Remember Donald "I love the UK's National Health Service" Berwick? When last we saw him he received a recess appointment to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services which basically put him charge of a huge swath of US health care spending (CMS' budget is larger than the Department of Defense).

To keep his job beyond the end of the year* Berwick had to be renominated and confirmed by the Senate. This week 42 of the 47 Republican Senators (more on that below) sent Obama a letter asking that the nomination be withdrawn. In light of that opposition, it looks like the Democrats will be throwing Berwick under the bus at some point.

Citing the GOP letter, a person familiar with the situation said Senate Democrats and the White House "can do the arithmetic" and now see that there's no way for Berwick to get the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate.

At a meeting with health care lobbyists Friday, Democratic Senate Finance Committee staffers indicated that the nomination is dead, that there will be no confirmation hearing, and that they'll soon be discussing "next steps" for CMS, sources said.

The Politico story was via Moe Lane who argues this shows what cowards Democrats are.

Berwick will still have 9 months (unless Obama nominates someone new sooner) to do damage but the end is in sight.

As for the 42 Republican Senators who signed the letter...that means 5 didn't. Slu did the homework and figured out who the Final Five were.

Brown, Collins, Snowe, Murkowski, Portman

The first four didn't surprise me but Rob Portman of Ohio did. So, I did a little checking with a Senate GOP source (yes I have one. Just one but I have it) and got this response from Portman's office.

“Ultimately, the President has the right to nominate whomever he wants, but, because of Dr. Berwick’s views, Senator Portman doesn’t plan to confirm him should he be nominated.”

I didn't check to see if Brown, Collins, Snow or Murkowski have a position on Berwick. Unlike Portman, I just wasn't entirely surprised they didn't join the letter.

There was nothing the GOP could do to prevent Berwick's Recess Appointment but they did a good job here of getting rid of him as soon as they could.

If you're looking for more on what Berwick is such a disaster, there's an app, er, website for that.

*Obama could recess appoint Berwick again but he wouldn't get paid (pdf, see page 6) and more to the point, there would be political hell to be paid for it.

Posted by: DrewM at 02:08 PM | Comments (158)
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Unprompted, really, she notes that what Christie's doing isn't really "courageous," as he's forced to make cuts. She contrasts that with her own action of cutting spending when the state was flush with funds and had a surplus.

So, it's a dig.

As I've repeatedly said that it's no big deal if Christie suggests Palin could profit from what he calls "unscripted" moments, I can't say Palin's dig in return is any thing to go bonkers over, really. She's wrong that Christie isn't politically courageous -- he did have the option that many politicians take of raising taxes and kicking the problem further down the road-- but she does have a point that cutting spending when you have a surplus shows a greater belief in the power of limited government.

Would Christie have done the same? Probably not. Since he never had the opportunity we'll never know.

The only thing is that, as DrewM noted on Twitter, David Asman's question really didn't suggest he was looking for a rebuttal to Christie; it seemed like she was prepared to offer this soundbite from the get-go, no matter what she was asked, which plays into Christie's "scripted" complaint.

The only thing that suggested a reply was being sought was that Asman asked about Christie's statement that the current candidates were "uninspiring," which may have led Palin to think that was a knock on her; but as she's not a current candidate (and her employer, FoxNews, agrees, as it's suspended the relationship with Gingrich and Santorum but not Palin and Huckabee), the knock wasn't on her. I guess she could maybe think it was.

Also, I should say, as a Christie fan, I'm not loving Christie's lack of support for the current field. It's nice to know he thinks he not only could win but would win against Obama, but he says he's not running, and while it is hard to argue with his statement that the current field is "uninspiring" (most agree), I'd sure like to see a bit more optimism and rah-rah from him.

Not running and also not offering some uplift for the actual candidates makes him sound like a spoilsport douche who's hoping the WH gets kept by Obama so it's open to him in 2016.

Don't do that, big man. Either run or don't but don't do that.

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (310)
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In the comments to my review of The Adjustment Bureau, people are taking two different positions:

1, that I'm right, the commercials did imply the movie was a serious, danger-filled thriller about some sinister conspiracy.

2, that I'm completely wrong, the commercials sold the movie as what it was, a romantic-comedy with a light supernatural complication in the plot.

So who's right?

Well, we all are.

