Month: April 2017

Health care for dummies

by digby

Look at this. LOOK AT IT!

In an interview with Face The Nation’s John Dickerson that aired Sunday, it appeared that President Donald Trump did not fully understand what was in the latest version of the Republican health care bill.
When Dickerson pushed Trump to acknowledge why there are critics of the bill, noting higher premiums for older people, Trump interrupted him to say that issue was fixed. Throughout the interview, Trump insisted that the latest version of the bill addressed all of the problems Dickerson mentioned, even though the bill has only become worse for low-income people, older people and people with pre-existing conditions.

When Dickerson asked Trump explain to how higher premiums were “fixed” under the new health care bill, he didn’t have an answer.

Finally, after being pressed several times, Trump responded, “This bill has evolved…But we have now pre-existing conditions in the bill. We have — we’ve set up a pool for the pre-existing conditions so that the premiums can be allowed to fall. We’re talking across all of the borders or the lines so that insurance companies can compete.”
When Dickerson pointed out there wasn’t any mention of purchasing insurance across state lines in the current legislation, Trump said, “Of course, it’s in.”

It isn’t clear what Trump means when he claims that “pre-existing conditions” are in the bill. In fact, Republicans gutted protections for people with pre-existing conditions last week. On Tuesday, Republican leaders proposed an amendment to the latest version of the legislation that would raise premiums by thousands of dollars for people with pre-existing conditions and thus make health care unaffordable for many Americans.

That’s why it was so puzzling that Trump insisted pre-existing conditions were covered “beautifully.”

He literally has no idea what he’s talking about:

And he never, never stops whining. Ever.

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Sunday Funnies

by digby

Samantha Bee ladies and gentlemen:

It will make you laugh, I guarantee it. It might also choke you up a little bit.

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Well isn’t that special?

by digby

John Dickerson actually took two minutes to write this. I think he’s put his finger on the biggest problem we face right now, don’t you?

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez has been swearing a lot lately.

“They call their budget a skinny budget, I call their budget a shitty budget,” he said of the Republican budget during a speech on Tuesday.

Gone is Michelle Obama’s advice for handling the opposition: “When they go low, we go high” — the best Democratic line of the last campaign, and words we should all live by.

This is about more than crass language. In times of tension, do you keep your standards or drop them? The Washington Post asked Perez about his potty mouth and he pointed out correctly that Republicans have tolerated far worse from Donald Trump.

So, two wrongs make a right, and the race is on to the bottom — or whatever is below the bottom.

At this point, you may be swearing in rebuttal. Party chairmen are supposed to be extreme. This conveys urgency. It excites the crowd. Plus, Donald Trump never paid a price. Essentially: this is good politics.

Is it really? If you oppose a president for his coarseness, why would you imitate it? Donald Trump’s primary opponents tried and failed at this.

Also, for a party with a message problem there’s something exhausting about the overuse of the manure spreader. It suggests a reliance on shock rather than the strength of an argument. The outburst is supposed to be spontaneous, but comes across as thoroughly calculated.

A pointed word now and again can be effective, as Bernie Sanders proved when he said, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” But it was the prior restraint, not just the word, that made people take notice.

Fuckin’ A.

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They said they were taking off the shackles and they meant it

by digby

The DHS ombudsman job was a nice idea. It would be better to abandon it altogether than do this:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is set to announce the appointment of a controversial former leader of an anti-immigrant policy center to be its ombudsman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Monday, according to two sources aware of the news.

Between 2005 and 2015, Julie Kirchner worked first as its director of government relations then as executive director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an organization founded by an alleged white nationalist who advocates for stricter immigration. During her time at FAIR, the organization proposed efforts to end birthright citizenship and reduce legal immigration levels. She left FAIR in 2015 to become an immigration adviser on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.

Immigrant advocates are worried Kirchner’s role as ombudsman will give her direct access to include or exclude stakeholders with an immigration nexus who may shape her formal recommendations based on how the agency should exercise authority over policy implementation.

“The appointment of Kirchner to the position of CIS ombudsman is extremely troubling when you consider the fact that she spent 10 years working for FAIR, a group founded on racist principals that has spent decades demonizing and vilifying immigrants,” Heidi Beirich, the director of SPLC’s Intelligence Project, told ThinkProgress in an email.

USCIS public affairs officer Katie Tichacek told ThinkProgress the agency “does not comment on potential personnel announcements. The two people who confirmed information of Kirchner’s appointment were one current DHS employee and one former DHS employee.

Congress created the role of the USCIS ombudsman under the Homeland Security Act of 2002 as an “impartial and independent perspective” to the agency housed within DHS, according to a DHS agency website. Among tasks like meeting with external stakeholders, ombudsman are responsible for resolving problems with pending immigration cases, sharing feedback on emerging trends in migration patterns, and issuing formal recommendations and proposals to address concerns. They cannot make or change USCIS decisions…

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has labeled FAIR as a hate group, pointing to a series of racist memos written by the organization’s founder John Tanton warning of a “Latin onslaught.” In the past, Tanton and other supporters promoted radical population control measures like sterilizing Third World women and making wider use of an abortion pill. FAIR has received $1.5 million from the pro-eugenics organization Pioneer Fund. Tanton also founded NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), two organizations that consulted Trump or senior administration officials during his campaign.

There can be no better sign of what they intend to do. FAIR is a straight-up white supremacist organization. Up until now they were as fringe as fringe can be. Now they are being appointed to official positions in the government.

Of course, we have actual Nazis on the White House staff, the mainstream Republican Party is good with it and the media is adjusting. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

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It’s “beautiful chocolate cake” all the time now

by digby

Trump’s bizarre bragging in his hundred days interviews is alarming. He is simply stating the sky is red and testing people to see if they will disagree with him. He’s been saying non sequiturs from the beginning,of course, like these:

When asked about the rise of anti-Semitism during a February presser with Israeli PM: “Well, I just want to say that we are very honored by the victory we had. 306 Electoral College votes. We were not supposed to crack 220.”

During a joint presser with Canadian PM Trudeau, he was asked about deporting Syrian refugees and said, “That’s what I said I would do. I’m just doing what I said I would do, and we won by a very, very large electoral college vote.”

 
In the middle of discussing Chinese President Xi Jinping with three Reuters reporters, Trump handed them three copies of the election map he had printed out that were sitting atop his desk in the Oval Office. “Here, you can take that, that’s the final map of the numbers. It’s pretty good, right? The red is obviously us.” 

He gave a speech to the NRA yesterday, the first POTUS to do so since Raegan, and spent the first portion of it talking about his electoral college victory. He listed the states he won, touted his 306 (actually 304) EC votes. “Big sports fans said [the election] was the single most exciting event they’re ever seen.”

5 minutes into his speech at a Louisville rally in March, Trump called Nov. 8 “a beautiful day” adding “they weren’t giving us a chance, saying, ‘There is no way to 270.’ …And you remember for the Republicans, the Electoral College has been very, very hard to win.”

Now, however, he’s dropping strange brags into interviews that sound as if he’s being translated from a foreign language:

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The relationship I have with China, it’s been already acclaimed as being something very special, something very different than we’ve ever had. But again, you know, we’ll find out whether or not President Xi is able to affect change.

How about this? Does it sound like a grown man fluent in English is speaking?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, one of the things that I’ve learned is how dishonest the media is, really. I’ve done things that are I think very good. I’ve set great foundations with foreign leaders. We have you know — NAFTA, as you know, I was going to terminate it, but I got a very nice call from a man I like, the president of Mexico.

I got a very nice call from Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada. And they said please would you rather than terminating NAFTA — I was all set to do it. In fact, I was going to do it today. I was going to do as we’re sitting here. I would’ve had to delay you. I was going to do it today. I was going to terminate NAFTA. But they called up and they said, “Would you negotiate?” And I said, “Yes, I will

Set aside the fact that we know that’s not what happened. He was persuaded by Wilbur Ross and Sonny Perdue rushing into the room with some colorful maps that showed he would be hurting some of his fans in red states by doing this. But even if this is what actually happened, what a weird childish way of telling the story.

I am more and more concerned that he’s actually regressing. I think the stress might be getting to him and he’s losing what’s left of his mental capacity. His interviews are all over the place and he’s making even less sense than he used to.

And yet …. the panelists on the programs this morning were very focused on not noticing that the Emperor has no clothes. They were all talking about his “flexibility and how he’s “signaled his willingness to compromise” and how his base loves him so much he’ll be in a powerful position to makes deals.

They persist in acting as if it is normal that the president speaks like a 4th grader and lives in a fantasy world. It. is. not. normal.

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Replaced by robots or replaced by UBI?
by Tom Sullivan

The changing nature of work and whether (or when) we all get replaced by robots gets talked about around the office. I don’t have a lot of money, but as Liam Neeson says in Taken, what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. That makes me somewhat harder to replace with a machine. Forget the computers and the engineering and science. What makes me still employable at this stage of life is so much of what I do is more art than science. I can teach a kid right out of engineering school how to run the software in a week, but she/he won’t know what they hell she/he is doing with it. Decades in, I’m still learning what to do with it. Plus, since it is a particular set of skills, when they need me, they need me. What I know isn’t just available on any street corner. So far.

The series “Robot-proof Jobs” from Marketplace Radio has been examining the impact of automation and algorithms in the workplace. Other than catering to investors or Trump promising to bring back jobs that aren’t coming back, what kind of planning is the government doing to get ahead of the economic displacement?

Thomas Kalil, until this year deputy director for technology and innovation of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, asks host David Brancaccio [Timestamp 26:00]:

“The R&D budget of the Department of Defense is around 73 billion dollars. Do you have any guesses as to what the Department of Labor research budget is? … Four million dollars.”

Nobody at the Department of Labor is looking at how we could take advances in artificial intelligence technology and turn that into a way to reduce the time for a non-college educated worker to gain a skill that would give him a lift into the middle class.

Brancaccio asks, “Why isn’t the government investing more massively in new ways to help people jump onto this high-tech jobs bandwagon?”

It’s not a matter of money. It’s a matter of will.

The Navy got the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to look into how to accelerate learning for new recruits. Their program found that after 4-5 months of specialized, computer-based training, new recruits were outperforming veterans with 7-10 years of experience. Kalil explains:

So, for example, 30 million Americans are reading at the third grade level or below. But you don’t see a huge effort on the part of the private sector to solve that problem. We have not thought seriously about how we would harness science, technology, and innovation to advance economic and social mobility and create more ladders of opportunity. In part, because the private sector is under-investing because they may not see an immediate opportunity. And the agencies that are responsible for worrying about these issues, like the Department of Labor or like HUD, we’ve never said, hey, you should have a research arm that could do for economic and social mobility what DARPA does for the military or what NIH does for biomedical research.

Don’t hold your breath. The private sector isn’t interested and government spending on its people is a cost to be minimized, not an investment in future growth.

David Atkins wrote a lot here about Universal Basic Income (UBI) and what a shifting economy might bring. A forum at CUNY on Trade, Jobs, and Inequality discussed UBI and trade-related topics. A computer(?) transcription of the discussion here with all its inaccuracies demonstrates how far machines have to go. The discussion wandered into the social meaning of income. Having a stronger social safety net is not enough, says Paul Krugman, “[T]hink about the fact that France has a welfare state, a social safety net, that is beyond the wildest dreams of American leftists. Nonetheless le Pen made it into the second round of the election.” So there is more going on in France than economic insecurity, he didn’t have to say.

Economist David Autor of MIT addressed recent impacts of trade and automation. The “China shock” is basically over, he says [Timestamp 52:00]:

But we ought to learn some lessons about this. One is about our social safety net. As emphasized, trade adjustment assistance policy is woefully inadequate. But a deeper point is, jobs have their own value. You cannot make someone whole… What if you said, “Hey, Paul, we are going to take away your identity. You are no longer an esteemed economist. You are just retired”. Would you say: “Oh, great! I have all this money and I do not have to do anything!”? Of course not. For most people, work is central to organize who they are, how they perceive themselves, how others perceive them, their social identity. A better social safety net is not sufficient. We would like to actually have good jobs.

It’s not a discussion that will end, probably ever, but what struck me was Kalil’s observation that we’ll spend research dollars to improve military performance, but not on our civilian population. So long as the prevailing ethos is a social Darwninist one that sees struggling Americans as being unworthy of help, they will receive neither government investment in their futures, nor a safety net to cushion them against it. Trump played to some of their concerns and left them behind as soon as he got from them what he wanted: a win.

Saturday Night at the Movies




Writer’s block: Top 10 films about writers

By Dennis Hartley

With the possibility of a Writer’s Guild strike looming over the entertainment industry this week, I’ve been pondering myriad films I have seen that are about screenwriters, novelists, journalists, poets, and playwrights. Here are 10 cinematic page-turners for you:

American Splendor-From the streets of Cleveland! Paul Giamatti was born to play underground comic writer Harvey Pekar, the misanthropic file clerk/armchair philosopher who became a cult figure after collaborating with legendary comic illustrator R. Crumb on some classic strips. Co-directors Shari Berman and Robert Pulcini keep their film fresh and engaging using imaginative visual devices and by breaking down the “fourth wall”. A virtually unrecognizable Hope Davis gives a great turn as Pekar’s deadpan wife.

Written by: Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner, Shari Springer Berman, and Robert Pulcini

An Angel at My Table-Jane Campion directed this incredibly moving story of successful New Zealand novelist Janet Frame (beautifully played at various stages of her life by three actresses, most notably Kerry Fox). When she was a young woman, her social phobia and generalized anxiety was misdiagnosed as a serious mental illness and she ended up spending nearly a decade in and out of institutions. Not for the faint of heart.

Written by: Janet Frame and Laura Jones.

Barfly-It’s the battle of the quirky method actors as Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway guzzle rye and wax wry in this booze-soaked dark comedy, based on the experiences of writer/poet Charles Bukowski. The film is quite richly drawn, right down to the smallest bit parts. Look for Sylvester Stallone’s brother Frank as a bartender who repeatedly beats the crap out of Rourke (I’d bet Rourke could take him in a real-life scrap!). If you’re up for a double feature, I’d suggest the compelling documentary Bukowski: Born into This.

Written by: Charles Bukowski.

The Front-Directed by Martin Ritt, this downbeat yet politically rousing tale uses the entertainment industry’s spurious McCarthy era blacklist as a backdrop. Woody Allen is very effective as a semi-literate bookie who ends up “fronting” for several blacklisted TV writers. Zero Mostel is brilliant in a tragicomic performance (Mostel, screenwriter Walter Bernstein and several other participants in the film actually were blacklisted in real life).

Written by: Walter Bernstein.

Hearts of the West-Jeff Bridges gives a winning performance as a rube from Iowa, a wannabe pulp western writer with the unlikely name of “Lewis Tater” (the scene where he asks the barber to cut his hair to make him look “just like Zane Grey” is priceless.) Tater gets fleeced by a mail-order scam promising enrollment in what turns out to be a bogus university “out west”. Serendipity lands him a job as a stuntman in 1930s Hollywood westerns. Featuring one of Andy Griffith’s best screen performances. Alan Arkin is a riot as a perpetually apoplectic director. Excellent direction by Howard Zieff.

Written by: Rob Thompson.

Henry and June– Fred Ward delivers his best performance to date as the gruff, libidinous literary icon Henry Miller. The story takes place during the time period that Miller was living in Paris and working on his infamous novel Tropic of Cancer. The film concentrates on the complicated love triangle between Miller, his wife June (Uma Thurman) and erotic novelist Anais Nin (Maria de Medeiros). Despite the frequent nudity and focus on eroticism, the film is curiously un-sexy, but still a well-acted, fascinating character study. Richard E. Grant portrays Nin’s husband. Directed by Philip Kaufman.

Written by: Anais Nin, Philip Kaufman, and Rose Kaufman.

In a Lonely Place – “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” Those words are uttered by Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), a Hollywood screenwriter with a volatile temperament. He also has quirky working habits, which leads to a fateful encounter with a hatcheck girl, who he hires for the evening to read aloud from a pulpy novel that he’s been assigned by the studio to adapt into a screenplay. At the end of the night, he gives her cab fare and sends her on her way. Unfortunately, the young woman turns up murdered, and Dix becomes a prime suspect. An attractive neighbor (Gloria Grahame) steps in to give him an unsolicited alibi. A marvelous film noir, directed by Nicholas Ray, with an intelligent screenplay full of twists and turns that keep you guessing until the end. It’s a precursor to Basic Instinct.

