Links: Politics & Movies

1. A good argument from Albany this morning:
[ht Indecision]

2. I just saw Precious. I thought Lee Daniels' cinéma vérité-esque rapid zoom and shaky camera work were distracting. I also thought it was manipulative of your emotions. At one point while I was sobbing, I realized everyone else in the theater was sobbing too, and pretty loudly, but it was just so obvious that was exactly what we were supposed to be doing at that moment that I then laughed a little. However, I thought the acting was fantastic and the movie was absolutely worth seeing.

3. After Obama's speech yesterday, I was struck by this quote in a Joan Walsh column at Salon:
I'm deeply disappointed, saddened even, but I don't feel betrayed. Obama has governed like the centrist he told us and showed us he is, from his early flip-flops on FISA to his Goldman Sachs-friendly bailout policies to compromising on the job-creation parts of his economic stimulus to his tepid backing of a healthcare reform public option. It's going to take hard work by activists on all of those fronts to push him to better solutions.

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