Hullabaloo

Monday, November 22, 2010

 
Taking The Long View

by digby

Greg Sargent notes that the right wing is building a silly hissy fit over the beyond the pale left wing rhetortic suggesting that the Republicans are sabotaging the economy for political gain. It seems that such accusations are completely outrageous attempts to smear fellow Americans and should not be tolerated in any decent society. (There's a lot of this leftist misbehavior going around these days ...) Greg rightly points out that the Republicans had no problem calling liberals who opposed the war "terrorist loving traitors" repeatedly, so their pearl clutching over this style of argumentation rings just a tad hollow.

But he says something else that's worth discussing a little bit further:

To be clear, I happen to think the "economic sabotage" argument is not going to work. Dems tried variations of this case for two years, and there's no evidence they bore any fruit. I just don't think voters will buy it, or if they do, they won't particularly care about it.

Also: At a certain point there's little percentage in making variations of the same old lament again and again that Republicans are out to defeat Obama politically at all costs and that it's folly for Obama to keep seeking bipartisan compromise. It seems like the better argument to be having at this point is over what Obama specifically should do to adjust to this new reality.

Certainly, discussions of what Obama needs to do are important and hopefully he's listening to people other than the usual suspects who always insist that Democrats must run as far to the right as they possibly can. But I think there's value in repeating this meme even though it isn't bringing immediate results. The Republicans have an unearned trust on the economy through years and years of propaganda that portrays liberals as irresponsible, profligate spenders, even as their leaders are on record saying things like "Reagan proved deficits don't matter, this is our due." It's important for liberals to stay the course on these memes over time as well, in order to counteract this ridiculous notion.

The fact is that the Republicans are not just irresponsible stewards of the economy, they are at the moment, totally batshit insane. Somebody has to call them out on this and be willing to do it repeatedly, even if the Miss Manners Villagers get upset about it. I don't expect that the Democratic politicians will take as hard a line (not that Republicans would be so polite) but it needs to be done regardless of whether or not it helps Obama and the Democrats in the short term. This is something that has to be done relentlessly over time or we really are screwed. They're winning this war.

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digby 11/22/2010 01:45:00 PM |

 
Overton Teabags

by digby

Their influence is more important than their numbers:

During his Senate campaign, Lee floated the idea of cutting the budget by 40 percent to erase the deficit right away. When that got some negative attention he described it as more of a thought experiment. But so far he's promising do what FreedomWorks and other Tea Party groups hoped he would when they backed him -- using a very safe seat as the high ground to launch Overton Window-shifting attacks on the political consensus.

Forget the question of whether Jim DeMint hurt the the GOP in a few Senate races. If all he did was help Rand Paul and Mike Lee into the Senate, he's tripled the number of die-hard strict constructionists in the GOP conference.

I'm not sure they are just going to be opening the Overton window to make previously looney conservos look reasonable. There's a reason why even Susan Collins, who isn't up for re-election in 2012, voted against one of her signature issues just last week. Lee won by primarying a staunch conservative. They are scared to death.

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digby 11/22/2010 12:22:00 PM |

 
Appeasing The Freshmen

by digby

The Daily Beast had an item over the week explaining that the Freshman Tea partiers are all being co-opted already by Boehner and the corporate masters and that despite their ostentatious budget hawkery there's no reason to believe they'll be causing any substantial trouble for the Big Money Boyz:

The peerless self-importance of the class continued in the burlesque house-setting of the caucus chamber, with some of the prideful rubes still sporting their campaign paraphernalia as if this was Animal House awaiting the toga moment. The pay-off for Boehner arrived when it was time to vote by secret ballot on the leadership for the 112th Congress. The froshers settled down dutifully and, without any doubts or even questions as to why there was only one name on the ballot for each leadership position, they voted for the men and women who had twice approved the Bush administration's TARP heresy in 2008 that began the long fall of the country into bailout nationhood.

"The Tea Party kept the TARP leaders in power," scoffed an unhappy veteran Republican. "The revolution was over the first day."

They are making noises about raising the debt ceiling too, and that might be more of a problem simply because it's called a "debt ceiling" which will make it harder for the Tea Party types to ignore. But the consequences for the markets of doing this are severe and I suspect Boehner will try to organize some kind of Kabuki to allow his fanatics to vote against it while he ensures that it gets passed. The financial overlords will not be pleased. But there are opportunities in this. Dday explains:

If Boehner actually wants this vote, I don’t think there’s a whole lot to worry about here. He’d get upwards of 180 Democrats in support and would only have to find 40 or so from his side of the aisle. There’s a path to allowing the tea partiers to stand firm on their principles while still getting the debt limit raised.

