Twisted Logic: The Kafkaesque Saga Continues

Imagine if you dunked the Obama Pretzel into a cup of your favorite winter-time comfort beverage. Not only would it get increasingly soggy, it would inevitably dissolve into a pathetic clump of dough, never to be a popular taste sensation again.

That now appears to be the fate of the secrecy-obsessed president. Even with a complicit federal court actually agreeing that we the citizens have no right to see all the sorry excuses the Justice Department has dreamed up over the years to cover up for the human rights abuses perpetrated both at home and abroad, there is no longer much public appetite for Obama's bag of propaganda goodies. We have Edward Snowden to thank for that.

 Still, it isn't stopping Obama's soggy pretzel logic. The latest morsel: a federal court panel has just decreed that if the abuse stems from an informal closed-door bull session amongst goons, it is not official policy. And if it's not official policy, then it's none of our beeswax either what the government does to us or how they justify it. The logic of the court decision upholding the illogic of the Obama administration is eerily reminiscent of Franz Kafka's Before the Law, a parable in which the legal gatekeeper, insisting that the system is transparent, strings the supplicant along for a lifetime while simultaneously denying him entry.  Charlie Savage of the New York Times explains the 21st Century version:

The memo establishes the legal basis for telephone companies to hand over customers’ calling records to the government without a subpoena or court order, even when there is no emergency, according to a 2010 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general. The details of the legal theory, and the circumstances in which it could be invoked, remain unclear.

The document at issue is a classified memo issued by the Office of Legal Counsel on Jan. 8, 2010. A report later that year by the Justice Department’s inspector general at the time, Glenn A. Fine, disclosed the memo’s existence and its broad conclusion that telephone companies may voluntarily provide records to the government “without legal process or a qualifying emergency,” notwithstanding the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

The F.B.I. had asked for the memo as part of an investigation by Mr. Fine into problems with the bureau’s use of so-called exigent letters to obtain telephone and financial records without following any legal procedures.

The bureau, which has abandoned exigent letters, said that it did not employ the legal theory outlined in the memo when using the letters, and that it had no plans to use it in the future. But Mr. Fine warned that the existence of the Office of Legal Counsel’s theory created a “significant gap” in “accountability and oversight,” and urged Congress to modify the statute. Lawmakers have not acted on that recommendation.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit in 2011 seeking to obtain the memo under the Freedom of Information Act. But a District Court judge ruled that the memo fell into an exception to that law covering materials developed when the executive branch is deliberating internally about what policy to select, and a three-judge panel on the appeals court agreed on Friday.

The Office of Legal Counsel issues binding legal advice to the executive branch. If it says something is permitted, officials who act on that advice are essentially immune from prosecution. Its power to adopt secret legal theories has come under greater scrutiny since a string of controversial opinions it produced during the Bush administration, including signing off on warrantless wiretapping and on the brutal questioning of detainees.

Meanwhile, rather than lambasting Obama, the editorial board of the New York Times today merely asks that he simply honor his campaign promise to be "more transparent" about government illogic and malfeasance. I mean, if he's going to spy on us, the least he can do is release the secret recipe of the Obama Twisted Pretzel to make us all feel better about it! Hmm. It's the parable of the Gatekeeper all over again. My comment:

Every day we're confronted with more examples of the erosion of democracy and the rising specter of totalitarianism.

While we're not yet denied the privilege of choosing between two pre-approved big money parties, that whole Bill of Rights thing is starting to come apart at the seams. And meanwhile, according to the P.E.N. American Center for human rights and literary expression, one in four writers working today reports self-censoring as well as avoiding social media and certain topics in emails and phone conversations because they are convinced that Big Brother is watching. And of course, he is.

The Sunlight Foundation and other open government groups decided to give Obama a transparency award early in his first term. To their dismay, Obama closed the ceremony to the press. That was perhaps our first clue that his administration would be Nixon-on-steroids.

Besides winning too many Kafkaesque court decisions upholding secrecy for the sake of secrecy, Obama is also seeking fast-track Congressional approval for the corporation-friendly Transpacific Partnership while refusing to allow anyone but corporations see what's really in it. He has even implemented an "Insider Threat" program mandating that government employees snitch on each other.

When Obama brags about transparency, I wonder if he isn't just reveling in the knowledge that all our lives are now an open book, whether we like it or not.

That polar vortex may be retreating, but the big chill is here to stay.

I ran out of allotted characters at that point. So let me add that the big chill is here to stay unless enough people get together and thaw it out. And judging from the comments from other readers, it's the type of heat not likely to warm the alleged hearts of our feckless leaders.

Oh, and speaking of Kafka -- the Orson Welles film version of The Trial is now available on Netflix (and probably elsewhere online too, since the copyright has expired.) Highly recommended. Here's just one of its all-too-familiar scenes:

Transparency in the Age of Obama

From the Laboratories of the Plutocracy

"Nothing Exceeds Like Excess"

On the off-chance that some of you think that the Democrats are really, really sincere this time about helping poor jobless people, and that Barack Obama really, really means it when he says he will make income inequality the defining issue of his second term, permit me to gently burst your balloon.

Just because Obama has stopped vocally espousing cutting the safety net as part of his Grand Bargain of deficit reduction with his GOP frenemies doesn't mean that his deeply ingrained desire for austerity for the masses isn't still merrily simmering on the back burner of his mind.

 Need proof? Just read the latest stenography from his favorite multimillionaire muse and golfing buddy, Thomas Friedman. His Sunday column is simply a laundry list of the pro-business centrist policies beloved of the New Democrats and Obama's Bowles-Simpson Catfood Commission. To wit:

 We have to raise the retirement and Medicare eligibility ages, so the greedy geezers will stop stealing from the young'uns! We have to reduce the corporate tax rate (as if corporate taxes were real), getting rid of pesky regulations that impede innovation! We have to frack, frack and frack some more! We have to get on with privatization of education, because:

In some cities, teachers’ unions really are holding up education reform. But we need to stop blaming teachers alone. We also have a parent problem: parents who do not take an interest in their children’s schooling or set high standards. And we have a student problem: students who do not understand the connection between their skills and their life opportunities and are unwilling to work to today’s global standards. Reform requires a hybrid of both teacher reform and a sustained — not just one speech — national campaign to challenge parents and create a culture of respect and excitement for learning.

If only the Republicans were more reasonable, Friedman whines,

 I’m certain that a second-term Obama, who is much more center-left than the ridiculous G.O.P. caricatures, would meet them in the middle. Absent that, we’re going to drift, unable to address effectively any of our biggest challenges or opportunities.

As it is, poor beleaguered Obama is being forced to join the Democratic Orchestra's income inequality theme of Campaign 2014. And that leaves Thomas Friedman to toot out the cadenza in the Trumpet Austerity Concerto in Plutocrat-Major, Opus (Forbes) 400. It blares out dissonantly in this feel-good era of wedge-issue populism, but so what? It's out there, hovering malignantly in the poisoned acoustic atmosphere.

How, you may ask, does Thomas Friedman's Sunday screed tie in to President Obama's own shadow agenda? Dylan Byers of Politico wrote a revealing piece last fall about the macho White House bull sessions of which Friedman is a regular and valued participant:

The sessions, which have become more frequent in Obama’s second term — he held at least three in October — provide a stark contrast to the combative, sometimes cantankerous relationship between the White House and the press corps. They also serve as an alternate means of shaping the debate in Washington: a private back-channel of genuine sentiment that seeps into the echo-chamber, while Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, delivers largely scripted responses in the public briefings. Obama holds the occasional off-the-record meeting with top White House correspondents, but they are few and far between — a fact that rankles some members of the press corps.

(snip) 

The goal in these get-togethers, participants said, is two-fold: First, the president wants to convince the columnists that he’s right — about the debt ceiling, about health care, about Syria — and that his opponents are wrong.

“The president is thoroughly convinced that the course he has set out is correct, and that his opponents are either wrong-headed or crazy or, in the case of [House Speaker John] Boehner, insufficiently courageous,” said a journalist who has attended off-the-record meetings. “By getting together a group of intelligent people who are going to be writing about him or talking about him, he thinks he can show them how obviously everything he is doing makes sense.”

The second goal is more tactical: By meeting privately with the people who shape national opinion, the president ensures that his points of view will be represented in the media — even if those points of view aren’t directly attributable to him. 

He sees columnists as portals,” another journalist who has attended meetings said. “It works — I feel it work with me. It’s almost impossible to spend hours face-to-face with the president, unfiltered, then write a column or go on television without taking his point of view into account.”

It's impossible to read Friedman (or David Brooks, or David Ignatius, or the whole gamut of centrist Beltway elites)  without also hearing the dulcet tones of Barack Obama in the background. And that is absolutely chilling. It's how democracy is subsumed by big money interests, and how public consent is manufactured.

Meanwhile, my published comment to Friedman's column, which had garnered the most reader recommendations, has been removed by the New York Times. I guess they thought I was being too mean to very serious important people. Here's what I wrote:

Just when we thought the zombies were finally taking their long-overdue winter nap, we are assaulted with another press release from the Fix the Debt cult of tax-phobic parasitical billionaires. The words "Alan Simpson" in the first sentence is our first warning to run for the hills. Simpson will not rest until an entire nation of impoverished retirees has been reduced to subsisting on cat food. He once derisively claimed (plagiarizing from Mencken) that Social Security is a "milk cow with 300 million tits." I guess he thinks the whole world is out to suck him and his rich friends dry. What a load of bull!

Paul Krugman just wrote a column celebrating the long-overdue debunking of deficit reduction as economic policy. At the time, I commented that the austerians were merely in temporary retreat, strategizing their next move.

Like malaria, deficit fever strikes when you least expect it. This time, the vector is another droning Friedman column, replete with all the usual neoliberal buzzwords (long-term challenges, innovation, heavy fiscal burden on our children) in a feeble attempt to disguise the true meaning: the rich shall get richer and the poor shall be damned.

We don't have a long-term deficit problem. We have a long-term greed problem.

Nice try, Mr. Friedman, at unleashing the pathogens from the test tubes of the plutocracy. But you should be aware that more and more of us are developing a healthy immunity to what you're trying to spread.

Come to think of it, it's pretty amazing that my little rant survived for 36 hours before being relegated to the ether. Was it because of the tits part, the Friedman as a mosquito part, or the Friedman as Dr. Moreau part?  But anyway, it was nice to see that Dean Baker took note, more politely than I did, that Friedman's readers told him he was full of crap.

***

As of this posting, my other comment on the equally annoying Ross Douthat column still survives in the digital domain of the Gray Lady. His particular brand of bunk comes from the far right side of the Right Wing Money Party. The big difference between him and Friedman is that he gets his anti-equality plutocratic talking points direct from Koch-funded stink tanks instead of through White House back-channels. So I says to Ross:

Here's just one example of how Douthat's beloved rich people are being squeezed:

As of January 2, the 900 wealthiest Americans became officially exempt from paying any more Social Security taxes for the rest of the year. That is because they earned the cap of $117,000 in only two days. If the billionaires of the Fix the Debt brigade of prosperity for them, austerity for everybody else, were truly interested in the long-term solvency of what they love to call "entitlements," they'd join with progressives and call for scrapping the cap entirely, expanding the program, and protecting the trust fund for Ross's beloved unborn children far, far, far into the future.

But Douthat and his conservative media cohort are too busy wasting their time, feverishly concern-trolling the poor now that their plutocratic claptrap is being called out for the fraud it is by the likes of DeBlasio, Elizabeth Warren and the Pope.

And we'd be remiss if we didn't also call out the studies referenced in his Think Tank Links. The Manhattan Institute is funded by the Koch Brothers, the Scaife Foundation, Big Pharma, Big Oil, and several too-big-to fail/jail banks. The Heritage Foundation does not disclose its donors. It recently gained notoriety with the disclosure that one of its experts (Jason Richwine) had previously and mendaciously claimed that Blacks and Hispanics have lower IQs than whites.

So, Ross, when you use such suspect sources as backup, your entire column becomes instantly tainted.

The Devil in the Details

Since American students now rank a dismal 21st in scientific proficiency among their global peers, it should come as no surprise that four in ten American adults do not believe in the evolution of species.

According to a recent Pew poll, the number of people denying that human beings slowly evolved over millions of years is about the same as it was four years ago.  The main difference is that the belief gap appears to be widening based upon political party affiliation:

In 2009, 54% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats said humans have evolved over time, a difference of 10 percentage points. Today, 43% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats say humans have evolved, a 24-point gap.

 

 

 
When you consider that more than half of Americans also believe that the devil is a living, breathing entity who literally walks among us, the evolution poll results are actually a little better than I would have expected. Sizeable minorities also believe in UFOs, witches, ghosts and astrology. Throughout our brief history, the championship of ignorance as a virtue has dominated the American landscape, much to the bafflement of the rest of the educated world. And New York Times columnist Charles Blow smells a Republican conspiracy to explain the widening gap:

I believe this is a natural result of a long-running ploy by Republican party leaders to play on the most base convictions of conservative voters in order to solidify their support. Convince people that they’re fighting a religious war for religious freedom, a war in which passion and devotion are one’s weapons against doubt and confusion, and you make loyal soldiers.

Blow notes that the self-described staunch conservatives denying evolution are also staunch viewers of Fox News, that cesspit of cable hate propaganda. The increasing denial of science, he believes, is the direct result of the GOP propaganda surge. 

But maybe, just maybe, their cynicism and cruelty will end up biting them in the butt. People still have to pay to get the message, and the pay is getting mightily reduced through the parallel surge of austerity. My comment:

The same people who deny evolution and climate change also believe that the devil is an actual living person. Polls show that between a half and two-thirds of Americans are convinced that Old Nick walks among us.

As the wealth gap between rich and poor widens, so too does the gap between ignorance and enlightenment, critical thinking and paranoia. People have got to blame somebody for their suffering, so it might as well be Satan. I reckon that a fair number of those most recently polled on evolution probably thought they were being questioned on evil-ution, and thus summoned their guardian angels for succor against the disembodied voice on the other end of the phone line.

Meanwhile, if the Republicans think they can maintain their grasp on power simply by fomenting the ignorance of their base, they'd better think again. Life itself is getting too damned expensive for millions and millions of people. Those losing unemployment benefits and food stamp assistance are already having to give up watching Sarah Palin in favor of eating. The cable TV industry just reported its worst year ever, losing a million new customers on top of the five million who've already cut the cord.

So who knows? Maybe people will go to the library. And when they discover that all the "Left Behind" books have been checked out, they'll discover Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle," and get hooked on Science, vote their economic interests, and we'll all live happily ever after.

The devil you say!

 

2014 Promises To Be a Ripping New Annus

While it may stay horribilis before it gets any better, there is reason to hope:

A leading IT research firm is predicting the resurgence of the Occupy movement on an even larger scale, the beginnings of a barter economy in the wake of mass boycotts, and a movement toward nonprofit-driven medical care instigated by activist volunteers. 

The information technology research firm, Gartner, which describes itself as “the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company" warns its clients not to be seen as culprits in the inevitable labor unrest, consumer boycotts, and mass social upheaval. CEOs had better get ready for some heavy-duty backlash and enhanced public scrutiny of their greed. They had better get their PR asses in gear, in other words.

 Of course, the ultra-rich are paying no heed. One tycoon named Ken Langone is so pissed off by the sudden unwarranted attention being paid to the poor that he is petulantly threatening to cut off the cash for the refurbishment of St. Pat's Cathedral in NYC. He's warning Pope Francis, through his pal Tim Cardinal Dolan, to tone down that inequality rhetoric -- or else. Dolan was forced to go on the Plutocrat Channel to do damage control, simultaneously pushing back against this trendy new demonization of The Obscene Rich and insisting no such demonization is even taking place. I guess that makes him an ecclesiastical centrist.

 Langone,  billionaire founder of Home Depot, funder of both Republicans and Wall Street Democrats, had approached Dolan and complained that another  billionaire who of course is not named Ken Langone got his feelings hurt by the Pope. From the CNBC transcript: 

So, he says to me (Dolan)-- "Pope Francis is helping us big time. Because there's such an enthusiasm and a love-- for him and for the church that he said, "People are more interested in our project of Saint Patrick's Cathedral." He did pass on to me.

He said, "Now, one person said, 'You know, you come to us who have been-- blessed, who are wealthy. And, yet, we sense that, perhaps, the Pope is less than enthusiastic about us.'" And he said, "We need to correct that."

And I said, "Well-- Ken, that would be a misunderstanding of the Holy Father's-- message. The Pope loves poor people. He also loves rich people. He loves people, all right. He's -- and he-- and he's not into the condemning game for anybody." His famous, renowned statement now, "Who am I to judge?" So, I said, "Ken, thanks for bringing it to my attention. We've got to correct to make sure this gentleman, who's the only one I've heard, understands the Holy Father's message properly. And then, I think he's going to say, 'Oh, okay. If that's the case, count me in for Saint Patrick's Cathedral,' so.  

So, yeah. But I trust Ken's judgment so much that if he tells me, "This is a potential donor who's a little confused and perhaps irritated about the Pope's message. Can you help me out here?" So, I think we have. Yeah.

If anybody can put the extreme back in unctuousness it is Tim Dolan.

Langone, for his part, recently went on another plutocrat channel to deliver his own pro-rich people anti-Paul Krugman rant, urging that Social Security be cut. Along with the other CEOs of the Fix the Debt austerian crowd, he falsely claims that poverty-stricken old geezers are stealing pensions and healthcare from the unborn. But since he also spends part of his billions glorifying the house of the Lord(s), he also passed on to his pal the Card the message that obscenely wealthy Americans are preferable to obscenely wealthy foreign people.   

So, yeah. It is indeed shaping up to be the year to end all Annuses (sic). Cheers, everybody!

 

Out, Out, Damned Year

Stuff to make the coffee burble out of your nose on a gloomy Monday morn:

Americans named President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the world's most admired living man and woman in 2013, according to a Gallup poll released on Monday.

OMG, you declare in disbelief? Be heartened, Sardonickists. Because they only asked a thousand people out of a population of 300+ million. Because despite winning this dubious popularity contest, Barack is fully 16 percentage points less popular with a thousand people than he was a year ago. Even Hillary, who has been winning the Beloved Sweepstakes for a dozen years running, is not quite so loved as she once was.

The Prom King and Queen are in good company.  Runners-up in the Court of Popular Opinion include Sarah Palin, Oprah, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, Ron Paul and Clint Eastwood.

Oh, but miracle of miracles: Pope Francis managed to make the cut, too. So all is not lost in Poll World, where you are given a preapproved list of people to admire rather than being allowed to blurt out, say, Noam Chomsky or Chris Hedges or Ed Snowden or Glenn Greenwald.

***

 

If you are a New York Times columnist named Charles Blow, and your New Years resolutions include holding politicians accountable, resisting the coverage of politics as a sporting event, and becoming a voice for the voiceless, then that makes you the Worst Purple Proselytizing Hack Ever, according to The New Republic. Worse than Frank "Foodie" Bruni, even!

 

Because, when you are bestowed with a valuable plot of establishment journalism real estate, then you must write for those who live on valuable plots of establishment real estate. Such as David Brooks and Thomas Friedman, who make comforting the comfortable their whole raison d'etre. I get that Blow sometimes veers off into self-conscious overwrought schmaltz, and is often all too willing to give Obama a free pass, but at least he is not as smarmy as Ross Douthat or as shallow as MoDo.

So let's hear it for New Republic: celebrating the New Normal of mass immiseration by trashing the polemic of its critics.

 

***

 

Meanwhile, the paper of record itself persists in covering the politics of mass immiseration as a horserace rather than a humanitarian crisis. Today's headline declares that minimally raising the minimum age to a paltry ten bucks and change is a "winning strategy" for the same politicians who just cravenly voted another austerity budget into existence:

Democratic Party leaders, bruised by months of attacks on the new health care program, have found an issue they believe can lift their fortunes both locally and nationally in 2014: an increase in the minimum wage. 

The effort to take advantage of growing populism among voters in both parties is being coordinated by officials from the White House, labor unions and liberal advocacy groups.

Cry me a river for those multimillionaire Democratic leaders covered with their boo-boos and needing to lift their own fortunes by pretending to care about poor people. They are taking advantage, for their own political gain, of a horrendous situation that they themselves were instrumental in creating.

Which brings me to Paul Krugman, who today declares that the "fiscal fever" of the Beltway deficit hawks has broken -- that Austerity Is Dead, Long Live Sanity. Uh... not so fast. My comment:

Just because the Fix the Debt crowd have been discredited doesn't mean they're still not out to get us. They're in temporary retreat, is all. A pope with a social conscience was elected, a progressive-talking NYC mayor was elected, and Elizabeth Warren finally has the power to take on the banking Mafia with the righteous indignation that they so sorely require.

Deficit fever hasn't broken. Like malaria, it rests between strikes. Our millionaire leaders certainly aren't breaking a sweat about the jobs crisis. Little do they seem to care about the shaking chill running up and down the spines of terrified ordinary people on a daily basis.

Nancy Pelosi, for example, told her colleagues to "embrace the suck" and pass another domestic austerity budget. And then both parties eagerly appropriated another $633 billion for the war budget (euphemistically called "defense.")

And while the unemployed are condemned to poverty, and nearly 50 million families with children to hunger, the welfare program known as Q.E. will continue to pump a free $75 billion a month to the banks. Jamie Dimon celebrated by sending out Christmas cards of his own family carousing and playing tennis in their palatial art museum of a home. The stock market is soaring.

Yes, the intellectual case for austerity has collapsed. But who said any of its instigators are intellectuals? They are true believers in a noxious cult of greed. And they're in dire need of some forced deprogramming therapy by the masses.

As one reader pointed out, my statement implying that Q.E. sends money to "the banks" was misleading, since the Fed is in reality buying up bonds and other financial products rather than writing checks to JP Morgan, Citi, and Goldman Sachs. As such, he said, I am only giving more credence to the ravings of the Tea Party, which claims the Fed is printing money and driving the country into inflation. 

So, I stand corrected. I should have written that the Fed is artificially propping up the bloated head of a diseased monstrosity (the financialized economy), which is comprised of Wall Street, the big banks, and corporations. Even a former official of the Fed admits that Q.E. has been nothing less than a backdoor bailout of the market.

New Year's Resolution: Resist the Lists

I don't know about you, but whenever I see a headline with the words Best Of, Worst Of, Most Shocking Moments of 2013, Best Tweets of the Year, etc., etc. I do an immediate Gump, and run Forrest run.

In this last week of the best of all possible worst years ever, we are being inundated by a veritable plague of lists. Have you noticed that Duck Dynasty seems to be on every single one of them? A cartoonish Methuselah homophobe racist is only the latest wedge issue in the culture wars that define the divide-and-conquer politics of the ruling class. The timing of Phil Robertson's First Amendment rights at the tail end of Aught-Thirteen virtually guarantees his placement in the List of Lists.

Before making my own New Years Resolution to avoid lists and rankings like the plague, I did happen to catch Think Progress's list of the Best Movies of the Year. (This is the official blog of the Center for American Progress, a front group for the White House and the Democratic Party. Though characterizing itself as a grassroots organization for the hoi polloi, it was recently forced to reveal its corporate backers, which run the gamut from too big to fail/jail banks, the military industrial complex, and Walmart. Oops.)

So, it should come as no surprise that TP's most beloved movies mesh perfectly with the policies and propaganda of the Obama administration and the self-serving interests of its corporate overlords. The reviewer, Alyssa Rosenberg, admits that she has not seen all the movies of 2013, but compiled her list anyway. These films may or may not be great... I have not seen them. It's the reasons why TP thinks they are great that are quite revealing -- and predictable. Here are how movie reviews are written within the smog of neoliberal thought:

12 Years A Slave: "A great movie about slavery in America that derives much of its greatness from focusing on how black Americans learned to accommodate themselves to the strangenesses of white privilege, rather than on how good white people rise above the unfair advantages granted them by the violence of white supremacy."

Rosenberg echoes centrist thought in her celebration of the latest entry in the Slavery Nostalgia genre: black Americans can only triumph by assimilating themselves into the white system. When movies can portray them doing this willingly, rather than having their rights bestowed upon them by white people, it is cause for celebration. So what a triumph for white people, huh?

 Personally, my favorite slavery nostalgia flic is Django Unchained, a piece of revisionist history in which the slaves triumphed by setting plantations on fire and killing their masters. Needless to say, the corporate media hated it. Probably because the cruelly corrupt house slave played by Samuel L. Jackson bears an uncanny resemblance to the current White House occupant. Plus, it uses the N word.

After Tiller: "A look at the few remaining doctors in the United States who provide late-term abortions, After Tiller is a remarkable and deeply compassionate look at what it’s like to provide a medical service that makes you a target of violence and hatred. And it’s a kind and clear-eyed look at the circumstances under which women and their partners seek these procedures, cutting through ugly rhetoric to emphasize that no one wants a late-term abortion."

Since abortion is one of the major cultural wedge issues distinguishing the two right wings of the Money Party, this film was obviously a shoo-in for TP's list.

Fruitvale Station: "Ryan Coogler’s strikingly assured debut feature makes the death of Oscar Grant a tragedy by providing a riotous, sexy, often extremely funny celebration of the last day of his life. And it’s not as if we needed even more proof that Michael B. Jordan should be an enormous star, but he filed yet another brief on his own merits in taking on what could have been a stiffly noble role, and instead is a gorgeously human one."

Unarmed black guy gets shot in extra-judicial assassination-by-cop. Another wedge issue to make white liberals feel vicariously victimized at the same time its film treatment makes them chuckle, and more prone to donate to millionaire Wall Street Democrats righteously proclaiming themselves oppressed by those bigoted Republicans in Congress.

(Another film, Dirty Wars, featuring extra-judicial assassination-by-president, is mysteriously absent from TP's best-of list -- despite the fact that it has been shortlisted as an Oscar nominee for best documentary of 2013.)

Her: "My review of Spike Jonze’s innovative romantic comedy is embargoed until next week. But his exploration of a blooming relationship between Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) and his operating system, named Samantha (Scarlett Johansson, liberated from her body, to great effect) is also a story about humanity as a whole getting attached to a new kind of technology. It’s funny, charming, very sad movie that pulls of something relatively rare–it’s fair and clear-eyed about all of the participants, as well as wise and moderate in its vision of the near future."

I haven't seen the movie, but since major Obama donor Scarlett Johannson plays the part of the sexy computer, this was bound to make the "progressive" list. Any movie showing us how to love our compromised-by-the-NSA operating system is a must-recommend for the Obama Spy State. If you can't love Big Brother, love Big Lover.

As an alternative, I recommend Ghost in the Machine, from Season One of The X-Files. Made in 1993, it presaged the post-9/11 surveillance state most eerily, and even villainized the NSA. There are plenty of films and books in the robot-as-love object genre, including dozens of old Twilight Zone and Outer Limits entries. The difference between these and Her is that Her (She?) is billed as a romantic comedy rather than cautionary dystopian sci-fi. So feel the neoliberal love, people!

Loves Her Gun: "I’m not sure Loves Her Gun has found distribution, which is too bad, because this chronicle of an accidental shooting foretold is a powerful brief on women, violence, and guns that makes the most of its Austin setting."

A triple-whammy of Democratic wedge issues for the price of one. The war on women. violence, and guns. Plus Austin, the one liberal bastion in the Lone Star State.

Pain and Gain: "Some of my fellow critics think Michael Bay isn’t self-aware enough to have fully pulled off this adaptation of a true story about three Miami bodybuilders who kidnapped, tortured, and extorted a local businessman for his assets. But, by God did I enjoy watching Mark Wahlberg, Dwanye Johnson, and Anthony Mackie rampage through Pain and Gain, a glorious, ridiculous exploration of the compelling power of American dumbness. 'Jesus Christ himself has blessed me with many gifts,' Johnson’s Paul reflects at one point. 'One of them is knocking people the fuck out.' Whatever you need to tell yourself."

Mocking stupid white rednecks is bread and butter for the smugly superior professional liberal veal pen. It is a cottage industry and the whole raison d'etre of MSNBC, for example. It is just another way for corporate Democrats to differentiate themselves from corporate Republicans. And what a gift this movie must be to them: stupid white rednecks stupidly attack capitalism. What delicious horror. Two phony left thumbs up, yo.


Short Term 12: "Based on director Destin Cretton’s experiences working in a group home for teenagers who’d been removed from their families, Short Term 12 stars Brie Larson and John Gallagher, Jr., giving tremendous performances as staffers at a similar facility who are terrific at their jobs because of past traumas they share with their charges. It’s a rare movie that can detonate and clear the ground on a genre–in this case, Troubled Children Saved By Dedicated Adults–that’s become a horrific, insulting cliche and then build something gorgeous and funny on the old foundations. Short Term 12 pulls that off, while also offering a resounding brief for the power of niceness."

If you can make an insulting cliché gorgeous and funny, then all is well. The "power of niceness" shall keep the Wall Street Democrats safe from the mob.

We Steal Secrets: "Alex Gibney’s documentary about Julian Assange has an unsettling structure that almost lead me to walk out of the theater when it seemed like the film wasn’t taking the sexual assault allegations against Assange seriously. But Gibney, in a moment in his career when he seems dedicated to fiercely interrogating his own assumptions and first reactions, delivers a sharp interrogation of Assange’s personality and how a transparency movement has been undermined by Assange’s sense that he deserves a deference he wouldn’t extend to anyone else."

If you thought a flack for Obama's think tank was going to praise Julian Assange, you should think again. So, thank God that this hit job of a movie did not disappoint Rosenberg. If it wasn't going to emphasize his personal weirdness issues over his exposure of war crimes, graft and corruption, then she never could have written her review. And we all would have been losers.

And last but least in the Obama Think Tank's best movies list: 

Zero Dark Thirty: "Kathryn Bigelow’s striking, gorgeously shot, volcanically acted chronicle of the search for and execution of Osama bin Laden technically opened wide early in 2013. And while the furor over it has largely faded in the excitement of a new Oscar season, it’s still one of the most important, complicating chronicles of our time, especially in a year where other cultural explorations of the War on Terror have ebbed in power and insight."

Is comment even necessary? Is Alyssa Rosenberg obsessed with the word "gorgeous?" This movie was scripted with the direct help of the CIA, and glorifies ("gorgeously shot") torture. And irony of ironies: the Obama administration is not punishing former CIA Director Leon Panetta, now exposed as the source for the filmmakers. They are going after the leakers who exposed Panetta as the leaker. That has got to be one of the most important, complicated chronicles of our time. But not one that Think Progress is ever likely to review.

***

 

Today's the day that more than a million people are being officially condemned to poverty by the two sides of the Money Party. At the very most, the Democrats are considering a measly three-month extension of benefits, as though the de facto 25 percent unemployment rate will magically correct itself when the green shoots of spring start popping up all over this exceptional land of ours.

 

In a column called "The Fear Economy," Paul Krugman bemoaned the political apathy and pointed out the inconvenient truth that even employed people are stuck in a rut. Because, obviously, what's bad for ordinary people is very, very good for CEOs. My New York Times comment:

Maybe the tipping point is near... when millions of us losing our unemployment benefits and millions more struggling under the yoke of wage stagnation, pension loss, and intolerable working conditions see the light, realize how badly the political system has failed us, and collectively assert our human rights.

It happened in the last great Depression when the Bonus Army camped in Washington to demand cash back for their reimbursement certificates. It happened when throngs of jobless people got wise to the propaganda that poverty is caused by laziness, stopped blaming themselves, and demanded relief from the politicians through the mass Unemployed Workers Movement.

The jobless joined the wage slaves in their sit-down strikes, endangering the bottom lines of the robber barons.

Once upon a time, the fear was transferred from the working class to the ruling class. And the New Deal was born. And ever since, the right wing and the plutocrats have been trying mightily to dismantle it.

So until enough of us can harness that soul-destroying fear and shove it right back at the miscreants who are causing this whole economic mess, nothing is going to change. We need to band together and collectively perform the ending of that other famous working class film, "9 to 5."

And then we need to go to the polls and throw the bums out who refuse to expand Social Security, restore SNAP cuts and extend unemployment insurance. And maybe convince Bernie Sanders to run for president.

The other 1100-plus reader comments were similarly outraged. It gives me hope that more and more people, even erstwhile Obamabots, are no longer limiting their ire to the Republicans. They are On to the Con. There is anger out there. And that is a healthy thing.

One of the readers responding to my comment said it sounded great until I mentioned Bernie Sanders, who apparently was among those  senators voting for the horrendous budget that rewarded the rich and the war-mongers and punished the poor even more than they've already been punished. If I had known about his vote, I probably would not have given him a plug.

Still, despite his unfortunate bout of "pragmatism," he may serve the purpose of at least verbally challenging neoliberalism in the upcoming rigged presidential horserace. For one thing, I doubt that the Establishment could ever get away with bodily removing him from presidential debates as they did with Jill Stein of the Green Party.

The Foisting of the Rejoicing

 

 

 

It's time once again to (belatedly) dust off that old seasonal standard, Barack and Michelle Do Christmas. Talk about Deja Vu all over again. No wonder Thomas Friedman is reportedly Obama's favorite columnist. Not only do these chin-stroking dudes share the delusion that endless repetition is a virtue, they share the same audience: an exclusive set of elites who never tire of being told how virtuous they are when they temper their endless acquisitions with an occasional spurt of noblesse-oblige.

So without further ado, The Obama Christmas Carol, 2013 version:
 

THE PRESIDENT: Hello everybody, and happy holidays.

 

(Greetings to the upper middle class and I will avoid the C word for fear of giving generic offense.)

THE FIRST LADY: We know how busy this time of year is for everyone, so we’re not going to take much of your time. 

 

(Everybody: tacitly defined as those who have actual jobs and money to spend shopping and partying. Those of you too unemployed or depressed in this Long Depression to even get out of bed are not included in the Foist Couple's message.)

 

But we did want to take a moment to wish you all a Merry Christmas, from our family to yours.

 

(Michelle bravely utters the C word, as our heads become stuffed with sugar-plummy visions of ideal intact American families just like hers.)
 

THE PRESIDENT:  This is a season for millions of Americans to be together with family, to continue long-held holiday traditions, and to show our gratitude to those we love.  And along the way, some of us might even watch a little basketball or eat some Christmas cookies, too.

 

(The vision coalesces into a hard chunk of treacle -- the ideal intact Norman Rockwell families gather around the fireside, with '50s interludes of women slaving in the kitchen and fake-sheepish regular guys just like him watching televised sports.)
 

THE FIRST LADY: Here at the White House, over the past few weeks, we’ve had about 70,000 people from all across the country come visit us and look at our holiday decorations. 

 

(So much for it being the People's House and the decorations belonging to the actual people. But I bitchily quibble. For among the attractions was a 300-pound Gingerbread McMansion, complete with a waterfall to further evoke those visions of trickle-down neoliberal economics and happy families.)
 

This year’s theme was “Gather Around: Stories of the Season.”

And in every room of the house, we tried to tell a story about who we are as Americans and how we celebrate the holidays together.
 

 

(And just think, it was only last spring when Hubby proclaimed that careless droning is Not Who We Are! Accompanied by the never-ending soundtrack of drones, playing "We are the Murkans, the mighty mighty Murkans, everywhere we go-oh, people wanna know-oh Who We Are. So we tell them. We are the Murkans, the mighty mighty Murkans...." Special tour attraction: The Kill List Room and Barry's Dead Militant baseball card collection encased under twinkling glass. Maybe next year he can include an exhibit on the "Grit and Resilience of the American People" with a diorama featuring the Yemeni wedding party just blasted to smithereens by Not Who We Are.)
 

And we made certain to highlight some of the most powerful stories we know – the stories of our outstanding troops, veterans, and military families and their service and sacrifice for our country.
 

 

(Okay. You knew the Support Our Troops bromides were inevitable. Prepare to feel guilty for daring to complain about your lousy job, your lack of a lousy job, less heat, less food. Because The Troops will always have it worse than you assholes ever will.)
 

