Month: March 2014

Saturday Night at the Movies




The 1% rundown: Child’s Pose

by Dennis Hartley

I’m sure you recall the “affluenza” case in Texas, in which a 16 year-old from a wealthy family received 10 year’s probation and a stint in rehab as “punishment” for killing four people in a drunk driving accident? A psychologist for the defense defined “affluenza” as an affliction unique to children of privilege; claiming that the young man’s coddled upbringing led to an inability to connect actions with consequences. We have to assume that he said this with a straight face, because judge and jury bought it. Which begs a question: Does the world have two justice systems…one for the rich and one for the poor?

Child’s Pose, a new film from Romanian writer-director Calin Peter Netzer, would seem to reinforce that suspicion. Shooting in a unfussy, Dogme 95-styled manner, and armed with a script (co-written by Razvan Radulescu) that blends droll satire with social realism, Netzer paints a portrait of contemporary Romanian class warfare through the eyes of a haughty bourgeoisie woman named Cornelia (Luminita Gheorghiu). We are introduced to Cornelia, a middle-aged, well-to-do architect who power-puffs every cigarette like it’s her last, as she is lamenting to her sister (Natasa Raab) about her relationship with her adult son, Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache). Why does she always have to initiate contact? He hasn’t phoned her for weeks…it must be that controlling wife of his (“That creature…she’s got him by his tail, like a little mouse.”). “Stop pestering him,” her sister says. It quickly becomes apparent that Cornelia is the one who has control issues.

Cornelia’s need to know every detail of Barbu’s daily life seems to go above and beyond the normal parental concerns for a child’s welfare. In a particularly telling scene, she invites her housekeeper (who she has hired to regularly clean her son’s home as well) to take a break and join her for a cup of coffee. Cornelia masterfully turns the chit-chat into an intelligence-gathering session. How is their place…”messy as usual”? When she dusted Barbu’s nightstand, did she happen to notice which book was there? Is it the one she recently sent, she wonders? Cornelia casually offers the maid a 200 Euro pair of shoes she found whilst cleaning out her closet (a payoff, disguised as an act of noblesse oblige).

One evening, Cornelia is attending an opera recital when she is suddenly torn away by her sister, who has bad news. Barbu is down at the police station; he has been involved in a car accident. He’s okay, but he has struck and killed a teenage boy. The look on Cornelia’s face speaks volumes. There’s none of the expected shock, or sense of panic. Rather, you can see all the gears turning. This is it. This is her “in”. Barbu is in trouble. Big trouble. But mama can help. Mama has her connections. She knows what to kiss, and when. She knows how the system works. She’s already formulating an action plan…not necessarily out of a maternal drive to “save” her son from jail, but to get him back under her thumb, where he belongs (Gheorghiu telegraphs all of this beautifully, wordlessly).

As you watch Cornelia serpentine her way though Bucharest like a preying viper, playing the cops, witnesses, and the victim’s working-class family like violins, it almost becomes a moot point that her spoiled, ne’er do well son is guilty as hell of negligent homicide. That’s because you’re so gob smacked by Cornelia’s gumption that you can’t help but develop a morbid fascination with whether or not she is actually going to pull all this off. Of course, there would have to be some enabling factors involving the inherent corruption within “The System” as well, and Netzer doesn’t spare any barbs there either.

While some viewers may be put off by the deliberate pacing (I’ll confess it took me about 20 minutes to get in tune with what the film was even going to be about) those with patience will be rewarded. Gheorghiu’s performance is the most compelling reason to stick with it; she’s the most conniving, insufferably narcissistic maternal nightmare you’ll love to hate this side of Livia Drusilla . It would be easy to say that the film’s message is “money talks, justice walks”, but the ambiguous denouement gives me pause. It seems that no victory that’s bought and paid for comes without a hidden cost. I’m not a religious man (had to look this up on Mr. Google) but how does that quote go…“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul”? Erm, amen to that.

Previous posts with related themes:

Elena

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

Saturday Night at the Movies review archives  

All the problems in the world laid at Obamacare’s feet

by digby

I honestly think that a whole lot of conservatives (and some not-so-bright Indies) will attribute all the existing problems with the health care system to Obamacare — long waits, insurance beefs, bad diagnoses, malpractice, high costs, all of it. They will easily convince themselves that it was great before and now it’s terrible even though it was really terrible before and is slightly less terrible now. After all, everybody said, “we have the best health care in the world!” Now it’s flawed. Thanks Obamacare.

