Month: August 2010

Saturday Night At The Movies

Winnebago Man: 7 words you can say on YouTube

By Dennis Hartley

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on

Many years ago (many, many years ago), when I was working at my first radio job (OK, Gerald Ford was in the White House…happy now?) a fellow announcer pulled me aside one day, took me into the production room and revealed a dirty little secret (mind out of the gutter, please). In those days, when we did our audio production, we would master onto reel-to-reel. Once you had a satisfying take, or had cut and pasted (literally, with like, you know, an actual razor blade and some splicing tape) your session into that perfect 30 second commercial, you would then transfer the audio onto a cart (sort of like an 8-track) that the DJs would then be able to play on the air. Now, we would all use (and re-use) the same work tapes on the reel to reel. What my co-worker had been doing for some time was listening back to the previous jock’s raw production session, and saving some of the more amusing outtakes onto a blooper reel. I picked up on this, and over the years I would compile cassette collections of outtakes for the amusement of my friends.

More often than not, what made an outtake a “keeper” was the boundlessly creative use of profanity and the degree of verbal self-abuse that perfectionists tend to heap upon themselves. And of course, there’s something intrinsically hilarious about listening to a dulcet-toned broadcast professional launching into a tirade that would make a Tourette’s sufferer blush, in perfectly metronomic pentameter. Over the years, I’ve heard (and said) it all myself-which is why I was somewhat ambivalent when I first saw this on YouTube:

It’s all “been there, done that” to me, but that particular collage of blue-streaked verbal self-flagellation by a Mr. Jack Grabney, (aka the “Winnebago Man”) has for some reason captured the imagination of many YouTube fans over the years and spawned its own devoted cult of personality. I think it’s safe to say that most people would take a look, have a chuckle and leave it at that. However, for filmmaker Ben Steinbauer, that was not enough. For his documentary, Winnebago Man, he wanted to dig deeper and discover the back story. So why would he bother anyway? Would anyone really care? After all, the YouTube clips were taken from VHS copies that had already been circulating amongst “found footage” festival curators and private enthusiasts for years, long before the term “viral video” had entered the lexicon-and certainly prior to YouTube’s existence. For all anyone knew, Grabney was long in his grave. It took the assistance of a private investigator and substantial digging, but Steinbauer discovered his quarry was above ground; indeed way above ground-living the hermit life in an isolated mountain cabin.

Any attempt to summarize further risks spoiling the mildly surprising twists and turns that ensue in this slight yet engaging film. In some ways, it’s more about the filmmaker than his subject; especially when it depicts Steinbauer wrestling with his own motivations for making the documentary in the first place. Is he ultimately exploiting Grabney, who alleges having no idea of his cult celebrity prior to the posting of the outtakes on the internet? Or is Grabney playing him like a violin? I was reminded of Ross McElwee’s 1996 documentary, Six O’Clock News. In that film, the director chose several people at random (most of them beset by personal tragedies) who were featured in TV news stories in an earnest attempt to reveal the living breathing human beings behind the sound bites (while attempting to remain sensitive to their feelings and as unobtrusive to their lives as possible). McElwee encountered the same conundrum as Steinbauer; how do you make a statement about an exploitative and self-aggrandizing media (or web culture) without in essence coming off to be as equally exploitative and self-aggrandizing yourself? Discuss?

Part deux: Better than life

Video killed the radio star
And then committed suicide
-Doug Powell, “Empty Vee”

Speaking of viral video stars, the original maven of the matrix has returned. The belated release of ABC-TV’s late 80s one-season wonder, Max Headroom on DVD earlier this week has given sci-fi geeks a nice little lift from the midsummer doldrums (well…some sci-fi geeks…hey-why is everybody looking at me like I’m some kind of a nerd?). In case you spent the 80s in a coma, or you’re too young to remember, “Max Headroom” was a fictional, computer-generated TV personality who was created (somewhat ironically) via a blend of live-action camera, prosthetics and old-school animation techniques. First appearing in 1985 on Channel 4 in the U.K. as the host (or “programme presenter” as our friends across the pond like to say) for a weekly, MTV-style music video/variety show, the hip, irreverent and oh-so-sardonic Max was indelibly brought to “life” by the comic improvisations of square-jawed Canadian actor Matt Frewer, backed by a pool of clever and wonderfully off-kilter writers (think-if Robin Williams had been the voice of HAL).

