A post about a poster

Check out this totally cool poster by John Mavroudis.  It serves its purpose admirably – it took a whole lot of history to get the country in the posture necessary to elect a black president.  I’ll admit it, I did not believe I would see it happen in my lifetime.  Of course, now that the reality has set in, the right wing is going absolutely bonkers, and the left wing is showing its genetic inability to accept compromise when the only other choice is defeat of an admirable initial goal. 

In all that I’ve read about Teddy Kennedy in the last few days, the universal assessment was that he would accept the compromise in order to a) get something rather than nothing, and b) keep the admirable initial goal alive and on the horizon for another fight on another day.

The President understands this and is acting accordingly for the benefit of all of us.

~  tom

Bring on the filibuster!

From Frank Rich’s column in today’s NY Times:

The G.O.P., whose ranks have now dwindled largely to whites in Dixie and the less-populated West, is not even a paper tiger — it’s a paper muskrat. James Carville is correct when he says that if Republicans actually carried out their filibuster threats on health care, it would be a political bonanza for the Democrats.

I couldn’t agree more.  I would love make these bloviating, lying, distorting, crass, politically-motivated, Obama-hating, Republicans stand up for days (make it weeks if necessary) and filibuster a healthcare reform bill.  As the time passes they will look less and less like Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” and more and more like Joe McCarthy when Joseph Welch confronted him:

“Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild...Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Obama the fox?

You know, I could be completely wrong, but I really believe that President Obama is executing a long-standing plan with respect to his handling of the health care brouhaha. Let me give you an analogy from my world:

In the old days, when I began practice as a young lawyer, all trials were assigned out of the “master calendar department” by the Presiding Judge. Sometimes you would “get out to trial,” but often there would be no courts available so your case would “trail” or be continued to a date weeks away. I learned from a mentor that you NEVER gave the opposing counsel your trial brief unless you actually got assigned to a department and the case started. At that point you would lay your trial brief on the other side. If you did give the opposing counsel your trial brief in master calendar and then your case got trailed, or worse, continued, the other guy would have lots of time to construct all sorts of opposition, including false or misleading arguments that would take you lots of time and energy to shoot down. Even today, when we don’t have a master calendar system, I never give the other side anything until the very last minute before the statutory or procedural deadline. Why give them any more time to beat you up than you need to?

Could it be that the President is sitting back and letting the other side “file their trial brief” in public, letting them get it all out, getting them backed into their loony corner before he files his trial brief? If he would have gotten overly specific or tried to respond point-by-point to the lies and distortions, they would have weeks to attack those responses, which he would then have to react to, and so on. Imagine he had tried that approach on the Jeremiah Wright matter in the campaign. Instead, he let the criticism go on until he was sure the other side had” filed their trial brief,” then, and only then, he made his famous “race” speech. (Which I believe will be studied long after we and Barack are gone).

Obama and the men and women who got him elected are just too smart to not have something up their sleeve, but you can be dam sure they are not going to pull it out of the sleeve until the are sure that

• The other side has filed its trial brief
• The timing is right to get full benefit from filing their trial brief , and the least amount of time is left for the other side to react.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. What will Barack’s “trial brief" be? A major speech like the race speech where he lays out the shame and cost of having 50 million of our fellow citizen uninsured, and the undeniable benefit to all but a few very rich people? An orchestrated blitz using popular and articulate people like Bill Clinton, Howard Dean, etc.? Forcing the opposing Senators to actually filibuster – let’s see them standing up for days or even weeks obstructing a bill whose benefit all will be able to see?