However, the most likely scenario is for Boehner to use the leverage he has to extract significant spending cuts in exchange for the vote. If those cuts are draconian enough that House Democrats refuse to support them, then we could see an impasse.

Playing chicken with the debt limit isn't a tea party game. It's a standard issue GOP tactic. And they have a lot more nerve than the Democrats do so I'd lay odds they get what they want

Meanwhile, the Tea Partiers are starting to sort out their priorities. Last week it was reported that GOProud had tried to push the line that the Tea party wasn't socially conservative and they got a pummelling from Religious Right. This week the major Tea party leaders are sending a letter to congress:

Tea Party Nation founder and CEO Judson Phillips plans to set the GOP congressional leadership straight about the tea party's legislative demands, after a handful of Tea Party Patriots and a homosexual activist group, GOProud, released an open letter last Monday urging Republicans to ignore social issues.

This coming Monday, Phillips plans to release an open letter of his own urging the GOP to address several fiscal matters and at least three social issues, including the preservation of the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy banning open homosexuals in the military.

"There is a battle going on for the heart and soul of the tea-party movement," Phillips told WND. "GOProud has its own agenda. It wants to create credibility for itself by leveraging the tea-party movement, but GOProud has never been a part of the tea-party movement."

Phillips is also taking aim at abortion.

"The abortion industry is a multibillion dollar industry. Why are they getting funding from the government? Cut that off!" said Phililips.

Let's not get confused here. Boehner will finesse the budget issues without harming any important donors or contractors. That's his job and he's good at it. But they are going to have to provide some red meat to the bloodthirsty Freshman Tea Partiers. I feel fairly confident that they'll come up with something.


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digby 11/22/2010 09:30:00 AM |

Sunday, November 21, 2010

 
Guess Who's More Trusted On Social Security Now?

by digby

Houston, we have a problem. A new poll says that large majorities of both parties and the Tea Party don't want benefits cuts Social Security or raising the retirement age but do believe that raising the cap on high earners makes sense.

But something has gone horribly wrong:

Who will better handle Social Security?

• Republicans vs. Democrats in Congress:

• 31% (R) to 28% (D);
• 34% both the same

• Republicans in Congress vs. Obama:

• 33% (R) to 26% (Obama);
• 31% both the same

That's right, Republicans now have the advantage on Social Security over the Democrats and President Obama. I don't know if that's been true since the 1930s.

I guess this is a natural reaction to being bombarded for two years with propaganda about Obama's death panels and then Democrats and the president lead the charge to "reform" social security. Apparently, this has led a fair number of people to conclude that it's the oppositional Republicans who are standing up for them. At the very least, the vast majority have decided that Democrats are no longer the defenders of social security they have been for 60 years.

I'm fairly certain that this comes from the inane belief among the Democratic elite that people really truly care about "the deficit" and will reward the Very Serious people who demand sacrifice from people who are scared stiff about the future. It's a joke. And as Mike the Mad Biologist pointed out, it's a sucker's game:

The ... fantasy is that if you pass some sort of plan which gets Social Security in surplus for the next 75 years according to the SSA then you get credit for "saving" Social Security and that the issue will be then off the table until the end of time. What will happen in practice is that the trustees will inevitably make minor and completely reasonable tweaks to the assumptions underlying their projections so they can once again have the trio of "nightmare," "middle ground," and "everything's awesome" scenarios, with the middle ground scenario showing problems at some point in the future. Then the pain caucus will be back to tell us just how much granny needs to starve and Wall Street will return to siphon up all the money into their gaping maws.

You don't have to be a political or mathematical genius to see that solving problems that don't exist will not bring you any credibility among the people. (Or even among the cynical Villagers who will simply laugh at your foolishness and pick up right where they left off.) If these numbers are correct, this silly gambit may have cost the Democrats the last bit of their real credibility as the protectors of the safety net --- the only thing they have been good for for the past 25 years.

