Sunday Funnies
by digby
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There’s no need to parse race and class and inequality
by digby
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said (among other things) that the issue’s they’re facing ar tied to income inequality and poverty and other “national problems.” This is true. And it’s even good to hear that being said in a matter-of-fact way in policy conversations. But let’s not kid ourselves:
It’s absolutely true that class is a huge issue in America. The poor are getting poorer, the middle class is stuck and the wealthy are gobbling up so much of America’s wealth they are about to burst. But when you look at that chart, you can see that poverty and race in this country are inextricable.
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2015: Imagine greaterby Tom Sullivan “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
— Ursula Le Guin, accepting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, 2014 National Book Awards So much of what bloggers write about is serendipity. Sometimes focusing fiercely on a single topic and searching out components to flesh out an idea, or else grazing the Net at random for articles that spark one, or sometimes just happening upon ideas floating around that connect in ways that say something about the zeitgeist. This morning I ran across this post on Raw Story featuring Ursula Le Guin’s speech at the National Book Awards ceremony in November:
I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries — the realists of a larger reality. … Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art — the art of words. I have had a long career and a good one. In good company. Now here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want — and should demand — our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.
The very next link led to a terrific read by Rebecca Solnit at Salon. In a San Francisco junk shop, she had come upon a document dating from the French Revolution that reminded her of the very Le Guin speech I had just seen:
That document I held was written only a few years after the French had gotten over the idea that the divine right of kings was an inescapable reality. The revolutionaries had executed their king for his crimes and were then trying out other forms of government. It’s popular to say that the experiment failed, but that’s too narrow an interpretation. France never again regressed to an absolutist monarchy and its experiments inspired other liberatory movements around the world (while terrifying monarchs and aristocrats everywhere). Americans are skilled at that combination of complacency and despair that assumes things cannot change and that we, the people, do not have the power to change them. Yet you have to be abysmally ignorant of history, as well as of current events, not to see that our country and our world have always been changing, are in the midst of great and terrible changes, and are occasionally changed through the power of the popular will and idealistic movements. As it happens, the planet’s changing climate now demands that we summon up the energy to leave behind the Age of Fossil Fuel (and maybe with it some portion of the Age of Capitalism as well).
The rest is about the global fight to rein in fossil fuels and combat climate change. But most inspiring is her account of a battle by Mayor Gayle McLaughin and progressive residents of Richmond, California to take on — and defeat — Chevron in a company town and get the firm to pay an additional $114 million in taxes to clean up the town and lower its crime rate:
For this November’s election, the second-largest oil company on Earth officially spent $3.1 million to defeat McLaughin and other progressive candidates and install a mayor and council more to its liking. That sum worked out to about $180 per Richmond voter, but my brother David, who’s long been connected to Richmond politics, points out that, if you look at all the other ways the company spends to influence local politics, it might be roughly ten times that. Nonetheless, Chevron lost. None of its candidates were elected and all the grassroots progressives it fought with billboards, mailers, television ads, websites, and everything else a lavishly funded smear campaign can come up with, won.
Since Democrats’ losses in the November elections, most news outlets have focused what the left lost across the country, while ignoring such victories. I point out to any who will listen that while Democrats lost across the South, here in North Carolina, even as Sen. Kay Hagan narrowly lost her reelection bid, Democrats gained seats in the state legislature. And in districts drawn to be safe Republican seats. Instead of wringing our hands over what went wrong, progressives might want to look more closely at places like Richmond to learn from what went right. “The Richmond progressives won,” Solnit writes, “by imagining that the status quo was not inevitable, no less an eternal way of life.” Imagine greater is not just a cable channel’s slogan. Who ever thought we’d see a pope advocating progressive ideas? Pope Francis is jumping into the climate change fight in a big way in 2015, including issuing a much-anticipated encyclical and taking on Vatican conservatives on the climate issue:
According to Vatican insiders, Francis will meet other faith leaders and lobby politicians at the general assembly in New York in September, when countries will sign up to new anti-poverty and environmental goals. In recent months, the pope has argued for a radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements: “An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it. “The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands. “The monopolising of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness,” he said.
