Month: August 2017

He’s not usually so shy

by digby

“Alt-right” flashing their gang signs in the WH

In case you were wondering:

Here’s a brief and certainly incomplete collection of some of the various people, things, and entities that the president has spoken out against by name since taking office:

— Opinion polls that are unflattering to him;

— Nordstrom;

— The “fake news” media;

— Specifically “CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NYTIMES & WAPO”;

— Meet the Press host Chuck Todd;

— The New York Times;

— The “fake” reporting on his campaign’s potential collusion with Russia;

— The “witch hunt” that is the investigation into his campaign’s potential collusion with Russia;

— #FraudNewsCNN;

— Leakers;

— Anonymous sources;

— Senator Lisa Murkowski;

— Senator John McCain;

— Senator Lindsey Graham;

— All Senate Republicans;

— Congress;

— Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch;

— His own attorney general, Jeff Sessions;

— Acting FBI director Andrew McCabe;

— Former FBI director James Comey;

— The FBI;

— “Fake tears” Cryin’ Chuck Schumer;

— Nancy Pelosi;

— Congressmember Adam Schiff;

— Senator Richard Blumenthal;

— Barack Obama;

— Hillary Clinton;

— John Podesta;

— Democratic congressional candidate Jon Ossoff;

— Democrats in Congress;

— Obamacare;

— North Korea’s unsuccessful missiles;

— North Korea;

— Qatar;

— China;

— Mexico;

— Canada;

— London mayor Sadiq Khan;

— “Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika”;

— Morning Joe;

— Arnold Schwarzenegger;

— Snoop Dogg;

— Mark Cuban;

— “Celebs”;

— Kathy Griffin;

— The Ninth Circuit Court;

— Transgender military service members;

— Chelsea Manning;

— M3-13 gang members;

— The idea that his first 100 days in office were of symbolic significance.

The “F” Word

by digby

Back in the fall of 2015 I wrote in Salon about Trump and his “tendencies” as he began to emerge as the frontrunner:

Over the past week or so, something unusual has happened in American politics: political figures, mainstream scholars and commentators are describing a leading contender for president of the United States as a fascist. Sure, people on barstools around the country have done this forever but it’s unprecedented to see such a thing on national television and in the pages of major newspapers.

For instance, take a look at this piece by MJ Lee at CNN:

[I]t it was after Trump started calling for stronger surveillance of Muslim-Americans in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks that a handful of conservatives ventured to call Trump’s rhetoric something much more dangerous: fascism.
[…]
“Trump is a fascist. And that’s not a term I use loosely or often. But he’s earned it,” tweeted Max Boot, a conservative fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who is advising Marco Rubio. 

“Forced federal registration of US citizens, based on religious identity, is fascism. Period. Nothing else to call it,” Jeb Bush national security adviser John Noonan wrote on Twitter.

Conservative Iowa radio host Steve Deace, who has endorsed Ted Cruz, also used the “F” word last week: “If Obama proposed the same religion registry as Trump every conservative in the country would call it what it is — creeping fascism.”

Yes, this is a hard fought primary campaign with insults flying in every direction. But ask yourself when was the last time you heard Republicans using the “F” word against someone running in their own party? I can’t remember it happening in decades. It’s possible that some members of the GOP establishment called Barry Goldwater a fascist in 1964 (Democrats did, for sure) but that was half a century ago. In recent years this just has not been considered politically correct on left or right.

The CNN story goes on to interview various scholars who all say that to one degree or another Trump is, indeed, fascistic if not what we used to call “a total fascist.” Historian Rick Perlstein was the first to venture there when he wrote this piece some months back,

It’s hard to understand why this has been so difficult to see. On the day he announced his campaign, Trump openly said he believed that undocumented workers are not just criminals (that’s a common refrain among the anti-immigrant right which fatuously chants “they broke the law by coming here”) but violent rapists, killers and gang members. He said he wants to deport millions of people, including American citizens. In fact, he wants to restrict American citizenship to people whose parents are citizens, and thus are guaranteed citizenship by the 14th amendment.

For months Trump has been saying that we cannot allow Syrian refugees into the country and promising to send the ones who are already here back. He has indicated a willingness to require American Muslims to register with the government and thinks they should be put under surveillance.

He condemns every other country on earth as an enemy, whether economic, military or both, and promises to beat them to “make America great again.” Despite the fact that the U.S. is the world’s only superpower, he says he will make it so strong that “nobody will ever mess with us again” so that it was “highly, highly, highly, unlikely” that he would have to use nuclear weapons.

And he said quite clearly that he believes,

“we’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule… And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago…”

Does that add up to fascism? Yeah, pretty much. In his book, “Rush, Newspeak and Fascism” David Neiwert explained that the dictionary definition of the word often leaves out the most important characteristics of the philosophy, which are “its claims to represent the “true character” of the respective national identities among which it arises; and its mythic core of national rebirth — not to mention its corporatist component, its anti-liberalism, its glorification of violence and its contempt for weakness.” If that’s not Donald Trump I don’t know what is.

