Month: December 2013

Time for somebody to start a New Year’s diary.

Haven’t starting drinking yet. Honest! But I’ll start with a toast to 2014. Welcome aboard, 2014, I’m thoroughly sick of 2013. Even if the year does start with me drafted to work the holiday and five inches of snow with single digit temps are predicted. Hell, we’re the USPS! We don’t let a little snow stop us! That’s those little boys at UPS and FedEx. Uncle Sam is an abusive employer and we’ve got our share of goldbricks (so did the US Navy), but there is a pride in doing the People’s business, whether it’s shadowing Russian submarines or delivering a child’s birthday card. I’ll be sure to drink a toast to the men and women, in and out of uniform (no, not a double entendre) who work lonely hours so the People can sleep safely and get up warm and snug to curse those lazy gubmint workers. And one very special toast to my fallen brothers and sisters at NAVSEA, who, in the widest sense, gave their lives to the government that despised them.

But enough of Auld Lang Syne! Here’s to David who’s finally getting extended Medicaid from the President he so passionately cast his first vote for. And for Cindy, who finally had her baby son come home. Be careful what you wish for, Cindy. Here’s to Robert who finally wised up and got off the student loan treadmill. Here’s to Jacob, another new year in which to search for that special someone. And here’s to Stephanie, David’s special someone and the newest member of mia famiglia. I love it when you say, “Love you, Grandpa Tony”. I’m counting on you, girl, to give me my first great-grandbaby. Here’s to hoping that you name him or her, Tony or Toni. OK, you can wait until one of you gets a job. But not too long, I’m not getting any younger and as my own departed grandfather taught me, family doesn’t just come first, it’s everything. There is nothing else.

And finally, a toast to my friends at the Frog pond. Your much like family to me. I’d name names but would inevitably forget someone and make them blue. Keep the Faith! Even if I’ve lost mine. And to Booman! Last, but not least. Don’t let blogging get in the way of special time with Finn. They grow up so indecently fast.

Hey! I haven’t even started the alcohol!  Time’s a wasting!

If there’s a great movie or two in the mix, it will be among those that I have yet to see: “Her,” “Nebraska,” “Wolf of Wall Street,” “Philomene,” and “American Hustle.”

What’s a great movie?  A good story, well told visually and in dialogue, characters with depth and  actors up to the task (and no miscasting), musical score that advances and never interferes with the story and characters, and usually elements that resonate beyond the confines of the story.  They also tend age well. *  

Nothing wrong with a purely entertaining movie that falls short on most of those criteria.  “The Heat” with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarty would be my 2013 pick for entertaining.  Not as rich or as entertaining as my 2012 pick of “The First Class Exotic Marigold Hotel,” but far better than the 2013 distant second  of “We Are The Millers.”  Okay, 2013 wasn’t hot for comedies.

No shortage of highly touted sci-fi/action/adventure/fantasy movie fare.  This list is as good as any guide for you.  I avoided most of those – and still managed to see a couple that I wouldn’t put on any recommended list.  However, “Gravity” is good and “Rush” is excellent.

What I recommend, one conditionally, are a couple of movies that haven’t gotten much buzz because the good field is so crowded.  Unlike say, “The Butler,” have no serious criticisms of either.  Both are well crafted, visually pitch perfect, music hits the right notes, and the actors dig well into their roles.

First, the other “PA deer hunter” movie of 2013.  Be forewarned, it may be the most depressing movie of the year.  “Prisoners” still takes it for most disturbing.  Which is sort of a shame because “Out of the Furnace” should have been most disturbing as well.  That part of the story got a bit lost as the violent and depressing elements overwhelmed the thought provoking parts of the story.  It’s raw, gritty, and bloody.  If it weren’t so well made, I would have hated it.  But it’s too real about too many lives in the US that my educated white ass doesn’t want to know or think about for me to like this movie.

It touches on the themes that were seen in “Winter’s Bone,” a movie that I highly recommended, but is simultaneously more and less.  The director of “Winter’s Bone” made the choice to lighten the heavy load of the movie with a short musical interlude.  The Coen Brothers did the same thing several times in “Fargo.”  A “spoonful of sugar” does help the medicine go down.  The closest “Out of the Furnace” comes to offering a sweetener is watching Christian Bale on a big screen.  It wasn’t enough for me, and I came close to missing how finely crafted the movie is.  An assessment a second viewing could change, but it’s not a movie I think I could sit through again.

Thematically, “The Book Thief” shares more with “Out of the Furnace” than is immediately apparent.  Both concern the impact of war and economic inequality and injustice on ordinary people.  Told through the lens of ordinary people and not that of the war makers and those labeled as hero warriors.  Sixty plus years on and a bazillion movies later, it would seem that there would be no stories left to be told from WWII.  That it’s been mined to the point of exhaustion.  Perhaps that’s not true because we have never gotten the story right.  In an almost understated fashion, “The Book Thief” offers as much, if not more, than “Schindler’s List” did.  Small segments that could easily have lapsed into derivative or cliched (like so very much in “The Butler”) are kept short enough and freshly staged enough to work well.  

Or perhaps it was all the exceptionally fine acting performances in this movie that made it so good.  Or Emily Watson, one of my favorite actors, is in it.  She’s so good in a supporting role that her performance is sublime.  She’s in that rare category of film actors that can speak with their eyes.  (Check out Hilary and Jackie to see this for yourself.)  Watson may become the female version of Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole with multiple Oscar nominations and no wins, but this year is likely not even to get a nomination.  However, wouldn’t quibble if Sally Hawkins wins for her work in “Blue Jasmine” which is really close to or equal to Watson’s in “The Book Thief.”

Speaking of  “Blue Jasmine,” and ignoring the experimental component, if you haven’t already done so, suggest seeing Woody Allen’s “Alice” before seeing “Blue Jasmine.”  The hand of the same “god” is at play in both.  A “god” that knows when to be generous and when to be unsparing (and occasionally to be confounding as in “Crimes and Misdemeanors.”)  

(Am debating seeing “Ender’s Game” and “Thor” which are at the $3.50/ticket theater.   Both are getting high marks and may be excellent in their genres, but that’s a low bar IMHO.  OTOH, it’s easier to be disappointed when I drop $10 to see a movie; I like the lower risk of waiting a few weeks.)              

*My short list of great movies:
“The Wizard of Oz”
“The African Queen”
“Some Like It Hot”
“Lawrence of Arabia”
“Driving Miss Daisy”
“Unforgiven” (almost)
“Fargo”
“Shakespeare In Love”
“Brokeback Mountain”

(“Unforgiven” was marred by Eastwood in the lead role – he was too old for the part by the time he was able to make the movie.  I didn’t include any Woody Allen movies because he invariably has at least one casting misstep (most often in the male roles) and the screenplays aren’t tight enough (may add the charm and quirkiness that make his movies enjoyable, but at a price).

Maybe it’s because 2013 was such a stupid year but, as it comes to an end, I have been preoccupied with how incredibly paralyzingly stupid our country has become. Matt Taibbi appears to be having similar thoughts.

Then, of course, there’s the irony. Men like Karl Rove and Dick Armey practically invented the politics of stupid. In fact, they practically invented the politics of winning millions of votes every time some oversexed cosmopolitan liberal of the Matt Damon/Sean Penn genus used words like “dumb” or “stupid” to describe the preoccupations of Middle America’s God-and-guns culture.

To see these same Beltway Svengalis trapped now in this crazy role reversal, denounced by the far right for being the same kind of condescending establishment snot-bags they themselves spent decades trying to find and campaign against – well, that’s just seriously funny.

At least Taibbi is capable of seeing the humor in it all. Increasingly, I am not finding it funny at all.

The party that figures out how to convince young people that they have a solution to this will win elections until either the problem is solved or it becomes apparent that their solution did not work.

The Institute for College Access & Success, an independent nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California recently released its eighth annual report on average student loan debt in the US, and its findings are dire. College graduates who borrowed for bachelor’s degrees granted in 2012 have an average student loan debt of $29,400, the highest average student loan debt ever on record.