Update: It appears that the NY Times made a major error which, so far, it's refusing to correct. I understand that the ombudsman may take it up if enough people draw it to his attention. This one's important. If you have a chance to read the article I linked and send a quick, polite note to the Ombudsman at public@nytimes.com it could make a difference. It's bad enough that people are relying on projections 75 years into the future to destroy the New Deal, but the least they could do is correct numbers that are clearly incorrect today. Social Security is not going broke in 2015.

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digby 11/21/2010 06:00:00 PM |

 
Good Reads

by digby

Here are three important pieces for you to read and one to listen to on a lazy, fall Sunday afternoon.

1.)Matt Stoller on the debt-cropper society:

A lot of people forget that having debt you can’t pay back really sucks. Debt is not just a credit instrument, it is an instrument of political and economic control.

It’s actually baked into our culture. The phrase ‘the man’, as in ‘fight the man’, referred originally to creditors. ‘The man’ in the 19th century stood for ‘furnishing man’, the merchant that sold 19th century sharecroppers and Southern farmers their supplies for the year, usually on credit. Farmers, often illiterate and certainly unable to understand the arrangements into which they were entering, were charged interest rates of 80-100 percent a year, with a lien placed on their crops. When approaching a furnishing agent, who could grant them credit for seeds, equipment, even food itself, a farmer would meekly look down nervously as his debts were marked down in a notebook. At the end of a year, due to deflation and usury, farmers usually owed more than they started the year owing. Their land was often forfeit, and eventually most of them became tenant farmers.

They were in hock to the man, and eventually became slaves to him. This structure, of sharecropping and usury, held together by political violence, continued into the 1960s in some areas of the South. As late as the 1960s, Kennedy would see rural poverty in Arkansas and pronounce it ’shocking’. These were the fruits of usury, a society built on unsustainable debt peonage.

Today, we are in the midst of creating a second sharecropper society.

The great irony in all this, is that the very people who are screeching "Freeeedom" like blue-faced Mel Gibsons are the ones who are enabling this enslavement.

2.)Michael Moore on how corporate America is pushing us over the cliff.

When someone talks about pushing you off a cliff, it's just human nature to be curious about them. Who are these people, you wonder, and why would they want to do such a thing?

That's what I was thinking when corporate whistleblower Wendell Potter revealed that, when "Sicko" was being released in 2007, the health insurance industry's PR firm, APCO Worldwide, discussed their Plan B: "Pushing Michael Moore off a cliff."

But after looking into it, it turns out it's nothing personal! APCO wants to push everyone off a cliff.

3) Taibbi having David Gergen for lunch.


And finally, Rick Perlstein on the radio answering the question of the hour "Is there such a thing as middle ground between the two parties in power?"

Any guesses as to what he thinks?

Enjoy.

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digby 11/21/2010 04:30:00 PM |

 
"A Question About The Strength The Case"

by digby

Speaking of heresy...

"We do believe that what are called Article Three trials, in other words in our civilian courts, are appropriate for the vast majority of detainees," Clinton told Fox News' Chris Wallace...

"The question is do you have any choice now except to hold all of the terror detainees at Gitmo or either give them military trials or hold them indefinitely?" Wallace asked Clinton.

"The sentence for what he was convicted of is 20 years to life," Clinton replied. "That is a significant sentence. Secondly, some of the challenges in the courtroom would be the very same challenges before a military commission about whether or not certain evidence could be used."

"If you look at the comparison between terrorists who are now serving time in our maximum security prisons compared to what military commissions have been able to do, there's no comparison," Clinton later said on NBC.

"We get convictions, we send people away in our civilian courts at a much more regularized-- and-- and predictable way than yet we've been able to figure out how in the military commission."

"It is good enough and strong enough to either convict and sentence the guilty, or even execute where appropriate, and where you can't convince an American jury, which is certainly obsessed with terrorism, maybe there's a question about the strength of the case," she said.

Whoa. I didn't think you were allowed to suggest even in the most abstract way that the "terrorists" might not be guilty or that the authorities might have erred in their capture or incarceration.

What she says, of course, is common sense and shouldn't even be controversial. And maybe it's some sort of State Department diplomacy. But I'm so inured to bipartisan governmental double speak on this that I confess I was shocked to hear it coming from such a high official in the administration.



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digby 11/21/2010 03:00:00 PM |

 
Sunday Sermon

by digby

From the right wing's favorite violent psychopathic preacher Bryan Fischer here's a little thought for the day:

Christianity is not a religion of pacifism. Remember that John the Baptist did not tell the soldiers who came to him to lay down their arms, even when they asked him directly, “what shall we do?” (Luke 3:14).

War is certainly a terrible thing, and should only be waged for the highest and most just of causes. But if the cause is just, then there is great honor in achieving military success, success which should be celebrated and rewarded.

The bottom line here is that the God of the Bible clearly honors those who show valor and gallantry in waging aggressive war in a just cause against the enemies of freedom, even while inflicting massive casualties in the process. What I’m saying is that it’s time we started imitating God’s example again.

The good news is that he is enlisting Christians to fight the evil, violent religion of Islam, so that's good.

The last time I quoted one of Fischer's violent interpretations of Biblical doctrine, my friend Pastor Dan (author of the book Changing the Script: An Authentically Faithful and Authentically Progressive Political Theology for the 21st Century)said:

We have a word for that in the business: "heresy"

Fischer, of course, is the fellow who said that the Medal of Honor was being "feminized" because it was given to men who saved the lives of their comrades instead of the men who killed large number of the enemy. I missed a few Sunday school lessons so I must have missed the part that said Jesus didn't believe that saving people is heroic or Godly. Evidently he preferred bloodshed.


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digby 11/21/2010 01:30:00 PM |

 
Circling the Wagons

by digby

TIME Magazine says:

"The strategy of designating an alien "other" for political ends is hardly new in human history, and over the centuries it has been employed with equal expediency by the left and the right."

I'm a little bit confused here. It's not that "the left", particularly if you define it as Soviet or Maoist, has not been historically guilty of some very bad things. But it's not really fair to say that it's been equal to the right in that particular way, unless you consider wealthy capitalists an oppressed class (which clearly many wealthy capitalists do.) But the truth is that riling up the rubes against a designated other is a fundamental right wing political strategy. In fact, it's definitional.

But be that as it may, the question the article asks about the changing right wing targets is interesting. It wonders why they seem to be changing targets so often -- gays, Immigrants, Muslims and what that says about our changing culture. The reporter posits that it might be the fast paced nature of the media or the difficulty of maintaining open prejudice in a pluralistic society. And I suppose that there are some truths in those things.

But the reason the right is rapidly shifting from one loathed "other" to the next is because they are driven by the knowledge that white, Conservative, Christian privilege is diminishing and their sense is that it's coming from all directions. It really doesn't matter who the alien is, whether an "Un-Christian" gay couple or a "foreign" Muslim or an "invading" illegal --- they are all perceived to be threats to the rightful white majority's worldview and way of life. If you happen to be a person who thinks that race, religion, ethnicity and nationality confer special privileges, they are. And that belief is the province of conservatism not liberalism (which has a whole different set of problems.)


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digby 11/21/2010 11:30:00 AM |

 
Guess Who's Trashing The Place Now?

by digby

David Broder wakes up from his nap and discovers that Republicans aren't behaving like the grown-ups he expected:

Whether it is tax rates or nuclear arms, Republicans are being assertive about their views and challenging Democrats to step up to the fight. Not one sign has appeared so far of any willingness to compromise...

All this signals that they are feeling their oats and will be hard to deal with.

What seems to have rally startled him is the fact that they aren't listening to the likes of James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger on the START Treaty. He comments with a barely disguised sneer:

But those three, representing the Republican foreign policy establishment of the past two administrations, are being countermanded by Jon Kyl, the senator from Arizona who is No. 2 to McConnell in the Senate.

A lot of old Washington hands haven't yet truly understood the significance of the Tea Party takeover of the GOP. But they're about to. However much the Republicans parrot terms like "adult conversation" like a bunch of mindless Myna birds, it won't change the fact that the Party is no longer a nice staid hierarchical organization run by staid old men. It's been obvious to outside observers for quite some years that the "conservative" party has become a radical force in American politics, but the beltway still suffered under the illusion that "grown-ups" ran the show. They haven't for quite some time, but with the Tea Party it's right out in the open.

In case you were wondering the allegedly serious George Will has proven once again that with very few exceptions, he's just a standard issue right wing whore. He "has great respect for Kyl" and doesn't think anyone is staying awake at night worrying about those silly old nukes. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with destroying the country in order to save it.


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digby 11/21/2010 09:49:00 AM |

Saturday, November 20, 2010

 
Saturday Night At The Movies


Eat them up, yum: Top 10 Food Flicks

By Dennis Hartley

















I don’t know if it’s worth $5…but it’s pretty fuckin’ good!




I was originally going to do a post this week about my “top 10 Thanksgiving movies”, but after pondering it for a spell, all I could come up with was The House of Yes, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Ice Storm , Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Alice's Restaurant. After that, I had nuthin’ (A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving ?But that’s TV.) Oh, I suppose there are many more titles out there (wasn’t there like, a Walton family Thanksgiving thingie?) but apparently they would not be among my favorites. One theme that I can more easily relate to, however, is movies about food (or that feature at least one memorable eating scene). Everyone’s gotta eat, right? So, chew on these (presented, as per usual, alphabetically-and not in order of preference).

Big Night-This is one DVD that I have repeatedly foisted on friends and relatives, because after all, it’s important to “…take a bite out of the ass of life!” (as one of the film’s characters points out with great veracity). Two brothers, one an enterprising businessman named Secondo (Stanley Tucci, who also co-wrote and co-directed) and his older sibling Primo (Tony Shalhoub), a gifted chef, open an Italian restaurant but quickly run into financial trouble. Possible salvation arrives via a dubious proposal from a more successful competitor (played with much aplomb by Ian Holm). The fate of their business hinges on Primo’s ability to conjure up the ultimate feast. And oh, what a meal he prepares-especially the timpano (you’d better have some pasta and ragu handy-or your appestat will be writing checks that your duodenum will not be able to cash, if you know what I’m sayin’). The wonderful cast includes Isabella Rossellini, Minnie Driver, Liev Schreiber, Allison Janney, and Campbell Scott (who co-directed with Tucci). Look for a mute Marc Anthony (the Latin pop superstar) lurking throughout as the kitchen assistant.


Comfort and Joy-Another delightful, quirky trifle from Scottish writer-director Bill Forsyth (Local Hero, Gregory's Girl). An amiable Glasgow radio personality (Bill Paterson) gets unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend on Christmas Eve, which throws him into an existential crisis, causing him to take a sudden and urgent inventory of his personal and professional life. Soon after lamenting to his GM that he wants to do something more “important” than his chirpy morning show, serendipity drops him into the middle a of a potentially hot investigative journalism story-an escalating war between two local rival ice-cream dairies. Chock full of Forsyth’s patented low-key anarchy and extremely dry one-liners. As a former morning DJ, I can tell you that the scenes depicting “Dickie Bird” doing his show are very authentic, which is rare on the screen. One caveat: It could take several days to get that ice cream van’s loopy theme music out of your head.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover-A gamey, visceral and perversely piss-elegant fable about food, as it relates to love, sex, violence, revenge, and uh, Thatcherism from writer-director Peter Greenaway (who I like to refer to as “the thinking person’s Ken Russell”). Michael Gambon really chews up the scenery (figuratively and literally) as a vile and vituperative British underworld type who holds nightly court at his “front” business, a gourmet restaurant. When his bored trophy wife (Helen Mirren) becomes attracted to one of the regular diners, a quiet and unassuming bookish fellow, the wheels are set in motion for quite a twisty tale, culminating in one of the most memorable scenes of “just desserts” ever served up on film. The opulent set design and cinematographer Sacha Vierny’s extraordinary use of color combine to lend a rich Jacobean texture to the proceedings. Look for the late great pub rocker Ian Dury as one of Gambon’s associates.

Delicatessen -This film is so…French. A seriocomic vision of a food-scarce, dystopian future society along the lines of Soylent Green, directed with great verve and trademark surrealist touches by co-directors Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro (The City of Lost Children). The pair’s favorite leading man, Dominique Pinon (sort of a sawed-off Robin Williams) plays a circus performer who moves into an apartment building with a butcher shop downstairs. The shop’s proprietor seems to be appraising the new tenant with, shall we say, a “professional” eye? In Jeunet and Caro’s bizarro world, it’s all par for the course (just wait ‘til you get a load of the vegan “troglodytes” who live underneath the city streets). One particular sequence, involving a wildly funny, imaginatively staged sex scene, stands on its own as a veritable master class in the arts of film and sound editing.