The problem comes when you say "the commercials" and "the advertising campaign."

There is no ""the" a lot of the time. There are some commercials and some parts of the advertising campaign.

Certain films are genre-mixing or of an established genre that itself is already hybrid -- romantic comedies are both romances and (light) comedies, for example.

That means that some films can be pitched differently to different audiences. That means that commercials will be different depending on what audience they're targeting. For some films, I mean. Not all.

I read about this a few years ago. I'm going to make up this example (although it might be the example I actually read about); Take My Best Friend's Girl.

Now, romantic comedies are usually light comedies. Light comedies mean, well, they're less about huge laughs than a steady, fast-paced stream of amusing complications and coincidences that induces a feeling of humorous pleasure in the audience. Ever see a movie that was funny but produced few big laughs? Well, that's a successful light comedy. Not everything is about huge jokes; the humorous effect comes from the quick pace and light tone and piling on of unlikely complications.

Get Shorty is a light comedy, I think. Anchorman and Old School are pure comedies. Get Shorty doesn't sacrifice everything and anything for a laugh; in addition to being funny, it also is trying to be a fish-out-of-water movie, a caper movie, and a Hollywood movie. (That is, a movie about Hollywood.) Plus, it had a romantic subplot. It doesn't sacrifice everything for laughs because it has other irons in the fire.

Anchorman and Old School, on the other hand, are pure comedies. They don't care if some of their plot elements are silly or implausible. They're not making any genuine stab at being anything other than great laugh-out-loud movies.

Anyway, back to My Best Friend's Girl. This movie was a mixed genre because it was both, sort of, a romantic comedy, which implies light comedy, and also implies it will not sacrifice a genuine, sweet romance just for some gross-out humor. That side of it appeals more to women, as a rule.

But it was also a true comedy, a sort of frat-boy-ish gross-out Humor of Humiliation romp. That sort of movie appeals more to young men and boys (and Dane Cook fans), as a rule.

So it was a mixed genre movie -- both a romantic (light) comedy and a comedy-comedy.

You can cut commercials for it two ways: You can feature meet-cute sweet little laughs between Dane Cook and Kate Hudson, suggesting it's a romantic (light) comedy.

Or you can feature Dane Cook doing his woman-humiliation evil-seducer-and-betrayer Wildman act, with the various outrages he perpetrates to make his victims feel awful. That doesn't sound like a romantic comedy. That is more a comedy-comedy, and a specific type of comedy-comedy to boot. (Again, a sort of cynical, revenge-on-women frat-boy comedy.)

The movie was actually both things and judging by the very poor critical response and box office, it didn't work for most people. (It worked for me-- I thought it was howlingly funny in the Dane Cook Cuts Loose sequences.)

But the point is, if you were seeing another romantic comedy, the trailer for this movie would be the rom-com advertisement.

If, on the other hand, you were seeing a more frat-boyish movie like Wedding Crashers, you'd see the women-humiliated cynical sex farce ad.

Both ads were sorta true, but both were emphasizing different things, and depending on which one you saw, you might be pretty misled into thinking what kind of movie it really was.

That's why I think the movie tanked -- the cutesy rom-com angle of it did not adequately warn to female audiences that this movie was going to contain a lot of outrageous "boy humor" and alot of that at women's expense.

Anyway, I have looked on YouTube and I have seen, in fact, that the trailers there do in fact sell The Adjustment Bureau as largely being about two people prevented by Forces of Fate from being together. (However, those trailers also imply this is a thriller filled with danger-beats, people running in the rain from unknown pursuers, etc.)

All I can tell you is I swear, on a stack of Holy Bibles notebooks containing "The Chairman's" corporate agenda of human fate, that the commercials I saw barely featured the female lead (Emily Blunt) at all; I'm sure I must have seen her, but the commercials did not flag her as anything but the typical romantic interest subplot that is common to thrillers. (Most thrillers contain romantic subplots, but they are definitely subplots, and not the main plot of the thing. The main plot of a thriller is escaping from danger.)

