Month: November 2017

Kudos. We like winning.
by Tom Sullivan

Women’s March 2017 by Mobilus In Mobili via Creative Commons.

The millions of women who took to the streets in January haven’t gone home just to knit more pink hats. They are running for office. And winning. We knew women won big in Virginia three weeks ago, but I didn’t know this:

For the first time since 1961, Chesterfield County backed a Democrat for governor — and the driving forces in this Richmond suburb included women who defiantly trumpeted a political label their party has ducked for decades.

“Are we done?” Kim Drew Wright asked members of the organization that she and her allies christened the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County after President Trump’s election last year.

“Noooooo!” the women shouted back.

As bad as things have seemed since last November, as disappointed as many are in the performance of the organs of the national Democratic Party (guilty pleasure writing that), these women kicked ass at the local level. That’s where Trumpism will be defeated.

Digby presented this story last night, but this passage in particular caught my attention:

The Liberal Women of Chesterfield County is an example of a new breed of Democratic activism in the Richmond suburbs. The group, which says it has admitted nearly 3,000 followers to its private Facebook page, has established 13 neighborhood chapters and canvassed more than 50,000 homes in a get-out-the-vote effort. On Election Day, the group worked with the local Democratic committee to staff all 75 of the county’s polling places, something that the local party on its own had previously been unable to accomplish.

Kudos to Liberal Women of Chesterfield County and the Chesterfield County Democratic Committee. Mobilized women are a force to reckon with.

We have 80 precincts in the Cesspool of Sin, and it is a chore, but our Democratic committee staffs them. Plus 20 or so Early Voting sites for 10 days before Election Day. Many more rural counties do not or cannot, in part, because they have never been taught how.

If you work with your county committee, follow the link below to find out more. We win local races in this purple state when others are losing. There’s a reason for that.

* * * * * * * *

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

Oh look. Women are pissed and they are organizing. Imagine that.by digby

The Republicans are worried about liberal women:

In this bastion of Virginia-brand conservatism, dozens of Democratic women roared on a recent night as their organization’s leader crowed over their party’s historic electoral triumph.

For the first time since 1961, Chesterfield County backed a Democrat for governor — and the driving forces in this Richmond suburb included women who defiantly trumpeted a political label their party has ducked for decades.

“Are we done?” Kim Drew Wright asked members of the organization that she and her allies christened the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County after President Trump’s election last year.

“Noooooo!” the women shouted back.

Until Gov.-elect Ralph Northam (D) won Chesterfield County three weeks ago, the stretch of suburban and rural communities southwest of Richmond had been considered reliably Republican.

Yet voters infuriated by Trump, many of them women and Hispanics who have migrated to the county in recent years, are redefining Chesterfield and alarming Virginia Republicans who have depended on the area to make up for the support the party lacks in urban areas.

[…]

The Liberal Women of Chesterfield County is an example of a new breed of Democratic activism in the Richmond suburbs. The group, which says it has admitted nearly 3,000 followers to its private Facebook page, has established 13 neighborhood chapters and canvassed more than 50,000 homes in a get-out-the-vote effort. On Election Day, the group worked with the local Democratic committee to staff all 75 of the county’s polling places, something that the local party on its own had previously been unable to accomplish.

Besides championing Northam and the statewide ticket, they pushed local residents running for the first time, including the first openly gay woman elected to the House of Delegates ; a mental health administrator who came within 128 votes of defeating a Republican House of Delegates incumbent; and a British-born accountant who ran her first race and is Chesterfield’s newly elected commissioner of revenue.

“I wouldn’t have done this every day for the past year if I hadn’t gotten so angry about Trump,” said Wright, 46, a mother of three who observed politics from the sidelines before last year’s presidential election. “Once you wake up and see how important local elections are, it’s hard to go back to the shadows and stick your head in the sand. Now we have our eye on everybody, from dogcatcher on up.”

Wright and her allies insisted on including “liberal” in the group’s name, reviving a political brand that Republicans and even some Democrats have lampooned or avoided. “It was defiance,” she said. “My mission is to change that connotation of ‘liberal.’ ”

The group’s next target is Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), whose district includes Chesterfield and who earlier this year complained that “the women are in my grill no matter where I go” — a reference to the activists who protested against efforts by Brat and other House Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Three women and a man who are LWCC members are among the six candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Brat in 2018, a group that includes a former CIA operative, an Army veteran, and a former Marine. “Everybody loves to hate Brat,” Wright said. “There’s something about his smug little face.”

He says they’ll all come home when the Republicans nationalize the race around tax cuts. or something.

I would love to see them defeat Brat and his smug little face. He’s insufferable.

.

Conspiracy Theorists R Usby digby

People think this is benign but it isn’t. He has 40 million followers and people all over the world read every word he tweets and follow every link. He is the fucking president of the United States and this is his chosen method of communicating to the world:

In a Saturday night tweet, Trump attacked CNN, saying the network’s international division “represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly.” A few minutes later, Trump tweeted an alternative: MagaPill.com.

The name MagaPill is a riff on “red pill,” a term popular with white nationalists and others on the far right. A metaphor based on a plot line from The Matrix, it refers to the process of normalizing extreme views. MagaPill is also active on Gab, a social network favored by white nationalist and banned from the Google app store violating its hate speech policy.

But while Trump presents MagaPill as the antidote to “fake news,” the site regularly traffics in unhinged conspiracy theories. Just a few hours before being endorsed by Trump, MagaPill posted a video from Liz Crokin, a fringe figure best known for pushing the Pizzagate conspiracy. In the video, Crokin claims there is a sex tape of Hillary Clinton with an underage girl on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

.@LizCrokin is #WOKEAF
Hidden Files on Anthony Wiener's laptop to bring down the Cabal.

Watch Full Vid: https://t.co/Aw4AKPgxRM pic.twitter.com/QHk66zYoOf— MAGA PILL 🏵️ (@MAGAPILL) November 25, 2017

[…]
Another recent MagaPill post features an “interesting flow chart” which combines nearly every conspiracy theory imaginable: “false flag terrorism,” “organ harvesting,” “child/human sacrifice,” “weaponize forced vaccination,” “earthquake machines.” [That’s the image up top — ed]

Shortly after Trump tweeted a link to the MagaPill website, it went offline. On Twitter, the MagaPill site immediately alleged there was a conspiracy to suppress information about Trump’s accomplishments.

During the presidential campaign and as president, Trump has repeatedly retweeted accounts linked to white nationalism and conspiracy theories.

This isn’t fine. It’s not normal. And it shouldn’t be dismissed as harmless fun. This right wing lunacy is being mainstreamed faster than ever before largely because the most powerful man in the world is propagating it. Why do we shrug it off like it’s nothing?

.

He’s quite the salesman for US products isn’t he?by digby

Here’s Trump talking to troops on Thanksgiving:

But, I mean, we have equipment that — nobody has the equipment that we have. And it’s sad when we’re selling our equipment to other countries but we’re not buying it ourselves ok?

But now that’s all changed. And the stuff I said — the stuff that we have is always a little bit better too. You know, when we sell to other countries, even if they’re allies — you never know about an ally. An ally can turn. You understand. You’re going to find that out.

But I always say, make ours a little bit better, You know, give it that extra speed. A little bit — keep a little bit — keep about 10 percent in the bag because what we have — nobody has like what we have, and that’s what we’re doing.

So let’s parse this a bit shall we?

First, he says the US is selling military equipment to other countries but not to the US. That’s ridiculous.

Second, he says that he’s instructed the military contractors that they must make the weapons and other equipment sold to America “a little better” than the equipment they send to other countries because you can’t depend on your allies not to turn on you.

What an excellent thing for a US president to say.

And what did he mean with the ominous comment “you’re going to find out..?”

I realize that this is mostly just word salad because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But his words are always a window into his twisted mind. In this case we know that he doesn’t realize he’s saying that American military contractors are selling defective equipmen tto our allies which I’m fairly sure they won’t be happy to have to account for, even if it isn’t true which it isn’t, of course. The president can’t order such a thing. It’s yet another example of his vainglorious vanity.

And he obviously thinks some ally is going to “betray” him. Your guess is as good as mine as to who that might be.

Jesus.

.

.

QOTD: somebody who knows about Nazisby digby

That picture is from a 2015 PBS profile of Trump volunteers in which the reporters failed to notice they were white supremacists. The following is in reference to the controversial profile of the nice Nazi next door in yesterday’s NY Times:

The NYT Nazi fluff text is only further proof that, at a fundamental level, large segments of the US intelligentsia do not appreciate the existential crisis now facing their republic. In short, they’re not actually concerned — and they really should be.

— Jasmin Mujanović (@JasminMuj) November 26, 2017

Winners and losersby digby

Here are some Trump voters who didn’t seem to know what they were voting for. I hope it works out for them:

In many ways, St Joseph, Mo., is Trump country.

Located about 55 miles north of Kansas City, the town of about 76,000 is almost 90% white. At about the same time the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect in 1994, drawing major employer Lee Jeans to outsource its operations to Mexico, floodwaters ravaged the city and partially destroyed its airport. A little over a decade later, it was badly hit by the Great Recession: unemployment peaked at 9.9% in January 2010, above the then-national level of 9.7%.

Home to many of the “forgotten” Midwesterners attracted to Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration and trade, it duly rewarded the Republican insurgent. Trump won nearly 60% of the vote there in last year’s presidential election, increasing the margin of Mitt Romney’s narrow victory over Barack Obama in 2012.

Look closer however, and the appeal of “America First” walled off from the world becomes less clear. The unemployment rate in St. Joseph currently stands at 3.1%, below the national average of 4.1%. Astonishingly, more locals were engaged in the manufacturing trade in 2015 than 2000, census data show. The town’s Chamber of Commerce head, a former Texas émigré who’s hardly a egghead globalist, frets that the Trump White House will pull America out of NAFTA. “It would be devastating to the economy in the Midwest,” R. Patt Lilly tells Moneyish.

The success of St. Joseph, long in the shadow of its much larger neighbor about a 45-minute drive away, offers lessons to geographical neighbors with decimated industrial bases. Trump’s success in capturing Midwestern states like Michigan and Ohio, which in recent years have trended Democratic during presidential contests, was key to his victory last year. It’s also a riposte to critics of free trade and globalization.

How did St. Joseph’s get here? For one, it benefited from its proximity to centers of education, which serve as incubators of talent while fostering the sort of cultural vibrancy that attracts businesses. Right in town is Missouri Western State University, which enrolled a record 5,388 students this academic year. The Kansas City campus of the University of Missouri is nearby, while Kansas State University is about 70 miles away. Complementing them is the Kauffman Foundation, a non-profit endowed by a late pharmaceutical philanthropist to create education and entrepreneurial activities.

“There are great schools and opportunities nearby with a lot of cultural activities,” says Jeffrey Hornsby, a management professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City, who works with local startups, many supported by the Kauffmann Foundation. “While still not enough is done to supply need in the STEM education area, there are a lot of strong engineering schools. That brings energy.”

In turn, St. Joseph’s hasn’t been afflicted with the same wave of young people departing for better prospects that have bedeviled similarly sized towns across the Rustbelt. “The brain drain was there 10 or 20 years ago, it’s not that pronounced anymore,” says Lilly. In 2010, 21.2% of Buchanan County’s population was between the ages of 20 and 34, a slight increase from 20.8% ten years before.

That’s partly because St. Joseph’s serves as a low-cost satellite to Kansas City, but also due to investments made by local businesses like food ingredients producer Lifeline, which recently spent $1.8 million installing a new packaging line. Altec, an international construction equipment maker that employs around 900 employees locally, last year announced it had budgeted $1.9 million on office expansion.

These businesses survived, indeed thrived, thanks to globalization. St. Joseph recorded $1.02 billion in exports in 2015, an increase of over 70% from $285 million a decade ago, according to the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center. About 17.6% of its exports went to Mexico or Canada. Nearly half of that—$531.45 million—was sent to countries that had enrolled in the Trans Pacific Partnership, an Obama Administration-supported free trade pact that Trump pulled the U.S. out of.

“We ship from the East Coast to the West Coast, down to Mexico and export too,” says Kelly, Lifeline’s chief executive, adding that the firm capitalizes on being in the center of the country and close to quality road and rail links. “That’s why I’m very concerned about the future of NAFTA and what D.C. is going to do.”

I think the writer of this article may have made a wrong assumption. It’s likely that many of the Trump voters didn’t vote for him because of the issues of “immigration and trade” but rather his derisive attitudes toward immigrants and foreigners. That’s not the same thing.

I hope it all works out for them and the millions of others who voted for the know-nothing “blue collar billionaire” because he hates all the right people. They may have even thought that translated into their own economic self-interest believing as they do that all their troubles stem from the blacks, browns, foreigners and liberal elites and because all those people were apoplectic about Trump that must make him ok. But they were wrong.

.

.

The dumb oneby digby

It’s not Eric:

Donald Trump Jr. had just posted a batch of private mes­sages he exchanged with Wiki­Leaks during last year’s campaign, confirming reports that he communicated with the website that published stolen Democratic emails obtained by Russian military intelligence.

“More nothing burgers from the media and others desperately trying to create a false narrative,” the president’s oldest son wrote on Instagram. “Keep coming at me guys!!!”

Over the course of the week, Trump Jr. went on to tweet or retweet criticism of his father’s 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton; actor George Takei; Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.); and former vice president Joe Biden, sharing unsubstantiated claims about him from an anonymously sourced blog post.

Faced with deepening scrutiny of contacts he had in 2016 with people tied to Russia, the 39-year-old has adopted a provocative response: defiance.

In public appearances and on Twitter, Trump Jr. has taken an increasingly caustic tone, mocking critics and shoving himself into the scrum of the country’s most polarizing debates.

It’s an unorthodox legal strategy for someone under scrutiny by congressional investigators, whose every word could be used against him. But the approach fits with the real estate executive’s growing public persona as a right-wing provocateur and ardent defender of Trumpism.

“He’s very smart to be in the spotlight,” said Charlie Kirk, a friend and the founder of the conservative college and high school group Turning Point USA. “Would they stop the investigation if he stopped tweeting? He’s in a situation where either you defend yourself, reassure the base, reassure the supporters, or stay silent. And if you’re totally silent, it only increases suspicion.”

The Trump base is with him, Kirk added: “Most people can’t even keep up with this stuff, anyway.”

Read on about his $100,000 speeches to GOP donors about liberal fascism and vitriol. He’s a real sweetheart just as recklessly loudmouthed as his father and just as dumb. He’s certainly got some fascist tendencies of his own. It remains to be seen if he’s as lucky.

Stuffing the courts for Thanksgiving
by Tom Sullivan

The proposal by the Federalist Society to remake the U.S. court system seems a more real threat here because North Carolina Republicans are already trying it. Democrats and community and voting rights groups have challenged law after Republican-crafted law in court since the GOP took control of the legislature in 2010. And Republicans keep losing.

“Instead of changing the way they write their laws, they want to change the judges,” Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, told the New York Times. Their remedy is to make judicial elections partisan, redraw judicial districts more favorable to Republicans, and shorten four-year terms to two, binding judges into a permanent reelection campaign like ordinary representatives.

So when Federalist Society co-founder professor Steven Calabresi unveiled a proposal to lard the court system with Trump judges ahead of the 2018 elections, people might want to take it seriously.

Ian Milhiser writes at Think Progress:

The memo, co-authored by law professor and Federalist Society founder Steven G. Calabresi, proposes a monumental expansion of the federal judiciary. It also is not subtle about its motivations. As the memo states in its introduction, a major purpose of this court-packing scheme is “undoing the judicial legacy of President Barack Obama.”

“There is something bracing about the naked activism of a leader of a movement that has spent the past generation railing against judicial activism,” Linda Greenhouse wrote in the New York Times, adding, “There has never been anything like the weaponizing of the federal judiciary that is currently taking place.”

Richard Primus writes at the Harvard Law Review blog:

If Congress were to enact the Calabresi-Hirji proposal, it would be hard to articulate a rationale on which the courts could strike the resulting law down as unconstitutional. But it is also clear that the proposal threatens the permanent unraveling of a settlement that has made legitimate judicial review possible for a century and a half. Second, the document depicts a judiciary that is populated, not by honorable judges who are appointed by Presidents of both parties and who often have good-faith disagreements, but by conservative judges on one hand and, on the other, Democratic-appointed judges who subvert the rule of law. In the paper’s view, the rule of law itself demands that Democratic appointees not be permitted to exercise judicial power.

In both respects, the proposal suggests a kind of constitutional Armageddon.

The Calabresi-Hirji proposal does not suggest changing the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Having effectively voided President Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to the court, they don’t have to attempt that “heavier lift,” observes Primus.

Scruples being out of season since long before the sitting president occupied the Oval Office, Senate Republicans will seat unqualified candidates and burn the Senate’s blue-slip tradition for blocking nominees to put a thumb on the scales. Their only sacrosanct rule is one that delivers the preferred outcome. It doesn’t? Re-write it.

Dahlia Lithwick writes:

This is the one issue on which the Jeff Flakes and John McCains and the other Republicans who purport to be principled about Trump’s failings will never defect: They will seat the judges, experience or temperament be damned, who will ensure that long after the constitutional conflagration that is Donald Trump has passed, the bench will belong to the GOP. The “Democrats started it” nonsense about Chuck Schumer and Robert Bork will substitute for calls for consistency or accountability or the need to reconcile last year’s positions with this year’s. Democrats are frequently faulted for refusing to play the long game when it comes to stacking the federal courts. The never-Trumpers who’ve now decided they love Trump are playing that game and winning it. They may destroy the legitimacy of the judicial branch in the process.

Ronald Klain describes the proposal in the Washington Post as a “court-packing turducken.” As did Milhiser, Lithwick, and Klain, Greenhouse calls it plainly a court-packing plan.

Calabresi shot back at the National Review on Friday: “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

I came that close to doing a spit-take onto my keyboard.

They only care about our laws and customs when they help them. They do not believe in the Constitution or any founding principles unless they're advantageous. 7/— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) November 25, 2017

Read the entire thread. Then don’t get angry. Get active. Don’t assume the Senate parliamentarian will stop this atrocity or that the courts will still be there to stop the next round of constitution-eroding legislation from Congress or your state legislature. Everything Americans who have principles value is on the line.

Update: Corrected (bold) to clarify proposal does not ask to change number of SCOTUS judges.

* * * * * * * *

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

Saturday Night at The Movies

Kleptocracy Now: A Top 10 list

By Dennis Hartley

This is a reprise of a post from last January. It’s only gotten worse since then …

“To assess the ‘personality’ of the corporate ‘person’ a checklist is employed, using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social ‘personality’: it is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.” – from the official website for the film, The Corporation

I don’t know about you, but my jaw is getting pretty sore from repeatedly dropping to the floor with each successive cabinet nomination by our incoming CEO-in-chief of the United States of Blind Trust. It seems that candidate Trump, who ran on an oft-bleated promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington D.C. bears little resemblance to President-elect Trump, who is currently hell-bent on loading the place up with even more alligators.

When I heard the name “Rex Tillerson” bandied about as Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, it rang a bell. I knew he was the former head of Exxon, so it wasn’t that. Then I remembered. Mr. Tillerson was one of the “stars” of a documentary I reviewed several years back, called Greedy Lying Bastards (conversely, if I hear the words “greedy lying bastards,” bandied about, “Trump’s cabinet picks” is the first phrase that comes to mind).

So with that in mind, and in keeping with my occasional unifying theme, “Hollywood saw this coming”, I was inspired to comb my review archives of the last 10 years to see if any bellwethers were emerging that may have been dropping hints that the planets were aligning in such a manner as to set up a path to the White House for an orange TV clown (the “self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful” kind of orange TV clown).

All 10 of these films were released within the last 10 years. I’ll let you be the judge:

The Big Short – Want the good news first? Writer-director Adam McKay and co-scripter Charles Randolph’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’ eponymous 2010 non-fiction book is an outstanding comedy-drama; an incisive parsing of what led to the crash of the global financial system in 2008. The bad news is…it made me pissed off about it all over again.

Yes, it’s a bitter pill to swallow, this ever-maddening tale of how we stood by, blissfully unaware, as unchecked colonies of greedy, lying Wall Street investment bankers were eventually able to morph into the parasitic gestalt monster journalist Matt Taibbi famously compared to a “…great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Good times!

Capitalism: A Love Story – Back in 2009, Digby and I did a double post on this film, which was Michael Moore’s reaction to the 2008 crash. Here’s how I viewed his intent:

So how did we arrive to this sorry state of our Union, where the number of banks being robbed by desperate people is running neck and neck with the number of desperate banks ostensibly robbing We The People? What paved the way for the near-total collapse of our financial system and its subsequent government bailout, which Moore provocatively refers to as nothing less than a “financial coup d’etat”? The enabler, Moore suggests, may very well be our sacred capitalist system itself-and proceeds to build a case (in his inimitable fashion) that results in his most engaging and thought-provoking film since Roger and Me […] at the end of the day I didn’t really find his message to be so much “down with capitalism” as it is “up with people”.

Digby gleaned something else from the film that did a flyover on me at the time:

But this movie, as Dennis notes, isn’t really about saviors or criminals, although it features some of both. It’s a call for citizens to focus their minds on what’s actually gone wrong and take to the streets or man the barricades or do whatever defines political engagement in this day and age and demand that the people who brought us to this place are identified and that the system is reformed. Indeed, I would guess that if it didn’t feature the stuff about capitalism being evil he could have shown this to audiences of all political stripes and most of the latent teabaggers would have given him a standing ovation.

If the film manages to focus the citizenry on the most important story of our time then it will be tremendously important. If it gets lost in a cacophony of commie bashing and primitive tribalism then it will probably not be recognized for what it is until sometime later. As with all of his films, he’s ahead of the zeitgeist, so I am hopeful that this epic call to leftwing populist engagement is at the very least a hopeful sign of things to come.

She called it. “Someone” did tap into that populist sentiment; but sadly, it wasn’t the Left.

The Corporation – While it’s not news to any thinking person that corporate greed and manipulation affects everyone’s life on this planet, co-directors Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott deliver the message in a unique and engrossing fashion. By applying a psychological profile to the rudiments of corporate think, Achbar and Abbott build a solid case; proving that if the “corporation” were corporeal, then “he” would be Norman Bates.

Mixing archival footage with observations from some of the expected talking heads (Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, etc.) the unexpected (CEOs actually sympathetic with the filmmakers’ point of view) along with the colorful (like a “corporate spy”), the film offers perspective not only from the watchdogs, but from the belly of the beast itself. Be warned: there are enough exposes trotted out here to keep conspiracy theorists, environmentalists and human rights activists tossing and turning in bed for nights on end.

The Forecaster – There’s a conspiracy nut axiom that “everything is rigged”. Turns out it’s not just paranoia…it’s a fact. At least that’s according to this absorbing documentary from German filmmaker Marcus Vetter, profiling economic “forecaster” Martin Armstrong. In the late 70s, Armstrong formulated a predictive algorithm (“The Economic Confidence Model”) that proved so accurate at prophesying global financial crashes and armed conflicts, that a shadowy cabal of everyone from his Wall Street competitors to the CIA made Wile E. Coyote-worthy attempts for years to get their hands on that formula.

And once Armstrong told the CIA to “fuck off”, he put himself on a path that culminated in serving a 12-year prison sentence for what the FBI called a “3 billion dollar Ponzi scheme”. Funny thing, no evidence was ever produced, nor was any judgement passed (most of the time he served was for “civil contempt”…for not giving up that coveted formula, which the FBI eventually snagged when they seized his assets). Another funny thing…Armstrong’s formula solidly backs up his contention that it’s the world’s governments running the biggest Ponzi schemes…again and again, all throughout history.

And something tells me that we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet…

Greedy Lying Bastards – I know it’s cliché to quote Joseph Goebbels, but: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.” That’s the theme of Craig Rosebraugh’s 2013 documentary. As one interviewee offers: “On one side you have all the facts. On the other side, you have none. But the folks without the facts are far more effective at convincing the public that this is not a problem, than scientists are about convincing them that we need to do something about this.” What is the debate in question here? Global warming.

Using simple but damning flow charts, Rosebraugh follows the money and connects dots between high-profile deniers (“career skeptics…in the business of selling doubt”) and their special interest sugar daddies. Shills range from media pundits (with no background in hard science) to members of Congress, presidential candidates and Supreme Court justices. Think tanks and other organizations are exposed as mouthpieces for Big Money.

Sadly, the villains outnumber the heroes-which is not reassuring. What does reassure are suggested action steps in the film’s coda…which might come in handy after January 20th.

Full review 

Inside Job – I have good news and bad news about documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson’s incisive parsing of what led to the crash of the global financial system in 2008. The good news is that I believe I finally grok what “derivatives” and “toxic loans” are. The bad news is…that doesn’t make me feel any better about how fucked we are.

Ferguson starts where the seeds were sown-rampant financial deregulation during the Reagan administration (“morning in America”-remember?). The film illustrates, point by point, how every subsequent administration, Democratic and Republican alike, did their “part” to enable the 2008 crisis- through political cronyism and legislative manipulation. The result of this decades long circle jerk involving Wall Street, the mortgage industry, Congress, the White House and lobbyists (with Ivy League professors as pivot men) is what we are still living with today…and I suspect it is about to get unimaginably worse.

Full review 

The International – Get this. In the Bizarro World of Tom Tykwer’s conspiracy thriller, people don’t rob banks…. banks rob people. That’s crazy! And if you think that’s weird, check this out: at one point in the film, one of the characters puts forth the proposition that true power belongs to he who controls the debt. Are you swallowing this malarkey? The filmmakers even go so far as to suggest that some Third World military coups are seeded by powerful financial groups and directed from shadowy corporate boardrooms…

What a fantasy! (Not.)

The international bank in question is under investigation by an Interpol agent (Clive Owen), who is following a trail of shady arms deals all over Europe and the Near East that appear to be linked to the organization. Whenever anyone gets close to exposing the truth about the bank’s Machiavellian schemes, they die under mysterious circumstances. Once the agent teams up with an American D.A. (Naomi Watts), much more complexity ensues, with tastefully-attired assassins lurking behind every silver-tongued bank exec.

The timing of the film’s release (in 2010) was interesting, in light of the then-current banking crisis and plethora of financial scandals. Screenwriter Eric Singer (no relation to the KISS drummer) based certain elements of the story on the real-life B.C.C.I. scandal.

Full review 

The Queen of Versailles — In Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 doc, billionaire David Siegel shares an anecdote about his 52-story luxury timeshare complex in Vegas. In 2010, Donald Trump called him and said, “Congratulations on your new tower! I’ve got one problem with it. When I stay in my penthouse suite, I look out the window and all I see is ‘WESTGATE’. Could you turn your sign down a little bit?” (how he must have suffered).

While Greenfield’s portrait of Siegal, his wife Jackie, their eight kids, nanny, cook, maids, chauffeur and (unknown) quantity of yippy, prolifically turd-laying teacup dogs is chock full of wacky “you couldn’t make this shit up” reality TV moments, there is an elephant in the room…the family’s unfinished Orlando, Florida mansion, the infamous “largest home in America”, a 90,000 square foot behemoth inspired by the palace at Versailles. Drama arises when the bank threatens to foreclose on it, along with the PH Towers Westgate. So does the family end up living in cardboard boxes? I’m not telling.

However, there is a more chilling message, buried near the end of the film. When Siegel boasts he was “personally responsible” for the election of George W. Bush in 2000, the director asks him to elaborate. “I’d rather not say,” he replies, “…because it may not necessarily have been legal.” Any further thoughts? “Had I not stuck my big nose into it, there probably would not have been an Iraqi War, and maybe we would have been better off…I don’t know.” Gosh, imagine a billionaire having the power to “buy” the POTUS of their choice. Worse yet, imagine a similarly odious billionaire becoming the POTUS. Oh.

Full review 

Welcome to New York — While it is not a “action thriller” per se, Abel Ferrara’s film is likewise “ripped from the headlines”, involves an evil banker, and agog with backroom deals and secret handshakes. More specifically, the film is based on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal. In case you need a refresher, he was the fine fellow who was accused and indicted for an alleged sexual assault and attempted rape of a maid employed by the ritzy NYC hotel he was staying at during a 2011 business trip. The case was dismissed after the maid’s credibility was brought into question (Strauss-Kahn later admitted in a TV interview that a liaison did occur, but denied any criminal wrongdoing). I’m sure that the fact that Strauss-Kahn was head of the International Monetary Fund at the time (and a front-runner in France’s 2012 presidential race) had absolutely nothing to do with him traipsing out from the sordid affair smelling like a rose (as of this writing, we don’t know the veracity of intelligence reports alleging shenanigans in a Russian hotel room that involve a “certain” President-elect, so I won’t draw any parallels…just sayin’).

It is interesting watching the hulking Gerard Depardieu wrestle with the motivations (and what passes as the “conscience”) of his Dostoevskian character. It doesn’t make this creep any more sympathetic, but it is a fearless late-career performance, as naked (literally and emotionally) as Brando was playing a similarly loathsome study in Last Tango in Paris. Jacqueline Bisset gives a good supporting turn as the long-suffering wife.

The Yes Men Fix the World – Anti-corporate activist/pranksters Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (aka “The Yes Men”) and co-director Kurt Engfehr come out swinging, vowing to do a take-down of a powerful nemesis…an Idea. If money makes the world go ‘round, then this particular Idea is the one that oils the crank on the money-go-round, regardless of the human cost. It is the free market cosmology of economist Milton Friedman, which the Yes Men posit as the root of much evil in the world. Once this springboard is established, the fun begins. Perhaps “fun” isn’t the right term, but there are hijinks afoot, and you’ll find yourself chuckling through most of the film (when you’re not crying). However, the filmmakers have a loftier goal than mining laughs: corporate accountability; and ideally, atonement. “Corporate accountability” is an oxymoron, but one has to admire the dogged determination (and boundless creativity) of the Yes Men and their co-conspirators, despite the odds. It’s a call to activism that is as timely as ever.

Full review 

Previous posts with related themes:

SCOTUS night at the movies
More reviews at Den of Cinema

–Dennis Hartley 

Patriarchy is everywhere. But only one party sells it as their brand.by digby

With the latest polling showing Judge Roy Moore and Doug Jones in adead heat, I was reminded of this great piece by Adele Stan about our current “reckoning.” I urge you to read the whole thing. It’s not long and every word is important. This is the conclusion:

It’s difficult to imagine a system more patriarchal than the one on which the U.S. economy was founded—that of chattel slavery. Plantation owners raped the women they enslaved, then enslaved any children resulting from those assaults, often using them as house servants in the domain of the gentleman farmer’s wife. This is our legacy, the part we don’t talk about. It courses silently through the veins of the body politic.

Seeing as how the Republican Party has become the home of neo-Confederates—of such people as Alabama’s U.S. Senate hopeful Roy Moore, who opposed the removal of segregation provisions from the state constitution—the depth of this legacy in both parties must not be allowed to overshadow its exercise in law, ideology, and tribalism. The sexism and misogyny found among Democrats is rightfully derided as hypocritical, since Democrats claim to stand for equality—of race, of sex, of sexual orientation and identity, of religion. But the sexism and misogyny (and racism and queerphobia) of Republicans these days is part of the brand, a rallying cry. There’s a self-described pussy-grabber in the White House. You’d have to conclude that a lot of the people who voted for him liked that about him, just as they liked the false crime statistics he tweeted about African Americans, his description of Mexicans as rapists, and his smearing of all Muslims as potential terrorists. They like it all, because it’s all of a piece.

Our choices being less than optimum, they are nonetheless stark. As for me, I’m sticking with the hypocrites.

The hypocrites or the deplorables. It’s not a great choice. But the difference that choice makes in the real lives of real people is profound. You do what you can. Voting for the hypocrites is the least you can do.

.