Frank Blethen Wants More Money

F.B., the owner of the Seattle Times, stopped by his editorial department to get them to write this little gem about inheritance taxes. (F.B. prefers the Luntz formulation of "death tax", but I prefer accuracy. Inheritance taxes.) F.B. wants to cast this as if he is but another poor victim of revenue services that slaver at the prospect of taking his family business, and in doing so makes a number of ridiculous claims.

"The Seattle Times, which is a family-owned business, believes the right rate of death tax is zero. We pay taxes, and we believe in paying them as an ongoing business, but we see no fairness in a punitive tax that falls due only when an owner dies. That said, there is a good deal of difference between a top rate of 55 percent, which it will be after 2011, and 15 percent, which may now be politically possible in Congress."

Leaving aside that the sorts of family businesses large enough to be subject to estate taxes are usually structured in such a way as to avoid them or minimize their impact (my mother has done living trusts and corporate work, for the rare client who has actually needed those services), the typical effective rate (the tax rate once exemptions are taken into account) individuals pay in inheritance taxes is 19%, and with the increase in exemptions coming in future tax years, that number should drop without Congress taking another step. In effect, F.B. would already pay more or less the rate he says he could live with, so what's the problem?

The problem is that he wants to have the inheritance rate top out at 15% before exemptions, so that he can reduce his liability to practically nothing. He's asking the Republicans to offer a "concession" that doesn't actually concede anything.

"The issue ought to have been one of straight economics — of what is the least job-killing way to collect the government's income. Considered that way, the death tax wouldn't have a chance. But it has become politicized, with Republicans championing repeal and Democrats tending to portray repeal as a gift to the rich. Each side has made a moral issue of it, to work their constituents for donations; what gets lost is sensible policy."

The estate tax has been around for the past hundred years, and somehow the American economy has managed to chug along. Though the economy has been through some tough times, I don't think the estate taxes were the principal cause of the Great Depression, the World Wars, 1970s stagflation, or either Bush recession. It's a standard conservative habit to suggest that high taxes automatically suppress economic growth, but as we saw during the Clinton years, saying it doesn't make it so. Finally, Democrats portray estate tax repeal as a gift to the rich because it is. Wealthy Americans, the only ones who have to pay estate taxes, will receive a trillion dollar windfall (over ten years), at the expense of poorer Americans, who, if they want government services like health care or roads, will have to pick up that check.

"It is common sense that tax rates on assets should be lower than on income, because assets do not renew themselves every year. The top rate of federal income tax is 35 percent for wages and salaries. For income from selling a capital asset, it is 15 percent, and on the gain only. A death tax, which is on the whole estate, ought to be at a lower rate still — but certainly not any more than 15 percent."

It's common sense if you're wealthy and don't feel like you should have to pay taxes. And what's this about assets not renewing every year? If you own an asset--a business, shares of stock, real estate, and the like--you not only get the immediate benefit of owning it, but you can also derive a substantial income without having to dirty your hands with anything as base as work. Widows and idiot sons in this country can literally sit on their assets, living off interest, dividends, and capital gains, and through various shelters and trusts pay astonishingly little tax, while those who draw salaries subsidize their lifestyles. Paris Hilton doesn't usually bother me, but she'll piss me off big time if I and my working and middle class friends wind up paying any more of her taxes for her out of our wages.

F.B., I thought you were full of shit when you made your paper endorse George W. Bush in 2000. I won't say this is worse, but it's just as bad. J.K. Galbraith once said that conservatism in the 20th century amounts to an attempt to find some philosophical justification for selfishness. F.B. just showed us that, at least in one sense, the 20th century hasn't ended.

By the by, if you want to read more about the estate tax, click here.

Brian, No

Imdb reports that Brian DePalma wants to make a prequel to "The Untouchables" called "The Untouchables: Capone Rising". Why not "The Untouchables Episode I: Capone Rising"? A long time ago, in a lakeside metropolis far, far away...Yoda can say "Full of anger, this young mobster is."

I've seen "The Untouchables" a few times, and at no point did I ever think "Gee, I'd like to know what happened before this movie. It's just not complete for me." Brian, no. Please don't do this. This movie does not need to be made. Antione Fuqua does not need to direct it. Whoever you're hiring for best boy doesn't need to best boy it.

Remember life before this obsession with remakes and prequels? It was sunny and warm. There were puppies and kittens. Little kids flew kites on windy days. People seemed to laugh more then.

Shhhhh!

Mr. President, could you please stop talking--preferably for the rest of my life. Devout people often take vows of silence, George. Please be one of them. I'm so tired of you, and if I have to suffer with you and your miserable cronies in office for the rest of my life, it would make things so much easier if you plundred the treasury, misspent our youth, slaughtered the innocent, ignored the guilty, and otherwise carried on cranky quietly.

The people at the TPM Cafe were kind enough to provide us with a transcript of Bush's remarks tonight. If you must read it out loud, do so at a whisper, please. Some of us are trying really hard to tune him out:

“Global war on terror, September the 11th, 2001, terrorists, terrorists , totalitarian ideology , freedom, tyranny, oppression, terror, kill, terrorists, September the 11th, freedom, enemy , war, terrorists, kill, murderous ideology , terrorism, terrorists, free nation, war on terror, freedom, violence and instability, dangerous, violence, bloodshed, violence, sacrifice , war on terror, violence, killers, freedom, criminal elements, hateful ideology, freedom, liberty, democracy, terrorists, war on terror, terrorists, Osama Bin Laden, murder and destruction, enemy, terrorists, car bombs, enemy, terrorists, suicide bomber, enemy, terrorists, violence, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists , freedom, enemies, September the 11th, Bin Laden, enemy , free, tyranny, terrorists, anti-terrorist, free, al Qaeda, free nation, terrorists, terrorists, enemy security terrorists, anti-terrorist terrorists, terror, enemy, tyranny , enemies, freedom, freedom, ideologies of murder, atrocity, September the 11th 2001, car bombers and assassins, freedom, freedom, flying the flag, freedom, freedom, September the 11th 2001, enemies”.

Dammit. I said read it quietly!

Remakes, Remakes Everywhere

The LA Times puts its finger on the reason I won't blow my tiny wad of disposable cash on movies that much this summer:

"CNN did an online poll Friday, asking what movie people were most likely to see over the weekend. The new films 'Herbie,' 'Bewitched' and 'Land of the Dead' received 27% of the vote. The landslide winner, with 73%, was 'None, I'd rather rent a DVD of something good.'
"Isn't it wonderful when a business has so many satisfied customers?"

True, online polls aren't scientific, but let's face it. Why should we watch remakes, particularly remakes of bad movies by undistinguished filmmakers, when we can rent or buy something worthwhile? If we want to have mediocre product with a shitload of commercials shoved down our throats, we don't have to leave home. That's what TV is all about.

Producers of the world, listen up. We want new movies. We want good movies. We want movies worth the trouble of parking, standing in line, paying $10 and enduring sticky floors and slack-jawed nimrods for. We want you to shut down the movie-making committees because the pictures they greenlight bore and insult us. The play testing, market research garbage is making bad movies, and, surprise-surprise, losing you dinks money. If movies ain't new, they're through. "Herbie: Fully Loaded" and "The Island" ain't new, and if you guys keep making this shit, you're through.

Poke My Eyes Out and Leave Me With A Snake if I'm Not

Elle Driver (California Mountain Snake)




You're Elle Driver! Sly and evil, you can manipulate people in order to get whatever you want. You're usually alone, but that's the way you like it. You hate having others nearby to order you around (unless it's Bill, of course... but even then you're still hesitant).

Kill Bill: Which Deadly Viper Assassin Are You? (Vol. II spoilers... results with pics)

(Probably) The Best Movie of the Summer

"War of the Worlds" may be able to overtake "Batman Begins" as the best of this summer's meager offerings, but "Batman" writer/director Christopher Nolan has set the bar so high that even a Steven Spielberg on a hot streak ("A.I.", "Catch Me If You Can", "Minority Report") may be unable to clear it. I loved "Batman Begins." It is the smartest big-budget picture since "Minority Report". It is DVD purchase-worthy. I plan to see it many, many times. The movie is fresh, smart, sly, willing to take chances, and unwilling to stoop. See it, live it, love it, be it, and watch it. In fact, when Michael Bay's born-to-be-crummy "The Island" comes out, go buy a ticket to "Batman Begins" just to let them know which movie deserves dollars and which doesn't.

"Batman Begins" is an origin story, and wow what an origin. Bruce Wayne, haunted by the deaths of his parents and his inability to avenge himself upon their killers, is recruited by a shadowy organization called the League of Shadows. He accepts their training but is unwilling to execute a criminal in order to complete his initiation in the order. When they reveal their plan to destroy Gotham City to teach the world a lesson about the wages of corruption, Wayne returns home in hopes of using his vast fortune to save Gotham. With the help of his butler and his company's head of applied sciences, he fashions the tools that will make him Batman. He then sets out against the head of organized crime, as well as the dark force of the League of Shadows, which is using the mob's services to do something truly fiendish to the citizens of Gotham.

Christian Bale's work in "Batman Begins" is lovely. He's serious without falling into a mannered gloom, and he makes his funny lines seem like wit instead of rehearsed one-liners. This is in part a testment to Chris Nolan's writing but it also tells us about Bale's ability to handle multiple aspects of Batman/Bruce Wayne's images while still suggesting that there's a real person underneath all the personas. Gary Oldman made for a great Jim Gordon. A less imaginative director would have placed Oldman in the villain role, having seen his showy performance in "The Fifth Element". Here, Oldman is pared down, quiet, almost mousy. I liked it. And you can't miss Michael Caine as Alfred or Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, Batman's armorer. Katie Holmes doesn't have a tremendous lot to do in the movie, but I appreciate it that Nolan never let her part become more than it was, and that he never insisted on a romance that the story hadn't earned. She represented Wayne's conscience and his reason for believing that Gotham was still worth fighting for. That was all she needed to be. And Liam Neeson's role allows him to make a nifty pivot from the good-guy-mentor character he played in "Star Wars Episode I".

On Bitterspice's and my way out of theater, a couple of employees were arguing over whether "Batman Begins" was superior to "Star Wars Episode III". How could there even be an argument here? "Batman Begins" is better than "Revenge of the Sith". It's better than the original "Star Wars". It deserves to sit in the pantheon with "Jaws", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Superman", "Superman II", "Star Trek II", "Batman", "The Matrix", and "Minority Report". It's a movie that reminds you why movies are wonderful things. (And after a dismal season with another Bay movie in the pipleline, I was starting to forget.) Vote with your feet, America! The Dark Knight and smart moviemaking in general need your support! You'll have a blast, I promise.

If I could blow off a half an hour:

Bitterspice did hers. I'll do mine.

If I could be a scientist: I'd head to South Korea to do stem cell work.
If I could be a farmer: I'd sell out and move to the city. I've no head for agriculture.
If I could be a musician: I'd go on tour with the Rollins Band, just for the stories.
If I could be a doctor: I could finally afford health insurance.
If I could be a painter: my cousin, the painter, could develop a sneering hatred of me.
If I could be a gardener: see the farmer sentence.
If I could be a missionary: I'd spread the good news that God is dead.
If I could be a chef: I could finally work with my own Tandoor.
If I could be an architect: I'd rebuild the White House in an early medieval theme to better fit its current inhabitants.
If I could be a linguist: I'd definitively isolate the Seattle accent.
If I could be a psychologist: I'd subject Michael Bay to my Michael-Bay-Film-Aversion protocol.
If I could be a librarian: I'd tell the FBI to fuck off.
If I could be an athlete: I'd be the starting SAM linebacker for the Oakland Raiders.
If I could be a lawyer: I'd try to secure legitimate legal hearings for the GitMo inmates.
If I could be an innkeeper: I'd...yes, dear, I'm doing it, dear!
If I could be a professor: I'd be the mighty famous bigshot who's always on sabbatical.
If I could be a writer: I'd be me.
If I could be a llama-rider: I'd name him Floyd Flewellan the Llovlley Llama of Tywysogaeth Cymru.

Movie Lines We Can Do Without

--"I'm just trying to say...[insert sentiment here].": The most popular sentiment for this one is "I'm sorry", but you can really put anything there. I suppose the point of including this kind of prefacing is to make it clear that the character is saying something that is difficult to admit, but it's time for someone to write a new preface, or just trust the actor to find a way to the moment without words.

--"She's gonna blow!" Action movies are, obviously, the worst offender here--with Jerry Bruckheimer movies leading the pack. The irony is that the more often someone says "She's going to blow" the more likely the movie is to, well, you know.

--"How can you say this to me?" Well, through the coodinated use of diaphragm, lungs, laryx, lips, teeth, and tongue. Usually meant to register offense, this line does so in the dullest, most perfunctory way possible.

--"The clock is ticking." A superfluous line. When tension is already present, it adds nothing to it; when it isn't, you don't need it because you're already checking your watch.

--"Why!?! Why!?!" Why? Primarily because its use in "The Lonely Lady" has made it impossible for me to hear this heartfelt cry at the basic injustice of the universe without laughing until I pee.

--"Watch your back." (Variation "I've got your back") Beyond the difficulty of doing this without prehensile eyes, this line collapsed for me when I saw this exchange in "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" (Not exactly classic Mel Brooks but still...)
"Watch my back!"
"Your back just got punched twice."
"Thank you."
The trouble with this line is that it has been used so much that its meaning is no longer clear. Is it saying that one should fear for one's life or that one should merely be cautious? As a warning, wouldn't "Don't let anyone jump out from the shadows and stab you in the back of the neck." work better? If mere caution is called for, wouldn't "the people in there would trade your mom for a packet of dried semen" convey the opposition's ethics (and intelligence) better?

Feel free to nominate other lines for retirement. I've got real work to do.

Hypocricy

Bitterspice called me this afternoon to tell me about a book about Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, and all the other reasons why I don't watch cable news. In this book someone wrote a long essay about Ann Coulter's hypocricy, and it got me thinking about the relative severity of hypocricy as a sin. It seems pretty venial to me. In Ann Coulter's case, I'd take the hypocricy. It's the bigotry, the bile, and the calls for terrorist bombings of major newspapers that I have trouble with.

Ted Bundy's hypocricy (manifested by his work in a rape crisis center) was the least of his faults. The big one had to do with his penchant for capturing women and bashing them over the head. If he'd been just an ordinary, closet misogynist, we'd have just called him a wanker and gone on with our lives. Yes, George W. Bush is a hypocrite, but his worst faults have to do with his serial dishonesty on matters that get people killed or maimed. Bill Clinton's faults look harmless by comparison, so when Ken Starr confronted us with his hypocricy, we called them both wankers (with Starr, deservedly, getting the worst of it for taking up the nation's time with such trivia) and returned to more important things.

We're all hypocritical in at least one area of our lives. And certainly it is silly for someone to think that politicians, who have to go through their lives without doing anything that offends anyone, can survive without a certain measure of hypocricy. It is only when other faults are added that the hypocricy charge starts to sting, but once those faults emerge, hypocricy seems like the least of the person's problems.

The pupu platters of my what?

I had no idea Frank Bruni had removed his lips from W.'s butt to devote them to the cause of restaurant reviewing, but now that he has, what a sentence! (Via Majikthise)

"Skewers of duck breast arrived with a miniature grill of sorts and thus recalled the participatory theater of the pu pu platters of yore."

Ah, where have you gone, you pupu platters of yore! Across the mists of time I search for you. Yearning, yearning, ever ever yearning for the sweet yet nutty embrace of the pupu I enjoyed just as the war began, when the world was in uproar and to this young stripling everything seemed possible.

Bulwer-Lytton, the search is over.

I Read Tom Friedman's Column So You Don't Have To

Tom learns that teachers are great.

Next week:

Tom goes to Davos to learn the true meaning of the month of June.