The trailers I saw -- and apparently the ones many commenters saw -- featured no rom-com meet-cutes and kisses, but only the following:

1) Matt Damon running

2) Men in suits and fedoras capturing him and dragging him to an interrogation chair in a dark, forbidding sub-basement

3) Matt Damon running some more, in the rain

4) A man in a suit using some sort of psionic power to lift a panel in the floor and cause Matt Damon to trip

and

5) A man escaping through a door into a busy city street, while the next person to open that door finds it no longer leads to a city street but a small coat-closet

So I believe (actually, I know) that two different campaigns were prepared for this film, one, more accurate, for a romantic-comedy oriented audience, and a second one for anyone not particularly interested in romantic comedy. Or someone, like me, who lives movies based on Philip K. Dick paranoid science-fantasy thrillers.

I only saw the latter type of trailers. That's while I felt so deceived, and during the movie, actually asked someone ten minutes in: "Wait, is this a romantic comedy?" I just had no idea.

The Recut Trailer Craze: I'm embedding two recut trailers below. One, which recuts the Shining trailer to make it look like a family-friendly romantic comedy, and another which recuts Mary Poppins to appear to be horror movie (and actually a scary one!)

This is a joke, of course, but the point is you can actually take selected scenes from a movie and use those to imply it's another type of movie entirely. And Hollywood actually does this, especially when it comes to movies which aren't clearly of one genre or another. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 AM | Comments (201)
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Here's how. The Republicans proposed $61 billion in real, going-forward, genuine cuts.

They tried to claim it was $100 billion, in total. How? Well, the Continuing Resolution they passed in the lame duck represented a $40 billion decrease in Obama's proposed budget.

Note that is really not a fair way to measure a cut, as that budget was merely proposed; it was never passed. No budget was passed. Thus this "$40 billion in savings from 2011" represents a "cut" from hypothetical, proposed-but-never passed levels.

That's like selling a sweater which sells for $80, saying that you intended to raise the price to $100, but now you're slashing prices by 20%, all the way down to... $80. That represents a "cut" not in any actual price that ever existed but only from the purported elevated levels you were planning.

So of the GOP's "$100 billion in cuts," $61 billion are in real cuts from current levels of spending, and the other $40 billion is merely money saved by not enacting a spending-level-raising budget previously.

That's not an entirely false way to calculate things. It is, however, misleading.

Now that the GOP has misled on this point, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid follow them in the same gimmicky accounting method and have a talking point.

The Democrats claim they have agreed to meet the Republicans almost exactly half-way on spending cuts. The Democrats claim they are proposing $50.5 billion in cuts -- fifty billion! Just about half of $101 billion! So the Democrats' talking point is that they are willing to compromise -- split the difference right down the middle -- and if those big meanie Republicans reject that compromise then they're, well, Big Meanie Compromise-Rejecters.

Here's how the Democratic math works: They propose a paltry $6.5 billion in real, actual cuts from current spending. But ah-- here's the cute part. Add into that the $40 billion already "saved" by not having a budget in 2011 (the same $40 billion the Republicans are selling to the base) and then add in the $4 billion saved in the last Continuing Resolution, and what do you get? $6.5 billion + $4 billion + $40 billion equals precisely $50.5 billion, precisely half the $101 billion the Republicans propose, in total.

Fair! Compromise! Meeting them halfway!

Of course the Democrats are not meeting them anywhere close to halfway. The Republicans propose $57 billion in actual cuts from current spending (ignoring the $4 billion in cuts from the two-week Continuing Resolution, which is already baked in the cake, a done deal), and the Democrats propose, in fair compromise, $6.5 billion in cuts.

That's meeting the Republicans just slightly higher than 10% of the way there.

But this spin talking point comes to you from Obama thanks to the GOP leadership and the tax-parasites on the appropriations committee that leadership installed there.

You can't blame Obama and Reid and Pelosi for padding their cuts with a phantom, fake $40 billion extra. Republicans did it first.

Nice work, guys. So now you have to prove that Democrats are lying with this accounting method and all you have to do to prove that is admit you were lying too when you first utilized this manner of accounting.

Stupid, dishonest dicks. I mean the GOP. I didn't see this coming; I'm not that smart. But what I did see coming is that whatever cuts the GOP proposed, the Democrats would propose some kind of false "compromise" that they'd sell as more "moderate." The GOP's drive to hoodwink its base has now cost miles of crucial bargaining position. We've conceded miles and miles of ground to the enemy and I don't see any good way to regain this territory.

Which will end up causing there to be even less in actual cuts than this smallball bumper-sticker-bait of $61 billion represented.