But if that doesn’t convince you, surely this quote from Monday in Ohio will:

“This morning they asked me a question. ‘Would you approve waterboarding” Would I approve waterboarding? Yeah. And let me ask you a question? I said, on the other side, they chop off our young people’s heads and they put ’em on a stick. On the other side they build these iron cages and they’ll put 20 people in them and they drop ’em in the ocean for 15 minutes and pull ’em up 15 minutes later. Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I’d approve it, you bet your ass — in a heartbeat. 

And I would approve more than that. Don’t kid yourself, folks. It works, okay? It works. Only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work.They’ll say, ‘oh it has no value’, well I know people, very, very important people and they want to be politically correct and I see some people taking on television, ‘well I don’t know if it works’ and they tell me later on, ‘it works, it works, believe me, it works’.

And you know what? If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they’re doing to us.”

Now it’s true that Trump isn’t the first important political figure to publicly endorse waterboarding. Former Vice President Dick Cheney recently said he’d do it again “in a heartbeat” and falsely claimed that “it works.” But even he kept up the fiction that it was rarely employed and only then for interrogation purposes. I don’t know that any top political figure has openly endorsed torture to exact revenge.

Friends with benefits

by digby

You’ll notice that Trump is unable to criticize only two things in this world: Vladimir Putin and white supremacy. Actually, that’s the same thing. This article from last October in The Diplomat explains:

Beyond Trump and Putin: The American Alt-Right’s Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

The Kremlin has various links with leading far-right figures undergirding Trump’s candidacy.

In late August, in a speech delineating white nationalist support for Donald Trump, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton unveiled a new title for Russian President Vladimir Putin: “The Grand Godfather of Extreme Nationalism.” With the sinecure, Clinton sought to directly link the odious policies of her Republican counterpart — namely, mainstreaming a racialized, white supremacist discourse the United States had not seen at such levels in a generation — to those brought to bear under Putin’s third term.

The epithet built upon one of the pillars of Clinton’s campaign which, in turn, built upon the primary campaignof former GOP contender, and current Ohio governor, John Kasich. That is, in addition to Trump’s outright praise for Putin’s leadership, as well as his murky, secretive financial ties to those close to the Kremlin, Clinton tied Trump to the Kremlin’s campaign of stoking hyper-nationalistic movements throughout the West.

As a rhetorical device, the title remains a flurry of brilliance. Not only does the terminology help highlight the Kremlin’s kleptocratic coterie — with Putin as don, as mafioso — but it also further emphasized Clinton’s grasp of Moscow’s policies, and the motivations therein. As seen with Hungary’s Jobbik, with France’s National Front, with Greece’s Golden Dawn, those far-right movements sprouting throughout Europe have found a counterpart in Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party. And much as Trump has aped the rotted, regressive policies of Putin-friendly leaders throughout Europe — see: Hungary’s Viktor Orban — so, too, has he helped give a national platform to the groups and movements that have not only fueled a resurgence of white nationalism in the United States, but who have gone out of their way to praise, of all international leaders, Putin. These groups, as noted in Clinton’s speech, include the “alt-right,” a gathering of fascists and white nationalists who would Balkanize the United States or who would return the country to a bygone era of white supremacy, but also extend to the secessionists and Christian fundamentalists further propping Trump’s campaign.Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.

Of course, certain critics of Clinton, ranging from Trumpian outlets like Breitbart to lefty journalists with little grasp on post-Soviet developments, tabbed her speech as conspiratorial, or as baseless fear-mongering. But those voices overlook the breadth of evidence linking American far-right groups to Kremlin-friendly policies, and in certain cases directly to Kremlin financing. While the phenomena of fascistic, hard-right support for Moscow within Europe has been well-documented elsewhere, most especially by Anton Shekhovtsov and Alina Polyakova, among others, the parallel networks and linkages within the United States have seen depressingly little coverage. Indeed, while “praise of Putin by [Europe’s] far-right leaders” becomes “commonplace,” as Polyakova wrote, so, too, has the pro-Kremlin fealty from far-right leaders in America, almost all of whom uniformly back Trump.

It doesn’t take much work to follow a trendline threading the Kremlin, most especially under Putin’s third term, directly to the leading far-right figures undergirding Trump’s candidacy. Take, for instance, Matthew Heimbach, tabbed by ThinkProgress as the “most important white supremacist of 2016.” The founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party and an unabashed anti-Semite, Heimbach espouses views not even Trump has deigned to offer, including the removal of birthright citizenship and the creation of white ethno-states. (The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Heimbach as “The Little Fuhrer.”) Heimbach has become one of the leading voices behind the expansion of the “alt-right” Clinton detailed. In a recent rundown of the “alt-right’s” main proponents, Yahoo! offered Heimbach top billing.

While Heimbach has offered vocal support for Trump this year — he was cited in a violence-related lawsuit, stemming from his actions at a Trump rally in Kentucky — there’s one leader he appears to admire more than the rest. As Heimbach, who has expressed support for the Kremlin’s “Novorossiya” project in Ukraine, recently told me, “Putin is the leader, really, of the anti-globalist forces around the world,” adding that Putin’s Russia has become “kind of the axis for nationalists.” Citing the creation of a “Traditionalist International,” a far-right counterpart to the Soviet-era “Communist International,” Heimbach also noted that Alexander Dugin, the neo-fascist ideologue behind the Kremlin’s push toward “Eurasianism,” gave a (recorded) speech at the 2015 unveiling of Heimbach’s party. And as Heimbach told Al Jazeera, “Russia’s our most powerful ally.”

Heimbach, who has cultivated links with hard-right nationalists internationally, originally intended on visiting Russia earlier this fall to attend the World National Conservative Movement conference. But that conference, organized by the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), has been postponed until next spring. (One of the far-right groups who will refrain from visiting the conference is the John Birch Society, who told me that the United States “should not be partnering with countries [like Russia] that are enemies to American liberty.”)

However, other leading members of the “alt-right” have already visited Russia, at the behest of organizations linked with the Kremlin. To wit, Jared Taylor, one of the foremost proponents of “race realism” in the United States and someone who has already recorded robocalls on behalf of Trump, arrived at a conference in St. Petersburg in 2015 to rail against American policy. Taylor was joined by Sam Dickson, another prominent face within the American’s white supremacist base, who praised Putin’s geopolitical policies. The conference, like the one recently postponed, was organized by RIM, which itself was an outgrowth of efforts from groups like Rodina, a Russian political party founded by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.

Meanwhile, David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and perhaps America’s most well-known white supremacist, has likewise visited Russia and has not been shy of his praise for Moscow’s policies under Putin. As the Anti-Defamation League found, Duke has noted that he believes that Russia holds “the key to white survival.” Added the ADL: “In Duke’s eyes, Russia presents an unmatched opportunity to help protect the longevity of the white race.” (Like Heimbach, Duke also has noted ties with Dugin.) For good measure, Richard Spencer, one of the foundational actors within the United States’s “alt-right” movement, recently and strangely lauded Russia as the “sole white power in the world.”

But it’s not only the primary proponents of white nationalism, or white supremacy, in the United States who have constructed links with Kremlin-tied groups, or who have heaped praise upon Putin’s Kremlin. Moscow has also continued its financing of movements that would sever American unity. To wit, in September, the Kremlin helped finance the second-annual “Dialog of Nations” conference, in Moscow. Much like 2015’s iteration, this year’s conference hosted a gathering of Western organizations that would secede from their respective countries. And the plurality of these groups came, perhaps unsurprisingly, from the United States. (One prominent secessionist who didn’t attend the conference nonetheless announced he preferred Putin to Clinton.)

The conference was hosted by the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, which names Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “honorable members.” Like last year, the conference hosted a representative from Puerto Rico and a Hawaiian separatist offered his testimonial via video. However, this year saw a further expansion of American representation, including a representative for California secession, about whom Kremlin-backed outlets ran multiple stories, as well as Nate Smith, the executive director of the Texas Nationalist Movement. (For good measure, Pravda followed Smith’s visit with an article claiming Texas was set to begin formulating its own currency.) This was at least Smith’s second trip to Russia in as many years, following a 2015 excursion in which he claimed that every Texan in the U.S. Army supported secession.

But the mutual support between the Kremlin and the American“alt-right,” as well as Moscow’s support for U.S. secessionist movements, present only two areas of linkage. As the Kremlin has spearheaded anti-gay and anti-abortion legislation, and as Putin has made moves to formalize the supremacy of the Russian Orthodox Church within Russia, so, too, have myriad members of far-right social conservative movements in the United States praised Putinist policy. Thankfully, such linkages have seen further coverage than the relations between the “alt-right” and secessionists — see, for instance, research from the University of South Florida’s Christopher Stroop — but it remains worth noting a few highlights of this relationship. For instance, according to Bryan Fischer, one of the most well-known faces of American Christian fundamentalism, Putin is the “lion of Christianity.” Paleoconservative politician Pat Buchanan, meanwhile, has alluded that God may be on Putin’s side. And Franklin Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and perhaps America’s foremost remaining televangelist, recently visited Russia to praise Putin for remaining “steadfastly against the rising homosexual agenda” in Russia.

This tripartite blend, of white nationalists, of secessionists, of social conservatives, have all formed some of the primary bulwarks of the Trump campaign over the past few months, and there is little reason to believe they’ll refrain from supporting Trumpian policies moving forward. Moreover, all three have seen their leading proponents — those within the “alt-right,” most especially — construct rhetorical, organizational, and financial links with the Kremlin and Kremlin-financed groups over the past two years.

More here.

Nothing for money or: Why their souls aren’t for sale
by Tom Sullivan

One of the pleasures of attending Netroots Nation is spending time with several thousand people whose principal motivation in life isn’t making money. (Blasphemy, I know.) A conference for do-gooders is how one regular explains the annual event to friends.

Former Vice President Al Gore just spoke to the closing plenary to promote his new film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. Gore recounted how he watched Congress change in the late 1970s as money took over Washington, D.C. Four to five hours per day politicians spend on the phone soliciting money from donors. Some of those donors today represent fossil-fuel interests, Gore said. They have employed the same advertising agencies tobacco companies paid for decades to question the science that cigarettes were dangerous to people’s health.

They took the money. Today, Gore told the assembly, those same ad agencies promote climate change denial. They’d sold their souls long ago, so what the hell?

While billionaire do-gooder Tom Steyer preceded Gore to the stage, his bankroll is the exception not the rule at the conference.

An attorney who runs a nonprofit explained how she’d entered public service after law school while a close friend joined a private practice. A recent financial disclosure revealed the friend had made $2 million last year. The attorney smiled and said every now and then her husband asks couldn’t she have gone into private practice for a few years before becoming a not-for-profit do-gooder.

Before becoming a public education advocate, another attendee received an offer to write the newsletter for a conservative think tank in Washington. It was a name-your-price offer. He turned it down. His soul was not for sale.

Netroots Nation is part activist fair and part advocacy trade show. Make no mistake, many of the attendees here make their living doing advocacy work. But most could make make a better living if money was their primary motivation.

Mary Cathryn Ricker came as executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers. She is on leave from her job teaching middle school English in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Aftab Pureval is the first Democrat elected Clerk of Court in Hamilton County, Ohio in 100 years. A neat trick for a Nepali-Indian kid from Beavercreek, Ohio. He too couldl. be making better money as an attorney in private practice.

As Gore’s session ended, tired convention-goers took to the streets of Atlanta to protest the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel writes:

At 7 p.m., hundreds of Netroots attendees gathered in a park across from the Hyatt Regency where the conference had been held. They held signs with slogans ranging from the optimistic (“United against hate”) to the profane (“F— white supremacy”) to the ultra-specific (“This Palestinian supports Black Intifada”). After forming into a long, winding line, they marched to the state Capitol, where labor organizer Dolores Huerta led them in prayer.

“Let’s pray for the people who have been killed and injured,” she said. “Let’s pray for the haters, that the hate comes out of their hearts.”

“one of the bloodiest fights to date over the removal of Confederate monuments ”? A) THE bloodiest B) not the point https://t.co/RpoDefbrRC— Dan Froomkin (@froomkin) August 13, 2017

MoveOn, Indivisible, Greenpeace, Our Revolution and other groups represented in Atlanta had already compiled a list of vigils held across the country in solidarity with Charlottesville.

Sweeping the water from his head as he stepped into the elevator afterwards, Democracy for America (DFA) chair Jim Dean looked as if he had just come from a swim. “Been walking,” he said.

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Saturday Night at the Movies




LazyHazyCrazy: Top 10 Summer Idyll Films

By Dennis Hartley

Since we’ve officially hit the “dog days” of Summer, I thought it would be a good excuse to cull a list of my 10 seasonal favorites for your consideration. These would be films that I feel capture the essence of these “lazy, hazy, crazy” days; stories infused with the sights, the sounds, the smells, of Summer. So, here you go…as per usual, in alphabetical order:

Jazz on a Summer’s Day– Bert Stern’s groundbreaking documentary about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival is not so much a “concert film” as it is a time capsule of late 50s American life. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of gorgeously filmed numbers spotlighting the artistry of Thelonius Monk, Anita O’Day, Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, etc., but it’s equally compelling when cameras turn away from the artists and linger on the audience and their environs while the music continues in the background.

The effect is like “being there” in 1958 Newport on a languid summer’s day, because if you’ve ever attended an outdoor music festival, you know half the fun is people-watching. Stern breaks with film making conventions of the era; this is the genesis of the cinema verite music documentary, which wouldn’t fully come to flower until a decade later with films like Don’t Look Back, Monterey Pop, Woodstock and Gimme Shelter.

Last Summer– This underrated 1969 gem is from the husband-and-wife film making team of director Frank Perry and writer Eleanor Perry (who adapted from Evan Hunter’s novel). It’s tough to summarize without possible spoilers. On the surface, it’s a character study about three friends on the cusp of adulthood (Bruce Davison, Barbara Hershey and Richard Thomas) who develop a Jules and Jim-style relationship during an idyllic summer vacation on Fire Island. When a socially awkward stranger (Catherine Burns) innocently bumbles into this simmering cauldron of raging hormones and burgeoning sexuality, it blows the lid off the pressure cooker, leading to unexpected twists. It’s sort of Summer of ’42 meets Lord of the Flies; I’ll leave it there. Beautifully acted and directed.

Mid-August Lunch-This slice-of-life charmer from Italy, set during the mid-August Italian public holiday known as Ferragosto, was written and directed by Gianni Di Gregorio (who also co-scripted the critically-acclaimed 2009 gangster drama Gomorra). Light-ish in plot but rich in observational insight, it proves that sometimes, less is more.

The Robert Mitchum-ish Di Gregorio casts himself as Giovanni, a middle-aged bachelor living in Rome with his elderly mother. He doesn’t work, because as he quips to a friend, taking care of mama is his “job”. Although nothing appears to faze the easy-going Giovanni, his nearly saintly countenance is tested when his landlord, who wants to take a little weekend excursion with his mistress, asks for a “small” favor. In exchange for some forgiveness on back rent, he requests that Giovanni take on a house guest for the weekend-his elderly mother. Giovanni agrees, but is chagrined when the landlord turns up with two little old ladies (he hadn’t mentioned his aunt). Things get more complicated when Giovanni’s doctor makes a house call, then in lieu of a bill asks if he doesn’t mind taking on his dear old mama as well (Ferragosto is a popular “getaway” holiday in Italy).

It’s the small moments that make this film such a delight. Giovanni reading Dumas aloud to his mother, until she quietly nods off in her chair. Two friends, sitting in the midday sun, enjoying white wine and watching the world go by. And in a scene that reminded me of a classic POV sequence in Fellini’s Roma, Giovanni and his pal glide us through the streets of Rome on a sunny motorcycle ride. This mid-August lunch might offer you a somewhat limited menu, but you’ll find that every morsel on it is well worth savoring.

Mommy is at the Hairdresser’s– Set at the beginning of an idyllic Quebec summer, circa 1966, Lea Pool’s beautifully photographed drama centers around the suburban Gauvin family. A teenager (Marianne Fortier) and her little brothers are thrilled that school’s out for summer. Their loving parents appear to be the ideal couple; Mom (Celine Bonnier) is a TV journalist and Dad (Laurent Lucas) is a medical microbiologist. A marital infidelity precipitates a separation, leaving the kids in the care of their well-meaning but now titular father, and young Elise finds herself the de facto head of the family. This is a perfect film about an imperfect family; a bittersweet paean to the endless summers of childhood lost.

Smiles of a Summer Night– “Lighthearted romp” and “Ingmar Bergman” are not usually mentioned in the same breath, but it applies to this wise, drolly amusing morality tale from the director whose name is synonymous with somber dramas. Bergman regular Gunnar Bjornstrand heads a fine ensemble, as an amorous middle-aged attorney with a young wife (whose “virtue” remains intact) and a free-spirited mistress, who juggles a number of lovers herself. As you may guess, this all leads to amusing complications.

Love in all of its guises is represented by a bevy of richly-drawn characters, who converge in a third act set on a sultry summer’s eve at a country estate (which provided inspiration for Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy). Fast-paced, literate, and sexy, it has a muted cry here and a whisper there of that patented Bergman “darkness”, but compared to most of his oeuvre, this one is a veritable screwball comedy.

Stand By Me– Director Rob Reiner was on a roll in the mid-to late 80s, delivering five exceptional films, book-ended by This is Spinal Tap in 1984 and When Harry Met Sally in 1989. This 1986 dramedy was in the middle of the cycle. Based on a Stephen King novella (adapted by Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans) it’s a bittersweet “end of summer” tale about four pals (Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell) who embark on a search for the body of a missing teenager, during the course of which they learn hard life lessons. Reiner coaxes extraordinary performances from the young leads, who navigate a roller coaster of emotions with an aplomb that belies their age and experience at that stage of their careers. Richard Dreyfus provides the narration.


Summer Wars– Don’t be misled by the cartoonish title of Mamoru Hosoda’s eye-popping movie-this could be the Gone with the Wind of Japanese anime. OK…that’s a tad hyperbolic. But it does have drama, romance, comedy, and war-centering around a summer gathering at a bucolic family estate. Tokyo Story meets War Games? At any rate, it’s one of the finer animes of recent years. While some narrative devices in Satoko Ohuder’s screenplay will feel familiar to anime fans (particularly the “cyber-punk” elements), it’s the humanist touches and subtle social observations (reminiscent of the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu) that makes it a unique and worthwhile genre entry.

