Facing the Id
by digby
Jon Stewart with Chris Wallace:
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
I don’t now why, but I found that really uncomfortable.
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"what digby sez..."
Month: June 2011
Saving Social Security and other scary Republican plans
by digby
Looks like Heritage is taking the Bizarroworld position in the new and improved “We must destroy Social Security in order to save it” plan.
Saving Social Security
With Social Security on a steep descent to $6.5 trillion in unfunded obligations during the next 75 years, Senator Hutchison’s Defend and Save Social Security Act would secure the future of the program without raising taxes or cutting core benefits. Under current law, retirees’ monthly benefits would be cut nearly one-fourth, beginning in 2036. Hutchison’s plan would ensure Social Security’s solvency by gradually increasing the retirement age (over 16 years) to 69 and instituting a modest one percent reduction in the annual cost-of-living adjustment.
Hutchison’s plan involves common-sense, gradual reform that strengthens Social Security for current and future retirees.
It’s so interesting to see these Republicans so concerned about “Saving Social Security.” Here I thought it was a Ponzi scheme…
Anyone with half a lick of sense will be skeptical of a political party that has pledged to destroy the program since its inception. But they’re counting on the fact that a rather large number of people don’t have half a lick of sense (also known as the Republican base.)
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Interactive Chart ‘O The Day
by digby
This New York Times feature:
And this one: The Traditional Family Gives Way to an Array of Configurations
The charts and maps goes along with a fascinating story today about the new way families are organizing themselves — singles, gay couples, inter-generational arrangements. The nuclear family isn’t (and historically hasn’t been) the only way to do this. But it’s complicated. Of course families have always been complicated, haven’t they?
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Today’s Court is just another political player
by digby
When I read the latest Clarence Thomas ethics scandal in the NY Times this morning, I wondered when anyone was going to bring up Abe Fortas. Think Progress did it. It’s hard to see any daylight between the two scandals. But I will be very surprised if Thomas ever even acknowledges the conflict. It would take a threatened impeachment and that’s just not going to happen. There are too many fault lines involved and he’s such a hero to the extreme right that I would doubt anyone would take the chance.
Plus, times have changed. I think the Court sees itself as an explicitly political branch now and any attack on Thomas is done in that light. Bush vs Gore was a watershed — the idea that the Court was above crass political considerations (even if it often wasn’t) was fully abandoned and there’s no going back. (Recall that Chief Justice Roberts worked on the Bush recount.)
I see no chance that Clarence Thomas will resign over this. (If they find out that he’s been tweeting pictures of his John Thomas,however,then all bets are off.)
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Power Plays
by digby
Yesterday I wrote that the Bush administration had used John Yoo’s fig leaf in contrast to the Obama admnistration’s apparent tossing aside of the normal process of following the findings of the Office of legal Counsel. I was wrong about that as Greenwald reminds us in his piece this morning. The Bush administration did try to do what the Obama administration has done — ignore the advice of the office of Legal Counsel and the Attorney General and rely on other attorneys — but the President faced a threat of mass resignation and backed off:
In 2007, former Bush Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about an amazing event. Bush’s then-Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, had blocked Comey from testifying for two years — once Democrats took over Congress, that obstruction was no longer possible — and it quickly became apparent why Gonzales was so desperate to suppress these events.
Comey explained that, in 2004, shortly after he became Deputy AG, he reviewed the NSA eavesdropping program Bush had ordered back in 2001 and concluded it was illegal. Other top administration lawyers — including Attorney General John Ashcroft and OLC Chief Jack Goldsmith — agreed with Comey, and told the White House they would no longer certify the program’s legality. It was then that Bush dispatched Gonzales and Andy Card to Ashcroft’s hospital room to try to extract an approval from the very sick Attorney General, but, from his sickbed, Ashcroft refused to overrule Comey.