My Name's Paul and This Shit's Between Y'all

Over at TPM Cafe the assembled bloggers seem to have religion on their minds. In particular they have in mind how to reach out to the religious voters in the red states, and elsewhere, who seem to think that us city folk are all left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers, without alienating left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers like me.

I'll have you know I'm not gay.

Here's the thing for me. Religious people who are of a centrist or liberal bent feel uncomfortable being lumped in with the James Dobsons of this world, and I can appreciate their position. As a secular person I'd hate to be lumped in with Objectivists. I certainly encourage devout lefties to do all they can to separate themselves from the religious right and I wish them well. The trouble is that apart from that there really isn't much more I can do. I'm outside the whole religious right/religious left conversation, largely because on one level I think both sides are full of crap. They both bought into the whole invisible man in the sky thing, and I can't follow them there. Their arguments over which elements of a common holy book they wish to emphasize bore and sadden me. I think they do a lot to stunt human progress and I wish they'd stick a cork in it so that we could get on with the problems of the real world.

I usually don't get what I want, though, so if you on the religious right and left feel you have to have these tiffs over the relative value of Leviticus or on whether commandment #5 applies to abortion doctors, go ahead I guess. I'll be the one impatiently tapping my feet while eyeing the British Airways flight schedules.

Well Put

Wil Wheaton has this post on the new SAG deal with Video Game Producers. It sounds like a reasonable deal, though actors still are underpaid given the game industry's profits. My favorite bit is here though:

"And while I'm talking about things producers should do: I'm really sick and tired of employers and non-actors lecturing actors about how useless and replaceable we are. If it's so easy to replace us with Dave from Human Resources, then go for it. Otherwise, show us just a tiny bit of respect for the craft we practice, and the value we provide to your movies, TV shows, commercials, and, yes, video games.

"I recently reviewed Area 51 for The Onion AV Club, which meant that I played it for about 7000 hours in three days. The gameplay is great, and I enjoyed it . . . but the story made it more than just another shooter, and it was the reason I kept playing until the end. And guess what? If you watch the "making of" features, you'll discover that just about everyone at the company thought it was important to hire actors who could bring "unique" voices to their characters, like Marilyn Manson, David Duchovny, and Powers Boothe. Maybe I'm wrong, but I seriously doubt that Kenny, the Hot Topic kid from the IT department, could bring the same energy and creepiness to the project as Marilyn Manson."

Yes, as funny as the guy who gave us the "AWWKISH HOORDE" from Warcraft 2 was, he just doesn't bat in the same league as actual thespians. I just finished another round of "James Bond: Everything Or Nothing" and, though I respect the crew who worked on the previous 007 games, it is so much better having Judi Dench, John Cleese, and Pierce Brosnan for this outing. Sean Connery is preparing to do the next Bond game, and Clint Eastwood will add his voice to a Dirty Harry title. Clearly this is serious work for a highly lucrative enterprise, so give the actors their due.

And the writers, while we're at it.

Not the World's Most Encouraging Words

Brett Ratner promises not to screw up "X-men 3". He then proceeds to sound like a major league doofus. No wonder his "Red Dragon" stank. My guess he didn't understand half the things the characters were saying.

I found this especially funny:

"I'm not Joel Schumacher," he said of the fan-despised director behind "Batman Forever" and the even more poorly received "Batman & Robin," "and I'm not ... um ... who did the third Superman?"

That would be Richard Lester. "I'm Brett," Ratner said, "and all I know is what I know, what I can do and what I have to work with."

Well, he doesn't know much, because Richard Lester didn't just direct "Superman III"; he also directed "Superman II" (widely considered the best of the series), "The Knack", "A Hard Day's Night", "Help!", and "The Three Musketeers". People have been watching his movies for thirty years, a feat Brett Ratner will be unlikely to match. I will agree on this, he is not Joel Schumacher, but then again, neither am I. So I don't see how that's a qualification to direct "X-Men 3".

I should say I don't have a stake in who directs "X-Men 3". I'm not a fan. I just like busting the chops of stupid people.