I don’t know, but I am waiting

A couple of shout-outs

Watchmen: About a week ago Eileen and I caught “Watchmen” on DVD on our 50” plasma. I was really blown away. I knew nothing of the story and background of Watchmen, and I was not expecting anything extraordinary. The movie was just great. Sure, it’s long, but the time just flew by for me. (I know it must have been great because Eileen stayed awake and riveted for the whole shebang). Also, some may say that the violence was a bit too graphic and gory, but I didn’t think so – I squirmed when I was meant to squirm. (Again, the Eileen test: she stayed through the whole thing, whereas with anything remotely resembling a slasher movie, she is gone). It would take me more time than I care to spend describing why I liked Watchmen so much, so I won’t even try. Suffice it to say, that I am still thinking about it even now. Oh, I loved the anatomically correct Dr. Manhattan!

Rave reviews of Watchmen: Roger | Mick

Callie Thorne: We are big fans of “Rescue Me.” Yeah, some of it is over the top, but that’s because Denis Leary is willing to take chances both as a writer/producer, and as an actor. Anyway, a couple of episodes ago, there was a scene where Tommy (Leary) comes over to Sheila’s (Callie Thorne) to fix her sink. (Not the most recent episode where she orders him to come over to install her TV – the one before that). Anyway, I’m watching this scene between the two of them and I suddenly realized how amazingly great Callie Thorne’s acting was in the scene. It was so real that I forgot I was watching someone act. It wasn’t just her delivering her lines with perfection and nuance, but also the way she used her face and body in pauses between her lines, or more importantly when Tommy was speaking to her, but the camera was still on her. I have several friends who are actors and they all say that “listening” is a much harder job than “talking.” Try testing this sometime: Instead of focusing on the “talker” when you are watching a movie or TV, watch the character who is supposed to be listening, and you will often see the most wooden, frozen, lifeless/or obviously forced performance imaginable. Anyway, if you get out a chance, check out Callie in this scene and you’ll see what I mean. She is just fabulous.

Kerouac goodies!

Because San Francisco was Jack Kerouac’s stomping ground, we get a lot of articles in the S.F. Chronicle that the rest of the country probably never sees.  Today, in the “Datebook” section of the Chron, there is a big article, filled with lots of goodies.  So, I’m pullin’ your coats to it.

Be sure you check out:

• The images by clicking “view more images.”
• “Six facts you might not know” at the very end of the article.

Begala talks me down

After seeing the cynical, angry, and downright nasty antics of the right-wing lemmings at various town hall meetings, I was really discouraged.  But then I read a couple of good columns today that made me get my chin up again. 

One, by the venerable David Broder, has as its theme the idea that these wingnut antics are pissing off a whole lot of people, but that fact never gets reported on by MSM.  Here is his article.

The second column is by Paul Begala, and it is quite brilliant.  Here is a part that I particularly like:

Progressive politics is, in my view, a movement, not a monument. We cannot achieve perfection in this life, and if that is our goal we will always be frustrated. The right has far more modest goals: At every turn, its members seek to advance their power and protect privilege. I've never seen the Republican right oppose a tax cut for the rich because it wasn't generous enough; I've never seen them oppose a set of loopholes for corporate lobbyists because one industry or another wasn't included. The left, on the other hand, too often prefers a glorious defeat to an incremental victory.

Begala also mans up and wears the hair shirt over his role in the 1993/1994 Clinton health insurance reform debacle.

I’m still hoping like hell that we can get a health care bill that contains a “public option” but if the Repulicant’s and the Blue Dogs kill it, let’s get every other damn thing we can, such as no “pre-existing condition” disqualifications, no dropping people when they get sick, an insurance exchange even without a public option (similar to what Massachusetts has), and so on. 

<sigh>

Steven Pearlstein weighs in on Repub. liars

I have been trying not to be too depressed and angry over the right-wing assault on the health care bill, and in a larger arena upon the President and all he stands for.  It’s hard.  These people are at best unpatriotic and at worst just plain evil. 

Well, I didn’t feel so much  like the Lone Ranger after I heard Stephanie Miller today reading from this column by Steven Pearlstein, hardly a flaming liberal.  This is really a terrific piece, which everyone should be required to read.

