Stooper Tuesday

At this point, could anybody care less who wins the GOP Presidential nomination? This is, anyone besides the candidates and campaigns themselves? I read today that Newt's due for a second or third surge, that the Republican establishment is expecting to coalesce around Mitt after he takes Ohio and most of the states today, that Santorum wins two plus maybe Ohio and it all slogs on.

For what?

These guys are boobs, blusterers and cowards. A few weeks ago I was sure Santorum was going to steal Mitt's nomination, that not only was he the "real" conservative for the party to come home to, but that he was the first professional candidate amongst the Not-Mitts. Turns out his 12th Century views on contraception and his bile towards fellow Catholic JFK were evidence that he's just as much of an amateur as Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman, Herman Caine, etc.

The fact is that today's GOP has jumped the shark and become America's first major religious party. Thanks to Ronald Reagan's successful courting of the religious right into the party, and George W. Bush increasing their power in 2000, the party is now in the thrall of those who do not believe in the Founding Fathers' separation of church and state. Per Howard Fineman:

"There has never been anything like it in our history," said Princeton historian Sean Wilentz. "'God's Own Party' now really is just that."

....

The American Faith Party is a doctrinally schizophrenic coalition bound by faith in the power of biblical values to create a better country; by fear of federal power, especially that of the federal courts and President Barack Obama and his administration; and by fear of rising Islamic political power around the world.

The AFP unites Catholic traditionalists who especially revere the papal hierarchy; evangelical, fundamentalist and charismatic Protestants; some strands of Judaism, including those ultra-orthodox on social issues and Jews for whom an Israel with biblical borders and a capital in Jerusalem is a spiritual imperative, not just a matter of diplomatic balance in the Middle East; and Mormons, who ironically aren't regarded as Christians by most other members of the coalition. Romney, a devout Mormon, is their man.

The four still-standing Republican presidential candidates are all AFP members in good standing on most of the party's key agenda items. The GOP platform is sure to feature all of them, including opposition to abortion and gay marriage; measures to counter what Republicans regard as attacks on religious liberty; expressions of fear about the extent of federal power, especially from the courts, on social and medical issues; libertarian economic policies that limit regulation and taxes (for religious conservatives and economic libertarians share a common enemy: government); denunciations of Islamic political power; and support for Israel. (Ron Paul is a dissenter on the last two points.)

All the candidates, including Paul, adhere to the AFP's central operational tenet: that professing your own faith -- once verboten in American politics -- is a necessary precondition to being taken seriously.

In direct violation of the U.S. Constitution, one South Carolina county, the GOP just tried requiring a Purity Pledge to run for office in their party:

The Republican Party in a small, conservative South Carolina county expects its candidates to lower taxes. They also expect them to not watch porn, be faithful to their spouses and not have sex outside of marriage.

The Laurens County Republican Party originally decided that anyone who wanted to run for office with the GOP’s blessing would have to sign a pledge and be approved by party leaders. They backed off that idea after the state party told them it was illegal and the pledge received international attention, becoming another cultural issues nightmare for Republicans.

They're becoming America's Muslim Brotherhood, Taliban, Sharia party. Let them nominate an avowed atheist for President and I'll rescind that sentence.

Their positions are damaging to women's health and world peace. We have a very calm, sensible, strong and stable President right now -- what some would call conservative values -- who himself is telling the screaming spoilt brats competing for the GOP nomination to put up or shut up:

The contrast couldn't be clearer -- we have a President much more gracious than he probably opponent this November:

If I were a Republican, I'd just say, Let Mitt Win. Let him and his supporters, the wealthy or Mormon, spend all the money this Presidential cycle to keep the GOP operatives fed. If he beats Obama it'll be a surprise (and a disaster) so if someone has to be the fall guy this Fall, let it be the richest man in the race.

And, with any luck, rinse and repeat in 2016.

Douchy

Willard Mitt Romney was a bishop, a lay pastor in his church, something he brings up to discuss abortion on the campaign trail. For being a Mormon missionary, he received a deferment from military service during the Vietnam War.

So my question is, as a man of religious faith, is this his idea of morality? :

"Close them. Turn 'em off. Even some you like," he said. "You might say, 'I like the National Endowment for the Arts.' I do," Romney said. "I like PBS. We subsidize PBS. Look, I'm going to stop that. I'm going to say that PBS is going to have to have advertisement."

"We're not going to kill Big Bird," Romney said. "But Big Bird is going to have advertisements. Alright?"

Alright? Because we all agree that educating children always goes so much better with advertisements? Not alright, Willard.

