Month: May 2010

“This Changes Nothing”

by digby

Al Gore says we need to use reason and science to understand that we are destroying the planet. What do you think the odds of that happening are?

Just as the oil companies told us that deep-water drilling was safe, they tell us that it’s perfectly all right to dump 90 million tons of CO2 into the air of the world every 24 hours. Even as the oil spill continues to grow—even as BP warns that the flow could increase multi-fold, to 60,000 barrels per day, and that it may continue for months—the head of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, says, “Nothing has changed. When we get back to the politics of energy, oil and natural gas are essential to the economy and our way of life.” His reaction reminds me of the day Elvis Presley died. Upon hearing the tragic news, Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, said, “This changes nothing.”

Is that a quote for the age or what? It certainly applies equally well to the economic crisis.

Gore continues:

However, both the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the CO2 spill into the global atmosphere are causing profound and harmful changes—directly and indirectly. The oil is having a direct impact on fish, shellfish, turtles, seabirds, coral reefs, marshes, and the entire web of life in the Gulf Coast. The indirect effects include the loss of jobs in the fishing and tourism industries; the destruction of the health, vitality, and rich culture of communities in the region; imminent bankruptcies; vast environmental damage expected to persist for decades; and the disruption of seafood markets nationwide.

And, of course, the consequences of our ravenous consumption of oil are even larger. Starting 40 years ago, when America’s domestic oil production peaked, our dependence on foreign oil has steadily grown. We are now draining our economy of several hundred billion dollars a year in order to purchase foreign oil in a global market dominated by the huge reserves owned by sovereign states in the Persian Gulf. This enormous and increasing transfer of wealth contributes heavily to our trade and current-account deficits, and enriches regimes in the most unstable region of the world, helping to finance both terrorism and Iran’s relentless effort to build a nuclear arsenal…

Here at home, the illusion that we can meaningfully reduce our dependence on foreign oil by taking extraordinary risks to develop deep reserves in the Outer Continental Shelf is illuminated by the illustration below. The addition to oil company profits may be significant, but the benefits to our national security are trivial. Meanwhile, our increasing appetite for coal is also creating environmental and human catastrophes. The obscene practice known as “mountaintop mining,” for instance, is not only defacing the landscape of Appalachia but also destroying streams throughout the region and poisoning the drinking water of many communities.

I think the former VP is failing to acknowledge that this country is exceptional and what may seem rational and logical to him is actually a slap in the face to Real Americans everywhere. The rules don’t apply to us, you see. Not even the rules of physics.

Besides, if we just clap harder we’ll find all the oil we need in Never-Neverland. It’s in the constitution.

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Ungrateful Bastards

by digby

Sean Hannity, Author of “Let Freedom Ring” says:

“The Iraqi’s need to pay us back for their liberation, every single solitary penny … I think they owe us a lot for that.”

Well, Paul Wolfowitz did say that the war would pay for itself and then the Middle East birth pangs would turn into a Jeffersonian democracy in his pants. Or something. But I’m not sure even he thought that the Iraqis should be required to “pay back every single solitary penny” for their liberation. It was more of wink-wink that the cheap oil would make it all worthwhile.

As Neiwert points out, there’s also that little matter of the hundreds of thousands of dead people to account for. We “liberated” an awful lot of people from their lives and I doubt there’s a whole lot of gratitude for that.

Speaking of “over there” here’s Seymour Hersh (via Michael Moore)

You never know with post-Vietnam Democrats whether or not they are true believers or whether they just don’t have the juice or the desire to fight the military industrial complex. The result is the same either way, which is the perpetuation of same military industrial complex. And so it goes.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the cold war in which there was a consensus for containment among the policy elites. The only consensus now seems to be to wet our collective pants at the slightest threat, start killing some random people and tear off another piece of the constitution. (And then do it all over again when Dick Cheney emerges from his coffin at sundown and snarls some criticism to Politico.)

