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Month: February 2016

We the People own it; they want it by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 8, 2016

We the People own it; they want it
by Tom Sullivan

Even if it is nailed down, the Midas Cult will try to take it. Or privatize it where it sits. It’s never about serving the public. It’s always about the money. During Saturday’s Republican debate, they argued about eminent domain because in New England they haven’t forgotten the Kelo decision: eminent domain used to further private profits.

The #FlintWaterCrisis originated in Detroit in 2014, I believe, when Gov. Rick Snyder’s emergency manager proposed putting the publicly owned water and sewer systems either up for sale or transferring control of it to a for-profit company:

Orr said last week at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s annual policy conference that he’s in talks with at least two of the largest U.S. private companies that operate water systems and has taken bids from them to manage Detroit’s sprawling water and sewer system that serves more than 4 million people in southeast Michigan.

Messing with Flint’s water and poisoning residents came later. Elsewhere there were the parking meters, highways … hell, they’ll even buy a bridge in Manhattan and sell it back to us. As I wrote before that:

Privatizing water supplies is a growth industry. Whether it’s American Water, Aqua America, Suez, Veolia Water, or Nestle, private water companies are competing to lock up water resources and public water systems. If not for you, for the fracking industry. As with charter schools and vouchers in public education, public-private partnerships are one of business’ favorite tactics for getting this particular camel’s nose under the tent.

The latest privatizing gambit around the country is “Lexus lanes” (turning HOV lanes into toll lanes). The I-77 toll lane contract with Spain-based Cintra Infraestructures has been controversial in North Carolina and was an issue in Thom Tillis’ 2014 run for the U.S. Senate. In 2015, supporting it cost several county politicians their jobs. Opponents charged that tolling I-77 is just the beginning. A Republican former legislator now primarying Gov. Pat McCrory confirms we were right:

Brawley says he started looking into the issue of tolling as a means to pay for the state’s transportation needs after the DOT told him about plans for tolls along I-77, near Charlotte.

“I sat down with (then) DOT Secretary Tony Tata and three lawyers. I was informed that I really needed to support the tolls on I-77 because that was the beginning of tolling every interstate corridor in North Carolina,” Brawley told the I-Team.

[…]

A spokesperson for the DOT says there are no plans to toll every interstate in North Carolina and wouldn’t comment on Brawley’s allegations that he was told that by the former Secretary of Transportation.

Because there is a primary, this is news, I guess. But it’s not as if they’ve made a secret of their plans. If I-77 is any indication, instead of keeping all the revenue in state, the GOP-led legislature will export running the tolling operation to a foreign for-profit instead of keeping the money in-state. Because the state running it is big gummint. From the Midas Cult’s perspective, publicly owned assets are waiting to be mined like minerals. Say, what’s your interstate doing under our toll road?

Fox News’ debate counter-programming #misogynyfest

Published by digby on February 8, 2016

Fox News’ debate counter-programming

by digby

During last night’s debate, the question of women in the military came up and several of the candidates came out for women being required to join the selective service and be subject to the draft. I happened to flip over to Fox after that exchange when they went to commercial. This is what they were saying:

There was lots of guffawing and joking about women in general.The following was just a small part of the “comedy”:

On a Saturday broadcast of The Greg Gutfeld Show, [men’s rights activist] McInnes griped about the idea of including women in the draft for military service.

“They want equality for everything fun,” said. “How about you’re equal in sanitation, how about you have to go down into the sewers and remove rats from blocked pipes? How about you go to war and die?”

“If we’re going to do that, we’ll have to talk to President Hitler,” McInnes opined. “Because if women were soldiers for the last hundred years, we would have lost World War II.”

Gutfeld remarked that “women want total equality and this is total equality.”

“By every metric, men have it worse off,” McInnes replied. “We’re more likely to get raped if you include prison, we’re more likely to be assaulted, we’re more likely to die, we’re more likely to commit suicide.”

“And you’re not as smart,” former White House National Security Council staffer Gillian Turner interrupted.

“If you want to come over to our side then get ready for some rough times,” McInnes quipped.

Again, you have to listen to the whole thing to get the full gist of the conversation.

That’s your flagship GOP news network.

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Jeb’s albatross

Published by digby on February 7, 2016

Jeb’s albatross

by digby

That’s it. He cannot escape his brother. It’s just too soon.

Maybe George P can reclaim the family honor in a decade or so.

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Your Republican frontrunner

Published by digby on February 7, 2016

Your Republican frontrunner

by digby

Would he be kind enough to use the guillotine?

STEPHANOPOULOS: The issue of waterboarding front and center last night as (INAUDIBLE). You said, I would bring back waterboarding and I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.

What did you have in mind?

TRUMP: Well, George, you’re not talking about what I said before that. I said we’re living in a world where, in the Middle East, they’re cutting people’s heads off. They’re chopping a Christian’s head off. And many of them, we talk about Foley, James Foley, and you know, what a wonderful young man. Boom, they’re chopping heads.

