Month: June 2011

What was it you were saying about freedom again?

by digby

I know it’s a terrible restriction on your liberty to have to pay for the roads on which you drive or the wars you insist that we must fight. But why is this ok?

Since the release of the 2008 manual, the assessment category has drawn scrutiny because it sets a low bar to examine a person or a group. The F.B.I. has opened thousands of such low-level investigations each month, and a vast majority has not generated information that justified opening more intensive investigations.

Ms. Caproni said the new manual would adjust the definition of assessments to make clear that they must be based on leads. But she rejected arguments that the F.B.I. should focus only on investigations that begin with a firm reason for suspecting wrongdoing.

I realize that we should all be pure and clean and perfect so that when the government surreptitiously investigates us we have nothing to hide. But you’d think that even Real Americans might feel better if the government at least suspected them of doing something wrong first.

But hey, at least we know we’re free right?

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Bachman’s fantasy

by digby

I don’t know if Michelle Bachman has ever read any Ayn Rand novels, but I think she’d like the plots:

“In my perfect world,” she explains, “we’d take the 35% corporate tax rate down to nine so that we’re the most competitive in the industrialized world. Zero out capital gains. Zero out the alternative minimum tax. Zero out the death tax.” […]
Her main goal is to get tax rates down with a broad-based income tax that everyone pays and that “gets rid of all the deductions.” A system in which 47% of Americans don’t pay any tax is ruinous for a democracy, she says, “because there is no tie to the government benefits that people demand. I think everyone should have to pay something.”

That’s so true. For instance the FICA taxes that every worker pays into Social Security and Medicare certainly create “no tie to the government benefits that people demand.” They must pay more.

And certainly corporations and heiresses shouldn’t be asked to pay taxes. That’s just silly. They’re the great producers of our society, the ones the rest of us parasites depend upon to bless us with whatever they feel we deserve.

Like I said, she’d love that dreamy John Galt.

Update: Matt Yglesias points out that Bachman’s ideas (if you can call them that) are even more draconian than Paul Ryan’s and that she’s pretty much telling anyone born after 1956 that they are shit out of luck — on everything.

There seems to be a common idea among these fiscal extremists that if they can only convince the old folks that they won’t be hurt, then they’ll have no problem selling this dystopian future to the country. I don’t know why they think that. The over 55ers don’t trust them to keep their word (after all, they’re prepared to tell people 54 and under that all the money they’ve put in was for nothing) and they also tend to love their kids and grandkids enough not to want to consign them to a Death Race 2000 kind of existence. And I think they might need some other people to vote for them so blatantly screwing them probably isn’t going to be a huge selling point.

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Stupid Net Tricks

by digby

I guess this is the month for stupidity on the tubes. First the dick-tweeting and now this:

After the story of the Syrian-American lesbian blogger who went missing during President Bashar Assad’s crackdown made headlines worldwide, it turns out the entire account was a hoax.

Over the past few days, several news reports have surfaced indicating that the author of the blog was from Scotland, after the Washington Post has linked the alleged lesbian blogger’s IP address to Edinburgh.

Pretending to be Amina Arraf, who wrote a blog called “A Gay Girl in Damascus” which documented updates about Syria’s uprising, Tom MacMaster confessed Sunday that every post on the blog has been written by him, including the whole account of Amina’s disappearance and her detention by Syrian security forces which has been reported on by various news outlets.

MacMaster, indicating his location as Istanbul, Turkey, posted a last entry on the blog on Sunday apologizing to the readers, emphasizing that the facts in his posts were truly reflective of the situation on the ground in Syria, even though the narrative voice was fictional.

“I do not believe that I have harmed anyone – I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about,” he wrote.

Right. Except for the fact that it was manipulative fiction, there wasn’t a thing wrong with it.

Do people still think the internet is some magical alternate universe that allows you to be anyone and say anything and no one will ever know? Isn’t that sort of 1998? What’s going on here?

