Finally, a Good Hitler Analogy!

In November, 1942 the Soviet army launched a counteroffensive against the German troops besieging Stalingrad that threatened to completely encircle German forces and thus cut them off from resupply. General Paulus, commander of the 6th German Army and other Axis forces, begged Hitler to allow him to breakout with a tactical retreat that would save the Army. However, having publicly committed himself to the goal of taking Stalingrad, Hitler refused, insisting that resupply by air and National Socialist ardor would be sufficient to win the day.

It wasn't. In short order the 6th Army began to starve and run out of ammunition. Paulos and 110,000 Germans surrendered on February 2nd. Only about 6,000 ever returned to Germany alive. It was the greatest German military catastrophe at that point in WWII, and marked a turning point in the war from which the Germans never recovered.

The House Republicans have essentially repeated the same mistake Hitler made at Stalingrad. They are so focused upon an ideological ideal--"No new taxes!"--that they are incapable of understanding that goals must be served by means. But in pursuit of their stated goal, the GOP has adopted means that are counterproductive to it.

Had Hitler allowed Paulus to withdraw, then the 6th Army would have survived largely intact and lived to fight another day, but dead soldiers cannot accomplish anything. In much the same way, by their fanatical refusal to sign on to any tax increase now, the House Republicans have guaranteed an even larger tax increase later. Their chosen means directly contradict their stated goal. This is clearly madness.

Joe Scarborough is an Idiot

I actually kind of like Joe Scarborough. I think that he is a member of that dying breed of honest and reasonable conservatives.

Nonetheless, he suffers from another problem. Let's face it, the guy just isn't very bright. Or perhaps he just never learned how to research, assess, and report information accurately and fairly. It is a useful skill set for someone who offers opinions for a living, but this is the world in which we live.

My first hint of this problem appeared in a particularly witless Politico article that I commented on here in which Scarborough bemoaned the growth in spending by comparing dollar outlays in 1980 against 2010 without taking into consideration the corresponding overall increase in the size of the economy and population over 30 years.

The second sign of trouble was Scarborough's uniformed rant against Nate Silver's claim that there were strong odds that President Obama would be re-elected. We know how that turned out.

To his credit, after the election, Scarborough apologized.

In his latest Politico article he repeats the GOP mantra that we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. Well, how much taxes are we collecting as a percentage of the economy compared to other times in our history? Scarborough doesn't fudge this number. He just ignores it entirely. I don't think he is intentionally misleading us. I have come to the conclusion that he is just not aware of such things. He is limited to political sloganeering and gut feeling.

In 2010, tax collection as a percentage of GDP was just under 15%. This is the lowest level since 1950 and considerably lower than the post-WII average of just under 18%. Consider the following chart.

 

This clearly shows two things: First, the current high deficits are caused by BOTH higher spending and lower revenue. Second, the budget surpluses of the late 1990s were achieved by, again, a combination of lower spending AND higher revenue.

This data is publicly available and not hard to find.

Fox News Implosion

You know, it just doesn't get any better than this. Watching Anne Coulter and Sean Hannity duke it out over how to salvage an unwinnable situation is about the most entertaining political spectacle I have witnessed since I don't know when. It even surpasses the Kark-Rove-No-We-Didn't-Lose-Ohio meltdown on Fox News election night.

The odd thing about this clip is that Anne Coulter--now I am speaking only in relative terms here--is the reasonable one. Hannity, in comparison, is so hamstrung by his ideological blinders that he cannot grasp Coulter's unassailable logic: if they fight, they'll lose and EVERYONE'S taxes go up. How is that a victory for the GOP? Hannity cannot seem to grasp this simple point.

An Electoral Landslide

Now that Obama has been awarded Florida, the final tally for the 2012 election is
Obama: 332
Romney: 206

This is an electoral college landslide. Obama's margin of victory was so large that even if he had lost Florida, Virginia, and Ohio--the three biggest of the nine swing states--he still would have won the presidency with 272 electoral votes.

Nate Silver points out that the Democrats have a structural advantage in the electoral college. See the chart below.

This chart shows that the Democratic electoral coalition is going to be difficult for the GOP to overcome. If you think about John Kerry and Al Gore, neither of which were particularly strong candidates, they lost the electoral college by the smallest of margins, 266 and 255 respectively (270 is required for victory). Al Gore actually won the popular vote.

By way of contrast, the last two presidential elections, when the Democrats had a good candidate, have been blowouts with 100+ electoral vote margins.

My own view of this is that the GOP message has become so extreme that they are now a regional party of the South and plains states. Prior to 1992, the GOP won California routinely. California is now as reliably Democratic as North Dakota is Republican. Obama won California by a 20% margin. Unfortunately for them, the solid GOP states tend to be sparsely populated. The ten most heavily-leaning GOP states only have 59 electoral votes. The ten most heavily Democratic states have 129 electoral votes.

What conservatives fail to appreciate is that their message--while successful at strongly galvanizing a segment of the population--has also had the effect of alienating another (larger) segment. As a national party, the GOP is virtually extinct in the Northeast and West Coast. That gives Democrats 170 electoral votes as a starting point. Add to that the states in the upper Midwest (Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) along with Pennsylvania and Illinois, which have all gone Democratic in the last six election cycles, and you are only 24 votes shy of victory, with most of the remaining states having a Democratic lean.

The GOP can still be successful winning Congressional seats in mid-term elections when the turnout is lower and with a demographic make-up more sympathetic to conservative candidates. However, the Democratic party has close to a lock on the presidency as far as the eye can see.

I will predict now that if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton in 2016, she will be elected by margins similar to, if not exceeding, Obama's. I say this because she is likely to hold on to most of the Obama coalition (Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, single women, and upscale women) while doing significantly better among working-class whites. Remember, she convincingly defeated Obama in the 2008 Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania Democratic primaries. The only group she is likely to do worse in is with young people. If Hillary serves two terms, it will be 2024 before the GOP gets another shot at the presidency, and by then the demographics of the country will make a win by the GOP--at least as currently constituted--nearly impossible.

If the party is smart, it will moderate. Given what I have read from the conservative press since the Romney debacle, this doesn't look likely.

The Paul Ryan Pick was a Mistake

Paul Ryan not only could not win his home state for the GOP, he couldn't even bring along his congressional district. Obama won Ryan's Wisconsin 1st District by 51%-48%.

In retrospect, Romney would have been better off selecting Ron Portman, who might have been able to give Romney Ohio. Better yet, he could have chosen Bob McDonnell, who might have been able to bring Virginia into the GOP fold. McDonnell would have been a good choice, especially since Virginia was a closer race (51%-48%) than Wisconsin (53%-46%), where Romney never really had a chance.

Rasmussen Does it Again

Before tonight's election, I compiled the most recent predictions by several of the most prominent polling firms for outcomes in the battleground states where the election would be decided. I then compared what they predicted with the actual result. I looked at

• PPP
• SurveyUSA
• NBC/Wall Street Journal
• CNN
• Rasmussen

I did this mainly because Rasmussen polling has gotten a reputation for having a GOP bias. I wanted to test that hypothesis. There were only two firms that published polls just before the election with errors of +-4%, Rasmussen and NBC/Wall Street Journal. These errors were in six battleground states.