Bush decided to reject the legal conclusions of his top lawyers and ordered the NSA eavesdropping program to continue anyway, even though he had been told it was illegal (like Obama now, Bush pointed to the fact that his own White House counsel (Gonzales), along with Dick Cheney’s top lawyer, David Addington, agreed the NSA program was legal). In response, Ashcroft, Comey, Goldsmith, and FBI Director Robert Mueller all threatened to resign en masse if Bush continued with this illegal spying, and Bush — wanting to avoid that kind of scandal in an election year — agreed to “re-fashion” the program into something those DOJ lawyers could approve (the “re-fashioned” program was the still-illegal NSA program revealed in 2005 by The New York Times; to date, we still do not know what Bush was doing before that that was so illegal as to prompt resignation threats from these right-wing lawyers).
That George Bush would knowingly order an eavesdropping program to continue which his own top lawyers were telling him was illegal was, of course, a major controversy, at least in many progressive circles. Now we have Barack Obama not merely eavesdropping in a way that his own top lawyers are telling him is illegal, but waging war in that manner (though, notably, there is no indication that these Obama lawyers have the situational integrity those Bush lawyers had [and which Archibald Cox, Eliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus had before them] by threatening to resign if the lawlessness continues).
This is what happens when you don’t play the blame game or look in the rear view mirror. Power, once assumed, will never be voluntarily relinquished. Read your Shakespeare. Or the Bible.
It’s very difficult to understand exactly why the President was so reluctant to go to congress with this. As Greenwald points out, the GOP leadership and conservative intelligentsia are in favor of the Libyan war. It’s true that it’s not a monolith and that there were Democrats who might object as well, but in the end, there’s little reason to believe that he couldn’t get a consensus.
The best example of a similar political situation would be Kosovo, done at a time in which the president was laboring under an unprecedented cloud of scandal, having just been acquited in his impeachment trial. Clinton didn’t get congressional approval for the move and didn’t have the United Nations backing that Obama has on Libya. But he claimed he had tacit approval because congress had specifically appropriated money for the mission, which served the constitutional purpose under the War Powers Resolution.
In this case, the Pentagon is using existing funds so there hasn’t been any kind of congressional referendum on the action, making the argument much more explicitly about executive power. However, if there were a vote, it’s highly unlikely that the president wouldn’t be able to get a bipartisan agreement in the congress. Why the President chose not to do it remains a mystery.
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A Colbert Commencement
by digby
Forget the Sabbath gasbags. They are especially useless this morning. Just watch Stephen Colbert’s Northwestern commencement speech and enjoy:
Happy Father’s Day, Dads.
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Saturday Night At The Movies
Roll over, S. Kubrick (and tell Tarkovsky the news)
By Dennis Hartley
Daze of heaven: The Tree of Life
By Dennis Hartley
Daze of heaven: The Tree of Life
Q: What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?A: Make me one with everything.
Oh…wait-I’ve got another one! Q: What do you get when you cross The Great Santini
This is also one of those films that critics pray for every night, because it gives them an opportunity to flex their writing instrument; especially those frustrated doctors of philosophy who don’t normally get the opportunity to roll out one-sheet friendly quotes like “lyrical tone poem” and “transcendent visual feast” while parsing Justin Bieber: Never Say Never or The Hangover Part II. Then again, so few films are greenlighted anymore that demand contemplation of The Big Questions (you know-like “Mr.Natural! What does it all mean?”) I think neither critics nor audiences know how to react when we do stumble across one…especially when it can’t be summarized in 140 characters or less.
If there is a signature stamp by this enigmatic filmmaker (who has directed but five films over a 38-year period) it is that inevitable POV shot (or two) where the protagonist takes a moment of Zen to contemplate the Awesomeness of Nature. It could be an event as microcosmic as contemplating a caterpillar inching up a blade of grass, or as nebulous as a lingering gaze into a clear blue sky. More often than not, it is soon followed by another example of the Random Cruelty of Fate. In this film, Malick not only revisits those themes, but he takes a stab at answering the ultimate question-about life, the universe and everything. But (you may wonder)-does he also tell us an interesting story? Well, sort of.
