Month: August 2012

From the No-Shit-Sherlock files

by digby

Well hell:

Iceland holds some key lessons for nations trying to survive bailouts after the island’s approach to its rescue led to a “surprisingly” strong recovery, the International Monetary Fund’s mission chief to the country said.

Iceland’s commitment to its program, a decision to push losses on to bondholders instead of taxpayers and the safeguarding of a welfare system that shielded the unemployed from penury helped propel the nation from collapse toward recovery, according to the Washington-based fund.

“Iceland has made significant achievements since the crisis,” Daria V. Zakharova, IMF mission chief to the island, said in an interview. “We have a very positive outlook on growth, especially for this year and next year because it appears to us that the growth is broad based.”

Iceland refused to protect creditors in its banks, which failed in 2008 after their debts bloated to 10 times the size of the economy. The island’s subsequent decision to shield itself from a capital outflow by restricting currency movements allowed the government to ward off a speculative attack, cauterizing the economy’s hemorrhaging. That helped the authorities focus on supporting households and businesses.

“The fact that Iceland managed to preserve the social welfare system in the face of a very sizeable fiscal consolidation is one of the major achievements under the program and of the Icelandic government,” Zakharova said. The program benefited from “strong implementation, reflecting ownership on the part of the authorities,” she said.

Imagine that.

Krugman FTW.

.

Bold Banana Republicans

by digby

I think this story from Ohio says it all, don’t you?

I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”

He called claims of unfairness by Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern and others “bullshit. Quote me!”

Uhm, nobody’s asking for special treatment. They’re arguing for everyone to have more opportunity to vote. As Dan Froomkin reports,the Republicans disagree:

In Ohio’s heavily Democratic cities — Cleveland, Columbus, Akron and Toledo — early voting will be limited to working hours on weekdays in 2012. But, as the Cincinnati Enquirer reported recently, attempts to add extended hours at the local election boards have been blocked by Republicans in urban counties, “even as extended hours will be available in some smaller counties with a strong Republican slant.”

The reason, as Ari Berman explained in the Nation, is that county boards of election in Ohio have two members from each party. Ties are broken by the secretary of state.

In solidly Republican counties, GOP election commissioners have approved expanded early voting hours — because why not? But in Democratic counties, they’ve balked. And Husted, the man who said he supports the law because it will bring uniformity to the state, has backed them up.

The Democrats should have been on this a long time ago and designed an organized campaign against it. The GOP manipulation of the Florida voting system should have been a wake up call. Instead, they were good little soldiers and “got over it” And now it’s looking as if it will be a very tough climb to turn back all these restrictive laws.

I don’t think there’s another democracy in the world in which an election official would publicly make a statement about suppressing the vote of his political rivals. It’s shocking.

.

Speaking of IOKIYAR:

Shut up and sing

by digby

A Real American:

Following the song “We Don’t Apologize For America” a chant of “USA, USA” broke out amongst the crowd. Williams smiled, telling the crowd that he was their mouth piece and adding:

“We’ve got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the US and we hate him!”

The cheers that followed were loud and enthusiastic.

Of course, as nasty as that was, it was nothing to what Dave Mustaine of Megadeath said last week in Singapore:

“Back in my country, my president is trying to pass a gun ban so he’s staging all of these murders. The ‘Fast and Furious’ thing down at the border. And Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there. And now, the beautiful people at the Sikh Temple. I don’t know where I’m going to live if America keeps going the way it’s going because it looks like it’s turning into Nazi America.”

I don’t care if musicians criticize the president — it’s a fine American tradition — but surely we can all recall a time when there was quite the uproar about the Dixie Chicks saying they were ashamed that the president was from Texas to a London audience:

They threatened to kill them. But, as always, IOKIYAR.

Also too:

h/t to Atrios

.

