I’ve been wondering for ever so long why movie studios always manage to release odd films with roughly the same premise at basically the same time. Two volcano movies, two asteroid-destroys-the-Earth movies, two Victorian illusionist movies, and now – now! – two guy-wandering-through-desolate-post-apocalyptic-wasteland movies. First, The Road:
And now The Book of Eli:
I ask you, dear reader: What the dickens?
What really attracted me to Obama during the campaign was common sense. He said he wasn’t an ideologue. He said there was stuff to do, and by golly, he was going to do that stuff, and get it done, and he would do so bipartisanly. It didn’t work out so well.
For the first year, I thought he was crazy. Principled, but crazy. It looked like he’d brought the proverbial knife to a gun fight, like he was playing chess on a rugby pitch, like he was quoting Shakespeare when all anyone really wanted was fart jokes.
If I were him, I would have dropped the gloves a long time ago and started nut-punching. The Republicans have been so incredibly destructive over the last few years that it almost seemed like a moral imperative to destroy them back. But now there’s this hour-long video of Obama wading into a meeting of Republican lawmakers, taking their questions, and absolutely devastating them the way only a former law professor can:
After watching this video, I’m starting to think that I underestimated Obama, severely. He wasn’t just mouthing talking points when he boosted bipartisanship in the campaign. The man was stone-cold serious. Bipartisanship really is his philosophy of governance, and (like it or not) he’s demonstrated that repeatedly by including Republican proposals in legislation passed by Democrats.
By fielding their questions clearly and firmly, Obama managed to reveal the Republicans for the nincompoop, hypocrite obstructionists that they really are, while at the same time inviting them to join him in moving the country forward. This was a display of not only incredible political savvy, but profound intellect. After watching this, I really think there’s a chance that Obama will turn out to be one of the great, historically-important presidents of the United States of America.
I also think Republicans will never, ever again let themselves be filmed asking Obama questions.
I’ve been thinking for some time now that the greatest hypocrisy of fiscal conservatives is coupling a fundamentalist opposition to new social spending with ferocious support for the American Military Welfare State. Glenn Greenwald has a great post on the topic. I found this graphic to be enlightening.
I just stumbled across The Faster Times, which bids itself as “A new type of newspaper for a new type of world.” It was launched in June of last year. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s always nice to see people starting new things. All media is moving onto the Internet sooner or later, and the sooner that process is complete, the sooner I might actually have some sort of career ahead of me.
On the other hand, is this really a new thing? Looking at the “About us” page, I see the same line-up of under-employed New York City freelancers one would probably rub elbows with at a Media Bistro party in Midtown. For some reason this gives me the creeps.
On the homepage, they’ve got links to articles about nuclear proliferation, the stock market, baby hair-cutting myths, and an all-white basketball league. Click through and the articles are short summaries with links to other news or documents, or longer commentary pieces.
In other words, The Faster Times is basically a blog about, well, everything.
That’s OK, I guess. But it certainly isn’t as revolutionary as their manifesto on the “About us” page leads one to believe (manifestos pretty much always disappoint, don’t they?). Also, I continue to insist that in order to be successful in Internet media, you need a theme, or a motif. Dare I say a niche?
Slate is contrarian: “You thought it was this way? It’s actually the opposite!” BoingBoing is totally random, but they bring it together with short, easily-skimable posts and the slogan “A directory of wonderful things.” Gawker has an Economist-grade fanaticism about consistent editorial voice. TalkingPointsMemo has a very well-defined audience.
What’s The Faster Times’ motif? The New Newspaper? I’m not feeling it.
Here’s the problem with current standards in American politics: In order to think you’re competent enough to run for state-wide or national office, you kind of have to be an arrogant, overly-self-confident, extroverted prick. Which, if you think about it, almost exactly describes a womanizer.
There are therefore two ways to avoid losing an entire class of political Golden Boys to sex scandals:
There is, of course, a third course of action, which is: Don’t do anything and just enjoy the goddamn shit out of the whole thing. Which is what I chose to do.
It’s Saturday night, you shouldn’t be working anyway.
From No More Mister Nice Blog:
I don’t know if yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling is really going to lead to the apocalypse predicted by so many, or if the corporate influence on American politics is already at its absolute maximum and this is merely going to alter the number of tools in the fat cats’ political influence toolkit. (The ruling is awful, yet I lean toward the latter view — it seems to me that corporations have found a way to have as much political influence as possible already.)
But I find myself having the same naive reaction to the notion of “corporate personhood” that I’ve always had when it’s come up: If corporations are persons in the eyes of the law, why has no one pursued the argument that we can do to corporations what we routinely do to persons, namely imprison and execute them?
What with health care reform failing, banking regulatory reform a joke, 10% unemployment, climate change unchecked, everyone getting fat on government-subsidized corn products, and two messy wars still ongoing, you’d think things couldn’t get much worse for the ol’ U.S. of A. You would be wrong.
The Supreme Court just overturned a century of precedent and ruled that corporations have the same first amendment rights as people. They can now spend as much as they want on political campaigns.
It’s over, folks.
Goldman Sachs 2009 earnings: $13.4 billion.
Government funds received by Goldman Sachs via the AIG bailout: $13 billion.
Think about that.
I posted this video earlier, but I think it’s worth posting again in light of the Masshole vote. It’s an interview with a Harvard health care economist on why we really, really need health care reform.