A Summer’s Tale– It’s nearly 8 minutes into Eric Rohmer’s romantic comedy before anyone utters a word; and it’s a man calling a waitress over to order a chocolate crepe. But not to worry, because things are about to get much more interesting. In fact, our young man, an introverted maths grad named Gaspar (Melvil Poupaud), who is killing time in sunny Dinard until his “sort of” girlfriend arrives to join him on summer holiday, will soon find himself in a dizzying girl whirl. It begins when he meets bubbly and outgoing Margo (Amanda Langlet) an ethnologist major who is spending her summer break waitressing at her aunt’s seaside crepery. Margo is also (sort of) spoken for, with a boyfriend (currently overseas). So a friendship blooms. But will they stay “just friends”?

Originally released in France in 1996, this film (which didn’t make its official U.S. debut until 2014) rates amongst the late director’s best work (strongly recalling Pauline at the Beach, which starred a then teenage Langlet, who is wonderful here as the charming Margo). If you’re unfamiliar with Rohmer, this is as good a place as any to start. In a way, this is a textbook “Rohmer film”, which I define as “a movie where the characters spend more screen time dissecting the complexities of male-female relationships than actually experiencing them”. But don’t despair; it won’t be like watching paint dry. In fact, even a neophyte should glean Rohmer’s ongoing influence (particularly if you’ve seen Once, When Harry Met Sally, or Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy). One gentle caveat: any viewer of A Summer’s Tale (or any Rohmer film) will sheepishly recognize his or herself at some juncture, yet at once feel absolved for being, after all, only human.

Tempest– “Show me the magic.” Nothing says “idyllic” like a Mediterranean getaway, which provides the backdrop for Paul Mazursky’s seriocomic 1982 update of Shakespeare’s classic play. His Prospero is a harried Manhattan architect (John Cassavetes) who spontaneously quits his firm, abandons his wife (Gena Rowlands), packs up his teen daughter (Molly Ringwald) and retreats to a Greek island for an open-ended sabbatical. He soon adds a young lover (Susan Sarandon) and a Man Friday (Raul Julia) to his entourage. But will this idyll inevitably be steamrolled by the adage: “Wherever you go…there you are”? The pacing lags a little bit on occasion, but superb performances, gorgeous scenery and bits of inspired lunacy (like a choreographed number featuring Julia and his sheep dancing to “New York, New York”) make up for it.

3 Women– If Robert Altman’s haunting 1977 character study plays like a languid, sun-baked California fever dream…it’s because it was (the late director claimed that the story came to him in his sleep). What ended up on the screen not only represents Altman’s best, but one of the best American art films of the 1970s. The women are Millie (Shelly Duvall), a chatty physical therapist, considered a needy bore by everyone except her childlike roommate/co-worker Pinky (Sissy Spacek), who worships the ground she walks on, and enigmatic Willie (Janice Rule), a pregnant artist who only paints anthropomorphic lizard figures (empty swimming pools as her canvas). As the three personas slowly merge (bolstered by fearless performances from the three leads), there’s little doubt that Millie, Pinky and Willie hail from the land of Wynken, Blynken and Nod.

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–Dennis Hartley

Planning for the blame game

by digby

Trump’s Art of the Deal is actually very simple: take credit for others’ success and cast blame for your screw ups on other people.

The latest iteration of this:

The rupture between President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell originated where so many of the president’s dramas do: with something he saw on TV.

Trump watched clips of McConnell criticizing him on the news and wasn’t happy. In a terse but loud conversation Wednesday, the president made clear he wasn’t to blame for the Obamacare failure and was displeased with the criticism he’s gotten for it. McConnell didn’t give any ground, said people briefed on the phone call, and there are no immediate plans to speak again.

By Thursday afternoon, after several angry tweets, Trump left open the possibility of asking McConnell to resign, saying his opinion would hinge on the majority leader’s ability to get a laundry list of things done — Obamacare repeal, tax cuts, infrastructure. “I’m very disappointed in Mitch,” Trump told reporters. “If he gets these bills passed, I’ll be very happy with him and I’ll be the first to admit it.”

The phone call, first reported by The New York Times, and comments at Bedminster mirror what Trump has said in private, according to four White House officials and Trump friends: that he is preparing to distance himself from Republicans in Congress if they aren’t successful in passing legislation and that he will not take the blame for them if they can’t.

Increasingly, these people say, the president is prepared to cast himself as an outsider — and Congress as an “insider” Washington institution. He has reminded advisers his poll numbers are higher than Congress’ and that he ran against Washington — and wants bills to sign — and will blast his own party if he doesn’t get them. 

Trump believes that his supporters will largely blame Congress instead of him, two people who have spoken to him said.

That’s all he cares about. But it’s worked out for him so far hasn’t it?

Read the rest of the article if you have time. Trump’s relationship with congress is becoming openly dictatorial. If he manages to provoke a war …. well.

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The cost of frenetic public chatter

by digby

CNN’s National Security Analyst John Kirby makes a good point:

It is worth considering the degree to which public discourse — and President Trump’s contribution to it — have driven us to a potentially dangerous level of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Remember how this all started: with a Washington Post story on Tuesday morning that cited unnamed intelligence sources who divulged a classified assessment that Pyongyang had reached the ability to miniaturize a nuclear warhead.

Mr. Trump was asked later that day for his take on the article. That’s when we got “fire and fury” and the nasty little exchange of threats and challenges between Bedminster, New Jersey, where Trump is taking his vacation, and Pyongyang, all of which culminated in this tweet Friday by the commander in chief: 

“Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!”

Social and conventional media coverage of the tit-for-tat has fueled speculation, engendered discussion about worst-case scenarios, and at intervals prompted, if not provoked, President Trump to keep upping the ante.

Here’s part of the exchange he had yesterday with a reporter outside his clubhouse:

TRUMP: Let’s see what he does with Guam. If he does something in Guam, it will be an event the likes of which nobody’s seen before, what will happen in North Korea.

REPORTER: And when you say that, what do you mean?

TRUMP: You’ll see. You’ll see. And he’ll see. He will see.

REPORTER: Is that a dare?

TRUMP: It’s not a dare. It’s a statement. He’s not going to go around threatening Guam. And he’s not going to threaten the United States. And he’s not going to threaten Japan. And he’s not going to threaten South Korea. No, that’s not a dare, as you say. That is a statement of fact.

You can see and feel in just this little give-and-take the frantic, tightening spiral toward yet another threat.

Don’t get me wrong. This is newsworthy stuff. These are fair questions to ask the leader of the free world. And Trump should be made to comment and clarify his position. I do not fault reporters for doing their work, or commentators for providing their views. Nor do I question the Washington Post for publishing the original story (though I have grave concerns over the logic behind the leak itself. It wasn’t only criminal; it was reckless).

As an on-air analyst, I have been party to the discussion. But I believe all of us — in and out of government — should be mindful that, as we talk about current events, the way we talk about them can and often does affect them. Words and tone matter and can drive more than just the story. They can drive actual events. 

Now, near as we can tell, no one’s finger is poised over any little red buttons. No US or coalition forces have been moved. No civilians have been evacuated. Aside from whatever preparations North Korea is making (or is not) to carry out its threat against Guam by mid-month, no other DPRK military action has been reported.

I’m going to choose to believe Mr. Trump is playing a game of chicken here, that he is trying to turn up the heat to a degree that even Kim Jong Un can’t stand, and that Washington is trying to force some sort of negotiated outcome. I hope it works.

But it’s a mistake to think his hyperbole and the frenetic public chatter don’t have deleterious effects. The war of words has already caused a dip in the stock market. It has certainly affected the public mood in Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, and Guam — where residents are now reading leaflets that tell them, for example, not to look at the airburst of incoming bombs. And it has prompted world leaders from Germany, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia, just to name a few, to publicly call for calm and dialogue.

Indeed, just this morning Russia and China floated again the idea of trying to broker some sort of dialogue between the US and North Korea. Think about that for a moment: Russia and China playing the big boys to keep us little scrappers in line.

And think about this: what was different between the time we went to bed Sunday night and woke up Monday morning? Nothing, really, except the public exposure of something most experts — and our President — already knew: that Pyongyang was racing ahead to build a nuclear-armed ICBM.

There should be a peaceful resolution to all this. If it must come by way of Chinese and Russian intervention, so be it. But if that happens, we cannot grouse anymore about diminishing US leadership. We will have had a hand in it.

Actually, US leadership was irretrievably diminished on November 8th, 2016. He’s just fulfilling his promises.

But yeah — we’re now officially a rogue nation not to be trusted. If we live through this one, the ramifications of Trump’s bellicose bullshit of the last few days haven’t begun to be felt.

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Trump’s most loyal followers


by digby

Those are shots of the white supremacist torch parade in Charlottesville last night. They surrounded a small group of counter protesters and maced them and hit them with their torches.

Soon, scuffles broke out inside the circle of torches, between the rotunda and the statue. One of the white nationalist protesters threw a torch into the circle, and another apparently sprayed the student counter-protesters with mace.

Ali, a counter-protester who asked that ThinkProgress not identify him further out of fear of retaliation, said he saw pushing and then saw a tiki torch thrown.

“At that point, I felt mace in my eyes and knew that I had to break the line,” he said in an interview. “So I ran.”

There was no visible police presence with the hundreds-strong white nationalist march, and the scene was extremely tense. A ThinkProgress reporter exited through the circle of white nationalists when the fighting broke out. Several, one wearing a sidearm, followed after him demanding to know his identity. They relented when he showed them his press credentials.

“In seemed like it was about to happen,” Ali said of the tense scene before scuffles broke out. “They were hinting violence.”