Mitt's too old to have watched Sesame Street as a kid. In fact, electing him would turn back the leadership of our country a generation, to the Clinton/Bush generation. So maybe he just doesn't get it because, like so much else, he's above it by age and wealth.

Sometimes I wonder if Mitt is not just embarked upon the greatest single performance art piece of our times. If he can flip-flop so easily, if he is indeed the hollow man everyone believes he is, if he's say or do anything to get elected and we're not getting real principles, and if enough people understand that but vote for him anyway hoping the massive tea-pandering is with a wink, then he's doing a better act than Stephen Colbert or Sasha Baron Cohen.

If not, then he's just kind of douchy.

If you want to see his whole pander, here you go:



And watching this clip, as always with Willard, I find it difficult to believe American will vote to see this man representing America on TV for the next four years.

The Second Coming of George W. Bush

I'll be shocked if Texas Governor Rick Perry is not the next Republican nominee for President. He's W. without having been born with a silver spoon. In fact, he used to be a Democrat. But now he's a hard-right Christianist anti-tax, crony capitalist ideologue with Reagan's hair but youth and Texas. The question is whether the U.S.A. electorate is ready to make the same disastrous mistake they made just 12 and 8 years ago with another hard-right Christianist anti-tax, crony capitalist ideologue, also a low-grade achiever at college, also with a killer political instinct, also chronically underestimated but great at winning elections.

It chills me to say this, because so many of my friends on the Left are cynical about President Barack Obama. At least it's not about corruption, but they're pissed that he's not acting more pissed, that he's not winning the tax battle and budget battle, which means the jobs battle -- since GOPconomics are proven to be disastrous in actual practice...hence the collapse of the system just in time for Obama to get elected on a high tide of idealism.

So I wish they'd consider this trenchant analysis of Obama operating in the context of the ongoing Civil Rights struggle by an Andrew Sullivan reader:

How does Obama break the iron unity of the GOP opposition to assemble a governing majority in the US Congress? ...

Obama acts entirely within the tradition of mainstream African American political strategy and tactics. The epitome of that tradition was the non-violence of the Civil Rights Movement, but goes back much further in time. It recognizes the inequality of power between whites and blacks. Number one: maintain your dignity. Number two: call your adversaries to the highest principles they hold. Number three: Seize the moral high ground and Number four: Win by winning over your adversaries, by revealing the contradiction between their own ideals and their actions. It is one way that a oppressed people struggle.

...

Honestly, I have been reminded more than once in the last few months of those brave college students sitting in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter, back in the day. Obama sits at that table, like they did at the counter. Boehner and McConnell and Cantor clown around, mugging for the camera, competing to ritually humiliate Obama, to dump ketchup on his head.

I don’t think those students got their sandwiches the first day, but they won in the end.

...

If white progressives understood much about the politics of the African American struggle in the United States, we would see Obama in the context of that struggle and understand him better. And you don’t have to be African American to know something about the history of the African American struggle. The books and the testimony is there. It’s not all freedom songs. But you have to be convinced that it is something that can teach you something you don’t already know.

The Help is seeming timely, middlebrow as it might be, popularizing the Civil Rights reading of our recent and ongoing history.

If Perry wins the nomination and Romney accepts having been swooped on, joins as VP, it unites the GOP. It could be Pawlenty as Veep, quitting the race the day after he comes in third in the Ames Iowa Straw Poll, the day after Perry enters, never has to face him in a debate and embarrass himself further. I don't know if Mitt could accept the demotion -- maybe run Treasury? -- so my money is on Perry/Pawlenty vs. Obama/Biden.

It'll be much more racially charged than against Romney and even McCain, because it'll be a Perry, Texan, Tea Party/Bircher Party. Secessionist Party -- that's the whole Confederacy right there. Then the straight shot up from TX to ND, the Western Conservative reliables Utah, ID, AZ, etc. So if they can pick off FL, NC, even PA...

Every voter from Dwight Eisenhower all the way to the Left of Cornell West should be thinking hard about slagging on our current President, when they consider the relentless sales job that's coming like a storm:

Compelling stuff. Wonder if the truth with be able to get out, if it'll get beaten down, or if everyone will know:

And that's not the worst of it. A rising tide of evangelical voters as tool of the oligarchy. Being sold by a folksy swaggernaut from Texas who likes executions.

Sound familiar?

The Broken Clock

is correct twice a day. Or so I heard before digital.

With that in mind and the vision of a shared America on Independence Day, the most holy day of the American year for all the right reasons, the anniversary of a document, not a battle, not a war, although it sparked one. An anniversary of a ideal that used to be the common knowledge of most folks, not a referendum on a divided country, as it feels in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Florida, and the House of Representatives.

