Video: Unplugged: Olympics Bid Brings Political Risks
Nancy Cordes, Chicago Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet and Washington Post’s Ezra Klein discuss President Obama’s upcoming Olympics pitch in Copenhagen and the latest on health care. Plus; CBS News’ John Bentley reports on Eliot Spitzer’s possible second act.
Indonesia quake death toll hits 75
A major earthquake in Indonesia today killed at least 75 people, according to a Red Cross disaster report, citing an official report from the country’s vice president. Earlier, Rustam Pakaya, the head of the Ministry of Health’s crisis center, said thousands may be trapped by collapsed buildings and houses.
Is the health care public option dead?
As lawmakers huddled this summer to put together the framework for health care legislation, it quickly became evident that the battle over President Obama’s top priority would be neither quick nor easy.
Pressure increases on Obama over Afghanistan
President Obama is under increasing pressure to decide whether the United States will commit more troops and resources to the conflict in Afghanistan.
Exorcising America’s Diplomatic Demons
That mentality prevailed until the day that President Richard Nixon suddenly decided that we could do business with Mao Zedong, the most fervently revolutionary communist of them all. What Nixon recognized was that the Chinese Communists were, like their Soviet counterparts, nationalists first and foremost. Any notion of an international communist conspiracy with a timetable for the takeover of the world (the correct answer on more than one social studies test I took as a kid) was rendered absurd by the fervent, even xenophobic, nationalism of a Tito, Castro or Ho Chi Minh. All of them made their revolutions, as did the Chinese, without significant outside help and were hostile to any foreign interference, no matter the source. Ho, who had successfully battled French colonialists, hardly wanted to exchange them for the Chinese overlords who had governed his country for a thousand years.
Yet that obvious fact did not stop Nixon from continuing to kill millions more in Vietnam and Cambodia in the name of combating international communism–even after he went to Beijing to toast Mao. Fast-forward to last weekend, when John McCain, as his way of justifying an escalation in Afghanistan, was on talk shows bemoaning our failure to win the Vietnam War. Nobody asked him what national security purpose a U.S. victory in Afghanistan would serve. Our defeat in Vietnam led not to dominos falling all the way to San Diego, as was predicted, but rather to Communist Vietnam and Communist China going to war against each other. Today those still-communist powers are battling for shelf space in Wal-Mart and Costco. This would have happened without sacrificing almost 59,000 American soldiers and the 3.4 million locals who died in a war that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said he could never honestly justify.
The limits of demonology as a substitute for thoughtful foreign policy are amply on display in the approach to Iran as the purported leading agent of Islamic terrorism. Once again we are the self-defined white hats blithely ignoring our long history of affronting Iranian national integrity. That assault began with the CIA-engineered overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddeq, the last secular elected leader of his country, and continued with our support of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. By ultimately overthrowing Saddam, the U.S. vastly increased the power of Iran’s religious hard-liners by installing their disciples in power in Iraq. By supporting the Islamic radicals in Afghanistan, whom Ronald Reagan called “freedom fighters,” the U.S. introduced al-Qaida to that country. Blowback is the inevitable outcome of a dangerous game that must be stopped.
According to the demonology that has long driven U.S. foreign policy, no country has ever cast a larger shadow as evil incarnate than Communist China. All communists in the Cold War era, like all Islamic radicals today, were assumed to be part of a unified internationalist movement bent on world conquest. And the Chinese, as the Iranians now, were thought to be the worst of the pack. Incapable of change and therefore the fit object of unrelenting hostility, they needed to be confronted militarily, up to the point of nuclear annihilation if that’s what it took, as the taped musings of various U.S. presidents attest. This was also a prospect for Iran that Hillary Clinton contemplated as a presidential candidate.
Communism once was, as the Islamic terrorist threat is today, presented as an undifferentiated revolutionary impulse that could never be diplomatically accommodated without sacrificing our own security or, indeed, our freedom. The various communist nations and movements, like those currently led by a polyglot collection of Islamist radicals, were stripped of any complexity, be it in their national identity or ideology.
This week the Chinese Communists celebrate their 60th year in power, an event that the make-war-not-peace crowd, now bloviating over Iran and Afghanistan, might benefit from contemplating. They might also recall a time when the mere suggestion of peaceful coexistence with the Red Menace of China was a career-ender for high school teachers and State Department officials alike. Now the danger from the Chinese Reds is that, being more prudent capitalists than Americans, they might be unwilling to continue carrying our rapidly growing debt.
