Category: Rants

(Hi. Skip to the last paragraph if you're pressed for time.)

Most adults have had the experience of sitting through a live performance by small children wherein the low entertainment value is offset by the fact that among the performers is one's child (or grandchild, etc.) What would otherwise be excruciating is kinda cute because, well, look at little Billy! That's our boy. Now imagine that you have been dropped into a random grade school full of strangers and you must sit through the same Christmas play. None of the children are yours. It is two hours long. And it consists of children reading excerpts from "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and instructional manuals from various home appliances. You've just watched Atlas Shrugged, and it didn't even cost you $9.

In fairness it did not cost me $9 either. For the first time in my 32 years I sneaked into a movie without paying, as it was clearly in my rational self-interest to do so. To financially reward the people who made this…

thing…smacked a little too much of altruism. It turns out I paid precisely the right amount for this rush job of a film, the production quality of which falls somewhere between an infomercial and the pilot episode of an original series on the SyFy Network. This film was made in just a few months for very little money in 2010 after 40 years of "development hell" because the film rights were about to lapse; the owner wanted to get something from his investment before it was too late. Believe me (and every other reviewer), it shows. Nearly the entire film consists of two actors standing or sitting in a room talking to each other filmed in basic Shot-Reverse Shot or, even worse, a single camera at a totally flat angle. Director Paul Johansson's lack of directorial experience – which consists of a few episodes of a TV show called "One Tree Hill" – is painfully apparent and totally inexcusable.

I emphasize this because I intend to review the film, not Ms. Rand's philosophy. I'm afraid the Randroids pelting the internet with love for a film they probably haven't seen – note Rotten Tomatoes' 10% critics rating compared to an 86% "user" rating – are unable to make this not-so-fine distinction, as if admitting that the film is shit would discredit their idol (They are also attempting to claim that the film is being "suppressed", which I suppose is true in the same way that the distribution of Baby Geniuses 2 was "suppressed"). In most instances – The Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Lord of the Rings, etc. – hardcore fans of written work are brutal on film adaptations thereof, more than eager to disparage the movie and catalogue the ways in which it fell short of the original artist's vision. Not so with Atlas, apparently. If I loved a novel like Objectivists love Atlas Shrugged I would be mortified to see such a shitshow released on the big screen bearing the same name. But if I loved a novel as horrendously written as Atlas Shrugged I very well might like movies this bad. More to the point, if I adhered to a cult-like philosophical movement that simultaneously celebrates the individual and tolerates absolutely no criticism of The Way and The Great Leader, I would follow all of the other lemmings off the cliff and applaud this film too.
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I must address one common yet undeserved reviewer criticism: poor acting. I contend that these actors did as well as anyone could expect given the limitations of the source material; large portions of dialogue are lifted verbatim from the novel. Rand is to realistic dialogue between compelling characters what the Battle of the Somme was to military strategy. I'd like to see an actor who can perform well while delivering lines like "I know the metal will work; I studied engineering in college." Honestly, a few of the actors – Graham Beckel (Ellis Wyatt) and Edi Gathegi (the guy who was "Big Love" on House, here playing Eddie Willers) – were quite good. Meryl Streep and Anthony Hopkins couldn't have made this work. Acting was not the problem.

The director is. It is his responsibility to overcome the limitations of the source material, and in this case the limitations are legion. He must realize that Dagny Taggart (a transparent stand-in for Rand, of course, played here by a gorgeous blonde irrespective of the fact that Rand looked like Joe Pesci) has the sex appeal of a burning orphanage. He must realize that the Taggart-Rearden "romance" is only romantic inasmuch as Rearden does not forcibly rape her or throw acid in her face upon what their lawyers deem satisfactory completion of coitus. He must realize that a story set in the future emphasizing the crucial role of trains in the economy is patently ridiculous. He must realize that endless dialogue about motors and the forging of metal and the minutiae of running a railroad are incomprehensibly boring.

And the director must do something about all of these flaws – perhaps deviate from the source material enough to make the characters do and say something that an actual human might consider saying or doing. Thus at their cores the film and novel share a fundamental flaw: they are incredibly, soul-crushingly, and unprecedentedly boring.
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The director's solution was to spice up the endless drudgery of scenes of two characters sitting in chairs talking about steel, legislative politicking, or trains by…showing montage scenes of railroad track being laid. Seriously.