I get David Brooks and why he makes sense as the conservative columnist at The New York Times, but what I've liked since 2008 is that he gets Obama, who has met with him and discussed ideas. But I can't say I've ever agreed so fully with one of his columns as today's on the unholy intransigence of the 2012 Republican Party:

If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases.

A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.

The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary.

This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.

But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor.

The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name. Economists have identified many factors that contribute to economic growth, ranging from the productivity of the work force to the share of private savings that is available for private investment. Tax levels matter, but they are far from the only or even the most important factor.

But to members of this movement, tax levels are everything. Members of this tendency have taken a small piece of economic policy and turned it into a sacred fixation. They are willing to cut education and research to preserve tax expenditures. Manufacturing employment is cratering even as output rises, but members of this movement somehow believe such problems can be addressed so long as they continue to worship their idol.

Praise the Lord and pay the insurance.

The President hasn't been so healthy on the Fox Twitter handle. Is this a warning sign to anybody besides me?

I spent Independence Day on the beach at at a Dodgers game (they lost to the Mets, so I had mixed emotions) with fireworks at the end. The last song was Ray Charles' "America, the Beautiful" in the bluesy genius he discovered in it. I'm a patriot and I teach my children to be patriots as well. I don't think it should be owned by some political party just because it says lower taxes = true patriotism. That's a lie.

We all want clean water and air, we all want meaningful work and the chance to build a life for ourselves and our descendants. We want our nation protected adequately. We want the state to preserve the peace, while providing opportunities. And no matter how you prioritize all that, some taxes must be paid if the people want them. Because government, when not corrupted by it, is the last check on complete corporate feudalism.

Like when the markets fail.

Burn Her?

There's an old saying in politics that when you smear an opponent with a lie, they have to waste time and oxygen defending against it, pulling themselves off message.

But how about when a politician (or an endlessly aspiring one) does it to herself? Like Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell who, years ago on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect, talked about dabbling in witchcraft even more years ago. And how she (and her campaign) perceives so much real danger that maybe she'll lose her core (nutbag) supporters that she opens her campaign ad by denying that she's a witch:



I'm wondering if the ad might have the opposite effect and, instead of neutralizing the witch-fear, actually stoke it. After all, it's all too pat how she denies her witchhood, then switches the subject to make it seem that she's "just like you." Hell, I'm not a witch!

And I don't have secret information that I can't reveal about China taking over the U.S., either.

Movingly Put, Mr. President

It doesn't get better than this, from today's POTUS press conference in response to a question from the Fox reporter:

"I think I've been pretty clear on my position here. And that is, is that this country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal, that they have certain inalienable rights; one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely. And what that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site...

"We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam to engage in their destructive acts. And we've got to be clear about that. We've got to be clear about that because ... if we're going to successfully reduce the terrorist threat, then we need all the allies we can get. The folks who are most interested in a war between the United States or the West and Islam are al Qaeda. That's what they've been banking on.

"And fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world are peace-loving, are interested in the same things that you and I are interested in: how do I make sure I can get a good job, how can I make sure that my kids get a decent education, how can I make sure I'm safe, how can I improve my lot in life. And so they have rejected this violent ideology for the most part, overwhelmingly.

"And so from a national security interest, we want to be clear about who the enemy is here. It's a handful, a tiny minority of people who are engaging in horrific acts and have killed Muslims more than anybody else.

"The other reason it's important for us to remember that is because we've got millions of Muslim-Americans, our fellow citizens, in this country. They're going to school with our kids. They're our neighbors. They're our friends. They're our coworkers. And, you know, when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?

"I've got Muslims who are fighting in Afghanistan, in the uniform of the United States armed services. They're out there putting their lives on the line for us, and we've got to make sure that we are crystal clear for our sakes and their sakes: They are Americans. And we honor their service. And part of honoring their service is making sure that they understand that we don't differentiate between 'them' and 'us.' It's just 'us.'"

Check out the passion and thoughtfulness for yourself:



Need I say, Gobama?

Wild Fires

When they start burning books in America, it's time to shun or, where applicable, arrest the book burners:

The government turned up the pressure Tuesday on the head of a small Florida church who plans to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, warning him that doing so could endanger U.S. troops and Americans everywhere.

But the Rev. Terry Jones insisted he would go ahead with his plans, despite criticism from the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, the White House and the State Department, as well as a host of religious leaders.

Jones, who is known for posting signs proclaiming that Islam is the devil's religion, says the Constitution gives him the right to publicly set fire to the book that Muslims consider the word of God.

These American Taliban Christianists endanger national security and our soldiers abroad in the name of their own PR and, no doubt, donations from the hateful faithful.

