What wingnuts find so utterly galling is that -- not only are the Obamas back in the White House for another four years -- they're immensely popular people. Which is why, much to wingers like Monica's chagrin, they tend to be invited to "national events."

But beyond the obvious correlation between "millions of Americans really liking you" and "getting invited to stuff" is the precedent for appearing at the Oscars set by Ronald Reagan in 1981 and Laura Bush in 2002.

But, you know, IOKIYAR.

The thing that really irked me about the whole "President Obama won't let the media have access while he plays golf with Tiger Woods" silliness has more to do with the fact that, while the largest climate rally ever took place in D.C., President Obama's golfing buddies included two prominent Texas oil and gas executives. (Not that the media would have covered that in much context, mind you.)

Deals do get done on the golf course. I think most people understand that, and so it's not necessarily a bad sign that Obama was playing golf with the same scumbags who helped destroy the environment and ravish our coastlines. It's possible that Obama said, "You know, Jim, we're going to have to do something about this, and you're going to have to get used to it." (Likely? Who the hell knows?)

But see, the problem isn't that Obama talks to oilmen. It's that he never, ever talks to people like us.

No, neutered Skype sessions with the general public don't count. Why doesn't the president sit down and talk with a group of the struggling long-term unemployed, those whose income took a massive nosedive, and all these highly-educated, yet underemployed young people? (You know, the people he only talks to when he's campaigning.)

He's not alone in this, by the way. In the past ten years, it has become much less likely that rank-and-file voters have any meaningful access to their elected officials. A lot of them have stopped holding town halls (or only hold them when they can hand-pick the crowd). Look how many of them won't even take phone calls now -- you can only fill out an online email form.

Look at the people who do have access: Lobbyists, CEOs, big donors. Wall Street billionaires.

And we don't.

Every time I see one of those stories about Obama helping someone who wrote him about their troubles, I get annoyed. Because these are almost always individuals with systemic problems, not individual problems. We The People are flotsam and jetsam caught up in an ongoing economic tsunami, and all we get from the White House are words -- and PR events.

It's time for some real engagement with working people. How about a White House summit on that?

Trevor Aaronson interviewed on RT, February 14, 2013

9/11 changed everything. Or so Washington DC would have you believe.

Certainly, it was the biggest act of terrorism to date on American soil, even if it was not the first. But rather than the uncomfortable evaluation that would be necessitated by fighting domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, 9/11 gave us an identifiable foe: Muslim extremists. Granted, it took some time for us to finesse the message down to Muslim extremism, causing its own form of discomfort as we went through the permutations of a "crusade", Islamofascism, etc, etc.

But there was no question people were frightened by 9/11 and demanded proof that our country would not be caught flat-footed again. And therein lies the danger that author Trevor Aaronson documents in The Terror Factory. Not content with just throwing Homeland Security money at low-probability targets as Lucas Stadium in Indianapolis, the American people wanted to see that terrorists were getting snapped up before they had the chance to wreak havoc.

But how many of the over 500 terrorism cases prosecuted since 9/11 were legitimately thwarted bad actors? The answer is, not many. For every Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, there are dozens of terrorists like the Fort Dix Five, who appear to have neither the wherewithal nor the capacity to commit an act of terrorism without the express enabling of FBI informants. And that is what The Terror Factory examines: how many of these terrorism prosecutions were the result of enablinga and entrapment? From the publisher:

An outgrowth of Trevor Aaronson's work as an investigative reporting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, which culminated in an award-winning cover story in Mother Jones magazine, The Terror Factory reveals shocking information about the criminals, con men, and liars the FBI uses as paid informants--including the story of an accused murderer who has become one of the Bureau's most prolific terrorism snitches--as well as documenting the extreme methods the FBI uses to ensnare Muslims in terrorist plots, which are in reality conceived and financed by the FBI.

The book also offers unprecedented detail into how the FBI has transformed from a reactive law enforcement agency to a proactive counterterrorism organization that traps hapless individuals in manufactured terrorist plots in order to justify the $3 billion it spends every year fighting terrorism.