Johansson shares Rand's appreciation for subtlety as well, as if the audience would not be able to identify the Bad Guy if not accompanied by villainous music, played by a physically repulsive actor, and spouting cartoonishly evil dialogue like "A federal tax! Will be applied to Colorado! To equalize the nation's economy!" (Also, what?) The politicians/lobbyists/etc are monstrously evil caricatures of every cheap stock villain in the Hollywood thriller universe: the fat, greedy lobbyist; the vain politician; the slimy, quasi-criminal union boss; the incompetent bureaucrat. With decent writing and acting, an audience can be told that the Heroes are Good without parading them around in halos or that the Villains are Bad without making them strum their fingers together and laugh evilly in the manner of robbers in a low budget Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

Counter-intuitively, then, the problem with this adaptation is that the film is very faithful to the novel, and the novel is probably the most poorly written work ever to be considered important. Ayn Rand may be your favorite philosopher, but she is an appalling writer. Her novels call into question whether she ever met another human being let alone spoke with one. With absolutely no understanding of how narrative, plot, character development, or exposition work, Rand produces fiction that sounds like it was written in Urdu and translated into English with the least reliable free online translator available. The few pleasant libertarian-objectivist types I have known over the years have admitted in candid moments that her fiction, while containing themes and ideas they found life-changing, borders on unreadable. How could a film be better? Thousand-page collections of obtuse, solipsistic monologues do not a good movie make.

Let me describe one key scene from the film's final act wherein Rearden and Taggart are attempting to track down the inventor of a revolutionary electric motor. Johansson handles this "quest" portion of the story with a hacky montage, essentially turning the last 15 minutes into an episode of Scooby Doo. After a series of events leads them to the abandoned Twentieth Century Motor Company factory (where blueprints for the amazing engine are hidden in a secret passageway…Velma and Shaggy had to move a bookcase to find it) the two pore over the diagrams. Then, in detailed, technical dialogue right out of a User's Manual, the characters listlessly trade lines describing how the motor works. As they walk around the factory Taggart wonders aloud what could have happened to TCMC. Rearden notes that they "flattened their wage scale, paying each according to his needs and not his ability" which quite naturally, Taggart responds, led to "the managers and more skilled workers leaving." Yes, Hank agrees, "and the ones who remained behind couldn't run the place."

Remember, these two just fucked. They are supposed to have great passion for one another. And in the span of 90 seconds they have read us an engineering blueprint and part of a fundraising pamphlet from the Von Mises Institute. This scene captures everything that makes this movie an insufferable experience of unpleasant length.

Battlefield: Earth is still my favorite film in the "so unbelievably bad you have to see it to believe it" genre, and it shares many similarities with Atlas. Both are cynical efforts to extract money from the wallets of blindly devoted followers of a patently silly belief system / cult of personality. Battlefield: Earth was made with the confidence that Scientologists would pay to see it no matter how bad it was, and I am afraid that the same motives underlie the decision to rush this sloppy, amateurish version of Atlas Shrugged into theaters. It ends with the disappeared Ellis Wyatt announcing in voiceover that the has gone Galt, emphatically stating "DON'T try to find me…I am ON STRIKE!" which caused the theater to erupt in an impromptu round of applause. The small crowd of office managers and dentists and petty bureaucrats so enjoyed identifying with the great Producer for two hours before heading home and preparing for another big day of running Northeast Georgia's fourth largest supplier of plumbing fixtures or filling out forms in the Office of Administrative Technicalities at the (public) University. And the cynical bastards who made this sad excuse for a film knew that no matter how much it sucked, society's frustrated, impotent petit bourgeoisie – lawyers, secretaries, cubicle dwellers, engineers, and assorted other educated, angry white people – would gladly hand over the price of admission for that brief thrill of feeling like society would give two flying shits if any of them joined Mr. Wyatt "on strike."

Atlas Shrugged: Part I is as good as anyone could expect a film based on the fiction of Ayn Rand to be. Shit begets shit.

Recently Slate ran a commentary on Connick v. Thompson, declaring, "Clarence Thomas writes one of the meanest Supreme Court decisions ever." They detail at length the penchant of the Scalia-Thomas dyad for being cruel simply because they can be – or more accurately, because they feel justified that their "originalist" interpretation makes them unbiased arbiters of the law. Slate notes that Thomas and Scalia bend over backwards to excuse the actions of the state even though lower courts and the prosecutors themselves have admitted that egregious errors were made. While it is understandable to focus on the human costs of this decision, Slate overlooks a much more important fact: they're wrong.
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In writing this decision they completely ignored 30 years of precedent in favor of "legislating from the bench" and "judicial activism" and all the other buzzwords that, curiously enough, I did not hear any conservative Champions of the Individual Against Encroaching Powers of the State apply to the justices' actions in this case.