I actually had a personal experience that leads me to believe that it might not just be coming from their own prejudice but from people who work in the health care business.  I was on a typically long and arduous call the other day with an insurance rep trying to straighten out a billing error and was told right upfront that the whole thing was a mess because of Obamacare. I pointed out that the bill in question was from 2012, but this person insisted that the “changes” to the health care system had messed everything up. I don’t know if he was freelancing or if he’d been told that, but he said it. I know he was full of it, but I’d imagine there are others out there who would believe it.  And when you combine that with the fact that employers are continuing to do what they’ve been doing for years — raising co-pays and reducing benefits — I suspect that some people are hearing similar tales from their workplace.

So, for a while at least, anyone who has a bad experience with the health care system will probably blame it on Obamacare if they’re inclined to think in  “government can’t do anything right terms.” Some will undoubtedly believe it forever. The relevant question will be if the people want it repealed.  And they don’t:

Even the GOP can only muster 33% to go back to the way it was.

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Kerning experts turn to sex. In 1960.

by digby

You have to see this whole thing to truly understand how daft it is, but this should be enough to give you the gist. It’s a new conspiracy theory about Barack Obama’s birth:

… Maraniss “calculated” in his 2012 book that Ann and Obama Sr. “were having sex, most likely at his apartment on 10th Avenue in Kaimuki[,]” “within weeks of the first day” of the “Russia” class. Although not at “10th Avenue” as Maraniss claimed, the 1960-1961 Honolulu Polk directory does show Obama Sr. residing(r) at 625 11th Ave.

… But Ann’s daughter, Maya Soetoro, postulated “with a chuckle” in David Mendell’s 2007 Obama biography From Promise to Power that her hapa-Kenyan brother “was conceived” in a “nondescript concrete dormitory building just inside the campus” in which Obama Sr. “had been living” “while he and Ann dated.” Since, in reality, Obama Sr.’s apparent 11th Avenue address in the fall of 1960 was not a dormitory “just inside the campus,” but rather a house over 1.5 miles from campus, we have to ask if Maya was confused, purposefully deceitful, or a combination of both.

No, I have no idea what the hell they’re trying to say. But I am impressed with the fact that someone would actually take the time to speculate about this.

NoMoreMisterNiceBlog has the whole story here.

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The Kochs aren’t exactly forced to clip coupons because of their political spending

by digby

Lee Fang takes a fatuous piece of Wall St. Journal “reporting” downtown:

In her column, “The Really Big Money? Not the Kochs,” Strassel cites a Center for Responsive Politics list to claim that unions “collectively spent $620,873,623 more than Koch Industries” on political races. Of course, if you actually visit this page on the CRP website, the list runs below a disclaimer noting that it does not include certain Super PAC spending or most undisclosed dark money spending, the preferred route for the Koch brothers for decades. In fact, the CRP site notes that union spending might appear inflated since unions’ traditional PAC spending is coupled with outside Super PAC spending. For the purposes of this chart, union spending is inflated compared to the giving of companies like Koch or Super PAC donors like Sheldon Adelson.

For the last election, Koch PACs spent $4.9 million in disclosed contributions (figures that appear on the chart referenced by Strassel). But they also spent over $407 million on undisclosed campaign entities, which does not show up in the CRP chart.

Here’s how it really looks:

And in case you’re wonder if that’s got the brothers counting coupons because they’ve blown their “savings” think again:

The following illustration compares an human being against a stack of $100 currency note bundles. A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house:

The Kochs have 75 of those rooms. The 412 million they spent in 2012 is a rounding error.

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The Sanders question

by digby

He’s right. It’s absolutely shameful.

Speaking of which, Howie posted something very interesting yesterday about Senator Sanders:

Why Settle is the name of an ActBlue page that suggests that we do not have to always settle for vile careerist corporate shills as presidential nominees. Alternatives are offered. One of those alternatives is the great independent senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. And yesterday, John Nichols offered SandersThe Nation’s platform to explain why he’s prepared to run (against Hillary Clinton and whichever right-wing automaton the Republicans put up. “Sanders,” writes Nichols, “has begun talking with savvy progressive political strategists, traveling to unexpected locations such as Alabama and entertaining the process questions that this most issue-focused member of the Senate has traditionally avoided… [H]e says his political instincts tell him America is ready for a ‘political revolution.'” 