Imagine that.
Saturday Night at the Movies
Dennis Hartley’s Top 10 for 2014
Dennis is still recovering from knee surgery but he wishes everyone a Happy New Year and sent this in in case you’re looking for something excellent to watch over the rest of the holiday.
In alphabetical order:
Birdman — One of my favorite movies is the 1957 “show-biz noir”, The Sweet Smell of Success, Alexander Mackendrick’s portrait of an influential (and megalomaniacal) New York newspaper columnist (Burt Lancaster), who can make or break the careers of actors, musicians and comics with the mere flick of his pen. One of my favorite lines from Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman’s infinitely quotable screenplay is uttered by Lancaster, as he sharpens his claws and fixes his predatory gaze down on the streets of Manhattan from his lofty penthouse perch: “I love this dirty town.” Now, I don’t know if writer-director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu intended this as homage, but there is a scene in his new film, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) where a character looks down upon the streets of Manhattan from a lofty rooftop perch (after accepting a “dare” to spit on a random pedestrian below) and gleefully proclaims, “I love this town!” Read on …
Child’s Pose — 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). Read on …
A Coffee in Berlin — Have you heard the good word? There’s this trendy new food pyramid that apparently keeps you energetic and svelte: Vodka, cigarettes and chewing gum. This appears to be all that sustains Niko (Tom Schilling), the Millennial slacker hero of writer-director Jan Ole Gerster’s debut film, A Coffee in Berlin (known in Germany as Oh Boy). Oh, you are allowed to drink coffee…if you can get your hands on a cup. This is proving difficult for Niko, as we follow him around Berlin on (what we assume to be) a typical day in his life. Read on …
The Grand Budapest Hotel — In the interest of upholding my credo to be forthright with my readers (all three of you), I will confess that, with the exception of his engaging 1996 directing debut, Bottle Rocket, and the fitfully amusing Rushmore, I have been somewhat immune to the charms of Wes Anderson. I have also developed a complex of sorts over my apparent inability to comprehend why the phrase “a Wes Anderson film” has become catnip to legions of hipster-garbed fanboys and swooning film critics (even the normally discerning Criterion Collection seems to have drunk the Kool-Aid). Maybe there’s something wrong with me? Am I like the uptight brother-in-law in Field of Dreams
) would be this: “Where did he go so right?” Read on …
Kill the Messenger — Sometimes, all you have to do is tell the truth, and nobody will believe you. That’s what happened to San Jose Mercury investigative journalist Gary Webb, who published a number of articles in 1996 that blew the lid off of this “dark alliance”. I’m ashamed to admit that while I remember hearing something about it back then, I somehow got the impression (at the time) that it was just some kind of urban legend; the kind of thing that the SNL sketch character “Drunk Uncle” might blurt out at the dinner table while everyone snickers or hides their head in embarrassment. “Hey everybody…I heard that the CIA was responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic in the African-American community!” Yeah…right, uncle.
Here’s the thing. The CIA actually did (sort of) cop to it, a few years after Webb’s newspaper expose. Normally, that would (should) have become a fairly major news story in and of itself. Unfortunately, the MSM was a little preoccupied at the time with a shinier object…the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Also by this time, Webb had lost his credibility, thanks to a concerted campaign by same aforementioned MSM to make Webb look like some nut yelling at traffic. Tragically, it “worked” too well; he became a pariah and ended up killing himself.