First, some background.

The defendant, Robert Thompson:

…was sentenced to death and spent 18 years in prison—14 of them isolated on death row—and watched as seven executions were planned for him. Several weeks before an execution scheduled for May 1999, Thompson's private investigators learned that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that would have cleared him at his robbery trial. This evidence included the fact that the main informant against him had received a reward from the victim's family, that the eyewitness identification done at the time described someone who looked nothing like him, and that a blood sample taken from the crime scene did not match Thompson's blood type.

Exculpatory evidence is called Brady material in reference to Brady v. Maryland, which holds that the state violates the constitutional rights of a defendant if it does not reveal evidence in its possession that might suggest the defendant's innocence. So if a prosecutor withholds Brady material it is in essence willingly prosecuting someone it knows, or has a valid reason to suspect, is innocent. In Mr. Thompson's case this involved collaboration among at least five prosecutors in New Orleans (despite Thomas' errant claim that the case is about "whether a municipality is liable for a single Brady violation by one of its prosecutors") and very nearly resulted in the application of the death penalty. No big deal, right?

A jury awarded Thompson $14 million in damages (one for each year he spent incarcerated) which was affirmed on appeal. At least it was until the Supreme Court came riding to the rescue of the crooked prosecutors. Scalia lays blame at the feet of a single "miscreant prosecutor" – just a bad apple!
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Where have we heard this argument before? – despite the fact that suppressing this evidence involved collaboration over twenty years and dozens of opportunities for the New Orleans prosecutor's office to introduce the evidence. Amazingly:

One of the reasons the truth came to light after 20 years is that Gerry Deegan, a junior assistant D.A. on the Thompson case, confessed as he lay dying of cancer that he had withheld the crime lab test results and removed a blood sample from the evidence room. The prosecutor to whom Deegan confessed said nothing about this for five years.

What's a deathbed confession among pals?

Here's the kicker. Thompson's suit was named the head of the prosecutor's office, District Attorney Harry Connick Sr. (yes, father of…). Connick did not prosecute the case personally. He was named in the suit because Thompson's attorneys allege that he failed to train his staff – that will be key in a minute – and that his office established a pattern of Brady violations under his command (which Ginsburg details in her dissent). OK? OK.

The Supreme Court established absolute prosecutorial immunity in Imbler v. Pachtman (1976) and Thomas/Scalia rely upon its precedent in their decisions. Unfortunately they overlooked a number of cases that subsequently defined the limits of immunity under Imbler. In Burns v. Reed (1991) the Court noted that Imbler affords absolute immunity for a prosecutor's conduct in "initiating a prosecution and in presenting the State's case" insofar as that conduct is "intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process." The burden rests with the State to prove that any actions for which it claims immunity meet the standard (see Forrester v. White, 1988).

More recently in Mink (2007) 482 F.3d 1244 from the 10th Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals, the Court ruled that absolute immunity does not extend to "those aspects of the prosecutor's responsibility that cast him in the role of an administrator or investigative officer rather than that of advocate (for the State)." In other words, the plain text of Imbler and Burns state that immunity covers actions "intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process" and immunity explicitly does not extend to "administrative" functions such as supervising one's subordinates and training them on proper conduct and legal procedures.

In short, there's nary a word in Imbler, Burns, Mink, or any of the predecessor cases involving prosecutorial immunity about holding a unit of government blameless when its prosecutor runs an office in which people who will represent the state in criminal trials are either encouraged or allowed by neglect and lack of training/supervision to disregard the rights of defendants. Thomas and Scalia just made it up. It's all well and good that the Justices adhere to what they believe is a very literal interpretation of the law; if only they could apply that same rigor to their interpretation of the facts of the cases before them.
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Instead they held the law constant and twisted the facts of until they matched the description of of what is protected by immunity under Imbler and other cases. By reinventing the history of Thompson's ordeal as a single act by a single Bad Apple they were able to give a crooked prosecutor in a crooked city a free pass, in keeping with the long tradition of "originalists" giving aid and comfort to the powerful.

Activist Judging: It's Not So Bad Sometimes!^tm

The culture industry – Hollywood, New York publishing giants, the internet – long ago figured out that being inoffensive is a very effective way to make money. Yes, some bands make record companies a lot of money by being loud and jarring, but their bread and butter is the muzak / mainstream "adult contemporary" stuff – James Taylor, Celine Dion, Air Supply, Eric Clapton, and so on. Some Hollywood movies are cutting edge, but the most reliable moneymakers are mainstream genre films (romantic comedies, crime dramas, etc.) with dull, bankable stars despite the fact that you will forget about these movies five minutes after they end. The collected work of David Foster Wallace didn't produce the profit of just one of the Danielle Steele novels churned out every few months for the last 20 years.