So then I went into this. I said, yes, I would bring back waterboarding. And I would make it a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes.

What did you have in mind?

TRUMP: I had in mind going worse than waterboarding. It’s enough. We have right now a country that’s under siege. It’s under siege from a people, from — we’re like living in medieval times. If I have it to do and if it’s up to me, I would absolutely bring back waterboarding. And if it’s going to be tougher than waterboarding, I would bring that back, too.

STEPHANOPOULOS: As president, you would authorize torture?

TRUMP: I would absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding. And believe me, it will be effective. If we need information, George, you have our enemy cutting heads off of Christians and plenty of others, by the hundreds, by the thousands.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do we win by being more like them?

TRUMP: Yes. I’m sorry. You have to do it that way. And I’m not sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of people don’t. We are living in a time that’s as evil as any time that there has ever been. You know, when I was a young man, I studied Medieval times. That’s what they did, they chopped off heads. That’s what we have…

STEPHANOPOULOS: So we’re going to chop off heads…

TRUMP: We’re going to do things beyond waterboarding perhaps, if that happens to come. The question was asked. I thought Ted’s answer was very tentative, Ted Cruz. He gave a very tentative answer. If we have to, we’re going to have to do more.

But when you have conditions like that, I would say absolutely, I would approve waterboarding and if you go beyond it, I’m OK with that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So let me just clarify this. Right now, the law says they have to follow the Army “Field Manual,” which prohibits…

TRUMP: Right.

STEPHANOPOULOS: — waterboarding. You would try to overturn the law (INAUDIBLE)…

TRUMP: Well, no, you had to have it reclassified. You reclassify and you’ll see what happens.

But I would certainly approve waterboarding. They laugh at us. Our enemies laugh at us, George. They say waterboarding, they don’t even think it’s a form — you know, they don’t even view that as real torture.

But they say waterboarding and they chop off heads. They think we are so stupid, you have no idea. The enemy that we are fighting — and no wonder they’re doing so well, because with this kind of thinking, that’s why they’re doing so well.

He sure sounded like he was open to using beheading.

I don’t know why he thinks “reclassifying” torture means anything. But then he’s not really conversant in the legal restrictions on the presidency. He clearly does not think there are any.

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He did it again #Rubiothemechanicalboy

Published by digby on February 7, 2016

He did it again

by digby

Rubio is so programmed that he came right back this morning and repeated his mistake. I would assume his programmers told him the only way out was to double down but it didn’t help him at all. I’m not sure what would have though. This was an epic, campaign stalling gaffe.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio defended repeating an attack he made against President Obama during Saturday’s Republican presidential debate, in which he said on four separate occasions that he wanted to dispel the notion the president doesn’t know what he’s doing.

“It’s what I believe and it’s what I’m going to continue to say, because it happens to be one of the main reasons why I am running,” Rubio said in an exclusive interview on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” the morning after the debate.
[…]
Shown a video of his repeated remarks produced by the Clinton super PAC “Correct the Record,” Rubio said he “would pay them to keep running that clip.”

“That’s what I believe passionately,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons why I’m not running for re-election to the Senate and I’m running for president. This notion and this idea that somehow all this is an accident — Obamacare was not an accident, Dodd Frank was not an accident, the deal with Iran was not an accident.”

Rubio added his campaign raised more money in the first hour of the debate than he has at previous debates.

He can try to say that he meant to emphasize “what he believes passionately” but nobody will believe him. It was weird. Really weird.

h/t to @Iddybud for the youtube

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And then Twitter exploded by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 7, 2016

And then Twitter exploded
by Tom Sullivan

As Marco Rubio’s campaign collapsed on live TV, a long ride home from a meeting kept us from watching the Republican debate, but the Twitter feed kept us in stitches. This in particular:

There was plenty of hilarity, but besides the self-inflicted wounds, Rubio was a punching bag last night.

That about sums it up.

There’s a Red’s house over yonder: “Hail, Caesar!” by Dennis Hartley

Published by digby on February 7, 2016
There’s a Red’s house over yonder: Hail, Caesar! ***

By Dennis Hartley









Not that Hollywood ever tires of making movies about Hollywood…but “they” really seem to be on a roll lately. Arriving on the heels of Jay Roach’s Trumbo (my review), which depicted the Red Scare-induced fear and paranoia that permeated the film industry in the 1950s through the eyes of a slightly fictionalized real-life participant, we now have the latest effort from co-writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen…which depicts the Red Scare-induced fear and paranoia that permeated the industry in the 1950s through the eyes of a slightly fictionalized real-life participant (although in this case, its funnier side).