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Depraved Influence

by digby

Endless discussions of political penises should have alerted me to the fact that we have embarked on a little nostalgia tour of Village hypocricy but until Fareed Zakaria had Ann Coulter on his show this morning as a political analyst, (apparently as a balance to Elliot Spitzer)I hadn’t fully realized how low we were going to go. She was typically incoherent and outrageous, turning the “discussion” into the usual clown show. I guess she makes for good television, but Jesus she’s annoying. Her re-emergence for this book tour reveals, once again, the great gaping hole where the conservative movement’s humanity should be.

Here’s a bit of her contribution to today’s discussion, helped along by a British conservative miscreant who says that David Cameron’s austerity eventually works out it will prove that he was a great leader. (It was very reminiscent of Junior Bush’s oft repeated statement that if peace eventually came to the middle east a hundred years from now it would prove that the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do.)

COULTER: What business are you in? You’re a governor. You’ve been in politics your whole life. You’re haranguing us?

SPITZER: No, no. What I’m saying is that –

COULTER: If you’re a businessman, that’s the strangest conversation I’ve ever seen (ph).

SPITZER: No, Ann, you – because you’re making statements that are so completely counterfactual.

ROBERTS: I’m a historian. I didn’t live (ph) in Ancient Rome.

SPITZER: Well, you know, I’ve heard people say – yes –

(CROSSTALK)

SPITZER: Your statements about the economy are simply counterfactual, counter every piece of evidence about jobs –

COULTER: Right. You’re right. The economy is just booming right now that Keynesian economics that Obama gave us has been a – …

ZAKARIA: OK, let me ask – let me ask – we’ve got to go, but I have to ask Ann this, which is there’s – there is a strong case that he has made – Obama has made, which is about Medicare. And, on that issue, I want to know whether you think it will work. Not – I know that you wish that he didn’t say it and that the Democrats’ took entitlement reform more seriously, and I happen to agree with you there.

But, when you ask the American people, should – are you willing to deal with the budget deficit by cutting Medicare, 78 percent say no. I mean, I don’t think you can get 78 percent of Americans to agree on the time of day.

COULTER: Right.

ZAKARIA: Where do (ph) –

COULTER: It’s the utter irresponsibility of former Democrats. It’s hard to take treats away from people, and that’s what we’ve done. And Democrats set up a Ponzi scheme with social security and Medicare, and it’s running out now. And, yes, it’s very hard to take the treats away once you start giving them away, which is why it was utterly irresponsible for Democrats long dead and gone to set up these systems that could never last.

But, you know, it would be very helpful –

ZAKARIA: But will it work? That’s what I’m asking.

COULTER: — if we could get Democrats to acknowledge the system’s about to go bankrupt rather than showing commercials of Paul Ryan –

ZAKARIA: But will it – OK.

COULTER: — pushing an old lady in a wheelchair off a cliff.

ZAKARIA: All right. We’ve got to go. Chrystia, last word on Medicare and the rest (ph).

FREELAND: The last word is you are absolutely right. I think this is the single strongest point for the Democrats, and what it shows, actually, is that Americans don’t see successful government programs as treats, which they are childish for enjoying. They see successful government programs as what the government should be doing.

COULTER: A program that’s about to go bankrupt is not successful.

Very edifying and informative, don’t you think? Except for all the lies.

I had occasion to look up some Coulter quotes this morning and I have to say that when you see them all together you see a portrait of a sociopath. That this rhetorical terrorist is welcomed into serious civic discussions is the perfect illustration of this country’s political depravity.

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Chart ‘O The Day

by digby

And Medicare takes care of the very sickest people in our country.

Krugman:

If Medicare costs had risen as fast as private insurance premiums, it would cost around 40 percent more than it does. If private insurers had done as well as Medicare at controlling costs, insurance would be a lot cheaper.

It’s a mystery why anyone claims that shifting more people into private insurance is a good idea. Actually, no, it isn’t a mystery; it’s an outrage.

