Month: December 2012

This is why I do it

by digby

I’ve had a lot of inquiries in the past few days about why I bother to keep doing this.  There are many reasons why they ask, from those who believe there’s too much information already to those of the anarchist bent who feel working within the system is useless. I don’t have easy answers for that.  I can certainly see their point.  It’s not as if blogging has changed the world.

But I get letters like the following fairly frequently.  And it means something to me.  This is from a young guy who lives in Alabama:

Hi Digby, 

When I heard a few days ago about O’s latest offer on the SS cuts (and the other undesirables) in the shock doctrine  fiscal cliff negotiations, I took your advice and called all my representatives in Congress – along with Reid and Pelosi. I also shot an email to the WH comment line. I live in the progressive frontier of Alabama, so calling my representatives is slightly preferred over getting prepped for a colonoscopy. Really, just barely. It had to be done, though. It’s that important, as you know, obviously. 

When I called Reid’s office, I had to hold about 10 minutes for a staffer. Side note: the music was of the patriotic sort (shock), which probably could’ve doubled as a movie score. I don’t know if that was as vomit-inducing as listening to the senator’s voice on the recorded greeting, but it was close. When a live person did answer, she did not seem engaged when I asked her what stance Reid would take. It’s not as much the obfuscation as it just was the unpreparedness. She was silent whenever I asked a question – to the point where I had to make sure she didn’t hang up on me several times. Yet, maybe that was the point. It’s convenient to play ignorant to an impassioned caller’s request, because that could very well foster a tiny bit of discouragement in the one imploring someone to act. And we all know that discouragement, like cynicism, aids those in power. But, I’m probably giving this staffer way to much credit. 

In the end, I’m glad I called everyone, and I plan on calling tomorrow. I’ve even engaged some in my family about what’s going on, and I encouraged them to call as well. My mom called her reps for the first time during the public option tease a few years ago. And even though it was tossed aside, she still felt empowered that she got involved. After a little bit of convincing, she’s firmly on the side of single payer, by the way – because it just makes sense.  

It’s just disheartening. So many people I know don’t seem to want to comprehend what impact these misguided/harsh cuts in our social programs not only will have on them in the present, but also how devastating the repercussions will be in the future. They’re so busy in school, working, etc. Or they take the route of my cousin, who constantly claims that we should just expect to live without these benefits. I know you see the fallacy in that argument. 

And it’s so easy to slip into escapism, but when there’s so many issues at hand, such as the planet being on fire and austerity being tossed around like candy (or cat food, more appropriately), the greater number of people getting involved in the process the better. I know it sounds like youthful optimism, but it is what’s needed. At least I try to do my part and educate as much as possible. I write for my school paper as an alumnus, and I plan to pen several piece about this and other topics breaking over the break when the spring semester starts in January. It’s all I’m able to do, now, but it’s something. 

I just want to thank you and others on the interwebs for what you do to inform everybody about the issues. It’s so vital in times like these. Keep it up! 

Best, 

Eric

It’s fashionable to cynical. And I’ve been around a while and will likely be leaving this world before Eric, so I could just let all this go. But letters like that make me want to carry on. I may not be changing the world overnight but if Eric finds value in what I do then so do I. Because what he’s doing is being a good citizen and if I can help him with that then it’s worthwhile.

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More armed civilians won’t stop mass shooters. If anything, they’ll make things worse

by David Atkins

Brad Friedman reminds us of a 2009 ABC segment showing how dramatically more armed civilians would fail at stopping armed shooters in a realistic situation:

A number of concealed carry civilians in one of these situations would very likely end in disaster and friendly fire deaths.

As with so much else, the right-wing “solution” to these problems is based not in reality, but in ideological faith.

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Holiday Fundraiser Greatest Hits: Randy Conservatives

by digby

First, thank you to all who have contributed to this 10th Anniversary fundraiser so far.  I’m extremely grateful for your support and kind words. I must say that the fact people value the work I do is always a little bit surprising  — and very gratifying.  Thanks again.