What we need is for Barack Obama to pull a Nixon and attempt to cut a deal with Tehran as well as with competing forces in Afghanistan that meets their nationalist aspirations and our security interests. That won’t be easy, since he is a Democrat and the Republican hard-liners will not allow him the slack given to Nixon. It is also true that the Iranian leadership can veer into outrageous behavior, making the international pursuit of peace extremely difficult. But does anyone believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can hold a candle to Mao when it comes to provocative rhetoric?
More on Afghanistan
Scott Mendelson: Huff Post review: Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (2009)
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
2009
67 minutes
Rated PG-13 (for action violence throughout and a crude comment)
Available on September 29th on DVD, Blu Ray, On-Demand, and iTunes download
by Scott Mendelson
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies is the Star Trek: Insurrection of the DCAU animated features. There wasn’t anything really wrong with that ninth Star Trek film, but it still feels like little more than a two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And if Public Enemies were merely a three-part episode of Superman: The Animated Series, it would be a good one. But it falls short as a stand-alone movie. It’s certainly entertaining, colorful, and quite action packed. But it’s also lacking in logical narrative and dramatic impact. The original comic book story that this is based on was the pay-off for nearly five-years of Superman story-arcs. However bubble-gum silly and widescreen spectacular the Jeph Loeb story was, it was preceded by years of build-up that gave the climax real weight. Without that continuity, this feature spin-off is the first DC Animated Universe original movie that truly feels like just a cartoon.
Some plot – Economic and social strife has left America so desperate that Lex Luthor himself now sits in the Oval Office. It would seem on the surface that Luthor has finally realized that the best revenge was living well, as he sits not on a hotbed of corruption but a stable economy and a safer populace. Superman can only seethe in the corner as he half-heartedly stops whatever crimes and/or accidents still occur in Metropolis. But trouble looms as a kryptonite meteor is apparently headed toward Earth. But a call for help from President Luther and the Man of Steel ends in tragedy and leaves Superman wounded and implicated in the murder of a super villain. Now with both heroes and villains hunting down the last son of Krypton, he turns to the only hero who still completely trusts him, the Dark Knight himself. Now Superman and Batman must unite to clear Superman’s name and save the Earth from approaching disaster.
Unfortunately, once the plot is established around the twenty-minute mark, the remaining forty-five minutes give way to one super-powered smack-down after another. Character and plot logic goes out the window for a stream of epic battle scenes between Superman and Batman vs this pack of heroes or that pack of villains. The cameos are numerous (even Hush makes and inexplicable experience, which makes no sense if you know anything about the character), but the film’s brief 67-minute running time leaves little room for plot any real substance in between the fight scenes. What time there is for plot is spent explicitly explaining things that were taking for granted in the comics (and should be taken for granted in a fan-friendly adaptation such as this). This results in a flurry of rushed and on-the-nose exposition for a story that just doesn’t have the time.
What does work is the character interplay between Batman and Superman. While this movie is obviously missing the back-and-forth thought bubbles that were a trademark of the Superman/Batman comic series in its early days, enough of the memorable wordplay makes its way onto the screen. And it’s obviously fun to see Kevin Conroy (Batman), Tim Daly (Superman), Clancy Brown (Lex Luthor), and CCH Pounder (Amanda Waller) return to their animated series roles. Although that only makes it incredibly distracting when certain characters show up who have new voices this time around (for example, Alfred is inexplicably not voiced by Efrem Zimbalist Jr.). And furthermore, am I the only one who wonders just why George Newbern gets so little respect? The guy voiced a darn-solid Superman in 60 episodes of Justice League from 2001 to 2005. That’s actually more than Daly, who voiced Superman from 1996-1999 in 52 episodes of Superman: The Animated Series. On the plus side, like in Batman: Arkham Asylum, Kevin Conroy is a more natural and low-key Batman than any time prior to Justice League.