It is patently clear at this point that President Obama believes in the political equivalent of this kind of product and has oriented his presidency toward the soft, mushy, forgettable middle. It's as if he's trying to be mediocre; if he is, Mission Accomplished. In the rush to declare victory after the budget deal that averted a government shutdown, the President had this to say late Friday evening:

Tomorrow, I’m pleased to announce that the Washington Monument, as well as the entire federal government, will be open for business. And that's because today Americans of different beliefs came together again.

In the final hours before our government would have been forced to shut down, leaders in both parties reached an agreement that will allow our small businesses to get the loans they need, our families to get the mortgages they applied for, and hundreds of thousands of Americans to show up at work and take home their paychecks on time, including our brave men and women in uniform.

This agreement between Democrats and Republicans, on behalf of all Americans, is on a budget that invests in our future while making the largest annual spending cut in our history. Like any worthwhile compromise, both sides had to make tough decisions and give ground on issues that were important to them. And I certainly did that.

Is there a market for this? I mean, is there anyone out there who gets excited about how bipartisany and compromisey Obama can be? Who's happy with this "deal"? Republicans certainly aren't going to pat him on the back, as they see the budget cuts as far too small.

Democrats wonder why Obama is validating Tea Party rhetoric and treating their talking points about the wisdom of austerity as a starting point for negotiations. "Independents" are probably just confused about why they should care about deep cuts in things they like in order to chop a tiny amount of cash off the deficit.

Who in the hell celebrates this as a victory?

As I like to remind everyone, Obama sees compromise as an end, not a means…

as if people are thrilled by compromise itself irrespective of whether problems get solved. We are supposed to overlook the fact that caving to the austerity movement is a terrible idea from the liberal perspective and that spending cuts are far too small from the conservative point of view.

There may be an audience for Air Supply and Sandra Bullock movies, but in politics the middle of the road is usually populated with roadkill. If the President expects people to rise up in celebration of mediocre policy outcomes and problems that never seem to get any better, he is going to be sorely disappointed. At this point it will be more a matter of fortune than strategy if he gets re-elected, which is a polite way of saying that the weakness (and borderline insanity) of the GOP field is more likely to save him than his heroic ability to give John Boehner what he wants in order to bolster his compromise count.

In my final years in Chicago I worked in an office in Greektown, roughly at Halsted and Jackson. A number of businesses in the area were notable for not having…well, customers. Or certainly not enough of them to stay in business. It was quite obvious even to the most naive observer that a number of storefronts in the neighborhood were fronts for Chicago's rather active Greek organized crime groups.

One day a coworker and I decided to relax after a long day by retiring to a nearby bar to watch the Bulls.
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We entered this ostensible drinking establishment and noted that there were A) no customers and, more unusually, B) no bartender. There was a dusty TV tuned not to local sports but to some baffling Greek soap opera. After a few minutes a gentleman emerged from a back room to inform us that they were unable to serve drinks because they had not received a delivery that day. It was the most ridiculous excuse I have ever heard before or since – and remember, I teach 18 year olds for a living. What do you mean, I asked, gesturing toward the clearly stocked bar. He drolly repeated "No drinks. No delivery today." in a tone that unmistakably indicated that he did not give a shit whether or not I believed him.

He locked the door behind us when we left.

This is why organized crime is so often described as "brazen" among journalists. They operate in the open and under the flimsiest of excuses because they know that everyone knows what they're doing but they simply do not care because what are you gonna do about it, huh? When your organization is so large and so powerful that you can insulate yourselves from the consequences of illegal behavior, why bother to hide it? Which is exactly the attitude we have seen and continue to see from the Scott Walker-era Wisconsin GOP.

In what would ordinarily be a shocking development, on Thursday the Clerk of overwhelmingly Republican Waukesha County (in suburban Milwaukee) fortuitously "discovered" 7500 votes for the Republican candidate in the hotly-contested State Supreme Court election, which had been a virtual tie beforehand. Amazingly, the number of newly discovered votes is just high enough to avoid a mandatory statewide recount.

The Clerk in question, one Kathy Nickolaus, received statewide and national attention last fall for making the unique and unusual decision to keep all of the county's election results not on county servers but on her personal PC and only on her PC. From a contemporaneous news story:

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus' decision to go it alone in how she collects and maintains election results has some county officials raising a red flag about the integrity of the system.