One of the more interesting aspects of the last election was the new national political awareness of  the pernicious influence of that chain-smoking philosopher Ayn Rand. But she’s been a topic around here for a very long time. This one was from five years ago, before the financial crisis:

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Randy Conservatives 

It’s interesting that Naomi Klein’s new book about “disaster capitalism” is taking the political world by storm, since it’s such a downer. She offers a stark and scary explanation as to why in disasters and wars and crises of all kinds we so often see these even more disasterous “free-market” solutions. From shock therapy in Russia to the CPA in Iraq to the Republican post-Katrina planning committee at the Heritage Foundation, you see similar examples of market fundamentalist approaches to problems of vast scale that one would have until recently assumed would be undertaken by government, democratic or otherwise. Klein makes the case that this is essentially a product of a school of economic thought that has found it can not only benefit by disaster, but it benefits greatly if it actually creates disasters, frightening people into accepting what in the best case can be considered experimental solutions to problems and in the worst case provides the opportunity for greed and graft to operate without restraint. 

It’s an interesting thesis, but I don’t mean to debate its merits in this post. The reason I bring it up at all is that I coincidentally found myself reading Alan Greenspan’s autobiography at the same time and was struck by the psychology of selfishness that I found underlying both of these books. There are too many people involved in this behavior to simply explain it as an anomaly. In a country supposedly based upon Judeo-Christian values and Enlightenment philosophy, I wondered why so many wealthy and powerful people are now openly embracing a philosophy of pure self-interest — and acting on it. And the answer, I think, is Ayn Rand. 

When the Greenspan book was published, the NY Times reprinted a letter to the editor from Greenspan defending Rand’s magnum opus “Atlas Shrugged” which used some rather startling language:

“‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.” 

It’s hard to believe that the man who wrote that fanboy letter was the man who went on to become one of the most powerful economic gurus in history. But then the fans of Ayn Rand are almost always, on some level, stuck in a sort of perpetual adolescence, which seems odd because many of her most ardent admirers are fantastically wealthy masters of the universe who attribute to her the inspiration for their success. And that, I suspect, may be one of the roots of the problem we are seeing with “disaster capitalism” and other frightening modern manifestations of cruel, free market fundamentalism. 

Ayn Rand, muse to the millionaire, thought she was imparting philosophy, but her own philosophy of “Objectivism,” (which was essentially a personality cult) remains very marginal in society at large. But certain of her ideas seem to have greatly informed the worldview of modern free market thinkers and business leaders in ways that run far more deeply and strongly than works of “philosophy” normally do on these types of people. 

Many of these leaders admit that “Atlas Shrugged” was the most important book they ever read. And “Atlas Shrugged” is a very stupid book, a turgid fantasy, tailor made for the scores of 16 year old who still read it every year (mostly because the Ayn Rand institute sends nearly half a million copies a year to Advanced Placement high school courses.) It appeals to the smart, sexually overwhelmed adolescent with its passionate relationships allegedly based purely on “reason”. I have little doubt that all those advanced placement geeks find that concept enthralling. (I was once one myself.) 

As it happens, Rand’s own life shows that her beliefs about rational love were a crock — she seduced her married protege, half her age, which pretty much negates the “heroic” alpha male model Rand extolled in her novels. Rand, for all her guru status, proclaimed she was not a feminist and that she would never vote for a woman for president: “it is not to a woman’s personal interest to rule men. It puts her in a very unhappy position. I do not believe that any good woman would want that position.” She worshiped manly heroism and her supposed philosophical novels lean far more heavily on that archetypal narrative than anyone cares to admit. It’s bodice-ripping for nerds, a fantasy of the pants far more than a philosophy of the mind. 

The young girls absorb this message of fantasy alpha male and the boys see a path to “heroism” purely by virtue of doing exactly what they want to do. What teen-ager wouldn’t be thrilled with such a philosophy? Most of us grow out of it, however, when the complexity of the world and our own emotional needs manifest themselves in adulthood. 