The original one-hour pilot that kicked off the British variety series in 1985 provided a back story for the character, and was quite an impressive production. An imaginative mash-up of Brazil, Network and The Parallax View, it is set in a dystopian metropolis some “20 minutes into the future” and concerns an investigative journalist (Frewer) who works for a media conglomerate called Network 23. He is hot on the trail of his own employers, who have developed a secretive video technology called the “blipvert” that can deliver a huge cache of subliminal advertising to unwitting TV viewers in a matter of seconds; such a huge amount of information, in fact, that some people have an adverse physical reaction (OK, they explode-don’t worry, not necessarily a spoiler). A shadowy conspiracy thriller ensues. Whilst fleeing some would-be assassins, he runs smack into a parking gate arm (emblazoned with the warning “Max Headroom”). Through a subsequent plot development soon thereafter, his memory and persona gets downloaded into a computer program, which then transmogrifies into the “Max” we know and love.

I remember first seeing the British pilot here in the states on Cinemax, which kicked off the domestic version of the variety series (only a handful of installments, which aired back in 1986). Unfortunately (most likely due to legal snafus) that original pilot is not included in the DVD set; if you scrounge around secondhand stores and yard sales you may spot the odd VHS copy (I found mine for $3 at a Hollywood Video a couple years ago when they were liquidating VHS inventory). I recommend catching it, if you haven’t.

What is included (thank the gods) is the entire 14 episode season that aired on ABC in 1987, a long-coveted cult item. The reworked U.S. pilot episode follows the same basic storyline (although not quite as gritty and technically accomplished as the original) and sets up the character dynamics for the series. Frewer reprises his dual role as investigative TV journalist Edison Carter and his alter-ego, Max. Also retained from the original pilot are the lovely Amanda Pays (as Edison’s producer) and the delightful William Morgan Sheppard as “Blank Reg”, the Mohawk-sporting pirate cable channel entrepreneur. The always dependable Jeffrey Tambor was recruited for the U.S. series to play Carter’s boss.

Something else retained for the U.S. series (and much to its benefit) was a good portion of the original British production and writing team. As I’ve been working my way through the episodes over the past week, it amazes me how truly subversive the show was for U.S. network television; especially with its strident (and unapologetically leftist) anti-corporatist, anti-consumerist message. With hindsight being 20/20, it’s not so surprising that it was yanked after one season. Sad as it is for me to say, you would just never see a show like this on American television now that so dared to challenge the status quo (the The X-Files had its moments, but cloaked them in horror-show silliness, more often than not). Some of the storylines are also quite prescient, including the advent of social networking, cyber-crime, and the inevitable merging of the technocracy with the idiocracy (which any casual perusal of YouTube will confirm). Perhaps what resonates most significantly in hindsight is the show’s depiction of news as infotainment and an insidiously corporatized media (still dismissible as paranoid fantasy 23 years ago). Worth ch-ch-ch-checking out.

Previous posts with related themes:

We Live in Public

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Roid Rage

by digby

Here’s a great post on Daily Kos by Steven D about the increased use of tasers in Chicago. Within the article however, is a report which I’ve not seen before about the use of steroids among police officers, which has been tied in some cases to excessive taser use(Roid Rage being the ostensible cause.)

Apparently, this has been known for a long time:

A segment of the CBS-TV program “60 Minutes” had already made that point on November 5, 1989. “Beefing Up the Force” presented interviews with three officers whose use of steroids had apparently caused the hyper-aggressiveness that had gotten them into serious trouble. The worst case involved what one psychiatrist called “a real Jekyll and Hyde change” in the personality of a prison security guard in Oregon who had kidnapped and shot a woman who made a casual remark he didn’t like. He got 20 years in prison, and she was paralyzed for life. The personality he presented during his prison interview made it seem utterly improbable that he would have been capable of such an act. But his testosterone level when he committed the crime was 50 times the normal level. This broadcast conveyed the message that steroid problems were lurking in many police departments across the country, and that police officials were turning a blind eye to a significant threat to public safety.