Nickolaus said she decided to take the election data collection and storage system off the county's computer network – and keep it on stand-alone personal computers accessible only in her office – for security reasons.

"What it gave me was good security of the elections from start to finish, without the ability of someone unauthorized to be involved," she said.

Nonetheless, Director of Administration Norman A. Cummings said because Nickolaus has kept them out of the loop, the county's information technology specialists have not been able to verify Nickolaus' claim that the system is secure from failure.

"How does anybody else in the county know, except for her verbal word, that there are backups, and that the software she has out there is performing as it should?" he said. "There's no way I can assure that the election system is going to be fine for the next presidential election."

And Nickolaus seemed to have the cockiness of a well protected mafioso down pat:

Several committee members said they were uncomfortable with Nickolaus' refusal to adopt the recommendations (ed: to make changes to the system, including assigning a unique logon and password for each employee).

During one part of the discussion, Dwyer erupted in exasperation at Nickolaus' facial expressions.

"There really is nothing funny about this, Kathy," he said, raising his voice. "Don't sit there and grin when I'm explaining what this is about.

"Don't sit there and say I will take it into consideration," he said, asking her pointedly whether she would change the passwords.

"I have not made my decision," she answered. After supervisors continued to press the issue, Nickolaus indicated she would create three different passwords.

"This isn't that big of a deal.
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It isn't worth an argument," she said. "This is ridiculous."

Nickolaus also said she would make her own assessment of when to back up computer programming for election ballots – and store the more frequent backup in another building, as the auditor recommended.

And this is the tale of how Wisconsin suddenly became Nigeria in terms of electoral transparency and credibility. When third world dictators rig elections they don't really try to hide it. They know that you know what they did.
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The thing is, they don't care – because they also know that there's nothing you can do about it. Thus Wisconsinites will sit back and watch while their state judiciary, Republican-dominated legislature, and Republican-controlled Executive branch assure the good citizens that there's nothing to see here. Everything's on the up-and-up. Her story checks out. Honest.

Nobody will believe such blatant nonsense but it won't matter. Once the a group of criminals get enough cops and judges on the payroll they lose their fear of operating in broad daylight.

I don't usually associate my 60 year-old parents with quality movie suggestions but I am grateful to my dad for making me watch Elia Kazan's 1957 satirical masterpiece A Face in the Crowd. For those of you who have not seen it, it could just as easily be named The Glenn Beck Story or How Rush Limbaugh Became Famous without being the slightest bit misleading.

To make a long story short, Andy Griffith portrays a miserable drunk who, through a series of unlikely events, parlays his folksy, down-home shtick on an Arkansas AM radio station into the role of political kingmaker and media superstar in New York City. Elected officials clamor for the opportunity to appear on his show to trade low-brow populist anecdotes and use the kind of corny expressions and affected aw-shucks accents that they imagine simple 'merican folk use. This clip really captures the flavor of the film:

Behind the scenes, "Lonesome" Rhodes is actually a neurotic tyrant, cynically manipulating the system for his own benefit, abusing his friends and coworkers, and acting vindictively toward anyone who isn't sufficiently deferential. Eventually he is destroyed when a hot microphone overhears him referring to his fans as mindless cattle, and Rhodes ends up alone in his apartment performing his shtick for hired servants and fulfilling his desperate need for adulation with a recorded applause track played repeatedly.

As Glenn Beck's show on Fox News has effectively been canceled due to declining ad revenues and plummeting ratings (Media Matters does a nice retrospective of his greatest hits) I am reminded of Walter Matthau's character in the film complaining in exasperation that despite having voiced contempt for his audience Rhodes will be back; the audience is dumb enough to accept any excuse Rhodes offers and the networks can't resist the temptation of a proven earner.

What comes next for the real life Lonesome Rhodes, now booted off the set at both CNN and Fox? I see a few possible outcomes:

1. Walter Matthau was right and Beck resurfaces elsewhere doing the same horseshit under a different call sign and sponsor.

2. Beck, whose calling card of insanity has always been his willingness to traffic in extreme conspiracy theories and make apocalyptic predictions that will inevitably be proven foolish, goes full Alex Jones and starts devoting his entire media presence to chemtrails, FEMA concentration camps, the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, and buried yard gold.