This largely forgotten debacle has been dramatized in a new film from Michael Cuesta called Kill the Messenger. Jeremy Renner delivers a terrific performance as the tenacious and impassioned Webb. We follow him on a journey that begins with a relatively innocuous tip from a player in the local drug trade, which leads to a perilous face-to-face meet with an imprisoned kingpin in Nicaragua (a great cameo from Andy Garcia) and eventually to the belly of the beast in D.C., where he’s implicitly advised by government spooks to cool his heels…or else. Naturally, this only makes him want to dig deeper. He hits pay dirt, and the exclusive story is published. His editors appear to have his back; that is, until the backlash begins. Read on …
Last Days of Vietnam — Call this an intervention, but someone has to say it. America has an ongoing co-dependent relationship with the Vietnam war. Oh, I know, it’s been nearly 40 years since we were “involved”. And to be sure, as soon as the last Marine split, we wasted no time giving the war its ring back. We put our fingers in our ears, started chanting “la-la-la-la can’t hear you” and moved on with our lives, pretending like the whole tragic misfire never happened. But here’s the funny thing. Every time we find ourselves teetering on the edge of another quagmire, we stack it up against our old flame. We can’t help ourselves. “We don’t want another Vietnam,” we worry, or “Well…at least this doesn’t seem likely to turn into another Vietnam,” we fib to ourselves as we get all dressed up for our third date.
Life Itself — After Siskel died in 1999, Ebert kept the show going whilst essentially auditioning an interestingly diverse roster of guest critics for several months, with fellow Chicago Sun-Times reviewer Richard Roeper eventually winning the permanent seat across the aisle. Ebert remained a stalwart fixture until 2006, when treatment for his thyroid cancer began. Of course, Roger Ebert’s life journey didn’t end there, just as it had already taken many twists and turns before his fame as a TV personality. In fact, it is these bookends that provide the most compelling elements in Life Itself, a moving, compassionate and surprisingly frank portrait from acclaimed documentarian Steve James (Hoop Dreams
A Summer’s Tale — I’m about to lose any (infinitesimal) amount of street cred that I may have accidentally accrued thus far in my “career” as a movie critic with the following admission. I was originally introduced to the work of Eric Rohmer in a roundabout and pedestrian manner. In Arthur Penn’s brilliant 1975 neo-noir, Night Moves
The Theory of Everything — There’s a truly jaw-dropping moment in James Marsh’s new biopic about theoretical physicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking, in which lead actor Eddie Redmayne (without the benefit of camera trickery or CGI) literally “unfolds” his paralyzed, crumpled body from the confines of his wheelchair, and walks offstage into the audience to gracefully kneel down and pick up a pencil. A lump formed in my throat, and I began to cry like I haven’t cried at a film since…I don’t know when (maybe Old Yeller, when I was 6?). I know what you’re thinking. I might as well write: “I saw this film today. There was this one incredible scene, where this guy gets up off the couch, and flips on a light switch. I wept.” But it’s all about context. In context of all the events leading up to that scene, it makes for an extraordinarily moving moment (as ‘they’ say…”You weren’t there, man!”). Read on …
The Wind Rises — If I understand Hayao Miyazaki’s take on the life of Jiro Horikoshi correctly, he was sort of the Temple Grandin of Japanese aviation; a photo-realistic visual thinker who lived, breathed, and even dreamt elegant aircraft designs from childhood onward. The fact that his most famous creation, the Zero, became one of the most indelible icons of Japanese aggression during WW2 is, erm, incidental. As I was hitherto blissfully unaware of Horikoshi prior to viewing the venerable director’s new (and purportedly, final) anime, The Wind Rises, I’m giving Miyazaki-san benefit of the doubt; though I also must assume that Miyazaki’s beautifully woven cinematic tapestry involved…a bit of creative license? Read on …
What are your favorite movies of 2014? Tell me on twitter at @digby56.
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Don’t lose your nerve
by digby
In light of the tremendous pressure to back off the police protests in New York, this bit of advice from an expert is important:
Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University professor who studies protest movements, said the strongest ones can survive a lot of animosity and adversity.
“In the antiwar movement, too, there was a lot of bad publicity given people burning draft cards and burning flags,” Professor Kazin said. “But the movement went on and was successful in convincing the public that we needed to get out of Vietnam.”
Obstacles, he said, are inevitable. “In some ways, the test of a successful movement is how you respond. You have to expect that there will be moments like this in a movement. If you don’t, you’re naïve and you don’t know what you got yourself into,” he said.
Keep calm and carry on.
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Is the GOP coming around or just changing strategies?
by digby
I’m usually quite cynical when it comes to the right wing ever changing their dogma, but this makes me wonder:
GOP learns lessons from Brownback’s tax scare
Call it the Brownback effect.
Republicans once idolized Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback as a tax cutting superstar — now he’s a lesson in what not to do.
“It’s a cautionary tale on a national scale … Many of us felt that [Kansas] had been too aggressive,” said Indiana Senate Majority Leader and tax committee chairman Brandt Hershman, who helped GOP Gov. Mike Pence cut corporate taxes last spring. “We all like low taxes … but we have to ensure the stability of a revenue stream to provide basic services that our citizens expect.”
It’s a major turnaround from two years ago, when Brownback was considered a Republican trailblazer for conservatives around the nation who dreamed of phasing out their state income tax.
Now, Republicans are rethinking how aggressive they can be on taxes in light of the projected $279 million revenue gap that’s plaguing Kansas this year — shortfalls that resulted in the state’s credit rating being downgraded and nearly booted the Republican from office in a state that bleeds red.
Of course, Republicans aren’t ditching supply-side economic theory or tax cuts. But they’re considering ways to avoid Kansas’ troubles. Their takeaways include smaller cuts over extended periods of time, stopgaps to protect revenues — and avoiding overpromising.
It’s making for an odd dynamic in which some Republicans now proudly say their tax plans will be “incremental” or “evolutionary” instead of “revolutionary.”
“Kansas did too much too fast, so at this point we’re continuing to look at our tax policy to make sure it’s competitive. But we’re not jumping — not following Kansas,” said Missouri state Sen. Will Kraus, a GOP tax writer who in 2013 pointed to Kansas as the reason tax cuts were needed in the Show Me State.
I wrote the other day that the economy was improving nationally so it was likely that Brownback would take credit for any improvements in his state regardless of the reality. But maybe the GOP will balk. Maybe other Republicans have had an epiphany and have come to understand that there’s no free lunch after all. It will surprise me if this happens but I’m hopeful in any case. This blind. nihilistic slashing of taxes and services is a sick and twisted form of magical thinking and it’s making a lot of people’s lives miserable. If they are actually seeing that misery as a bad thing at long last we may have made some progress.
ICYMI, I wrote this piece on Brownback earlier this year:
What Happened When an Extremist, Christian Fundamentalist Got to Run a Whole State
July 31, 2014 |
Liberals throughout the land breathed a sigh of relief when Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas stepped down in 2008 and later decided to run for governor. Yes, the nation’s gain was a loss for the good people of Kansas, but Brownback’s special brand of right-wing fundamentalism was so extreme that many felt it was better to try to contain him in a single state rather than inflict him on the whole of the country. Judging from the four years he’s been in charge of that unfortunate state, their concerns were well-founded.This should come as no surprise. His tenure in the Senate was characterized by his righteous absolutism and entirely predictable ultra-conservative vote. There was no tax cut he did not back or military adventure he wasn’t in favor of. He voted to impeach President Clinton and even took the unusual step [3] of decrying the immorality of the American public for failing to be properly outraged. But it was in the realm of culture and religion where he made his mark.
Once a devout evangelical Protestant, Brownback converted to Catholicism later in life. (His chief of staff at the time was none other than Congressman Paul Ryan, who is credited with counseling him in his conversion.) In the Senate he took up the banner of the culture war, even chairing a Senate group called the Values Action Team which included such conservative activist groups as Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the National Right to Life Committee, where he and fellow right-wing senators plotted their strategy for taking America back to the Dark Ages. He was so doctrinaire he even refused to vote for a particular judicial candidate because she had once attended a lesbian commitment ceremony. (She didn’t officiate or participate; she merely attended.) For the two terms he served in the Senate he was a ferocious culture warrior.