The shrill and the serious

by David Atkins

Noted innumerate dilettante Paul Krugman tallies up the numbers in Nobel Prize winning economic maestro Paul Ryan’s budget:

So if we look at the actual policy proposals, they look like this:

Spending cuts: $1.7 trillion
Tax cuts: $4.3 trillion

This is, then, a plan that would increase the deficit by around $2.6 trillion.

How, then, does Ryan get to call himself a fiscal hawk? By asserting that he will keep his tax cuts revenue-neutral by broadening the base in ways he refuses to specify, and that he will make further large cuts in spending, in ways he refuses to specify.

And this is what passes inside the Beltway for serious thinking and a serious commitment to deficit reduction.

As Digby pointed out, we have a very serious media problem in this country. It goes far beyond failure to investigate the truth. The media is eager to promote as truth things that just aren’t so.

.

Saturday Night at the Movies 

Dog days: 10 noirs that make you sweat

by Dennis Hartley

With the mercury continuing to soar in many parts of the country this week, I thought I would cobble together a list of really “hot” film noirs. Hot-as in sweaty, steamy, dripping, sticky, sudoriferous cinema (get your mind out of the gutter). If you’re like me (and isn’t everyone?) there’s nothing more satisfying than gathering up an armload of DVDs (along with a 12-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper) and happily spending hot days ensconced in my dark, cool media room (actually, I don’t have a “media room” nor any A/C in my studio apartment…but I can always dream). So here are my Top Ten (in alphabetical order)…

Body Heat– A bucket of ice cubes in the bath is just not enough to cool down this steamy noir. Writer-director Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 homage to Double Indemnity blows the mercury right out the top of the thermometer. Kathleen Turner is the sultry femme fatale who plays William Hurt’s hapless pushover like a Stradivarius (“You aren’t too smart. I like that in a man.”) The combination of the Florida heat with Turner and Hurt’s sexual chemistry will light your socks on fire. Outstanding support from Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, J.A. Preston and an up-and-coming character actor named Mickey Rourke.

Cool Hand Luke-Paul Newman shines (and sweats buckets) in his iconic role as the title character of this 1967 film, a ne’er do well from a southern burg who ends up on a chain gang. He’s busted for cutting the heads off of parking meters while on a drunken spree, but by the end of this sly allegory, astute viewers will glean that his real crime is: Being a Non-conformist. Stuart Rosenberg’s directs; sharp script by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson (there he is again!) Highlights include Strother Martin’s “failure to communicate” speech, Harry Dean Stanton singing “The Midnight Special”, the (ahem) car wash scene and George Kennedy’s Best Supporting Actor turn. Also with Ralph Waite, Dennis Hopper, Wayne Rogers, Anthony Zerbe (Dog Boy!), and Joy Harmon as the (er, seriously-is it hot in here?) car wash girl. Oh…did I mention the car wash scene?

Dog Day Afternoon-As far as oppressively humid hostage dramas go, this 1975 “true crime” classic from director Sidney Lumet easily out-sops the competition. The air conditioning may be off, but Al Pacino is definitely “on” in his absolutely brilliant portrayal of John Wojtowicz (“Sonny Wortzik” in the film), whose botched attempt to rob a Brooklyn bank turned into a dangerous hostage crisis and a twisted media circus (the desperate Wojtowicz was trying to finance his lover’s sex-change operation). Even though he had already done the first two Godfather films, this was the performance that put Pacino on the map. John Cazale is both scary and heartbreaking in his role as Sonny’s dim-witted “muscle”. Keep an eye out for Chris Sarandon’s memorable cameo. Frank Pierson’s whip-smart screenplay was based on articles by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore.

