Month: June 2010

Saturday Night At The Movies

Solitary Man: 60 is the new 40

By Dennis Hartley

Michael Douglas dispenses some not so sage advice.

Did you know that the average human life expectancy in the Neolithic era was 20? Which means that you would have your midlife crisis around what…age 10? Of course, 12,000 years later, thanks to advances in medicine, science and technology, that number skews a bit higher now. This probably accounts for 65-year old Michael Douglas getting away with portraying a 60 year-old who is suffering a midlife crisis, in the film Solitary Man.

Douglas plays Ben, a divorced 60-year old New Yorker at a crucial crossroads in his personal and professional life. Crucial, because his physician has given him sobering news regarding his health. However, having a bad ticker (and a ticking clock) is the least of his problems. A classic narcissist, Ben’s main concern is not that he could be “going” any time now, but that he may not get to go out with the most toys, if he doesn’t get his act together soon. You see, he’s a “use to be”. He used to be a successful car dealer, but lost the franchise (and barely escaped incarceration) due to unethical business practices. He used to have a lot of money, but his legal troubles decimated most of his net worth. He used to be married to the intelligent, lovely and supportive Nancy (Susan Sarandon) but blew that with serial philandering. He’s not a likeable guy, but he does possess the gift of the silver-tongued devil; he’s a “closer”- whether he’s on the car lot, or on the pull.

His current girlfriend, Jordan (Mary-Louise Parker), is a well-connected Upper East Side divorcee with a college-bound daughter named Allyson (Imogen Poots). At Jordan’s request, Ben accompanies her daughter to his alma mater, where she wants him to use his pull with the dean to assure Allyson’s acceptance there. The dean used to be happy to see him, back in the days when Ben was a generous benefactor (the campus library even carries his name), but his highly publicized fall from grace in the business community has made him a social pariah. To paraphrase Steely Dan-the weekend at the college doesn’t turn out like they planned. Ben’s penchant for getting himself into hot water gets the better of him; he has a physical altercation with a student, as well as an ill-advised (and wholly inappropriate) roll in the hay that not only costs him his relationship with Jordan, but puts the kibosh on getting himself back in the game, business-wise. We spend the rest of the film watching the self-sabotaging Ben crawl slowly from the wreckage of his life.

Ben may be at an impasse regarding a comeback, but this film is a comeback for the actor playing him; it’s a fine performance by Douglas, one of his best in years. Few actors can play a self-serving prick as convincingly as Douglas can (consider his characterizations in Wall Street, The War of the Roses, Falling Down and A Perfect Murder). Director-screenwriter Brian Koppelman and co-director David Levien navigate the tricky waters of “dramedy” on a fairly even keel, without going too overboard in either direction. The writing is sharp, and there are some smart zingers to temper the inherent angst of the narrative. Danny Devito is reunited with Douglas in an engaging supporting role, and Jesse Eisenberg once again plays, erm, Jesse Eisenberg…or maybe he’s playing Michael Cera (or perhaps those two young men represent a new paradigm in post-modern acting technique that is too subtle for me?). I would have liked to have seen more scenes with Sarandon and Louise-Parker, those two wonderful actresses feel under-utilized; but this project was obviously developed as a showcase for Douglas, so it is what it is, and I accepted it as such. I find myself becoming more accepting as I get older. Besides, according to this film, I still have about six more carefree years before my midlife crisis.

Midlife meltdowns: American Beauty, Lost in Translation, New Age [VHS], Carnal Knowledge, Lolita (1962), Baby Doll, Shopgirl , Ghost World, Serial, Bitter Moon, Middle Age Crazy, L.A. Story , As Good As It Gets, The Sweet Hereafter, Reuben, Reuben, Blame It On Rio, The Swimmer, Panic , Husbands & Wives, Manhattan, Hannah & Her Sisters, Guinevere , Husbands , All Night Long, Tempest, Breezy, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!, All That Jazz, Nobody’s Fool, The Hospital, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Previous posts with related themes:

Whatever Works
Crazy Heart
Paper Man

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Replaying the game of 2003

by digby

Ben Somberg catches the Washington Post publishing lazy, nonfactual reporting. Again:

If Congress doesn’t provide additional stimulus spending, economists inside and outside the administration warn that the nation risks a prolonged period of high unemployment or, more frightening, a descent back into recession. But a competing threat — the exploding federal budget deficit — seems to be resonating more powerfully in Congress and among voters.

