I’ll admit, things in America suck right now, compared to the salad days of the late-nineties. But from the daily headlines regarding the current financial downturn, you’d think Hoovervilles are already springing up outside every major American city. As I’ve pointed out in previous posts, the hyperbole surrounding these events is laughable once you get into the meat of the stories. Like the story a few weeks back about the “ruined lives” of Bear Stearns employees, in which one executive stock options were worth a mere $28 million dollars, and lesser employees were forced to put their “weekend homes” up for sale, or another story about the California housing market in which the shrinking pool of mortgage related credit had forced one homeowner to “cut back on travel” and find other means by which to pay for his “investment properties.” Today, I found yet another golden quote, in a story with the dire headline “Food Costs Rising Fastest in 17 Years,” which definitely sounds scary. Should we expect food riots in the streets of New York? Soviet-style bread lines at bakeries nationwide? OMG WHAT DO WE HAVE TO BE AFRAID OF NOW???! How about $20 key lime pies that now cost $25?

Steve Tarpin can bake a graham cracker crust in his sleep, but explaining why the price for his Key lime pies went from $20 to $25 required mastering a thornier topic: global economics. The owner of Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies in Brooklyn said he didn’t want customers thinking he was “jacking up prices because I have a unique product.”

“I have to justify it,” he said.

I somehow doubt that anyone who could afford a $20 key lime pie is somehow going to starve now that they have to pay $5 more. But then the story got even better:

“I was talking to people who make $9 an hour, talking about how they might save $5 a week,” said Kathleen DiChiara, president and CEO of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey. “They really felt they couldn’t. That was before. Now, they have to.”

For some, that means adding an extra cup of water to their soup, watering down their milk, or giving their children soda because it’s cheaper than milk, DiChiara said

Umm…have they ever heard of WATER?? It’s this thing that runs out of the faucet. And guess how much it costs?? $0.0000000!!11 But I guess if you’re poor you’re not really interested in giving your kids something healthy to drink, especially not something totally free.

Brian De Palma’s Redacted(Magnolia Pictures) opens 11/16, and so far the right wing media is really STOKED on it:

“Brian DePalma ..should be ASHAMED. (Redacted) will incite young Muslim men, already steeped in hatred toward America and the West, to act on their hatred. If just one of those men straps on a bomb vest and murders people, that is on Brian DePalma.” Bill O’Reilly

“A case for TREASON” patdollard.com

Okay, I’m interested.

The film’s tagline:
“Truth is the first casualty of war”

Okay, really interested.

The Trailer:

Okay…wtf? That’s a pretty lackluster trailer. I know, negative space, disembodied voices…possibly intriguing to some, but it really doesn’t do anything for me. But judge not a movie by its trailer I suppose.

Redactedis a fictional story based on the true events that led up to America’s invasion of Iraq, and focuses on the trifecta of fucked: the media, the soldiers and the Iraqi people.

Centered around a small group of American soldiers stationed at a checkpoint in Iraq, REDACTED alternates points of view, balancing the experiences of these young men under duress and members of the media with those of the local Iraqi people, illuminating how each have been deeply affected by the current conflict and their encounters with each other.