It was no accident that the “60 Minutes” segment paid special attention to a “hard core group” of steroid users on the Miami police force. Two years earlier the Miami Herald had run a long article on steroid-using police officers. The seven notorious Miami “River Cops”, who in 1987 were on trial for alleged crimes including cocaine trafficking and conspiracy to commit murder, included Armando “Scarface” Garcia, a weightlifter who had publicly admitted to taking steroids. “There’s a great potential for an officer abusing steroids to physically mistreat people,” said the police chief of nearby Hollywood, Florida, who had told his investigators to be on the lookout for officers who looked like “small mountains.” (3) The Miami Herald article may have been the first of the tiny number of analytical treatments of this subject that have appeared in American newspapers since the 1980s.

Here’s another report from 2007:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

I have often lamented the loss of common sense among some officers in the use of tasers.The documented abuses seem so irrational and so disproportionate that I’ve wondered what’s going on in the minds of these guys. Maybe this explains some of those cases.

I can’t think of a worse drug for police officers to use than steroids. I know they need to be physically strong, but the side effects of these particular drugs are the worst of all possible worlds. They create paranoia, anxiety, aggression and violence which are the last characteristics you want in police officers. If this is a wide spread phenomenon then it explains a lot about why tasers are used so injudiciously and often with such inappropriate emotion.

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Back In The Fold

by digby

Apparently, Mark Williams’ little faux pas isn’t going to hamper his involvement in Tea Party activities:

Mark Williams, the bomb-throwing conservative talk show host who last month was ousted from the Tea Party movement after a rant against the NAACP that was widely condemned as racist, looks to be back. The former Tea Party Express chairman is said to be teaming up with two fellow conservative activists to create Citizens for Constitutional Liberty, a new political action committee that plans to support conservative candidates and promote grassroots activism among Tea Partiers.Rodney Stanhope, one of the group’s founders, told The Daily Beast that he and another northern California Tea Party activist, Mandy Morello, spoke recently about forming the new group. From there, Stanhope reached out to Williams, whom he said he’d known since the two worked together on the 2003 recall of Democratic Governor Gray Davis. “I happened to be in a conversation with Mark,” said Stanhope. “I said, ‘We wanna do this, and he said, ‘I’d love to help.’”

[…]

…Stanhope added that the group planned to soon register as a PAC with both the FEC and the California secretary of state’s office, at which point it can begin raising money. Williams, who is traveling, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last month, he became the public face of Tea Party racism after he posted a lengthy screed, written in the voice of an NAACP official, which, among other things, praised slavery for offering blacks “three squares, room and board.” In response, the Tea Party Express, for which Williams served as chair and as a frequent spokesman, was publicly ousted from a national Tea Party umbrella group. Soon after, Tea Party Express announced it had cut ties with Williams…
But Williams’ new partners don’t sound concerned. In her blog post, Morello downplayed the flap over Williams’ attack on the NAACP. “While I find his comments distasteful,” she wrote, “it is not my place to take away his free speech guaranteed by our First Amendment.” And Stanhope told The Daily Beast he thought the NAACP controversy had been blown out of proportion. “This latest flap is garbage,” he said. “They want to throw the word racism out there these days. It’s overused.”

That’s what they all say.

This guy’s a typical political hustler, making a good living raising funds from dupes and fools, so he’s just found himself another con. But seriously, if this screed isn’t beyond the pale for any decent person, what is?

As Chris Rock says, “what do you have to do, kill Medgar Evers?”

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Just Sayin’

by digby

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The Threads Hold

by digby

It’s good to see the fourth Amendment is still hanging in there, tattered though it is …

Appeals court limits use of GPS to track suspects

A federal appeals court ruled for the first time Friday that police cannot use a Global Positioning System device to track a person’s movements for an extended time without a warrant, clearing the way for the Supreme Court to decide the privacy impact of the new surveillance technology in products such as cellphones and vehicle-navigation systems.

This is great news. Maybe someday they’ll limit the use of tasers to electrocute suspects too.

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Here’s Hoping The GOP Follows Dick Morris Over The Cliff

by digby

Karoli at Crooks and Liars catches Dick Morris being … Dick Morris:

As long as the Democrats control Congress, they will continue to rubber-stamp Obama’s requests for bailouts of profligate states. But when the Republicans take control, they will be less than forthcoming. Republicans will ask the central question: Why should taxpayers from states that have cut their budgets and observed spending restraint, pay for the extravagances of the other states? Why should forty-seven states have to pay for California, New York, and Michigan?

I love this argument. First of all, we were a nation the last time I checked, although it’s becoming more and more clear that the civil war will never be truly over. This idea that each state, town, individual gets to choose not only its representatives to the federal government but also weigh in on which taxes they choose to pay and for what, our systems looking a teensy bit unworkable.

And as Karoli notes:

Will those 47 states refuse to accept the federal dollars which kept their states’ budgets balanced last year? Why did Rick Perry accept the federal aid for Texas? So he could campaign on a balanced budget, of course.

Obviously not. They deserve the money ‘cuz they’re good and we’re evul.

Morris also wants to provide for states to go bankrupt so they can dispose of all their public employee union contracts and pension obligations. The good news is that Dick Morris hasn’t been right about a single thing for at least 20 years, so I’m fairly hopeful that they will push this.

The right is obviously preparing for all out war on the public employee and service unions. I’m sure the Democrats will scurry like mice the minute they attack and leap over one another trying to figure out ways to screw them first.

But if the unions are smart they are going to be prepared with spots like this one which I featured yesterday. It makes normal people very uncomfortable to see middle class people like nurses, cops, teachers and firefighters — their neighbors and themselves — treated like enemies of the state. It will backfire:

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Worry With The Fringe On The Top

by digby

There is now a cottage industry devoted to lecturing people like me about how I’m being unfair to the Tea Partiers. They are mostly just hard working Americas who are feeling economic stress and it’s unfair to paint them as extremists. Certainly, the least I could do is recognize that they are not engaged in culture war issues and are just expressing an ideological disagreement over economic policy.

So what do we make of the fact that so many of their chosen leaders are such crazy, fringe freaks?

When Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle told a Christian news interviewer this year that “entitlement programs (are) built to make government our God,” she voiced a central tenet of Christian Reconstructionism, according to academics who study the movement.

Christian Reconstructionism is a political-religious movement formed in the 1960s and ’70s that seeks to return American society to the rule of biblical law. Any attempt to expand government beyond the dictates in the Old Testament — for example, by establishing Social Security benefits, education policy or property taxes — turns government into a false idol, reconstructionists believe.

“The problem is that government becomes an idol when it overspills its biblically proscribed boundaries, and people start looking to government for salvation,” said Julie Ingersoll, a religious studies professor at the University of North Florida, in explaining a tenet of Christian Reconstructionism.

In April, Angle said her Democratic rival, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, along with President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was remaking the federal government into God.

“And these programs that you mentioned — that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward — are all entitlement programs built to make government our God,” she said told the TruNews interviewer. “And that’s really what’s happening in this country, is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government.”

Her comments are getting widespread discussion and a counterattack this week by the Reid campaign.

Many of Angle’s religious and political beliefs appear to align with the tenets of Christian Reconstructionism. She’s supported eliminating Social Security and Medicare, is a home schooling champion, sees the separation of church and state as an unconstitutional doctrine that was never meant to protect the state from religious belief, and believes public policy should support the traditional family structure as defined in the Bible.

She also helped resurrect the Nevada affiliate of a national party founded by a prominent Christian Reconstructionist and has raised campaign money from reconstructionists.

But Ingersoll said Angle’s comments on government as a false idol come directly from the movement’s founder, R.J. Rushdoony, an orthodox Presbyterian minister.

“Since this spring you’ve had all this flap over the degree to which you might suggest Angle was influenced by the Reconstructionist movement,” Ingersoll said.

“But if you really sum up Rushdoony’s philosophy on government, that’s it. That really is it.”

Religious Right experts like Sarah Posner have been sounding the alarm about this for a while. The Tea Party is really just a manifestation of the Far Right fringe in all its glory. In this fascinating piece, she examines all the tentacles between the Gun Owners of America reconstructionist lawyer Herb Titus, militias and the Tea Party. Here’s just one little interesting excerpt:

Rep. Ron Paul, a godfather of sorts to the Tea Parties, calls the GOA “the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington.” Indeed, Pratt, GOA’s executive director, told RD that he has spoken at Tea Party events, calling his group “a natural match for the folks in the Tea Party.” Pratt believes the federal government is largely unconstitutional, and that all federal agencies save the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury (which should be “a lot smaller”), should be abolished. (The Internal Revenue Service is a part of Treasury that Pratt would like to see abolished.)

GOA’s political action arm has endorsed Paul’s son, Rand, in the Kentucky Senate race, as well as other Tea Party favorites for Senate Sharron Angle (Nevada), Marco Rubio (Florida), J.D. Hayworth (Arizona), David Vitter (Louisiana), Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), and Jim DeMint (South Carolina), as well as eight House candidates. The Angle campaign embraced the endorsement, with her spokesperson saying, “Not only is Mrs. Angle unafraid of guns, but she is also unafraid to stand up against those who would attempt to deny the legal rights of other gun owners.”

Pratt, whose advocacy has led him to intersect not only with the Tea Partiers, but also with neo-Nazis and white supremacists, sees the revitalization of the 10th Amendment movement—far-right agitators who believe the federal government is largely unconstitutional—as evidence of states “pushing back federal authority.” Pratt believes that states should be “reactivating” militias; which should be at their disposal “instead of relying on the [federal] government to come and screw things up… these things should be given new life.”

Pratt refuses the label “Christian Reconstructionist,” telling RD he prefers to identify as a “Biblical Christian.” He advocates for militias which he describes as “the sheriff’s posse” and that the “availability of it will further cool their [the federal government’s] jets. No more Wacos. Because if you try something like that again, we’re not going to stand around and watch. We’re going to put you in our jail. Which is what the sheriff in that county should have told the thugs in Waco.”

This is predicated, Pratt insists, “on the actual meaning of the word militia, as it was put into the Constitution and into the Bill of Rights.”

Citing Romans 13, Pratt said the “magistrate is a servant of God. He’s supposed to be a terror to evildoers and a comfort to the righteous. So we talk in terms of protecting the people’s liberties. That’s really the same concept.”

Now I would guess that most of the tea partiers are not aware of any of this, mostly because they are listening to Glenn Beck spew even less coherent Libertarian gobbledeygook on FOX. But you can certainly see how the various strands of the far Right Fringe can find common cause — and it isn’t on economics, at least as sentient people understand it.

When I saw Posner at one of the conferences she asked me why none of us were talking about the Christian Right influences in the Tea Party movement and the only thing I could say was that I suspected we didn’t know much about it. Indeed, I find myself pressured every day by people telling me that I’m being disrespectful to these nice folks for pointing out just how nuts their movement is, so I’m sure that we’re all afraid to get too far out there.

But with Tea Party star Sharron Angle going on the record with the Christian reconstructionist line, it’s probably not a good idea to ignore it as just fringe of the fringe. The woman is neck and neck with Harry Reid in the polls.

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“It Doesn’t Look Good”

by digby

Dr James Boyd of the Black Farmers Association, who is out there working desperately to get the government off the dime to finally pay out their overdue settlement could show other liberals a thing or two. I noted before that the web site was really good, but this fellow is a breath of fresh air on television.

Here he is on CNN today:

Don Lemon: Do you think this is an outrage?

Boyd: I think this is an outrage and a disgrace for the Senate not to pass this bill that black farmers have been waiting for. This is the 7th time, Don, that the bill has come before the floor and we got basically a no vote. We’ve been attached to the tax extenders bill, the war bill, this bill, that bill. We call on the Senate leadership and President Obama to see what can be done so that the black farmers can receive our money. The Senate now has gone home for a recess until September the 13th. Pretty much a month and some change with no avail for black farmers… This is starting to look like a black thing Don…

Lemon: Do you think they are playing partisan politics here when it comes to black farmers? Is this a Republican vs Democrat thing when it comes to black farmers or is this Washington bureaucratic thing a political thing where everything gets mushed and mashed into other things?