Not so with the masters of the universe whose inner lives were indelibly stamped with the heroic model of John Galt, the man who is so spectacularly special that the world simply cannot not function properly unless he is allowed to follow his own self-interest without interference. Rand tells these people that not only is altruism inefficient (as the laissez fair gods Friedman and Hayek do.) She tells them it is immoral. There can be nothing wrong with taking advantage of disasters — or even creating them — because moral actors must take advantage of the “parasites” who offer nothing of value to our system. 

I don’t suggest that Wall Street Masters of the Universe and the Titans of Industry  literally believe this today — at least not all of them. But the combination of sexual excitement and fantasy within which these ideas were first presented, psychologically marked more people in this society than we realize. And the people most likely to have internalized this message would be those who had the ambition and drive to achieve financial success already. 

So you find comments like this:

James M. Kilts, who led turnarounds at Gillette, Nabisco and Kraft, said he encountered “Atlas” at “a time in college life when everybody was a nihilist, anti-establishment, and a collectivist.” He found her writing reassuring because it made success seem rational. 

“Rand believed that there is right and wrong,” he said, “that excellence should be your goal.” 

Yes, she did. But her notions of right and wrong were a little bit unusual. She famously wrote in he journal, “what is good for me is Good!”  

You see this same philosophy in recent stories like this one, in which the tycoons of the new Gilded Age explain why they should be receiving so much more compensation in relation to their workers. They believe they deserve it because they are very, very special people:

[V]ery wealthy men in the new Gilded Age talk of themselves as having a flair for business not unlike Derek Jeter’s “unique talent” for baseball, as Leo J. Hindery Jr. put it. “I think there are people, including myself at certain times in my career,” Mr. Hindery said, “who because of their uniqueness warrant whatever the market will bear.”
[…]
“The income distribution has to stand,” Mr. Griffin said, adding that by trying to alter it with a more progressive income tax, “you end up in problematic circumstances. In the current world, there will be people who will move from one tax area to another. I am proud to be an American. But if the tax became too high, as a matter of principle I would not be working this hard.” 

And it is this kind of thinking that leads people to believe that when they are price gouging a whole country — or a beloved American city — and consciously using fear to intimidate whole populations to buy into experimental and lucrative schemes (for the tycoons, at least) that leave nothing but more disaster in their wake, they are doing the Right Thing. “What is good for me is Good!” No conscience. No regrets. No worries.  

They are John Galt.

I don’t think anything’s happened since I wrote that to disprove it.  Indeed, it’s more obvious than ever that it’s Galt’s world and we’re just living in it.  Not that it has to stay that way.  But despite the president’s big win over the Randroid twins in November, it’s fairly clear that the Masters of the Universe are still very much pulling the strings. It will take more than elections to change that.

If you’d like to see more of those kinds of scribblings, along with the great contributions of my friends Atkins, Hartley and tristero, you can click one of the buttons below:

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Happy to Oblige 

by tristero

Wayne LaPierre, you’re crazy.

Shorter Ross Douthat 

by tristero

I don’t know what I’m talking about. And I don’t what to do.

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Holiday Fundraiser Greatest Hits: The Art of the Hissy Fit

by digby

10 years is a long time to be an independent blogger. You work pretty much 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year so it’s something like being a parent with a newborn — a newborn who never grows beyond two weeks old. It screams and howls and needs feeding every four hours. But you love it — it doesn’t seem like a burden. It’s a joy.

I’ve been lucky in that readers like you make it possible for me to keep doing it the way I like to do it, on my terms, which is a true gift.

If you have a couple of bucks to throw into the kitty to keep us up and running for another year, you can click on of the buttons or send something to the snail mail address on your left.

Meanwhile, let’s take another trip down memory lane shall we?

I wrote the following piece in reaction to the notorious Move-On General Betrayus ad back in 2007. The entire political establishment lost its head and turned what should have been a very transitory contretemps over an extremely minor matter of opinion into a full blown scandal, largely as a result of the right wing’s amazing ability to churn up just this sort of hysteria and distort the political system in the process.

The Art Of The Hissy Fit


By digby

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

I first noticed the right’s successful use of  ostentatious handwringing, sanctimony and faux outrage back in the 90’s when well-known conservative players like Gingrich and Livingston pretended to be offended at the president’s extramarital affair and were repeatedly and tiresomely “upset” about fund-raising practices they all practiced themselves. The idea of these powerful and corrupt adulterers being personally upset by White House coffees and naughty sexual behavior was laughable.

But they did it, oh how they did it, and it often succeeded in changing the dialogue and titillating the media into a frenzy of breathless tabloid coverage.

In fact, they became so good at the tactic that they now rely on it as their first choice to control the political dialogue when it becomes uncomfortable and put the Democrats on the defensive whenever they are winning the day. Perhaps the best example during the Bush years would be the completely cynical and over-the-top reaction to Senator Paul Wellstone’s memorial rally in 2002 in the last couple of weeks leading up to the election.

With the exception of the bizarre Jesse Ventura, those in attendance, including the Republicans, were non-plussed by the nature of the event at the time. It was not, as the chatterers insisted, a funeral, but rather more like an Irish wake for Wellstone supporters — a celebration of Wellstone’s life, which included, naturally, politics. (He died campaigning, after all.) But Vin Weber, one of the Republican party’s most sophisticated operatives, immediately saw the opportunity for a faux outrage fest that was more successful than even he could have ever dreamed.

By the time they were through, the Democrats were prostrating themselves at the feet of anyone who would listen, begging for forgiveness for something they didn’t do, just to stop the shrieking. The Republicans could barely keep the smirks off their faces as they sternly lectured the Democrats on how to properly honor the dead — the same Republicans who had relentlessly tortured poor Vince Foster’s family for years.

It’s an excellent technique and one they continue to employ with great success, most recently with the entirely fake Move-On and Pete Stark “controversies.” (The Democrats try their own versions but rarely achieve the kind of full blown hissy fit the Republicans can conjure with a mere blast fax to Drudge and their talk radio minions.)

But it’s about more than simple political distraction or savvy public relations. It’s actually a very well developed form of social control called Ritual Defamation (or Ritual Humiliation) as this well trafficked internet article defines it:

Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. For the purposes of this essay, the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and “insensitivity” or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.

The article goes on to lay out several defining characteristics of ritual defamation such as “the method of attack in a ritual defamation is to assail the character of the victim, and never to offer more than a perfunctory challenge to the particular attitudes, opinions or beliefs expressed or implied. Character assassination is its primary tool.” Perhaps its most intriguing insight is this:

The power of ritual defamation lies entirely in its capacity to intimidate and terrorize. It embraces some elements of primitive superstitious belief, as in a “curse” or “hex.” It plays into the subconscious fear most people have of being abandoned or rejected by the tribe or by society and being cut off from social and psychological support systems.

In a political context this translates to a fear by liberal politicians that they will be rejected by the American people — and a subconscious dulling of passion and inspiration in the mistaken belief that they can spare themselves further humiliation if only they control their rhetoric. The social order these fearsome conservative rituals pretend to “protect,” however, are not those of the nation at large, but rather the conservative political establishment which is perhaps best exemplified by this famous article about how Washington perceived the Lewinsky scandal. The “scandal” is moved into the national conversation through the political media which has its own uses for such entertaining spectacles and expends a great deal of energy promoting these shaming exercises for commercial purposes.

The political cost to progressives and liberals for their inability to properly deal with this tactic is greater than they realize. Just as Newt Gingrich was not truly offended by Bill Clinton’s behavior (which mirrored his own) neither were conservative congressmen and Rush Limbaugh truly upset by the Move On ad — and everyone knew it, which was the point. It is a potent demonstration of pure power to force others toinsincerely condemn or apologize for something, particularly when the person who is forcing it is also insincerely outraged. For a political party that suffers from a reputation for weakness, it is extremely damaging to be so publicly cowed over and over again. It separates them from their most ardent supporters and makes them appear guilty and unprincipled to the public at large.

Ritual defamation and humiliation are designed to make the group feel contempt for the victim and over time it’s extremely hard to resist feeling it when the victims fail to stand up for themselves.

There is the possibility that the Republicans will overplay this particular gambit. Their exposure over the past few years for incompetence, immorality and corruption, both personal and institutional, makes them extremely imperfect messengers for sanctimony, faux or otherwise. But they are still effectively wielding the flag, (or at least the Democratic congress is allowing them to) and until liberals and progressives find a way to thwart this successful tactic, it will continue. At this point the conservatives have little else.

What do you suppose today’s enforcers of proper decorum would say to this?

Americans too often teach their children to despise those who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place – the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. — Mark Twain

I have a feeling Mark Twain would be the subject of many a hissy fit were he alive today.

Keep your eye on Benghazi. They haven’t succeeded in turning this into a full blown hissy fit so far and I suspect that it’s only because there are just too many serious stories out there and it can’t get the oxygen. But judging from what I saw on the alternate Fox universe yesterday, even as Wayne LaPierre was doing his best Strangelove impression, Fox was flogging the “Benghazi report” as if Ken Starr had been called up to investigate Hillary’s panty drawer.

And they’re trying it out on Chuck Hagel too — which represents a new front, I think. I’ve never seen them do it to a Republican before.

Again, thanks for reading these scribbles all these years. David, Dennis, tristero and I are all very grateful that you keep coming back.

Cheers,

digby

Saturday Night at the Movies


Just in case we’re all still here: Top 10 films of 2012 

 By Dennis Hartley

‘Tis the season to offer up my picks for the best films that opened in 2012. I should qualify that. These are my picks for the “top ten” movies out of the 50+ first run features I was able to cover here at Hullabaloo since January. Since I am (literally) a “weekend movie critic”, I don’t have the time to screen every new release (it’s that pesky 9-5 gig that keeps getting in the way). So here you go…alphabetically, not in order of preference:

Applause– I think I have a new favorite actress. Her name is Paprika Steen, and she delivers a searing performance in this Danish import, directed by Martin Zandvliet. Technically, Steen is giving two searing performances in this film…as an embittered, middle-aged alcoholic stage actress who somehow manages to sober up just enough to deliver acclaimed nightly performances as the embittered, middle-aged alcoholic Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (which itself doubles as a Greek Chorus for her concurrent offstage travails). Steen is a force of nature; a sheer joy to watch. Full review

Dark Horse– Refreshingly, Todd Solondz does not induce the usual amount of seat squirming in his latest film. Not that it lacks the (very) dark comedic flourishes that have become the writer-director’s stock in trade, but he actually toys with sweetness and light. Sort of a twisty, postmodern art house re-imagining of Marty, the story centers on a portly thirty-something nudnik (Jordan Gelber) who falls head over heels for a clinically depressed woman (deadpan Selma Blair, slyly pinpointing that sweet spot between funny and sad). Solondz has fashioned something akin to a modern Jewish morality tale, in the tradition of Jules Feiffer, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Mordecai Richler. Full review

Killer Joe-A blackly funny and deliriously nasty piece of work from veteran director William Friedkin. Jim Thompson meets Sam Shepherd (with a whiff of Tennessee Williams) in this dysfunctional trailer trash-strewn tale of avarice, perversion and murder-for-hire, adapted for the screen by Tracy Letts from his own play. While the noir tropes in the narrative holds few surprises, the squeamish are forewarned that the 76 year-old Friedkin still has a formidable ability to startle unsuspecting viewers; proving you’re never too old to earn an NC-17 rating. How startling? The real litmus test occurs during the film’s climactic scene, which is so Grand Guignol that (depending on your sense of humor) you’ll either cringe and cover your eyes…or laugh yourself sick. Full review

The Master– As Inspector Clouseau once ruminated, “Well you know, there are leaders…and there are followers.” At its most rudimentary level, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is a two-character study about a leader and a follower (and metaphorically, all leaders and followers). It’s also a story about a complex surrogate father-son relationship (a recurring theme in the director’s oeuvre). And yes, there are some who feel the film is a thinly disguised takedown of Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. I found it to be a thought-provoking and startlingly original examination of why human beings in general are so prone to kowtow to a burning bush, or an emperor with no clothes; a film that begs repeated viewings. One thing’s for sure-Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix give two of this year’s most fearless performances. Like all of Anderson’s films, it’s audacious, sometimes baffling, but never dull. Full review

