Textual Healing 01.23.2009

Paul Krugman says that economists, "not all of them especially liberal," think the Federal Government should nationalize the banking industry. No matter how hard left the country goes, you can always count on Krugman to go farther.

David Brooks says it's now time for Obama to show that he is serious about change. The stimulus bill approved by the House, says Brooks, is "an undisciplined sprawl of health, education, entitlement and other spending" In other words, pork barrel politics as usual. Obama "didn’t run for president just to sign whatever bills the Old Bulls put on his desk." Brooks says the new president must refuse to sign, and then totally remake, the wasteful spending package.

Also in the NYT , Steven Pinker wonders how Chief Justice John Roberts "a famous stickler for grammar" could have bungled the presidential oath? Conspiracy theorists think"it was unconscious retaliation for Senator Obama’s vote against the chief justice’s confirmation in 2005." But a simpler explanation is Chief Justice Roberts’s grammatical niggling, including a loathing for so-called "split verbs." According to this fallacy, Captain Kirk made a grammatical error when he declared the five-year mission of the Starship Enterprise was “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” It should have been “to go boldly.”

Funny. We always thought Justice Roberts was a strict constructionist, yet here is judicial activism at it's worst. Or, at least, it's silliest.

Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post notes (just like The Grind did three days ago) that Obama's invocation of George Washington and the Founders was "a declaration of his own emancipation from -- or better, transcendence of -- the civil rights movement."

Newsweek explains the implications of the executive orders that call for closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay and would bar the CIA from using interrogation methods beyond those of the U.S. military. Jack Bauer is not pleased. Neither is the Wall Street Journal.

With the Sundance Film Festival almost through, the LA Times mentions a few movies that won distribution deals, and could be theaters later this year. Magnolia Pictures struck a deal for “Humpday,” a comedy about two college buddies testing their friendship. Lionsgate bought rights to “Winning Season,” a story of an alcoholic, played by Sam Rockwell, coaching a girls’ high school basketball team, while Sony spent $2 million for North American rights for “Black Dynamite,” a spoof of 1970's exploitation movies. Both Jim Carey and Robins Williams also have films that are garnering a lot of studio interest -- proving that independent film is alive and well, especially if you happen to be a mega-rich movie star.