Shortly after the fighting broke out, organizers of the march demanded that their fellow protesters put out their torches. Protesters then surrounded the Jefferson statue as they forced the student counter-protesters away and off to one side. Not long after, a handful of police officers came on the scene and ordered the crowd to disperse. “This is over,” an officer told the protesters.

There was a lull as the white nationalist protesters disbanded and the student counter-protesters tended to members who’d been sprayed with mace. At one point, officers consulted with street medics caring for the injured counter-protesters and told them EMTs were on the way, while a small group stood to one side holding their banner and chanting “black lives matter.”

Soon, however, a line of Charlottesville police officers, aided by a handful of Virginia State Police officers, swept through the area with their batons in hand to clear out the lingering counter-protesters, street medics, legal observers, and media.

“If you stay, you’ll be arrested,” one officer said as the line prepared to make its sweep. “Press too.”

The full neo-fascist, white nationalist alt-right contingent is in Charlottesville today. Lovely people, all of them.

What with a lunatic in the White House and white supremacists marching in the streets it makes you very proud to be an American right now.

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A little nuclear tourism

by digby

Governor Eddie Baza Calvo shared a video of his call with President Trump on Facebook, in which the President assured Mr Calvo the US was behind the remote Pacific island “1000 per cent”.

Pyongyang said this week it is planning to launch four missiles into waters near the coast of Guam, which is a major US military hub with a population of 163,000 – all of whom are technically US citizens.

“I just wanted to pay my respects [and say] you are safe,” Mr Trump began the call.

“You’ve become extremely famous,” he told Mr Calvo of the global news coverage following North Korea’s threat. “All over the world they are talking about Guam, and they are talking about you.”

“I can tell you this — tourism, you’re going to go up like 10-fold with the expenditure of no money so I congratulate you,” he added.

Mr Trump praised the scenic beauty of the island, which is roughly 3379 kilometres southeast of Pyongyang.

“It just looks like a beautiful place,” Mr Trump said.

Mr Calvo responded by agreeing his home was “paradise” and had “99 per cent occupancy”.

“You just went to 110 I think,” Mr Trump joked.

The Guam leader thanked Mr Trump for his efforts and said he had “never felt more safe”.

“As an American citizen I have never felt more safe or so confident with you at the helm,” Mr Calvo said.

“With all the criticism that’s going on over there, from a guy that’s being targeted, we need a president like you.”

Mr Trump agreed that, “They should have had me in years ago … frankly you could have said that for the last three presidents.”

He then reassured Mr Calvo, who he describes as a “hell of a guy”, telling him the US military is “rock solid”.

“We are the best in the world by a factor of five,” he said.

I’ll just leave that there…

True-The-Vote unapproved
by Tom Sullivan

Dawn over downtown Denver and the Front Range to the south. Photo by Robert Cash via Creative Commons.

Amber McReynolds, director of the Denver Elections Division, has a process for cleaning up the city’s voter rolls without de-registering voters willy-nilly. It makes ballots easier to count and the voter rolls easier to administer:

In the 2016 general election, turnout was at 72 percent — up six points from the city’s 2008’s turnout, and ten points higher than the national average in 2016, according to the city’s data. The effort has driven election costs down, from $6.51 per voter to $4.15 per voter.

[…]

Some voters are so impressed with the changes — and later how she handled the president’s voter integrity commission’s request for voter data — they’ve mailed in thank you notes, McReynolds said. She keeps one on her desk: a homemade secrecy sleeve for a ballot a voter cast in honor of her mother, born 18 years before suffrage, and three aunts.

Denver also uses technology to keep voters in the loop. You can text questions to an automated help system (15,396 queries were answered this way in 2016), and watch ballots being counted and verified by signature on a Periscope live feed. Ballots are mailed to voters, and returned by mail or at designated drop-off locations, where bar codes are scanned to prevent duplicates. This has improved accuracy and efficiency: In 2016, there were just 340 provisional ballots cast by voters whose eligibility or registration was questioned, down dramatically from 10,721 in 2012.

It sounds like a model Kris Kobach won’t want to replicate.

Now that ain’t purgin’ that’s the way you do it

But that’s not how they do it in Ohio. On Monday, the Trump administration threw itself behind Ohio’s Supreme Court appeal of its voter purge:

Ohio has purged more voters from its rolls than any other state — 2 million voters from 2011 to 2016, including 1.2 million for infrequent voting. An analysis from Reuters found that voters in Democratic-leaning areas were nearly twice as likely to be removed as those in Republican-leaning ones. The filing of the amicus brief is a direct reversal of the Obama administration’s position on the case.

If Ohio and Jeff Sessions lose in the Supreme Court, as North Carolina Republicans did in May, they could always try Amber McReynolds’ approach to cleaning up voter rolls. But then they would have to find reasons besides messy voter rolls for erecting new barriers to the wrong kinds of people voting. They would. They’re very clever that way.

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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.