Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Afghanistan: Up The Escalator To Nowhere

by dday

Today, several bloggers are engaging in a day of discussion and debate about Administration policy in Afghanistan. Now that the President has announced his Afghanistan strategy and shared it with the world, we can begin to assess the policy. Europe has reacted to a call for more involvement with a show of support but few troops to offer to the effort, most of them temporary for security around the Afghan elections. And US commanders are already calling for 10,000 more additional US troops on top of the 17,000 combat forces and 4,000 trainers already pledged. Increasingly, this is becoming an American war.

Petraeus acknowledged that the ratio of coalition and Afghan security forces to the population is projected through 2011 to be significantly lower than the 20 troops per 1,000 people prescribed by the Army counterinsurgency manual he helped write.

“If you assume there is an insurgency throughout the country . . . you need more forces,” Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as head of U.S. Central Command, said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said the Pentagon has not yet forwarded the troop request to the White House.

Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy, testified that the new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan is based on a plan to concentrate forces in “the insurgency belt in the south and east,” rather than throughout Afghanistan.

Obama “doesn’t have to make a decision until the fall, so the troops would arrive, as planned, in 2010,” she said.

The U.S. military has 38,000 troops in Afghanistan, and the number is projected to rise to 68,000 with deployments scheduled for this year. Those deployments include a 4,000-strong contingent of trainers from the 4th brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, 17,000 other combat troops, a 2,800-strong combat aviation brigade and thousands of support forces whose placement was not publicly announced, the Pentagon said.

Yes, the Administration snuck another 9,000 troops into the country when our heads were turned.

Clearly our commitment to the region in physical troops and treasure is escalating, and I fail to see how it could be de-escalated without the key goals being met. In other words, Plans A, B and C involve more and more troops to a part of the world that has not known peace in more than a generation, to carry out a policy that entrenches us in the region and with the governments there while publicly stating a desire to limit its focus.

If the Obama Administration sticks to these goals, of dismantling and disrupting Al Qaeda safe havens, I would be fine with it. But most of them don’t even exist inside Afghanistan but in Pakistan, where we are engaged in the same kind of “war at 30,000 feet” through unmanned drone strikes that failed to work in Afghanistan and necessitated the call for additional troops. In Pakistan, estimates of one million people have been displaced due to these airstrikes, and they have inflamed the local Taliban, who specifically cited the bombings as responsible for their run of suicide attacks deep inside their own country. We have succeeded in turning a national problem into a regional one, without the ability to mount a ground offensive inside Pakistan where the threat originates. In this sense, it can be said that the Taliban’s strength is directly proportional to US involvement.

As for Afghanistan, I basically agree with Juan Cole. Obama expresses a latter-day domino theory to justify occupation in Afghanistan, yet while a failed state would certainly have consequences for Al Qaeda, the threat of that failure has been largely overstated (in both Afghanistan and Pakistan), and there are certainly means to contain a terrorist threat without the need for military occupation. And, “when a policymaker gets the rationale for action wrong, he is at particular risk of falling into mission creep and stubborn commitment to a doomed and unnecessary enterprise.”

In a later piece, Cole details how Afghanistan is turning into Iraq, with its large military bases, use of private military contractors, unrealistic talk of an imminent decision point, and worst, the rise of a fundamentalist cental government:

The US has actually only managed to install a fundamentalist government in Afghanistan, which is rolling back rights of women and prosecuting blasphemy cases. In a play for the Shiite vote (22% or so of the population), President Hamid Karzai put through civilly legislated Shiite personal status law, which affects Shiite women in that country. The wife will need the husband’s permission to go out of the house, and can’t refuse a demand for sex. (Since the 1990s there has been a movement in 50 or more countries to abandon the idea that spouses cannot rape one another, though admittedly this idea is new and was rejected in US law until recently).

No one seems to have noted that the Shiite regime in Baghdad is more or less doing the same thing. In Iraq, the US switched out the secular Baath Party for Shiite fundamentalist parties. Everyone keeps saying the US improved the status of women in both countries. Actually, in Iraq the US invasion set women back about 30 years. In Afghanistan, the socialist government of the 1980s, for all its brutality in other spheres, did implement policies substantially improving women’s rights, including aiming at universal education, making a place for them in the professions, and so forth. There were socialist Afghan women soldiers fighting the Muslim fundamentalist guerrillas that Reagan called “freedom fighters” and to whom he gave billions to turn the country into a conservative theocracy. I can never get American audiences to concede that Afghan women had it way better in the 1980s, and that it has been downhill ever since, mainly because of US favoritism toward patriarchal and anti-progressive forces.

After criticism, Hamid Karzai has vowed to review the spousal rape law, and elsewhere the Taliban has actually relaxed their policies on burqas and beards in their negotiations with the Afghan government. Yes negotiations:

…preliminary talks between President Hamid Karzai’s government and Taliban insurgents are already under way, and appear to have yielded a significant shift away from the Taliban’s past obsession with repressive rules and punishments governing personal behaviour. The Taliban are now prepared to commit themselves to refraining from banning girls’ education, beating up taxi drivers for listening to Bollywood music, or measuring the length of mens’ beards, according to representatives of the Islamist movement. Burqas worn by women in public would be “strongly recommended” but not compulsory. The undertakings have been confirmed by Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, who was the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan in the late 1990s, and who has been part of a Saudi-sponsored peace initiative.

According to Christoph Hörstel, a German analyst of Afghan affairs, Mullah Zaeef has confirmed that the Taliban are no longer insisting that their members should form the government. Instead, they would agree to rule by religious scholars and technocrats who meet with their approval following a national loya jirga, or community meeting, attended by public figures. The demand for a loya jirga could be met as early as next month if President Karzai convenes a meeting of elders to determine who should rule when his term officially ends on 21 May.

I sincerely believe the Administration would rather have the governments inside Pakistan and Afghanistan settle this danger themselves. That’s what’s behind the economic development and improving intergovernmental communication lines at the heart of the strategy. But the focus on “safe havens” betrays a rather antiquated thinking about where militant extremists can communicate and coordinate, namely anywhere. And the ability of Pakistan’s government to help the United States through destroying their homegrown threat, or even to govern themselves, must be in serious question at this point.

Neoconservatives have thus far been quite supportive of the Administration’s escalation policy in Afghanistan, and I agree that they pretty much pick their piece of imperialist policy that practically every President supports and latch themselves to it to maintain a certain legitimacy. In this case, I don’t view it as neocons clinging to a Democratic President’s policy, but the other way around, as they adhere to worn-out arguments to intensify a failed policy based on the continued fear of not wanting to lose a war.

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Lucky Waitress Redux

by digby

Over the week-end I wrote this post about CNN’s unbelievable report about the 84 year old waitress who was lucky to have a job and be able to survive because her house is paid off.

Anyway, Crooks and Liars captured the video and it’s really worth seeing so that you can actually see this woman waiting tables and hear her talk about how she thought she could “relax a little bit” but that “it’s not that way.” And then listen to the totally inane discussion by the journalists.

They don’t even mention the sad necessity for this 84 year old woman to still be doing manual labor.

Blackmail

by digby

It’s the Republican way. First the banksters strap an economic IED to their chests and demand that the government does it their way or else. Now, it appears the Senate has taken Dawn Johnsen and Harold Koh hostage and are threatening to go nuclear if the president doesn’t agree to hide Cheney’s torture secrets.

Here’s
Scott Horton:

Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principal reason for the Obama administration’s abrupt pullback last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward.

Excuse me, but who the hell do they think they are? These are the people who put the Starr report on the internet. And now they are all about protecting privacy? I guess it makes some sense. What happens between consenting adults is everyone’s business as far as they are concerned. War crimes, however, are private matters between the criminals and the people who ordered them.

As dday points out below, the pressure on these memos is also coming from within the administration, led by none other than John Brennan. So, Obama has Republicans on his own team agitating for the Cheney gang. Love that bipartisanship. (I wonder if he’s helping out his allies in the senate at all?)

Let’s hope Obama stands up to them. If he shows weakness with the Republicans on this, there will be no end to it when it comes to judicial nominees. And it is vitally important that Obama balances out the courts after the past 25 years of centrist to far right appointments.

That Mighty Liberal Blog Power Made Manifest

by dday

A couple weeks ago, the Justice Department had planned to release a set of internal DoJ memos that, perhaps more than anything previously released, describe in great detail the exact types of interrogation procedures that were approved for use in secret CIA prisons. We know what was done, of course, but the memos would further provide evidence to the authorization and direction of torture at the highest levels. Some inside the White House would rather not see that happen.

As reported by NEWSWEEK, the White House last month had accepted a recommendation from Attorney General Eric Holder to declassify and publicly release three 2005 memos that graphically describe harsh interrogation techniques approved for the CIA to use against Al Qaeda suspects. But after the story, U.S. intelligence officials, led by senior national-security aide John Brennan, mounted an intense campaign to get the decision reversed, according to a senior administration official familiar with the debate. “Holy hell has broken loose over this,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because of political sensitivities […]

Brennan, who now oversees intelligence issues at the National Security Council, argued that release of the memos could embarrass foreign intelligence services who cooperated with the CIA, either by participating in overseas “extraordinary renditions” of high-level detainees or housing them in overseas “black site” prisons.

Brennan succeeded in persuading CIA Director Leon Panetta to become “engaged” in his efforts to block release, according to the senior official. Their joint arguments stalled plans to declassify the memos even though White House counsel Gregory Craig had already signed off on Holder’s recommendation that they should be disclosed, according to an official and another government source familiar with the debate. No final decision has been made, and it is likely Obama will have to resolve the matter, according to the sources who spoke to NEWSWEEK.

Brennan, Brennan, hmm, I can’t put my finger on where I’ve heard that name… oh, wait, he was the guy who “liberal bloggers” supposedly defeated for the post of CIA Director. Here was part of his withdrawal letter:

“It has been immaterial to the critics that I have been a strong opponent of many of the policies of the Bush administration such as the pre-emptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics, to include waterboarding,” he wrote. “It is with profound regret that I respectfully ask that my name be withdrawn from consideration for a position within the intelligence community. The challenges ahead of our nation are too daunting, and the role of the CIA too critical, for there to be any distraction from the vital work that lays ahead,” Brennan wrote.

Yes, and those credentials as a “strong opponent” are certainly showing now. And it’s fantastic that he’s not proving a “distraction” in his role as a national security aide, by, say, pitching a fit and using institutional allies to undermine Justice Department directives.

Forget about Brennan’s specific views, which are problematic enough. Clearly he’s protecting his friends in the intelligence community and sparing them the embarrassment of having to face up to their actions, to say nothing of the criminal liability. The cover story that Brennan wants to protect foreign intelligence services who cooperated with the CIA is ridiculous, as Hilzoy notes:

Fear of embarrassing countries who cooperated with us cannot possibly be the reason for not releasing the memos. The solution is too simple: just redact their names and any identifying details. Are we supposed to believe that this has not occurred to Panetta or Holder? Or that there is some identifying detail that is so thoroughly intertwined with the legal arguments that it cannot possibly be edited out?

Give me a break.

If foreign countries are so embarrassed by participating in torture, naming and shaming them would maybe stop them from doing it in the future?

Clearly, Brennan wants to keep open the option of torturing in secret, or at the least save his pals some heartburn.

Boy, I know I’m sure glad liberal bloggers fought the good fight and denied Brennan an important voice inside the Administration. We sure showed him, right?

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Laserium

by digby

Apparently, US soldiers are being injured with friendly laser fire in Iraq:

An American soldier was blinded in one eye and three others required medical evacuation out of Iraq in a series of laser “friendly fire” incidents, the U.S. military has disclosed. These injuries are caused by the misuse of dangerous green-laser dazzlers. Since November 2008, a single unit in Iraq “has experienced 12 green-laser incidents involving 14 soldiers and varying degrees of injury. Three soldiers required medical evacuation out of Iraq and one soldier is now blind in one eye,” writes Sgt. Crystal Reidy, from the 3rd Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), or ESC. Captain Russell Harris, a Troop Commander with 3rd ESC reports that his troops have suffered “temporary blindness, headaches and blurred vision,” as a result of laser incidents. Others describe severe, 48-hour migraines after lasing. These types of laser injuries appear to be common when units first deploy to Iraq, and may be the result of inadequate training; soldiers may assume that the lasers are harmless and use them without due caution.[…]
“We are all U.S. soldiers, you would never point your rifle at another soldier, don’t point your laser,” says a Sergeant in the 3rd ESC who experienced a laser incident.

Absolutely. These things are obviously really dangerous when shined in someone’s face. So what are they used for?

In 2006, the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force reportedly acquired 2,000 green lasers for use at checkpoints, as a tool to warn oncoming drivers to stop. Although they are said to be safe for eyes, the unspecified lasers are also described as being fifty times the power of normal red-laser pointers. (Green light is far more effective than red for dazzling.) MSNBC noted in 2006 that troops were trained not to use the laser closer than 75 yards, as this “would cause eye damage.”

You’d better hope you don’t take a wrong turn in Iraq, that’s for sure. But hey, if they didn’t want to be blinded, they shouldn’t be living in a country that the US had to invade for no good reason. They only have themselves to blame.

No Country For Old Newt

by digby

If there’s one thing the conservatives are good at, it’s rewriting history. Already we see them hard at work pressing the lie that conservative Republicans were opposed to Bush’s free spending ways. C&L reports on Newtie’s latest:

“If the Republicans can’t break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012,” Newt Gingrich said during a Wednesday speech in Missouri. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, the former Speaker of the House expanded on why conservatives might turn away from the Republican Party. “Republicans need to understand that there’s a country which did not like the big spending of the last administration, didn’t like the interventionist policies of the last administration and the country at large would like to see a genuine alternative to the Obama strategy of basically trying to run the entire economy from the white house and basically trying to increase government, I think, by 36% this year, which is the largest single increase outside of war in American history,” said Gingrich.

Oh please. Sure, there’s a “country” out there that didn’t like any of Bush’s policies and it’s called “America.” Contrary to his other assertion, they aren’t upset about Obama running the economy from the White House because that’s a load of bs that only addled dittoheads actually think is happening. And if there is a country of people who hate both Bush’s and Obama’s policies, they are pretty likely to be lefties who have a whole set of concerns that have absolutely nothing to do with concerns about too much intrusion into the private sector.
The right wing stuck with that mess Bush all the way to the bitter end and didn’t seem to be agitated at all about his big spending ways which were obvious from the first few months of his presidency when he started passing out thousand dollar bills to his millionaire friends. Here’s the beginning of Bush’s slide in the polls right after the 2004 election, from Gallup:

There have been double-digit decreases in Bush approval ratings among pure independents (those who are independent and do not “lean” toward either party) and moderate and liberal Republicans. Pure independents’ support has fallen from 42% to 28%, while moderate and liberal Republicans’ support has dropped from 83% to 69%. Conservative Republicans remain overwhelmingly likely to approve of Bush, but his support among this group has fallen below 90% in the past 11 months.

Here’s where he ended up in November of 2008:

Views of President Bush’s popularity are highly partisan. Only 6% of Democrats approve [and 18% of Independents] of the job he has done as president, while 57% of Republicans approve.

That 57% were the conservatives. It was the moderates Bush lost and contrary to Newties wet dream, they haven’t yet been brainwashed into believing that Obama is the second coming of Hugo Chavez. This “country” of Bush and Obama hating fiscal conservatives that he fantasizes about, can fit into his corner office at AEI.

Didn’t Tom Brokaw Call This “The Fleecing Of America”?

by dday

I don’t know that I have much to say about the dysfunction in the Obama economic team that wouldn’t just be a rewrite of Glenn Greenwald’s piece, but it may be worth it to just disseminate the information. Here’s the story so far:

Banks lost a ton of money by making terrible bets based on fanciful notions that housing prices would go up 20% year over year approximately forever. All the while the executives sat on each other’s boards and handed out giant bonuses and compensation packages to each other while the financial sector grew essentially out of control. In the process, they used their money and power to effectively buy Capitol Hill and make sure their portion of the economy could keep growing, whether through usurious interest rates, a total lack of oversight (including by some of the same people now charged with overseeing the banks) or just massive wealth transfers. When everything came crashing down, the very last thing these banking interests wanted to do was admit defeat or give back any of their money and power. At the same time, the entire country was furious at them. So they set to work bribing who they knew would be top officials in the next government, people like Larry Summers, who honestly didn’t even need to be bribed. And every time Congress or the executive branch threatened to end their party and put limits on their power, they found in Summers and other officials a willing partner in subverting the rules that would make them give back their bonuses and excessive compensation, which by the way the taxpayer is funding. We, the taxpayers, are told that this is necessary to ensure financial sector participation in the program to rid the banks of all of their bad assets at a potentially massive taxpayer expense. However, left unsaid is the fact that the same banks are planning to game the system by passing the same bad assets back and forth among each other at high prices, and using tricky accounting tactics to pretend that the assets on their books have value.

I think we can go to Greenwald now:

Rubin, Summers and Greenspan succeeded in inducing Congress — funded, of course, by these same financial firms — to enact legislation blocking the CFTC from regulating these derivative markets. More amazingly still, the CFTC, headed back then by Born, is now headed by Obama appointee Gary Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs executive (naturally) who was as instrumental as anyone in blocking any regulations of those derivative markets (and then enriched himself by feeding on those unregulated markets).

Just think about how this works. People like Rubin, Summers and Gensler shuffle back and forth from the public to the private sector and back again, repeatedly switching places with their GOP counterparts in this endless public/private sector looting. When in government, they ensure that the laws and regulations are written to redound directly to the benefit of a handful of Wall St. firms, literally abolishing all safeguards and allowing them to pillage and steal. Then, when out of government, they return to those very firms and collect millions upon millions of dollars, profits made possible by the laws and regulations they implemented when in government. Then, when their party returns to power, they return back to government, where they continue to use their influence to ensure that the oligarchical circle that rewards them so massively is protected and advanced. This corruption is so tawdry and transparent — and it has fueled and continues to fuel a fraud so enormous and destructive as to be unprecedented in both size and audacity — that it is mystifying that it is not provoking more mass public rage.

At the same time, the exact same banks which the government has propped up to the tune of trillions of dollars will not lift a finger to help out industries that produce tangible goods, further crumbling them and increasing the financial sector share of the economy.

And the lesson we have to learn here is that the financial sector bought government and has thus far gotten what they paid for.

I think I’ll watch some basketball. Go Cavs! Don’t worry, your government is in control. You are free… to do as we tell you…

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Bringing In The Sheaves

by digby

Yesterday I wrote about the reports of a possible retreat by the Religious Right and today I see that the liberal members of the Religion Industrial Complex are chasing after them, begging for the them to come back into the public square:

This past week the debate between the nascent Religious Left and the Religion Industrial Complex gained national attention when it was featured in a major article in U.S. News and World Report. We might not ordinarily focus on such matters on this site, but an important part of the criticism of the RIC has been how it has at once enabled the Religious Right while pretending that the culture wars of aggression waged by the Religious Right against the civil and constitutional rights of other Americans are over or are about to be.

As we have seen, RIC leaders based on a series of faulty assumptions and cynical political triangulations, have not only declared that the culture wars are over or about to be but promoted the power hungry ambitions of retrograde Religious Right figures like Rick Warren, who seem nice enough – until they talk about what they really believe.

[…]

Susan Thistlethwaite, a member of the board of Faith in Public Life and its parent organization, the Center for American Progress, takes to her the Washington Post/Newweek’s On Faith blog for a political tap dance and light show because her organization, which has earned a lot of media coverage as an agnecy of the Religious Left, was described by U.S. News as heading down a “centrist” road.

“I’m in favor of reaching out and I am less interested in labels. To me as a person of faith, I believe we should be engaging the public square in order to effect change. In order to effect change, you have to engage in the broadest possible coalition-building.”

Indeed, those of us who have been critical agree that the matter is about substance more than terminology. That is part of what has been so objectionable about the way that substantive debates are diverted and obscured by semantic slights of hand. There is hardly a better example than Thistlethwaite’s invocation of the “broadest possible coalition.” While most sensible people would agree that sometimes seemingly unlikely coalition partners are necessary and possible, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice for one, says that Thistletwaite’s idea of reaching out is almost exclusively to the Religious Right, while the religious mainstream — never mind the Religious Left — has been left out. So let’s be very clear: Leaders of mainstream Protestant denominations and major bodies of Judaism representing many tens of millions of Americans, are marginalized in favor of building relationships with a handful of conservative evangelicals of various stripes. This may be a strategic error of historic proportions, but Thistlethwaite et al, do not even want to discuss it.

These people have fashioned their entire enterprise as a bridge between the religious right and the Democratic party so they have a big stake in ensuring that the religious right is powerful. Otherwise, they would be superfluous.

This is an interesting subplot in the political story, and one to keep an eye on. Right now, people are rightly obsessed with the economic situation and the culture wars have retreated. But the organizing power of religious is still powerful and in the right hands can be used for political purposes.

Meanwhile, Job Meechum, the trendiest of religious trendies, declares in this week’s Newsweek the end of Christian America:

There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler’s attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.) Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)

Why it seems like only a a few years ago that he was on every gasbag show proclaiming that religion was the driving force in American politics (while some of us were pointing out that the the numbers were actually going the other way.) But when Bush was in office religion was so “in” among the villagers, that the Rachel Zoe of Washington, Sally Quinn, even jumped on the bandwagon. Today, it’s as outre as ass antlers.

Meacham sees some disillusioned social conservatives becoming more radical (drawing some rather stupid comparisons to 60s liberals, naturally) and I think that’s entirely possible. If the right wing Christians are withdrawing into the private sphere it would be in keeping with their religious traditions and is something that’s happened many times in the past. But there is a fringe of social conservatives who are not really religious but rather simple authoritarians who could very well join up with the other wingnuts and organize themselves around the cause of abortion or gay rights in a far more radical way than we’ve seen in quite some time.

The paranoid style in American politics has always been most comfortable on the right, particularly when they are out of power. The Christian Right of Tom Delay and Justice Sunday will be right at home among the black helicopter crowd.

Impossible Things

by digby

“It is a revolutionary world that we live in, and history shows us that we can do improbable, sometimes impossible, things.”

Michael Hirsh has written a useful article in Newsweek, which drills down to the essence of what divides the Treasury and its critics. Considering that most of the critics are liberal, it’s an interesting question:

On one side are those who want to fix the financial house we have; on the other are those who think we should knock it down so we can build a brand-new one—a new Wall Street, in other words. The keep-the-house-intact crowd includes Geithner and Bernanke, as well as Obama-appointed regulators like Mary Schapiro of the SEC. They want serious fixes to the Wall Street system—new rules and regulations to repair the old house and ensure that it doesn’t burn down again in the future—but they don’t much want to change its structure. Having giants like Citigroup and Bank of America dominating the landscape is OK with them, as long as those giants follow the new rules. On the other side of the debate are critics such as Paul Krugman and possibly Paul Volcker and Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., who think the old house is structurally unsound. They believe that not only can’t we solve the present crisis by merely tinkering with the old house, but that we’ll assuredly find ourselves in another crisis down the line if we don’t dismantle it entirely. It’s a debate that encompasses all the back-and-forth over Geithner’s and Bernanke’s careful, intricate plan to fix the big Wall Street banks instead of nationalizing and dismantling them, as well as the cautious regulatory scheme they laid out last week. And it’s a debate that must be settled now.

It seems to have been pretty much settled already. The administration has cast its lot with those who don’t believe fundamental change in the financial sector is necessary or desirable. Perhaps some tinkering around the regulatory edges and keeping a sharper eye on things will prevent some of this from happening in the future. But the critics think something much more fundamental is needed to fix the current economic problems and prevent this from happening again.
There is a lot of speculation about why the Obama administration is unwilling or unable to fulfill the promise of fundamental change on this particular issue, ranging from thinking that he and his crew are Wall Street lackeys to the belief that the lack of 60 Senators makes anything else impossible to the idea that the problem is simply too big and systemic to do anything more than fiddle a bit without triggering a cataclysmic meltdown.
Perhaps it’s a little bit of all of those, or something else entirely. But whatever the motives, it’s clear that Obama sees himself at best as an intermediary between the people and the bankers rather than an strict advocate for reform on behalf of the citizens.
He has said explicitly that the bankers have an IED straped to their chests and are threatening to blow themselves up if they don’t get their way, so maybe this is the only way he can manage this situation. I can sympathize with that. But there is something even more unnerving about the president telling the bankers that the administration is the only thing that stands between them and the pitchforks. I don’t think the wielders of the pitchforks are nearly as dangerous as the guys with the IEDs strapped to their chests. Indeed, at this point I don’t even see any pitchforks at all, but rather citizens being justifiably annoyed by millionaires whining about their bonuses and simply asking their government to step in and fix these problems the bankers have caused. It appeared that he was putting himself out there as the protectors of the elites against the people and no matter whether he truly believes that or if he’s just acknowledging the Big Money Boyz’s threats, that’s not a place any of us should want him to be.

Hirsh’s piece, by the way, is actually about the fact that the Geithner plan appears to be based upon a plan set forth by Warren Buffet. Buffet is a very smart investor and by most accounts a fairly liberal guy when it comes to politics. But this is way beyond partisan politics. Hirsch writes:

My point in raising this episode, which has not been reported until now, is not to fault Buffett, Gross or Blankfein—or even Geithner. Indeed, it appears that Buffett, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman (who, full disclosure, is a director of The Washington Post Co., which owns NEWSWEEK), was genuinely trying to help Paulson find a way out of the bank collapse. But the genesis of the PPIP plan does resurrect questions about who’s really running the show here, and how incestuous the relationship between Washington and Wall Street has become.

That’s the problem that everyone’s trying to grapple with and it looks incresingly as if the administration is throwing in his lot with the “best and the brightest.” That didn’t work out too well the last time a young, charismatic Democrats did it and it’s not likely to be any better this time.
Obama, April 3, 2008

We know that transformational change is possible. We know this because of three reasons. First, because, for all our differences, there are certain values that bind us together and reveal our common humanity: the universal longing to live a life free from fear and free from want, a life marked by dignity and respect and simple justice. Our two republics were founded in service of these ideals. In America it is written into our founding documents as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In France, liberte — AUDIENCE MEMBER: Egalite. PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely — (laughter, cheers, applause) — egalite, fraternite. Our moral authority is derived from the fact that generations of our citizens have fought and bled to uphold these values in our nations and others. And that’s why we can never sacrifice them for expedience’s sake.

Hear, hear. Economic justice is one of those values as well.

Saturday Night At The Movies

The April fools: Top 10 Mockumentaries

By Dennis Hartley

Homeland security, circa 1984:Simpler times

OK, so April fool’s Day was 3 days ago, but who’s counting? Besides, I’ll milk anything for a Top 10 theme. I thought it might be fun this week to take a look at some filmmakers who have made it their mission to yank on our collective lanyards (does that hurt?). So, in no particular ranking order, here are my picks for the “Top 10 Mockumentaries”:

Best in Show-Christopher Guest’s name has become synonymous with the word “mockumentary”, and for good reason. He and his repertory company of actors and co-writers have delivered some of the more memorable examples of the genre in the last decade or so (Waiting for Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration), and I think this gentle poke at dog lovers represents his own “best in show” so far. Guest uses a Robert Altman-style framing device to deliver a revolving study of various eccentric characters as they all converge (with pooches in tow) to compete against each other at a national dog show. Of course, it is ultimately all about the owners and their egos, not the dogs and their poise (which makes me wonder if Guest took just a bit of inspiration from Errol Morris’ Gates of Heaven, a classic documentary about a California pet cemetery.) Perhaps it is unfair to single anyone out with such a tight comic ensemble in play, but Fred Willard is a definite highlight as a witless TV commentator (is that redundant?) and Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock chew major scenery as an obnoxious yuppie couple. More standouts: Catherine O’Hara, Michael McKean, John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch, Jennifer Coolidge, Larry Miller and Eugene Levy (who co-scripted). Woof!

The Blair Witch Project-This may not fit the standard definition of a mockumentary in a traditional “ha-ha” sense; and perhaps it was ultimately the audience who was being mocked here, but (love it or hate it) there is no denying the impact that this cleverly marketed trifle has had on modern filmmaking. Keep in mind-this film came out a few years before any yahoo with a cell phone camera could file an “I-report” on CNN or become a viral video star. In the event that you spent most of 1999 in a coma, this is the one where several young amateur actors were turned loose in some dark and scary woods, armed with camping gear, video cameras and a plot point or two provided by the filmmakers, who then proceeded to play creepy, “gotcha” mind games with their merry troupe. The result was surprisingly effective, because after all, it’s the IDEA that “something” in the woods is out to get you which brings on the nightmares-not some guy in a rubber monster suit lurching about in front of the camera. There are still some “chicken-egg” debates raging over whether the very similar low budget fright, The Last Broadcast (1998) or possibly an obscure cult item from 1980 called Cannibal Holocaust (don’t ask) deserves the kudos (or the blame) as the kick-starter for this sub-genre.

Borat -I think the closest I have ever come to literally passing out laughing was when I watched a faux-newsmagazine segment on HBO’s Da Ali G Show featuring a visiting Kazakhstani “journalist” named Borat, leading a barroom full of drunken, happily obliging all-‘murcan rednecks in a rousing chorus of a “traditional” song from his homeland called “Throw the Jew Down the Well”. Appallingly tasteless? To a channel-surfer, perhaps…but since I knew going in that the obliviously coarse ‘Borat’ was really a brilliant, Cambridge-educated British satirist (and nice Jewish boy) named Sacha Baron Cohen who was only illustrating a point about the inherent racism that still runs rampant here in the good ol’ U S of A, I was in full ROTFL mode (while crying on the inside, of course). Cohen teamed up with director Larry Charles in 2006 for a feature-length extrapolation on this loopy, “must be seen to be believed” sketch character, basically expanding on the premise already established on the HBO series. Cohen commits himself with Andy Kaufman-esque intensity; never once breaking character as he befuddles, outrages and enrages the hapless yokels he encounters (who we assume are not in on the joke). A unique blend of expert, hilarious crank-yanking and smart, incisive social satire.

Drop Dead Gorgeous-Making a mockery of beauty contests may be tantamount to “shooting fish in a barrel”, but as far as guilty pleasures go, you could do worse than this faux backstage documentary from 1999 about a Minnesota pageant that goes horribly, horribly wrong (on so many levels). Director Michael Patrick Jann went on to direct 40 episodes of Comedy Central’s outrageous Cops parody, Reno 911, which should give you a clue as to what you’re in for here. Star Kirsten Dunst plays it fairly straight, and is easily out-hammed by Ellen Barkin (an absolute riot as her trailer-trash mom) and an extremely over-the-top Kirstie Alley as the Stage Mother From Hell. Gorgeous Denise Richards shows a real flair for comedy with a show-stopping, jaw-dropping “so bad that it’s good” performance number dedicated to the “special fella in her life”, a Mr. J. Christ. Also in the cast: Alison Janey, Brittany Murphy and Amy Adams. The film is a bit reminiscent of a (gentler) beauty pageant spoof from 1975 called Smile (recommended).

F for Fake– “This is a promise,” Orson Welles intones, looking directly into the camera, “For the next hour, everything you hear from us is really true and based on solid fact.” Ay, but here’s the rub: This playful ‘documentary’ about Elmyr de Hory (“the world’s greatest art forger”) and his biographer Clifford Irving (infamous for his own fakery) runs for 85 minutes. Ever feel like someone’s having you on? That’s the subject of Welles’ 1974 rumination on the meaning of art, and the art of the con (something that the creator of the infamous “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast knew a thing or two about). Not for all tastes; some may find it too scattershot and even incoherent at times, but there is a method to the madness, and attentive viewers will be rewarded. A musical score from the great Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) is a nice bonus. Even toward the end of an admittedly chequered career, with his prowess as a filmmaker arguably on the wane, any completed project by the great Welles demands your attention (at least once!).

Hard Core Logo-Frequently compared with This is Spinal Tap, this film from iconoclastic Canadian director Bruce McDonald does Reiner’s film one better-it’s got real substance. Now, obviously I love Spinal Tap (otherwise it wouldn’t have been included on this “Top 10” list), but it relentlessly opts for the quick yuck, sometimes at the expense of becoming slightly smug and condescending toward its subject matter. McDonald’s film, on the other hand, mixes its humor with genuine dramatic tension and even some surprising poignancy, particularly in its portrayal of the complex, mercurial relationship between the two main characters, Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon) and Billy Tallent (Callum Keith Rennie). Joe and Billy front a “legendary” D.I.Y. punk band called Hard Core Logo, who hit the road for a belated reunion tour. McDonald plays himself, as the director who is documenting what could turn out to be the band’s final hurrah. The film is full of great throwaway lines (“I can’t come to the phone right now. I’m eating corn chips and masturbating. Please leave a message.”). There are also a ton of obscure references in Noel S. Baker’s screenplay that truly dedicated rock music geeks (guilty!) will delight in. This is part of a trilogy (of sorts) by McDonald that includes Roadkill and Highway 61.

Real Life-Stylistically speaking, this underrated 1979 gem from writer-director Albert Brooks presaged Christopher Guest & company’s successful mockumentary franchise by at least a decade. In fact, the screenplay was co-written by Guest alum Harry Shearer (along with Brooks’ long-time creative collaborator, Monica Mcgowan Johnson). Real Life is a brilliant take-off on the 1973 PBS miniseries, An American Family (which I suppose can now be tagged as the original “reality TV” experiment). Brooks basically plays himself-a neurotic, narcissistic comedian who decides to direct a documentary that will intimately profile the daily life of a “perfect” American family. After vetting several candidates (represented via a montage of hilarious “tests” conducted at a behavioral studies institute), he decides on the Yeager family of Phoenix, Arizona (headed by the ever-wry Charles Grodin, who was born for this role). The film becomes funnier and funnier as it becomes more about the self-absorbed filmmaker himself (and his tremendous ego) rather than his subjects. Brooks takes a lot of jabs at Hollywood, and at clueless studio execs in particular. If you’ve never seen this one, you’re in for a real treat.

Take the Money and Run-This is one of Woody Allen’s “earlier, funny films”. It’s also one of the seminal mockumentaries, and an absolute riot from start to finish. Woody casts himself as bumbling career criminal Virgil Starkwell, who is the subject of this faux biopic. Narrated with tongue-in-cheek gravitas by veteran voice-over maestro Jackson Beck, the film traces Starkwell’s trajectory from his early days as a petty criminal (knocking over gumball machines) to his career apex as a “notorious” bank robber. In one of the most singularly hilarious gags Allen has ever conceived, Virgil blows a heist by arguing with a bank manager over his penmanship on a scribbled stickup note that he has handed to a teller, who is very confused by the sentence that appears to read; “I have a gub.” Although I’d have to say it’s a tossup between that scene and the one that involves an on-the-lam Virgil, knocking on a farmhouse door and asking to use the phone whilst still connected via leg irons to an entire chain gang of fellow escapees, who each offer a polite nod to their kind host as they shuffle through the door one by one. A true comedy classic, not to be missed. BTW-if you ever plan to break out of jail by wielding a fake revolver carved from a bar of soap…a word of advice? Check the weather report!

This is Spinal Tap– Sometimes, I have to be reminded that it was Rob Reiner who directed this cult fave from 1984; because it features several of the key players who went on to form the creative core of Christopher Guest’s mockumentary franchise. Reiner generously shared screenplay credits with his three stars-Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean, who portray Spinal Tap founders Nigel Tufnel (guitar), Derek Smalls (bass) and David St. Hubbins (lead vocals), respectively. “Screenplay” might be a loose term here; as much of the dialog was allegedly improvised on the fly by the actors. Reiner is “rockumentary” filmmaker Marti Dibergi, who is tagging along with the hard rocking British outfit on a grueling tour of the states. By the time the film’s relatively brief 84 minutes have expired, no one (and I mean, no one) involved in the business of rock’n’roll has been spared the knife-the musicians, roadies, girlfriends, groupies, fans, band managers, rock journalists, concert promoters, record company execs, A & R reps, even record store clerks…you name it, they all get bagged and tagged. Admittedly, a lot of the jokes are pretty “inside”; I’ve noticed that the people who tend to dismiss this film also tend to not be rock music aficionados (or perhaps even more tellingly, have never played in a band!). Nonetheless, a classic of its kind. Remember-you can’t dust for vomit.

True Stories-New Yawk musician/raconteur David Byrne (that’s MISTER Talking Heads to you) enters the Lone Star state of mind with this subtly satirical Texas travelogue from 1986. It is not easy to pigeonhole this one- part social satire, part long-form music video, part mockumentary. The episodic vignettes about the quirky but generally likable inhabitants of sleepy Virgil, Texas should hold your fascination once you buy into “tour-guide” Byrne’s bemused anthropological detachment (some might say, “conceit”, but there is no detectable mean-spiritedness here). Among the town’s “residents”: John Goodman, “Pops” Staples, Swoosie Kurtz and the late, great Spalding Gray. The outstanding cinematography is by Edward Lachman. Byrne’s fellow Heads have cameos performing “Wild Wild Life”. Not everyone’s cup of tea, perhaps- but for some reason, I have an emotional attachment to this film that I can’t even explain (shrug).

Previous posts with related themes:

The Hoax/Color Me Kubrick

My Kid Could Paint That

Update: Here’s some weird synchronicity. I swear, I didn’t plan this (and no, I am not a shill or a programmer for the network), but I was looking at my cable schedule for tonight, and beginning at 5pm, Turner Classic Movies is having a mockumentary film festival! And in an even weirder bit of kismet, all four films are on my Top 10 list. They will be airing Take the Money and Run, Real Life, Best in Show and This is Spinal Tap. You start the popcorn, I’ll go melt some butter…