• Colorado
• Iowa
• Nevada
• Ohio
• Virginia
• Wisconsin

Of these six errors, FIVE were from Rasmussen. More importantly, in EVERY case the error was biased towards the GOP. Thus Rasmussen managed to simultaneously be both the least accurate of the major polling firms AND the most biased. A twofer!

Here's the raw data.

Positive Error numbers lean towards Romney and negative error numbers lean towards Obama. Another point is evident looking at this data. Other than the sizable 3.67 GOP-bias seen with Rasmussen, the remaining polls were remarkably unbiased, showing a slight bias towards Romney. PPP which is often thought of as a Pro-Democratic firm showed an insignificant 0.2 bias towards Obama.

Andrew Sullivan was Right

On ABC's This Week, Andrew Sullivan pointed out that if Obama loses the three Southern states he won in 2008--Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina--then he will be completely shut out from all states that formed the Confederacy.

George Will was upset, responding with great sarcasm that Sullivan's view is that all these lost voters suddenly became racists in the last four years. Even Gywn Ifill pointed out that John Kerry lost the white vote.

What neither Will nor Ifill want to acknowledge is that the problem with the ability of Democratic presidential candidates to attract white voters--while a very real phenomenon--is one that is almost entirely confined to the South.

I pointed out in an earlier blog that a poll taken in August showed that

Among white working-class voters in the South, Romney held a commanding 40-point lead over Obama (62% vs. 22%). However, neither candidate held a statistically significant lead among white working-class voters in the West (46% Romney vs. 41% Obama), Northeast (42% Romney vs. 38% Obama), and Midwest (36% Romney vs. 44% Obama). - from Beyond Guns and God: Understanding the Complexities of the White Working Class in America by Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox

Additionally, a paper presented in 2004 by Larry Bartels shows

White voters in the bottom third of the income distribution have actually become more reliably Democratic in presidential elections over the past half-century, while middle- and upper-income white voters have trended Republican. Low-income whites have become less Democratic in their partisan identifications, but at a slower rate than more affluent whites – and that trend is entirely confined to the South, where Democratic identification was artificially inflated by the one-party system of the Jim Crow era.

As Bartel's data shows, between 1954-2004 the percentage of white, working-class voters outside of the South that voted for Democratic presidential candidates fell by a whopping 1%. The loss of Democratic support among whites since the 1950s has been almost exclusively a Southern phenomenon.

Andrew Sullivan was right.

Religion in Public Life

Kevin Drum has a very good post on Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdack's possibly electorally fatal error in which he asserted that pregnancy due to rape is a "gift from God,” and "something that God intended to happen."

Drum points out something that has puzzled me for a long time. Even in the U.S., which is the most religiously observant nation in the developed world, directing public policy according to thoroughly conventional religious views is never popular.

Any Christian theist who takes their faith seriously has to struggle with the fact that bad things routinely occur in a world designed and actively administered by the divine will. Asserting that tragedies are mysteriously consistent with God's plan is not exactly an uncommon or far-out belief among practicing Christians. Yet Mourdack's act of bringing the abstract into specific focus as part of a political campaign seemed to many beyond the pale.

It reminds me of the patently inconsistent view held by religious conservatives who assert that full human rights are conferred upon a microscopic egg at the moment of conception and yet condemn the killing of abortion doctors. If a fetus is literally a baby, then why is what an abortion doctor does more excusable than what was done to the Lindbergh baby? And if one had the opportunity to shoot Richard Hauptmann (presumably) just before he dispatched the Lindbergh child, would he or she not be praised? I have always believed that this reveals that members of the Right to Life do NOT in fact literally believe that a fetus is a baby. It is merely a rhetorical assertion designed to express their condemnation of the practice of abortion. It is a metaphorical rather than literal belief.

In the case of conservative theists like Mourdack who obviously believe that God not only designed and created the world but also actively participates in its living history, the problem of evil is a truly difficult conundrum. He might have said--had he the benefit of a classical education--that God only intended that humanity should have free will, and that an unfortunate--indeed often horrible--consequence of this is that sometimes people suffer at the hands of others. God's "plan" was to give the potential rapists of the world free will. It was not his plan that they should actually rape. That's on the rapist.

Had Mourdack spent more time in a philosophy classroom and less time patting fellow travelers on the back with comforting recitals of shared religious and political axioms, he might be in a better political position than he finds himself today.

Romney's Tax Plan

Mitt Romney has a tax plan that broadly promises to lower tax rates without increasing the deficit. The plan achieves these goal by broadening the tax base by eliminating unspecified deductions.

The Obama campaign has claimed that Romney's tax plan will raise taxes on the middle class, while Romney's campaign vigorously denies this.

The Obama campaign's claim is based on a study by the Tax Policy Center that concluded that Romney's plan could not achieve all of its stated goals. The conclusions of this study have not been contradicted. Those goals are:

• cut current marginal income tax rates by 20%
• preserve and enhance incentives for saving and investment
• eliminate the alternative minimum tax
• eliminate the estate tax
• maintain revenue neutrality

In fact, the unwillingness of the Romney campaign to specify which deductions it would eliminate to finance the planned tax cuts makes any detailed and definitive analysis of the plan impossible. All the Tax Policy Center could do was make some assumptions. Its assumptions were favorable to the Romney plan. However, the TPC also claimed that these assumptions were politically unrealistic, and that under any politically feasible set of assumptions, the Romney plan would be even less able to meet the five stated goals. Romney and his supporters have indicated that they would be willing to adjust the details of the plan to meet its stated goals (e.g., cutting rates by 18% instead of 20%), but it has not been specific about this.

The Obama campaign's assertion that Romney's plan will raise middle class taxes assumes that a President Romney would insist upon maintaining all five of the goals of his tax plan, and would thus need to seek additional revenue elsewhere--that is, raising taxes on the middle class. Although the GOP has put forward a consistent theme that too many people pay little or no income taxes--lending support to the view that the party is at least open to the idea of raising taxes on the middle class--there is nothing in the Romney plan that would require this.

In fact, taking history as a guide, the GOP has been reluctant to raise taxes on anyone, including those in low and middle income groups. Whether this is a matter of ideology or political expediency is not clear. What they have been shown repeatedly willing to do is to finance tax cuts for the affluent though deficit spending. That's what happened during both the Reagan and the G.W. Bush administrations. There is no reason to believe that a Romney administration would be any different.

Therefore, it seems most likely that a President Romney would not raise taxes on the middle class as the Obama campaign claims, but rather simply pay for his tax cuts by raising the deficit, and thereby abandon the his plan's final provision, which is to maintain revenue neutrality.

Money and Politics

Want good evidence how corrosive the Citizens United decision was for our electoral process?