There are two distinct narratives. They both “branch” (if you will) from the racing thoughts of a brooding yuppie named Jack (Sean Penn, in a nearly wordless, largely internalized performance). The primary story unfolds through a random series of episodic sense memories from Jack’s childhood, growing up in a small Texas town in the 50s with two younger brothers, a loving but strict father (Brad Pitt) and gentle-spirited mother (Jessica Chastain). The second thread is less tactile and more abstract-which is where The Big Questions come in. As Jack veers off memory lane to mull over the meaning of God and life itself, his musings are accompanied by a Laserium-worthy reenactment of the Big Bang (impressively handled by a special effects team that includes legendary Kubrick collaborator Douglas Trumbull), followed by a visual Cliff’s Notes take on the origins of life on Earth. And yes, as you’ve likely already heard…dinosaurs are involved.
Now,on paper, this may look like I Remember Mama
First, if you’re worried about “saving face” with your date (or your fellow moviegoers), just be sure you are nodding slowly to yourself while thoughtfully stroking your chin as the lights come up. If you can swing it, an enigmatic, knowing grin adds a nice touch. Next, you must “unlearn” what you have learned about traditional film narrative. Now, you need to visualize The Tree of Life not so much as a “movie”, but rather as a dim sum cart full of interesting ideas and Deep Thoughts that Malick is bringing to the table. You can pick any of these items that strike your fancy and arrange them on your plate as you wish, in order to make a full meal. You are in control. What you take away from the table is up to you as well; there are no “right” or “wrong” interpretations in this kind of exercise. Now, if you’re still not feeling “full”-no worries. Take a deep breath. Take a little walk around the block; maybe stop and contemplate the Awesomeness of Nature. Then, on your way home, stop and treat yourself to a nice hot dog. One with Everything.
Existentialism 101: Badlands
Previous posts with related themes:
Synecdoche, N.Y.AlamarThe Exploding GirlMan on WireCertified CopyWhere the Wild Things Are
From the “what were they thinking? files
by digby
These people just have no sense at all:
NEW ORLEANS — A President Obama impersonator was pulled off the stage Saturday at the Republican Leadership Conference, after telling a string of racially themed jokes about the president.
The impersonator, Reggie Brown, took the stage at the annual presidential cattle call to the Bruce Springsteen song “Born in the USA” — an apparent allusion to the birther controversy. He proceeded to tell a series of off-color jokes poking fun at Obama’s biracial heritage and a gay member of Congress.
Eventually, RLC President and CEO Charlie Davis made the decision to pull him offstage, and a man came onstage to physcially escort Brown off.
“I pulled him off the stage,” Davis acknowledged afterward. “I just thought he had gone too far. He was funny the first 10 or 15 minutes, but it was inappropriate, it was getting ridiculous.”
Seriously, this is one group that should be very careful about this sort of thing. They have a bit of a dicey track record.
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Who cares what they think?
by digby
Jack Balkin’s post about the similarities between the Bush lawyer shopping and the Obama lawyer shopping is an important read. The difference between them is that I think Bush manipulated the system to provide the appearance of following the normal process and Obama just said to hell with normal process. The result is the same, but it is surprising to see a Democrat who ran on the proposition that he was very conscientious about the separations of powers would be the one who would just say “who cares what they think?”
It should be noted that Balkin was one of those who said repeatedly that the problem with allowing these presidents to get away with asserting these ever more dictatorial powers isn’t a matter of presidential character. They ALL protect these powers once they are assumed, no matter how well intentioned you think they are. There was a great fallacy in progressive thinking back in the Bush years that this was unique to that administration. Yes, they were particularly interested in adopting a radical definition of executive power, but in the end their hypocrisy was a tribute that their vice paid to virtue in that at least they kept up the pretense that certain rules and norms in these matters were still operative. Obama, their great critic on the whole range of these issues, has just said they no longer are. He can do as he pleases.
This has never been about what’s in these men’s hearts (which we can never know.) It’s about the power of the office. Once given, they will almost always use it.
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