Somberg writes:

[I]s this notion supported by what the polling actually says? No. Not even close.

A Pew Research / National Journal poll from early June asked “Which of the following national economic issues worries you most?” Number one was “job situation” with 41%. “Federal budget deficit” got 23%.

An NBC / Wall Street Journal poll from early May asked “Please tell me which one of these items you think should be the top priority for the federal government.” Sure enough, “job creation and economic growth” won with 35%. “The deficit and government spending” got 20%.

A Fox News poll also in early May got even more dramatic results. “Economy and jobs” topped the priority list with 47%, while “deficit, spending” garnered only 15%.

A CBS / NYT poll in early April found 27% prioritizing “jobs”, 27% the “economy” and 5% prioritizing “budget deficit/national debt.”

The only recent poll that gives the slightest hint of support for the Post’s thesis is the USA Today / Gallup poll from late May (not even their newest). Participants were asked “How serious a threat to the future well-being of the United States do you consider each of the following.” For “federal government debt”, 40% said extremely serious, 39% very serious, and 15% somewhat serious. For “unemployment”, 33% said extremely serious, 50% said very serious, and 15% said somewhat serious. If you use only the “extremely serious” numbers, you get 7% more for the debt. Greg Marx at CJR makes the case that this poll, nevermind its headline, should not be read as some sort of overwhelming evidence of a shifted public view.

And in fact a newer Gallup poll, from a week ago, asking “What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?” finds the economy and jobs on top. “Economy in general” gets 28%, “Unemployment/Jobs” gets 21%, and “Federal budget deficit” gets 7%.

I don’t know where this reporter got this information, but it is wrong and it requires a correction. The public is NOT more upset by the deficit than unemployment and to the extent they are upset about the deficit at all, it comes from the Big Lie that the deficit is responsible for the economic problems we face.

I have a fairly clear idea about why the powers that be are pushing this line, but why the press is doing it is another question. Just as they slanted their news and analysis in the run-up to the Iraq war, they are doing the same thing with respect to this deficit fetish. We saw it happening in real time then, just as we are now.

Here’s a report by Jeff Cohen from FAIR in December 2003:

The run-up to the Iraq war offers a case study in news bias: how mainstream media, especially television, were incapable of getting the truth out in the face of administration lies and innuendo about Iraq’s 9/11 role and weapons of mass destruction.

Among experts internationally, there had been much debate and many doubts about Iraq being an imminent WMD threat. But there was little debate among the handpicked weapons “experts” who dominated U.S. television coverage in the build up to war — and most of what they told us has turned out to be wrong. A media furor erupted over fictionalization in news accounts by New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, but not about the more momentous reporting — illusory and scarily overstated — by Times star Judith Miller on WMDs, both before and after the Iraq invasion.

News outlets ideologically allied with Bush have been happy to assist in confusing the public about who had attacked us on 9/11 and in morphing our enemy from Al-Qaeda to Iraq. The Fox News Channel runs its “War on Terror” banner whether discussing Afghanistan or Iraq. Other outlets promoted the Saddam/911 confusion less out of ideology than ineptitude — during a live, pre-war news conference at which the chief of Homeland Security described new terrorist threats from Al-Qaeda, MSNBC ran its banner: “Showdown with Saddam.”

While most of us who pay attention know who was and who wasn’t behind 9/11, others get their news on the fly — basically headlines and banners. But even Americans who say they’re paying attention, at least to TV, are highly misinformed. A massive University of Maryland study found that most who get their news from commercial TV held at least one of three fundamental “misperceptions”: that Iraq had been directly linked to 9/11, that WMDs had been found in Iraq or that world opinion supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Not unexpectedly, Fox News viewers were the most misled. But strong majorities of CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN viewers were also confused on at least one of these points. Among those informed on all three questions, only 23 percent supported Bush’s war.

Ultimately, the Iraq war was a “Rush Limbaugh/Fox News War” — based on the premise that in our current media environment if you tell a lie forcefully and frequently enough, the lie will triumph. Limbaugh rose to be the top commentator in our country while conducting a reign of error virtually unnoticed by mainstream media. Fox News, with its “fair and balanced” mantra, became the top cable news channel while mainstream TV writers solemnly debated whether the channel was biased or not.

The ideologues in the Bush White House apparently learned from watching the rise of Limbaugh and Fox News: When you invert or concoct reality, do so passionately and repetitively, and accuse anyone who challenges your reality of liberal bias…or treason.

The deficit fetishists, many of whom are the same people, obviously learned the same thing. But since the time Cohen wrote that, I think we’ve developed another reason why the press runs with this sort of thing. It’s the Very Serious People syndrome, in which the media are reluctant to challenge the “experts” who insist that we believe them or believe our lying eyes. I don’t know if it’s because they are afraid of losing access or if they are just lazy and choose to rely on these people for their analysis rather than challenge the prevailing CW. Either way, it’s happening again and the consequences are just as dire. And it’s journalistic malpractice.

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Deep Thought

by digby

If you’ve been confused, as I have, about the bizarre statements coming from the usual suspects about the oil spill being a natural disaster, I think perhaps Rick Perlstein has cleared it up. He tells me this is actually a right wing redefinition of the term itself. It now means a disaster that happens to nature. Isn’t that clever?

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The Right Celebrates The End Of The American Dream

by digby

Athenae, pinch hitting over at Tbogg’s joint, caught John Derbyshire lubing himself up with gloppy crude and sliding down the rabbit hole with this little gem:

As the writer says: “The very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more.” In slightly different words: The best we can hope for is that the thing just goes on gushing through the bore hole indefinitely. (Or until we can drill enough relief wells to reduce the pressure. Don’t hold your breath.) I’m as horrified as anyone by this — if the guy has got it right, and I’ve understood him correctly. At the same time, as a constitutional pessimist, I’ll own to a certain grim satisfaction. The infantile optimism of post-JFK America may have met its match down there in the Gulf. Nature is not mocked.

And here I thought it was the hippies who hate America and are destroying it with all this environmental mumbo jumbo and American Dream doomsaying. Now it turns out that the whole country has been living in “infantile optimism” which an epic environmental disaster brings this conservative writer “grim satisfaction” by crushing.

Do you get the sense that conservatives are confused? Insane? Possessed by Lucifer?

If you’d like to read a righteous rant about this nonsense, click the link. Athenae goes bloggerifically postal on him.

h/t to dan — and thanks again for the drink!

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“Tough Love”

by digby

Rand Paul has some advice for the lazy unemployed:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul on Friday urged Americans who have been unemployed for many months to consider returning to the workforce in less desirable jobs rather than continue relying on government unemployment assistance. “In Europe, they give about a year of unemployment. We’re up to two years now in America,” Paul said on Sue Wylie’s WVLK-AM 590 radio program.”As bad as it sounds, ultimately we do have to sometimes accept a wage that’s less than we had at our previous job in order to get back to work and allow the economy to get started again,” Paul said. “Nobody likes that, but it may be one of the tough love things that has to happen.” Paul was responding to a question from Wylie about Thursday’s Senate Republican filibuster of a $120 billion package of additional jobless benefits and state aid. Tens of thousands of Americans will have exhausted their unemployment benefits this month without that extension.Paul said he supports the filibuster. If the Senate thinks the bill is necessary, it needs to find the money to pay for it elsewhere in the federal budget rather than add to the $13 trillion national debt, he said.”It’s all a matter of making priorities,” Paul said. “Some tough decisions will have to be made.”

Yes, Rand knows that some people have to make those sacrifices for the greater good. But not him. While the lazy unemployed need some “tough love,” both doctors and unaccredited quacks like himself “deserve a comfortable living.”

U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul (R-KY) has made opposition to the “heavy hand” of the federal government one of the hallmarks of his political ideology. Yet, despite his anti-government rhetoric, the Kentucky opthamologist has gone on record opposing cuts to the Medicare program, saying that “physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living.”

Last week in a show of major “tough love” the Senate couldn’t pass a modest unemployment extension (even one that cut benefits $25.00 a week!) over a Republican plus conservadem filibuster. But they did manage to do this:

The Senate belatedly voted Friday to spare doctors who treat Medicare patients from a 21 precent cut in pay.

After all, the doctors “should be allowed to make a comfortable living” while the unemployed need to make sacrifices and help get the nation out of debt by destroying their hopes and dreams for a better life. Surely we can all agree that’s perfectly fair.

So what’s a comfortable living for Rand? The estimate of how much money he makes from Medicare (which he hasn’t divulged) and Medicaid (which he has) runs somewhere between 300 and half a million dollars a year. Rand says those payments are about 50% of his income. So I think we know just what it takes for him to be “comfortable.” I’d be pretty comfortable too.

This new meme about the unemployed continues to shock me, and I’m not easily shocked by rightwing rhetoric. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one before, however. They are making a conscious decision to portray the unemployed as the cause of high unemployment so they don’t need to factor it into economic decisions. The actual point seems to be making a permanent underclass out of what were responsible members of the workforce and then demonizing them for being unemployed — thus creating a scapegoat for continued unemployment. This also gives them an excuse to “welfare queen” these people and cut services and social spending even more under the rationale that we need to teach them a lesson in tough love. After all, we “reformed welfare as we know it” so why not “reform unemployment insurance as we know it” too?

Next step: the elderly who are living high off the hog on social security instead of selling oranges on street corners as they should. (That’s another one of those good jobs that are being stolen by undocumented workers.)

Paul Krugman wrote this morning about Alan Greenspan’s bizarre statement yesterday that it’s unfortunate interest rates and inflation haven’t spiked because it makes it harder to cut the deficit when all the predicted consequences of doing so don’t materialize. Krugman writes:

You know, some people might take the fact that what’s actually happening is exactly what people like me were saying would happen — namely, that deficits in the face of a liquidity trap don’t drive up interest rates and don’t cause inflation — lends credence to the Keynesian view. But no: Greenspan KNOWS that deficits do these terrible things, and finds it “regrettable” that they aren’t actually happening. The triumph of prejudices over the evidence is a wondrous thing to behold. Unfortunately, millions of workers will pay the price for that triumph.

Yes, they will. And it appears they are also going to be blamed for causing the problem. That “stubborn” unemployment would go away if these people would just go out and accept jobs they don’t like. Like picking strawberries. Or prostitution.

It’s clear that stubborn unemployment is impeding the Grand Bargain to “cut the deficit” which actually means cutting social spending of all kinds. (After all, even a high school economics student can figure out that reducing unemployment is key to reducing the deficit, so I think we can fairly assume at this point that the deficit is beside the point.) So they are attempting to change the perception that unemployment is something that happens to people and turn it into something they do to themselves, thus making it something that shouldn’t require social insurance. It’s a very daring thing to do because it goes right to the heart of the middle class. But from the looks of things, they are in the process of consciously turning the middle class into an underclass on all kinds of levels, so perhaps that’s not an accident.

This war on the unemployed and the New Austerity is very, very creepy and I’m extremely concerned that it’s going to take on a life of its own. Not only will it destroy the economy further — it’s the opposite of what needs to be done — it’s going to finally destroy what’s left of our frayed social contract. This is the environment in which very unpredictable things begin to happen.

