Culture Update: "The Visitor"

Earlier this evening, I saw a very good film with global political overtones: "The Visitor." This is the description from the Internet Movie Database:

Walter Vale (Jenkins) is a widower who teaches economics at a Connecticut university. No longer motivated by his work, he lives alone, struggling to find passion and meaning in his life. In New York to present a paper at a conference, he goes to the apartment that he has kept since his wife was alive (but hasn't visited for some time) only to discover a young couple living there, having been duped by an acquaintance who "rented" it to them. Despite their great cultural difference, Walter befriends Tarek (Sleiman), a Syrian citizen and drummer, and gradually builds a friendship with Esi (Gurira), his girlfriend from Senegal. One day, when returning from Central Park with Walter, Tarek gets arrested for jumping a stuck subway turnstile, despite the fact that he had paid. The police discover he does not have legal papers and transfer him to an immigrant detention center in Queens. Feeling responsible for and connected to Tarek, Walter stays in New York to help and support him. Not hearing from her son, Tarek's mother arrives from Michigan to find out why, and she and Walter support one another while they attempt to free Tarek.

The movie is a painful illustration of the inhumanity of the post-9/11 immigration policies and procedures. At the same time, it beautifully illuminates the wonders of friendship, kindness, reaching out, exploring life and finding meaning in a challenging world.

In some ways, the film reminded me of "Lost in Translation." In that movie, the lead character (a white late-middle-aged American man) makes a connection in Japan with a young woman from the US. In this film, the white late-middle-aged American makes a connection inside the US with characters from Senegal and Syria. Until those links are established, the protagonist is alienated from the larger world.

Towards the end of the movie, the widower becomes enraged at public officials from his own country who treat him like a child -- protecting him from a non-threatening friend, making him move away from a service window when no one else is in line, etc.

It is a powerful film.

Thumps way up!


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This week at the Duck

Earlier today, I blogged "Appeasement Anecdotes" at the Duck of Minerva. Did you know that the right accused Ronald Reagan of appeasement when he successfully negotiated arms control with the Soviet Union? Within 3 years of that "appeasement," the Soviet Union was gone.

Wednesday, I posted "The Golf War," which concerned George W. Bush's sacrifices in the wars on terror and Iraq. Last night, on "The Daily Show," they too headlined this story as "The Golf War."


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Delegates

By all accounts, Hillary Clinton is going to win today's West Virginia Primary.

At stake? 28 delegates to the Democratic presidential nominating convention.

If Clinton wins the state by a 75-25 landslide, she'll pick up 21 delegates while Barack Obama will receive 7. That's a net gain of 14.

Meanwhile, since last Friday when I last posted about the then-nearly tied Superdelegate "primary," Obama has picked up 14 more superdelegates, while Clinton has added one and lost one.

Indeed, Obama has now gained a net of 29 superdelegate endorsements since last Tuesday and has clearly taken a lead in that battle.

Don't be surprised tonight if the talking heads covering the election spend as much time talking about superdelegate endorsements as they do about West Virginia returns.


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Duck doings

Today, at the Duck of Minerva, I blogged "New 'crimes against humanity'?" The piece considers the claims various political figures have tossed about concerning biofuel production. I also note some additional uses of this phrase in contemporary political debates.

On May 6, I blogged "The taboo," which is about the lack of debate concerning Israeli nuclear weapons -- especially in the US. Why is OK to talk of obliterating Iran, but not OK to talk about Israel's arsenal? [Note: this post originally appeared here, but I'm noting the Duck cross-posting because it was mentioned in a Chronicle of Higher Education footnoted from academic blogs post.]

Finally, May 2, I posted "Power outage" about the apparent decline in home runs in baseball following the most recent crackdowns against steroid use by players. Since posting some early season data, the major league HR rate has risen to 40.7 at bats per homer (from 41.8 in April). That's still down significantly from the rate during the rest of the aughts.


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The Superdelegate Primary

This week, including Monday, Barack Obama has gained commitments from 17 Democratic superdelegates.

Hillary Clinton has gained 3 new commitments, but has also lost 2 as Obama's additions include 2 delegates that previously committed to Clinton.

That means Obama has added 16 more delegates to his lead this week, which is about as many as he advanced his overall lead on Tuesday in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.