High and Low – Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 noir, adapted from Ed McBain’s crime thriller King’s Ransom, is so multifaceted that it almost boggles the mind. Toshiro Mifune is excellent as a CEO who, at the possible risk of losing controlling shares of his own company takes full responsibility for helping to assure the safe return of his chauffeur’s son, who has been mistaken as his own child by kidnappers. As the film progresses, the backdrop transitions subtly, and literally, from the executive’s comfortable, air conditioned mansion “high” above the city, to the “low”, sweltering back alleys where desperate souls will do anything to survive; a veritable descent into Hell. On the surface, it plays as a fairly straightforward police procedural; and even if one chooses not to delve any further into subtext, it’s a perfectly serviceable and engrossing entertainment on that level. However, upon repeat viewings, it reveals itself to be so much more than a mere genre piece. It’s about class struggle, corporate culture, and the socio-economic complexities of modern society (for a 50 year old film, it still feels quite contemporary).

In the Heat of the Night – “They call me MISTER Tibbs!” In this classic (which won 1967’s Best Picture Oscar) Sidney Poitier plays a cosmopolitan police detective from Philly who gets waylaid in a torpid Mississippi backwater, where he is reluctantly recruited into helping the bigoted sheriff (Rod Steiger) solve a local murder. Poitier absolutely nails his role; you feel Virgil Tibb’s pain as he tries to maintain his professional cool amidst a brace of surly rednecks, who throw up roadblocks at every turn. While Steiger is outstanding here as well, I always found it ironic that he was the one who won “Best Actor in a leading role”, when in reality Poitier was the star (it seems Hollywood didn’t get the film’s message). Sterling Silliphant’s brilliant screenplay (another Oscar) works as a crime thriller and a “fish out of water” story. Director Norman Jewison was nominated, but didn’t score a win. Future director Hal Ashby won for Best Editing. Quincy Jones composed the soundtrack, and Ray Charles sings the sultry theme.

Key Largo – Humphrey Bogart gives a great performance as a WW2 vet who drops by a Florida hotel to pay his respects to its proprietors- the widow (Lauren Bacall) and father (Lionel Barrymore) of one of the men who had served under his command. Initially just “passing through”, he is waylaid by a convergence of two angry tempests: an approaching hurricane and the appearance of Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson). Rocco is a notorious gangster, who, along with his henchmen, takes the hotel residents hostage while they ride out the storm. It’s interesting to see Bogie play a gangster’s victim for a change (in one of his earlier starring vehicles, The Petrified Forest, and later on in one of his final films, The Desperate Hours, he essentially played the Edward G. Robinson character). The entire cast is spectacular. Along with The Maltese Falcon and The Asphalt Jungle, it’s one of John Huston’s finest contributions to the U.S. noir cycle.

The Night of the Hunter– Is it a film noir? A horror movie? A black comedy? A haunting American folk tale? The answer would be yes. The man responsible for this tough-to-categorize 1957 film was one of the greatest acting hams of the 20th century, Charles Laughton, who began and ended his directorial career with this effort. Like a great many films now regarded as “cult classics”, this one was savaged by critics and tanked at the box office upon its initial release (enough to spook Laughton from ever returning to the director’s chair). Robert Mitchum is brilliant (and genuinely scary) as a knife-wielding religious zealot who does considerably more “preying” than “praying”. Before Mitchum’s condemned cell mate (Peter Graves) meets the hangman, he talks in his sleep about $10,000 in loot money stashed somewhere on his property. When the “preacher” gets out of the slam, he makes a beeline for the widow (Shelly Winters) and her two young’uns. A very disturbing (and muggy) tale unfolds. The great Lillian Gish is on board as well. Artfully directed by Laughton and beautifully shot by DP Stanley Cortez.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)- A grimy (but strapping) itinerant (John Garfield) drifts into a hot and dusty California truck stop/”last chance” gas station run by a dusty old codger (Cecil Kellaway) and his hot young wife (Lana Turner). Sign outside reads: “Man Wanted”. Garfield needs a job. Turner needs a man. Guess what happens. An iconic noir and the blueprint for ensuing entries in the “That was good for me too, baby…now how do we lose the husband?” genre. Tay Garnett directs with a wonderfully lurid flourish. Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch adapted their screenplay from the James M. Cain novel. Bob Rafelson’s 1981 remake (starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange as the illicit lovers) was more sexually graphic yet somehow…not as deliciously sordid.