Imagine if people over 50 had been allowed to buy into Medicare as was proposed during the Health Care debate. They would have been paying into the system as they already are and also paying for their current insurance. And they would have been getting their care from the less costly system at a time when they are starting to have health problems.

In fact, imagine if everyone were in the less costly system.

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Santorum!

by digby

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Saturday Night At The Movies

The purple prose of Paris

By Dennis Hartley

Oh, Dr. Drew-please help me. I’m a wreck. This is only the first line for my review of Midnight in Paris, and already I’m feeling defensive. Why is that? When will I be able to sit down and write a critique of a Woody Allen movie without feeling obliged…no, strike that…DUTY-bound to suffix any superlatives with a qualifier like “…in years”. You know-as in, “This is Woody Allen’s best film-in years!” Why can’t I just say something like, “This is a great film”? Is it the vacillating quality of the director’s work over the last two decades? Or is it me? Am I stuck in the past? Have I become one of those sniveling little fan boys that Woody parodied in Stardust Memories-you know, wringing my hands over the fact that his recent work is nothing like the “earlier, funny films” he made in the days of my golden youth? I mean, neither Woody nor yours truly are spring chickens any more, if you know what I’m saying. Can’t I be willing to allow an artist’s oeuvre to grow and mature over time as does the artist himself? Wait-what’s that ringing in my ears? I feel a little nauseous. God, I hope it isn’t a brain tumor. Jesus! Uh- Dr. Drew? Dr. Drew?

OK, we seem to have lost our connection. While the studio techs are re-establishing the call, I’ll continue with the thing you came here for-the actual movie review. Woody Allen continues the 6-year (and counting) European travelogue that began in England (

Match Point,

Scoop

,

Cassandra’s Dream), trekked south to Spain (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) then after a respite in N.Y.C. (Whatever Works) headed back to the U.K. (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger) before settling in the City of Light for this charming romantic fantasy. Allen opens the film Manhattan style-with a montage of iconic Paris landmarks (strikingly captured by The City of Lost Children DP Darius Khonji and co-cinematographer Johanne Debas). We are quickly introduced to the protagonist/Allen avatar, a financially successful but artistically unfulfilled Hollywood screenwriter named Gil (Owen Wilson).

Gil is engaged to an attractive young woman named Inez (Rachel McAdams). The two of them have “tagged along” with Inez’s parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy) who are in Paris on a business trip. Gil and Inez view Paris from differing perspectives. Inez is excited about the shopping and all of the standard tourist attractions, plus the fact that her bubbly friend Carol (Nina Arianda) is also in town with her boyfriend Paul (Michael Sheen), a pompous art professor who has been invited to speak at the Sorbonne. Gil, on the other hand, is one of those nostalgia junkies who tend to wax melancholic about “being born at the wrong time”. To be sure, part of him does appreciate being alive in the 21st century, where he currently shares a house in Malibu with his lovely fiancée-but if he had his druthers, he would gladly surrender all the Hollywood trappings to make Paris (the perfect environs for him to polish the draft of his first novel) his new home. In fact, if he pushed the fantasy to its limits, Paris in the 1920s would be ideal; a time and place where he might have consorted in quaint Left Bank cafes with the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Eliot and Stein. Meanwhile, Inez and her parents roll their eyes and hope Gil’s romanticized musings about becoming an ex-pat are just a silly phase he’s going through.

Gil, intoxicated by the Parisian vibe, continues to daydream about the Lost Generation as Inez drags him to all the perfunctory tourist stops, accompanied by Carol and Paul. To Gil’s chagrin, Inez appears to be enraptured by Paul’s windy professorial pontifications about the various landmarks that they visit (at one point, he self-importantly “corrects” a French tour guide on some trivia regarding a Rodin sculpture). While Inez admires his “brilliance”, Gil sees Paul for what he really is-an insufferably arrogant pedant (pseudo-intellectuals have been one of Allen’s pet targets over the years; in a later scene where Gil finds himself in a position to render the ever-chattering Paul stymied, I was reminded of that classic “I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here” moment in Annie Hall).