ABC News is reporting that Obama now leads the "superdelegate primary."

With these [latest] endorsements, Obama has the support of 267 superdelegates and Clinton has 265 superdelegates.

...Clinton’s advantage among superdelegates was once massive and has been dwindling steadily since Super Tuesday, when she was ahead by over 60 superdelegates.

Other news organizations still report Clinton with a narrow lead, but the slow trickle may yet become an avalanche.

Apparently, Obama is now free to put together a "winning coalition" against John McCain.


Update at 6pm ET: The AP is now reporting that Obama gained 9 superdelegates today, including one that used to support Clinton. The AP's count (and DCW's) shows that the race for supers is now essentially tied.

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Bargaining time

Virtually everyone agrees the Obama-Clinton race for the Democratic nomination is over. Today's NYT:

The moment came shortly after midnight Eastern time, captured in a devastatingly declarative statement from Tim Russert of NBC News: “We now know who the Democratic nominee’s going to be, and no one’s going to dispute it,” he said on MSNBC.

Expect a superdelegate avalanche to start growing more pronounced this week.

The next stage of the contest is a negotiation and Hillary Clinton loses much of her leverage if she stops campaigning altogether. Thus, she is making appearances in West Virginia today. She might crush Barack Obama in West Virginia and both sides know it. Presumably, both sides also know that while this result would look bad for him, it would do almost nothing for her electoral chances.

Thus, both sides should be talking now about the terms of her withdrawal from the race. HRC has personal debt to retire and will have concerns about delegations from MI/FL, the platform, and perhaps the Veep. She likely wants to place some of her staff on Obama's campaign and may want the power to name some potential Cabinet members.

My guess is Obama caves on the debt question and figures out a way to seat the delegations for MI/FL. However, he will reveal less interest on most of the other demands. He will accept some Clinton staffers who are known to his people.

The McCain-Obama race has started.


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Clinton: 50 years may be enough

While many Democrats have piled on Senator John McCain for saying that it would be OK for the US to spend "maybe 100" years in Iraq, few have taken note of Senator Hillary Clinton's similar comment. Mark Kleiman has this from a "Face the Nation" transcript in February 2005:

Senator McCain made the point earlier today, which I agree with, and that is, it's not so much a question of time when it comes to American military presence for the average American; I include myself in this. But it is a question of casualties.

We don't want to see our young men and women dying and suffering these grievous injuries that so many of them have. We've been in South Korea for 50-plus years. We've been in Europe for 50-plus. We're still in Okinawa with respect to protection there coming out of World War II.

You know, we have been in places for very long periods of time. And in recent history, we've made a commitment to Bosnia and Kosovo, and I think what is different is the feeling that we're on a track that is getting better and that we can see how the Iraqi government will begin to assume greater and greater responsibility. The elections were key to that. The training, equipment, equipping and motivating of the Iraqi security forces is key to that. But so is our understanding that if we were to artificially set a deadline of some sort, that would be like a green light to the terrorists, and we can't afford to do that.

I suspect, as does Kleiman, that a Clinton candidacy would dramatically reduce Democratic options concerning Iraq against McCain in the fall campaign.


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Clinton hypocrisy on tax relief

I just watched a Hillary Clinton surrogate on MSNBC praising the $70 that average people might save this summer if her gas tax holiday is achieved. The surrogate said that Senator Obama might find that amount to be trivial, but that it was important to ordinary Americans.

So, I went to google investigating the Clinton campaign's response to the "Bush" stimulus. This is from April 28 on a CNN blog:

The federal government started depositing the stimulus checks Monday into bank accounts of 800,000 Americans hoping the extra money will encourage people to spend.

Between now and July, the treasury will distribute more than $110 billion to at least 117 million low and middle income homes.

[Bill] Clinton said the fundamental issue is most people need the checks to pay off credit debt and bills. “Even if it’s all spent the way the president and Congress hoped it would be,” the current housing crisis would dwarf any possible gains.

I think this demonstrates Senator Obama's point -- the gas tax holiday is a "phony" idea "calculated to win elections instead of actually solving problems."



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The Taboo

Political Scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt received a lot of heat for their recent work about the power of the Israeli lobby inside the United States.

