Skip to content

Month: September 2018

The looming lame duck crisis

The looming lame duck crisis

by digby

I hope you don’t want to sleep tonight. This piece by Brian Beutler sounds very plausible to me. He talks about all the machinations in the past couple of weeks having to do with Sessions, McGahn and the Senators signaling that he has a free hand to fire Sessions after the midterms. And he speculates about why that is:

On Wednesday, Trump essentially fired McGahn. Yes, McGahn has reportedly wanted to step down later this year, but Trump made his departure a foregone conclusion, without consulting McGahn, amid a swirl of important revelations—including that McGahn spent much more time voluntarily answering Mueller’s questions than Trump’s personal lawyers knew, and that McGahn has intervened to stop Trump from pardoning his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

As he maneuvered to knock out that guardrail, he simultaneously brought pressure to bear on key Republican senators, who have suddenly come around to the view that Trump will, or even should, fire Sessions—just so long as he waits until after Kavanaugh has been confirmed—which in effect means until after the election. “The fix is in,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN).

This is the backdrop against which we should interpret the Republicans’ urgency to confirm Kavanaugh, marked most importantly by their abrupt reversal on the question of whether the Senate should insist upon reviewing Kavanaugh’s paperwork from his service as George W. Bush’s staff secretary—records that comprise the vast majority of Kavanaugh’s correspondence. That reversal followed a private meeting between key Senate Republicans and McGahn, who is the White House point man for judicial nominations, and whose personal lawyer—Kavanaugh’s former colleague Bill Burck—is managing Kavanaugh’s document production.

Democrats see these unorthodox machinations as part of an effort to bury damaging information in Kavanaugh’s records, and they may well be. But they could just as easily constitute an effort to make sure Kavanaugh is confirmed more quickly than a thorough review of his paper trail would otherwise allow.

Yes, it’s possible that Republicans will lose control of the Senate in January, but they are intent on confirming Kavanaugh before the election, foreclosing on the possibility of using the lame duck session to more completely review Kavanaugh’s public-service record. Their haste looks fairly arbitrary, unless we interpret it as an effort to lock in another Supreme Court justice before Trump takes drastic steps to protect himself from Mueller.

The implication of recent reporting is that those steps will include, at a minimum, pardoning Manafort and firing Sessions. We can see his intentions both in overt and behind-the-scenes steps he’s taken against McGahn and Sessions in recent days, and in reports that he has consulted with his personal, criminal lawyers about both pardoning Manafort, firing Sessions, and impeachment.

Depending upon how willingly Republicans in the Senate will go along with Trump’s designs, Trump may also seek to rush a new, unrecused attorney general through the confirmation process, or abuse the vacancies act to install an acting attorney general who might corruptly interfere with the Mueller investigation.

If Republicans do well in the elections, all this scheming will have proved unnecessary, and Trump will be given a free hand to obstruct any investigation he’d like. But if Republicans lose one or both houses of Congress, the lame-duck period will be the critical window during which Trump can take corrupt steps to insulate himself from justice. By the time Democrats took control, their ability to set things right would be limited. They could conduct oversight, which would damage Republicans politically, but Republicans would at the very least have the power to block impeachment and the restoration of the Mueller investigation.

There’s more. I think he’s right. We’ve already seen Graham and Grassly signal that Trump should go ahead and clean house during the lame duck, regardless of the outcome of the election. It will be a very critical time.

.

If it is broke, fix it by @BloggersRUs

If it is broke, fix it
by Tom Sullivan

“One of the scammiest parts of Trump’s politics is that he talks like a labor leader but governs like a corporate lobbyist,” quips E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post. Remember the great health care replacement for Obamacare he was going to deliver right out of the gate? Better, cheaper? Remember all the winning? And jobs. There would be jobs.

There are jobs, at least. Robert J. Samuelson (also with the Post) writes that the jobless rate has sunk to its lowest mark since 2000. Yet wages remain stagnant. They’ve been stagnant for decades. Wages have risen 2 percent since January 2015. “The gain is roughly one-half of 1 percent annually,” Samuelson explains. “Little wonder that many workers feel they’re not getting ahead. They aren’t.” In fact, workers’ standard of living is going down.