Update:

Nothing Is That Important

by digby

This makes me want to stop driving. Or even leave my house:

About 47 percent of adults who use text messages said they have sent or read text messages while driving, the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported. A September 2009 study from the same group found that 34 percent of teenagers aged 16 and 17 reported the same behavior. In the general population, those numbers mean that 27 percent of all American adults have texted while driving their cars.

I don’t care how good you are at it, that’s just cracked. I personally witnessed an accident a block from my house in which someone was texting and went right through a red light and broadsided a van. The driver was just oblivious, concentrating on her little screen.
The fact that more adults do it than teenagers doesn’t surprise me in the least. And they are probably far less competent at the task as well, which makes them even more distracted and dangerous. It’s just dumb..

Comply Immediately Or Things Could Go Very, Very Badly

by digby

Speaking of tasers, remember the case of the transit cops shooting and killing a suspect on the train platform in Oakland a while back? Well, the trial is going on and one of the police officers testified:

Anthony Pirone took the witness stand this morning at the murder trial of a former colleague on the BART police force, explaining to jurors how and why he detained train rider Oscar Grant minutes before the colleague shot and killed him. Pirone, a critical witness for both the prosecution and defense in the trial of Johannes Mehserle, said Grant and four of his friends fit a vague description of suspects in a fight aboard a train that had pulled into Fruitvale Station in Oakland early Jan. 1, 2009. A police dispatcher, relaying information the train operator had gotten from a passenger, had said the suspects were black men in black clothing on the lead car. Grant was African American. Pirone said he began cursing at the men almost immediately after spotting them on the platform, and threatened to shock them with a Taser as a means of “intimidation” to gain compliance. Pirone said he had ordered three men to sit against a wall. Grant and a second man initially tried to hide inside a train car, Pirone said, but he found them and pulled them out. He said he had found Grant walking from one car to another using the interior doors, then had directed the laser light of his Taser at Grant through a window. He said he had ordered Grant off, then had told him to “get the f- off the train.” Grant soon came out, Pirone said, and cooperated as he was escorted to the wall, though he complained and swore as he went. This afternoon, Pirone is expected to testify about why he ultimately decided to arrest Grant for allegedly resisting officers, and about what happened in the moments before Mehserle shot Grant while trying to handcuff him. Grant was unarmed and on his chest. Witnesses at the trial have said Pirone’s profanity and aggressiveness in detaining the men angered other BART riders. Grant’s relatives believe Pirone escalated the situation, and that racial profiling was a factor in his initial detention of the five men.

But this is the real kicker:

Pirone could influence the jury’s conclusions on two major issues in the case: whether Grant was resisting Mehserle and whether, as the defense contends, Mehserle accidentally shot Grant while intending to shock him with a Taser.

The kid was on his chest in handcuffs and the cop pulled out his gun and shot him. I guess everyone’s entitled to a defense, but that’s shockingly bad.

But the fact that the cops blithely admit that they use the taser as an intimidation tactic is equally disturbing. It’s not to protect themselves, it’s not to stop someone from hurting themselves or others. It’s just a plain old police state tactic to make people behave, even in situations where they are clearly within their rights. They’re killing people with them. And nobody cares.

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Afghan Pain Compliance

by digby

I’ve been writing for a while about the new “pain compliance” weapons, the most famous being the taser, of course. In this post I talked about a number of the new ones and what I perceive to be the rationale behind them.

According to WIRED, there is a possibility that they are testing one of them in Afghanistan:

The U.S. mission in Afghanistan centers around swaying locals to its side. And there’s no better persuasion tool than an invisible pain ray that makes people feel like they’re on fire. OK, OK. Maybe that isn’t precisely the logic being employed those segments of the American military who would like to deploy the Active Denial System to Afghanistan. I’m sure they’re telling themselves that the generally non-lethal microwave weapon is a better, safer crowd control alternative than an M-16. But those ray-gun advocates better think long and hard about the Taliban’s propaganda bonanza when news leaks of the Americans zapping Afghans until they feel roasted alive. Because, apparently, the Active Denial System is “in Afghanistan for testing.” An Air Force military officer and a civilian employee at the Air Force Research Laboratory are just two of the people telling our pal Sharon Weinberger that the vehicle-mounted “block 2″ version of the pain ray is in the warzone, but hasn’t been used in combat.