But he wasn’t always so intensely focused on the decadence and moral dissipation of modern American life. When he first ran for congress in the mid-’90s he was considered a moderate Kansas Republican like Eisenhower. But a tough campaign against an opponent backed by well-organized right-to-life zealots converted him to an evangelical culture warrior and Republican revolutionary so committed to cutting taxes and shrinking government one profiler said [4] he even gave Newt Gingrich “the willies.”
He became leader of a House group called the New Federalists which devoted itself to the dismantling of the government one brick at a time. Fortunately, they were unable to pass their ambitious agenda so they instead became the far-right’s hitmen, pioneering the use of hard-core obstructionist tactics to paralyze the government. They were the faction agitating the hardest for a government shutdown in 1995, pushing Gingrich to his most obstreperous limits (and setting the stage for his precipitous fall from grace). Joe Scarborough famously quoted Brownback telling him not to be disillusioned by the PR disaster that ensued, saying “Rome wasn’t burnt in a day.”
His far-right fiscal bona fides solidly demonstrated, Brownback turned his attention to social issues when he ran for the Senate in 1996 at the height of the religious right’s growing clout in the GOP. He spent the next 12 years as a hardcore fiscal conservative but more importantly, as a far-right Christian crusader, sometimes fashioning himself as a “Wilberforce” conservative (after the British anti-slavery activist) comparing abolition of slavery to his determination to ban abortion. He’s been closely associated for years with the secretive Christian fellowship group known as the Family [5].
By the time he tried to run for president in 2008, he appeared to be perfect conservative candidate. Unfortunately, the anticipated groundswell didn’t materialize and he dropped out before the primaries. But he did participate in the early debates and was memorably one of the three (with Mike Huckabee and Tom Tancredo) who raised his hand to declare he did not believe in evolution.
Evidently, he really wanted an executive position, so he set his sights on the governor’s seat in Kansas and in the Tea Party wave of 2010, won decisively. Brownback’s Kansas has turned out to be a perfect petrie dish for every right-wing policy proposal he’s championed for the past 20 years. With a Republican legislature and a strong mandate, he quickly established his tenure as the right-wing experiment to end all experiments. The results are in and they are amazing. And not in a good way.
Unlike other Tea Party governors around the nation who have tried out a handful of their more extreme policies, Brownback went for broke. First he and his Koch brother allies (they are Kansas homeboys too, you’ll recall) engineered a full-blown Tea Party takeover of the legislature with a well-funded primary strategy in 2012. It is now the most conservative legislature in the nation (and that’s saying something considering how conservative Republican legislatures have become). In their minds, they are on a mission from God.
He went after the teachers’ union, in one particularly clever move creating what he called “innovation zones” which allow districts to circumvent existing state law regarding curriculum and teacher salaries. He slashed education funding, including cutting the arts programs entirely. He privatized Medicaid. (It goes without saying refused the Medicaid expansion under the ACA.) He defunded Planned Parenthood and signed one of the most far reaching anti-abortion laws in the land, declaring that life begins at “fertilization” and forcing the last remaining Kansas providers to read an anti-abortion script filled with frightening misinformation to women seeking the procedure. (He doesn’t even try to hide his religious motives—he wrote the words Jesus + Mary [6] on top of the bill when he signed it.)
Gun legislation has been similarly extreme. Adopting the language of the 10th Amendment fetishists, they managed to pass what they called the Second Amendment Protection Act, a thoroughly useless piece of legislation declaring that the state of Kansas does not have to observe federal gun laws under its “sovereign” status. This last April, Brownback signed the “CLEO Shall Sign and Comprehensive Preemption legislation” which, among other things, prohibits all county and municipal initiative to regulate firearms and ammunition. So much for the vaunted small government, local control portion of the conservative program.
All of this was to be expected from Sam Brownback. But the results of his equally fundamentalist approach to economics [7] has made a lot of people stand up and take notice. First and foremost, he slashed taxes to the bone. Well, not for everyone. The Center on Budget and policy priorities shows how that tax cut has been distributed:
And he cut spending, especially for education, as far as the eye can see:
(Of course, Governor Brownback is a huge proponent of religious home schooling so this is killing two birds with one stone.)