Which, I keep suspecting, is what a lot of the GOP wants in the first place: They want to be on record as supporting cuts to keep Tea Partiers voting for them; but they don't want there to be to much in actual cuts, to keep from having to defend tough votes in public.

Doesn't that work out marvelously for everyone in the political class. Everyone gets what they want, Democrats get spending, Republicans get a talking point. Everyone wins, except the taxpaying citizen buying into this sham.

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 AM | Comments (152)
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Democracy in America - Vol 1

Democracy in America - Vol 2

Here's an excerpt from Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, Vol 1 Chapter 18. He compares adjacent states - one free, one slave.

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A century had scarcely elapsed since the foundation of the colonies, when the attention of the planters was struck by the extraordinary fact, that the provinces which were comparatively destitute of slaves, increased in population, in wealth, and in prosperity more rapidly than those which contained the greatest number of negroes. In the former, however, the inhabitants were obliged to cultivate the soil themselves, or by hired laborers; in the latter they were furnished with hands for which they paid no wages; yet although labor and expenses were on the one side, and ease with economy on the other, the former were in possession of the most advantageous system. This consequence seemed to be the more difficult to explain, since the settlers, who all belonged to the same European race, had the same habits, the same civilization, the same laws, and their shades of difference were extremely slight.

Time, however, continued to advance, and the Anglo-Americans, spreading beyond the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, penetrated farther and farther into the solitudes of the West; they met with a new soil and an unwonted climate; the obstacles which opposed them were of the most various character; their races intermingled, the inhabitants of the South went up towards the North, those of the North descended to the South; but in the midst of all these causes, the same result occurred at every step, and in general, the colonies in which there were no slaves became more populous and more rich than those in which slavery flourished. The more progress was made, the more was it shown that slavery, which is so cruel to the slave, is prejudicial to the master.


more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:28 AM | Comments (71)
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Posted by: rdbrewer at 07:18 AM | Comments (249)
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One star. I think it's probably one and a half stars, but I'm deducting a half-star for the completely deceptive marketing campaign, which sells this as the sort of movie I wanted to see when in fact it's a completely different one. A really gaytarded one.

This the quickest way I can review this piece of shit. I'm going to give you two movie pitches. You decide which you think you'd probably like to see.

Pitch One: Jake Dale is a hotshot technologist who's just perfected a new form of laser propulsion that will lift man to the stars. But after he crosses paths with a mysterious woman, he finds events of his past life keep changing -- and finds that a sinister cabal of fedora-wearing corporate "fixers" from the future are intruding into his world to change events so that priceless patents become the property of the all-powerful future megacorporation. And now that they've stolen his tech, it's time to erase him from the timeline! See... The Corporate Agenda!

Pitch Two: Jake Dale is the youngest man ever elected to Congress in America, whom the newspapers call "New York's Bad-Boy Congressman." He meets a pretty dancer and they kiss. Suddenly a band of goofy, fedora-wearing bureaucrats from heaven, angels with a madcap agenda, try to stop him from hooking up with his would-be girlfriend because God, who they call "the Chairman," thinks he'll wind up too happy if he marries her and then won't fulfill his divine fate of becoming President of the United States. See... Conspiracy of Love!

Okay, which would you see?

I'm assuming that 90% of you would say the first one. (Goofy title aside.) It seems the studio releasing The Adjustment Bureau also thinks that 90% of people would want to see that first one, because all of the ads portray it as being just that.

In fact, it's the second one-- that second pitch actually describes the actual plot of The Adjustment Bureau. You may think I've made stuff up and made it sound sillier than it is, but in fact, I just gave you the actual plot. That was all real, yo! The movie is a romantic comedy with a genial fantasy twist about bureaucratic angels who work for "The Chairman" and set people's lives according to plan through little telekinetic nudges, like making someone miss a crucial meeting by making him spill coffee on himself.

Oh, and a newspaper does call Matt Damon "New York's Bad-Boy Congressman."

I'm not lying. Seriously.

Anyway, I have a question: Since the studio knows that that first pitch is likely to make more money, and please more people, why didn't they just make that movie? Why did they make the second movie and then try to sell it as the first?

If they knew that first pitch was a winner, why did they make, as one reviewer calls it waggishly, "a Philip K. Dick romantic comedy"?