Gen. David Petraeus warned Tuesday in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence." It was a rare example of a military commander taking a position on a domestic political matter.

And at a time when fire is costing people their homes in Boulder, even wilder in Detroit.

Good vs. Evil

On one side, President Obama comes out for the Constitutional right of Freedom of Religion in the U.S.:

Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities - particularly in New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

On the other side, the fear-mongering, Anti-Constitutional, opportunistic scum:

New York's Conservative Party is planning a television ad campaign to pressure a New York City utility to use its power to block a proposed mosque near ground zero that the ad says is planned by an "un-American" Muslim leader.

The ad states "patriotic Americans" want "real answers" about the cultural center proposed for lower Manhattan in a building partly owned by Consolidated Edison. Plans call for the Muslim center to include a mosque in the building about two blocks from the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.

The ad asks viewers to contact the utility, which has more than 3 million customers, at a phone number provided on screen and is the first effort to try to get customers to target the company.

The Conservative Party's statewide ad to begin running next week says Republican candidate for governor Rick Lazio, the Conservative nominee, is asking the right questions about the effort and who or what groups will fund it.

Yep. Any chance to create a fake issue, run it through their rightwing noise machine cycles, try to stir up hatred and division, appeal to the lowest impulses of human nature, and create more misery than they already have with their economic policies.

All this drummed up, sanctimonious, hypocritical outrage is tiresome already to me. Might it be that for rest of our nation as well?

Bloomberg for Freedom

Big credit to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his stirring defense of the Muslim community center to be built near ground zero, and for leading a multi-faith address on the subject today. Clearly super-hacks Palin, Gingrich, Lieberman, etc are just working on fear and anger, typical demagoguery. From a simple Federalist viewpoint, supposedly the philosophy these desperate hacks follow, shouldn't the decision be up to the New Yorkers who are overwhelmingly in favor of it?

From Bloomberg's emotional speech:

“Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.

“This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.

"For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetimes, as important a test. And it is critically important that we get it right."

The Cordoba Initiative, the group building the mosque, is in fact an enemy of Bin Laden. That may not help an earlier argument I wanted to make about a mosque making it less likely that the site would be attacked again, but instead it speaks volumes about the reductive hatefulness of the GOP political attacks on the mosque.

As the Mayor says, NYC is the most free city in the free world. (Although I'd argue that Amsterdam could make a good case!) Death to tyrants, both overseas and in our midst.

Here's the whole event, which included three Jewish leaders as well:

May God have mercy on the souls of the hacks.

Fascist Revisionists

Welcome to the Goskomizdat 2010 -- Christianists taking over the school board and rewriting history books to suit their ideology:

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

Dunbar and her allies deserve public humiliation if not treason trials for their fascistic use of power. Not only did Thomas Jefferson's writing inspire revolution around the globe, he's the author of our Declaration of Independence, the ultimate great revolutionary document of all time.

Obama may be President, but he hard right threat to this nation is only just getting started. Since Texas buys a disproportionate number of text books, there are other states that will be infected by this school board's lies.

Another argument for allowing Tejas secession.

Caprica

On Friday night SyFy premiered the new Battlestar Galactica prequel, Caprica, which takes place not in outer space but on a planet very much like our own, 58 years before the events of Battlestar. The creators of the earlier show (the sequel to this prequel?) have applied the same sharp political edge that invigorated the space series, except here we're watching the highly advanced society that made whatever mistakes that led to the revolt of the cylons (both human-like and chrone plated robots) and the planet-wide destruction of Caprica by the very devices they originally manufactured to serve their needs.

Bottom line up front: the pilot is brilliant.

This is clearly a comment on our own society with some interesting differences and one key reversal. The event that sets off the plot and eventually leads to the downfall of humanity is the death of two daughters in a terrorist bombing. One is the teenaged child of Daniel Greystone, played by Eric Stoltz, an engineering visionary who is the cornerstone of a huge corporation that is currently working on the first crude cylons, all exposed metal and clumsy artificial intelligence, hoping to keep the huge defense contract. The other daughter is that of Joseph Adams, played by Esai Morales, who's surviving son will become Galactica Commander William Adama in the years to come.