THE PRESIDENT:  Our extraordinary men and women in uniform are serving so that the rest of us can enjoy the blessings we cherish during the holidays.  But that means many of our troops are far from home and far from family.  They’re spending some extra time on the phone with their loved ones back home. Or they’re setting up video chats so they can watch as the presents are opened.  So today, we want all of our troops to know that you’re in our thoughts and prayers this holiday season.
 

 

(They serve so that the One Percent and the military-industrial complex and corrupt politicians can enjoy the financial blessings reaped by death, dismemberment, mayhem and destruction on a global scale. All the corporate media networks are cooperating in this propaganda, airing the video chats between news of Obama sending more weapons to Iraq and Marines to South Sudan to protect the oil cartels. And meanwhile, he is imposing chained CPI on his beloved veterans' pensions. But he is bestowing his thoughts and prayers... which do not cost his financial backers one red cent.)
 

And here’s the good news: For many of our troops and newest veterans, this might be the first time in years that they’ve been with their families on Christmas.  In fact, with the Iraq war over and the transition in Afghanistan, fewer of our men and women in uniform are deployed in harm’s way than at any time in the last decade.
 

 

(He just gave Karzai more time to comply with his demand to keep American troops in Afghanistan for at least another decade, at a cost of billions of dollars that will not be invested here in The Homeland.)
 

THE FIRST LADY: And that’s something we all can be thankful for. 

And with more and more of our troops back here at home, now it’s our turn to serve – it’s our turn to step up and show our gratitude for the military families who have given us so much. 

And that’s why Jill Biden and I started our Joining Forces initiative – to rally all Americans to support our military families in ways large and small. 

And again and again, we have been overwhelmed by the response we’ve gotten as folks from across the country have found new ways to give back to these families through their schools, businesses, and houses of worship.
 

 

(Joining Forces is fully funded and run by the Military Industrial Complex via a neoliberal think tank called the Center for a New American Security. It's just another way for tax-immune corporate welfare recipients like Walmart and G.E. to salvage their misanthropic reputations. They get White House access and photo ops in exchange for vaguely promising to create a few jobs for veterans and service members' families. The administration stresses voluntary private help for vets instead of harassing the Veterans Administration to do its own job and deal with the massive backlog of applications for earned benefits. 

 

And thus, say the Obamas to all you civilians out there: you need to feel some shame during this Time of Joy for daring to complain about your own low-paid jobs, your own lack of low-paid jobs, your foreclosures, your evictions, the government vacuuming up your communications, your food stamp cuts. Because The Troops are spilling their blood and losing their limbs to Keep You Safe.)

 

THE PRESIDENT:  That’s the same spirit of giving that connects all of us during the holidays.  So many people all across the country are helping out at soup kitchens, buying gifts for children in need, or organizing food or clothing drives for their neighbors.  For families like ours, that service is a chance to celebrate the birth of Christ and live out what He taught us – to love our neighbors as we would ourselves; to feed the hungry and look after the sick; to be our brother’s keeper and our sister’s keeper.  And for all of us as Americans, regardless of our faith, those are values that can drive us to be better parents and friends, better neighbors and better citizens.
 

 

(Notice how Obama is not addressing those "folks" who actually are being forced to eat in Soup Kitchens this holiday season. Obama never addresses poor people directly. They remain "The Other," whom the better off must notice and help from time to time, on a purely voluntary basis. Read His Lips: No New Taxes. But "families like his" who do engage in occasional food bank photo-ops or clean out their overstuffed walk-in closets for Goodwill can be an example and inspiration to others in their class.)
 

THE FIRST LADY: So as we look to the New Year, let’s pledge ourselves to living out those values by reaching out and lifting up those in our communities who could use a hand up. 
 

 

(A neoliberal lift up, a hand up, but heaven forbid the dreaded hand out. Hand-ups include public-private partnerships to enrich corporations, unpaid internships to enrich corporations, tech training to enrich corporations, closing public schools to make way for charters, to enrich corporations. Hand outs would include enhanced Social Security benefits, pension protections, a living wage/guaranteed income, food stamp increases, free or nearly free college or student loan forgiveness, Medicare for All, renewal of federal unemployment benefits. Hand-ups are granted by the Free Market, which ensures all the wealth will continue to concentrate at the very top. Hand-outs -- a government jobs program and actual cash in people's pockets -- would serve stimulate the economy, level the playing field, and deprive the plutocrats of the joy of controlling both what they deign to give and the recipients of their "largesse.")
 

THE PRESIDENT:  So Merry Christmas, everyone.  And from the two of us, as well as Malia, Sasha, Grandma, Bo…

THE FIRST LADY: And Sunny, the newest Obama.
 

 

(It's always Sunny in D.C., aka Wall Street-on-the-Potomac. It's always darkest in the hinterland, right before it gets completely black.)
 

THE PRESIDENT:  We wish you all a blessed and safe holiday season. 

 

(But not a peaceful holiday season, apparently. It seems that Obama broke with Christmas tradition and actually launched a drone attack in Pakistan on Christmas Day itself! Maybe he felt upstaged by the Pope's plea for peace, which got a ton more positive press.)
 

THE FIRST LADY: Happy holidays everybody, and God bless. 
 

 

(It could have been worse. At least she skipped the usual America after the God Bless part. Then again, she might have said God Bless Us, and the videographer simply indulged in a bit of choppy creative editing.)