Mearsheimer and Walt raised issues that are rarely discussed in the United States. Indeed. some describe this topic as "the third rail" of US foreign policy debate.

Now that the power of "the Lobby" has been made part of the US public debate, Israel's nuclear weapons program should also be scrutinized more publicly. Ordinarily, that subject is taboo.

Lew Butler (who used to chair the Ploughshares Fund) explained in an op-ed in the SF Chronicle, November 30, 2007:

Estimates are that there are probably as many as 200 [nuclear weapons] in the Israeli arsenal, including thermonuclear (hydrogen) ones.

What is surprising is that there is almost never any public discussion in the United States, and certainly none in the White House or the Congress, about these weapons.

...Clearly, the Bush administration is not going to talk publicly about our understanding, if any, with Israel about its nuclear weapons. And no member of Congress is rushing to get into a subject as politically delicate as this one. That leaves it to those of us in private life to begin the debate, for the sake of the United States and Israel.

Part of the reason nobody wants to talk about Israeli nuclear weapons is that any debate would quickly reveal American hypocrisy. How can the US put pressure on Iran or North Korea about their proliferation if it turns a blind eye to Israel?

The unspoken basis for U.S. policy about Israel's nukes seems to be that we don't want our enemies to have such weapons but we don't worry as much if our friends, like Israel, Pakistan and India, have them.

However, the lack of debate about Israel's arsenal occasionally causes US political leaders to make careless and immoral threats. Hillary Clinton's recent warning that she would "obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel led me to note the following in comments:

I don't know why Israel's nuclear force isn't sufficient to deter Iran's. Estimates suggest that it has 100s of deliverable weapons, some in the form of accurate cruise missiles on relatively invulnerable submarines.

Butler asks a set of related questions

Is there any understanding between Israel and the United States, its principal source of military aid, about their use? If so, does the understanding cover "no first use," similar to the policy advocated in the United States at the height of the Cold War? What would the United States do if Israel were ever under an attack that might lead it to a nuclear response? Has the United States ever talked with Israel about its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? For Israel, are the weapons more of a danger to its security than a defense?

I see no reason to avoid public debate about these issues.

An honest discussion about Israel's arsenal might lead the US to adopt policies that would reduce its hypocrisy. For example, achieving genuine nonproliferation in the Middle East might require Israel to abandon its reliance upon nuclear weapons. Alternatively, perhaps the US and the regional states could embrace some kind of mutual deterrence based on Iran maintaining a secure second strike force. Iran does not currently have a nuclear-armed ally willing to extend deterrence on its behalf.

How would the US respond if Russia announced that it would obliterate Israel if it used nuclear weapons against Iran?


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Email as echo chamber

I've known about Sidney Blumenthal's emails for some months, but did not write anything about them because I lacked first-hand evidence. I am not on Blumenthal's email list. However, I did link to a Newhouse New story about the email list back in mid-February when I discussed the Barack Obama-as-messiah smear.

Peter Dreier, who gets the material via a forward, explains how it works:

Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era.

Almost every day over the past six months, I have been the recipient of an email that attacks Obama's character, political views, electability, and real or manufactured associations. The original source of many of these hit pieces are virulent and sometimes extreme right-wing websites, bloggers, and publications. But they aren't being emailed out from some fringe right-wing group that somehow managed to get my email address. Instead, it is Sidney Blumenthal who, on a regular basis, methodically dispatches these email mudballs to an influential list of opinion shapers -- including journalists, former Clinton administration officials, academics, policy entrepreneurs, and think tankers -- in what is an obvious attempt to create an echo chamber that reverberates among talk shows, columnists, and Democratic Party funders and activists. One of the recipients of the Blumenthal email blast, himself a Clinton supporter, forwards the material to me and perhaps to others.

Blumenthal has gone from critic of "right wing conspiracy" to enabler. Apparently, some of the stuff he's circulated is comparable to the "Clintons-killed-Vince Foster" crap from the 1990s.

Jonathan Tilove of Newhouse News named some of the recipients back in February:

the list of those receiving Blumenthal's e-mail included reporters John B. Judis, a senior editor at The New Republic; Joe Conason, national correspondent for The New York Observer and columnist for Salon.com; and Gene Lyons, columnist with the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and author of "The Hunting of the President: The Ten Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton."