3. Freed from the minimal standards of taste and decency imposed by Fox – which after all IS a mainstream media outlet – Beck goes Westbrook Pegler on us, slowly killing himself with liquor while making a career out of increasingly anti-Semitic and racist outbursts in increasingly obscure media. By the 1960s Pegler had become so unhinged that the John Birch Society newsletter fired him because his views were too extreme. I have very little difficulty seeing Beck go down this path, shambling about in the gutters of the right wing media machine launching tirades of invective against the Goddamn Jews and the Shiftless Negroes before dying of cirrhosis at a city-run men's shelter in Brooklyn.

4. Let's not rule out the possibility of pulling an Al Capp – going on a highly paid college speaking tour until one too many female undergraduates come forward to tell the police that he exposed himself and attempted to sexually assault them.

I don't know with any degree of certainty what is going to happen to Beck, but I am sure that he isn't going to go quietly into the night. He still has an audience willing to hand him money (and do just about anything else The Leader asks) and an insatiable need for attention. I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up with a major radio network, nor if he ended up in his basement paying a coterie of homeless people to nod solemnly during his long rants to no one in particular.

Every time the U.S. engages in one of its periodic made-for-TV post-Vietnam wars military adventures I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. We see the same images, hear the same arguments, and watch the same cheap partisan bickering (or, if the president in question is a Republican, we see the same hyperbolic jingoism and accusations of treason). The best part is that every time we start a new, uh, mission we get to start fresh and run through all of the same memes from scratch. In our brief involvement in Libya we have already covered my favorites:

1. "We must arm the rebels." You may remember this meme from conflicts such as…well, basically every country in Southeast Asia and Latin America. And the Middle East. Lindsey Graham is among the many GOPers giving this one the hard sell lately, and why not? The logic is flawless! Anybody who says they want to remove Ghadaffi from power must, by definition, be a U.S. ally because we want him out of power too. When two groups of people have the same goals that makes them allies. So we should help our allies out even though A) they have no leadership or organization of any kind and 2) we haven't the slightest idea what they'll do or how friendly to the U.S. they'll be once in power. This worked extremely well in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Bonus: if you arm the rebels, there won't be any need for U.S. ground forces!

2. The "human shields" argument. I think the U.S. has to pay royalties to Israel for this one, as it may not have invented the technique but certainly has perfected it. The U.S. engages in an overwhelming show of air power using ultra high tech weapons; eventually someone with a camera finds a burnt out building with a bunch of civilian corpses lying around; the aggressor then accuses the Bad Guy of intentionally putting his people in a position to be killed in order to score a propaganda victory. This was extremely popular in Gulf War I and we are seeing it again in Libya. Brilliant! Rather than admitting that perhaps America's gee-whiz super high tech precision Smart Munitions might not be as laser guided and pinpoint accurate as the Pentagon (and endless cable shows full of nose camera footage of bombs flying into open windows) may have led you to believe, we decide that the more likely alternative is…uh…that the Bad Guy must have stuffed likely targets with civilians to ensure a high body count! So the possibilities are A) a civilian target was unintentionally bombed or B) Bad Guy wants video of smoking corpses and thus pre-positions a few hundred poor saps in targets of legitimate military value. Let me check Occam's Razor and get back to you.

The reason I find the "human shields" excuse so morally repugnant is that it transfers blame for unintended casualties to the victims. Israel does this constantly: "We execute precision strikes but the Arabs use people as human shields. Blame Hamas, not us." Rather than having the balls to stand up and say, "We believe that we are in a just war and regrettably accept that civilian casualties are unavoidable in modern urban warfare" the aggressors hide behind laughable excuses and redirect responsibility for their own actions.

Good times. Too bad we can only enjoy these memes every few years. If only we were involved in wars more regularly.

When the American auto industry collapsed and came crawling to Washington for handouts in 2008, major restructuring was a precondition for receiving billions in tax dollars. Cutting labor and legacy costs was a priority (shockingly) and GM management presented the United Auto Workers with two alternative scenarios. In one the UAW could maintain its current wage/benefit structure but face the loss of large numbers of U.S. jobs – in other words, better jobs but fewer of them. In the other, existing jobs would be maintained but at lower compensation. Both choices are undesirable. If only there was a way to obtain the best of both worlds, to satisfy existing members while allowing management to cut labor costs.