The military wrote in to WIRED and said they are not “currently” testing there. The spokesperson also reassured the writer that the pain isn’t really all that bad, so that’s good.

Setting aside the fact that using a “pain ray” in general is a horrible idea, how much more horrible is it to use in a country that already sees itself invaded by men who look like robot insects and where unmanned planes kill targets from a distance? It’s hard not to see that as a weapons laboratory on a people who have no means to protest.

The good news is that once they test their efficacy, pain ray machines are coming to a protest near you. Of course, we’re being softened up already with taser comedy and a long indoctrination to police inflicting pain to achieve compliance (even if it kills us.) By the time they deploy the ADS, most people in this country will be completely comfortable with such Big Brother tactics. Indeed, they already see them as a compassionate and benign approach to law enforcement. The rising death toll doesn’t seem to bother anyone at all.

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Solidarity

by digby

A truly wonderful speech from Richard Trumka today, showing solidarity with all workers, even the undocumented. It’s an inspiring sea change for the unions, which have long been ambivalent at best and hostile at worst to immigration, and one which shows how this progressive coalition is developing into a true movement based on shared values.

Here’s just one short excerpt. You can read the whole transcript here:

We need a new national economic strategy for a global economy.

At the heart of our strategy must be a workforce with world class skills and world class rights and trade policies that serve the interests of the American people. But today I also want to talk to you about what may seem like a strange subject–immigration–because it is patently clear that we cannot talk about our national workforce strategy unless we face head-on our own contradictions, hypocrisy and history on immigration.

The truth is that in a dynamic global economy in the 21st century, we simply cannot afford to have millions of hard-working people without legal protections, without meaningful access to higher education, shut off from the high-wage, high-productivity economy. It is just too costly to waste all that talent and strength and drive.

But immigration reform is not just an economic issue. The way we as a nation treat the immigrants among us is about more than economic strategy—it is about who we are as a nation.

I grew up in a small town in Southwestern Pennsylvania, not that far from here. The immigrant path led from the coalmines to Pittsburgh to Cleveland.

And if you look around Cleveland at the ethnic clubs and the churches, you see a city that immigrants built–Hungarians and Poles, Irish and Italians, Serbs and Croats and Jews, as well as African Americans. Cleveland is a city where the traditions of the places we came from are the very foundation of our community.

It was not easy when my family came to this country. My parents fled poverty and war from different corners of Europe. When I was a kid, there was an ugly name for every one of us in all twelve languages spoken in Nemacolin, PA—wop and hunkie and polack and kike. We were the last hired and first fired, the people who did the hardest and most dangerous work, the people whose pay got shorted because we didn’t know the language and were afraid to complain.

We got to the mines and the mills, and the people already there said we were taking their jobs, ruining their country. Yet in the end the immigrants of my parents’ and grandparents’ generation prevailed, and built America. This is the history of my family, and this is the story of Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Detroit and Chicago and Baltimore and a thousand cities and towns across America.

And yet today I hear from working people who should know better, some in my own family – that those immigrants are taking our jobs, ruining our country. Haven’t we been here before?

When I hear that kind of talk, I want to say, did an immigrant move your plant overseas? Did an immigrant take away your pension? Or cut your health care? Did an immigrant destroy American workers’ right to organize? Or crash the financial system? Did immigrant workers write the trade laws that have done so much harm to Ohio?

My friends, we are most of us the children of immigrants.

But there was no labor movement in America until workers learned to look at each other and see not immigrants and native born, not white and black, not different last names, but our common fate as workers.

The labor movement believes that our goal as a nation should be a future of shared prosperity – not stubborn unemployment and a lost generation. That our economic strategy must bring us together instead of driving us apart. Our strategy must help us be the kind of country we want our children to thrive in—the country our history tells us we can be. The home of the American Dream.

