American Madness

Intelligent Criticism in the Service of a Better Nation




Courage Under Fire

Posted by Joel Friedlander on | February 4, 2010 | Click to Comment

Today in America we are faced with a major issue of equal rights regarding Gay people serving in the military.  It may be beneficial to look at how Harry Truman handled a very similar situation in 1948; the integration of the military.

In early 1948, Truman “… proposed a ten-point program, which included provisions for an anti-lynching law, an anti-poll tax law, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, a Commission on Civil Rights, home rule for the District of Columbia and desegregation of the armed services. … nothing was passed by the Congress.” The Truman Legacy, http://www.majorcox.com/columns/truman.htm.

Later in the year, at the Democratic National Convention, then Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey, pushed through a civil rights platform even more wide ranging than Truman’s proposals.  Many of the southern Democratic delegates, the Dixicrats, as they were called, walked out of the convention.  They nominated Strom Thurmond as their candidate for President.

With his reelection in sight, and with 1948 Gallop Polls showing that 82% of Americans were against his plan for integration of the military, Harry Truman issued Executive Order No. 9981 on July 26. The order stated, in part, that “It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.” The order also established the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and opportunity in the Armed Services (Fahy Committee). http://www.trumanlibrary.org/anniversaries/desegblurb.htm

Read more

Predictions before Tuesday morning

Posted by Jason Ihle on | January 31, 2010 | 2 Comments

OscarsHere are my full predictions for the Academy Award nominations, scheduled to be announced Tuesday morning. I never make predictions in the Documentary, Foreign Film and Short film categories, but all others are here.

Let’s see how I do and then follow up with commentary later in the week.

Best Picture - With 10 nominees this year the category feels rather bloated and will certainly let in more than a couple of films that will make you scratch your head with wonder about whether it really is one of the best films of the year and deserving of such recognition.

I’d say the top 8 films on my list below have a pretty solid lock on a nomination. The last two spots are tough calls. You have to weigh the driving force of Harvey Weinstein behind Nine and A Single Man. But Nine was just short of awful and A Single Man (unseen by me) doesn’t seem to be as widely touted as other films. Crazy Heart (also unseen by me) could ride the wave of Jeff Bridges’ performance. The Messenger is a timely choice, being about two soldiers whose job it is to inform next of kin of the deaths of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. District 9 was a very well-received sci-fi film. And I’ve got a warm spot for Fantastic Mr. Fox which I thought was really great. The Road is excellent, but I don’t really think it has a great chance. I don’t understand why I don’t see anyone talking about The White Ribbon being nominated here. It’s as if foreign films are relegated to the back of the bus. There’s also the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man. It speaks to a niche market, but one that is abundant in Hollywood. Although I don’t know if the Academy is still populated by enough Jews who are connected enough to that culture to fully appreciate how that film gets to the core of Jewish suffering. For the final two spots I’m going to go with A Single Man and A Serious Man, if for no other reason than the similar titles may confuse older voters (like what happened some years ago with Pat Buchanan and Al Gore).

The Hurt Locker
Up in the Air
Avatar
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
An Education
Invictus
Up
A Serious Man
A Single Man Read more

Creating New Jobs to Get out of the Recession: How will we do it?

Posted by Joel Friedlander on | January 27, 2010 | 2 Comments

Well, I just lost this one by mistake but lets try again.  We need a massive amount of job creation to get out of this Recession, which in some areas of the Economy is a Depression.

During the recent Bush administration there were 3 million jobs created with a population growth of 22 million.  That was one new job per every 7.5 people.  Under Bill Clinton there was a population growth of 25.2 million with 23.1 million jobs created, almost one job for every single person.  Under the elder Bush there were 2.5 million jobs created for a growth of 12.5 million.  In fact the only Republican President who did have real job growth was Ronald Reagan, with 16 million jobs created for a population growth of 17.3 million, like Bill Clinton, there was almost a job for each new person in the population.

Because of the fact that we have lost 7 million jobs since the Recession began in 2007, we must recoup those lost jobs and add new jobs for the growth we didn’t have during the Bush years.  How are we going to do that?  We probably need to create 5 million jobs per year to get out of the hole we are in.

I will gratefully entertain any ideas of how we should increase job creation.  Keynesian ideas are ok, Socialist Ideas are ok, Supply side ideas are ok.  I’d like to hear from Liberals, Moderates, Conservatives, Radicals, etc.!!!!

The Best of the Aughts, ctd

Posted by Jason Ihle on | January 26, 2010 | 1 Comment

A few days ago I posted a list of 6 films that are on my list of the decade’s favorites. Here I continue with another 5, all of which were released in the year 2000, which seems to have produced many of my favorite films. Could that be because it was the first year since I was 6 that I was not a student for a single day?

Again, there’s no particular order to this list, except I did single these out for this posting because they all come from the same year.

High Fidelity (2000) – dir. Stephen Frears – Here’s a movie that was made specifically for me. That was my exact thought when I first saw this wonderful movie that I still watch at least once a year. John Cusack’s Rob is basically like me, but fixated on music instead of movies. He’s obsessed with lists and arcane trivia, but most importantly he’s torn apart by women and relationships. He loves deeply and gets badly hurt by breakups. His self-evaluation process to determine why he’s doomed to be rejected by women eventually reveals that all his relationships have been variations on a 3 day relationship he had when he was 12 and that really he’s sort of been looking at things the wrong way. Phenomenal soundtrack and the movie that put Jack Black on my radar. Read more

Fool me once…

Posted by Jason Ihle on | January 26, 2010 | 4 Comments

Health Care Is Dead…shame on…shame on you. Fool me…can’t get fooled again.

It seems Democrats have not learned President George W. Bush’s lesson.

In a maddeningly frustrating article about how Democrats have decided to throw in the towel, Senator Evan Bayh had this to say with regard to using reconciliation to get the Health Care Bill passed: “It would destroy the opportunity, if there is one, for any bipartisan cooperation the rest of this year on anything else.”

Oh, I can’t wait to see how benevolent Congressional Republicans suddenly become after a full year of obstructionism which led to the defeat of a MAJOR piece of legislation. I’m dying for the sight of the Republican Party caring more about improving the country than preventing the other guys from winning. Right, now that they’ve tasted blood and can see the November elections in the distance with the great possibility that they’ll swing in their party’s favor they’re going to go all bipartisan. Read more

Older Stories »

  • Trust us


    As with Anna Karina, we prefer to remember the U.S.A as she was in the 1960s.

  • Archives

  • RSS Matt Friedlander’s Tumblr Feed

  • RSS Josh Friedlander’s Twitter Feed