In the end, this feature is as light as a feather, without the years of comic-book back story to make it more potent than it otherwise would be. Even the climax feels limper and more perfunctory, and the story alterations feel unnecessary and drain what emotional impact there was in the first place. If you want to watch an hour of Clancy Brown hamming it up and our two favorite heroes laying waste to much of the DC universe, then you’ll get your fill. But this entry feels more like the Lionsgate Ultimate Avengers cartoons than the more artistically ambitious DCAU products. It lacks the ambition of Justice League: The New Frontier, the scope and angry feminism of Wonder Woman, and the noirish qualities of Green Lantern: First Flight. It’s certainly more entertaining that Batman: Gotham Knights, but I expect better from the Timm/Burnett universe.
Grade: B-
The Blu Ray:
The image is hurts-your-eyes colorful and perfectly fits the cotton-candy nature of the story. The sound was just fine on my English 2.0 mono system. As for the extras, we have the usual 20-minute featurette on the dual natures of Batman and Superman, as well as spotlights on the prior DCAU titles. We have two bonus episodes of Superman: The Animated Series (the hilarious “Knight Time” and the dreadful “The Demon Reborn”) as well as the four-part ‘Cadmus’ arc that closed out the stellar fourth season of Justice League (at around 85 minutes, it’s just plain better than the main feature in nearly every way). We have a sneak preview of the next feature, Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths, a multi-verse story that apparently started as a planned story arc for the Justice League animated series. Best of all, we have a whopping fifty-five minute round-table ‘dinner with DCU’ interview with Bruce Timm, Andrea Romano, Gregory Novick, and Kevin Conroy. This segment is by itself worth the purchase or at least rental of the Blu Ray (the DVD version is allegedly shorter). It’s a wonderfully insightful and funny conversation about everything from the origins of Batman: The Animated Series to the casting of Public Enemies. You’ll love Kevin Conroy’s story involving an encounter with a homeless person outside of his local post office.
We have a merely so-so movie, but with a glorious transfer and genuinely compelling extras. If you collect this stuff out of habit, I won’t stop you this time. But casual fans might want a rental first. Superman/Batman: Public Enemies is not a patch on the better DCAU films or cartoon shows, but it’s pretty entertaining in its own right. For more information, go to the official site.
Movie – B-
Video – A
Audio – NA
Extras – B+
2016 Olympics: Chicago, Rio Square Off In Copenhagen
COPENHAGEN — Rio or Chicago? Risk vs. reliable.
For the International Olympic Committee, the biggest decision in choosing the city to host the 2016 Games is what statement it wants to send the world.
Does it make the bold, transformational choice of Rio de Janeiro, giving the Olympics to South America for the first time? Or does it play it safe and head for the familiar shores of the United States and, perhaps, a more lucrative games?
“Policy wise, the IOC has to decide if we’re ready to go to a new continent,” longtime IOC member Dick Pound said recently. “That’s the biggest paradigm shift. Is the time right?”
Rio certainly thinks so.
The city didn’t even make the finals when it bid for the Olympics in 2004 and 2012. Now, however, Brazil has one of the world’s largest economies and its international stature is growing. South America is also home to 400 million people, bid committee leader Carlos Arthur Nuzman said, a population that could ensure the Olympic movement’s legacy for generations to come.
And, Rio leaders say, given any chance they get, it is time.
When Rio traveled to Switzerland in June to present its bid to IOC members, the highlight of its passionate appeal was a large map showing where all the Olympics have been held. Dots blanketed Europe, Asia and North America.
The entire South American continent was bare.
“The Olympic movement is a global movement, so it has to be global. It has to go to all the continents, all the countries, all the areas of the world,” Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes said Tuesday. “We’re pretty emotional here at this moment because we know it’s a very important moment for a city that has a lot to give. It’s going to change forever the Olympic movement.”
IOC members acknowledge there is large appeal in going somewhere new. That Rio’s plan is technically strong only strengthens its case, making it a slight favorite over Chicago ahead of Friday’s vote.
Madrid and Tokyo both seem to have faded, done in largely by geography. Though the IOC doesn’t have an official continental rotation, European cities are hosting the 2012 and ’14 games, while last year’s Beijing Olympics are still fresh in members’ minds.
Of course, for all the handicapping, nothing is ever as certain as it seems.
The vagaries of the IOC’s voting system make it that any of the four could go out in the first round, and ballrooms across the globe are littered with supposed favorites who didn’t win the ultimate prize. In fact, the key to victory often depends on picking up those second- and third-choice votes.
The city receiving the fewest votes is eliminated after each round until one candidate has a majority. The vote is expected to go the maximum three rounds.