Diner-This wondrous, episodic slice-of-life dramedy marked writer-director Barry Levinson’s first feature film back in 1982, and it remains his best, IMHO. A small group of twenty-something buddies converge for Christmas week in 1959 Baltimore. One is recently married, another is about to get hitched, and the others are still playing the field and deciding what to do with the rest of their life. They are all slogging fitfully toward that last, “no turning back” portal to adulthood. The most entertaining scenes take place at the group’s favorite meeting place, a local diner, where the comfort food of choice is French fries with gravy (mmm…French fries with gravy). Levinson has a great gift for writing dialog, and it’s all the little details that make the difference here; like a cranky appliance store customer who refuses to upgrade to color TV because he saw Bonanza at a friend’s house, and decided that “…the Ponderosa looked fake”. This film was more influential than it gets credit for; Tarantino owes a debt of gratitude (see below) as well as the creators of TV’s Seinfeld. It also helped launch film careers for Kevin Bacon, Mickey Rourke, Ellen Barkin, Daniel Stern, Timothy Daly, Steve Guttenberg and Paul Reiser.


Eat Drink Man Woman-Or as I once dubbed it: “I Never Stir-Fried for My Father”. This was director Ang Lee’s more substantive follow-up to his enjoyable, but relatively fluffy crowd-pleaser The Wedding Banquet (another good food flick). (another good food flick). Lee treads on Wayne Wang territory in this beautifully acted dramedy about the clash of traditional vs. modern values within Chinese culture. An aging master chef, who is losing his sense of taste (ah, savor the irony) stringently follows a tradition of preparing an elaborate feast every Sunday, which his three grown (and single) daughters are required to attend. Dysfunctional family angst ensues around these mandatory gatherings, as you might expect. As the story unfolds, Lee reveals the bittersweet truths and universality of family dynamics, which transcends culture and geography. Only caveat: An hour after you watch it, you’ll be hungry for a second feature (I’m KIDDING). You know I’m a kidder.

My Dinner with Andre- Boy, this one is a tough sell to the uninitiated. “An entire film that nearly all takes place at one restaurant table, with two self-absorbed New York intellectuals pontificating the whole time- ‘yak, yak, yak, yak’? This is entertaining?!” Actually, um, yes-it is. Quite surprisingly so. The late great director Louis Malle took a bold artistic gamble with this movie that pays off in spades. Although essentially a work of “fiction”, Malle’s two stars, theatre director Andre Gregory and actor-playwright Wallace Shawn are playing themselves (the pair collaborated on the screenplay). A rumination on art, life, love, the universe and everything, the film is not so much about the food itself, but more of a love letter to the lost art of erudite dinner conversation.

Pulp Fiction -Although the universal popularity of this Quentin Tarantino opus is largely owed to its hyper-stylized mayhem and the ultra-hip, creatively salty iambic pentameter spouted by the characters, I have always felt it to be a closer cousin to Diner than to, say, The Asphalt Jungle(I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out). Think about it: The film’s crucial opening and closing scenes take place in a diner, with characters conducting animated, eclectic conversations over plates of food. In Mia and Vincent’s protracted sequence at the theme restaurant, the camera gives us fetishistic close-ups of their decidedly all-American eats (“Douglas Sirk steak. And a vanilla coke.”). There’s that classic exchange between Vincent and Jules regarding “Le” Big Macs in France, Jules’ voracious hijacking of poor hapless Brett’s “Big Kahuna” burger, and Fabienne pining wistfully about her longing for blueberry pancakes. Even the super efficient Mr. Wolfe takes a few seconds out of his precisely mapped schedule to reflect on the pleasures of a fresh-brewed cup of coffee. I think this definitely qualifies as a food flick!

Tampopo-Self billed as “The first Japanese noodle western”, this 1987 entry from writer-director Juzo Itami (A Taxing Woman) is all that and more. Nobuko Niyamoto is superb as the title character, a widow who has inherited her late husband’s noodle house. Despite her hard work and sincere effort to please customers, Tampopo struggles to keep the business afloat, until a deux ex machina arrives-a truck driver named Goro (Tsutomo Yamazaki). After one taste, Goro pinpoints the problem-her noodles are bland (in his personal “code of the east”, bland noodles are an aesthetic crime). No worries-like the magnanimous gunslinger of the old west, Goro decides to take Tampopo on as a personal project, and mentor her on the Zen of creating the perfect noodle bowl. A true delight from start to finish, offering keen insight on the relationship between food, sex and love.