Paul Williams: Still Alive- This 2012 SIFF entry is an update on the oddball singer-songwriter-actor with the pageboy haircut who penned a slew of 70s hits (“We’ve Only Just Begun”, “Rainy Days and Mondays”, “An Old-Fashioned Love Song”), appeared in a number of cult movies (The Loved One, Phantom of the Paradise), became a fixture on the TV game show/talk show circuit, then disappeared. A wary Williams initially vacillates on whether he wants to be the subject of a “fly on the wall” study, but filmmaker (and professed super fan) Steven Kessler ingratiates himself after the men bond over a mutual love of squid (don’t ask). What results is an alternately hilarious and sobering look at the ups and downs of this crazy business we call “show”. Full review

Rampart– In a published interview, hard-boiled scribe James Ellroy once said of his (typical) protagonists “…I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity.”  Later in the interview, Ellroy confided that he “…would like to provide ambiguous responses in my readers.” If those were his primary intentions in the screenplay that drives Oren Moverman’s gripping and unsettling film (co-written with the director), I would say that he has succeeded mightily on both counts. If you’re seeking car chases, shootouts and a neatly wrapped ending tied with a bow-look elsewhere. Not unlike one of those classic 1970s character studies, this film just sort of…starts, shit happens, and then it sort of…stops. But don’t let that put you off-it’s what’s inside this sandwich that matters, namely the fearless and outstanding performance from a gaunt and haunted Woody Harrelson, so good here as a bad, bad, bad, bad L.A. cop. Full review

Samsara– Whether you see Ron Fricke’s film as a deep treatise on the cyclic nature of the Omniverse, or merely as an assemblage of pretty pictures, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. The man who gave us the similar cinematic tone poems Chronos and Baraka drops a clue early on in his latest film, as we observe a group of Buddhist monks painstakingly creating a sand mandala (it must take days). At the very end of the film, we revisit the artists, who now sit in silent contemplation of their lovely creation. This (literal) Moment of Zen turns out to be the preface to the monks’ next project-the ritualistic de-construction of the painting (which I assume must take an equal amount of time). Yes, it is a very simple metaphor for the transitory nature of beauty, life, the universe and everything. But, as they say, there’s beauty in simplicity. Full review

Skyfall– I’m sure you’ve heard the old chestnut about cockroaches and Cher surviving the Apocalypse? As the James Bond movie franchise celebrates its 50th year with the release of Skyfall (one of the best in the series) you might as well add “007” to that list of indestructible life forms. Helmed with intelligence and verve by American Beauty director Sam Mendes, this tough, spare and relatively gadget-free Bond caper harkens back to the gritty, straightforward approach of From Russia with Love. In his third outing, Daniel Craig has settled comfortably into the character, and I was glad to see one element return to 007’s personality: a mordant sense of humor. Bond geeks will be pleased; and anyone up for pure popcorn escapism will not be disappointed. Full review

The Story of Film: an Odyssey– This 2012 SIFF selection is one long-ass film (15 hours). It literally is the story of film, from the 1890s through last Tuesday. This idiosyncratic opus (now on DVD) is nearly as epic an undertaking for the viewer as it surely was for director-writer-narrator Mark Cousins. While the usual suspects are well-represented, his choices for in-depth analysis are atypical. Of course, he “left out” many directors and films I would have included. Nits aside, this is a labor of love by someone passionate about the medium, and if you claim to be, you have an obligation to see it. Full review

Your Sister’s Sister– This latest offering from Humpday writer-director Lynn Shelton was the opening night selection for this year’s Seattle International Film Festival; and what a fine choice it was (not always a given, as I have learned from experience). Shelton’s romantic “love triangle” dramedy (reminiscent of Chasing Amy) is a talky but thoroughly engaging look at the complexities of modern relationships, centering on a slacker man-child (Mark Duplass) his deceased brother’s girlfriend (Emily Blunt) and her sister (Rosemarie Dewitt), who all bumble into a sort of unplanned “encounter weekend” together at a remote family cabin. A funny, insightful and well-directed film. Full review

Saturday Night at the Movies review archives

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What we have to look forward to

by digby

This just gets better and better:

President Obama’s concessions to Republicans on taxes and Social Security have grabbed the headlines, but there’s another big area where the White House has shifted considerably in the GOP’s direction: direct stimulus to revive the short-term economy.