And Rio is not without its drawbacks.
Though the homicide rate in the city of 6 million dropped to 33 per 100,000 people last year from 39 per 100,000 the year before, that’s still well above Chicago, Madrid or Tokyo. Major highways, including one that links the international airport to the beaches, are periodically shut down by shootouts.
Rio also has to convince the IOC that it can pay for $11 billion worth of infrastructure projects and complete them on time – on top of staging the World Cup just two years earlier. Hosting the world’s two largest sporting events back-to-back could prove to be a marketing challenge, with advertisers deciding they have the money for one or the other, not both.
Then again, FIFA’s endorsement might be what’s needed to convince IOC members that now is the right time.
“It’s a big, sophisticated international federation, so maybe that’s a signal,” Pound said.
More like a loud alarm, Rio said.
“It’s the absolute historical moment for our country, for our continent, for our state,” said Sergio Cabral, governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro.
But what if it’s not?
While Chicago doesn’t have the international flair of, say, Los Angeles, New York or even San Francisco, it is an American bid and those are the ultimate security blanket for the IOC. Los Angeles, Atlanta and Salt Lake City all staged successful games that made money. Lots of it, in Los Angeles and Salt Lake.
Chicago may not have the architectural masterpieces that typically define a host city, but its plan to use city parks and existing or temporary venues also makes it less vulnerable to the massive cost overruns that London and Vancouver have seen. Its bid committee is run by insurance magnate Pat Ryan, who didn’t get rich by making bad decisions, and is filled with people who worked on the Sydney and Salt Lake games.
And by returning to the United States for its first Summer Games since 1996, the IOC will have an attractive property for American advertisers and broadcasters. That’s no small thing, considering the IOC’s largest chunk of revenue comes from its $2.2 billion deal with NBC to broadcast the 2010 and 2012 Olympics. Negotiations for the U.S. TV rights to the 2014 and 2016 games won’t begin until after the vote, and the IOC can expect that a Chicago games will increase both the number of bids and dollar amounts attached to them.
There is also the Obama factor.
President Barack Obama is a popular figure overseas, an adopted son of Chicago and an ardent supporter of the city’s bid and the Olympic movement. So much so he is taking a few hours away from all-important health care reform to come to Copenhagen for Chicago’s final presentation, the first sitting U.S. president to personally lobby the IOC at a host city vote.
Although Ryan is thrilled Obama will be part of the final presentation, he cautions that it isn’t a contest of heads of state. “This is really about cities that would be the best host city for the games,” Ryan said.
Obama is just one of four big name leaders being brought in by the cities. Rio will have Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Madrid will have King Juan Carlos, and Japan will have new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.
“We believe we can make a great impact on the future of the Olympics,” said David Robinson, one of the original Dream Teamers. “That’s no comment against the other great cities. We just feel like we bring some great things to the table.”
More on Olympics
Abner Mikva Endorses David Hoffman For Obama’s Old Senate Seat
Former Chicago inspector general David Hoffman picked up the endorsement of a venerable former judge and unveiled a transparency platform Tuesday in his bid for President Obama’s former Senate seat.
Retired federal judge, Congressman and Clinton White House counsel Abner Mikva announced his support for Hoffman in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary over rival candidates Alexi Giannoulias, the Illinois Treasurer, Cheryle Robinson Jackson, recently president of the Chicago Urban League, and attorney Jacob Meister.
“It isn’t easy to get an 83-year-old excited about a campaign,” Mikva said in a video released by the Hoffman campaign. “But David Hoffman represents exactly what we want in government and public life. He brings the enthusiasm, the vigor, the cleanliness and spotless record that we need.”
Mikva compared Hoffman’s campaign to Barack Obama’s Senate and presidential runs, both of which he supported and both of which he said were against better-known and better-funded opponents.
“I see a lot of similarities,” Mikva said. “Barack was probably even a longer shot for both president and for senator than David is. But long shots do happen, and it’s exciting and it restores confidence in the people’s judgment.”
Mikva’s endorsement comes just days after he declined to endorse a candidate in the contentious Democratic primary to replace Mark Kirk in the 10th Congressional District.
Hoffman’s transparency plans include posting his detailed daily Senate schedule, office budget and salaries online and revealing campaign bundlers in addition to individual donors.