Overall, 70 percent of college seniors graduated in 2012 with debt.

“The graduates of 2012 left school and entered repayment at a time of high unemployment,” said Debbie Cochrane, research director at the institute. “In many ways, these graduates were hit from both sides.”

“They went to college during a recession when their family’s ability to pay for college was likely reduced. Now they are graduating from college and may be experiencing substantial challenges getting a job to repay the loans.”

We have created a generation of well-educated sharecroppers, and they are going to be extremely angry. How that populist anger is channelled will decide whether we move as a country to the left or we start looking for scapegoats and tear each other apart.

Yesterday saw the first commercial flight from Key West to Havana in more than half a century. That so much time had elapsed between flights is a testimony to the idiocy of America’s foreign policy towards Cuba. Neither Cuba nor America has benefitted in any tangible way from this economic and cultural isolation. Havana is closer to Key West than Miami, and the two locales should be part of a cohesive economic zone.

Cuba and Key West have a long and interwoven history. Before the 1959 revolution, there was regular flight and ferry service to the island. Residents could fly to Havana for lunch and be back in Key West in time for dinner.

Our country’s New Year’s resolution should be to completely normalize relations with Cuba in 2014. It’s now more than 50 years since the missile crisis. Can we get this done?

Disbelief in evolution is the best indicator of stupidity. It doesn’t matter if you were born stupid or every adult in your community is a moron who gave you bad information which made you stupid. Anyway, Republicans are getting more stupid at a fairly rapid pace, while Democrats are getting less stupid at a slower pace.

What’s probably happening is that anyone with half a brain is leaving their evangelical hamlet and moving somewhere where people eat quiche and drive Volvos.

This has to be the most unintentionally funny headline to a blog post in the history of the intertubes: Left is getting desperate over Pajama Boy. Who the hell is Pajama Boy, you ask?

Here he is:

For some reason, conservatives have latched on to this ad and think it has some kind of significance. Jay Michaelson thinks the reason is anti-semitism.

Yes, Virginia, Pajama Boy is a member of the tribe. Look at him. Pale Ashkenazic skin, Jew-fro’d black curls, Woody Allen specs. Even the smart-ass expression on his face screams of the Wise Son from the Passover Seder.

Oddly, Pajama Boy does look undeniably Jewish, but he also looks like he’s enjoyably waiting for his next present from under the Christmas tree, or perhaps taking some pleasure in watching a younger brother or cousin open a new toy.

Is he manly? Does he prefer men to women? Is he “a metrosexual in a plaid onesie” or “an insufferable man-child” as conservatives have claimed?

Is Charles Cooke correct that “the vaguely androgynous, student-glasses-wearing, Williamsburg hipster” with his “priggish facial expression” proves “the harsh truth…that the advertising machine behind the Obama administration seems not to really know what normal human beings are like”?

Of course, in Williamsburg, Pajama Boy looks like a normal human being. That’s because Jews live there, along with other normal-looking Puerto Rican and Dominican human beings. That Cooke mentioned Williamsburg wasn’t some accident. It was no subtler than a derisive reference to Brandeis University from the mouth of Pat Buchanan.

So, yeah, just so we’re clear, slight spindly Jew-Boys are not normal human beings and, “suffice it to say, are people you do not want quartered anywhere near you.”

We get it.

That’s why we keep comparing you to fascists.

According to a new CNN/ORC International survey, only “17% of those [Americans] questioned say they support the 12-year-long war” in Afghanistan. According to a recent Associated Press/GfK survey, 57% of Americans say that invading Afghanistan was a mistake. This makes the war in Afghanistan the least popular conflict ever polled in America.

Yet, I don’t see anybody in the streets complaining about it.

This is the downside of an all-volunteer army. The Establishment can spend a decade and a half fighting a war and it doesn’t even really matter whether the war goes well or what the public thinks about it.

Were things any worse when we had a draft?

Look, I admit that I don’t place any importance on these things and, therefore, don’t pay much attention to them, but I can’t remember ever seeing a president and First Lady attending a Christmas service. I’m sure I’ve seen footage and probably even read an article than mentioned it, but the following is quite a bit too much:

President Obama celebrated a low-key Christmas in Hawaii this year. He sang carols, opened presents with his family, and visited a nearby military base to wish the troops “Mele Kalikimaka” — the Hawaiian phrase meaning “Merry Christmas.”

But the one thing the president and his family did not do — something they have rarely done since he entered the White House — was attend Christmas church services.

“He has not gone to church hardly at all, as president,” said Gary Scott Smith, the author of “Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush,” adding that it is “very unusual for a president not to attend” Christmas services.

Historically, watching the nation’s first family head to church dressed in their Sunday best, especially around the holiday season, was something of a ritual.

Here I have to ask, “ritual for whom?” Who are the people who gathered in front of their televisions on Christmas, breathlessly waiting to see the president and First Lady enter or exit a church? Anybody? Even one single family in the whole wide country?

It can’t be just me for whom this “ritual” doesn’t and never has existed. So, why is Ashley Parker writing this in the New York Times? What is the point? What agenda is advanced?

Because it certainly isn’t selling any papers or educating the public. It’s basically just a way of raising public doubt about the sincerity of the president’s professed Christianity. At the very least, that is the only effect is can possibly have.

Aside from angering liberals, that is.

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Kirkpatrick doesn’t offer any new evidence to what US Congress and multiple investigations already published. His story is suspect of a whte-wash for a future Democratic presidential candidate.

Bloggers Call BS on NY Times Article benghazi no link to Al Qaeda

This is just breaking from the New York Times.

IMO…THIS is just NY Times – B.S….probably concocted to give some political cover for it’s beloved Hillary Clinton’s run for Prez. They are desperate!

One year ago by the same NY Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick …

Al Qaeda And Benghazi – The Times Sets Us Straight

October 16, 2012 – As part of their ongoing effort to pump up their candidate, David Kirkpatrick of the Times informs us that Al Qaeda is now a story used to scare the gullible. And the partisans, of course …

 
More stories by Kirkpatrick of the NY Times on the Clintons:

○ Gaddafi must surrender power now, says Hillary Clinton

March 2011 – An international campaign to force Colonel Moammar el-Gaddafi out of office gathered pace on Monday as the European Union (EU) adopted an arms embargo and other sanctions, as US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton bluntly told the Libyan leader to surrender power “now, without further violence or delay.”

○ Election-Year Stakes Overshadow Nuances of Libya Investigation

○ Are Hillary’s favorables “unusually high”?
February 2007 – Writing in the New York Times, David D. Kirkpatrick claims Hillary Clinton’s favorable ratings are “unusually high.”

○ Media Talk; Mrs. Clinton Seeks Ghostwriter for Memoirs
By David D. Kirkpatrick,  January 08, 2001
Now that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has sold the rights to publish her memoirs for $8 million, who will she pick to help write it, and how much will that person be paid?

Of course, an anonymous White House official is quoted and there is plenty of cheerleading going around. Applause.

White House doesn’t dispute report finding no al Qaeda role in Benghazi attack

A senior Obama administration official said the White House does not dispute a New York Times article published Saturday about the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which found no evidence al Qaeda was involved.

… NBC News has not independently verified the Times report, which is the first to argue the video played a large role in sparking the violence in Benghazi.

Daily Kos: NY Times Benghazi Bombshell: Attack spurred by anti-Islam Video

Benghazi Truthers dealt a blow by months long investigation  by NY Times as actual journalism rears its head.

…
While it is customary to thank everyone for rec listing my one’s diary while acting astounded that one made the rec list, the reality is I knew this was rec list material the moment I saw the headline. Nonetheless, thanks for the rec list to all Kossacks and to the great reporters at the New York Times for the outstanding journalism that lead to the creation of this diary.

○ NY Times: US-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell Into Jihadis’ Hands (Dec. 2012)   by James Risen, Mark Mazzetti and Michael S. Schmidt

The first articles with some healthy criticism can be found …

○ The New York Times Whitewashes Benghazi
○ New York Times falsely says Benghazi was ‘fueled in large part’ by YouTube video