Thus for the first time in its 70+ year history the UAW agreed to a contract with tiered wages. Tier 1 employees were those employed at the time the contract was signed; they were essentially grandfathered into the wage/benefit package in place at the time of their hire. Tier 2 employees were those hired from that point forward; they received considerably lower wages and minimal benefits. The UAW had previously resisted this scheme for obvious reasons. It's hard to build solidarity when a clear caste system is created in the workforce wherein one guy makes $28/hour and the guy next to him doing the same job makes $13.50/hour. I mean, what could go wrong? Yet the UAW and other unions have been accepting more and more contracts with tiered wages under the threat of losing jobs to sad, low wage hellholes like rural Mexico, Indonesia, or Oklahoma. From the employers' perspective, the beauty is that eventually every Tier 1 employee retires, dies, or quits and the whole workforce is ever-so-slowly transitioned to lower wages without incurring the costs of moving factories or pissing off the existing labor force.

The manufacturing sector is hardly alone. Academia is increasingly divided among secure, well compensated tenured or tenure-track faculty and at-will adjunct or other temporary employees who make 1/3 the salary with no benefits. As tenured faculty retire, of course, they are replaced by the cheaper alternative. My father, a career civil servant, is among the employees of the State of Illinois grandfathered into a generous pension system (although changes have been made to it as well) while all subsequent new hires will receive a much cheaper benefit package with hard caps. The entire business world now runs offices in which older, salaried employees with benefits work alongside temps – including the baffling "permanent temp" – supplied by outside contractors.

Unsurprisingly, GOP budget whiz (*cough*) Paul Ryan's proposal to put Social Security and Medicare – primarily the latter – on the chopping block takes a similar approach. While proposing enormous cuts in benefits, the politically savvy GOP leadership takes great care to exclude anyone currently over the age of 55. And why not? We know that the entire political system is focused on the needs and wants of the Boomers and more specifically the elderly, who vote and complain far more reliably than younger Americans. Besides, those of us under 40 have long since accepted the reality that we will be the first generation that won't "do better" than its parents. Twenty- and thirtysomethings understand how the deck has been stacked; we work to pay for the lifestyle of our elders with the explicit promise that nothing we see ahead of us will ever be ours. The political mantra is "Austerity for thee, not for me."

When John Edwards talked about the "two Americas" in the 2004 and 2008 elections he meant a rich one and a poor one. It is hard to dispute the validity of that argument. Increasingly, however, we are a society bifurcated by age and generation. Those born before 1960 will go cradle-to-grave with the benefits of the New Deal: a social safety net, job security, pensions / benefits, and good wages. Anyone unfortunate enough to be born since then – especially Carter babies and beyond – will have an entirely different standard of living.

It feels great to know that the 55-and-under set is carrying the burden of paying for the existing standard of living of our predecessors even though we'll never reach the Promised Land ourselves. It's like making 20-30 years of monthly payments for a shiny new Ferrari and being rewarded with the keys to a fire-damaged 1977 Ford Ranchero.

This new breed of Teabagger governors is really something special. We are fortunate to live in an era in which the political class is so committed to radical change. It's exciting. Fresh. Exhilarating. Behold one of the greatest visionaries, Florida's Governor Rick Scott. The ex-hospital executive and lipless chemotherapy patient faces an uphill battle against recalcitrant, entrenched public sector unions who stand in the way of Progress. I think he's up for the challenge. Don't you?

One of Scott's campaign promises was rapidly fulfilled on Monday when Florida's legislature passed a bill tying teacher salaries to student performance – particularly student performance on standardized tests. Teachers, regardless of seniority, may also be fired if their students' three-year average standardized test scores are judged unsatisfactory . Scott hailed the law as a way to reward the best educators in the state and to create incentives to excel in the classroom. It's a great idea. What's more, its passage bodes well for a number of nearly identical measures soon to be considered in the Florida legislature:

1. A pending bill proposes a performance-based pay system for police officers throughout the Sunshine State. If the crime rate fails to improve based on rolling three-year averages, officers can be fired. They'll all be working on year-to-year contracts without seniority benefits. Bonuses will be paid to officers who make the most arrests. Legislators believe that the new merit-based rules will encourage officers to follow the law scrupulously and suppress the crime rate for which police are responsible.

2. A proposed Senate bill will create an incentive-based salary structure for trash collectors. Since landfill space is an unwelcome expense (and rapidly diminishing resource) for municipal governments, the new rules will reward garbage men for completing their routes while using the least possible landfill volume. State Republicans believe that the law will encourage waste disposal workers to innovate and develop new means of reducing the volume of trash generated by Floridians.

3. Two radical new laws are experimenting with ways of altering the compensation structure of state firefighters. One plan, soon to be implemented in a pilot program in Bradenton, will pay firefighters for each fire they extinguish. Logically, rewarding firefighters for each fire they put out will ensure diligent work with no conceivable negative impact on the number of fires that occur. A separate program (currently testing in Opa-Locka) takes a different approach, terminating the contracts of firefighters who allow buildings to burn down or for fatalities to occur in fires. This makes sense, as firefighters are ultimately the people who control outcomes in this area.