One evening, after the two couples have wined and dined, it’s suggested that they all go out dancing. Gil has done a little more wining than dining, and opts instead to take a head-clearing, late-night stroll back to the hotel, leaving a less-than-pleased Inez on her own to go out partying with Carol and Paul. It’s not long before Gil finds himself lost in the labyrinth of Paris’s narrow backstreets. As he stops to rest and get his bearings, the bells begin to toll midnight. At that moment, a well-preserved vintage Peugeot Landaulet pulls up, seemingly out of nowhere. A lively group of well-oiled young partiers invite him to hop on in and join their revelry. With a “what the hell” shrug, Gil accepts the invitation. Now, so I don’t risk spoiling your fun, I won’t tell you much more about what happens next. I will even suppress the urge to insert a smartass reference to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang right about now (damn my OCD…I think I just did). Let’s just say that this is to become the first of several “transportive” midnight outings that will change Gil’s life.

Allen re-examines many of his signature themes-particularly regarding the mysteries of attraction and the flightiness of the Muse. He also offers keen insights about those who romanticize the past. Do we really believe in our heart of hearts that everything was better “then”? Isn’t getting lost in nostalgia just another way to shirk responsibility for dealing with the present? At the top of the post, I made a tongue-in-cheek analogy between Allen’s “earlier, funny films” and the “days of my golden youth”. Were Woody’s movies really “funnier” then-or do they function as portals back to a carefree time when I still had my whole life ahead of me? Lest you begin to think that this is one of his more Bergman-esque excursions-let me assure you that it’s not. It’s romantic, intelligent, perceptive, magical, and yes…it’s very funny. There’s a fantastic supporting cast, including Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates and Adrien Brody. In fact, I will say this without qualification: This is a great film. Never mind, Dr. Drew…I’m cured! Dr. Drew?

“Hoods in the house”

by digby

There’s nothing racist about any of this and I don’t want to hear anyone say there is. It’s just a decent fellow who has some differences of opinion wit the president about politics. I’m sure he thinks Herman Cain and Clarence Thomas are terrific which proves that he’s completely colorblind:.

Media Matters has the whole story.

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Newtie’s stuck with her

by digby

Boy has Newtie ever fallen. Even if this boring henpecked husband excuse is true, there’s not much he can do about it, is there? I don’t think even a Republican can get elected with four different wives and three divorces under his belt:

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Drama Queens

by digby

Ladies, here’s some advice from a conservative, freedom loving man who cares about you:

Don’t trust your male friends. Don’t go to a man’s home at night unless you’re prepared to have sex with him. Don’t disrobe in front of a male masseur. If you take a job as a masseuse, don’t be shocked if your male customers think you’re a prostitute. And if you want to be taken seriously as a journalist, don’t pose for pictures that emphasize your cleavage.

Yes, yes, I know: Each of us wears many personas. A woman journalist like Lara Logan should be able to celebrate herself as both a journalist and a woman, even a sexy woman. But the operative word in that sentence— should— is the sticky point.

Many of the tragedies mentioned about spring from what I see as a naïve faith in the power of the modern sexual revolution. Women today are technically free to do all sorts of things that were forbidden to their grandmothers, which is all well and good. But in practice, rape and the notion of sexual conquest persist for the same reason that warfare persists: because the human animal— especially the male animal— craves drama as much as food, shelter and clothing. Conquering an unwilling sex partner is about as much drama as a man can find without shooting a gun— and, of course, guns haven’t disappeared either.

Earth to liberated women: When you display legs, thighs or cleavage, some liberated men will see it as a sign that you feel good about yourself and your sexuality. But most men will see it as a sign that you want to get laid.

There’s one culture that takes this sort of thing very seriously indeed and ensures that women don’t go around provoking men to rape them: