It is entertaining, but I was not enthralled by it. The jacket promises a "surprising revelation," but what happens is neither surprising nor a revelation. Plus, it occurred too early in the story; I did not think that it could be the surprising revelation, so I kept waiting for something else, only to find that was it.
However, Callahan finely delineates the different personalities of the story. Each character is drawn very well. I think the ending is satisfying, as it leaves you wondering what happens next.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Of Palin Again: A good summary
Share Comments 61 She took great umbrage at Rahm Emanuel's use of the phrase " retards," then excused Rush Limbaugh's subsequent reference to a "retard summit" as "satire." She snarked to the Tea Partiers about President Obama's use of a teleprompter, then was caught during the Q&A sneaking peeks at her hand, where she had pathetically scribbled crib notes in the idiotic belief that no one would notice them. ("Energy," "Tax," and "Lift American Spirits" -- she was afraid she'd forget those deep thoughts?) And, of course, there was, "How's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?" which, in all my years of watching politics, is the most viscerally nauseating utterance I've ever heard. And these are just from the past week.
After a year and a half of exposure to this virulently toxic presence, the question on the table is: In our lifetime, has there ever been a worse human being in American politics than Sarah Palin? For all the morons and criminals and bigots we've been subjected to, has there been anyone else who has combined all of the fetid qualities -- the proud ignorance, the sadistic viciousness, the shameless hypocrisy, the arrogant laziness, the congenital dishonesty, the unctuous sanctimony, the bilious resentment, and whichever others I'm forgetting for the moment -- that this morals-free harridan so relentlessly displays? (Not to mention that atonal bray with which she communicates it all.)
Talk amongst yourselves.
After a year and a half of exposure to this virulently toxic presence, the question on the table is: In our lifetime, has there ever been a worse human being in American politics than Sarah Palin? For all the morons and criminals and bigots we've been subjected to, has there been anyone else who has combined all of the fetid qualities -- the proud ignorance, the sadistic viciousness, the shameless hypocrisy, the arrogant laziness, the congenital dishonesty, the unctuous sanctimony, the bilious resentment, and whichever others I'm forgetting for the moment -- that this morals-free harridan so relentlessly displays? (Not to mention that atonal bray with which she communicates it all.)
Talk amongst yourselves.
The Teabaggers
I've been reading lots about the so-called Teabaggers. They had a convention in Nashville last weekend where 600 hearty souls showed paying $549 a head for the privilege of hearing speakers question Obama's citizenship, rail about deficit spending without in any way suggesting how they would cut federal spending or raise taxies (God forbid!) to balance the budget, and the usual tirades about states rights and socialized medicine (what is Medicare if not socialized medicine?) And of course, there was Sarah Palin reading her notes off her hands.
Sure, there is the usual racial element in all of this. There is the usual right-wing nonsense that surfaces in this country every 10 years or so when Democrat is in the White House. Historically, there is nothing new about the Teabaggers.
However, I do think there is genuine and proper anger in this country about the bankers, the callous indifference of some politicans about the suffering going on in the heartland, and the long-term sustainability of govermental obligations. Sure, we need changes, but they won't come from these rightly in some ways angry people but completely wrong in any of their solutions.
Sure, there is the usual racial element in all of this. There is the usual right-wing nonsense that surfaces in this country every 10 years or so when Democrat is in the White House. Historically, there is nothing new about the Teabaggers.
However, I do think there is genuine and proper anger in this country about the bankers, the callous indifference of some politicans about the suffering going on in the heartland, and the long-term sustainability of govermental obligations. Sure, we need changes, but they won't come from these rightly in some ways angry people but completely wrong in any of their solutions.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
The Politics of Budget Deficits
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 4, 2010
These days it’s hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we’re told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world. These claims generally aren’t stated as opinions, as views held by some analysts but disputed by others. Instead, they’re reported as if they were facts, plain and simple.
Yet they aren’t facts. Many economists take a much calmer view of budget deficits than anything you’ll see on TV. Nor do investors seem unduly concerned: U.S. government bonds continue to find ready buyers, even at historically low interest rates. The long-run budget outlook is problematic, but short-term deficits aren’t — and even the long-term outlook is much less frightening than the public is being led to believe.
So why the sudden ubiquity of deficit scare stories? It isn’t being driven by any actual news. It has been obvious for at least a year that the U.S. government would face an extended period of large deficits, and projections of those deficits haven’t changed much since last summer. Yet the drumbeat of dire fiscal warnings has grown vastly louder.
To me — and I’m not alone in this — the sudden outbreak of deficit hysteria brings back memories of the groupthink that took hold during the run-up to the Iraq war. Now, as then, dubious allegations, not backed by hard evidence, are being reported as if they have been established beyond a shadow of a doubt. Now, as then, much of the political and media establishments have bought into the notion that we must take drastic action quickly, even though there hasn’t been any new information to justify this sudden urgency. Now, as then, those who challenge the prevailing narrative, no matter how strong their case and no matter how solid their background, are being marginalized.
And fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction.
Let’s talk for a moment about budget reality. Contrary to what you often hear, the large deficit the federal government is running right now isn’t the result of runaway spending growth. Instead, well more than half of the deficit was caused by the ongoing economic crisis, which has led to a plunge in tax receipts, required federal bailouts of financial institutions, and been met — appropriately — with temporary measures to stimulate growth and support employment.
The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do. If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs.
True, there is a longer-term budget problem. Even a full economic recovery wouldn’t balance the budget, and it probably wouldn’t even reduce the deficit to a permanently sustainable level. So once the economic crisis is past, the U.S. government will have to increase its revenue and control its costs. And in the long run there’s no way to make the budget math work unless something is done about health care costs.
But there’s no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade. Consider, for example, what the latest budget proposal from the Obama administration says about interest payments on federal debt; according to the projections, a decade from now they’ll have risen to 3.5 percent of G.D.P. How scary is that? It’s about the same as interest costs under the first President Bush.
Why, then, all the hysteria? The answer is politics.
The main difference between last summer, when we were mostly (and appropriately) taking deficits in stride, and the current sense of panic is that deficit fear-mongering has become a key part of Republican political strategy, doing double duty: it damages President Obama’s image even as it cripples his policy agenda. And if the hypocrisy is breathtaking — politicians who voted for budget-busting tax cuts posing as apostles of fiscal rectitude, politicians demonizing attempts to rein in Medicare costs one day (death panels!), then denouncing excessive government spending the next — well, what else is new?
The trouble, however, is that it’s apparently hard for many people to tell the difference between cynical posturing and serious economic argument. And that is having tragic consequences.
For the fact is that thanks to deficit hysteria, Washington now has its priorities all wrong: all the talk is about how to shave a few billion dollars off government spending, while there’s hardly any willingness to tackle mass unemployment. Policy is headed in the wrong direction — and millions of Americans will pay the price.
Published: February 4, 2010
These days it’s hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we’re told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world. These claims generally aren’t stated as opinions, as views held by some analysts but disputed by others. Instead, they’re reported as if they were facts, plain and simple.
Yet they aren’t facts. Many economists take a much calmer view of budget deficits than anything you’ll see on TV. Nor do investors seem unduly concerned: U.S. government bonds continue to find ready buyers, even at historically low interest rates. The long-run budget outlook is problematic, but short-term deficits aren’t — and even the long-term outlook is much less frightening than the public is being led to believe.
So why the sudden ubiquity of deficit scare stories? It isn’t being driven by any actual news. It has been obvious for at least a year that the U.S. government would face an extended period of large deficits, and projections of those deficits haven’t changed much since last summer. Yet the drumbeat of dire fiscal warnings has grown vastly louder.
To me — and I’m not alone in this — the sudden outbreak of deficit hysteria brings back memories of the groupthink that took hold during the run-up to the Iraq war. Now, as then, dubious allegations, not backed by hard evidence, are being reported as if they have been established beyond a shadow of a doubt. Now, as then, much of the political and media establishments have bought into the notion that we must take drastic action quickly, even though there hasn’t been any new information to justify this sudden urgency. Now, as then, those who challenge the prevailing narrative, no matter how strong their case and no matter how solid their background, are being marginalized.
And fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction.
Let’s talk for a moment about budget reality. Contrary to what you often hear, the large deficit the federal government is running right now isn’t the result of runaway spending growth. Instead, well more than half of the deficit was caused by the ongoing economic crisis, which has led to a plunge in tax receipts, required federal bailouts of financial institutions, and been met — appropriately — with temporary measures to stimulate growth and support employment.
The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do. If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs.
True, there is a longer-term budget problem. Even a full economic recovery wouldn’t balance the budget, and it probably wouldn’t even reduce the deficit to a permanently sustainable level. So once the economic crisis is past, the U.S. government will have to increase its revenue and control its costs. And in the long run there’s no way to make the budget math work unless something is done about health care costs.
But there’s no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade. Consider, for example, what the latest budget proposal from the Obama administration says about interest payments on federal debt; according to the projections, a decade from now they’ll have risen to 3.5 percent of G.D.P. How scary is that? It’s about the same as interest costs under the first President Bush.
Why, then, all the hysteria? The answer is politics.
The main difference between last summer, when we were mostly (and appropriately) taking deficits in stride, and the current sense of panic is that deficit fear-mongering has become a key part of Republican political strategy, doing double duty: it damages President Obama’s image even as it cripples his policy agenda. And if the hypocrisy is breathtaking — politicians who voted for budget-busting tax cuts posing as apostles of fiscal rectitude, politicians demonizing attempts to rein in Medicare costs one day (death panels!), then denouncing excessive government spending the next — well, what else is new?
The trouble, however, is that it’s apparently hard for many people to tell the difference between cynical posturing and serious economic argument. And that is having tragic consequences.
For the fact is that thanks to deficit hysteria, Washington now has its priorities all wrong: all the talk is about how to shave a few billion dollars off government spending, while there’s hardly any willingness to tackle mass unemployment. Policy is headed in the wrong direction — and millions of Americans will pay the price.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Andrew Sullivan on Palin
I was struck by this comment: Palin has the ability to make substance irrelevant and her cult following listens to her but not to what she actually says.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
The future former governor of Alaska in Sarah Palin: The Untold Story, now on magazine stands. Andrea Stone finds that Alaskans are happy to be rid of her:
Palin has "what any politician out there would kill for," said Andrew Halcro, who competed against Palin as an independent gubernatorial candidate in 2006 and is challenging U.S. Rep. Don Young in the Republican primary this year. "And that is the ability to make substance irrelevant."
Speaking of her new side job as a news-network analyst, Halcro said, "It's brilliant for Fox. She brings in a built-in audience who want to listen to Sarah Palin and not listen to what she says." It's also, he believes, an opportunity that fits her better than her old position did.
"This is her sweet spot. This is what she was always cut out to do. She's found her groove."
She's a beauty queen again! And her Fox gig is basically the equivalent of the interview segments of a pageant. Plus: she gets to rake in more moolah ... until the hole she has already dug for herself falls in on her.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
The future former governor of Alaska in Sarah Palin: The Untold Story, now on magazine stands. Andrea Stone finds that Alaskans are happy to be rid of her:
Palin has "what any politician out there would kill for," said Andrew Halcro, who competed against Palin as an independent gubernatorial candidate in 2006 and is challenging U.S. Rep. Don Young in the Republican primary this year. "And that is the ability to make substance irrelevant."
Speaking of her new side job as a news-network analyst, Halcro said, "It's brilliant for Fox. She brings in a built-in audience who want to listen to Sarah Palin and not listen to what she says." It's also, he believes, an opportunity that fits her better than her old position did.
"This is her sweet spot. This is what she was always cut out to do. She's found her groove."
She's a beauty queen again! And her Fox gig is basically the equivalent of the interview segments of a pageant. Plus: she gets to rake in more moolah ... until the hole she has already dug for herself falls in on her.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Absolutely Clueless Republicans
by Paul Krugman
February 1, 2010, 4:48 pm
The Party Of “Look, You Know, I Was, Uh, Yeah”
Last week Mike Pence, the third-ranking Republican in the House, was asked what compromise he would agree to on health care. His answer, word for word, was
Well, look, you know, I was, uh, yeah, yeah, look, uh.