Tom Jones Truly, doth I really need to explain? Good sirs and madams, I prithee, just watch this morsel…and enjoy:

Anyone for seconds? Here are 10 more personal recommendations for your delectation: Babette's Feast, Like Water for Chocolate, Henry Jaglom's Eating - A Very Serious Comedy About Women and Food, Ratatouille, The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie, Eating Raoul, Chocolat , 9 1/2 Weeks, La Grande Bouffe,Mostly Martha.




*Dennis is on vacation this week, so I'm serving left-over reviews. It tastes even better the next year. -- digby


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Dennis Hartley 11/20/2010 05:30:00 PM |

 
Sad

by digby

Then:



Now:

Getty images --Protestors hold banners portraying US former president George Bush and current US President Barack Obama while marching through central London during a Stop The War demonstration on November 20, 2010 against the continued involvement of Britain in the war in Afghanistan.

Obama always promised to continue the war in Afghanistan, of course. But it would have been hard to imagine that image back in those heady days of the big win. People certainly didn't see him as a clone of Bush, regardless of his promises.

One little detail that's worth contemplating is the Daily Mail headline in the first compilation. There's the glowing "Obama Takes His Place In History" headline and just below it is a huge headline that says: "Home loans: A Slap In The Face." That juxtaposition was prescient.


h/t to @BagNewsNotes for the imperialism shot.

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digby 11/20/2010 04:30:00 PM |

 
We're All Know Nothings

by digby


There are a lot of rather depressing findings in this latest Pew knowledge poll, including the fact the while 75% of the public knows that the Republicans 'won" the last election, only 46% know they only won the House of Representatives. I joked before election day that a lot of Tea Partiers were going to be upset to find out that Barack Obama was still president on the day after, but I didn't think it might actually be true.

As much fun as it is to contemplate that, I think these results are fairly understandable. Many people don't vote and even those who do find politics an abstract, irrelevant subject most of the time. So they caught the general gist of the fact that the GOP won big, but the details of that didn't penetrate. Obama's still president, after all, so it's not as if there's been a wholesale changing of the guard.They pretty much got it right.

I think this may be the most revealing bit of info from the poll:

Overall, 39% of the public know that the government spends more on national defense than on education, Medicare or interest on the national debt. About one-in-four (23%) say the government spends more on interest payments and 15% say Medicare is the largest expenditure of these four alternatives. Government accounting estimates indicate that the government spends about twice as much on defense than on Medicare, and more than four times as much on defense as on interest on the debt.

More Democrats (46%) than Republicans (28%) know that the government spends more on national defense than the other items listed. Republicans are as likely to say the government spends most on interest on the debt (29%) as on defense (28%). A plurality of independents (44%) know that the government spends most on national defense.

Not even a majority of Democrats know that defense is the big budget item apparently, although some of that may be an unwillingness to admit it after having been mau-maued by the right for years about being soft on national security and always wanting to cut defense. Whatever the case, this is more evidence proving that deficit fear among the people (to the extent it actually exists) is just a proxy for generalized economic angst, which the Catfood Commissars and their wealthy benefactors are using to advance their own agenda. If the public doesn't even know the vague parameters of where their tax dollars are going, how can they possibly know that it's a waste?*




*That's rhetorical, of course. Many people take it on faith that their money is going to people who don't deserve it, which is why they want tax cuts for themselves and spending cuts for whomever they personally believe are undeserving parasites. But in a sane world such things would not be part of any discussion of spending priorities.



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digby 11/20/2010 03:00:00 PM |

 
Forget The Slurpees

by digby

Thomas Mann isn't known as an angry partisan, so this might surprise some Villagers:

“There is simply no basis for meaningful bipartisan leadership meetings today,” Brookings scholar and congressional expert Thomas Mann told me. “Republicans are determined to defeat Obama in 2012; they have no interest in negotiating with him in order to provide him any sort of victory. This is a partisan war and the Republicans are playing to win. The only question is how long it will take Obama to accept this reality and act accordingly.”

On the other hand, if you read the whole article, it's clear that the writer was completely oblivious to what he was saying, so who knows? Maybe even Thomas Mann is a dirty hippie blogger now.



h/t to bb
digby 11/20/2010 01:30:00 PM |

 
Virtuous Sabotage

by digby


Following up on my post from last night about the administration meeting with the Chamber of Commerce, I was struck by Steve Benen's post this morning about the possibility that the Republicans have decided to affirmatively sabotage the economy and important national security initiatives like the START treaty, the opposition to which from the GOP has even the GOP elder statesmen astonished.