I’m thinking this may be the right time for a president to challenge this system. In fact, I thought that even with all the inspirational vagueness of the 2008 election, this would be the one policy area in which the Democrats would make a fairly sharp turn. So far, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

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Even In The Moderate States

by digby

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am at the prospect that the Republican Party is poised to take over the congress in the fall — and it’s increasingly controlled by people like this:

The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories. The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of “collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth,” suggests the adoption of “Austrian Economics,” declares that “‘Freedom of Religion’ does not mean ‘freedom from religion'” (which I guess makes atheism illegal), insists that “healthcare is not a right,” calls for the abrogation of the “UN Treaty on Rights of the Child” and the “Law Of The Sea Treaty” and declares that we must resist “efforts to create a one world government.” It also contains favorable mentions of both the Tea Party and Ron Paul. You can read the whole thing here.

Dan Billings, who has served as an attorney for the Maine GOP, called the new platform “wack job pablum” and “nutcase stuff.” Despite the document’s crazy content, Maine Republican Party Chair Charlie Webster insisted to the AP that all of the elements in the platform are things that Republicans support. He claimed to the Press Herald that these issues reflect the values of working-class Mainers.

The California Republican Senate primary debate is happening this morning. Even here they’ve gone nuts:

Jonathan Singer tweets:

Fiorina and DeVore restate their support for those on the no-fly list being able to buy guns. Today’s Republican Party…

Chuck DeVore: Solution to Wall Street problems is less regulation and less taxes. Okay…

Tom Campbell attacks Ronald Reagan for backing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. A real moderate…

Watching the GOP’s CA-Sen debate. Fiorina and DeVore working overtime to show themselves in favor of off-shore drilling…

Imagine a government in which Bob Bennett of Utah is considered a liberal and you have some idea of what will happen if the Republicans seize power.

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Only Villagers May Opine

by digby

My goodness, Marty Peretz certainly has his little boy shorts in a twist. An unsanctioned non-villager asked questions about Elena Kagan so his Village better had to put him in his place:

“I Am Appalled That TNR Has Published Why Some Nobody Doesn’t Want Elena Kagan Nominated To The Supreme Court” …

Isn’t it enough that President Obama, who is clearly satisfied with her performance as S.G., will send her name to the Senate? As Campos admits, most people on the left are roughly comfortable with her politics. And everybody admires her character. I’ve only met her a few times at Cambridge events. She is a brilliant conversationalist … and very funny, besides.

That really should be good enough for anyone which is why I’m backing Jon Stewart for the seat.

This is the same guy who wrote this:

“What I suspect is that the president is probably a clinical narcissist. This is not necessarily a bad condition if one maintains for oneself what the psychiatrists call an ‘optimal margin of illusion,’ that is, the margin of hope that allows you to work. But what if his narcissism blinds him to the issues and problems in the world and the inveterate foes of the nation that are not susceptible to his charms?”

I think what happened here is that while Peretz may loathe him the president and his choice Kagan are members of the club and the riff raff were getting above themselves. It’s called class solidarity and it’s always interesting to see how solid it always is among the ruling class — especially when they feel the peasants getting restless.

BTW: The “nobody” who so appalled Peretz is a “magna cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan LawSchool, where he was editor of the Law Review Professor Campos joined the University of Colorado faculty in 1990. His academic articles and
essays have appeared in the nation’s top legal journals, including the Columbia Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the California Law Review. In 1995 he was named the first director of the Byron R. White Center for American Constitutional Study. Among other awards and honors, Professor Campos was recently named “Best University of
Colorado Professor” by the Colorado Daily. He is the author of two books on the law.”

But is he funny?

He is also a blogger at Lawyer, Guns and Money, which makes him a DFH as well. No wonder Peretz was appalled.

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Even Dick Was More Restrained

by digby

This may be the worst example of IOKIYAR yet:

The frighting reality is that not even Dick Cheney thought of stripping Americans of their citizenship so that you could torture and imprison them forever — even right after 9/11 when the whole country was petrified and he could have gotten away with anything. You’ll recall even John Walker Lindh, who was literally captured on the battlefield fighting with the Taliban, was tried in civilian court. They even read him his rights.

I think this says something fairly alarming about the current state of our politics.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Staring at a blank page

By Dennis Hartley

High-strung: Emma Stone and Jeff Daniels in Paper Man

Did you ever encounter a married couple who left you pondering: “How in the hell did those two ever get together? Did somebody lose a bet?” I would lay odds that this thought has crossed the minds of husband and wife Kieran and Michele Mulroney, because in their first effort as co-writer/directors, Paper Man, they have created a fictional married couple who leave you pondering: “How in the hell did those two ever get together?”

“Those two” are Claire (Lisa Kudrow) and Richard (Jeff Daniels) Dunn. She is a successful and renowned vascular surgeon who works at a New York City hospital. He is a not-so-successful writer, whose last book went in the dumper. Needless to say, Claire is the breadwinner of the family; she’s the “responsible” one, and a bit of a control freak. Richard is a man-child; taciturn and socially awkward, with a tendency to daydream (typical writer). There is a third member of the family-but I’m jumping ahead of myself.

Richard is struggling with a new book, and Claire has decided that setting him up in a rented cottage in the Long Island boonies will help him focus on his work. As we watch the couple getting settled in to the digs, it becomes apparent that Claire is more of a caregiver/guardian to Richard than a wife; it is not unlike a doctor clinically observing a patient. Her fussy exasperation over her husband’s chronic underachievement is barely contained beneath her mask of cheerfulness as she prattles on about her busy professional schedule in the city for the upcoming week, and then casually asks Richard (with a hint of cautious optimism) what he has planned for his first week alone at the cottage. “I’ll start from the very beginning,” he says nebulously, adding with half-hearted jocularity “…which is a very good place to start.” Before she leaves for work the next morning, she asks him, with a palpable air of foreboding, “You didn’t bring ‘him’ with you, did you?”

So who is ‘him’? ‘He’ is Captain Excellent (Ryan Reynolds)- a figment of Richard’s imagination, his lifelong imaginary friend, ‘super-hero’, muse, conscience-whatever one chooses to call that “little voice” in our heads (what…you mean you don’t hear the voices?). Although he has assured his wife that ‘he’ is not along for this writing sabbatical, we are (naturally) introduced to him, the second after Claire pulls out of the driveway. “I sense danger,” he warns Richard. This “danger” comes in many forms. Richard tends to neurotically fixate on things (the couch in the cottage, for instance, really, really bothers him, to the point of obsession). Thinking too hard about his “half-dead marriage”, as the Captain refers to it (to Richard’s chagrin). And of course, staring listlessly at the empty page in his Smith-Corona for days on end (I do know that feeling).

The Captain’s early warning system really goes into overdrive when Richard ventures into town on a Spyder bike (don’t ask) and espies a young woman with the small town blues named Abby (Emma Stone) nonchalantly setting fire to a public trashcan. For some reason, this intrigues him. He follows her, and when she (rightfully) confronts this possibly mentally challenged middle-aged man stalking her on a Spyder bike, Richard blurts that he is new and town and needs a babysitter for Friday night. For some reason, this intrigues her, and she says yes. Imagine her surprise when she arrives for the job and Richard tells her that there is no baby to sit. He just wants to go out for a while, and would like her to hang out at his house In spite of the red flags, rather than turn and flee like a sensible person would at this juncture, she says OK. And, in accordance with the rules and regulations of indie film, this marks the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

So-is this film yet another quirky, navel-gazing indie dramedy, a la Lost in Translation/Smart People/Me and You and Everyone We Know, offering up a wistful and pithy examination of lonely, desperately unhappy people yearning to connect amidst a cold and unfeeling universe, set to a requisite soundtrack of lo-fi pop and angsty emo? And was I a tad gob smacked that Ellen Page or Zooey Deschanel were nowhere in sight?

Yes, and yeah, pretty much.

That being said, I still didn’t mind spending two hours with these characters, thanks to the sensitive direction and excellent performances, particularly by Daniels and Stone. Lisa Kudrow is always a wonderful actress to watch, and I was surprised by Kieran Culkin’s touching performance in a small but substantive supporting role. The Mulroneys were not quite sure how to end their film (it felt like they had several alternate endings but decided they didn’t want to throw any of them out of the final cut) but I’m willing to grade them on a curve since this is their first collaborative writing-directing effort (Kieran Mulroney is the younger brother of actor Dermot, if you care about such things). Perhaps they are staring at a blank page as we speak, cooking up their next project. I hope Captain Excellent is looking over their shoulder (and I wonder if he does contract work?).

Previous posts with related themes:

Writer’s Block: Top 10 Movies about writers

Where the Wild Things Are

They Are Stardust, They Are Golden Girls

by digby

One of the ways you can tell that the tea party movement is made up of aging baby boomers (like me) is the fact that they keep describing various events as their “Woodstock.” (They must have been Brylcream and hairspray kids back in the day and missed all the fun the first time.) The rally in Searchlight came first and now they’re planning one for 9/11 — which sort of besmirches both events:

An event described as the “Woodstock” of tea parties is planned for Sept. 11 at the Monona County Fairgrounds in Onawa in western Iowa.
[…]

The event will have a “Take back our country” theme, Halverson said. Although the activities will occur on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, he said organizers don’t plan to spend the day reflecting on those events.

Wouldn’t want to harsh their mellow.

Jon Perr gets the quote of the day on this one:

While details of the event remain sketchy, the theme song of the September 11 Woodstock event should be Procul Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale.”

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Handing Them The Weapon

by digby

Sam Stein has more on the potential political problems with Kagan over her Goldman connection:

Considering how many actual economists missed the housing bubble in real time, it would be difficult to hold Kagan to a higher standard — though Goldman was already betting against the housing market by the time the latter report was published. The issue for progressives, however, isn’t her lack of long-term market salience. But rather the ties — however small — to a firm that is now a black mark on Wall Street and a pariah in Congress. Already, a variety of right-wing blogs have picked up on the findings. And the concern is that Goldman represents the type of superficial connection that could cause political damage.

“I just don’t understand why the Administration would want to makes themselves and their nominee vulnerable to the opposition at a time when American skepticism of Wall Street is at an all time high,” said a prominent progressive strategist speaking on the condition of anonymity. “This is like handing the Republicans the mantle of populism just for trying to oppose Kagen’s confirmation.”

I doubt that this law professor is a big Goldman insider. But who knows? There’s very little to go on and the neo-liberal bent of the elite is fairly monolithic, so it wouldn’t surprise me.

But it really irks the hell out of me that if we are going to have a big confirmation battle (which goes without saying)the administration is going put themselves in a position in which they have to defend Kagan’s Goldman Sachs ties while Jeff Sessions prances around like the second coming of William Jennings Bryan. Unless they think it’s a terrific idea to convince the American people once and for all that the Republican Party is the people’s only defense against Big Government and Wall Street, I can’t think of a more counterproductive political fight.

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Recipe For Abuse

by digby

But they assured us that this couldn’t possibly happen:

Full-body scanning machines may reveal a little too much, if an incident of workplace violence this week among Transportation Security Administration screeners is any indication.

A TSA worker at Miami International Airport in Florida was arrested for allegedly assaulting a co-worker who had repeatedly teased him about the size of his genitals.

The insults stemmed from an X-ray of the accused captured during a training exercise with the airport’s full-body scanning machines, the report said.

[…]

The incident puts the spotlight back on technology some privacy advocates liken to a virtual strip search.

“As far as I’m concerned, this really demonstrates exactly how detailed the images are, exactly how invasive the search is,” said John Verdi, senior counsel with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based research center specializing in civil liberties and privacy issues. It receives much of its funding from private foundations.

Verdi said the Miami incident “… also demonstrates that this technology, and the way it’s being implemented by TSA, is ripe for abuse.”

The TSA screener scuffle is not the only recent case of workplace tension involving the technology. A security worker at London’s Heathrow Airport allegedly made lewd comments about a female colleague who mistakenly entered a scanner, according to the UK’s Press Association. The accused worker was given a police warning for harassment.

[…]

The alternative pat-down, which U.S. passengers may opt for instead of body scanning, has to be very intrusive to be effective, and studies show people are less tolerant of physical intrusion than of intrusive technology, Laird said.

While advanced imaging technology doesn’t involve direct physical contact, the screener training incident in Miami highlights some travelers’ reservations about full-body scans.

“I really think it would give a lot of folks pause if they thought that TSA employees were mocking naked body scans of American air travelers,” Verdi said.

Yeah.

I don’t know what the alternatives are here. It seems as if would-be terrorists really are so unimaginative that they are still hung up on airplanes, so ever more intrusive security is going to be necessary. Chalk one up for the bad guys on that. So I suppose these body scans are better than strip searches. But it’s also inevitable that these scans are going to be of prurient interest to the people who look at them and there are likely to be other breaches of personal privacy.

Me, I’m just going to fly as little as possible. It’s become such a nightmare on so many levels that it’s hardly worth it.

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Golf Stories: A Tale of Two Drinkers

by digby

Golf is such serious business that the police don’t take any chances. Drunks on the course must be dealt with by using the full force of the law, including 50,000 volts and a charge of “resisting arrest without violence” (which is a new one on me.)

A 36-year-old man attending the second round of The Players Championship was subdued by a Taser on Friday.

Travis Parmelee, of Jacksonville, was charged with disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest without violence, said St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Dave Messenger.

Messenger said course marshals notified officers that Parmelee was yelling at players and being belligerent near the 11th hole. Officers responded and attempted to calm Parmelee down, but they said he became more combative.

They tried to take Parmelee into custody, but he resisted and was Tasered once.

“He was at the point where it was time for law enforcement to step in,” Messenger said. “Our goal is to escort people off the property, but it was clear he wasn’t going to go with us.”

Parmelee pulled away as officers tried to put him into a golf cart, Messenger said, prompting one to touch him with a stun gun. Messenger said it was clear Parmelee had been drinking.

Well the man did “pull away” so he deserved to be shot through with electricity — whatever it takes to keep the golf game from being disturbed. We just can’t have that kind of disruption in public.

Drinking and golf don’t mix. Drinking and driving,however, if you happen to be a world class golfer, is not a problem:

Minutes after Tiger Woods crashed his Cadillac Escalade into a tree, his wife Elin told police that he had been drinking. To the paramedics and cops on the scene, there was little question that Woods—who was asleep and snoring in the street—was impaired. “I would bet everything I own that he was not fit to drive,” says one of the officers who investigated the case. “But I’ll never be able to prove it, because our hands were tied. The powers that be didn’t want to tangle with Tiger; they just wanted the situation to go away.”

[…]

Police say they believed that they had enough evidence to subpoena Woods’ blood from the hospital, a routine process that occurs hundreds of times per day in Florida. They felt they could make a strong case for probable cause, and were sure that the State Attorney’s Office would agree. But officers were stunned to learn that the State Attorney was unwilling to subpoena the blood-test results. Although a spokeswoman for the office says that Woods’ celebrity status played no part in the decision, officers say that Woods’ fame—along with his high-powered legal team—protected him from being charged with a DUI.

Trooper Joshua Evans submitted a Request for Investigative Subpoena, asking for access to Tiger’s blood results from Health Central Hospital. In the narrative section of the request, Evans wrote, “The driver lost control of his vehicle, crashed and was transported to the hospital. A witness stated that the driver had consumed alcohol earlier in the day and the same witness removed the driver from the vehicle after the collision. Also, the same witness stated that the driver was prescribed medication (Ambien and Vicodin). Impairment of the driver is also suspected due to the careless driving that resulted in the traffic crash.”

Less than an hour later, Trooper Evans received his answer: Assistant State Attorney Steve Foster, head of the State Attorney’s Office Intake Division, denied the request. At the bottom of the form, he scrawled, “Insufficient information provided to lawfully issue subpoena.”

The refusal of the State Attorney’s Office to issue the subpoena irritated many of the officers within the Florida Highway Patrol. “I have gotten subpoenas issued with a lot less evidence than that,” said one of the officers involved in the case. “I don’t know why the subpoena wasn’t issued. I really don’t. All I know is that everything was done by the book, and I believe that subpoena should have been issued.”

Officers were further rankled when the golfer repeatedly refused to meet with them after the accident. For four days, they were denied access to Woods. Inside the precinct of the Highway Patrol, officers asked each other what Woods had to hide. But without any evidence of impairment, the FHP had no choice but to give Woods a routine traffic citation.

On Tuesday, December 1, troopers were finally able to meet with Tiger at his Isleworth home. Flanked by his lawyer and his agent, Tiger politely answered the officers’ questions and even lifted his shirt to show them his torso and abdomen. Officers observed that Tiger had a fat lip from the incident, but no other visible injuries. They issued him a $164 ticket for careless driving, which he signed and paid during the meeting. Legally, the case of Florida vs. Tiger Woods was closed.

They may be kvetching now that they weren’t allowed to do their jobs, but if it had been an ordinary citizen they probably would have tasered him to “wake him up.”

This story certainly illustrates the fact that our two tiered system of justice is in perfect working order.

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