Making friends through their shared loss, Greystone uses Adams to get something he needs to begin bringing his daughter back to life -- as a cylon. The conflict between the two men begins. The second major conflict is one that runs through the original series as well -- that of religion. Caprica is polytheistic, but as we learned in Battlestar, the cylons are seeking the "one true God," and their anticedents are here already, an underground network of human beings who want a single God who knows right from wrong -- like the one that's dominated all major religions in our real world since the beginnings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

So while the series looks to bend the mind with the question of what really makes us human and whether a human-based artificial intelligence is itself a being with the same worth as a flesh & blood person, by far the most transgressive element of the series is the questioning of our very own monotheism. This is using science fiction in the best possible way, by positing an alternative reality that rips open otherwise unmentionable questions and letting us reconsider our most precious assumptions in its light.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that Caprica posits monotheism as a source of violence based on the certainty of the faithful. On another level (thus far -- the series is just beginning) it is also an abdication of personal morality, arguing that the reliance on a single all-knowing God is a way not to wrestle with morality on one's own.

On the other hand, Caprica is already a decadent society, with a gangster syndicate (from the Tauron colony planet, where Adams/Adama hails from) and young people entering holo-clubs using technology originally invented by Greystone, clubs where sex, drugs, violence and even human sacrifice are all part of the scene.

And there's a Shakespearean element to the drama as well. We're looking at the characters who's actions will set the groundwork for the fate of the planet six decades down the line, and their very human grief, yearnings, desires, lusts in steady conflict with each other have a weightier feel for our knowing what will come. This series is by nature a multi-season tragedy.

The cast is well-prepared for it. Stoltz seems more handsome than he did in his youth, and fellow '80's film veteran Morales is a great match. Greystone's wife is played by Paula Malcomson, whom I'm so pleased to have back after her breakthrough as Trixie on Deadwood. Polly Walker, another HBO vet, from Rome, is great as the headmistress of the school where Greystone's daughter went, and where his daughter's best friend (Magda Apanowicz) is coming under the influence of the One-God underground. The rest of the cast is terrific as well -- Alessandra Torresani as Greystone's daughter, Zoe and Sasha Roiz as Adams' violent gangster brother are the other regulars thus far.

I predict another peak sci-fi experience from Ron Moore and company. It's a nice change-up from the setting of the first series, and the themes may cut even closer to home.

D'jew eat?

Without getting into spoilers, I have the pleasure of recommending the new Coen Bros movie, A Serious Man. It's clearly their most personal film, and not just because it's about growing up Jewish in the the late 1960's in suburban Minneapolis, but because with God as a theme and the commensurate inability to discern his or her plan, it's the most clear utterance yet of the theme that runs through all their work: there is no justice.

What makes the Coens so unusual is their success with that theme. They still get to make the movies they want to make after all these years, and the box office clunkers here and there don't slow them down, usually because they bring their movies in on time and budget (thanks to their end-to-end storyboarding process). While virtually every other fictional film and about 99.9% of all Hollywood movies revolve around a morality where, no matter the second act obstacles, good is somehow rewarded and evil punished, in the Coen's world (or their take on our world) the only time that happens is by absurd accident, and usually followed by some ironic reversal, even if small.

What drew them to Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men besides the massive opportunity for suspense was undoubtedly this premise, leading to the part that seems to even disappoint some of the movie's fans, the ending with Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff recalling a dream that might as well be his fantasy of an ultimately just afterworld, but which ends with the Coen's leaving him hanging, i.e. him and the belief he clings to hung out to dry.

Likewise, in A Serious Man, for pre-tenure professor Larry Gopnick, no good deed goes unpunished. Taking their cue for centuries of internecine Jewish persecution, the Coens have even incorporated classic themes of Yiddish drama in s movie that I've already heard one non-Jew viewer refer to as "anti-Semitic," and it's easy to understand why. This film makes the Jewish satires of Woody Allen appear benign and playful. With freakish recall they paint perfectly cast pictures of the various characters reminiscent of those from my own youth in the Albany, NY Jewish community, giving the film a kind of ethnic specificity that often leads to successful crossover of an ethnic family comedy -- think Moonlighting or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The Coens, however, have little interest in cute or endearing. I mean, has there ever been a villain as terrifyingly unctuous as Sy Adelman in movie history?

A line often repeated in our faith when faced with personal trauma: "It could be worse." In A Serious Man, it always is, hilariously so. Larry is on the verge of losing his wife, his job, his home, his sanity. Larry's narrative counterpart is his pot-smoking son, preparing for his Bar Mitzvah while trying to avoid the big kid down the street to whom he owes $20 for weed. But it's Larry who awakes from the routine of his life as he's forced to look for answers, most specifically to the meaning of God's will. And one wonders by the end if God is, in fact, a serious being, or perhaps enjoys screwing around with us.

While The Book of Job from the Torah may be seen as the inspiration for the tale, this is also a classic tale of a modern (1967) day schlimazel, i.e. born loser. This is as distinct for a schlemiel, which is a bumbling or inept person. The best way to understand the relationship between the two terms:

A schlemiel is one who always spills his soup, schlimazel is the one on whom it always lands.