“I like Hillary,” he responded to Nichols; “she is very, very intelligent; she focuses on issues. But I think, sad to say, that the Clinton type of politics is not the politics certainly that I’m talking about. We are living in the moment in American history where the problems facing the country, even if you do not include climate change, are more severe than at any time since the Great Depression. And if you throw in climate change, they are more severe. So the same old same old [Clinton administration Secretary of the Treasury] Robert Rubin type of economics, or centrist politics, or continued dependence on big money, or unfettered free-trade, that is not what this country needs ideologically. That is not the type of policy that we need. And it is certainly not going to be the politics that galvanizes the tens of millions of people today who are thoroughly alienated and disgusted with the status quo. People are hurting, and it is important for leadership now to explain to them why they are hurting and how we can grow the middle class and reverse the economic decline of so many people. And I don’t think that is the politics of Senator Clinton or the Democratic establishment.” 

He’s got a point. I don’t know if Sanders is going to throw his hat in the ring but I do know that we should have a primary campaign that features one or more Democrats who will challenge the status quo. That is the mechanism in our system in which the grassroots of both parties get a chance to weigh in and try to shape the debate. It allows for questioning on subjects important to the base of the party and can potentially move the campaign in directions the voters care about.

If Hillary Clinton is unopposed and is never asked the tough questions by those on the left, she will run a general election campaign from the very beginning and it will be a wasted opportunity for the progressive faction of the Democratic Party. And there’s little reason for the Clinton campaign to need to do that. The Republicans are a party in chaos and it’s highly unlikely they could beat her even if she ran to the left of Sanders. But the consultants and the Party Poohbahs, as well as Clinton herself, will take the easy way out if they can and avoid any controversial policy issues for as long as possible. That’s the political professional’s preferred approach and I suppose it’s understandable. But they aren’t the only ones with a say in this. The activists and the grassroots have a say in it to. Or they should have, anyway. If Sanders agrees to run, it’s worth supporting him so that he can qualify for debates and other venues where he can ask some tough questions on our behalf and present the liberal argument to the people of this country when they are paying attention to politics. We need that. Desperately.

And by the way, it certainly sounds like Sanders is thinking seriously about it.

BTW: That Pew Poll of the millenials I mentioned in the previous post also says this about voters aged 18 -33:

There is a huge amount of support among millenials for Barack Obama despite their feelings of alienation from political parties.  I don’t know if that support will automatically translate to support for Hillary Clinton, but I think it would be foolish to simply assume it. They have not adopted the “Democratic brand” and that is the single best indicator of how people are going to vote. These people haven’t voted a lot yet so there’s still plenty of room for them to surprise us. Dig down into that millenial data and you’ll see some rather deep fault lines that I hope the Party is taking into account before it does its usual premature triumphant victory dance.

None of this is to say that I think Clinton will have a problem winning. It’s hard to imagine at this point that she won’t be the next president (although I’ve certainly been wrong about that before…). And as a woman, there’s a big part of me that will be personally thrilled to see a woman president — especially since I assumed America would only be allowed to elect a socially conservative, right wing Republican woman.  (Clinton is a lot of things but she is not a right wing social conservative.) So, there is that.  And it’s not nothing. But I believe that both Obama and Clinton as “firsts” are cautious politicians who have failed to see that these historic presidencies are actually opportunities to take on the entrenched power structure since they also come at a time when the world is in transition in a dozen different ways. They certainly have to battle the conservatives, and that presents obvious institutional impediments to change, but they have more power than they think they do.

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Will borders hold?

by digby

So far, they mostly have. But you can feel the tension, all over the world:

The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research group, has used United Nations migration estimates to produce this fascinating, and somewhat addictive, interactive map. Choose from the “Select Country” pull-down menu below the map, and it will show you (to the nearest thousand) how many immigrants to and emigrants from that country there were as of last year, along with those migrants’ countries of origin or destinations.

We learn, for instance, that Russia and Ukraine are each other’s leading sources of migrants, with more than 2.9 million Ukrainians now living in Russia and nearly 3.5 million Russians living in Ukraine. Saudi Arabia and the United States are the top destination countries for Syrian migrants (139,000 and 76,000, respectively). The U.S. draws immigrants from nearly every country in the world, from Mexico (nearly 13 million) to Mauritius (3,000).

Borders are an organizing construct and have proved very useful. But humans will migrate. They always have and they always will. And when our system destabilizes because of greed, rapid cultural change or something as catastrophic as global warming, you can bet that borders are not going to hold them back.

This is what our species has always done to survive — when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

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The goalposts

by digby

How banning abortion after 20 weeks becomes the reasonable, mainstream, “compromise” position:

Efforts to restrict reproductive rights are ongoing in several states, but no state is being quite as ambitious as Alabama. Yesterday, the Republican-led state House approved four bills on abortion, including one that would prohibit women from terminating an unwanted pregnancy just six weeks after conception.