Watch Mikva’s endorsement video:
More on Senate Races
Mike Lux: Public Option Stays Very Much Alive
Today we lost two amendment votes in the Senate Finance Committee on the public option, one offered by Sen. Rockefeller (8 ayes, 15 nays), and one by Sen. Schumer (10 ayes, 13 nays). Traditional media outlets everywhere are reporting this is a massive defeat for the public option, but I don’t see it that way- in fact quite the opposite.
I have said before (most recently here) that the Senate Finance Committee was conservative, in fact the most conservative committee makeup in the Senate, and that we would be likely to lose these votes:
With numbers like this, and with the entire Democratic base mobilized intensely around the issue, you would have to be politically tone deaf as a Democrat to oppose this, but this is the Senate Finance Committee, so public option advocates are likely to lose these votes. The question, though, will be the margin. On a committee this conservative, far more conservative than the Senate as a whole, if we only get seven votes for the public option amendments, that would have to be considered a major political victory, and a sign that the public option can definitely get a majority vote on the floor.
So getting 10 votes on this is promising for those of us who believe a public option is essential. Baucus, Conrad, Lincoln, Carper, and Bill Nelson are five of the ten most conservative Dems in the Senate, and on the Schumer amendment, even two of them went with us. President Obama is for it, a majority in the House is for it, and the whip count we’re running at OpenLeft.com shows that 51 Democrats are in favor of it. And today Tom Harkin confirmed that our whip count is right:
“I have polled senators, and the vast majority of Democrats — maybe approaching 50 — support a public option,” Harkin said told the liberal “Bill Press Radio Show.” “So why shouldn’t we have a public option? We have the votes.
“I believe we’ll have the 60 votes, now that we have the new senator from Massachusetts, to at least get it on the Senate floor,” Harkin later added. “But once we cross that hurdle, we only need 51 votes for the public option. And I believe there are, comfortably, 51 votes for a public option.”
Will all this evidence, the public option will only be hard to beat if Democratic leaders decide they don’t want to do it.
Nebraska Power Co-Ops Sue Colorado Electric Provider
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Five western Nebraska public power cooperatives are accusing a Colorado-based electric provider of grossly overcharging them for electricity.
The utilities also claim in a lawsuit that Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc., as well as its president and several board members, are holding its Nebraska members captive by demanding they pay $220 million to buy out their Tri-State contracts.
Chimney Rock Public Power District of Bayard, Midwest Electric Cooperative Corp. of Grant, Northwest Rural Public Power District of Hay Springs, Panhandle Rural Electric Membership Association of Alliance and Roosevelt Public Power District of Mitchell filed the lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in North Platte.
The utilities helped form Westminster, Colo.-based Tri-State with other rural electric cooperatives in 1952. Tri-State has grown substantially since then, now serving 44 electric cooperatives in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and western Nebraska.
The western Nebraska cooperatives “no longer enjoy the mutual benefit that led them each to come together with other rural distribution entities … Rather, (they) are now captive in an increasingly intolerable situation that Tri-State simply refuses to acknowledge, let alone correct,” the lawsuit says.
The co-ops claim they are charged twice what it costs Tri-State to acquire electricity — costs that must be passed on to Nebraska consumers. They say Tri-State uses a “postage stamp” rate methodology, in which it charges all of its members the same rates.
That rate system is unfair, the lawsuit says, because it essentially forces the Nebraska members to subsidize capital investments in other, more populated states.
Tri-State general manager Ken Anderson said in a statement released Tuesday that the rate system reflects the direct cost of service to meet members’ power load requirements and the association’s financial goals.
“Tri-State’s wholesale rate is nondiscriminatory, cost-based and competitive in the marketplace we serve,” Anderson said.
The lawsuit also accuses Tri-State president and board chairman Harold “Hub” Thompson of taking action to keep the Nebraska members from leaving Tri-State by putting an exorbitant price tag on their efforts to buy out their contracts — which are set to run through 2050.
“We believe all of our members continue to receive value, and contribute value, to the association, including the five Nebraska members, and that as a cooperative, we are stronger together than apart,” Thompson said in Tri-State’s statement.
The Nebraska utilities are asking the court to find, among other things, that Tri-State breached its contracts with them. They seek unspecified damages, as well as court costs and attorneys’ fees.
Nebraska is the only state in the nation in which all electricity is provided by public power districts, and the state prides itself on maintaining relatively low electricity rates.