Written by: Andrew Solt and Edmund H. North (from a story by Dorothy B. Hughes).

The Owl and the Pussycat-George Segal is a reclusive, egghead NYC writer and Barbra Streisand is a profane, boisterous hooker in this classic “oil and water” farce, directed by Herbert Ross. Serendipity throws the two odd bedfellows together one fateful evening, and the resulting mayhem is crude, lewd, and funny as hell. Buck Henry adapted his screenplay from Bill Manhoff’s original stage version. Robert Klein is wonderfully droll in a small but memorable role. My favorite line: “Doris…you’re a sexual Disneyland!”

Written by: Bill Manhoff and Buck Henry.

Prick Up Your Ears-Gary Oldman chews major scenery in this biopic about British playwright Joe Orton, who lived fast and died young. Alfred Molina nearly steals the film as Orton’s lover, Kenneth Halliwell. Halliwell was a middling writer who had a complex, love-hate obsession with his partner’s effortless artistic gifts (you might say he played Salieri to Orton’s Mozart). This obsession led to a shocking and heartbreaking tragedy. Director Stephen Frears captures the exuberance of “swinging” 1960s London to a tee.

Written by: Alan Bennett and John Lahr.

Reuben, Reuben-Director Robert Ellis Miller’s underrated gem (from 1983) features Tom Conti as a boozing, womanizing Scottish poet (reminiscent of Sean Connery’s character in the 1966 satire A Fine Madness). Conti’s character (he’s not “Reuben”, incidentally) spends more time getting himself in trouble than writing poetry, and is always on the prowl for wealthy patrons. The inspiration for the enigmatic title isn’t revealed until the final moments of the film. Also with Kelly McGillis (in her film debut).

Written by: Peter De Vries, Herman Shumlin, and Julius J. Epstein.

Previous posts with related themes:
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson
Hannah Arendt
I Am Not Your Negro
Trumbo
William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

More reviews at Den of Cinema
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–Dennis Hartley

Highlights of the apocalypse

by digby

… here’s just some of what we’ve seen in the past 99 days. https://t.co/pHpnPeEI6I #11MSNBC pic.twitter.com/0F06IywH8S

— fake nick ramsey (@nick_ramsey) April 29, 2017

WATCH: Trust me when I tell you that you need to watch this. It’s surreal.

Creator: @AlexanderTrow pic.twitter.com/rJpdG2TPf8

— Yashar (@yashar) April 28, 2017

There’s certainly nothing disconcerting about this, nothing at all

by digby

This man runs an activist group full of angry people who are armed to the teeth:

Yikes.

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Bad hombres

by digby

About half of the 675 immigrants picked up in roundups across the United States in the days after President Trump took office either had no criminal convictions or had committed traffic offenses, mostly drunken driving, as their most serious crimes, according to data obtained by The Washington Post.

Records provided by congressional aides Friday offered the most detailed look yet at the backgrounds of the individuals rounded up and targeted for deportation in early February by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents assigned to regional offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, San Antonio and New York.

Two people had been convicted of homicide, 80 had been convicted of assault, and 57 had convictions for “dangerous drugs.” Many of the most serious criminals were given top billing in ICE news statements about the operation.

The largest single group — 163 immigrants convicted of traffic offenses — was mentioned only briefly. Over 90 percent of those cases involved drunken driving, ICE said Friday. Of those taken into custody in the raids, 177 had no criminal convictions at all, though 66 had charges pending, largely immigration or traffic offenses.

The raids were part of a nationwide immigration roundup dubbed Operation Cross Check, which accounts for a small portion of the 21,362 immigrants the Trump administration took into custody for deportation proceedings from January through mid-March.

It is obvious that the directive is to deport as many as possible for any reason they can find. It’s not a secret.

Sean Spicer, 2/21/17:

When you’re talking about, 13, 14, 15, potentially more, millions of people in this country, the President needed to give guidance, especially after what they went through in the last administration where there were so many carve-outs that ICE agents and CBP members had to figure out each individual whether or not they fit in a particular category and they could adjudicate that case.

The President wanted to take the shackles off individuals in these agencies and say: You have a mission, there are laws that need to be followed; you should do your mission and follow the law.

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