Boyd: This is partisan politics at its absolute worst. Anytime you can get seven tries at a bill and it fails seven times all for different excuses. First they told us that we had to find offsets, we found the offsets. This bill wasn’t the right fit, that bill wasn’t the right fit. But not one Republican has voted to secure the funds for black farmers.

We’re going to be out in the month of August, Don, raising some cane in these Senatorial election where we can make a difference. It’s time for this partisan politics to stop and for the Senate to start working for the American people. We’ve sat back and been nice about this thing long enough and we’re sick and tired of being sick and tired of waiting.

Lemon: it really has been for years that black farmers have been trying to get some restitution from Washington when it came to what they believe was discrimination and what have you against black farmers and this was before and even after the civil rights movement… [Shirley Sherrod, haves and have nots etc].. There are white farmers who are suffering. But do you think white farmers have gotten their due at least more than African American farmers have?

Boyd: I would say the white farmers are receiving all of the benefits they have coming to them. We’re shut out of the US farm subsidy program. Just this week there was a deal with Senator Blanche Lincoln by the White House to get 1.5 billion in disaster aid within in two weeks out to large scale corporate farmers and white farmers.

And I’ve been pleading with the administration to meet and see what the next steps are for the black farmers so we can secure our funding. How does it look when we’re out here doing everything we can in the Senate to secure the funds for black farmers who’ve been mistreated by the government while we have white farmers who get loans on time. It takes 387 days to get loans for black farmers and we’re shut out of all of the lending programs.

It just doesn’t look good for the administration to put a deal out for large scale white farmers and tell the black farmers they have to continue to wait. It just doesn’t look good.

This settlement is from a case that was decided in 1999. It’s not like anyone’s rushing into anything:

In a written statement Thursday, President Obama said his administration “is dedicated to ensuring that federal agencies treat all our citizens fairly, and the settlement in the Pigford case reflects that commitment.”

The Pigford case was decided in favor of black farmers by a federal judge’s ruling in 1999.

The head of the farmers group, John Boyd, said: “It’s really the Department of Agriculture agreeing to pay, the Justice Department agreeing to pay and our lawyers agreeing to the process.”

In a conference telephone call with reporters, Vilsack said racial bias unquestionably took place in his agency over many years.

He gave an example of two farmers, one white, one black, applying for a farm loan with an office of the USDA.

The white farmer’s application “was processed rapidly, it was approved, and resources were quickly available to enable him to put a crop in,” Vilsack said. The application from the black farmer “was denied without due diligence on whether he had the capacity to repay, or else he or she was strung out over such a long period of time that they couldn’t put in a crop,” Vilsack said.

The result, Vilsack said, was that “in some cases they lost the farm.”

This month Boyd’s group organized demonstrations throughout historically black agricultural areas of the South, including areas in Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia.

The rallies wrapped up Monday as a small group of activists gathered outside the Agriculture Department in Washington. Boyd and other demonstrators expressed frustration that Congress has yet to approve a budget that would pay for the 1999 class action settlement in the case.

Of course, the longer they wait the greater chance that many of the elderly farmers will be dead.

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Slaying Privatizing Ryan

by digby

Krugman follows up his dynamite column today on Paul Ryan with a little lesson on how to read a CBO report. This is fascinating and should be common knowledge:

What you need to realize is that the CBO is the servant of members of Congress, which means that if a Congressman asks it to analyze a plan under certain assumptions, it will do just that — no matter how unrealistic the assumptions may be. CBO will tell you what’s going on, but it will do so deadpan, doing nothing in terms of emphasis or placement to highlight the funny business. So how do you spot that funny business? One way is to go through the whole thing with a fine-toothed comb. Another is to look at the estimate, and see if anything odd jumps out — then search for the sources of that oddity.