In his original offer, Obama asked for $425 billion in stimulus through jobs measures and tax extenders, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, including $50 billion in infrastructure spending and other stimulus measures; mass mortgage refinancing to boost the housing market; $30 billion in unemployment extension; a $115 billion extension of the payroll tax holiday; and the extension of a host of business tax breaks known as extenders.

The stimulus measures are intended to counteract the impact of a fiscal cliff that would put major austerity into effect immediately. But they’re also meant to counter the fiscal tightening in a fiscal cliff deal, which both Democrats and Republicans have agreed should promote major austerity in the longer term through deficit reduction. 

Republicans, however, have argued that more explicit stimulus right now isn’t the answer: House Speaker John Boehner included no explicit stimulus measures in his original offer and has only proposed to extend a handful of business tax breaks since then. It’s clearly been a point of contention in the negotiations as Obama’s stimulus proposal has progressively shrunk over time: In his third offer, reported Monday, Obama dropped his ask from $425 billion to $175 billion in stimulus, as my colleague Dylan’s chart shows below, keeping the federal extension of unemployment insurance, infrastructure spending and some business tax breaks, but abandoning the extension of the payroll tax holiday, among other major measures.

For a White House which everyone says has all the leverage, they sure are willing to compromise their allegedly most cherished priorities. From reporting and public quotes from various Democratic leaders, the Democrats signed on to that offer.  (Whether they will still agree to it after they were rebuffed is another story.)

Meanwhile, John Boehner offered up one thing: allowing the taxes on those making a million dollars a year to go back up to the levels they were a decade ago. Of course he sweetened it with more cuts to food stamps and other vital programs. And he couldn’t even sell that. So why do so many people say that the Democrats aren’t negotiating with themselves? Who are they negotiating with?

Here’s just a little reminder of where these austerity measures that the Washington Post claims have been embraced by both parties are going to lead us:

Across Europe, holiday “shoppers” this season are doing more browsing than buying.

Retailers remain hopeful for a last-minute burst of Christmas consumerism, and some governments are encouraging it by allowing stores to open on Sunday. But with economies across the region slowing and unemployment soaring, analysts say holiday spending in Europe is bound to disappoint for the fourth year in a row.

In Rome, some shopkeepers say holiday sales are down 20 percent from last year. In Paris, refurbished second-hand toys are attracting buyers. And in Spain, which has Europe’s highest unemployment rate, some families are contemplating whether to give gifts at all.
[…]
Austerity measures implemented to combat the continent’s debt crisis have hit Europe’s economies hard: Nine countries in the 27-member European Union are in recession and unemployment across the region is 10.7 percent.

Retail sales across Europe have been on a steady decline since August and have yet to match levels last seen since the start of the Great Recession in 2008. In October, the latest month for which official figures are available, retail sales in the European Union fell 1.1 percent from the previous month and 2.4 percent from the previous year, according to Eurostat. In Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, retail sales fell 3.8 percent in October from the previous year.

Apparently our elites think we need a nice big dose of that austerity too. I guess we feel left out of the misery what with only having 7.6% unemployment and anemic growth. We need to go all in. Why, I do not know, but that’s the plan.

Update: Hoooboy. Read Krugman and Baker.

I’m going to shut down my brain for the rest of the day and go have some Christmas cheer. I suggest that everyone else do the same. It’s the only sane thing to do right now.

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Why they turned on Hagel

by digby

If you’re looking for some quality commentary this afternoon and you missed Up with Chris Hayes this morning, look no further than this extremely interesting discussion of the Israel lobby and this hissy fit over Chuck Hagel:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I’m surprised he’s allowed to have conversations like these. The Villagers must not get up early on the week-ends.

When you’ve lost the NY Post …


by digby

Maybe the worm really is turning …

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