And yes, Philip K. Dick did write the story this was based on. Do not be deceived. This is not a thriller. It's a fantasy romance, and not a good one.

Huh. The guy who always writes about mind-control and androids can't write genial romantic comedy? Who knew?

I use the word "comedy" advisedly. Although it is a comedy of sorts, it's clumsy, awkward one, because when a movie's bad, you really don't know where the jokes are intended and where they just sort of happen due to incompetence.

For a movie about fate as written by God himself, no one here seemed to have any good plan of what the hell to do with this basic material.

Now that I've saved you $10 for a theater ticket, let me also save you $5 for a Blockbuster rental, too: Don't rent it, either. See it free if at all.

Because, conservatives should know, Matt Damon spends the first ten minutes of the movie running for Senate on Obama's basic platform (telling his enthusiastic fans "the future belongs to the young" or some horseshit like that) and meeting all the usual liberal assholes who show up in movies about politics, like James Carville and Terry MacCauliffe. Actually, the usual liberal assholes are sort of absent -- finally, a movie about politics in which Chris Matthes does not appear.

No one watches his show in real life; why does everyone watch it in the movies? Anyway, he's not here. But I'm not giving the movie an extra half star just for that.

Plus, Matt Damon is kinda fat and looks like a stocky butt-plug in his various running-from-angelic-bureaucrat scenes. I kept wondering: Why Matt Damon and not Sean Astin? If you want a squat, stocky homely kind of guy who doesn't really make an impact on the screen, why not Samwise? Why this twit?

The movie does have a cute conceit, about angels being able to open a regular deli door on 3rd Avenue and have it open into Yankee Stadium or Liberty Island or the top of the Empire State Building, and that's entertaining for three minutes, but the rest of it is, well.

This is the time of year they release troubled-production, not-sure-how-to-market, and just plain stinker movies. I got burned. Don't follow me in my fate.

Posted by: Ace at 06:47 PM | Comments (252)
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Worst. ONT. Ever.

TonightÂ’s Random ONT Quote of the Overnightish Nightliness:

“I would not want Jimmy Carter and his men put in charge of snake control in Ireland.” (Eugene McCarthy)

Oregon Man Wakes up to Find Dog Ate 3 of His Toes:

Pretty sure it was just trying to be helpful and all. Like at those salons where you can put your feet in a tub and fishies nibble off your dead skin. So I'm told.

"ROSEBURG, Ore. (AP) - A diabetic Roseburg man with no feeling in his feet woke up to find his dog had eaten part of his right foot, including three toes. The Roseburg News-Review reports that the 61-year-old man, whose name was not disclosed by police, was in serious condition after calling 911 at about 3 a.m. on Tuesday."

More proclamations of LoafDog's innocence and snakes below the fold...

more...

Posted by: Genghis at 06:27 PM | Comments (737)
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I met up with AoSHQ resident hottie Candace Kita aboard the luxury yacht "Ace of Spades" moored off the coast of Catalina Island near LA. Ms. Kita had only complimentary things to say about Charlie Sheen. As she puts it:
"There's been a lot of office gossip this week about Charlie Sheen. And because I've worked with him on 2 1/2 Men, it seems this is the only topic people can ask me about. Ironically, this week I'm guest starring on the series finale of another sitcom. And the director of this series was also my director on 2 1/2 Men. So every morning, we have our own version of office gossip on the set. People ask me:

"What was he really like?"

"Did he hit on you?"

"Was he on drugs?"

To answer your questions, Charlie was the most professional person. He was always on time. He always knew his lines. And no, he never hit on me. And I especially appreciated the fact he took time to find me at the end of each day to shake my hand and say good night. I had a wonderful experience on the show because of him. And because of this, I have nothing bad to say." more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 03:20 PM | Comments (419)
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Bad news at Hot Air -- Walker's approval rating is down to 43% (he was elected with 52% of the vote), and almost all of that erosion is due to Republicans failing to support him at the high rates you'd want them to.

And there's a report that four of the senators are thinking about some kind of compromise, but Allah thinks that might be some messaging by the GOP to encourage people to support them.

There's also a good point he makes about the recall: If the fold, they'll still face a recall, this time from the conservatives.

Putting aside the substance of the dispute: the fleebagging tactic cannot be incentivized by rewarding it with a victory.

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (362)
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