He says:

Historically, lawmakers from both parties have resisted any kind of temptations along these lines for one simple reason: they didn't think they'd get away with it. If members of Congress set out to undermine the strength of the country, deliberately, just to weaken an elected president, they risked a brutal backlash -- the media would excoriate them, and the punishment from voters would be severe.

All that assumed they thought they would be found out --- Dick Nixon being the prime example of someone who sabotaged a peace process as well as Ronnie Reagan, who is suspected of double dealing in the Iran hostage crisis. And on economics, there's always been widespread belief that the Fed manipulates interest rates on behalf of Republicans in election years. But be that as it may, these efforts were always covert and the politicians were always careful to keep up the fiction that they put the national interest above all else. So something has changed.

I think it's just another step in the degradation of our societal norms. We are not living in a country anymore in which there is even a consensus about something as immoral as torture, so why should political sabotage be beyond the pale? And the mainstream media, which Benen points out should be charged with bringing some perspective to these issues and calling attention to the fact that the Republican Party is actively working to undermine the national interest, is so deep into their "Church of the Savvy" that they literally laugh at this phenomenon and then proceed to call balls and strikes as if it's a sport to find out who can win with the most cynical strategy.

Yesterday, for instance, Andrea Mitchell interviewed Senator Richard Lugar, elder statesman and nuclear disarmament specialist. He was extremely agitated that the Senate was about to scuttle the START treaty for reasons that were petty and unintelligible to anyone who cares about the idea of a loose nuke or accidental launch of an ancient soviet missile. (One would have thought that group would include all elected officials, but clearly not.) Anyway, she interviewed him and then had on Ambassador Richard Burt who negotiated the original START treaty back in 1991. She said, "I haven't seen Richard Lugar that fired up about this issue in quite a long time, and it's because, on the face of it, what is the explanation? When you read this treaty, the preamble to the treaty, what is the explanation for saying that this is bad for U.S. interests? He replied, and I kid you not, that he thinks Republicans only want nuclear treaties to be signed under GOP administrations. Mitchell, of course, just said "ah" and blithely carried on as if they were talking about Karl Rove's election strategy and that was that.

Perhaps one can attribute all this to the new media world in which everyone is now a political pundit and so strategy is considered a moral value in itself. And it's certainly the case that those who live inside the conservative media bubble believe that Obama is a Muslim socialist terrorist sympathizer so, in their view, stopping anything he does by definition isn't sabotage, it's patriotism. (And when you saw people interviewed at the Glenn Beck rally, many of them simply couldn't believe that Beck repeatedly called Obama a racist --- so it's possible that many right wing citizens haven't totally abandoned these social norms, but that they just don't realize their leaders have.)

Whatever the case, I do know that the the old "hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue" thing is long gone in national Republican politics and they are just blatantly proclaiming themselves to be virtuous by undermining the national interest in order to win elections. That is now seen as a positive good, not a shameful unpatriotic act. Because in American life, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.

(This is also, by the way, why Wall Street criminals and banksters are given a pass. They "won" which means they are better and more worthy than the rest of us. Indeed, the Church of the Savvy, it turns out, is just an offshoot of the Church of Ayn Rand.)



Update: Kevin Drum talks a bit about this too, although I don't think he agrees with me ...

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digby 11/20/2010 12:00:00 PM |

 
Dissing The Foreigner

by digby


Ezra Klein wonders why everyone in the DC establishment is so much more overwrought about Pelosi keeping her leadership post than Harry Reid, pointing out that his hold on office is even less secure than hers and that if all the seats in the Senate had been up for reelection the Dems would have lost the majority there as well.

The answer is simple: Reid is a nice pro-life centrist man while the uppity beyotch from San Francisco needs to be taken down a peg. The gasbag chatter for the past two weeks has been quite clear in this regard --- the reason the Democrats lost is because they made the ridiculous decision to put a foreigner in charge and Real America is not having it. It's one thing to be a woman in a man's rightful job, but being a liberal and a woman (and successful at passing liberal legislation!) is a bridge too far. This whole thing could get out of hand if they don't watch themselves.

In fact, I have to say that Democrats defying that CW and keeping her as leader is one of the few bright moments of the past few months and it gave me hope that they aren't completely brain dead yet. It's a real act of defiance against the Republicans and the Villagers and I'm shocked they did it. I fully expected to see leader Hoyer (or worse.)


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digby 11/20/2010 09:38:00 AM |