Month: December 2017

“I would never kill reporters”by digby

Remember this?

Aaaand this:

Hitting the Sunday morning shows, Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway sought to downplay the fracas while highlighting what she called the president’s “unfair” treatment.

“I don’t think, ultimately, presidents are judged by crowd sizes at their inauguration. I think they’re judged by their accomplishments,” Conway said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” before going on to say, “I think it is a symbol for the unfair and incomplete treatment that this president often receives.”

She also tried to defend press secretary Sean Spicer, who called reporters to the White House briefing room on Saturday night to accuse the media of “deliberately false reporting,” while delivering a statement on crowd size that was riddled with inaccuracies.

When asked by NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” why Spicer used falsehoods during the statement, Conway offered an explanation that quickly went viral.

“You’re saying it’s a falsehood and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that,” she said.

Yes. The “alternative facts” comment was about crowd size.

Spicer has taken heat for his main claim that “this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe,” while offering other inaccurate statements including that Trump’s was the first inauguration in which white floor coverings were used on the mall. White floor coverings were used during Obama’s second inauguration in 2013.

Spicer also used misleading numbers to highlight Metro ridership, comparing essentially half-day statistics for Obama’s last inauguration to longer-day statistics for Trump’s…

Trump even hijacked a speech in front of the Langley Memorial wall at the CIA headquarters that was intended to patch up his relationship with the intelligence community. Instead, he delivered a strongly political speech that exaggerated the inaugural crowd size and blasted the “dishonest media.”

Yesterday, this happened:

President Donald Trump called for a Washington Post journalist to be fired Saturday over an erroneous tweet about his crowd size. The reporter quickly apologized for the mix-up and had deleted the tweet, because that’s generally what you do when you make mistakes. Except when you’re Trump, who has throughout his tenure has refused to back down from even the most obvious falsities. 

Trump fired off a pair of tweets attacking Post reporter Dave Weigel over a “phony photo” of an empty arena ahead of his Friday rally in Pensacola, Florida. “Packed house, many people unable to get in. Demand apology & retraction from FAKE NEWS WaPo!” he wrote. 

In a separate tweet, he asserted Weigel should be fired.

Yes, the man who has lied repeatedly about his (crowd) size wants a reporter fired for a quickly corrected tweet on his personal account. But then Trump is all about getting reporters fired.

Someone on twitter reminded me of this:

Putin to Bush: You Fired Dan Rather

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, February 28, 2005; 11:43 AM

President Bush may try to manipulate, work around and undermine the American press — but he certainly doesn’t have as much control over the media as Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently thinks he does.] 

In an odd exchange during the private meeting that preceded their joint news conference on Thursday, a defensive Putin reportedly expressed his belief that Bush fired CBS News anchor Dan Rather.

Richard Wolffe writes in Newsweek: “It was meant to be a heart-to-heart: just the two presidents and their translators, sitting alone inside the historic castle that overlooks the Slovak capital of Bratislava. Four years earlier, in another castle in Central Europe, George W. Bush looked Vladimir Putin in the eye and saw his trustworthy soul. But what he saw inside Putin last week was far less comforting. When Bush confronted his Russian counterpart about the freedom of the press in Russia, Putin shot back with an attack of his own: ‘We didn’t criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS.’ 

“It’s not clear how well Putin understands the controversy that led to the dismissal of four CBS journalists over the discredited report on Bush’s National Guard service. Yet it’s all too clear how Putin sees the relationship between Bush and the American media — just like his own. Bush’s aides have long feared that former KGB officers in Putin’s inner circle are painting a twisted picture of U.S. policy. So Bush explained how he had no power to fire American journalists. It made little difference. When the two presidents emerged for their joint press conference, one Russian reporter repeated Putin’s language about journalists getting fired. Bush (already hot after an earlier question about his spying on U.S. citizens) asked the reporter if he felt free. ‘They obviously planted the question,’ said one of Bush’s senior aides.” 

John F. Dickerson writes in Time: “George Bush knew Vladimir Putin would be defensive when Bush brought up the pace of democratic reform in Russia in their private meeting at the end of Bush’s four-day, three-city tour of Europe. But when Bush talked about the Kremlin’s crackdown on the media and explained that democracies require a free press, the Russian leader gave a rebuttal that left the President nonplussed. If the press was so free in the U.S., Putin asked, then why had those reporters at CBS lost their jobs? Bush was openmouthed. ‘Putin thought we’d fired Dan Rather,’ says a senior Administration official. ‘It was like something out of 1984.’ “

Yeah well, we’ve moved way past “1984”. We’re in “Brave New World “territory now.

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Make Armageddon Great Againby digby

Trump’s rally last Friday in Pensacola was pretty typical: creepy, stupid and frightening. But I want to highlight one of the people who introduced him. I think this was a telling moment:

A conservative politician at President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida suggested that the president’s controversial decision to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem may usher in the biblical end times.

Republican state Senator Doug Broxson represents the Florida Panhandle in the legislature and gave an introductory speech welcoming President Trump to Florida.

“Now, I don’t know about you, but when I heard about Jerusalem — where the King of Kings [applause] where our soon coming King is coming back to Jerusalem, it is because President Trump declared Jerusalem to be capitol of Israel,” Sen. Broxson predicted.

Go to 33:00 to see how he said it and hear the audience reaction.

This guy is saying out lous that Trump declaring Jerusalem the capitol of Israel will bring on Armageddon and the Second Coming. And this audience of Trump loving Real Americans cheers wildly.

Now, if this were an audience of secular people you might just think they’re cheering for tax cuts or “the wall” or “lock her up.” But this is one issue Trump’s conservative evangelical base knows more about than Trump or the rest of us. They read the Bible, they hear about it in church.

They are cheering for the end of the world.

I think a good many of those Trump voters see him as the hand of God.

I’m surprised nobody has pointed out that Satan is a master of deception.

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The most chilling question you will hear all dayby digby

From Amy Davidson in the New Yorker:

The Republicans have a fifty-two-seat majority, meaning that Moore’s presence would be helpful but, in terms of control of the chamber, not decisive. What would they tolerate in order to secure the fifty-first vote?

I hadn’t thought about it quite like that before. They don’t actually need him. But they are all whoring themselves out for a batshit crazy molester who makes Louis Gohmert look like Eisenhower by comparison anyway. How low would they go if they really needed that vote?

I know. There is no bottom. But their embrace of him despite the fact that his presence won’t make or break their majority is really telling. They’ll back Trumpists no matter what. He won’t be the last.

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Wars and rumors of wars
by Tom Sullivan

Foreboding signs of what the next period of American history have in store are still sinking in.

Last week brought a 20-year conviction for ex-cop Michael Slager for shooting unarmed Walter Scott as he ran after a traffic stop in North Charleston, SC. But in Mesa, AZ, a jury acquitted ex-cop Philip Brailsford of murder in the shooting a sobbing unarmed suspect, Daniel Shaver, in a hotel hallway. The body-cam video released after the ruling looked to untrained eyes more like summary execution than a justified response to a threat. All the threats were coming from Brailsford. Scott was black. Shaver was white.

The same day as the ruling in Mesa, former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio, 85, announced he was considering a run for U.S. Senate to fill the seat vacated by retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, a fellow Republican. President Trump pardoned Arpaio after his conviction for criminal contempt for refusing to stop detaining and imprisoning suspected undocumented immigrants.

“And he will win, too,” wrote Dave Neiwert of the Southern Poverty Law Center in a personal Facebook post. “Authoritarianism is upon us, and we are in denial.”

Even with the burst of new progressive energy of the kind that helped Democrats win big in Virginia last month, the left is still trying to find its footing in Trump’s America. A diatribe against the FBI last night by Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro was breathtaking. During the 2006 campaign, I caught two minutes of Glenn Beck and knew CNN had given a professional propagandist his own show. Pirro makes Beck look like Captain Kangaroo.

Dahlia Lithwick wrote last week she worried that in pushing Sen. Al Franken out of the Senate, Democrats were “self-neutering in the face of unprecedented threats, in part to do the right thing and in part to take ammunition away from the right—a maneuver that never seems to work out these days.” But in a podcast, she added that Democrats doing the honorable thing and believing the other side would meet them halfway results in them getting “pantsed every single time.” Process matters, she argues.

It’s hard if you are not a nihilist and you believe in systems and you believe in institutions when they don’t do what they are meant to do … I think we have to figure out how to fix institutions and how to create systems that redound to our benefit. And here’s why. If you don’t, if you go for the full on nihilist, let’s just throw everybody who may or may not be a predator out, it doesn’t ever help women and minorities. It doesn’t ever help people that have no power when you break a system.

Democrats, she argues, should be defending systems in the face of a movement that’s reducing them to Potemkin villages.

Thomas Edsall backs up Lithwick’s analysis in the New York Times on Thursday, writing:

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, observes that “believers in liberal democracy have unilaterally disarmed in the defense of the institution” by agreeing in many cases with the premise of the Trump campaign: “that the country is a hopeless swamp.” This left Democrats “defenseless when he proposed to drain it.”

Pinker asks, bolstering Michael Tomasky’s defense of the liberal project:

… are the liberals who are willing to say that liberal democracy has worked? That environmental regulations have slashed air pollutants while allowing Americans to drive more miles and burn more fuel? That social transfers have reduced poverty rates fivefold? That globalization has allowed Americans to afford more food, clothing, TVs, cars, and air-conditioners? That international organizations have prevented nuclear war, and reduced the rate of death in warfare by 90 percent? That environmental treaties are healing the hole in the ozone layer?

But Democrats have not come to terms with their own role in the backlash that is Trump, writes Edsall. Karen Stenner, author of “The Authoritarian Dynamic” tells Edsall features of liberal democracy such as “absolutely unfettered freedom and diversity; acceptance and promotion of multiculturalism; allowing retention of separate identities; maintenance of separate communities, lifestyles and values;” etc. are sharply contested in many parts of the country.

Stenner adds, “liberal democracy’s allowance of these things inevitably creates conditions of ‘normative threat,’ arousing the classic authoritarian fears about threats to oneness and sameness, which activate those predispositions — about a third of most western populations lean toward authoritarianism — and cause the increased manifestation of racial, moral and political intolerance.”

In essence, liberalizing forces, not just cultural opening, but globalization, arouse the very hostility we now see, whether or not the changes in the culture will eventually become more widely adopted. As America saw with marriage equality, much of the country turned on a proverbial dime to accepting it. But even as Michael Tomasky argues that, contrary to the right’s narrative, it is red America that is out of touch with the dynamism of blue states, red states feel their way of life threatened by that change and others beyond their control. Some of that is economic, but it goes deeper than that.

Writer and political consultant Eric Schnurer tells Edsall that Trumpist anger is part economic, part demographic, and part cultural. But the modern economy that has prospered much of blue America has had a deleterious effect in red-states:

This is a classic political problem of general benefit at the cost of specific individual harm. At a minimum, “we” — as a country but also as a self-styled progressive subset of that country — have given inadequate thought to those harms and how to ameliorate them; but I think you can also make the argument that we have exacerbated them.

Perhaps red-state voters hear the economic equivalent of “get over it” from areas promoting greater diversity and prospering from shifts in the economy. But given the structure of our system of federalism, red state legislatures and red-state governors dominate. Their voters’ concerns cannot be brushed aside without consequence.

Edsall writes, “The problem is that even if Pinker is right, his analysis does not preclude a sustained period in which the anti-democratic right dominates American politics. There is no telling how long it will be before the movement Trump has mobilized will have run its course.”

Or how much damage it might do before then, he adds.

But there are genies and there are bottles. Some of the changes to which red-state America object are made possible not by haughty liberals, but by technological advances that cannot be uninvented. The Internet makes global business possible, not just unfavorable trade rules. The technology allowed shunned minority groups to find each other and organize for full recognition. As I’ve argued, if conservatives want to return to the halycon days they imagine of women staying at home with the kids while dad goes to work, they are better off not getting angry at the left or at blacks or immigrants, but at cars and televisions. But as humans, we identify enemies with faces. And we like our cars and our televisions.

In 1989, as the Chinese government tried to suppress the Tiananmen Square protests, its ability to keep a lid on its crackdown was, if I recall, undermined by the now nearly obsolete fax machine. Efforts afoot to restrict the Internet may similarly fail. The changes people fear may be unstoppable, but efforts to ameliorate the harm have been weak, as well as our defense of the basic structures that have held this country together. Conservative politicians have used the anger their own policies have generated to further their careers. The left needs to do more to recognize the sources of the backlash and work more at defusing it.

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

Saturday Night at the Movies

Blu Xmas: Best BD re-issues of 2017, pt. 2By Dennis Hartley

Since it’s now post Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Tuesday Afternoon and Wednesday Morning 3am, I thought I’d toss out gift ideas, with more picks for the best Blu-ray reissues of 2017. Most titles are released concurrent with an SD edition, so if you don’t have a Blu-ray player, don’t despair. Any reviews based on Region “B” editions (which require a multi-region Blu-ray player) are noted as such; the good news is that multi-region players are now more affordable! So here you go, in alphabetical order:

Barry Lyndon (Criterion Collection) – Stanley Kubrick’s beautifully constructed, leisurely paced adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s rags-to-riches-to-rags tale about a roguish Irishman (Ryan O’Neal) who grifts his way into the English aristocracy is akin to watching 18th-century paintings come to life (to its detractors, about as exciting as being forced to stare at a painting for 3 hours, strapped to a chair). This magnificent 1975 film has improved with age, like a fine wine; successive viewings prove the legends about Kubrick’s obsession with the minutest of details regarding production design were not exaggerated-every frame is steeped in verisimilitude. Michael Hordern’s delightfully droll voice over work as The Narrator rescues the proceedings from sliding into staidness.

Criterion’s superb 4K restoration is a vast improvement over Warner’s 2011 Blu-ray release; finally giving full due to one of the most visually resplendent costume dramas of all time. Criterion also packed in the extras on this one, including new and archival interviews with cast and crew, as well as featurettes covering everything from cinematography, production design, costume design to critical reappraisal. A must-have.

Blow-Up (Criterion Collection) – You know how the song goes: “England swings like a pendulum do”. And nobody swung the arthouse in the 60s like Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. Combine the acid-dazed op art splendor of 1966 London with Antonioni’s predilection for enigmatic narrative, and out pops this colorful mindbender. A “mod” photographer (David Hemmings) is wandering around a public park and espies a lovely young woman (Vanessa Redgrave) who is acting a bit erratic. Intrigued, he shoots a series of photos. When he develops them, he realizes that he may have inadvertently documented a crime. What ensues is part mystery-thriller and part youth-ploitation flick. Look for a great scene in a club where The Yardbirds (featuring Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck) rave it up! Also in the cast: Sarah Miles, Jane Birkin, and Verushka.

The Day of the Jackal (Arrow Video; Region “B”) – “Conspiracy a-go go” films don’t get any better than Fred Zinnemann’s taut political thriller. Adapted from Frederick Forsyth’s eponymous 1971 bestseller, this 1973 film (set in 1962) takes you on a chilling “ride-along” with a professional assassin (Edward Fox) who is hired by a French right-wing extremist group to kill President Charles de Gaulle. It’s a real nail-biter from start to finish, intelligently written and well-crafted. While it undoubtedly was not his intent, Zinnemann’s docu-realism regarding the hitman’s meticulous prep work and coolly detached social engineering methodology at times plays like a “how-to” guide (shudder). Arrow’s print is the best I’ve seen of this film. Among the extras: a new interview with a Zinnemann biographer, and Kenneth Ross’ entire original screenplay (CD ROM content).

Lost in America (Criterion Collection) – Released at the height of Reaganomics, this 1985 gem can now be viewed in hindsight as a spot-on satirical smack down of the Yuppie cosmology that shaped the Decade of Greed. Director/co-writer Albert Brooks and Julie Hagerty portray a 30-something, upwardly mobile couple who quit their high-paying jobs, liquidate their assets, buy a Winnebago, and hit the road to “find themselves”; they’ll “touch Indians” (with a “nest egg” of $145,000). Due to unforeseen circumstances, the “egg” is soon off the table, and the couple find themselves on the receiving end of “trickle down”, to Brooks’ chagrin. Like all of Brooks’ movies, it is at once painfully funny and painful to watch (he paved the way for Larry David and Ricky Gervais). Criterion’s extras are a bit skimpy here, but the new 2K restoration is fabulous.

Mickey One (Indicator Limited Edition; all-region) – Arthur Penn’s 1965 existential film noir stars Warren Beatty as a standup comic who is on the run from the mob. The ultimate intent of this pursuit is never made 100% clear (is it a “hit”, or just a debt collection?), but one thing is certain: viewers will find themselves becoming as unsettled as the twitchy, paranoid protagonist. It’s a Kafkaesque nightmare, with echoes of Godard’s Breathless. A true rarity-an American art film, photographed in expressive, moody chiaroscuro by DP Ghislain Cloquet (who also did the cinematography for Bresson’s classic Au Hasard Balthazar and Woody Allen’s Love and Death). Nice transfer. Extras include a 40-page booklet and a new interview with Penn’s son Matthew.

Sid & Nancy (Criterion Collection) – The ultimate love story…for nihilists. Director Alex Cox has never been accused of subtlety, and there’s certainly a glorious lack of it here in his over-the-top 1986 biopic about the doomed relationship between Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb chew all the available scenery as they shoot up, turn on and check out. It is a bit of a downer, but the cast is great, and Cox (who co-scripted with Abbe Wool) injects a fair amount of dark comedy (“Eeew, Sid! I look like fuckin’ Stevie Nicks in hippie clothes!”). The movie also benefits from outstanding cinematography by Roger Deakins, which is really brought to the fore in Criterion’s 4K restoration. Extras include a 1987 doc on the making of the film, and the “infamous” 1976 Sex Pistols TV interview with Bill Grundy.

Stormy Monday (Arrow Video; Region “B”) – I have to admit, I geeked out a little when I heard that Mike Figgis’ tightly-scripted, gorgeously-photographed 1988 Brit-noir (his feature directorial debut) was finally getting the high-def home video treatment that it so richly deserves. Sean Bean stars as a restless young drifter who blows into Newcastle and falls in with a local jazz club owner (Sting). Right about the same time, a shady American businessman with mob ties (Tommy Lee Jones) arrives to muscle in on a land development deal, accompanied by his ex-mistress/current P.A. (Melanie Griffith). As romantic sparks begin to fly between Bean and Griffith, the mobster puts the thumbscrews to the club owner, who stands in the way of the development scheme by refusing to sell. Things get complicated. This is one of my favorite 80s sleepers; a criminally underseen and underrated gem. Arrow’s sparkling transfer is a revelation; a great showcase for cinematographer Roger Deakins’ work here, which rates among his best. Extras include an interesting “then and now” tour of the Newcastle film locations.

Tampopo (Criterion Collection) – Self billed as “The first Japanese noodle western”, this 1987 entry from writer-director Juzo Itami is all that and more. Nobuko Niyamoto is superb as the eponymous character, a widow who has inherited her late husband’s noodle house. Despite her dedication and effort to please customers, Tampopo struggles to keep the business afloat, until a deux ex machina arrives-a truck driver named Goro (Tsutomo Yamazaki). After one taste, Goro pinpoints the problem-bland noodles. No worries-like the magnanimous stranger who blows into an old western town (think Shane). Goro takes Tampopo on as a personal project, mentoring her on the Zen of creating the perfect noodle bowl. A delight from start to finish, offering keen insight on the relationship between food, sex and love. Criterion’s edition features a nicely restored print and a generous helping of extras, including Rubber Band Pistol, Itami’s 1962 debut short film.

Previous posts with related themes:

Best Blu-ray reissues of 2017, pt. 1
Criterion reissues The Front Page and His Girl Friday

More reviews at Den of Cinema

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–Dennis Hartley

It’s just trolling right? They can’t really believe this
by digby

Oy

Kayleigh McEnany is an educated person. The obvious contempt these people hold for Republican voters is really something. You know she knows better:

McEnany was educated at the Academy of the Holy Names, a private Catholic college preparatory school for girls (co-educational up to eighth grade), in the city of Tampa in western Florida, followed by Georgetown University School of Foreign Service with a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (BSFS) in International Politics, in Washington, D.C. She also spent a year studying at St Edmund Hall, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, in England. McEnany studied at the University of Miami School of Law and then transferred to Harvard Law School, where she received a JD in May 2016.

Oh, what’s one less vote in congress anyway, amirite?by digby

Well this is working out nicely:

Michigan’s Republican governor announced Friday that Democrat John Conyers’ congressional seat will not be filled until the regularly scheduled November election, leaving it vacant for nearly a year.

Gov. Rick Snyder decided the post will be listed twice on the August primary and November general election ballots. While unlikely, it is possible voters could choose one candidate to fill the vacancy until January 2019 and elect another to a full two-year term after that.

It is unusual for a congressional district to stay vacant for so long, according to a review of roughly 100 vacancies and successors listed on the House website for the last 20 years. The longest time a seat stayed empty was about 10 months — both in 2014, when Rep. Melvin Watt of North Carolina left to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and 2006, when Rep. Bob Menendez of New Jersey was appointed to the Senate.

In case you were wondering there are whole lot more Republican governors than Democratic. So as more dominoes fall, as they surely will, I’d guess you can count on this happening in any Republican run state that has the option of delaying replacement of a Democrat as long as possible so they can ram through Trump’s carnage agenda. Wonderful.

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“This system? Gonna be a lotta changes”by digby
What kind of changes, you ask? Well, he’s talking about the legal system as it pertains to him. Because it’s “rigged” against him:

The audience at the Trump rally breaks into a "lock her up" chant pic.twitter.com/F31UUX5Bw9— Axios (@axios) December 9, 2017

I guess this is where the privatized spy network comes in?

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QOTD: himby digby

“With us [the market] goes up, and with them it goes down, and that’s the end of the election.”

Will people forgive everything if the economy is roaring? Is he right? Economic determinists say that material well-being is the key everything so if the economy roars under Trump and more people are feeling flush, well …

Hey, maybe he’ll build a really nice highway.

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The people who destroyed the worldby digby

Here they are. The Real Americans who voted for Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world:

This Luntz/Vice focus group on Roy Moore has it all pic.twitter.com/y9iRx2oeQ2— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) December 9, 2017

We are doomed.

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