He then reveals that Paul Ryan’s fabulous road map told the CBO to assume that the massive tax cuts are irrelevant to the issue:

On the tax side, we immediately see that the CBO finds no effect — revenue with the Ryan plan is the same as without it. Huh? Search the report, and you find:

The proposal would make significant changes to the tax system. However, as specified by your staff, for this analysis total federal tax revenues are assumed to equal those under CBO’s alternative fiscal scenario (which is one interpretation of what it would mean to continue current fiscal policy) until they reach 19 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2030, and to remain at that share of GDP thereafter.

In short, the CBO was told to disregard any possible effects of the tax cuts; that’s a pretty good way to make the plan seem affordable.

Moreover, Ryan also told them to assume that all the savings would be from freezing discretionary spending at 2009 levels for ten years, which translates into draconian cuts the details of which are left to future congresses to figure out. (Interestingly, they assume no savings from “entitlement reform” on which his reputation for intellectual honesty rests.)

I admit that economic wonkery is beyond most Americans including me. But it shouldn’t be beyond the leadership of the Democratic party. Unless they are cleverly setting up this charlatan for a big fall (which they should not even attempt because they don’t have the skills) failing to take on Paul Ryan is political malpractice. Boosting him up as they have done is sabotage.

Here’s a typical right wing encomium to Ryan:

The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes:

At just 38, Paul Ryan is already considered a guiding voice of conservatives in Washington. In media profiles and speech introductions, Ryan is often described as a next-generation leader of the Republican Party. That’s only half right. Ryan will almost certainly shape the GOP in the years to come. But, as the gathering at Charlie Palmer’s suggests, Ryan is an influential voice in Washington right now. . . . “He’s smart, eloquent, well-informed and committed to the conservative principles that made this country great,” says Liz Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney and another next-generation conservative leader. There is little disagreement among inside-the-Beltway conservatives that Ryan will have a prominent role in the future of the Republican Party. The only question is whether he’ll be director of the Office of Management and Budget in a future Republican administration—or whether he’ll be on the ticket someday himself.

Paul Ryan has been in congress more than 11 years. Barack Obama was in the Senate from January 4, 2005 until November 13, 2008, less than four years, during which he ran for president. By the time 2012 rolls around, Ryan will have three times the government experience Obama had. More importantly, Ryan will look like the perfect guy to clean up the mess Obama has made of our government and our freedom. Where do I sign? Oh yeah. Maybe it’s just the hair, but he seems to have the whole Reagan thing going for him too. By 2012, that may be a handy little asset.

Oh Good God.

I’m with Howie on this one. Ryan is my choice for Worst Republican too. Certainly the most dangerous. I like Howie’s picture better too:

Lame Lucky Duckies

by digby

If you have any remaining niggling thoughts that the Republicans have any sense of shame whatsoever, this latest ridiculous campaign to mau-mau the Democrats into agreeing that they will do nothing but give each other manicures during the lame duck congressional session after the election should erase them. As Dave Weigel points out in this piece, the fact that Newtie himself is leading the charge is especially rich:

Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., won his last election on Nov. 3, 1998. Not enough of his fellow Republicans came with him. Gingrich’s party lost five seats in the House of Representatives after a year exploring impeachment charges against President Bill Clinton. Gingrich, who was House speaker, acknowledged the unexpected setback by announcing his resignation. His final act of power was to call a lame-duck session of Congress to deal with the impeachment.Democrats were horrified and helpless. As far as they were concerned, the election had been a referendum on impeachment, and the Republicans had lost it. Republicans who were retiring or being replaced by Democrats were going to provide votes for impeachment that wouldn’t be there when the new, Gingrich-free Congress took over in January. “Listen to the American people,” said Democratic investigative counsel Abbe Lowell, one of many members of his party who spent weeks wringing hands, pointing at polls, and watching the impeachment train chug along.One week before Christmas the majority party held votes on four articles of impeachment, passing two of them. Gingrich cast his final votes in the House for all four articles. Two weeks later, he departed.

Weigel reports that the good news about Gingrich’s awesome exercise in hypocrisy is that Democrats will undoubtedly be too cowed (regardless of whether they lose the House) to fight for anything ever again so this whole thing is just kabuki no matter what happens on election day. No surprise there although someone might remind them that the Republicans impeached a president after a clear repudiation at the polls, proceeded to steal the presidency two years later and kept their majority for six years after that.

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