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Will Spike Lee’s Original Three-Hour Cut of "Oldboy" Ever See the Light of Day?

by Curtis Tangredi Posted on November 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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“Tough fucking business.”

Those are the three words director Spike Lee used to explain the studio-led mangling of his latest film, Oldboy (FilmDistrict, 104 minutes).

The movie, which hits theaters on Wednesday, is a remake of Park Chan-wook‘s acclaimed 2003 South Korean revenge film of the same name. Lee’s version stars Josh Brolin as Joe Doucett, an alcoholic ad man and deadbeat father who is mysteriously abducted in 1993. He is held in a privately run detention facility (managed by a warden played by Samuel L. Jackson), where he learns he’s been framed for the rape and murder of his ex-wife. The authorities are hunting him, and his young daughter is placed into foster care. Twenty years later (a passage of time that Lee marks with clips of Clinton, Bush, 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, Obama, and more), Joe is suddenly released, and embarks on a gore-filled mission to find his daughter, make his captors suffer, and discover why he was detained for two decades.

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Will Spike Lee’s Original Three-Hour Cut of "Oldboy" Ever See the Light of Day?

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America is the Stingiest Rich Country in the World

by JosephFinsch Posted on November 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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Over at the Economist, Steven Mazie directs me to a recent New Yorker piece on income inequality by John Cassidy. Its most revealing chart, Mazie says, is one that compares raw income inequality in various rich countries (as calculated by GINI scores) to income inequality after taxes and government transfers. In other words, it helps us see which countries do the most to fight the relentless rise in income inequality over the past three decades.

But I wanted to see that more directly, so I re-charted the data. All I did was calculate how much taxes and transfers reduced inequality in every country that had high inequality to begin with. Unsurprisingly, whether you use raw number or percentages, the United States is #1:

The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, with a top 1 percent that’s seen its income triple or more in the past three decades. And yet, we also do the least to fight the rising tide of income inequality. Government programs in America reduce the level of inequality by only 26 percent. Nobody else is so stingy.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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America is the Stingiest Rich Country in the World

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WATCH: How a Canadian Town Is Teaching Polar Bears to Fear Humans in Order to Save Them

by Amy R. Eddy Posted on November 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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Churchill in northern Manitoba bills itself as the the polar bear capital of the world and its tourism-based economy depends on it. But as climate change forces the polar bears inland in search of food, attacks on humans are increasing. Can this small community continue to co-exist with the world’s largest land predator? Suzanne Goldenberg reports from Churchill where its bear alert program uses guns, helicopters and a polar bear jail to manage the creatures.

This trip was supported by Explore.org, Polar Bears International, and Frontiers North

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WATCH: How a Canadian Town Is Teaching Polar Bears to Fear Humans in Order to Save Them

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The Kids Are Alright, Video Game Edition

by RochelleChewing Posted on November 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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This post comes with an even stronger warning than usual that a single study is just a single study; correlation is not causation; and even well-done studies can’t account for every possible confounding factor. In other words, You Have Been Warned.

And yet, this study is pretty interesting!

Typical daily hours viewing television and playing electronic games at age 5 years were reported by mothers of 11,014 children from the UK Millennium Cohort Study….Change in adjustment from age 5 years to 7 years was regressed on screen exposures; adjusting for family characteristics and functioning, and child characteristics.

RESULTS: Watching TV for 3 hours or more at 5 years predicted a 0.13 point increase [] in conduct problems by 7 years, compared with watching for under an hour, but playing electronic games was not associated with conduct problems. No associations were found between either type of screen time and emotional symptoms, hyperactivity/inattention, peer relationship problems or prosocial behaviour. There was no evidence of gender differences in the effect of screen time.

This comes via Aaron Carroll, who adds this comment: “Yes, these are young kids, and it’s unlikely that they have been playing much GTA 5 or Battlefield 4. So I’ll look forward to more data. But that this point, it’s hard to point to a large study like this and find a smoking gun. Figuratively or literally.”