Republican	Democratic
$36,591,800	$4,225,700
$16,959,200	$3,220,238
$15,940,900	$2,436,300
$4,794,700	$9,882,238	Total
$2,860,900
$2,800,933
$2,229,539
$82,177,972	Total

Not only is there a 9-to-1 partisan difference between the top-ten donors, but it is also simply unhealthy for a democratic process to be subject to this type of influence by big money interests.

The Best Article on Obama's Economic Performance I Have Read

David Leonhardt has an excellent article on Obama's economic record in the New York Times Sunday Review, its strengths and weaknesses.

He criticizes Obama on three grounds.

• Obama should have immediately filled the two vacant chairs on the Federal Reserve. Had he done so, Leonhardt argues, the Fed would have acted sooner and more aggressively to improve the economy.
• Obama should have included an insurance policy in the stimulus bill that would automatically extend some of its provisions as long as unemployment stayed above a certain threshold.
• Finally, Obama should have been as aggressive in dealing with the housing problem as he and Bush had been when dealing with the banking system.

I find some merit in these observations, with a few caveats.

First, it is unclear to me that Congress would have agreed to automatic triggers extending a stimulus many of them did not like in the first place. A more telling criticism, I think, is that the stimulus could have been more narrowly tailored to have direct stimulative effect. Many of its provisions were laudable and justifiable on their own merits, but had dubious effects on job creation. I am thinking of the measures such as those aimed at high-speed rail, green energy, and encouraging electronic medical records. The stimulus would have had a more profound affect on job creation had it included more infrastructure spending and aid to state and local governments.

Second, the administration tried and failed against GOP opposition to get Peter Diamond on the Fed board. This is not just a story of what Obama didn't do. It is also a story about GOP obstructionism.

Third, the criticism I am most sympathetic to is the one concerning housing. The administration never seemed to have the same enthusiasm for helping main street as they had showed for helping Wall Street. However, even here conservative opposition plays a important role. The initiating event that actually created the Tea Party movement was Rick Santelli's rant on floor of Chicago's Commodity Exchange bemoaning even the meager aid that the administration planned to offer home owners.

However, these are fairly small quibbles. Overall, Leonhardt's article is the best summary I have read of the Obama administration's reaction to the 2008 financial crisis.

Signs of Desperation

The presidential polls are not going the way conservatives expected. Obama is up by about 4% in national polls and is polling even better in the battleground states.

One response to this phenomenon among conservatives is to criticize the polls themselves, arguing that they have a Democratic bias. A good example of this is found on the National Review web site in an article by Jim Geraghty and quoted repeatedly throughput the conservative blogosphere.

This really smacks of desperation. For example, one statistic cited repeatedly is that the last Gallup poll before the election showed Clinton up by 12%, when in fact he only beat Bush by 5.6%. A very strong Democratic bias, yes? Well, no. If you look at the actual data, that difference between the last pre-election polls and the final result had nothing to do with a pro-Democratic or anti-Republican bias. The change in the results is entirely accounted for by a large shift away from Clinton towards Perot. The polling for Bush was quite accurate. If anything, the polling in 1992 shows a bias against independent candidates.

I looked at the data published by Gallup for Presidential polling going all the way back to 1932 comparing the last poll before the election with the actual election results. I ignore exit polling, which is notoriously unreliable. I also assume that any final polling result that gets the actual election results +-1% shows no bias. The result? There is a measurable partisan bias towards Democrats in seven elections and a measurable partisan bias towards Republicans in eight elections! In other words, no consistent bias at all.

 

As recently as 2000, Gallup showed a bias against the Democratic candidate. The largest single polling error was in 1932, when FDR underpolled the actual result by 6.8%, a huge GOP bias. Interestingly, this anti-Democratic bias is even larger than the famous polling error of 1948, when Truman unexpectedly won against Dewey.

The problem is not the polling. It is the candidate.

Obama and the White, Working Class

I ran across an interesting bit of information today. You often hear that Obama has real trouble attracting support from the white, working class. It turns out that this is only partially true. Consider the following graph.

Source: Recent survey from the Public Religion and Research Institute—entitled “Beyond God and Guns”

In the West, Midwest, and Northeast support for Obama and Romney is fairly evenly divided. Obama doesn't have a white working class problem. He has a white, working class problem with Southerners, who overwhelmingly support Romney, which skews the national results.

So, white, working class Southerners don't care for a black guy. . . . . I think I have heard this music before.

How to Lose a Reputation

Paul Ryan had (notice the tense?) a Beltway reputation for being a straight shooter. After his fact-challenged convention speech and performance on the campaign trail, that reputation has taken a hit, perhaps an unrecoverable one.

The latest campaign statement that seems to emanate from an alternate sphere of reality is his insistence that Obama has been weak on foreign policy in a way that invites attacks, such as the recent attack on the consulate in Benghazi.

We should, perhaps, ask Mr. Ryan if George Bush projected weakness in his first 10 months in office in hope of explaining a domestic terrorist attack that claimed 3,000 American lives. We might also inquire as to the weakness projected by Ronald Reagan in months preceding the 1983 attack on the barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Marines. Finally, we might ask the jihadis--what is left of them--operating in the tribal regions of Pakistan if they think that Obama has been weak on foreign policy.

Quite apart from these delusional speeches by Mr. Ryan, I have begun to wonder if for some reason conservatives are inherently more partisan than liberals. Is there something about the conservative soul that lends itself to a myopic partisan worldview? I think back to the period after the election of G.W. Bush, an election that, if any election ever was, ideal for stoking partisan resentment from the losing party. He won after a contested vote in a state controlled by his brother and a disgraceful ruling by Republican judges on the Supreme Court. Despite this, Democrats were willing to work with the new president when they found common ground. Ted Kennedy helped shepherd Bush's "No Child Left Behind" initiative through Congress. Compare this to the almost unanimous rejectionist attitude Republicans in Congress adopted regarding Obama's legislative agenda, including opposing policies that they had recently championed.

Perhaps it is the fact that the GOP is a more ideologically uniform party than the Democrats. Perhaps it is that the conservative disdain for government leads them to have less interest in public policy than Democrats. Absent an legitimate interest in policy, its costs and effectiveness, they are left with little more than a desire for power. I honestly don't know.

The Most Interesting Hollywood Biography

As this EW piece on Mary Pickford points outs, in her day she was the most famous woman in the world, arguably the most famous woman the world had ever known. However, the article only hints in a couple of sentences towards the end how ultimately tragic her life was. "She remained a fierce producer, but as an actress she was losing her clout, when she got older. Then she became a recluse."

Mary Pickford co-founded both United Artists and the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, had unparalleled wealth, fame, and personal happiness, and who, in just a few short years, lost it all (except the wealth). In rapid succession she lost her mother (with whom she was almost preternaturally close), her husband, her career, and her talent. Once it was gone, she failed at everything she tried, including adoptive parenthood. The final years of her life were lived as a sad, Howard Hughes-like recluse.

It is a fascinating portrait of a life lived that embodies the ominous warning quoted at the end of Patton, something Patton apparently never actually wrote, but would certainly have agreed with,

The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.

Obama's Biggest Failing

Joel Klein hits this right on head. See this.

I often wonder if Obama simply lacks the temperament to be a politician.

Camelot in LA

I have always thought that "The 60s" is a somewhat misleading phrase, at least when used to define a cultural phenomenon. The problem is that the early 60s were much more like the 50s, and much of what we think of as the counterculture and social revolution that defined the era occurred in the early 70s. I always think of the 60s as beginning with the JFK assassination (1963) and ending with the release of Saturday Night Fever (1977), which ushered in the era of disco. Woodstock, arguably the seminal event of the 1960s, didn't occur until August, 1969, a mere four months before the end of the decade. So, THE 60s and the 60s are not precisely the same thing.

I like to think of the 60s as divided into two parts, pre-Beatles and post-Beatles. Since The Beatles broke up in a horribly acrimonious mess just as the decade came to an end, the event provides a useful bookmark. Yes, there were many other sources of musical genius in the 60s--Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Stones come to mind. But as immortalized in Don McClean's American Pie, The Beatles so dominated their era that it was difficult for others to capture the attention they perhaps deserved.

Enter The Troubadour

In many ways, I find the post-Beatles era the more interesting. I was fascinated by the southern California, easy-listening, country rock movement of the early 1970s. What I did not realize until last night was that virtually all of the musicians that I loved at that time all knew one another and worked closely together, all getting their start in a relatively small club in Los Angeles called the Troubadour.

I was enlightened by a documentary that is part of the great PBS series American Masters entitled Troubadours: Carole King / James Taylor & The Rise of the Singer-Songwriter. It can viewed in its entirety online here. If you have 90 minutes to spare, I strongly recommend viewing it. It is a wonderful time capsule capturing a magical era in American music. If you were to browse through the albums that I loved in the early 1970s, most would have been a product of the artists profiled in this documentary. James Taylor's Sweet Baby James and Mud Slide Slim? Check. Carole King's Tapestry? Check. Linda Rondstadt's Heart Like a Wheel, Prisoner in Disguise, and Hasten Down thew Wind? Check. Jackson Browne's For Everyman, The Pretender, and Running on Empty? Check. Eagles' Eagles and Desperado? Check. CSN&Y's Deja Vu? Check. Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark? Check. This list goes on and on--Elton John, J.D. Souther, Karla Bonhoff, The Byrds, Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, and Bonnie Raitt to to list just a few. Even Steve Martin got his start at the Troubadour.

The strange part of this story is how insular this community of singer/songwriters were. All of the these people knew each other. Well. They played on each other's albums. Many lived in the same Laurel Canyon neighborhood in Los Angeles.

It all ended when the intimate collection of friends and collaborators went their own ways when they got huge record deals and began making unimaginable sums of money for kids in their 20s. The transition from marijuana to cocaine also played a role in the dissolution of the idealism and camaraderie that was the Troubadour.

Watching the video, I couldn't help but think of that line from Camelot, "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot." As one of the players interviewed in the documentary--I forget who--pointed out, usually reality fails to live up to the legend, but in the case of the Troubadour in the early 70s, it did.

The Drive-In Theater

I across across an article in the New York Times about drive-in theaters, and how many were still prospering.

Springfield Missouri used to have five drive-ins

• Sunset - Chestnut Expressway
• Holiday - Kearney
• Hi-M - Republic Road
• Springfield - Sunshine/Glenstone
• Queen City - Sunshine/Ingram Mill Rd

Now it has none. The last surviving drive-in was the Holiday, which closed in 1996. The Springfield drive-in was the first to go in 1977.

The demise of drive-in theater has nothing to do with the Internet, cable TV, or even home video. Drive-ins were killed by two forces. First, the rapid increase in property values in the 1970s undercut the drive-in's economic feasibility. Since drive-ins needed to be close to large population centers, they took up large tracts of land that were simply too valuable for a drive-in to support. Second, by the 1970s Hollywood was producing fewer and fewer family-friendly films. There were movies for kids and movies for adults, but not very many that appealed to both, as was common when I was growing up in the early-mid 1960s. The drive-in is first and foremost a form of family entertainment. Some of my fondest memories of time spent with my parents as a kid were Saturday evenings at the drive-in, usually the Hi-M or Springfield.

Another strange thing has happened to theaters in Springfield. In 1996 Wehrenberg opened the Campbell 16 theater. When it opened, Springfield had 9 other theaters, some single screen and other multiplexes. The downtown theaters that I visited in my youth--the Fox, the Gillioz, and the Landers had all closed by the early 1980s.

• The Petite 3
• Fremont 3 Theaters
• The Tower
• Battlefield Mall Cinema 6
• Century 21 (also at Battlefield Mall)
• North Town 4 Cinemas
• Town and Country 6
• Palace Theater
• Springfield 8

Today, only the Springfield 8 and the Palace Theater (second run) survive. Recently, another multiplex was added downtown, the College Station Stadium 14. I was pleased when the Campbell 16 opened, but I had no idea that it would result in 24 other screens closing, including the best theater in town (Century 21) and the most historic (The Tower). The demise of the downtown theaters was a foreseeable result of the shift in Springfield's retail center from the Downtown Square to the Battlefield Mall, but these other closing were all over town.

The result was predictable. Popular films at the Campbell 16 were often sold-out. With the addition of College Station Stadium 14 and Springfield 8 adding three screens, the situation has considerably improved, but for many years Springfield was under served by too few screens.

Politics Can Be So Depressing

ABC OTUS News reports that Wisconsin Congressman and GOP Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan said the following at a campaign rally in Virginia.

Remember the line, we're not red states, we're not blue states but we're the United States of America? I want to be a uniter, not a divider? I tell ya, I've served with three presidents since I have been in Congress, this is the most partisan atmosphere I have ever seen. This is not uniting, this is dividing.

In these comments Ryan clearly hopes to tap into the revulsion most persuadable voters have for extreme partisanship. Although he doesn't say it directly, he clearly suggests that this hyper-partisan atmosphere is Barack Obama's doing.

It has become almost a cliche to refer to statements that are not only false, but which actually state the exact opposite of the truth as Orwellian, after George Orwell's portrayal of "doublethink" in the novel 1984. One source defines Orwells doublethink as "a thought process in which ideas that are obviously self-contradictory are accepted as true based on the fact that an authority figure is asserting them."

By that definition, Ryan is a truly Orwellian figure. The run-up to his selection as Vice-President has seen a GOP nominating and primary process in which the party he represents consistently weeds out any candidate who dares to voice the apostasy of bipartisanship. Consider this description of a GOP retreat that occurred shortly before Obama's inauguration.

The Republican strategy, from even before Obama was inaugurated, was to oppose him in lockstep. . . . Grunwald describes a retreat the House Republican leadership took in January 2008, before Obama was inaugurated. The second slide in the presentation read “The purpose of the Minority is to become the Majority.” Pete Sessions, the Texas Republican giving the presentation, added, “This is the entire Conference’s mission."

Not long after this meeting, Senate GOP Minority leader proudly announced that "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

Long-serving and reliably conservative GOP Senators, such as Indiana's Richard Lugar and Utah's Robert Bennett were defeated in GOP primaries because they were perceived to have betrayed the party by occasionally working with Democratic colleagues. Richard Mourdock announced on friendly turf--Fox and Friends--"I have a mindset that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view." See the doublethink? For Mourdock, bipartisanship is pure partisan uniformity. Ryan laments the loss of bipartisanship while working feverishly with his party to destroy it.

George Orwell would find the current client quite familiar.

Romney Selects Sarah Palin as His Running Mate!

Well, not exactly.

Paul Ryan is not Palinesque in being both uninterested in and uninformed about public policy. He is not like Palin in vanity or rhetorical viciousness.

He is, however, very much like Palin in that a GOP presidential nominee--concerned that his moderate past may undermine support from the conservative base--has swung for the fences by selecting a running mate that is both high risk and high reward. Ryan is, like Palin before him, in Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's phrase, a "Game Changer."

Was it a wise choice? That depends on how you view the current state of the race. If you believe that Romney is seriously behind and needed something to kick start his campaign, then Ryan might be a good choice. If you are losing anyway, a risky choice can only help. This was clearly Romney's own view. He abandoned his earlier pledge to select a "boring white guy" like Tim Pawlenty or Rob Portman. Ryan is a white guy to be sure, but he is certainly not boring. Why the change? We can only guess, but the Obama campaign's relentless efforts at portraying Romney as a richy rich plutocrat, out of touch with ordinary folks was clearly working. The culminating event may have been the conservative freakout over a Romney aid's audacious suggestion that the electorate should consider Romney's own record as governor of Massachusetts.

So, Ryan will no doubt shore up the conservative base, and I suppose that it is possible that the selection may put Wisconsin into play, which had been looking increasingly out of Romney's reach. Finally, Ryan is an attractive candidate in that he is personable and serious-sounding. He possesses serious political skills. That's the up side. What's the down side? Um, where to start?

• Ryan is the author and promoter of a plan to fundamentally restructure Medicare, transforming it from guaranteed health care for the elderly into a voucher plan in which retirees will be given a fixed amount of cash with which to purchase health insurance on the open market. It polls terribly. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, won a traditionally GOP seat in upper state New York running against the Ryan Medicare plan. As David Frum pointed out today, "Romney has transformed a campaign about jobs and growth into a campaign about entitlements and Medicare."
• Ryan reinforces the very aspect of Romney's positions that Obama has been savaging. Obama has been saying that Romney wants to raise taxes and cut benefits for the middle class to fund an huge tax cut for the very wealthy. Ryan is on record supporting such a plan, the only difference being it is even more radical in this direction. Whereas Romney wants to maintain the preferential tax treatment provided to stock dividends and capital gains contained in the Bush 2003 tax cut (traditional sources of income for the very wealthy), Ryan wants to eliminate taxes on dividends, capital gains, and inherited wealth entirely. However, serious the Buffett secretary problem is now, Ryan's plan would make it immeasurably worse.
• Unlike Ohio's Rob Portman, Virginia's Bob McDonnell, or Florida's Mark Rubio, any of whom could almost certainly put a key battleground state within reach, Ryan only marginally improves Romney's chances in Wisconsin. Furthermore, Ryan is a leading member of Congress, one of the least liked institutions in the country. 
• Unlike Chris Christie, who might have conceivably helped Romney with independents, an area where recent polling look increasingly bad for Romney, Ryan will likely make that problem even worse.

For political junkies the Ryan choice makes the race much more interesting. Ryan has very strong views and is the most ideologically extreme candidate for Vice-President since at least 1900 and is roughly as conservative as Michele Bachmann. I am particularly interested in seeing whether the media exposure resulting from this choice will transform Ryan in the public's mind from a wonky deficit hawk into a Randian class warrior, a portrait that is much more accurate, as I have claimed previously here and here. We will never know whether the choice improves Romney's chances of winning the White House. Personally, I doubt it, but it will be fun to watch.

I Told You So

I think that this falls into the category of "I told you so."

I have been saying this for at least 25 years.

A Generation to be Proud of

I am not alone in proclaiming that the baby-boomer generation of which I am a proud member produced some of the best music of the century.

We haven't seen its like since.

I offer this as Exhibit One.

Frum on Desert and Random Fortune

David Frum offers an especially smart analysis of the mostly silly controversy over President Obama's "you didn't build that" comment.

He points out, correctly, that Obama was just restating something that had been said earlier (and better) by Elizabeth Warren.

However, although Frum concedes that many critics of Obama's speech may have distorted his meaning, he identifies another element in Obama's speech--fairly and accurately I think--that goes a long way towards explaining why some people are upset by what he said--not that what he said was untrue mind you, but unsettling nonetheless.

A Word on Volatility

What in the world has happened to the stock market?

When I first started about thinking about saving for retirement in my 30s, the standard line repeated over and over by investment counselors was that the stock market was the best choice because in the long run it provided about an 8% annual return, better than bonds or cash.

Consider this chart, which portrays S&P 500 performance since 1950.

As you can see, with minor deviations the 8% rule held until the mid 1990s. Then something crazy happened: extreme volatility. First, there was the "irrational exuberance" of the .com bubble and the inevitable crash. Then there was a rapid recovery until the 2008 financial crisis, which resulted in an even bigger crash. Since the 2008 meltdown, there was yet another rapid recovery until 2010. Since then, returns have been more modest, and we have yet to reach the 2007 peak.

Since the 1999 and 2007 peaks were both considerably above the 8% trend line, a correction was perhaps expected. The question is: Now that we are below the 8% trend line, what happens now?

If we are to resume the 8% annual rate of return, then the market should double in the next 10 years--a strong argument for investing in stocks. On the other hand, one can't help but feel like the old rules just don't apply any more.

Like Arthur Jensen in Network, I don't like volatility. I am sticking to bonds, which give a boring, but predictable rate of return considerably below 8%.

A Look Inside the Tea Party Soul

In the film The Princess Bride a bad guy named Vizzini (played marvelously by Wallace Shawn) repeatedly rejects several threats to his evil plan, claiming "that's inconceivable."
When, to Vizzini's amazement, each event actually occurs, Mandy Potinkin's Inigo Montoya observes that "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."



I had a friendly political argument with a Tea Party follower the other day, and he seemed shocked when I pointed out that there was nothing in the U.S. Constitution to preclude the United States from adopting socialist policies per se, so long as the Congress and President endorsed them. I felt like Mandy Potinkin. Whenever I read a Tea Party tome I feel like Mandy Potinkin. They keep using the word "unconstitutional", but it really doesn't mean what they think it means.

Here's how it typically works. A Democratic politician enacts--or even just proposes--a policy the Tea Party member disagrees with and the Tea Party calls the policy "unconstitutional." Actually, it doesn't even have to be a policy the Tea Party disagrees with. Sometimes it is a policy they support, perhaps even actively promoted. It is only the nanosecond after it is endorsed by Barack Obama that it becomes "unconstitutional."

There are lots of examples of this, but a good place to start is Florida-based right-wing radio talk show host, Steve Bussey, who recently published bill of particulars against Barack Obama's multiple violations of individual liberty that believes warrant civil disobedience on a massive scale. Interestingly, breaking from the Tea Party practice, he doesn't actually use the word "unconstitutional", but it is clear that this is what he has in mind when he refers to the government being "abusive and injurious of our unalienable rights and Supreme Law of the Land" and how "President Obama’s crimes against Americans follow those of King George III."

He created a situation through Operation Fast and Furious to support his calls for unconstitutional gun control. 

The Obama administration has neither proposed or even suggested any new gun control legislation. A fortiriori, it has not called for any "unconstitutional gun control" measures. 

He has refused to enforce American immigration law and actually changed those laws– unconstitutionally legislated–by announcing he will issue work permits to illegal aliens.

I am not sure what this refers to. The only thing I can think of is the recent announcement that the Administration will no longer seek to deport children who entered the country illegally. This was a response to lack of Congressional action on the Dream Act, a bill that used to have wide bipartisan support, until the GOP decided to oppose virtually anything that Obama favors--including positions and legislation it once supported. The administration has wide discretion as to how to allocate prosecutorial resources and it is perfectly within it rights to do this. If this decision were unconstitutional, it is supported by other extra-constitutional, European socialists, such as Haley Barbour and Rick Perry. 

He has refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and defend it in court as required by our Constitution as well a the voting rights act as in with the case of the New Black Panthers.

DOMA was widely thought to be unconstitutional when it was passed in 1996 because it seemed to violate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st and 9th Circuit have both officially ruled it unconstitutional, and the Obama administration agrees with these rulings. It has requested expedited Supreme Court review and will not enforce the law in the interim. Not only is this policy NOT unconstitutional, it is prudent.

The New Black Panther incident involved the behavior of two knuckleheads--repudiated by the party of which they were members--at a Philadelphia polling station in 2008 engaged in what could be plausibly called voter intimidation. The Justice Department did not pursue the case aggressively simply because it was an isolated incident in a predominantly black neighborhood with no demonstrated effect. The incident was, as Abagail Thernstrom concluded, "very small potatoes."  Again, this is well within the prosecutorial discretion of the Justice Department. You can question its judgment. You can disagree with the decision. However, calling it "unconstitutional" is just silly. 

His Administration has been held in contempt of court for refusing to lift the Gulf of Mexico oil drilling ban following the BP oil spill.

The Administration was held in civil contempt by a Louisiana judge over a dispute about how to respond to the massive BP oil spill. The administration instituted a temporary ban on the deep water drilling in the Gulf. The ban was withdrawn in Oct. 2010 and deep water drilling in the gulf has now resumed at aggressive pace.

He has sued Arizona for passing a state law of a pressing nature to secure the peace and freedom of residents within that state.

Because of our Federalist system of government, legal disputes between the states and and the federal government are commonplace. Bizarrely, the Supreme Court largely sided with the Administration in this case striking down 3 of 4 of the provisions of the Arizona law, a turn of events that apparently passed Mr. Bussey by. It is unclear how anything about this dispute could lead one to conclude that the administration acted unconstitutionally.

He intentionally created a situation where in the State of Florida could not meet certain legal requirements and then sued the State of Florida for attempting to ensure the sanctity of the vote in that state.

This apparently refers to Florida governor Rick Scott's attempt to purge the state's voter roles of non-citizens. The Justice Department has argued that Scott's attempt violates the Voting Rights Act. Scott has asked for a DHS database that will help him identify non-citizens, and the DHS says that their database is not definitive and in any case will not grant the request until the Justice Department determines that Florida's effort is legal. This is much like the Arizona case above. It is a legal dispute between the Federal Government and the state of Florida. How, exactly, is this an instance of "unconstitutional" behavior?

He de facto dissolved Congress when he made unconstitutional “recess” appointments without the advice and consent of the Senate while the Senate was still in session and not in recess in clear violation of our Constitution.

The constitution allows the president to make appointments normally requiring confirmation by the Senate without Senate approval when the Senate is in recess--a recess appointment. In just the last 5 years (starting with Harry Reid during the Bush presidency) the leader of the opposition party in the Senate has attempted to prevent the president from making a recess appointment by keeping the Senate constantly in session by relying on "pro forma" sessions, which occur when the full Senate is out of session and no Senate business is being conducted. One or two senators stay in Washington and simply gavel in and out of session in a matter of seconds. This dispute hinges on what technically constitutes "being in session." Is simply saying you are session sufficient or must a session involve actually conducting Senate business?

This entire problem arose over the GOP's refusal to hold a vote on the confirmation of the head of the new Consumer Protection Bureau. Having lost the debate over the creation of the Bureau, part of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act, the GOP sought to prevent its effective implementation by withholding consent for ANY proposed Bureau chairman. The Bureau was officially created by a law passed by the Congress and signed by the President. By abusing its duty to advise and consent through stonewalling any appointee regardless of qualifications, one could just as easily charge Senate Republicans with acting unconstitutionally. In any case, whatever else this dispute is, it is certainly NOT "clear." The Supreme Court will have to rule on the legitimacy of using pro forma sessions as a tactic to prevent the executive from making recess appointments before the legality of this dispute is resolved. 

He has used his EPA to enact regulations refused by Congress and the National Labor Relations Board to enact rules rejected by Congress. 

The GOP used to support Cap and Trade. In fact, in 2008 John McCain ran on it. However, once the Obama administration endorsed it the GOP abruptly changed course. So, Cap and Trade died in the Senate. The Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency that the EPA was empowered to treat Co2 as a pollutant and subject it to regulation unless Congress forbade it. Congress did not. How, then, can it be unconstitutional for the EPA to pursue regulations of Co2 as a pollutant? 

The Obama czars have clearly gone beyond any advisors used by previous presidents and he has sent his EPA, IRS, Justice Department and others to sue private businesses and citizens, confiscate private lands and harass churches, private groups and organizations that oppose him.

This assertion is so vague and lacking specificity that it defies commentary. 

He has removed the United States Military from the congressional chain of command and used them in Libya in violation of the War Powers Act and his Secretary of Defense has advised Congress they will go to war upon UN, NATO or other authorization without notifying or seeking specific funding or resolutions from the United States Congress as has always been done by previous presidents even when they have disagreed with the War Powers Act.

Rachel Maddow has recently published a book on this historical trend, which she also disapproves of. Obama has done nothing that other modern presidents have done. Every president since Richard Nixon has claimed the War Powers Act is an unconstitutional infringement on the president's power as Commander in Chief, and the Supreme Court has not ruled on this. Although Bush 1 and 2 got Congressional approval for the Gulf War and the Iraq War, both asserted that they did not need it and would have gone ahead even absent any approval. In any case, comparing the Libyian action--where no US ground troops were employed, no U.S. casualties were incurred, and where our involvement was limited--to the Iraq or Gulf War, where tens of thousands of US troops were engaged in a massive land invasion and thousands were subsequently killed or wounded is more than a little ridiculous.

Furthermore, Reagan invaded Grenada and sent the Marines to Lebanon without obtaining prior Congressional approval. George H. W. Bush invaded Panama without prior Congressional approval. Were these presidents also acting "unconstitutionally?" Did Bussey say so at the time or enthusiastically support the policy? 

He is negotiating the Law of the Sea and Small Arms treaties and conspiring with the United Nations to place American sovereignty under foreign rule by default, implementing rules such as Cap and Trade and Agenda 21 pursuant to international rules without the assent of Congress or the People and, in fact, when some of the international rules have specifically been rejected by the representatives of the People.

The Law of the Sea and the Arms Trade Treaty both require a two-thirds vote in the Senate for ratification. Is it the Tea Party position that that it is unconstitutional even for the Administration to engage in negotiations over international treaties?

The mention of Cap and Trade is simply a repeat of the issue discussed above regarding EPA regulations.

Agenda 21 isn't even a treaty. It is a is a non-binding and voluntary action plan proposed by the UN regarding sustainable development. Since it has no force of law, even if agreed to (whatever that would mean), this issue is irrelevant.

More on Nora Ephron

There has been an outpouring of commentary about the life and work of Nora Ephron. Let me add to this by providing the following examples of Nora Ephron at her best.

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Mike Nichols Salute

Passing of our Greatest Female Filmmaker

Nora Ephron died yesterday at the age of 71 from complications from myelodysplasia, a form of leukemia with which she was diagnosed six years ago.

Ms. Ephron's career had its ups and downs, but she will likely be best remembered as the writer of When Harry Met Sally, arguably the best romantic comedy of the modern era and the film that made Meg Ryan a star. She worked with Ms. Ryan again in Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail. Ms Ephron wrote and directed both films. She also worked frequently with our greatest living actress, Meryl Streep, in Silkwood, Heartburn, and Julie and Julia.

To get a good sense of Ms. Ephron's wit and charm, see this very funny appearance at a 2004 AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring Meryl Streep.



Ephron came from a family of writers and show business people, and she married two famous men. Her brief marriage to Carl Bernstein resulted in the novel and film Heartburn, with Streep playing the Ephron role and Jack Nicholson stepping in as the philandering Carl Bernstein, who Ephron once remarked was  “capable of having sex with a Venetian blind.” She also married Nicolas Pileggi in 1987 who wrote GoodFellas and Casino, both memorably brought to the screen by Martin Scorsese.This marriage took, unlike her previous attempts.

Ephron was an intern in the Kennedy White House and often remarked on the fact that she was apparently the only woman on the White House staff to whom JFK didn't make a pass. She attributed the oversight to her Jewishness.

Ephron's style of film making embodied women-centered stories replete with witty and rapid-fire dialog. Just think of a female version of Aaron Sorkin and you get the idea.

Her best films are the Meg Ryan romantic comedy trilogy When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and You've Got Mail (1998); and the three films she did with Meryl Streep Silkwood (1983), Heartburn (1986), and Julie and Julia (2009).


She will be missed.

Everything you Need to Know about the Politics of Obamacare

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

David Brooks Can be Exasperating

I generally like David Brooks. I particularly enjoy his end-of-week political commentary on both NPR and PBS's Newshour. He is the kind of conservative liberals can live with because he is reasonable, moderate, and seemingly not afflicted by the fever that has swept the GOP since the financial crisis. For example, he described Jim DeMint's recovery plan to freeze government hiring in 2008 as "insane."

However, I am not a fan of his NY Times column. I say this for two, completely unrelated, reasons. First, his columns are often quite dull. Brooks is much more interested in sociological and psychological analysis than I am. Second, his column is very different in tone and emphasis than what you get from him when he wears his TV and radio talking head hat. Today's column is a good example of this. It is an attempt to describe, as favorably as possible, the recent rightward lurch of the GOP. He cites an article by Yuval Levin in the Weekly Standard as a good example of what he sees as the GOP's realization that "the the welfare-state model is in its death throes", and the old rules just don't apply anymore. So it is not that the GOP has gone bonkers; rather, they simply have a new point of view that requires the party to change its governing approach.

What I found exasperating about Brook's column was an almost complete lack of analysis of the material he presents. Does he agree with this new GOP point of view, or not? He clearly used to think some of the positions advocated by the GOP after the financial crisis were "insane." Has he changed his mind? If so, why? You'll never found out by reading the column.

However, Brook's lack of analysis goes beyond a mere refusal to self-disclose. It is also remarkably passively uncritical. Assume, as I am willing to do, that his description of the current GOP "point of view" is accurate. Is there any reason to think that it is true, or even a reasonable approximation of reality?

What do we know in 2012 about the burdens of the welfare state that we didn't know in 2007? Nothing so far as I can tell. We have demographic problem in which fewer and fewer workers will be supporting more and more retiring baby-boomers. The places a burden on Social Security, but especially on Medicare that is quite serious unless something is done to reign in the inflation rate of medical care. Is there anything new about this? Public policy wonks have been talking about this for a couple of decades at least.

He also points to GOP concerns about lower growth rates since 1999. This is to be sure a real concern, but I am surprised that it is one that conservatives wish to highlight. The economics of the post-Clinton era is defined by large tax cuts for the wealthy, an unprecedented unwillingness to fund both wars and major entitlement expansions, and a crippling financial crisis brought on by spectacular failures of judgment and ethics in the private sector in general and by Wall Street in particular. These are all policies that the GOP either actively advanced or passively encouraged. The post-WWII era of prosperity and growth that Brooks looks back on with nostalgic affection were decades that witnessed both stronger regulation of business and much higher taxes on the wealthy. Just how does a conservative compare these two eras and conclude that what we need is less regulation of business and lower taxes on the wealthy? The ability of conservatives, as Brooks describes them, to hold both of these two clearly inconsistent positions simultaneously is as breathtaking as it is puzzling.

Finally, what in the world does the welfare state have to do with low levels of growth anyway? Consider the changes in GDP and unemployment from 2006-2011 for five countries.

What conclusions can we draw from this data? Well, of these countries the best GDP growth has been in Sweden, Denmark, and Canada. The U.S. performed somewhat worse, and Ireland brings up the rear. If we look at unemployment, again, Sweden, Denmark, and Canada have done the best. The U.S. falls behind and Ireland again sees the highest levels of unemployment.

Is there any correlation here between the size of the welfare state and economic performance? Yes, there is. However, it is exactly the opposite of the new conservative "point of view" that Brooks describes. I don't know, maybe it is me, but this seems as good a functional definition of crazy as you are likely to encounter.

Deciphering Prometheus

OK, Spoiler Alert. If you have not seen Prometheus and don't want major plot points revealed, then read no further. Come back after you have seen it. On the other hand, if you have already seen it, don't plan to see it, or plan to see it but don't care if I reveal the plot, then read on.

Apparently Ridley Scott started out with the idea that Prometheus would be a prequel to his 1979 classic Alien, a prequel that explained, among other things, the marooned ship with the weird-looking elephant man sitting at an enormous instrument panel and telescope who seemed to have exploded from the inside.

Having now seen Prometheus, here's what I can tell you. The alien creature was apparently engineered by the elephant man as a kind of weapon of mass destruction, and the creation turned on its maker.

The film is as gorgeously photographed as any I have seen. It was shot using the digital Red Epic camera, which is quickly becoming an industry standard. It was also shot in 3D, if you are in to that sort of thing. The performances by the major characters, Noomi Rapace, Michael Fasbinder, Charlize Theron, and Idris Elba (yea, Wire!) are all superb. However, though the story contains some intriguing and even thought-provoking ideas, the screenplay is something of a mess.

The largest source of irritation for me was the apparently intentional unwillingness of Scott and his screenwriters to explain several key events in story. Presumably, these will all be dealt with in a sequel, but this is a gip. Wasn't this supposed to be the film that answered unresolved questions from the previous films? Now we have to wait for yet another film to answer new questions raised in Prometheus! This is endless.

Here is my list of the mysterious, implausible, or just plain embarrassing plot points that Prometheus left us with.

• What actually occurs in the opening sequence? Does the Engineer commit suicide or was his destruction after drinking the dark liquid an accident? Regardless of how you answer this question, why was he there (wherever "there" was) and what was he trying to accomplish?
• The Fassbinder character acts as though he is "in" on the whole biological-weapon-gone-bad story, but this is never explained. He apparently intentionally infects Holloway with the black liquid, and then when Holloway has sex with Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw, she becomes impregnated with one of the squid creatures. Fassbinder's David seems to understand all of this and brings it about on purpose, but to what end? Unlike in Aliens in which the evil corporation intended to impregnate Ripley and then bring the Alien back to earth to use for weapons research, in this film we are led to believe that the corporation's sole motive is that its on-death's-door CEO wishes to attain immortality. Anyway, how could robot David even know about these creatures? No one else from planet earth does.
• The scene where one of the crew members is startled by a snake-like alien that emerges from the black liquid and then goes to it, because. . . he wants to pet it or something, was just ridiculous. If you had watched me while I watched this scene I think you would have noticed that I literally rolled my eyes.
• When the Engineer is wakened from his stasis, he is apparently so enraged by the presence of the humans that he immediately starts trying to kill them all. Why is he a kill-crazy psycho? Even if he has some deep, philosophical reason for wanting to extinguish all of humanity, is the matter so pressing that he must immediately start killing everyone in site after being asleep for two centuries? Maybe have a cup of coffee and a danish first? You can always kill them after you have lulled them into complacency.
• The anthropology of the original Alien is now quite complicated. It all starts with black liquid that either:
• Dissolves your body
• Turns you into psychotic murdering mutant
• Spontaneously creates the snake creature. When the snake creature gets inside of you, it turns you into a mutant and also gives your sperm the ability to impregnate barren women with the squid creature.
  The squid creature then enters another body and lays yet another kind of egg, and when this emerges rather spectacularly from the unfortunate host's  abdominal cavity we finally get the Alien we first met in 1979. Got all that? Black Liquid-Mutant-Squid Creature-Alien, more or less in that order.

• When Theron reveals that the CEO of the Weyland Corporation is good ol' Dad (despite the fact that she clearly wants to throttle him), I rolled my eyes again. Jez, this was a direct lift from The Empire Strike Back where Luke learns that Darth Vader is his father.
• Since the Weyland CEO character is only played as a very old man, why in the world did Scott cast 45-year-old Guy Pearce in the role and then force him to spend hours every day in the make-up chair? Why not just hire an elderly actor?
• Finally, the biggest question of all--the question that Rapace asks directly as she leads us off to Sequel Land in the final scenes--is why did the Engineers go to all the trouble of genetically engineering the human race only to then decide to annihilate it? It sure seems like a lot of wasted effort.

Alternate Realities

There is something strangely disorienting about the way Mitt Romney describes the economy and President Obama's economic policies. It is as though Romney lives in some alternate reality unaffected by and unrelated to the common experience of the vast majority of citizens.

For example, today it was reported that Romney said that in Obama's economy "There is nothing fair about a government that favors political connections over honest competition and takes away your right to earn your own success"; and "there is nothing morally right about trying to turn government dependence into a substitute for the dignity of work"; and Under Obama, the country was on the brink of a "government-led economy".

Let's take these one at a time.

Presumably, the comment about favoring "political connections over honest competition" refers to Solyndra. One does not have to believe that all elements of the Solyndra experience were uncontroversial to also believe that generally characterizing the Obama economic record as one that favors "political connections over honest competition" is absurd. The Solyndra loan was begun by the Bush administration. The loans in question had already been approved by non-political career employees at the Department of Energy before the administration seemed to rush final OMB approval. The Washington Post pointed out that "The Energy Department’s loan-guarantee program, enacted in 2005 with bipartisan support, has backed nearly $38 billion in loans for 40 projects around the country. Solyndra represents just 1.3 percent of that portfolio — and, as yet, it’s the only loan that has soured. " In fact, investigations have revealed no evidence that the decision to green-light Solyndra was payback to political supporters. In any case, the idea that $535 million worth of loan guarantees was payback for the $87,000 in contributions provided by Solyndra-related individuals is a little ridiculous. In a post Citizens United era that allows unlimited anonymous contributions to organizations committed to achieving partisan political outcomes, there are much easier ways to encourage contributions to political causes.

I have no idea what the part about taking "away your right to earn your own success"   refers to. Whose right to success has been denied? This is just a fantasy.

One can only imagine that turning "government dependence into a substitute for the dignity of work" refers to the large increase in unemployment benefits, food stamps, and other automatic stabilizers that have kicked in as a response to the financial crisis. What makes this statement so weird is that it implies 1) that there is a large backlog of people who have chosen not to work, preferring instead of live off of government benefits; and, 2) had Romney gotten his way, social safety net programs would not be allowed to cushion the effect of the most profound economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Does anyone--including Mitt Romney--seriously believe either of these propositions? Did unemployment explode from 4% to 10% between 2007 and 2010 because millions of Americans suddenly decided to become welfare queens? The plain fact is that there are more people looking for work than there are jobs available.

Finally, it is not clear what he means when warning about a "government-led economy". Again, this is strangely unconnected with reality. The private sector has recovered from the recession much more robustly than has the public sector, which has been hemorrhaging jobs as state and local governments layoff teachers, firefighters, and cops. Perhaps this statement refers to health care reform, but Obamacare maintains the private insurance system. In fact, many on the Left were disappointed that health care reform did NOT provide a single-payer government solution, and was instead modeled after Romney's own private insurance approach he developed while governor of Massachusetts.

Actually, there is an important point in all of this. As David Frum points out in an excellent column, Republicans are weirdly stuck in a kind of time warp in which every event is understood in the context of the problems the country faced in 1979. However, the problems we face in 2012 are very different, and indeed as Frum points out, in many ways they are exactly the opposite of the era that ushered in the Reagan administration. Nonetheless, Republicans continue to evoke the image of welfare queens and government dependency.

This sort of nostalgic cheerleading is obviously popular among the GOP base. It will be interesting to see if it has any traction among the independents that will determine the election.