In fact, the Coens have gone into full “screwball” mode for Hail, Caesar! – leaving no gag unturned (think The Hudsucker Proxy or O Brother, Where Art Thou? ). That said, it wouldn’t be a Coen Brothers film without its Conflicted Everyman Protagonist; for this outing it’s Hollywood “fixer” Eddie Mannix, (the ubiquitous Josh Brolin). Not unlike his (wholly fictional) contemporary counterpart “Ray Donovan” (who I wrote about recently) he’s a responsible family man on the one hand, yet earns his living in a twilight world where he is required to bend whatever rules he needs to (moral and/or legal) in order to clean up after his clients. Also like Donovan, Mannix is racked by Catholic guilt.

When Mannix isn’t in the confession box (which provides some the film’s more drolly amusing scenes) he’s busy putting out fires; like the one that involves the kidnapping of Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), one of Capitol Studio’s biggest stars. Whitlock has been snatched off the set of his latest picture (a sword-and-sandal epic bearing a striking resemblance to Spartacus ) by an enigmatic organization called The Future…whose true identity I’m sworn to protect, in the interest of remaining spoiler-free. In the meantime, Mannix has to stave off a pair of persistent gossip columnists (twin sisters played by Tilda Swinton, who through no fault of her own has to follow Helen Mirren’s recent bigger-than-life, Golden Globes and SAG-nominated turn as Hedda Hopper in Trumbo).

Truth be told, the narrative is actually a bit thin in this fluffier-than-usual Coen outing; it’s primarily a skeleton around which the brothers can construct a portmanteau of 50s movie parodies. 1950s musicals provide fodder for several set pieces; including an Esther Williams sendup (with Scarlett Johanssen poured into a mermaid suit), and a takeoff of On the Town, featuring a nimble-footed Channing Tatum firing up a barroom full of hunky sailors and leading them in a winking, cheerfully homoerotic song and dance. Singing westerns are parodied via Alden Ehrenreich’s character, a hick who hit the big time based not so much on his acting abilities (which are nominal), but  rather due to his looks and rodeo skills. And the main plot itself cleverly mirrors 1950s Red Scare films like Big Jim McLain and I Was a Communist for the FBI (I also found the kidnappers’ hideaway to be suspiciously reminiscent of the antagonists’ digs in North By Northwest ).

Brolin plays it straight, Clooney plays it broad, Ehrenreich is endearing, Johanssen is, uh, gorgeous, and Tatum proves quite adept at comedy (who knew?). Ralph Fiennes hams it up as a finicky “prestige” director, and you can have fun playing “spot the cameo” with the likes of Frances McDormand, Jonah Hill, Clancy Brown, Christopher Lambert, and Dolph Lundgren. This is far from the Coen’s best work, but the film has just enough of their patented “little touches” (like a Communist who has named his dog “Engels”) that make it unmistakably Coen. Oh-and a character is repeatedly told to shut up; undoubtedly this is a callback to the catchphrase “Shut the fuck up, Donnie!” from The Big Lebowski .


Which is what I will do now.


Previous posts with related themes:


More reviews at Den of Cinema

—Dennis Hartley

Trump goes after Jebra with a new low

Published by digby on February 7, 2016

Trump goes after Jebra with a new low

by digby

He’s such a jerk:

He could have let it go. But he couldn’t. Because he’s a schoolyard bully, emphasis on the schoolyard.

Remember when we all thought George W. Bush was a juvenile fool? He was just the opening bid.

“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”

Published by digby on February 6, 2016

“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”

by digby



You can’t make this up: 

Heather Anne Leavitt, the cake designer and proprietress behind Ann Arbor’s boutique cakery, Sweet Heather Anne, makes a lot of high-end, super-detailed cakes, so she didn’t blink when a woman met with her to place an order for an expensive cake to be delivered to The West End Grill for a private party.

She didn’t find out until she and her assistant delivered the cake to the upscale Ann Arbor restaurant that the cake was to be one of the centerpieces of a birthday celebration that Governor Rick Snyder was throwing for his wife, Sue.

“The weird thing about it is we didn’t know it was for them,” said Leavitt. “We worked with a really nice woman – I’m not sure if she was a planner or what her position is. With birthday cakes we don’t normally meet the recipient. They came in with some pretty specific ideas of the things they wanted in the cake and then I designed it based on what they wanted.”

The designs included a bag from Chanel, a box from Tiffany & Co., a diamond necklace and a box from Nordstrom, which Leavitt rendered in cake and fondant. The cake took 30 hours to design, bake and decorate.

“The way we price, we break it down to a per-serving fee and then a labor fee,” explained Leavitt, who declined to reveal the price of the cake. “Even though it looked big, it wasn’t that big of a cake in terms of servings. It was only 60 servings. So most of what they were charged was for the labor.”

Leavitt said that though much of the work they do at Sweet Heather Anne’s is for weddings, where designs run the gamut from simple buttercream frostings to intricate fondant cakes, they also do a lot of work for The University of Michigan, which orders cakes with a similar level of detail for donors.

Leavitt said though she had no idea that the governor and his wife were to be the recipients of this cake, she was grateful that they had chosen to work with a very small, local business.

This is the cake. I’m not kidding: