Busted

The walls are starting to cave in on former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's bid for the Republican Presidential nomination.

Back in the day when Rudy was running for reelection, a friend of mine -- the wife of a close buddy -- told me there was no way she was going to vote for "that fascist." Indeed, Rudy did his NYC clean-up with a lot of force, also his opening up to real estate developers, but was absolutely terrible on race relations (eventually alienating even those who had supported him earlier) and even tried to use his office to censor works of art and punish the museum for their noteworthy British "Sensation" show:

Giuliani asserted that he found a portrait of a black Virgin Mary splattered with elephant dung and photographs of genitalia to be the most offensive. Other works that outraged the mayor include a bust of a man made from his own frozen blood, the use of dead pigs and cows sliced from head to tail in a tank of formaldehyde, and a painting depicting the murder of children that took place in England in the 1960s.

Although threatening to withhold public funds for the Brooklyn Museum, he only succeeded in making British artists Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili et al the most famous contemporary artists.

So inside of the authoritarian, that one trait which most endears him to the average Republican voter, does it necessarily go hand-in-hand that he would cheat on his wife, and let her and her kids learn that he was divorcing her from the television set in Gracie Mansion?

It's a man who's only in it for himself, of course. His own ego. His sexual gratification. His yearning for power.

Hence no surprise that, while still married to second wife Donna Hanover and engaging in an affair with eventual third wife Dr. Judith Nathan, he had people on the city tab squiring around his mistress like it was his own kingly taxi service, all on the public dime.

It's the same thing that took down NY State Comptroller and mayorial hopeful Alan Hevesi. It's a felony.

None of it any surprise. Rudy's fatal flaw is actual more about his legal background, and how he lies like the bad lawyers that make people hate all of 'em. He just says whatever he wants to bolster his rhetoric, like it's the College Republican club, a vicious advocate who cheats on the facts. Anything to win.

I'm guessing that since he was coming off a "rumored" longterm affair with his press secretary, Cristyne Lategano, imagining that much of their erotic time would have been spent alone in workplace settings, it was probably second nature to integrate his new affairlette into his official life and quarters. After all, he was a very busy man.

So what if maybe he made them build the terrorism command center, against expert recommendations, close enough to City Hall that he could go down there and shag with Dr. Nathan. Busy men have to be efficient with their time.

Giuliani isn't the first executive politician who thinks he's popular enough that he owns the city or the state enough to take liberties for personal pleasure. But what's been so dissonant during this run up to the GOP primaries is how flagrant he was with his amorality, yet it's gotten virtually no play among the party faithful. Media blackout, maybe. Narrative interference (Mr. 9/11), maybe. Willful self-delusion, certainly.

The key indicator to watch during this scandal is Fox News, run by Giuliani's very own ex-campaign manager, Roger Ailes. If they show people in the heartland giving up on Giuliani based on what they're learning about the real Rudy during these next few news cycles, his goose is cooked. But they'll be his staunchest hagiographers to the end.

Watch Rudy sink like a rock in the upcoming GOP polls. He was wearing badly last night in the Florida debate, and the party faithful are breathing a sigh of relief that Mike Huckabee appears ready for primetime.

All that's left is face-saving so he can duck back into the private sector and keep the brand intact enough to get clients. Expect him to drop out by March. New affair twelve months hence.

America's Mayor.

GOP Turning Point

I believe tonight's GOP debate, which neither I watched nor most of the electorate, is a turning point in the process. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is, I predict, about to get a huge influx of cash, much of it from evangelicals and fundamentalists, and will become the front-runner for the nomination coming out of the Iowa caucuses.

The Rudy & Mitt show is over, to a large degree because they ate each other. Giuliani is also cooked because of the Shaggate, that the NYC taxpayer paid for him to shag his future wife, Dr. Judith Nathanson. I'll be surprised if their marriage survives the coming train wreck of his candidacy.

The general news story is that this was the debate that drew blood. Andrew Sullivan calls it "Rove's Frankenstein Moment," when a Christian Bible studies bar was solidified for the Republican Party Presidential nominee (Pastor Huckabee wins that contest hands down). McCain took on Ron Paul for wanting out of Iraq but Paul gave as good as he got.

Kevin Drum live blogged here. Favorite line:

9:04 — McCain and Giuliani don't own a gun? What the hell kind of effete pussies are they?

Conservative boot-licking dope Fred Barnes calls it "Two Hours of Humiliation". Best line:

By my recollection, there were no questions on health care, the economy, trade, the S-chip children's health care issue, the "surge" in Iraq, the spending showdown between President Bush and Congress, terrorist surveillance, or the performance of the Democratic Congress.

But I think Eschaton's Thers sums it up best

Rice Party

I'll laud any U.S. Presidential efforts towards peace between Israeli and Palestinian factions in the Middle East, even Mister Bush's. And it's certainly better than nothing that he's got the Israeli Prime Minister and the head of the once vilified PLO agreeing to negotiate. However, like most sentient followers of Bushie behavior, I'll believe it when I see it that he's going to "devote himself to ending the six-decade conflict in the 14 months he has left in office."

Sure, he could use a Hail Mary Pass on his legacy. But he's going to have to do more than, as Keith Olbermann explained tonight, show up for a couple of hours for a photo op, mispronounce the names of the two men leading their peoples in negotiations, and not be able to say what his actual involvement is in "devoting himself" thus far.

President Bill Clinton, as some may remember, actually led the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during the twilight of his term. This time it's really Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's show, and one imagines she's hoping to make this her place in the history books, rather than failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks as National Security Advisor even though the memo was staring her in the face, lying to Congress, and enabling the Presidents Cheney and Bush to misdirect our war against al-Qaeda by invading Iraq and allowing the destruction of that country from the inside.

There is, of course, the question of a negotiation without including Hamas, which actually won the last democratic election in the Palestinian territories. 49 countries involved but no seat for them -- undoubtedly the Administration is hoping to marginalize them enough that they don't win any more elections over there.

All that being said, I can only hope that some sort of effective peace comes out of this. With various parts of the globe regionalizing economic power, it will hopefully be in the best interest of the regional Mideast countries to come together, somehow, someday.

With or without Mister Bush's direct help.

Speechless

The whole series, spearheaded somehow by director George Hickenlooper and featuring famous actors in black & white shorts supporting the Writers Guild of America in its strike for a fair contract, is awesome, and today's is the most fun, a compilation of actors set to music as they go and scrawl "Speechless".

Here's the list of actors in the video and participating whole-heartedly with their biggest business asset, their images, in the pro-union activism:

David Schwimmer, Kate Beckinsale, Chic Eglee, Susan Sarandon, Benito Martinez, Walton Goggins, Sean Penn, Richard Benjamin, Paula Prentiss, Paula Garces, Garry Marshall, Lizzy Caplan, Holly Hunter, John Amos, Gary Dourdan, Matthew Perry, Bill Hader, Robert Patrick, James Lemar, Joshua Jackson, Matthew Modine, Bill Macy, Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000), Rosanna Arquette, Jill Kushner, Chazz Palminteri, Cch Pounder, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Christine Lahti, Eva Longoria, Patricia Clarkson, Amy Ryan, Frances Fisher, Justine Bateman, Jason Bateman, Ed Asner, Nicolette Sheridan, Felicity Huffman, America Ferrera, Judith Light, Rebecca Romijn, Ana Ortiz, Ashley Jensen, Mark Indelicato, Tony Plana, Freddy Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, Christopher Gorham, Michael Urie, Laura Linney, Alan Cumming, Michael Weatherly, Michael Jace

Love seeing my faves from The Shield in there! It's all very iconic and sharp and strong. The writers strike has produced much better agitprop than anyone must have expected. I guess the writers can control the means of their own production. After all, the most successful of them in TV become executive producers.

You can find all of the videos on emerging Internet doyenne Nikki Fink's Deadline Hollywood Daily blog. They're all interesting -- Laura Linney, Felicity Huffman & Bill Macy, Sean Penn, Holly Hunter etc etc. Personal faves have to include Jeff Garlin (#4) because's he's so darned cute at the end, and elder statesmen Hollywoodians Richard Benjamin & Paula Prentiss (#2) -- she's particularly adorable, even as she seems to have a cast on her right arm. He & She, anyone? And Andre Benjamin (#7) is great to look at as he speaks Martian.

Here's to a speedy, quality deal between the writers and the production entities. Everyone knows there is money enough for all.

Why else would anybody be working in Hollywood?

Prescience

From the June 16, 2001 White House Joint Press Conference transcript:

I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue.

There was no kind of diplomatic chit-chat, trying to throw each other off balance. There was a straightforward dialogue. And that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship. I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him. (Laughter.)

That was the Joint Press Conference by President Bush and Russian Federation President Putin.

There was no kind of diplomatic chit-chat. No trying to throw each other off- balance. Because that would have been the tactic, you see. Putin's only tactic.

The "Nickname Prezdent" proves once again that he is our nation's greatest judge of character:

On a second day of rallies against President Vladimir V. Putin, riot police officers aggressively broke up a protest in St. Petersburg on Sunday, detaining numerous marchers, including two prominent politicians.

The unrest came a day after a similar event in Moscow ended with the arrest of Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and opposition leader, whose coalition, Other Russia, has declared that Mr. Putin is turning Russia into a dictatorship. A judge sentenced Mr. Kasparov to five days in jail.

Similar demonstrations across Russia this weekend, a week before parliamentary elections, were either banned by regional authorities or squelched by the police.

Putin, Musharraf, it's all just friendly fascism. This is what they do.

Kasparov was recently on the U.S. TV circuit hawking his new book and giving a frank reality check on the growth of Putin's repressive, power aggrandizing moves.

Fortunately, the Cheney/Bush White House is responding:

"We are troubled that Garry Kasparov and other leaders of the opposition have been arrested and detained," said White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Once more time:

Heckuva job, Bushie.

The Main Argument

I'm sure I'd be as righteously vindictive as anyone should a criminal hurt one of my own family members, but in philosophical terms, in moral terms, the one reason I've always ended up against the Death Penalty is fall conviction.

The New York Times has a powerful piece on one man, Jeffrey Deskovic, who was freed a little over a year ago for a murder/rape that DNA evidence proved he had not committed (and which nailed the actually perpetrator). What's so heartbreaking is that Deskovic, 34, was falsely convicted when he was a shy kid of 17. After seven hours of questioning, during which he was browbeaten that he had failed his lie detector test -- a ruinous lie itself by some lawman who no doubt wanted an easy, face-saving solve -- and promised psychiatric treatment rather than incarceration, the poor kid (age 16 at the time) signed a false confession.

Deskovic missed growing into the real world during the crucial formative young adult years, a whopping seventeen of them. He's doing as many speaking engagements as he can book, telling his story, wearing a suit, advocating for Death Penalty abolishment. No one is exempt from false conviction, he says. But he's clearly having a hard re-entry, feels he's still in prison mentally, misses the routine, and worries most that he'll wake up and release will have been a dream.

The a/v slide show tells the story best. There's also an interactive feature with a slew of cases and voices. The fact is that the stolen decades and inculcated horrors can never be compensated, no matter the size of the settlement or the publicity of the exoneration. But it's better than being executed for false conviction.

The government has a fundamental responsibility to remove those who commit grave crimes from society, for both individual safety and the health of society as a whole. But execution?

I guess I ultimately don't care if it's a deterrent or not, although I understand the value as a bargaining chip for law enforcement interrogators. I don't think it is moral for the state to put someone to death, but there's a number of grown adults who have deserved it. I can't imagine the feeling I'd have were, God forbid, someone still alive, even in life imprisonment, who had killed, worst of all, one of my boys.

When Robert Chambers was convicted in a plea deal of killing Jennifer Levin in NYC back in the 1980's, her father said in no uncertain terms that of course he wanted to kill Chambers, but he was a sane man living in civil society. Chambers was released a few years ago but clearly there was nothing to reform, as he's been in and out of jail on drug dealing charges.

It's a shame that scum like Chambers get to reemerge into our society. One expects it won't be for long, hopefully without taking anyone else down with him again.

But it's worth it for every single falsely convicted citizen like Jeffrey Deskovic to go free.

More Thanks

Here's a huge one -- a cruise ship hits the Antarctic ice, goes down, and yet everyone is rescued (the anti-Titanic):

A Canadian cruise ship struck submerged ice off Antarctica and began sinking, but all 154 passengers and crew, Americans and Britons among them, took to lifeboats and were plucked to safety by a passing cruise ship.

The entire vessel finally slipped beneath the waves Friday evening, about 20 hours after the predawn accident near Antarctica's South Shetland Islands, the Chilean navy said.

No injuries were reported although passengers reportedly endured subfreezing temperatures for several hours as they waited in bobbing lifeboats for a Norwegian liner that took them to a Chilean military base in the region.

The New York Times has a more moment-to-moment account (and some blowaway pics):

In the lecture hall, they were told that water was creeping in through a fist-size hole punched into the ship’s starboard. As it flooded the grinding engine room, the power failed. The ship ceased responding.

“We all got a little nervous when the ship began to list sharply, and the lifeboats still hadn’t been lowered,” John Cartwright, a Canadian, told CBC radio.

About 1:30 a.m., the passengers climbed down ladders on the ship’s side into open lifeboats and inflatable craft. They bobbed for some four hours in the rough seas and biting winds as the sun rose and the day broadened, sandwiched between the 20-degree air and the nearly freezing waters. Their ship traced loose circles in the steely ocean.

And then a research ship and a Norwegian cruise liner that had heard the distress call approached.

I've been looking for video but so far just have this YouTube link to a sequenced slideshow. I know I'm not the only person who can get mesmerized by catastrophic events. All in all, it seems like a fitting capper to the Thanksgiving holiday.

That is, if your Thanksgiving wasn't in Baghdad.

Thankful

Over at Talking Points Memo there's a hilarious video collecting "Testimony We Give Thanks For" by the Cheney/Bush Administration officials who appeared in front of Congress over the past year, the first of Democratic control in twelve years. Disgraced ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is the star scumbag, but there's no shortage of forgetters and pretenders.

While crime in D.C. has gone up during Republican rule, i.e. in the Federal government with seemingly anything they've touched, it's actually decreased in NYC, and some credit should go to faux-Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg switched parties from Democratic to GOP in order to get a nomination (he was right that the NYC Dems would never nominate him) but he's led as a pragmatic, connective centrist, much more so than the self-myth of ex-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

So since I'm closing out a holiday family visit to the city, I'm grateful for these statistics from The New York Times:

New York City is on track to have fewer than 500 murders in 2007, by far the lowest amount in a 12-month period since reliable Police Department statistics became available in 1963.

But within the city’s official crime statistics is a perhaps even more striking figure: so far, with roughly half the killings analyzed, only 35 were found to be committed by strangers, a microscopic statistic in a city of 8.5 million.

That's right -- it's not so dangerous to visit anymore.

Let's hope this holds until we're safely on the plane and headed back to sunny Santa Monica.

Support

One thing we know about the Republican leadership in the Cheney/Bush White House: they sure know how to cudgel any opposition with the phrase, "Support the Troops."

That's the myth.

How does this Administration actually treat the valiant?:

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments. To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

Since this story went live there's been some ass-covering from the Pentagon, but it's not good enough:

From Rep. Jason Altmire:

I am heartened by Brigadier General Michael S. Tucker’s announcement of the Army’s policy that it will not ask for repayment of bonuses paid to those soldiers who are injured in the line of duty. However, I am disappointed that the policy does not go further by stating that wounded soldiers will also receive the remaining balance of future bonus payments. It is preposterous for our government to have a policy that says that a soldier who has sustained serious injuries in the field of battle has not fulfilled his or her service obligation.

Y'know, every four years the GOP accuses the Democratic Presidential candidate of calling for a class war, and then something like this pops up and I think, isn't that war already on?

Balancing the Federal budget on the backs of broken service men and women instead while allowing Blackwater and Halliburton to pillage the Treasury, not to mention the outrageous oil industry subsidies?

Support the Troops! Support Our Troops!

Here's how to really support 'em.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Devilish

It's late and I'm short on both time and wakefulness, but as the mega-long weekend approaches there's an opportunity to see some movies, so I don't want to wait too long to recommend Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. It's a one-way ticket to damnation, something in the air that also rides through No Country for Old Men, but in some ways it makes the Coen Bros film feels like a trip to Disneyland. It's that dark.

One of the more astonishing aspects of BTDKYD is that the director, Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, Serpico, Prince of the City, Twelve Angry Men, The Anderson Tapes, Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Pawnbroker, Network...need I go on?), is 83 years old, having won his lifetime achievement Oscar three years ago at 80. There's none of the slackening of vision that often comes with "geriatric" filmmakers, no weakening of shot rigor or logic. Taking a script by newcomer Kelly Masterson and reportedly changing the lead characters from friends to brothers, he's made a Greek tragedy wrapped up as a tightly-wound crime thriller. Think Agamemnon set in NYC and Westchester; Oedipus noir.

The basic story is of two brothers, one apparently successful, the other just barely hanging on, who decide to stick up their parents' mall-located jewelry store to pay off various debts. The heist goes horribly wrong and the moral conundrums pile on. The story is told in fits of flashbacks and flash-forwards, but while such a narrative gimmick may have provided the delight of its own cleverness in earlier pictures (Reservoir Dogs comes to mind), in this instance it feels maybe a little less obviously clever and more a necessary method for conveying the moral structure of the story. That is to say, fractured at best.

The cast is brilliant and unexpected. Philip Seymour Hoffman is brilliant in the lead, the dominant brother, his trademark technique of smiling at some sort of inward, private joke (the kind that conveys his intelligence and draws one closer in hopes of being let in on it) is here perversely charismatic, a man who has all the moves figures out if only they'd behave. Ethan Hawke is also great as his brother, conveying the endless panic of a man caught in a life-changing plan gone bad, his conscience like an endless earthquake. Albert Finney, who interestingly played famed Agatha Christie detective Hercule Poirot in Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express, is the missing motivational piece as the father, and Marisa Tomei once again demonstrates her commitment and skill, making my movie-going companion wonder why she's not used more often.

Movies like this one and Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan have a particularly nasty edge for cash-strapped or even cash-conscious yuppies, and it's what makes their knives particularly sharp. They're modern cautionary tales, not distanced enough to make the medicine go down easily, hence more courageous than a lot of other films. It was a sold-out Sunday night audience in Brooklyn for the Lumet picture, and while there wasn't a lot of feel-good applause at the end, there was that good kind of silence I used to remember from well-made, honest, powerful dramatic pix I saw as a kid.

Back when Sidney Lumet was in his heyday.

Yes, Torture

Men of amelioration of torture like Rudy Giuliani would like to blur the discussion of how the Cheney/Bush Administration has lowered our country into international barbarism by instituting, for the first time in U.S. history, the notorious practices of the Spanish Inquisition.

Waterboarding. Is that like snowboarding?

Or waterskiing?

It turns out, it isn't. In fact, it's proper name is either "Controlled Drowning" or, most accurately, "Induced Drowning."

If you don't think the embrace or even consideration of Induced Drowning as an interrogative technique isn't grounds for Presidential candidate disqualification, then read this thorough description of the vile practice by Hunter at DailyKos.

WARNING: This post sickened me. It delineates something that happens to an accidentally drowning human only once but, in the hands of torture operatives like ours, can be prolonged in such a way that it happens to the torture subject, the (yes) victim, over and over and over again for hours:

Compare this with the crude techniques of torturers: cutting off a thumb or finger is repeatable, at most, ten times. Drowning can be repeated indefinitely, or at least until the information is obtained, the interrogator deems the sessions worthless, or the prisoner accidentally dies.

I read it like watching a blood-freezing, clinical description of a butchering car accident, mainly to know exactly what it is that I thought I was against.

Now I'm sure.

And remember, these techniques were originally used to bring about false confessions, because they were the confessions the brutal ruling powers needed. Hence the whole section on how torture subjects give false information, and the need for additional violent punishment (not specified) due to that common result.

Hell, I'd lie to stop the assault. Wouldn't you?

After reading the post it became clear to me that there was only one fair answer to the likes of Giuliani, "Double Guantanamo" Romney, Richard Bruce Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush and all those who would seek to enlist the darkest and most sadistic among us to perform this perverse and godless act.

They must voluntarily submit to 24 hours of Induced Drowning interrogation themselves.

C'mon, Blackwater.

The Real Game

It's all about the dollar. There's arguments that the Iranian oil bourse, going live with a new oil exchange based on a currency other than the dollar, i.e. the euro, is a pipe dream of undermining U.S. currency hegemony in the world, but then again, we (Bush & Cheney & their fellow Republicans) have done it all ourselves.

To the point that seven (7) countries are considering abandoning the dollar.

But if the world runs on oil, then problem with destabilization of the dollar can have wide-ranging effects. Sure, Ahmadinejad and Chavez have their own political agendas to push, but you never want anybody calling your currency, "a worthless piece of paper."

Writing off a column by economist Paul Krugman, European economist Richard Baldwin writes:

The only reason to predict a sudden dollar plunge is if we believe today's capital flows are driven by investor myopia. That the markets are due for what Krugman calls a 'Wile E. Coyote' moment – a reference to the Warner Brothers’ cartoon where a greedy, shortsighted coyote chases a roadrunner off a cliff but doesn’t start falling until he looks down and realizes he’s left solid ground. Up until this 'Wile E. Coyote' moment, his belief that he’s on solid ground prevents him from falling. For investors in dollars, the 'Wile E. Coyote' moment comes when they realise that their expectations are inconsistent with any feasible adjustment path.

In this instance, "double bubble" isn't a flavor-packed alternative to Bazooka Joe.

Writers

Support writers. It's as simple as that.

Daily Show version here.

More Balls?

That's the question the electorate has been asking about the Democrats ever since Clinton the 1st left office.

For some reason, they seem to be driving back into Cajoneville at the end of this week. Even The New York Times has noticed it.

To me the big news is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is not allowing that chamber to fully recess over the Thanksgiving holiday, in order to deprive President Cheney/Bush from making yet another assholic recess appointment.

Next in line is my district's Congressman, I'm proud to say, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who's just nailed a Bush State Department Inspector General, Howard Krongard, who has just perjured himself regarding his brother, Alvin “Buzzy” Krongard, being on the Blackwater Board of Advisors. Since Blackwater is in deep doodoo from killing unarmed Iraqi civilians with impunity, and the Howard's job includes oversight of Blackwater, it sure looks like the now classic Bush/Cheney Corrupt Cronyism we've come to expect, albeit after a lull.

Operation Ass Save: Buzzy just bailed on Blackwater.

The lull dates back to the resignation of disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. A legal defense fund just happened to open up for Mr. Gonzales (will it scare up as much cash as Scooter's?) and maybe it had something to do with this:

New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici called Iglesias to see about getting indictments against state Democratic officials before the 2006 election. McKay said it's clear from testimony that Gonzales met with Domenici and other New Mexico Republicans -- and with the president -- about the fraud case there.

"It's apparent that he had a conversation with the president about David Iglesias and David Iglesias was fired six weeks later," he said. "There was real live investigation and the Republicans wanted the indictment out in time to help them in the election, and Iglesias said 'no' and they fired him.

"Now if all of that's true and the attorney general was aware of that when he fired David Iglesias, then he has some 'splainin' to do -- and probably in front of a grand jury."

The Democratic candidates are getting some traction at the end of this week. Hillary proved that hers is bigger in the Las Vegas debate (C'mon, lucky number seven!) even though Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is acting like such a gentleman, raising money off one of his supporters calling Clinton a "bitch" to his face, ha-ha-ha.

John Edwards marched with the WGA in Burbank, and even ex-Presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) is getting into the act, facing down the cowardly T. Boone Pickens, Texas corporate predator and Swift Boat funder.

More balls? Really?

How about Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA):

The Bush administration has taken historically unprecedented steps in its assertions of executive privilege and authority. For instance, the Vice President has fought over relatively modest requests to disclose information such as with whom he consulted when setting the Administration's energy policy. The Vice President's office, during a confrontation with the National Archives over executive branch records, even declared itself an entity outside of the executive branch with enhanced powers to resist the public's right to know about its actions.

These assertions of executive privilege have wide-ranging implications for both Congress' day-to-day oversight of the Bush administration and for efforts to hold the President and Vice President accountable.

That is why I introduced the Executive Branch Prosecutions Act. This legislation would suspend the statute of limitations for crimes committed while the president and vice president hold office. Federal law currently suspends the statute of limitations for crimes related to national security. That suspension should extend to any crime committed by the President or Vice President while in office.

Could it be an outbreak of sanity?

I mean, what could be saner than getting serious about impeaching Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney? "Events sure have changed the situation..."

Oh...and guess who's returning to be honored at the White House...?

Unimmunity

I can't say I have high expectations for how it will fare in the Senate, but the FISA bill made it out of the Judiciary Committee day without immunity for those telecoms which knowingly violated the law for Cheney/Bush.

It was a 100% party-line vote, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein getting the message and reversing her support for immunity earlier this week. I had let her know what I thought by email, as her phone lines were jammed.

Seems the main metaphor these days:

Hold the line.

Pro-

There's two new ads up from the Center for American Progress at Crooks and Liars, essentially re-introducing the Progressive "brand" to America, for the first time via television.

Casting the yet-to-be-smeared term Progressivism as the antidote to Conservatism -- rather than Liberalism vs. Conservatism -- the ads list major advancements such as Women's Suffrage, the National Park system, the 40-hour work week, Civil Rights, Social Security and the New Deal as successes benefiting all Americans bitterly opposed by Conservative forces, and then links up to today's major battlefields of national health care and protection from corporate exploitation.

There's two more ads I "get" but like a lot less, as they're already cliched parodies of Apples "Mac guy/PC guy" ads, but they're at least on point and mildly amusing, if borderline cheap shots.

What I love about all of this is the focus on modern branding, and anyone who gets too purist on me can eat it, because if we don't do it we don't win -- the other side already knows all these lessons, witness Karl Rove's message machine. And it's also crucial to define it to ourselves so it's not just an instinct or tendency or feeling.

But a modern brand campaign won't be enough in and of itself, progressives.

Get ready to be slimed, and I hope the Center for American Progress already has their plans in place for brand defense.

Suspensed

Tell me something. What's the most you've ever lost on a coin toss?

I've read the Cormac McCarthy book, certainly his most accessible to then, that the Coen Brothers made into their latest release, No Country for Old Men, and read most of the screenplay, so I was prepared for the crazy violence, the Texas desert and, most of all, the un-Hollywood ending, so when I was watching it in packed Century City AMC on Sunday night at 8:05pm I was not only caught in the relentless suspense of the story, at the same time I was thinking about how to describe the work.

At one level, it's simply a perfect literary adaptation, true to the source material in both plotting and spirit, true down to the offbeat, ruminative ending, bringing it alive in jackpot images not unlike the successful adaptation of Tolkien by Jackson.

At another level it's a sterling set of actors, roles, performances, not a weak link in the bunch, with high-wattage bigscreen performers including Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Steven Root and, best of all, Javier Bardem as the ruthlessly principled boogie man, Anton Chigurh.

Sure, the picture has a lived-in authenticity while still delivering the crystalline Coen Bros imagery, by way of DP Roger Deakins. Yes, the level of control is astounding, yet the performances seem fresh and three-dimensional. Yeah, maybe the ending is striving for a certain literary quality that we can debate whether it merits.

What's really at the core of the movie's appeal, and credit McCarthy for laying out all the brutal beats in his own semi-elliptical style in the source material, is the suspense. As one NYC friend and reader wrote me after seeing the movie pre-release, "them Coen boys are badasses."

I can't recall the last time I saw such detailed playing out of extended suspense, essentially one long chase stretching across all three acts. The audience I saw it with was completely rapt, with groans and expletives and inappropriate laughter at all the right moments (okay, maybe that was me with most of the inappropriate laughter). The Coens are so at the top of their game, the lessons of Blood Simple and Fargo echoing throughout their unimpeachable command, that they easily win the heir to Alfred Hitchcock mantle with this one.

It's Hitchcock with shotguns. Sawed-off shotguns. And a cattle puncher.

Beside the cliche infusion of L.A. cinema geeks/unbearable Coen fanipshers (there was a tiny group in the audience, middle left, who applauded when the credits rolled, one member endlessly, that was completely inappropriate to the way the Bros leave us), I realized that the rest of the crowd is there not so much for "quirkiness" or "Art"; we came because this looked like a serious Americana noir, and we know the Coens know how to deliver on that.

So in the middle of this essentially nihilistic movie I remember the quote Fellini made about Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, another masterpiece suspense picture with a dangling, deliberately unsatisfying ending -- he called it, "An apocalyptic tone-poem."

This one as well. Those critics seeing a larger metaphor talk about the apocalyptic undertones to the story, the way Chigurh represents and whole never wave of future violence tearing apart the old world (set in 1980) or maybe our terroristic world of today. What I love about the movie is that it allows that the violence is actually ancient an reoccurring, per Chigurh's lopsided Buster Brown haircut and Jones' visit to an old, disabled lawman towards the end of the picture.

But at some level it's an existential art d'object, a Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) screening, stills of running, bloody, at night, or fishing in air ducts with tentpoles, or standing in by the counter in the filling station, all Warholized on the wall. It's an invitation to look deeper and the possibility that nothing's there, that it's the surface you have to watch, for clues and warnings, and god-bless quick reflexes.

McCarthy himself seems twice inspired by Sam Peckinpah movies, with Blood Meridian like a "Mirror, Mirror" version of The Wild Bunch, and No Country echoing Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. In the Bros hands, it's a brilliant combination. Long stretches of Alfred laced with startling explosions of Sam, then a couple John Ford-class speeches by Jones, who's arguably the protagonist of the piece.

When the lights go up, the movie's still with you. Stop clapping, asshat, because this one's bigger than the self-importance of your self-valorizing opinion.

Ethan Coen turned 50 this year, and the team of he and his older brother, Joel, is here to stay; the biggest professionals on the lot, hitting a peak. What I think they're reaching for here, that maybe they weren't fully feeling before, is a real mortality. Still young men relative to McCarthy, they deliver his darkening vision of aging and passing beautifully. It gives their characters, which appear as seamless additions to the Coen cannon, a weight that hasn't been so certifiable before.

That's right. They may have made more than their share of classics already, but with this one they've grown up.

Ethan & Joel Coen have made their first 100% movie for adults.

Veterans Day Blues

The worst Veterans Days are always the ones where there's a war going on. And while all wars seem to engender some degree of patriotic censorship, even the ones going well, the chaotic banning of anti-Iraq War vets from V-Day parades is just, well, un-American:

Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out were prevented from joining the annual parade down Atlantic Avenue and restricted to a nearby parking lot, officials said. Organizers said the groups were trying to push a political agenda at an event to honor veterans. Earlier this week, the Veterans Day Parade Committee rejected their applications to participate, according to the Long Beach Press- Telegram. "This is not a political event, this is a time to come and just say thank you to all veterans," said Long Beach City Councilman Val Lerch, who also was on the parade committee.

Here's Val. I'm hoping he means well, but you just don't know these days, with such a dissent-averse rightwing as we have now. The partisans in charge.

Keith Olbermann had on a very compelling Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), where they covered the stifling of veteran free speech, the 1 in 4 stats of Iraq & Afghanistan war vets currently homeless, and a recent case story in the L.A. Times by a photographer who got closer than usual to his Marlboro Marine.

Oh, and they cover Bush not pausing in his war council to attend the annual wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetary.

Meanwhile our very own Admiral William Fallon, head of Central Command, says:

None of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and around and around that any day now there will be another war which is just not where we want to go.

Getting Iranian behaviour to change and finding ways to get them to come to their senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book.

Getting our government to change its behavior is not even possible until January 20, 2009.

It's enough to drive one to absinthe.

Finally?

Did Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) just turn his sagging campaign around?

On Saturday night in Iowa, at a fabled event called the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, with six Democratic Presidential candidates giving speeches, Obama got his best reviews since his big splash at the 2004 Democratic Convention, i.e. MyDD.com:

What I liked most about it was that Obama finally seemed to find the right balance between being a unity candidate, someone who can bring both parties together, and throwing anti-Republican red meat to the base while at the same time actually expressing pride in being a Democrat. Last night, Obama may have given his very first Democratic primary speech of the campaign. About time, Senator...

Andrew Sullivan has a collection of raves.

If you 're really interested, you can watch the whole 20:49 here. Big winning drive:

Our moment is now!

I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years refighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don’t want to pit red America against blue America. I want to be the President of the United States of America.

And if those Republicans come at me with the same fear-mongering and swift-boating that they usually do, then I will take them head-on. Because I believe the American people are tired of fear, and tired of distractions…we can make this election not about fear, but about the future, and that will not be just a Democratic victory, that will be an American victory, a victory that America needs right now!

Legitimately stirring stuff. If Obama really has a chance to win the nomination, I may have to rethink my current voting plan...

Dirty Water

What the hell is going on in San Francisco Bay?

Emergency officials more than doubled the number of ships and cleanup workers attacking the massive oil spill throughout the Bay Area on Saturday - while hundreds of frustrated citizens who tried to help were turned away from contaminated beaches and so-called training sessions.

The armada of governmental and private boats on the water either searching for oily messes or mopping them up grew from 11 to 46, the Coast Guard reported, and the number of people working cleanup shifts increased from 300 to 770. Three helicopters did flyovers all day to pinpoint the worst contamination spots.

"I assure you, that's not where we're stopping," said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Craig Bone, who for days has been fending off criticism of his agency's response to the crisis. "In the next few days you'll see hundreds more people arriving on these beaches."

Yep, another coastal oil spill. And it's really, really bad:

The 65,131-ton ship hit the second tower west of Yerba Buena Island at 8:30 a.m., causing a gash more than 100 feet long in the ship's hull and releasing 58,000 gallons of fuel into the bay. The resulting oil slick has spread as far north as Tomales Bay, fouling or killing more than 100 birds.

It was the first time a commercial ship had hit the bridge and is the worst oil spill in the bay since 1996.

Immediately after the accident, Capt. Peter McIsaac, president of the San Francisco Bar Pilots, boarded a boat and headed for the Cosco Busan, then just off Treasure Island. He said oil was pouring out of a gash in the ship.

"I've never seen oil going into the water like that," he said.

The geography there is damning. They've got protective booms coming out of Chrissy Field, for godsake. The most beautiful jewel of bridge over water in a U.S. city, now longterm besmirched.

At Daily Kos, catfish has the latest on how everyone is trying to volunteer, but the Coast Guard and other feds are arresting people trying to help, while Rome burns.

Take a look at this overhead view of the Bay, with the variations in water color clearly indicating that this breach, being at the Oakland Bay Bridge on the east side of the city, is a total horrorshow

The Cosco Busan struck a tower of the Bay Bridge on Wednesday morning in dense fog, creating a long slash along the ship that allowed bunker fuel to spill into the water.

The Coast Guard initially called the spill minor but later realized the amount of fuel was greater than first thought. Environmentalists criticized the Coast Guard for not notifying other agencies fast enough and for being slow to put inflatable booms on the water's surface to prevent oil from spreading...

...Tides carried the bunker fuel towards the Pacific Ocean under the Golden Gate Bridge and people near the spill on Wednesday reported headaches and nausea. The spill reached the famed former prison island of Alcatraz and as far north as Marin County, environmentalists said.

Someone has to run against Big Oil, and I'm guessing it might be Edwards, but why doesn't someone just do it? Obscene profits, massive subsidies, life-threatening energy source who's dwindling is causing wars.

Remember the Exxon Valdez? It's still not over:

Many people remember that the Exxon Valdez tanker went aground and gushed 200,000 gallons of oil a minute into the waters of Alaska's Prince William Sound. And that its captain allegedly was drunk. It is harder to recall just how long ago that was — March 1989, more than 18 years ago.

It was the largest oil spill in the United States. It dominated the news and became part of the national culture.

But in the United States every really big story happens twice — first the thing itself, and then the trial.

The Exxon Valdez trial occurred five years later, in federal district court in Alaska. The plaintiffs were fishermen and natives claiming that their livelihoods had been destroyed by the spill, and the principal defendant was Exxon, which owned the now-immortal tanker.

It was a jury trial. It lasted for months. And then the 12 jurors deliberated and debated. And decided. They came in with a punitive damage award of $5 billion against Exxon. (Compensatory damages of $286 million had been awarded in another phase of the trial.)

That decision was on Sept. 16, 1994. Exxon quickly filed an appeal on the punitive award.

That was more than 13 years ago.

And for those 13 years, the case has remained in the seamless limbo known as appeal. It is as if time stopped. The matter went to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and there it stayed, shrouded by mystery and fog, like Skull Island. From time to time small fleets of litigants tried to approach and were themselves enveloped in the eerie mists.

Many plaintiffs died. No matter. Advantage moved from one side to the other, with no end in sight.

Then last week, the fog thickened. The Supreme Court granted certiorari, and so those plaintiffs still clinging to life will have to keep on waiting to see whether they get their money — the pot is now about $4.7 billion, because during the appeals process the sum was lowered but interest has kicked in.

Eighteen years later and still not paid. Who says you can't buy justice?

I expect to be up in SF later this month, will try to get a look.

Just heartbreaking.