His economic mentor and top adviser, the thoroughly discredited inventor of supply-side economics, Arthur Laffer, explained the game plan back in 2012 this way: [8]
Laffer told more than 200 people at a small-business forum at Johnson County Community College that there is a war among states over tax policy and that nowhere is that revolution more powerful than in Kansas. He said Kansas’ tax cuts and political shifts will produce “enormous prosperity” for the state.
How’s that working out? Well, last May this happened: [9]
Moody’s Investors Service dropped Kansas from its second-highest bond rating, Aa1, to its third highest, Aa2. The Kansas Department of Transportation also took the same downgrade.
“The downgrade reflects Kansas’ relatively sluggish recovery compared with its peers, the use of non-recurring measures to balance the budget, revenue reductions resulting from tax cuts which have not been fully offset by recurring spending cuts, and an underfunded retirement system for which the state is not making required contributions,” the report said.And that’s not all. This graph shows what’s the matter with Kansas in 2014 in red, white and blue:
As Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times pointed out [10], if the last few years have shown anything, it’s that draconian spending cuts inhibit economic growth while preservation of the services that businesses and workers require to thrive enable it. He cites the example of California where Gov. Jerry Brown successfully raised taxes once the recession was over. As you can see above, California’s job growth and prosperity is now leading the nation.
Yes, the citizens of Kansas voted in this right-wing wrecking crew, but it must be remembered that there was a whole lot of help from the deep pockets of native sons Charles and David Koch, who wanted to demonstrate once and for all how well their libertarian economic ideas would work if only they were given a chance. Unlike their counterparts in DC, they didn’t have to deal with a Democratic usurper in the Governor’s Mansion—they had a true believer leading the way and full rein to see their ideology put to the test.
Their problem now is not because they are seen as the Party of No, or that they are using obstructionist tactics that offend the sensibilities of those who seek a nice bipartisan consensus. These Republicans got everything they wanted. Governor Brownback’s approval rating is unsurprisingly in the dirt and he is in grave danger of losing re-election. [11] Another nail in his coffin was pounded in last week when more than 100 current and former Republican officials [12]endorsed Brownback’s Democratic opponent, citing the failure of his economic program and the extreme nature of his overall agenda.
Just as other races in the country are reflecting the fight between the GOP establishment and the Tea Party wing, Kansas will be a battleground in the fall for the latest fight for the soul of the Republican Party. But this time it isn’t just about race or the culture war or bad political tactics. This one is about all of that to be sure. But this time the Koch brothers’ libertarian economic dream agenda has been enacted and it’s on the ballot. If America wants to see what the country will look like if the Brownback wing of the GOP manages to get its way nationally, they only need to look at Sam Brownback’s Kansas—a disaster on every level.
When I wrote that, I had hopes that the people of Kansas would be wise enough to punish Brownback at the ballot box. He played the “scary liberal” card and eked out a win so they’re stuck with him for 4 more years. But maybe the Republican poohbah’s are taking the right lesson anyway.
Still … I have to believe that they are very happy with most of those government services being slashed and they will not move to reinstate them once the crisis is fully past. The only services which concern them are those that business needs to function properly. The whole house of cards depends on taxing the rubes to support business so that owners and shareholders can profit and get rich. I have to believe that they think Brownback’s mistake was in failing to cut taxes and services in the right way, not that he cut them at all.
*The holiday fundraiser continues through the end of the year. Thank you, thank you to all who have contributed so far. I am very grateful for your support.
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Insults fly across the continents
by digby
So everyone’s upset that Pyongyang is personally insulting the president, and it’s a legit complaint. They used a racist term that’s clearly repulsive. But as a nation, let’s not get too sanctimonious about this sort of bad behavior:
Here’s one extraordinary scene from Bob Woodward’s book, “Bush at War:”
“The President sat forward in his chair. I thought he might jump up, he became so emotional about the North Korean leader. ‘I loathe Kim Jong Il!’ Bush shouted, waving his finger in the air. ‘I’ve got a visceral reaction to this guy, because he is starving his people.’”