The bill would make exceptions if the pregnancy endangers the woman’s life or if a fetus would be stillborn or die shortly after birth but does not make an exception for rape or incest.

An unborn fetus is “a life regardless of the painful, painful circumstances,” McClurkin said.

Physicians would be required to check for a fetal heartbeat. Doctors who perform an abortion without documenting the heartbeat could be charged with a Class C felony, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

In case it’s not obvious, women sometimes don’t know they’re pregnant until after six weeks. In practical terms, then, Alabama state law would expect women to seek an abortion before they might know they want one.

That seems extreme and somewhat silly. But keep in mind that while the latest Pew poll finds that millenials are far greater advocates for gay rights and have little trust in the moldy old institutions of religion and political parties than previous generations, they do not support reproductive rights in greater numbers than anyone else. (And oddly, they support gun rights to the same extent everyone else does as well. In fact, when it comes to white millenials, it appears they really aren’t that much different from the olds. What makes them different is the larger numbers of people of color.)That’s depressing. If young people can care about gay rights and gun rights, one would hope they’d be equally concerned with women’s rights. But then, women’s rights are always waiting their turn. Mom doesn’t eat until the family is done.

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Stopped clock alert: David Brooks is right. Really right.

by digby

This is the best column I’ve read by him in many a moon and it gives me a tiny bit of hope that the right will get on board with the idea that torture by solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment:

We don’t flog people in our prison system, or put them in thumbscrews or stretch them on the rack. We do, however, lock prisoners away in social isolation for 23 hours a day, often for months, years or decades at a time.

We prohibit the former and permit the latter because we make a distinction between physical and social pain. But, at the level of the brain where pain really resides, this is a distinction without a difference. Matthew Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles, compared the brain activities of people suffering physical pain with people suffering from social pain. As he writes in his book, “Social,” “Looking at the screens side by side … you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.”

The brain processes both kinds of pain in similar ways. Moreover, at the level of human experience, social pain is, if anything, more traumatic, more destabilizing and inflicts more cruel and long-lasting effects than physical pain. What we’re doing to prisoners in extreme isolation, in other words, is arguably more inhumane than flogging.

This seems obvious to me. Simple human empathy should be enough to show that this is a form of torture. The anguish this causes in prisoners has been clear since … forever. But having science back up what any decent person would already know, adds a layer to the moral argument that might convince at least a few people. (I have no hope for a large number of my fellow Americans on this — they believe torture in our prisons is useful — and entertaining.)

Brooks’ conclusion is quite something for a Republican, even one who sells himself as a moderate:

The larger point is we need to obliterate the assumption that inflicting any amount of social pain is O.K. because it’s not real pain.

When you put people in prison, you are imposing pain on them. But that doesn’t mean you have to gouge out the nourishment that humans need for health, which is social, emotional and relational.

Imagine that. He thinks even prisoners have a “need for health, which is social, emotional and relational.” What a concept. If our criminal justice system made a decision to end the practice of “social pain” we would have taken a large step toward becoming civilized again.

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California still believes in progress. Other places are heading in the opposite direction.

by digby

This piece by Irin Carmen about the new California law allowing non-doctor medical professionals to perform abortions ins a must read. This legislation was based upon real science and a genuine belief that the right to control your reproduction is fundamental and should be available to women who need to end unwanted or unhealthy pregnancies.

Unfortunately, that story of rationality and progress on this issue is all too rare:

This is going the wrong way in most of the country. Even as gay rights have become accepted at warp speed by historical standards, women’s fundamental rights have been eroded in equal measure.

I hate to be a grudge about this, but I have to blame Democrats, including Democratic women, for being all too willing to accommodate the right’s onslaught and allow their propaganda to flourish. The mere fact that we are simultaneously fighting over birth control should prove that this is not about squeamishness over abortion. And the people who continue to advise us that the best strategy is to enthusiastically support “pro-choice” politicians who insist that the goal of “zero abortions” is desirable and attainable if only we provide enough birth control and economic support are affirmatively helping them. Too many people only hear the “zero abortions” part and come away with the belief that members of both parties believe that abortion is so bad that we must try to eliminate it.

It would be nice to think that the old saw of “as California goes, so goes the nation” still applies.  But it’s a very heavy task trying to reverse the momentum on this issue. It’s going at full speed in the other direction.