So exactly what is the American Dream? Some will tell you the American Dream is the idea that in America anyone can become rich. And the fact that the upper reaches of our society are relatively open is a good thing about our country—but it is not the American Dream.

The American Dream is not that a few of us will get to be rich, but that all of us will have a fair portion of the good things in life. Time to be with our families. The chance for our children to get an education and the opportunity to make their own way in the world. Laws that protect us, not oppress us.

The American labor movement is all about the pursuit and the defense of this idea of America. And we have learned through our history that it is only when working people stand together—in the workplace and at the polling place—that the American Dream is secure.

Nice.

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The Road To Madness

by digby

I get dinged a lot for suggesting that even though the Democrats are feckless and often down right corrupt, putting these batshit crazy Republicans in power would be a disaster of epic proportions. I’m told there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them, that only by electing right wing nut jobs will the Dems learn that they need to be more progressive, etc, etc.

But I say this not because I have some filial feeling toward Democrats or because I wish to protect them in some way. It’s because as bad as they are, they do not do this. From Jamison Foser:

Now, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa wants to make clear that if you liked the Republican investigations of the White House cat, the armed assault on vegetable gardens Dan Burton waged in a delusional attempt to disprove Vince Foster’s suicide, the endless distractions and wasted money of partisan investigations of non-scandals, you’ll love what the GOP has in store for Barack Obama if they win control of Congress:

Rep. Darrell Issa, the conservative firebrand whose specialty is lobbing corruption allegations at the Obama White House, is making plans to hire dozens of subpoena-wielding investigators if Republicans win the House this fall. The California Republican’s daily denunciations draw cheers from partisans and bookings from cable TV producers. He even bought his own earphone for live shots. But his bombastic style and attention-seeking investigations draw eye rolls from other quarters. Now, he’s making clear he won’t be so easy to shrug off if he becomes chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2011. … Issa has told Republican leadership that if he becomes chairman, he wants to roughly double his staff from 40 to between 70 and 80. And he is not subtle about what that means for President Barack Obama. At a recent speech to Pennsylvania Republicans here, he boasted about what would happen if the GOP wins 39 seats, and he gets the power to subpoena. “That will make all the difference in the world,” he told 400 applauding party members during a dinner at the chocolate-themed Hershey Lodge. “I won’t use it to have corporate America live in fear that we’re going to subpoena everything. I will use it to get the very information that today the White House is either shredding or not producing.” In other words, Issa wants to be to the Obama administration what Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) was to the Clinton administration — a subpoena machine in search of White House scandals.

If you think it doesn’t matter if the entire government comes to a standstill, that whatever work gets done, gets done in total darkness because the puerile press corps is lapping up this tabloid bs by the barrel full, then you’ll think it’s a good idea for the Republicans to take control of the congress this fall and “teach the Democrats a lesson.” Unfortunately, the actual humans who live in this world will be taught a lesson as well, most of whom don’t deserve it.

I know the Democratic Party sucks. (It always has to one degree or another, by the way. Check out Roosevelt’s policies on race. It’s not like he didn’t know they were bad — it was his deal with the devil to keep the old confederacy in the coalition.) Sadly, that’s true of every political party ever created. However, it is the only institutional governance vehicle we have for liberalism of any kind and it is the only viable tool our system provides to fight back the increasingly manipulative, nihilistic and fascistic conservatives.

Over time we must change the status quo and force them to be more responsive to their constituents and there are ways outside and inside the system to make that happen. But empowering the Republicans at the very height of their teabag madness isn’t one of them — the risk of it all going terribly, terribly wrong in ways we haven’t contemplated in a time of crisis like this is far too great.

I know it’s hard to believe that there could be anything worse than denying unemployment insurance while coddling corporate criminals, but there is. These are people who really like the idea of invading other countries to solve non-existent problems and are actually electing people who think armed insurrection is a good idea and that we should invade Iran in order to bring on the Rapture. Seriously, it really can get worse.

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