And another, from Newsweek in 2002:
“He’s starving his own people,” Bush said about Kim Jong Il. Bush compared Kim to “a spoiled child at a dinner table” and called him a “pygmy.” The senators were “stunned,” with one of them telling Newsweek magazine that “it was like in church, when the sermon goes on too long and you’re not sure what the point is. Nobody dared look at anybody else.”
When that comment reached Pyongyang, a top official asked an American scholar, “How can we deal with you when your leader doesn’t show us even a minimum of respect?”
Speaking of sanctimonious …
It appears that the story of the Sony hack is under more scrutiny as security experts question the official line much more aggressively. It has always struck me as a dicey narrative and all the pearl clutching over the “attack” on our way of life by North Korea has been hard to take considering what it is we’re allegedly defending and the industry’s usual willingness to do whatever it takes to appease anyone who objects to political content in their films — and how closely they work with the CIA and the rest of the government.
Hopefully this part of the controversy is over. The hack itself brings up many important issues about privacy and security — and how Hollywood really works. Those are the issues at the heart of all this and it would be nice if we could unwrap ourselves from the flag for a bit to take a closer look at it.
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What was that they were saying about “the tree of liberty” again?
by digby
All you folks who think the right wingers are revolutionaries who carry guns to fight against government tyranny need to check out what they’re saying about the celebration of police authority over civilian government taking place in the streets of New York today. Let’s just say they don’t have a problem with it.
A couple of contrasting headlines illustrates it quite well:
Anyone with a heart has to feel compassion for the families of the slain police officers. But the television commentary today, exclusively featuring police advocates, is pretty much laying it on the line: the mayor must acquiesce to police authority just like the rest of the citizens. And nobody is arguing with them. Out of “respect.”
Let’s not kid ourselves. This is who we are.
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No biggie
by digby
Here’s a headline for you:
“[T]he scathing report the Senate Intelligence Committee delivered this month is unlikely to significantly change the role the CIA now plays in running America’s secret wars.”
I’m not a military worshipper. But they are the people who are supposed to conduct warfare on behalf of the American people. They have rules. They have protocols. They aren’t perfect by any means but they aren’t allowed to operate in total secret and with impunity.
So they can no longer be trusted.
Addicted to fear
by Tom Sullivan
Dave Weigel sees all the fuss over The Interview and threats from “Guardians of Peace” hackers against theaters as another case of public overreaction to a perceived threat:
The incident-free Interview screenings should be remembered alongside two other overhyped 2014 fears: the Ebola panic and the reaction to ISIS. The latter stories were handled even worse, because they happened during an election, and because some candidates created a feedback loop of childish speculation that Ebola could spread by sneezes, or that virus-laden ISIS terrorists could stalk across the Mexican border. All of these people were wrong, and thanks to the amnesiac nature of the news cycle, they might never have to answer for that. (Being wildly wrong on live TV during crises is a good way to secure a return invitation.)
Weigel quotes Ohio State University professor, John Mueller, who tracks terrorist incidents: “The lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about one in 80,000–about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteor.”
But the 9/11 attacks have so shaken this country’s confidence that Americans now routinely overreact to the slightest perceived threat. It is something Osama bin Laden knew would happen and something the American right’s Noise Machine has used to jerk its listeners’ chains for years. Americans of a certain sort are easily spooked.
After six years of Obama’s tyrannical, iron-fisted rule, I’m still waiting for his jack-booted thugs to kick in my door and confiscate my weapons. Since he took office, the NRA has promised us Obama would be coming for my guns, and so far nada. He’s running out of time the way gun stores have been running out of ammo.
Staying afraid is almost an addiction. After enough regular doses, I wonder if the brain takes a certain “set” the way depression can become a habit?
(Updated to correct spelling of John Mueller.)