More here on the new “20-week ban” part of the strategy. I thought this bit of editorializing was especially interesting:

In the court of public opinion, however, 20-week bans raise relatively few hackles.

Right. They’re no biggie. They only affect 1% of the population. Even though:

the circumstances of these abortions are often dire, as most fetal abnormalities are only detectable at 20 weeks, according to Planned Parenthood, a group that provides contraception and abortions.

Yes, that’s a shame. They probably should have thought of that before they had a pregnancy with fetal anomalies. But what can we do? Now that it’s been brought to their attention that it’s ok to think abortion after 20 weeks is wrong, (and that some of the avatars of the pro-choice movement are on board) why shouldn’t most people think the 20 week cut-off is perfectly fine?

And when the anti-abortion zealots move the goalposts again, I’m sure there will be many Democrats telling us that we can’t draw any lines in the sand because people are uncomfortable with abortion. And over time, step by step,  their dream will be realized: we’ll have “zero” abortions.

Or, I should say, “zero legal abortions.”

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The vigilante lobby

by digby

I can’t see any other way to look at Wayne LaPierre’s speech to CPAC:

1. LaPierre On America Becoming Too Dangerous For Children To Play Outside

“All across America, everywhere I go, people come up to me, and they say, ‘Wayne, I’ve never been worried about this country until now.’ And they say it not with anger, but they say it with sadness in their eyes. ‘I’ve never been worried about this country until now.’ We’re worried about the economic crisis choking our budgets and shrinking our retirement, we’re worried about providing decent healthcare and a college education for our own children. We fear for the safety of our families. It’s why neighborhood streets that were once filled with bicycles and skateboards and laughter in the air now sit empty and silent. In virtually every way, for the things we care about most, we feel profound loss. We’re sad, not because we fear something is going wrong, but because we know something already has gone wrong.”

2. LaPierre: Americans Buying Guns Because Of “Reckless Government Actions” And Because The “Entire Fabric Of Society” Is In “Jeopardy”

“It’s why more and more Americans are buying firearms and ammunition. Not to cause trouble, but because that America is already in trouble. We know that sooner or later reckless government actions and policies have consequences, that when government corrupts the truth and breaks faith with the American people, the entire fabric of society, everything we believe in and count on, is then in jeopardy.”

3. LaPierre On How The National Media Is One Of America’s “Greatest Threats”

“One of America’s greatest threats is a national news media that fails to provide a level playing field for the truth. Now it’s all entertainment, ratings, personal celebrity, the next sensational story, and the deliberate spinning and purposeful use of words and language, truth be damned, to advance their own agenda. You see it every day in this country. And here’s how you know the media is lying: they still call themselves journalists. I’ll tell you they’ve never been honest about the NRA. They hate us. Just for saying out loud and sticking up for what we believe. As if we have no right. So they try to ridicule us into oblivion or shame us into submission. But their moral indignation, it should be directed right into their own makeup mirrors. The media’s intentional corruption of the truth is an abomination. And NRA members will never, and I mean never, submit or surrender to the national media.”

4. LaPierre: “Knockout Gamers” And “Haters” Just Two Reasons We Need Unlimited Rifles, Shotguns, And Pistols (Also “Waves Of Chemicals” Could Collapse Society At Any Moment)

“We don’t trust government, because government itself has proven unworthy of our trust. We trust ourselves and we trust what we know in our hearts to be right. We trust our freedom. In this uncertain world, surrounded by lies and corruption everywhere you look, there is no greater freedom than the right to survive and protect our families with all the rifles, shotguns, and handguns we want. We know in the world that surrounds us there are terrorists and there are home invaders, drug cartels, carjackers, knockout gamers, and rapers, and haters, and campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse our society that sustains us all.”

5. LaPierre Quotes From “Independence Day” At Speech’s Emotional Peak: The NRA “Will Not Go Quietly Into The Night!”

“This election, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, it’s going to be a bare-knuckled street fight. They’re going after every House seat, every Senate seat, every governor’s chair, every statehouse they can get their hands on. And they’re laying the groundwork to put another Clinton back in the White House. They fully intend to finish the job, to fulfill their commitment, their dream, of fundamentally transforming America. Into an America that I guarantee you won’t recognize. But mark my words — the NRA will not go quietly into the night. We will fight. I promise you that.”

Basically, he’s saying that everyone needs to be armed and prepared to shoot first and ask questions later. Whether it’s the jackbooted cops or the rampaging criminals, they’re all trying to kill you and you’d better kill them before they get the chance.

George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn heard the call. I’m sure they won’t be the last.

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