In other words, if it’s a choice between letting your young kids watch more TV or play more video games, go with the video games. Until some other study comes out, anyway.

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The Kids Are Alright, Video Game Edition

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Why Institutional Divestment Might Be One of Our Best Tools For Fighting Climate Change

by Laura Posted on November 22, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Apocalyptic climate change is upon us. For shorthand, let’s call it a slow-motion apocalypse to distinguish it from an intergalactic attack out of the blue or a suddenly surging Genesis-style flood.

Slow-motion, however, is not no-motion. In fits and starts, speeding up and slowing down, turning risks into clumps of extreme fact, one catastrophe after another—even if there can be no 100% certitude about the origin of each one—the planetary future careens toward the unlivable. That future is, it seems, arriving ahead of schedule, though erratically enough that most people—in the lucky, prosperous countries at any rate—can still imagine the planet conducting something close to business as usual.

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Why Institutional Divestment Might Be One of Our Best Tools For Fighting Climate Change

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Obamacare Has a Friend in the Health Care Industry

by s4o840t Posted on November 22, 2013

Mother Jones

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In the LA Times today, Noam Levey writes that Obamacare has an ace in the hole: the insurance industry. Sure, they have their gripes:

But since 2010, they have invested billions of dollars to overhaul their businesses, design new insurance plans and physician practices and develop better ways to monitor quality and control costs.

Few industry leaders want to go back to a system that most had concluded was failing, as costs skyrocketed and the ranks of the uninsured swelled. Nor do they see much that is promising from the law’s Republican critics. The GOP has focused on repealing Obamacare, but has devoted less energy to developing a replacement.

…. For many of these organizations, the prospect of new customers and a more rational system outweighs their sometimes intense irritation with the Obama administration. Insurance executives, in particular, have gnashed their teeth at the president’s attacks on their industry….Despite the frustrations, most insurers remain committed to moving to a new market that would achieve the central promise of the Affordable Care Act: that all consumers can buy health plans even if they have preexisting medical conditions.

This is really a crucial point. Like it or not, the entire health care industry has spent the past three years gearing up for the rollout of Obamacare. At this point, they’re committed—and doubly so since the Republican Party very clearly has no real alternative for them. This means that all the doom-mongering on Fox News is basically just chum for the rubes: Obamacare isn’t going anywhere, and everyone knows it. The health care industry will do everything it can to make it work, and one way or another, it’s going to work. Even the Medicaid expansion is almost certain to be taken up eventually by nearly every state as passions cool down a bit and hospitals start complaining about the lost income.

The tea party may not quite know yet that it’s lost the war, and Republican politicians have every reason to egg them on in this delusion, but the war is well and truly lost. It’s all mopping up now.

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Obamacare Has a Friend in the Health Care Industry

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Republicans Refuse to Cover the Poor, Then Complain that Obamacare Isn’t Covering the Poor

by HiramWhittell Posted on November 21, 2013

Mother Jones

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The New York Times has gotten hold of the “House Republican Playbook” on Obamacare, and I have to admit that it brought back warm memories. It’s just like the launch kits I used to produce for our sales force whenever we came out with a new product, and I have to say that it looks very professional. For Eric Cantor’s sake, I hope his sales force pays more attention to it than my sales force used to pay to mine.

In any case, it’s all pretty predictable stuff: Obamacare is an abomination; people are losing their insurance; small companies are being ruined; etc. etc. But I have to say that this is my favorite talking point:

Needless to say, this is primarily because Republicans governors have refused to implement Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, even though it’s 100 percent paid for at first and 90 percent paid for forever. These governors literally prefer to have their state’s residents pay taxes and get nothing in return rather than give so much as an extra dime to poor people who need health care. It’s truly hard to fathom what kind of human being is callous enough to do this, but apparently there are a bunch of them in the Republican Party.

And then, just to add a cherry of chutzpah on top of this ice cream sundae of spitefulness, they crow about how Obamacare isn’t covering as many people as Obama hoped it would. You really have to marvel.