Don't worry, there's a schlemiel pouring it on Larry in the form of his crackpot genius brother, but I'll leave that discovery for you to see for yourself.

In the meantime, enjoy the trailer, which gives a sense of Larry's journey and quest for understanding, if not justice:



Apocalypse coming.

It's God's will.

Atone

It's the end of the Jewish High Holy Days, the atonement climax, Yom Kippur. And as much as I'd like to atone for saying not nice things about certain rightwing factions, I can't do so if their goal is assassination of our fairly elected Commander-in-Chief:

A poll was posted on Facebook asking users to vote "should Obama be killed?"

The responses include: "yes," "maybe," "if he cuts my health care," and "no.

Over 730 people had taken the poll, which was later removed from Facebook. The poll is now being probed by the Secret Service, reports the Associated Press.

This category of agitators for violence include all wingers who call healthcare reform anything approaching creeping Nazism, and advocate buying more weapons to battle oncoming Nazism and feminism:



Especially when now a part-time census worker appears to have been lynched, with the word "FED" scrawled across his chest.

For those who still need it, Garry Trudeau draws a picture.

37 in 5770

L'shana tova tikatevu to all Nettertainment readers, regular, occasional or new. In case you're wondering, it's now the year 5770. I know, I expect to forget and keep writing 5769 on my checks for the next few weeks, too.

By the way, it may be 5770, but the U.S. is #37 in 2009:



Better luck this year.

Liberty as Irony

I guess there's only one political party that's at liberty to meet in campus facilities at Liberty "University":

Liberty University, the university founded by the late Christian evangelist Rev. Jerry Falwell, has revoked its recognition of the campus Democratic Party club, saying “we are unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by” the university, The News & Advance, of Lynchburg, Va., reports.

“It kind of happened out of nowhere,” said Brian Diaz, president of the student Democratic Party organization that the school had formally recognized in October.

Diaz, the paper reports, said he got the news May 15 in an e-mail from Mark Hine, vice president of student affairs.

According to the e-mail, the club must stop using the university’s name, holding meetings on campus, or advertising events, the newspaper reports.

Hine said late Thursday that the university could not sanction an official club that supported Democratic candidates, the newspaper reports, but stresses that "we are in no way attempting to stifle free speech.”

I find this particularly humorous considering all the conservative griping about liberal favoritism in academic settings across America. How many so-called liberal-biased universities have banned their conservative counterparts from university facilities?

Per Amy Sullivan, religious and liberal are growing closer every day now, which is perhaps why the Liberty administration feels threatened?

Last spring I met a young woman from Liberty who made her mother drive her to Charlottesville to hear me speak because she had read an op-ed I wrote about being an evangelical and a liberal. She was an Obama supporter and a Democrat, but until she read that piece, she had worried that there was something wrong with her faith, that she wasn't a good Christian.

It's harder to feel that way when there's a critical mass of other people just like you. So even if the College Democrats have been shut down, the idea that theologically conservative Christians must be Republicans has already been challenged. Diaz says that when the College Democrats set up a table at a recruiting fair last fall, "people were a little confrontational, asking us how we could call ourselves Christians and be Democrats." But when they did the same thing this past semester, the response was different. "Now it's more like, 'That's interesting--let me talk to you and hear why you're a Democrat.'" That new openness to political diversity will be harder to shut down.

You know, free speech.

A.k.a. "liberty."

Ball of Confusion

We're in crazy times. Recessions, depressions do that. Howling at the moon. Firing guns. Stealing airplanes. Devastation in Italy, 150 dead so far in the earthquake.

Bob Dylan likening Barack Obama to a fictional character.

Meanwhile, our President rushes to change the world fast enough, overdue. Working quickly for a nuclear-free world. He's doing perhaps the #1 job he was hired for, the biggest unassailable point that no other candidate could claim, a man with Muslim family making it clear to the world that America is not in a battle against Islam.

Going so far as to say that America is not solely a Christian nation:



Oh, and he's reforming the U.S. military budget while allowing Americans to finally see (with the relatives' permission) the cost of war:



And it's the week that brought marriage equality to Iowa, the state that first showed us it was alright to vote for Obama. Can the state of America really be so bad when a straight legislator makes an honest, compassionate, breakthrough speech like this:



Yes, the battle against barbarism is far from over, but at least decency is scoring some points right now.

McScrew-up

McCain goes hat-in-hand to Letterman. It's nice to see him admit a mistake. Twice. But he is so freaked out, you just can't imagine Obama acting like that, let alone getting himself into the situation in the first place. Note that the admission of screwing up is a bid for absolution, not a real admission that he screwed up by lying to Letterman. One doubts Obama would lie, at least so brazenly, or wouldn't have been on Katie Couric to run interference with a running mate he can't trust alone with a network news anchor.

Obama was right today, anyone who thinks it's okay to get complacent doesn't remember New Hampshire. However, I'm still thinking of last night's third and final Presidential debate, and how much it felt like we were watching the climax of John McCain's nervous breakdown. Pictures like these (oh especially that now-famous last one with his tongue hanging out in reptilian pose) don't help. But it's more like George Packer nails it in The New Yorker:

It made me sad, watching the tight-necked, pop-eyed, clenched-jawed, eyebrows-twitching, shoulders-heaving, ghoulish-smiling, rapid-blinking John McCain go from pale to translucent as he flailed away on TV last night, to remember the man I saw at a town-hall meeting in Salem, New Hampshire, last January—years ago. Back then he was witty, he was relaxed, he was appealingly combative, he was generous. For sheer talent at engaging with voters he had it all over both Obama and Clinton. The contrast now is so severe that it makes running for President seem like a personal disaster on the scale of a prolonged nervous breakdown leading to physical and psychological ruin. This campaign has done something terrible to McCain. And it’s entirely his own fault. Character is fate.

While Obama understood what he needed to do in the debates and delivered with profoundly together coolness, per Mark Kleiman (per David Gergen):

David Gergen made the most important point of the evening, one that related to all three debates and one that, I thought, Obama grasped and McCain didn't. These were only formally and secondarily clashes between Obama and McCain. The voters weren't really measuring them against each other. These debates were the final step in Barack Obama's job interview for the Presidency.

The voters (like those in 1980, as Ed Rollins pointed out yesterday) had already decided they'd had about enough of the ruling party. But they needed to be reassured that the opposition candidate wasn't a fool, a lightweight, or a kook. What mattered was whether the challenger could get above the bar, put himself in the voters' comfort zone. Once that happened, there was sure to be a landslide.

Obama's super-controlled performances were all aimed at that end. Unlike his opponent, he knows deep in his bones the difference between tactics and strategy.

Tonight Obama and McCain met again at the traditional Al Smith formal dinner in NYC, a big Catholic establishment event, as Al Smith was a failed 1920's Democratic Presidential candidate, smeared due to his then-unaccepted Catholicism. It's a foundation dinner as well, and the candidates are supposed to let down their hair with written comedic monologues that singe but don't burn, usually climaxing with a tribute to the other candidate, who's sitting right there at the dais table. This is the dinner where Al Gore was specifically not gracious about his opponent while then-Gov. Bush spoke kindly of Al as a family man, feeding into the Gore cold elitism disdain meme. So it's weird to watch McCain and then Obama speak in such a collegial setting, getting digs in but also honoring each other. I have to say that if McCain wins he'll be the most surprised guy in America, because you can see the acceptance, the this-side-of-tears resignation written all over his face.

It feels like he wants Obama to be his President. And it would certainly spare him the humiliation of his own first term. By the time this is over, he's going to be grateful to his opponent for winning, or maybe for winning in the honorable way he's on track to do.

But until then, you'll find John's navigating the gutter.

McSinner

There's that commandment prohibiting bearing false witness against your neighbor. For which John McCain, Sarah Palin and now Cindy McCain should all beg forgiveness from their deity, which would be today if they shared the same faith as me.

Happy Yom Kippur.

Joe Biden is telling them to repent. Campbell Brown is honestly exposing the racism of their tactics. The undecided voters are clearly telling them not to do it.

But they're stirring up their base. That's the "energy" Gov. Palin injects into the race, similarly corrupt Spiro Agnew-style. The base that just smashed windows at an Obama headquarters in Denver.

To paraphrase John McCain the night Obama cinched the nomination, "Now that's a Kristallnacht we can believe in!"

Think I'm exagerating? Then take a look at the base their inciting, the mob that McCain so desperately hired Palin to motivate, and leave a light on while you sleep tonight:



The McCain campaign says it has a newsmaker to surprise us with tomorrow morning. What new lie, smear or spurious guilt-by-association are they going to distract with this time? And distract they must -- the first official Alaska Troopergate report comes out on Friday. Oh, and McCain let slip that he's made us all prisoners (of his campaign, of his dirtiness, of his bucket list):



I just love the look on Palin's face when he calls us all prisoners. She's a mean, narcissistic, shallow but insatiably ambitious woman and every few days she thinks they might win the election, but the rest of the time knows she just has to make it alive to hopscotch over McCain's electoral corpse to a lucrative life on the Ultra-Right Tour and maybe a run at the GOP nomination in 2012, convictions-depending.

McCain spent the debate lying (repent!) about an overpriced "overhead projector" (remember those, Boomers?) that turns out to have been a planetarium projector, and making up a new late-inning economic ploy, lurching like both he and Hillary Clinton did to the desperation-reeking "gas tax holiday" back in the Primaries. Hey, as I remember, it didn't work for her (strategy, John, or haven't you learned the difference from tactics?) and this mortgage-buying jamboree tries to top the greased pander pole. Please give me a news cycle, please! pleads the wicked McCain, even as he scrambles his plan overnight and still manages to alienate fiscal Republicans.

Lurch!

So while McCain lurches from desperation rock to rock on the short road to Hades, Obama's countering with her very moving and relateable life story, like when he spoke of his mother's battle with the health insurance industry while dying of cancer, an American story.

Oh, and calling McCain out plainly as a coward for not saying his evil shit to his face Tuesday night.

Atone, McCoward. Lose with dignity. You know, put your country, not you sinning ambition, first.

Fightin' Barack

Hard not to like a Democrat acting like he can win.

Obama gets slammed by rightwing evangelical James Dobson:

Dobson used his Focus on the Family radio program to highlight excerpts of a speech Obama gave in June 2006 to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal...

..."I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson said.

Obama slams back:

Speaking to reporters on his campaign plane before landing in Los Angeles, Obama said the speech made the argument that people of faith, like himself, "try to translate some of our concerns in a universal language so that we can have an open and vigorous debate rather than having religion divide us."

Obama added, "I think you'll see that he was just making stuff up, maybe for his own purposes."

Then other clerical leaders, even Bush supporters, come to Obama's aid thanks to the respect and outreach he's made to evangelicals, as does the independent Matthew 25 Network of young Christian activists for Obama, who are acting as fast-response debunking squads for combating smears in Christian media:

Like BenGoshi said in the Diary on the Rec List "Read The Beatitudes Before You Vote." The Matthew 25 Network is resolved around policies for the least of these.

This week our first print ads ran and will be seen by over 200,000 Catholics and Evangelicals in the coming days. The next step is Christian radio.

There has been a lot of indignation on Daily Kos today, and rightly so, for the remarks of Dr. Dobson. You can DO something about it! Donate to our Act Blue Account so we can run ads back-to-back against Dobson. He promised today there would be more segments along these lines – lets have an answer ready.

For too long we have not responded on these stations, in these magazines, and with positive Christian voices. This year, this cycle, that all changes.

Meanwhile, McCain comes up with offshore drilling and a battery-making sweepstakes, but the next moment revealing that he knows it's all placebo:

Mr. Obama was responding to remarks that Mr. McCain made on Monday in Fresno, Calif., when he observed that even though the nation might take years to benefit from offshore drilling, “exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial...”

“...‘Psychological impact’?” Mr. Obama said. “In case you’re wondering, that’s Washington-speak for ‘It polls well.’ ”

He added, “It’s an example of how Washington politicians try to convince you that they did something to make your life better when they really didn’t.”

Asked in Riverside, Calif., about his remarks on the psychological effects of lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling, Mr. McCain said: “I think Americans want hope. They want some trust and confidence.”

Way to build both, John.

What's happening here is that Obama is taking it straight to him on the issues, not on the distractions or caricatures we've gotten so used to thanks to a whole generation of political consultants.

What Obama does is much more powerful, because he's actually going after McCain's political character. Not his personal character, as Obama is if nothing else a dignitarian, so as long as the game gravitates towards Obama's terms and away from, say, Karl Rove's, the effect is all the more devastating for being fair play.

Maybe that why even a Republican Senator, perhaps starting a trend, is grabbing at Obama's coattails big time:



This is starting to get interesting.

Hard News

Tim Russert, R.I.P. Whatever you thought good or ill of his interviewing technique, debate moderation, or shared journalistic responsibility during the run-up sales job of the Iraq War, he seems to have been a decent guy at heart, a family man and a wonderful father.

Even harder to take news, Cedar Rapids now lives up to its name as much of it is under water. Godspeed that help reaches the residents there in a timely manner. Is this, after Katrina, part of the seven lean years?

Obama met quietly this week with “a small group of religious leaders, academics and faith-based organizations” i.e. influential Christian leaders and engaged in a frank give-'n-take, not asking for any endorsements, just talk. And he's even winning some of them.

Iraq doesn't want 58 permanent U.S. military bases in "their" country.

And tonight's 1/2 season-closing episode of Battlestar Galactica is one of the greatest cliffhangers in television -- and maybe human? -- history.