Today Tim Pawlenty has an article in Politico, which is a bit more articulate than that — but as Bruce Bartlett says,
he rants about the deficit without proposing any spending cuts and insisting on still more tax cuts.
Well, look, you know, he was, uh, yeah.
The moral here is that right now the GOP literally has no ideas about how the nation should actually be governed.
And the scary thing is that lack of ideas seems to be a winning platform
February 1, 2010, 4:48 pm
The Party Of “Look, You Know, I Was, Uh, Yeah”
Last week Mike Pence, the third-ranking Republican in the House, was asked what compromise he would agree to on health care. His answer, word for word, was
Well, look, you know, I was, uh, yeah, yeah, look, uh.
Today Tim Pawlenty has an article in Politico, which is a bit more articulate than that — but as Bruce Bartlett says,
he rants about the deficit without proposing any spending cuts and insisting on still more tax cuts.
Well, look, you know, he was, uh, yeah.
The moral here is that right now the GOP literally has no ideas about how the nation should actually be governed.
And the scary thing is that lack of ideas seems to be a winning platform
Monday, February 1, 2010
Synecdoche, New York
Since this blog has taken a turn toward discussing movies, let me chime in on Synecdoche, New York. I watched this a few days ago and am still thinking about it. It is a complicated movie that requires many viewings and much explication. It forges a dream reality and is solipsistic.
The basic gist is that a New York theater director gets a grant to design a new play. He gets an abandoned warehouse to stage this play and proceeds to build a life size replica of New York City. He hires a cast of thousands to play real people from his life and has them enact different episodes and experiences from his life. His hope is to better understand his life, himself, and life in general.
What makes this film fun is the dream reality. Obviously, a life size replica of New York City cannot be built inside a warehouse that is itself located in New York City. But in the film that happens. Then, because the replica is of New York City, in which there is this warehouse with the replica, the replica itself has a warehouse, inside of which is another life size replica of New York City, that then has another warehouse... and so on.
As another example, since the play recreates his own life, the theater director hires actors to recreate the staging of the play. So there are actors playing actors.
Because the theater director attempts to recreate his life, the production of the play never ends, as his life is continuing, thus meaning there is always more to be staged. He spends at least forty years creating this play.
As I continue to think about this film, what fascinates me most so far is the solipsism. The theater director is entirely consumed, as evidenced by the play, by his own perspective. He sees only his own viewpoint. I think this is how we all are. Reality does not exist; there is no reality out there to be accurately deciphered or that even can be accurately deciphered. Reality is, instead, a social construction filtered through our experiences, prejudices, emotions, and other internal censors. That different people can agree on anything is astonishing.
The basic gist is that a New York theater director gets a grant to design a new play. He gets an abandoned warehouse to stage this play and proceeds to build a life size replica of New York City. He hires a cast of thousands to play real people from his life and has them enact different episodes and experiences from his life. His hope is to better understand his life, himself, and life in general.
What makes this film fun is the dream reality. Obviously, a life size replica of New York City cannot be built inside a warehouse that is itself located in New York City. But in the film that happens. Then, because the replica is of New York City, in which there is this warehouse with the replica, the replica itself has a warehouse, inside of which is another life size replica of New York City, that then has another warehouse... and so on.
As another example, since the play recreates his own life, the theater director hires actors to recreate the staging of the play. So there are actors playing actors.
Because the theater director attempts to recreate his life, the production of the play never ends, as his life is continuing, thus meaning there is always more to be staged. He spends at least forty years creating this play.
As I continue to think about this film, what fascinates me most so far is the solipsism. The theater director is entirely consumed, as evidenced by the play, by his own perspective. He sees only his own viewpoint. I think this is how we all are. Reality does not exist; there is no reality out there to be accurately deciphered or that even can be accurately deciphered. Reality is, instead, a social construction filtered through our experiences, prejudices, emotions, and other internal censors. That different people can agree on anything is astonishing.
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