4. House Bill 415 creates a pay-for-performance system for the Governor, State Supreme Court, and legislature. Governors will receive no salary if the state unemployment rate increases on their watch, which is fair inasmuch as Governors are tasked with determining unemployment rates. The court will pay judges by the case and terminate lower-level judges whose cases are overturned on appeal more often than average. Legislators will be paid on a similar per-bill system, with penalties for failing to meet a 500 bill per session quota.

5. Florida Gators football coach Will Muschamp, the highest paid state employee in Florida at $2,500,000 annually, will have his contract restructured to a complicated formula based on wins, time of possession, and successfully executed fake punts. Broadly speaking, Muschamp will earn roughly $100,000 per Gators victory, potentially saving the cash-strapped state over $1,000,000 annually.

6. In the event of a failed citrus crop, Florida Agriculture commissioner Adam Putnam will receive no salary for that calendar year. A successful citrus crop is the responsibility of Commissioner Putnam and his office.

7. The Florida Department of Children and Families will face budgetary cuts for each fiscal year in which the percentage of abused children in the state rises above the national average at the state level. The Cato Institute described this incentive-based scheme as the best way to guarantee a safe childhood and home environment to as many young Floridians as possible, as the FDCF will have the strongest incentives to get out there and combat child abuse.

Gov. Scott has barely scratched the surface. If the potential of pay-for-performance government is Mount Everest, the recent restructuring of teacher compensation and tenure is just a few pebbles in your driveway! By understanding all of the relevant mechanisms of causality and assigning responsibility to the appropriate actors, government can not only operate more efficiently and save money but also provide the very best services to its constituents – without exception or compromise.

Many years ago I was dating someone with whom I did not see eye to eye on the topic of movies. Her taste in that area, to be blunt, was very bad. She favored the chick flick romantic comedy aimed primarily at a female audience. After about a dozen terrible movies over the course of a year I was fairly upset. I felt like the choice of movies in relationships is a joint responsibility and the opposing party was letting down its end of the bargain. I decided it was time to send a message. "Look," I said, "I think it's only fair that I get to pick a movie for once."

With all the subtlety of an Oliver Stone film, I decided to make my point by picking the worst, most obviously ridiculous movie in theaters at the time. Which explains why I found myself in a theater watching Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. The point was made but I was not happy.

The problem was twofold. First, in my spiteful effort to make a point I gave Michael Bay $20 and indirectly encouraged him to continue making movies. I am not proud of that. Second, and more importantly, it's not as though I administered this punishment from a safe distance. I had to sit in that theater too. About 90 seconds into the movie my mood shifted rapidly from "Ha ha! Revenge is mine!" to "OK, now I have to sit through Pearl Harbor." It's like four fucking hours long.

Revenge is never as rewarding as we expect it to be. We do something out of anger and more often than not we end up punishing ourselves in the long run. This anecdote has been stuck in my head for the past few months as the results of the anger-driven 2010 elections have played out.

I understand exactly why voters would vote for people like Paul LePage, John Kasich, Scott Walker, and so on to run their states. I understand why they would send Mark Kirk and Ron Johnson to the Senate. It makes a very clear statement: "Screw you, Democrats. We're mad at you and we'll vote for just about anyone else to send a message." There is little doubt that this strategy works – losing 55 House seats, several Governors' mansions, and six Senators is enough to make any political party snap to attention.

The problem is, it took about 30 seconds to make the point. And now they have to live with these ass clowns for four more years.

Scott Walker might not last much longer than a year. Paul "What Maine really needs is lax child labor laws, or perhaps none" LePage. Ohioans, who spent the 00s wildly swinging back and forth between the GOP and Democrats, have enjoyed just three months into Kasichnomics yet it feels like three years. In LePage's defense, though, he has created employment opportunities for unskilled workers. By hiring his daughter as a $41,000 clerical worker.

I don't live in a state with tendencies toward either liberalism or introspection, but I have to imagine that there are some Wisconsinites, Ohioans, Mainers, and so on who are feeling a bit of buyer's remorse at the moment. Of course there are thousands of voters who are perfectly happy with the decision they made and the way their new elected officials have performed. At the same time, I imagine there are quite a few who voted angry and are just now figuring out what they've gotten themselves into. Too bad they're stuck in the theater for a couple more years.