Touch Of Evil – What is it with Janet Leigh’s bad luck finding decent overnight lodging? In Orson Welles’ classic sleaze noir, poor Janet is terrorized in her motel room by a gang of low-rent junkie thugs led by a totally butched out, leather-clad Mercedes McCambridge. This is but a small taste of the perversely entertaining vignettes that make up this 1958 film, set in a Mexican border town. Welles casts himself as one of filmdom’s most memorable villains-Hank Quinlan. Quinlan is a sweaty, corpulent, morally bankrupt police captain from the U.S. side who is “helping” a straight arrow Mexican narcotics officer (Charlton Heston) as he investigates the car bomb murder of an American businessman. For such a pulpy tale, there’s a fairly intricate narrative, and a myriad of speaking parts, played with much aplomb right down to the smallest character bits (my favorite cameos are by the aforementioned McCambridge, and Dennis Weaver as a twitchy motel manager). As Quinlan’s cynical old flame, Marlene Dietrich nearly steals the show (“I didn’t recognize you. You should lay off those candy bars,” she deadpans, in the film’s best line). Welles despised the studio’s original 96-minute theatrical cut; there have been nearly half a dozen re-edited versions released since 1975. Universal’s 50th anniversary DVD has the theatrical, preview and 1998 “definitive” cuts.

The Wages of Fear -The primeval jungles of South America have served as a backdrop for a plethora of sweat-streaked tales (Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of Godcome to mind), but this 1953 existential adventure film from director Henri-Georges Clouzot sits atop that list. Four societal outcasts, who for one reason or another find themselves figuratively and literally at the “end of the road”, hire themselves out for an apparently suicidal job transporting two truckloads of touchy nitro over several hundred miles of bumpy jungle terrain for delivery to a distant oilfield. It does take a little time for the “action” to really get going; once it does, you won’t let out your breath until the final frame. Yves Montand leads the fine international cast. Clouzot co-scripted with Jerome Geronimi, adapting from the original Georges Anaud novel. The 1977 William Friedkin remake Sorcerer has its detractors, but I recommend a peek.

Saturday Night at the Movies review archives

Todd Akin channeling his heroes Strom Thurmond and George Wallace

by digby

Think Progress:

Rep. Todd Akin, the GOP’s candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, suggested in an interview that it was time to “look at or overturn” the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Asked directly if seminal federal civil rights legislation that prohibits discriminatory voting proceedures needed to be modified or scrapped, Akin said that states — not the federal government — should set voting rules. According to Akin, elections “have historically always been a state thing” and that’s a “good principle.”

Indeed:

During the heyday of the African-American civil rights movement, the term “states’ rights” was used as a code word by defenders of segregation. In 1948 it was the official name of the “Dixiecrat” party led by white supremacist presidential candidate Strom Thurmond.Democratic governor George Wallace, of Alabama, who famously declared in his inaugural address in 1962, “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”—later remarked that he should have said, “States’ rights now! States’ rights tomorrow! States’ rights forever!”

If you ever want a clear idea of what “states’ rights” really mean, read the platform of the 1948 “States’ Rights Democratic” Party, also known as the Dixiecrats:

As you can see, it wasn’t very long. In the first paragraph or two it railed against the totalitarian federal government. But it soon got to the real agenda:

The “right” to deny equal rights to all Americans is what “states’ rights” has always been about. That is why the federal government had to intervene in voting cases when some of them decided that they had the “right” to deny the vote to African Americans (or any other American they chose to deny it to.) And that’s what this cretinous Dixiecrat throwback Todd Akin wants to go back to. And he’s not the only one. States run by Dixiecrat throwbacks (what we call “Republicans” today) all over the nation are trying to deny citizens the right to vote.

.

The poster boy for the conservative policy elite

by digby

I think this says more about the conservative elite than it does about Paul Ryan:

With the debate over the federal deficit roiling last year, David Smick, a financial market consultant, held a dinner for a bipartisan group of connected budget thinkers at his expansive home here.

At the table were members of the city’s conservative policy elite, including Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard.

But that evening, none drew more attention than a relatively new member of that best-of class: Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and now Mitt Romney’s running mate, who spoke passionately about the threat posed by the national debt and the radical actions needed to rein it in.

“I thought, ‘This is the one guy in Washington paying attention,’ ” said Niall Ferguson, the Harvard economic historian and commentator, who spent some of the rest of that evening, along with Mr. Kristol, trying to persuade Mr. Ryan to run for president.

Much has been written about Mr. Ryan’s intellectual influences: canonical conservative thinkers like Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian economist, and Ayn Rand, the novelist and philosopher. Mr. Ryan’s enthusiasm for them dates at least to his days as a precocious undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio.

But since first coming to Washington in the early 1990s, Mr. Ryan has been closely tied to an intellectual world more concerned with the political agenda of low taxes, light regulations and small government than philosophical ruminations on work and freedom.

And since his emergence as the key Congressional Republican on the budget issue, Mr. Ryan has become a particular favorite of — and powerful influence on — the intellectuals, economists, writers and policy makers who are at the heart of Washington’s conservative establishment.

He really is the “it boy” of the GOP. Hannity loves him for his hot bod and these guys all love that he can spout lies and bad statistics with the effortlessness of a mid-level think tanker. He reads white papers!

He also athletically argues for his policy ideas among the city’s policy elite in the white-tablecloth lunches, Capitol Hill meetings, private dinners and retreats where consensus gets formed.

Mr. Kemp “taught me that big ideas are the best politics,” Mr. Ryan told National Review. “They will always be challenged, and they will sometimes be controversial, but you have to do what you think is right, what you’re passionate about, and be a strong advocate for it. If you do that, you can shift the debate in a major way.”
[…]
The embrace by conservative policy elites began after Mr. Ryan became a prominent voice pushing for the privatization of the Social Security system during the George W. Bush administration. Despite his lack of seniority — and in no small part because of his already firm reputation as an economic policy thinker — Mr. Ryan became the top Republican on the budget committee in 2007 and then its chairman when Republicans retook the House in 2010.

In 2008, he released the first iteration of his budget, the “Roadmap for America’s Future.” It won plaudits in a right-of-center policy world that had gotten used to politicians watering down its ideas and acquiescing to a bloated federal budget through the Bush years…

“He’s worried about much more than the budget arithmetic, about the kind of government that we are going to have in America,” said Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center here and a favored policy thinker of Mr. Ryan.

“He’s a politician, not an O.M.B. economist,” Mr. Levin said, referring to the Office of Management and Budget at the White House.

That’s right, he’s a politician. But he’s a politician with a radical agenda. I think it makes good sense to take him at his word about what that agenda really is but for some reason the Villagers all want to believe that he’s only posturing. Sometimes I think the GOP cognoscenti who all love him so, believe that too. He isn’t. He means it.

.

Issues

by digby

Republicans have such deep issues with masculinity that they can’t even begin to hide it:

Lest you think I’m making some homophobic slam against Hannity, let me be clear: both Republican sexes are obsessed with the alleged sex appeal of their leaders. And that includes even the least likely of them:

[H]is is an especially potent lure with the Republican Party feeling so lost and fragile. Just last month, former [Fred]Thompson sweetie Lorrie Morgan predicted to the Sunday Times of London that Thompson will prove irresistible to women voters: “He’s majestic. He’s a soft, safe place to be, and that could be Fred’s ticket. Women love a soft place to lay and a strong pair of hands to hold us.”

Oh baby.

But none have been quite the manly beefcake in their eyes as our last president. Remember this?

I had the most astonishing thought last Thursday. After a long day of hauling the kids to playdates and ballet, I turned on the news. And there was the president, landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that amazing uniform, looking–how to put it?–really hot. Also presidential, of course. Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly “hot,” as in virile, sexy and powerful.

The man uses overwhelming military force to vanquish a truly evil foe, facing down balking former “allies,” and he is not taken seriously as a foreign-policy president. He out top-guns the Hollywood version, and all the media can talk about is the impending campaign commercial…

“He’s a hottie. No doubt about it. Really a hottie. Why haven’t I noticed this before? He looks so much better than Michael Douglas in that movie we saw,” comparing the tired, indifferent megastar of “The American President” to the totally present leader of the free world.”

“Hot? SO HOT!!!!! THAT UNIFORM!”

“I think he is actually protecting me and my sons, and I find that attractive in a man.”

“Oh God, yes,” she said. “I mean, that swagger. George Bush in a pair of jeans is a treat to watch.”

Many of them still cite Bill Clinton and his allegedly penetrating intellect as more appealing.

Liberals make such a fetish of intellect. But who cares how smart you are if you can’t make a decision and follow through?

I’m just saying: issues.

.

A Report on the Banana Republic of America

by digby

This is a travesty for our democracy:

Analysis of the resulting comprehensive News21 election fraud database turned up 10 cases of voter impersonation. With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters.

“Voter fraud at the polls is an insignificant aspect of American elections,” said elections expert David Schultz, professor of public policy at Hamline University School of Business in St. Paul, Minn.

“There is absolutely no evidence that (voter impersonation fraud) has affected the outcome of any election in the United States, at least any recent election in the United States,” Schultz said.

The News21 analysis of its election fraud database shows:

In-person voter-impersonation fraud is rare. The database shows 207 cases of other types of fraud for every case of voter impersonation.
“The fraud that matters is the fraud that is organized. That’s why voter impersonation is practically non-existent because it is difficult to do and it is difficult to pull people into conspiracies to do it,” said Lorraine Minnite, professor of public policy and administration at Rutgers University.

There is more fraud in absentee ballots and voter registration than any other categories. The analysis shows 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud and 400 cases of registration fraud. A required photo ID at the polls would not have prevented these cases.

“The one issue I think is potentially important, though more or less ignored, is the overuse of absentee balloting, which provides far more opportunity for fraud and intimidation than on-site voter fraud,” said Daniel Lowenstein, a UCLA School of Law professor.

Of reported election-fraud allegations in the database whose resolution could be determined, 46 percent resulted in acquittals, dropped charges or decisions not to bring charges.

Minnite says prosecutions are rare. “You have to be able to show that people knew what they were doing and they knew it was wrong and they did it anyway,” she said. “It may be in the end they (prosecutors) can’t really show that the people who have cast technically illegal ballots did it on purpose.”

Felons or noncitizens sometimes register to vote or cast votes because they are confused about their eligibility. The database shows 74 cases of felons voting and 56 cases of noncitizens voting.

Voters make a lot of mistakes, from accidentally voting twice to voting in the wrong precinct.

Election officials make a lot of mistakes, from clerical errors — giving voters ballots when they’ve already voted — to election workers confused about voters’ eligibility requirements.

“I don’t think there is a mature democracy that has as bad of an elections system as we do,” said Richard Hasen, a professor of political science and election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. “We have thousands of electoral jurisdictions, we have non-professionals running our elections, we have partisans running our elections, we have lack of uniformity.”

Sadly, these people who are making it harder to vote for partisan gain are winning this battle with the public:

81% of people see voter fraud as a problem, with 43% saying it is a major problem. Only 14% say it is not a problem. And yet, voter fraud is complete and utter bullshit — it doesn’t exist. A partisan faction that wishes to steal elections has managed to convince a large majority of Americans that it does, nonetheless.

We’ve had some journalistic failure in our time, but this one ranks right up there with the WMD hoax.

h/t to TS and DJ

.