Parting shot: Yes, Brett, someday Brandon Routh will die, and I'm sure that someone will call it tragic. This will also be true of Dean Cain and Tim Daly, and you, and (unfortunately) me.

Republicans Trying to Shut Down Free Wi-Fi

Majikthise has the story, via Dailykos.

I keep wondering how Democrats can make in-roads into rural America, and pushing government sponsored high-speed internet sounds like a good way. Municipal high speed internet service is the only way a lot of small towns can get reasonably priced high-speed internet, and, in doing so, keep their local businesses competitive with their urban rivals. (A lot of little towns see their businesses either shut down or leave the area because of a lack of high-speed access.) If we were to push it, we could set ourselves up against the telcos and cable companies--whom everybody hates--while connecting the Republicans with the usual allotment of big business types who want to screw the little guy.

Come on, Dems. Get in the fight. It won't win everything, but it could help.

Ooh, That's Not Good

From IMDB

"Sony, which began showing a trailer for its upcoming The Pink Panther movie preceding the release of Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, has yanked the film from its scheduled August 5 release date following disparaging reviews on a number of websites, Reuters reported. One review on JoBlo.com remarked, 'How could anything with Kevin Kline and Steve Martin be so unfunny?' The film, also starring Beyonce Knowles and Jean Reno and directed by Shawn Levy (Cheaper by the Dozen), is now scheduled to be released on Feb. 10."

February 10th! A fate second only to direct-to-video.

I'm not sure why people keep trying to ressurect Inspector Clouseau, because it seems impossible without ressurecting Peter Sellers. Clouseau is not James Bond (in many, many ways). You can't simply plug a handsome actor from the British commonwealth into the role and expect the formula to function. Clouseau requires the gifts peculiar to Sellers, in the same way The Little Tramp required Chaplin or Mr. Bean requires Rowan Atkinson. Any other portrayal isn't so much an actor playing Clouseau as it is an actor playing Peter Sellers playing Clouseau. It has to be, because if the actor doesn't do that, we won't recognize that he is playing Clouseau. The role is a trap for anyone other than Sellers, and Sellers is dead.

So, Sony, instead of releasing more Clouseau films, just restore and re-release the ones Sellers made. You'll have better luck.

If Nixon Were President Now...

A nifty little thought experiment from Newsweek's Jonathan Alter.

Hmm, Feeding Them to the Wolves...

"It turns out that my readers think the proper role of insurance companies is to be dismembered, their office towers reduced to rubble, and their executives fed to the wolves."

--Kevin Drum

Actually, I'd like to give insurance company executives the option of being broken on the wheel or impaled before they are fed to the wolves. Still, what all this is about is a proposal a guest blogger is making for health care vouchers--i.e. vouchers issued to all taxpayers so that they can buy private plans. On the surface, this sounds inoffensive, but I do have a fear. Insurance companies like making profits, and the quickest way for them to make profits is to find inventive ways to cut off the poor or the sick. (His idea that companies will climb over each other to serve the unhealthy and destitute sounds comical to me.) However tightly regulated an insurance company may be, they have armies of lawyers and they can jigger their rules or their lists of preferred providers any way they like to keep the working poor and the desperate out. What'll the poor do? Sue?

In the meantime, the insurance companies will lobby to give themselves as many regulatory loopholes as they can slip into omnibus bills. The uninsured become the "effectively" uninsured, costs rise, and eventually the system collapses.

Which brings us back to breaking on the wheel or impaling.

The World's Smallest Violin Plays for Dino

This is what happens when you have no case. Now Dino, take your unctuous grin and that sleazy torturer vice-presidential friend of yours and sod off.

ApTel

I just finished watching Steve Jobs's WWDC keynote address. He managed to make the transition from Power PC to Intel CPUs look fairly innocuous. Certainly it'll be less of a hassle than the move from OS 9 to OS X. The trick he pulled where he did all of his demos on an Intel based Mac before announcing the move was exemplary. It looks like he'll have developer backing, and I'm comfortable with Rosetta and its method of assuring backward compatibility of software.

I doubt Apple will make the move, however, of porting OS X onto all Wintel machines. Apple's main advantage is that it builds its OS for a limited number of devices. Thus it avoids a lot of the compatibility problems that plague Windows. If Apple took on those issues, it would lose one of its major selling points against XP and (eventually at some point in the far, far future) Longhorn.

I also doubt Apple will have to deal much with clone-makers. I don't think it was ever the CPU that made Apple technology proprietary. Power PC chips have shown up in lots of other devices, including game machines and, for die-hards, the Amiga. (Though there are also Amigas, as I understand it, that run on Intel chips). I'm sure Apple has lots of proprietary elements in their systems to frustrate cloners, and the switch to Intel won't make much difference.

Give It Time

Matt Yglesias wades into the whole question of the gulag reference in the Amnesty International report and moral equivalency and so on. He makes a very good point when he says:

"Indeed, one might say that the clearest signpost that a truly noxious rot has taken root in our culture is that it even occurs to people to argue in this manner. Can you imagine Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot all sitting in a dock somewhere in hell pointing fingers at each other and maintaining that they should be let off because the others were worse? 'Stalin killed the most!' 'But Pol Pot killed the most percentagewise!' 'But just think what Adolf here would have done if he'd won the war!' I like to think we wouldn't take such statements very seriously. And, no, George W. Bush is not as bad as Pol Pot. Good for him -- mom and dad must be proud. He even compares favorably to Richard Nixon in most respects (albeit not in his attitude toward very poor Americans). Let's give him a medal."

But for me, it goes beyond this. When people compare Gitmo and the other prisons in our new system to the gulag, they compare it to the gulag at its height, when our system is still fairly young and still developing. A more appropriate point of comparion would probably be to the Gulag system of 1922 or the concentration camp system in 1936. Both systems were in their infancy then, but they share features with our current system that should chill any sensible person looking at our system of suspected-terrorist confinement.

1. Secrecy: Inmates are confined without due process of law, or through a process whose methods are secret and beyond the ken of the prisoner. Families and lawyers are not allowed access to the prisoner. Prisoners can be moved without notifying relatives and with no records kept of their transfer. (In other words, they disappear).

2. Torture: Inmates are subjected to physical and psychological torture both as a means of punishment, of extracting infomation, or of amusing their captors.

3. Deceit: Government officials willfully misinform the public about the actions taking place at these prisons, or, in some cases, pretend such facilities don't exist.

Both the Gulag and the concentration camp system started small. As time passed and circumstances changed, the governments administering these programs expanded their prison programs and, to a degree, changed their purpose to fit new priorities. As the Germans captured large swaths of Eastern territories, and the Einsatzgruppen proved inefficient at disposing of Russian Jewry, the Germans expanded already existing camps and built new ones to absorb the larger populations and modified their concentration camps for the purpose of holding mass executions. They built the genocide on their already extant prison structure.

What scares me is that there are people, both in and out of our government, willing to justify the abuses of the current system and to see it as a success. When people see these kinds of tactics as a legitimate tool, they feel the temptation to apply that tool to ever wider populations of victims. Once you decide that some people deserve this treatment, it becomes easier to think that other people--ordinary criminals, political opponents, homosexuals, unpopular minorities--deserve it too. These places, and these tactics, look like the beginning of something awful, something we kept telling ourselves couldn't happen here. We may not be at the Stalinist gulag yet, but it's become a lot easier to see since we started moving toward it.

Oh, Yeah. They Shouldn't Make That One Either

I had known that Michael Bay was making "The Island", but I blocked that information out. Michael Bay already forced me to bear the cinematic pain of "Armageddon". (My summary line in my IMDB comments sums up my feeling about that shit-slab movie: "I wanted to walk out on this movie, and I was on a plane") I took "Pearl Harbor" on myself--or the first two hours of it anyway. There was no way I was going to burn calories switching DVDs for that time-wasting prick. I did enjoy the Henry Rollins story about what blue-veined dicks Bay and Bruckheimer were when they auditioned him for "Bad Boys 2".

Why does Michael Bay want to remake "Parts: the Clonus Horror"? Try this on. He has no taste. He has no class. He's a intellectual pygmy and a moral idiot. That he makes more money than the urchins begging for change on University Avenue is evidence that there is neither God nor justice in this wicked world.

The Wrong Worry

Stephen Pizzo doesn't want Hillary Clinton to get the nomination in 2008. While I'm not sanguine about her chances--or any other Democrat's chances--in 2008, this is the wrong reason to say no:

"All's fair in love, war and politics. So expect all that Kenneth Starr variety crap about the Clintons to make a big comeback. I know that Starr and his Dark Side minions failed to prove most of the allegations against the Clintons. But the Clintons' own sloppy ethics provided the very fuel on which the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy ran. If Hillary runs for president the Swift Boat Veterans will be back in a new form, but in full form. They will pound her relentlessly. Unfair? You bet. Go tell it to John Kerry."

This is exactly the thing we shouldn't worry about when picking the nominee, because as the Republicans proved in 2004, they'll pound anybody relentlessly and without justification. Karl Rove once attacked a Democrat whose background was working with poor children by inventing a group to accuse him of child molestation. The Democrat managed to show, to anyone who would listen, that the charges were untrue, but it ruined him politically. So it doesn't really matter who we pick. Our nominee will face the same attack machine that ruined John Kerry, and in the unlikely even that our candidate is elected, the attack machine will continue until the Presidency is destroyed. If anything, this is an argument for Hillary. That she, like her husband, has managed to survive so much and remain a going concern in electoral politics, makes it clear that she will be very hard for Rove and company to kill.

The question is not who can avoid the Swift Boat Veterans, but who can survive their torrent of lies and return fire. I would prefer a nominee whose riposte would be so devastating that Rove runs screaming back to the fleabitten cur who begat him, a nominee who understands that when the Republicans put one of yours in the hospital, you need to put one of theirs in the morgue. We need a nominee who understands the Chicago way.

Two potential candidates come from Chicago: Wesley Clark and Hillary Clinton.

Ha Ha

This is pretty fucking funny. I guess we should feel sorry for Bret Schundler. Sure he's a tool of evil plutocrats, but he really just wants to be loved--or at least, to look as if he's loved.

Someone needs a hug.

Come on, Ted, Take Your Network Back

Ted Turner doesn't like the direction that CNN is headed in. I don't blame him. It was a lot better when he ran it. Remember "Earth Matters"? Or "CNN World Report"? Or "Future Watch"? Those were good shows, and made for a much happier viewing experience than the combination of administration shilling and courtroom analysis that CNN's current bosses seem to think will help them compete with Fox News. They'd be much better off understanding that they're not really competing with Fox News. Fox News exists for the purpose of befogging the gullible and extolling the vicious. If NewsCorp wants to corner the market on that, let them. CNN would be better off if they got back to who they were, with one addition--a prime time news show, replacing "Larry King Live"--that spent a full hour debunking Fox News's whoppers. They'd never run out of material, and it would be fun enough that I might consider getting expanded basic cable to tune in.

Ted, it's time to get back to where you once belonged.

Speaking of Movies That Shouldn't Be Made

While farting around on imdb, I discovered this. Please no. No! NOOOOOOO!

Yet Another Thing the 49ers Are Bad At

So, what do you do if you can't throw, can't catch, can't tackle, can't defend, and can't run? You play for the 49ers. We've known that for a while. But it turns out that there are more requirements for a job in the organization. You can't act, write or tell jokes either. At least, that's what the video their ex-PR flack made indicates. It's supposedly 15 minutes long, but I felt like the second segment involving the Asian stereotype character and his endless sexual malaprops lasted for at least six weeks. It was bad enough to make we yearn for someone to come on and do a twenty minute "New York is different from L.A." set. If the overgrown Butthead who wrote this crap read this post, he'd have probably stopped at "organization" because it contains the word "organ" huh-huh-huh-huh.

Though I guess we should count our blessings on this one. The 49ers have at least picked a harmless new vocation at which to suck. Let's keep them in comedy (at which they're clearly better on the field than off) lest they scratch an itch to try heart surgery.