Trevor Aaronson is here with us today to discuss the way the domestic prosecution of the "War on Terror"™ has become warped and twisted into a mockery of investigations, entrapment and the persecution of hapless Muslims in the name of keeping the country safe.

Please join me in welcoming Trevor to C&L and let's discuss The Terror Factory.

Take heart, America. While Fox is doing its best to prevent President Obama from implementing preschool for the poor, it’s totally looking out for the little (white) man and woman’s ability to own assault weapons. Case in point: Dan Bongino, a “former Secret Service agent” on Fox & Friends Weekend to explain why he thinks there’s “no such thing as gun control, only people control.” Host Tucker Carlson forgot to mention that Bongino is also a failed Republican senatorial candidate in 2012, now considering running for governor of Maryland in 2014

Bongino wasted no time getting to his larger platform. “Whether it’s the sequester, health care or the gun control issue, what they do is they manipulate an emotional crisis, a national emotional crisis to further an ideological agenda which involves the evaporation, the slow disintegration of your civil rights, your liberties, your ability to live and let live.” But speaking of manipulating emotions, Bongino quickly went on to push people into thinking that gun control is a matter of the wealthy one percent trying to disempower everybody else.

We have this Downton Abbey class of politicians and bureaucrats who – they understand as clear as day that… gun control, with air quotes, has no effect whatsoever on violence or the ability of wolves in our society to impart violence on you. So they feel the need to be protected by weapons and self-defense and the ability to defend themselves with their security details, of which I was one, but they don’t want to impart the same rights upon you, the average American citizen.

Tucker Carlson, who oozes one percent-ness, agreed.

I’ve noticed that. We seem to be developing a two-tier system where privileged people, Mayor Bloomberg, for example, are surrounded by body guards with high-capacity magazines and the rest of us have to make do with double-barrel shotguns. Is that adequate do you think? I mean, is the average person safe with no firearm at home?

BONGINO: No, you’re not.

Later, Bongino said:

We are living in this post-Constitutional society right now where somehow they have sold to you, the American citizens, that it’s moral, ethical, kind or generous to disarm you… while allowing the wolves in our society, the criminals, to impart violence upon you at will – and they know that you won’t be carrying a weapon in these strict gun-control states, one of which I live in, in Maryland.

Carlson gushed, “That is about the most eloquent defense of the right of self-protection I’ve heard in a long time!”

Forget Social Security. Let ‘em eat guns!

[h/t Heather at VideoCafe]

Steven Brill has written a must-read article for this week's Time magazine about health care costs and why we really do have to be concerned about them. Following on that, he made an appearance on the round table segment of This Week to discuss those costs and why he's sounding the alarm.

Anyone who has spent even a day in the hospital knows what the problem is. When one over-the-counter pain reliever administered in the hospital costs as much as an entire bottle at the pharmacy, there's a very, very big problem.

Brill correctly points out that Medicare is an efficient program that Congress has managed to hog-tie into some ridiculous costly measures:

And it actually that bears on the conversation we're having, because a chunk of that money is paid by Medicare. Medicare is I point out in the article is very efficient at most things. It buys health care really efficiently, which is a great irony, because it's supposed to be the big government of bureaucracy.

Where Medicare is not efficient is where Congress, because of lobbyists have handcuffed Medicare. Medicare can't negotiate what it pays for any kind of drugs. It can't negotiate what it pays for wheelchairs, diabetes testing equipment. And if Congress took those handcuffs off of Medicare, you could get about half of the spending cuts that we're sitting around here talking about.

Yes, this. Of course, that assumes anyone in Congress is brave enough to stand up to the mighty PhRMA lobby, which seems to have as deep a lock on Washington as the gun lobby. Brill also makes the compelling argument for lowering the Medicare eligibility age, which I have argued over and over again here at C&L. The single biggest cost-saver for Medicare would be to drop the eligibility age, let people buy in until they actually reach retirement age, and then they would drop to the levels under the Social Security law.