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Republicans Refuse to Cover the Poor, Then Complain that Obamacare Isn’t Covering the Poor

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The Filibuster Is Dead (Partly)

by q1jurse Posted on November 21, 2013

Mother Jones

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CNN reports that by a vote of 52-48 in the Senate, the filibuster of judicial and executive branch nominees has been eliminated. The nuclear option has been detonated.

UPDATE: I was in the middle of writing a post about this when the vote was taken. Here’s what I was writing:

A few minutes before the vote, Dana Bash was on CNN talking about the Democratic effort to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominees. “It’s going to make things a lot more tense in the Senate, if you can believe that,” she said. “I imagine it will provoke a lot of anger on the Republican side,” said another anchor. This was followed by some back-and-forth about just how angry Republicans would get and how they’d take advantage of this during next year’s midterms.

This is typical, and telling. Republican anger is always taken as a given, and always treated as genuine. But for some reason Democrats don’t get the same consideration. This despite the fact that Democrats stepped away from this brink several times already earlier this year, and the only reason they’re going forward now is because Republicans have finally pissed them off beyond endurance. Even the moderates have reached the end of their ropes. If things are tenser now in the Senate, Republican need only look in the mirror to find the cause. They’re no longer even pretending that they’ll allow President Obama to perform the normal functions of his office—functions that every other president in history has performed without any serious obstacles.

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The Filibuster Is Dead (Partly)

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Filibuster Reform May Be Just Hours Away

by Michael Rinchen Posted on November 21, 2013

Mother Jones

Is filibuster reform coming as soon as tomorrow? Maybe so:

“We’re not bluffing,” said one senior aide who has spoken with Mr. Reid directly and expects a vote on Thursday, barring any unforeseen breakthrough on blocked judges.

The threat that Democrats could significantly limit how the filibuster can be used against nominees has rattled Republicans. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has brokered last-minute deals that have averted a change to filibuster rules in the past, visited Mr. Reid in his office on Thursday but failed to strike a compromise.

Of course, as Rick Hasen says, “If Democrats were bluffing, they’d have every incentive to say ‘We’re not bluffing.'” Still, it sure doesn’t look like any serious negotiations are taking place, and Harry Reid wouldn’t bring something to the floor unless he knew he had the votes to pass it. Thursday could be a very interesting day in Washington DC.

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Filibuster Reform May Be Just Hours Away

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The Media Once Again Refuses to Answer Questions From the Media

by genestrong2484 Posted on November 21, 2013

Mother Jones

Personally, I’ve never really understood the appeal of Mike Allen’s “Playbook”—or any of the other morning briefing newsletters. Why would reporters deliberately read something whose explicit goal is to make sure that everyone is saying and chasing the same stories? This has never made any sense to me.

That’s not really the topic of this post, though. I just wanted to get it off my chest as a prelude to the latest example of the press going into full stonewall mode whenever they’re the ones a story is about. Today, Erik Wemple reported the results of a deep dive into the contents of Playbook, and it wasn’t pretty: organizations that advertise with Allen, such as the Chamber of Commerce, get an awful lot of friendly mentions that are presented as straight news. Does Allen do this as part of his deal with his advertisers without telling his readers, or is there a more innocent explanation? We’ll never know:

Politico’s leaders didn’t cooperate for this piece. In rejecting a sit-down discussion, Editor-in-Chief John Harris said the premise “is without merit in any shape or form.” Without an interview, it’s impossible to judge Allen’s motivations. For example, does he write nice things about the chamber because he wants more advertisers or because he feels their agenda doesn’t get fair play in other outlets? Did he publish those BP plugs because he thought they were newsworthy or because he’s got a friend at the company?

Of course Harris refused to say anything. It’s standard journalistic practice. It’s only other people who have to answer questions. It’s outrageous to expect news organizations themselves to do the same.

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The Media Once Again Refuses to Answer Questions From the Media

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