Just goes to show that even a 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner can get his undies in a bunch.

American Idiots

I have just about had it with these people who are showing up at the town hall meetings of Democrats and causing havoc, if not violence.  I’m a big defender of first amendment free speech, but these people are clearly hollering “fire” in the proverbial crowded theater. 

I don’t mean to be patronizing, but under any stretch of my imagination these people are idiots.   This was clearly illustrated when a beleaguered host-congressman, asked people who were on Medicare to raise their hands and well over half of the mouth-breathers raised their hands! 

This brings me to my purpose here:  check out the new book by Charles Pierce, “Idiot America.”  I have pasted in below the link to this book on the Amazon site.

  http://tinyurl.com/msfhfc

This link also includes a nice interview with the author, which you can read even if you don’t buy his book.  Here is a particular apropos excerpt from that interview,  which winds its way back to the  town hall chaos mentioned at the outset of this post:

Question: What is the difference between stupidity and glorifying ignorance?
Charles P. Pierce: Stupidity is as stupidity does, to quote a uniquely stupid movie. It has been with us always and always will be. But we moved into an era in which stupidity was celebrated if it managed to sell itself well, if it succeeded, if it made people money. That is “glorifying ignorance.” We moved into an era in which the reflexive instincts of the Gut were celebrated at the expense of reasoned, informed opinion. To this day, we have a political party—the Republicans—who, because it embraced a “movement of Conservatism” that celebrated anti-intellectualism is now incapable of conducting itself in any other way. That has profound political and cultural consequences, and the truly foul part about it was that so many people engaged in it knowing full well they were peddling poison.

Amen.

Stimulus, bailouts, and the like explained

My friend Josh Feldman pulled my coat to this.  I’m still laffin’

Frank Rich’s latest

Frank Rich is always superb, but this effort has got to be one of his best.  Truth rings out in every last sentence.

Well well, a well-written article

This is the stuff that I just lap up, having taught writing for many years, made my living writing in the legal world, and having a father who corrected my grammar whilst I was in the crib.  I have to admit, this is one I had not encountered before.  It’s a fun one to boot.

Triple play – no relatives allowed

I don’t quite know how I vibed on this the other day, but I was trying to remember the name of Mary Louise Parker (whom I just love) and I kept thinking of Sarah Jessica Parker, and then got myself to believing (in my old age) that Mary Louise was not a “Parker” and that I was totally confused. This then lead me to remember Posey Parker (absolutely great in “Best of Show” ). By then I was reeling and I had to run to the computer and look up each one to make sure the they all were really “Parker.” Indeed they are, and they are all unrelated.

Since then I have been racking my brain to come up with another example of three unrelated actors (male or female) with the same last name, who are all unrelated. No luck so far. Can you think of any?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Since original posting I have been corrected. It's "Parker Posey." See comments.

Nature rules

I am up at our place at Tahoe/Donner this weekend. On Friday, while taking the dog for a walk in the woods right behind our place, I noticed that one of the big pine trees had a big piece torn out of it, with other lacerations below that down the trunk. There were also pieces of the tree strewn below and a large piece hanging in an adjacent tree. I couldn’t figure out what happened.

On Saturday I was speaking with our neighbor, Norm, who lives up here full-time. His place is even closer to the tree than ours (only about 50 feet or so). He told me that about a week ago there had been a huge thunder storm right over our houses, and that lightning was striking in bolts in the darkness. He was in his house and saw a huge bolt strike the tree of which I am speaking in this post. He said the whole thing really humbled him. I went out this morning and took some pictures. Double-click on the image to enlarge it.

This is a close-up of the tree. You can see a large chunk of it hanging in the two trees to the right of the victim.

A long shot. Norms place is out of the picture just to the right. Another neighbor’s place is in the right foreground.

The moral? Don’t ever take nature for granted.

Health insurance controversy…

A great article by Jonathan Alter.  (With tongue firmly in cheek).