By the way, Steve Brill is not by any stretch of the imagination some liberal socialist out to destroy capitalism. The man is a moderate conservative who has done quite well in the land of free enterprise, which made his declaration is a refreshing breath of intellectual honesty about health care in this country.

Brill makes compelling arguments, and I agree with every single one of them. What struck me about this exchange, however, was how George Will hijacked the conversation to talk about all the people in the whole United States who are nothing but a bunch of health care moochers! It's not the costs of health care, people! No, not at all. What we have in this country are a bunch of moochers who don't carry their own weight.

Here's Will, telling us all we mooch:

Here's an argument against that, for a different kind of reform, all the big numbers, billions and trillions, 12 cents is the most important number. 12 cents is the portion of every health care dollar paid by the person receiving the health care. Someone else is paying the rest. It was 47 cents 50 years ago when Jack Kennedy was president.

Continue reading »

Towleroad: Before heading off to the Vatican, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan had some ‘splainin’ to do about his last job.

AmericaBlog: Ditto for Los Angeles Roger Cardinal Mahony.

Sarah Kliff: U.S. medical bills are so high because of what the government here uniquely doesn’t do: rate-setting.

Economist’s View: In the U.S. and the UK, conservatives are “gambling with the economy for political ends.”

SCOTUSblog: On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, a case which could spell the end of the “pre-clearance” requirements of the Voting Rights Act.

Speaking of which, your quote of the day: “Are Southerners more likely to discriminate than Northerners?” (Chief Justice John Roberts, April 29, 2009)

Guest blogging Mike's Blog Round Up this week is Jon Perr from Perrspectives. Send your tips, recommendations, comments and angst to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

Richard Roeper's Academy Awards picks

Here is a full list of the nominees for those who'd like to play at home.

And for those who like to hedge their bets, What Would Nate Silver Predict?

Make your predictions, snark on the fashion, groan through the musical numbers (I don't mean Barbra!) and wonder why they keep hiring Bruce Vilanch to write unfunny jokes for the presenters every damn year.

Here are John Amato's predictions:

I haven't seen every movie up for awards, but I'll throw in my two cents anyway.

I have Argo winning the Oscar for Best Picture. Ben Affleck's movie was simply compelling and funny while crafting the action around a very tough time in our history---the 1979 hostage crisis. Although it wasn't a true depiction of the actual events since the Canadians played a major part in saving the Americans, it still was a terrific movie.

Beasts of the Southern Wild was a magical surprise of a film with a cast of real people (not actors) that shined and a new young rising star (Quvenzhané Wallis) that captures your imagination from the first scene to the last.

Django Unchained was completely overrated. Yes it was fun, but once Christoph Waltz (SPOILER ALERT) was killed, the movie flamed out. And at one point it appeared that Tarantino tried to turn it into a Mel Brooks comedy when KKK members argued about how badly their hoods were made.

Les Misérables had good intentions until Russell Crowe opened his mouth. I couldn't finish it.

Lincoln was good, but not as great as the early reviews claimed it to be. On a side note, the Beltway press is trying to paint this as a movie that shows how Lincoln brought disagreeing parties together to ratify the 13th Amendment because today's Congress is so toxic. But the truth is it passed only because Lincoln was able to buy off as many people as he needed.

Silver Linings Playbook I loved. It was hard to watch during the first third because Bradley Cooper (most excellent) was so manically obsessed with his wife that it was unnerving; then it settled in and rocked until David O. Russell decided to give it a typical Hollywood feel-good ending.

Zero Dark Thirty was well made, but highly overrated. It was a film that covered the historical progression of modern terrorism starting with 9/11---along with the search for Bin Laden until he was found and killed. And yes, the excessive time spent on torture was unnecessary and factually not accurate in its aiding of the discovery of UBL.

Best Director will go to Steven Spielberg.