Dreier names more:

Among those whose names show up as recipients of Blumenthal's emails are writers and journalists Craig Unger, Edward Jay Epstein, Thomas Edsall (Politics Editor of the Huffington Post), Joe Conason, Gene Lyons (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist and author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton), John Judis, Eric Alterman, Christine Ockrent, David Brock, Reza Aslan, Harold Evans, and Josh Marshall; academics and think tankers Todd Gitlin (Columbia U sociologist), Karen Greenberg (NYU law school), Sean Wilentz (Princeton historian), Michael Lind, William M. Drozdiak, and Richard Parker; and former Clinton administration officials John Ritch, James Rubin, Derek Shearer, and Joe Wilson.

Mark Kleiman is fairly disgusted that the journalists kept this to themselves.

I think this is why some Obama supporters so actively want to find a politician who are

"hungry for a new kind of politics, a politics that focused not just on how to win but why we should, a politics that focused on those values and ideals that we held in common as Americans; a politics that favored common sense over ideology, straight talk over spin."

On substance, there's very little separating Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The former is a bit better on health care and some other domestic issues, while I like Obama's foreign policy better.

On political process, I see big differences. Blumenthal has been sending this stuff around for six months.


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Religion in the public square

I don't think Reverend Jeremiah Wright speaks for Barack Obama and I'm not all that concerned that Obama attended his church for 20 years. Over the past few decades, since Ronald Reagan embraced Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, we've heard many religious figures make incredible statements about politics. For the most part, their ties to specific politicians has not determined voting outcomes.

I think this reflects the insight Ronald Reagan offered when asked about the views of a John Birch Society member who supported him:

"if anyone chooses to support me, they're buying my views; I'm not buying theirs."

For most politicians, that's sage advice.

George W. Bush tried to take a similar stand in 2000 when Senator John McCain called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance." This is what McCain said at the time:

"The politics of division and slander are not our values," McCain said in Virginia. "They are corrupting influences on religion and politics and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country."

I've previously blogged about Pat Robertson's outrageous "contributions" to public debate. It is almost impossible to select a single representative example from so much nonsense, but here's one to pit against Wright:

"If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer. You've got to blow that thing up."

Colorful, eh? And he said that after 9/11.

This is from a transcript featuring Jerry Falwell on Robertson's TV network, September 13, 2001:

JERRY FALWELL: ...[T}he Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil, first time, and by far the worst results. And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters; the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats, what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do.

Back in 2000, then-Governor Bush tried to echo Reagan to distance himself from these kinds of remarks from Falwell and Robertson:

Bush acknowledged that Robertson, Falwell and other fundamentalist religious leaders have lined up behind his presidential bid. "They're supporters of ours, but I have all kinds of supporters," Bush said.

Obama supporters are probably ready to offer an amen to that, eh?

But what of McCain? Should it make a difference if the politician seeks out the controversial religious leader?

You've probably already heard about McCain pursuing the endorsement of controversial Texas pastor John Hagee. Indeed, he was "very honored by Pastor John Hagee's endorsement." In various public forums, however, Hagee has said that God sent Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans because of their offensive "level of sin." He's denounced all Muslims for having a "a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews." There's more:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue said Hagee "has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.’

Given the saturation TV coverage of Wright -- and the previous efforts to make Obama denouce Louis Farrakhan -- it is one-sided to think that we haven't seen more about this pastor and his endorsement of McCain.

In any case, rather than provocative statements in the public sphere, perhaps we should worry most about what religious figures say privately to politicians. This story concerns release of tapes from Richard Nixon's Oval Office in 1972. Reverend Billy Graham has had the ear of every president since Harry Truman:

In the taped conversation, Mr [Reverend Billy] Graham said the Jewish "stranglehold" on the media "has got to be broken or this country's going down the drain".

"You believe that?" [President] Nixon replies.

"Yes, sir."

"Oh boy. So do I. I can't ever say that but I believe it," Nixon says.

"If you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something," Mr Graham replies.

Later in the conversation, when Nixon raises the subject of Jewish influence in Hollywood, Mr Graham says:

"A lot of Jews are great friends of mine. They swarm around me and are friendly to me, because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth, but they don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them."

Jon Stewart played the tape on last night's "Daily Show."


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Clinton: When to obliterate Iran

I have some security question fors Senator Clinton. First, what policy choices should the U.S. pursue so as to avoid "doing something that would be reckless, foolish, and tragic."

CLINTON: Well, the question was, if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be? And I want the Iranians to know that if I am president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that. Because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society. Because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program, in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that. Because that, perhaps, will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish, and tragic.

Certainly, Dick Cheney was wrong pretending that deterrence cannot work against Iran.

However, it is morally reprehensible to talk lightly of obliterating a society. Would the U.S. really punish millions of innocent people if their government acted reprehensively? How could this be consistent with just war theory? Just think about proportionality for one moment.

Do all the Catholics in Pennsylvania who apparently voted for Clinton know about this?


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In the Valley of Old Men

Recently, my wife and I have had a Tommy Lee Jones film festival on DVD. Some weeks ago, we watched "No Country for Old Men," which won the most recent Academy Award for Best Picture. Saturday night, we watched "In the Valley of Elah." If you missed it, that latter film is about a father of a missing soldier just back from Iraq.

Except for the sappy song played during the flag raising near the end of the movie, I thought "In the Valley of Elah" was a better film.

In any case, "No Country for Old Men" would not have won our vote for Best Picture.


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Basketball primaries

Did you catch this news item from the AP today? Barack Obama's campaign is offering young Indiana campaign workers the chance to play basketball with the candidate:

Obama's campaign has been intensely focused on new voter registration ever since staff arrived in large numbers back in mid-March. The campaign... [is] offering high school and college students who register their peers the chance to play basketball with the senator.

In the Hoosier state, this is a politically savvy move.

Indeed, several of the next primaries are in states that are basketball crazy -- Indiana and North Carolina on May 6 and then Kentucky on May 20. This March, the largest cities in these states had some of the "highest average television rating[s] and share[s] for the run of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament." Of the top 56 TV markets, Louisville finished #1, Charlotte was #2 and Indianapolis was #4. Additionally, Raleigh-Durham finished #10.

Is Obama's link to basketball authentic? Yes.

Barack Obama was a high school basketball player (footage here). His brother-in-law is a college head coach. Most importantly, Obama has continued to play basketball into adulthood -- the offer to young staffers isn't an awkward gimmick.

Even the NY Times has noticed Obama's love of basketball:

From John F. Kennedy’s sailing to Bill Clinton’s golf mulligans to John Kerry’s windsurfing, sports has been used, correctly or incorrectly, as a personality decoder for presidents and presidential aspirants. So, armchair psychologists and fans of athletic metaphors, take note: Barack Obama is a wily player of pickup basketball, the version of the game with unspoken rules, no referee and lots of elbows. He has been playing since adolescence...

That rough-and-tumble vision of pickup basketball might not jell completely with Obama's "change" agenda, but consider these elements:

...over the years, Mr. Obama’s gymmates have become loyal allies and generous backers....Though some of these men could afford to build courts at their own homes, they pride themselves on the democratic nature of basketball, on showing up at South Side parks and playing with whoever is around. At the University of Chicago court where he and Mr. Obama used to play, “You might have someone from the street and a potential Nobel Prize winner on the same team,” Mr. Duncan said. “It’s a great equalizer.”

It is a theme that runs throughout Mr. Obama’s basketball career: a desire to be perceived as a regular guy despite great advantage and success...

For fans in Kentucky, Indiana, and North Carolina, here's the money quote:

“I dream of playing basketball,” Mr. Obama said in a television interview

As frequently as he can, over the next month, I think Obama should appear with a basketball in his hands.

Based on this CNN footage, it appears he can shoot.

If he can win Indiana and North Carolina on May 6, the long campaign may be over.


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Duck

Yesterday, at the Duck of Minerva, I posted "History lesson: PA 1980."

April 21, I blogged "Nuclear umbrella" concerning what the Democratic candidates said in the California debate about nuclear deterrence and proliferation in the Middle East.

From Friday April 11, you can find "Teaching from the blogosphere."


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