Best Actor will go to Daniel Day-Lewis. I thought Joaquin Phoenix's performance in The Master has been the most overlooked by the critics though. Bradley Cooper was simply terrific as well. (And he was Sydney's BFF in Alias)

Best Actress will go to Jennifer Lawrence. I've been a fan since I saw her in Winter's Bone and thought she should have won then. When she was introduced in the movie I thought she was too young to play the role of a widowed sex addict, but after a few scenes she flat out blew me away. Her monologue to De Niro disproving his idea that she's a jinx to the Eagles was fantastic and should not be missed.

Best Supporting Actor might be the hardest one to pick. Every one of them was awesome in their roles. Christoph Waltz made Django Unchained watchable. Tommy Lee Jones is always excellent. Philip Seymour Hoffman was tremendous as an L. Ron Hubbard-esque character. Alan Arkin was hysterical in Argo, but my pick is Robert De Niro. I know, I'm going against the grain here. I think I felt this way partially because his character was so similar to the way I root for my sports teams. Yes, don't get to close to me if the NY Giants are in a Super Bowl, but it wasn't just his crazed rituals whenever an Eagles game was on, but the low key way that he made you understand why Bradley is the way he is.

Best Supporting Actress is going to be Anne Hathaway. What a performance.

This is your Academy Awards open thread. Use it.

Wear a Big Top Hat, an excerpt from Great (1975), the Academy Award-winning short by Bob Godfrey, starring Richard Briers

Although there was a single casualty reported in Afghanistan on Friday, the name has not been released by the Pentagon. It is the first casualty in Afghanistan in a month, for a total of 9 allied service members since the beginning of the year. According to iCasualties, the total number of allied service members killed in Afghanistan is 3,258.

In addition, the following notable names passed away this week:
Actor Richard Briers (see above), country singer Mindy McCready, All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Sophie Kurys, R&B/Soul singer Damon Harris, actor Elspet Gray, Louisiana politician B.G. Dyess, L.A. Lakers owner Jerry Buss, Virginia politician Chip Woodrum, South Dakota politician Elmer Diedtrich, hockey player Jean Gauthier, gospel singer Cleotha Staples, blues musician Magic Slim, animator Bob Godfrey (see above), Ohio politician Bob Corbin, first female Speaker of the Australian Parliament Joan Child.

Ahhh...the glory of never having to admit that you're clueless. In the face of tonight's Academy Awards program and the surprisingly high percentage of political films nominated, host George Stephanopoulos asks his panel to give their predictions of who will take home the Oscar.

Whodathunk that the partisan hacks--who are equally as clueless about their domestic policy predictions--use the opportunity to thump Democrats:

Of the three politically charged films up for Best Picture, ABC News contributor George Will thinks “Zero Dark Thirty” should take home Oscar gold.

“It’s a genuine contribution to public education,” he said. “Sufficient reason for voting for it is a rebuke to Sens. Levin, Feinstein and McCain, who have enough to do without being movie critics and falsely accusing that movie of taking a stand on torture it does not take.”

TIME Magazine contributor Steven Brill agreed.

Because, you know, those Academy voters are always looking for an opportunity to teach a lesson to Democratic senators.

And even then, Will doesn't get the criticism correct. Levin and Feinstein did not object to 'Zero Dark Thirty' for taking a supposed stand on torture. They objected to the way the film elides over the years and false information given via torture before they finally did get actionable intelligence, something an FBI agent involved confirmed.

In arguing with Susie Madrak against a 'Silver Linings Playbook' Best Picture win, I reminded her that Academy voters love sweeping epics and elevated films and tend to reward that. Kathryn Bigelow's 'Zero Dark Thirty' did not do that and even the nominations reflect that:

But I suspect that the real problem for academy voters with Kathryn Bigelow’s film is not the torture sequences, but how utterly devoid of larger context the movie is. Should that matter? No, unless you make the claim, as the filmmakers have done, that your version of “history’s greatest manhunt” carries the imprimatur of journalistic accuracy — durable enough to become the art of record.

The duty of a dramatist is to tell a story, with conflict, peril and resolution. The duty of a historian is much the same, with the added responsibility of assembling a factual narrative. In trying to have it both ways, “Zero Dark Thirty” lost a large segment of thinking movie lovers.

I first saw the film with two highly opinionated women, and we had the same instant reaction: best picture. Maya, the composite character of the C.I.A. band of sisters that tracked Osama bin Laden, was mesmerizing. It was emotionally satisfying to see a mass killer in a body bag. The stomach-turning visual style was similar to Bigelow’s best-picture winner, “The Hurt Locker,” which I loved.

That was six weeks ago. A second viewing with journalist friends who know the story well led to a more troubling take-away. It’s not just the torture and its inherent message that young, attractive Americans got the ultimate payoff in part by doing what German bad guys used to do in the movies.

It’s the omissions. In “Zero Dark Thirty,” several larger truths — the many intelligence mistakes, the loss of focus and diversion of resources, and the fallout from the folly of the Iraq war — are missing. This is a crucial point, because the film is likely to end up as the most popular version of the singular trauma in the first decade of the 21st century.

It’s obvious, now, why the C.I.A. was cooperative with the filmmakers: it couldn’t have asked for better product placement.

The Academy--unlike George Will--does not want to appear to be in bed with the CIA. That's why we can chalk up yet another incorrect statement out of the mouth of Will. Not that it will ever matter to ABC News.

Campaign disclosures for the last month have just been filed for the current elections to the Los Angeles Unified School District board and the numbers are obscene. Worse yet, the donors have no vested interest in Los Angeles schools, but they're ponying up the money anyway.

After Michelle Rhee's disingenuous claim that she was just marching "for the children" last week, she tossed $250,000 into the kitty for Kate Anderson, the "reform" candidate looking to oust Steve Zimmer.

LA Times:

A group led by former District of Columbia schools chancellor Michelle Rhee donated $250,000 Wednesday to contests for seats on the Los Angeles Board of Education, adding further political fuel to a battle over the direction of reform efforts in the nation's second-largest school system.

The support of StudentsFirst, which is based in Sacramento, will benefit an independent campaign on behalf of school board President Monica Garcia as well as Kate Anderson and Antonio Sanchez, who are seeking to join the seven-member body.

That's not all. Michael Bloomberg tossed in a million last week, and News Corp has tossed in $50,000 too. Then there's Netflix chairman Reed Hastings with his donation of $100,000, Jeffrey Katzenberg with $50,000, and Laurene Powell Jobs, who has given $112,500 between a foundation she runs and her own personal funds.

But wait! There's more! Venture capitalists don't want to be left in the dust, so they're digging into their pockets, too, giving a collective total of $200,000.

Since January 1, 2013, $2.8 million dollars in outside money has been given to three candidates backed by the Coalition for School Reform, which supports Kate Anderson, Antonio Sanchez, and incumbent school board president Monica Garcia.

As usual, Michelle Rhee has her own agenda first, rather than students:

Rhee said her involvement in Los Angeles could advance school reform statewide.

"We think it's important that John Deasy be able to continue on the job to finish the work he started," she said.

Deasy is developing an evaluation system that incorporates the use of student standardized test scores as one measure of an instructor's effectiveness. Last week, he directed principals to count test results as 30% of an evaluation. He also has altered district rules so that layoffs are not based strictly on seniority.

As a reminder, that "evaluation system" was used to humiliate Los Angeles teachers by using their students' performance on standardized tests which don't account for underfunded facilities, poverty, and other barriers to student learning.

Laura Clawson at Daily Kos:

This is the kind of money that's behind corporate education policy, with its attendant privatization, teaching to the test, and union-busting. And when you look at the players giving six and seven figures here, you realize how much more money is coming down the pike.

The election is March 5th. Who knows how many other billionaires will pony up to buy Los Angeles schools by then. Voters, beware.