The economy people work for isn’t working for them. Much of Republicans’ $1.5 trillion in tax cuts went into stock buybacks, not into investment or wages. Several factors may be behind wages flatlining. Demographics, robots, etc. But health care costs are a major contributor. Health insurance premiums are rising faster than wages.

A recent survey from Down Home NC in two counties hit hardest by economic shifts found losing access to health care and having income sufficient to meet other basic needs topped respondents’ concerns.

Many of Down Home’s respondents, particularly among people of color, blamed Donald Trump and the government for their problems. But they had broad complaints about the economy:

In comments from people during the survey, we heard many complaints that government is not concerned with their struggles, is unfair, inefficient, or serves only the rich and powerful. Women are more likely than men to blame the “rich and powerful.”

None of this is new. Professor Elizabeth Warren was lecturing on how rising coats and flat wages contributed to the middle class collapse over a decade ago. Add to that higher costs resulting from Trump launching trade wars. The New York Times Editorial Board wrote in August:

All of this seems like a pretty poor return on investment for Mr. Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cuts, at least for most working-class Americans, who benefited least from the tax cuts. None of these issues by themselves will put the brakes on an economy that is powering along with a 3.9 percent unemployment rate. But the friction is building.

Warren, now a senator from Massachusetts, comes to repair capitalism, not to bury it. In a conversation with The Atlantic‘s Franklin Foer, Warren outlines the goals of her Accountable Capitalism Act and Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act. More detailed than simply getting money out of politics, her prescription for what’s ailing us is to address the conduct of both business and government. Capitalism and democracy are intertwined.

Markets work well if properly regulated, Warren argues. “GDP goes up 1935 to 1980 and the 90 percent of America—everybody outside the top 10 percent—gets 70 percent of all new income growth.” It was a period of rapid growth with strong enforcement of rules. Then in the 1980s we pulled cops off Wall Street and “the wheels came off.” Now 84 percent of the wealth in the stock markets goes to a mere 10 percent of Americans, she tells Foer:

Foer: There are all these hints of Louis Brandeis in what you do. Brandeis had a vision of how the economy could be structured differently when the rules that he wanted were applied. He favored the small shopkeeper. In your vision, who gets favored? Are there forces in the market that you feel like are being unfairly shackled that you want to see unleashed?

Warren: Yes. Perfect. Competition. I love competition. I want to see every start-up business, everybody who’s got a good idea, have a chance to get in the market and try. This is what’s so interesting to me. There are so many people right now who argue against these reforms and other reforms, who claim they are pro-business. They’re not. They’re pro-monopoly. They’re pro–concentration of power, which crushes competition.

This is where the political and the economic interact. Once a corporation climbs up the ladder so that it’s got hundreds of millions—no, so that it’s got billions of dollars in resources—today too many of them turn around and use those resources to influence government to cut off that ladder, so nobody else climbs it. To cut off that ladder so that the big guys don’t have to compete with the little guys anymore.

But a “crisis in capitalism” is an abstraction, Warren recognizes. She needs (and wants) to make it more personal if the scholar of contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law hopes to successfully market her Accountable Capitalism and Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Acts.

Warren: We need to make capitalism work for your family and we need to make democracy work for your family … It’s not that you’re wrong, I’m just saying this is where I land it, right with how families experience this economy. A rising stock market is not helpful to the half of all America who own not one single share of stock. Rising productivity that doesn’t translate into rising wages for the people who actually do the work is not building a better future for them. Costs that are skyrocketing for education and health care and housing put a squeeze on families that are struggling with flat wages, so every one of those is about the lived experience, and that’s what colors our view of both capitalism and democracy in 2018.

Warren’s one-two punch to the jaws of the powerful will go nowhere without some rising up from “down home.” But the Oklahoma native has a knack for that too. People don’t care about saving democracy as much as feeding themselves and their kids. They need to know what’s in it for them.

* * * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

A precipitous drop

A precipitous drop

by digby

Many people dismissed that latest ABC/Washington Post poll showing Trump’s job approval tanking to 36% in the last month despite the fact that it’s a 538. com “A” rated poll. It could be an outlier. But now there’s another “A” rated poll with similar results:

Just 36% say they approve of the job President Trump is doing, a 5-point drop from last month, according to the latest IBD/TIPP poll. Fifty six percent disapprove of Trump’s job performance, up from 53% the month before.

The drop in Trump’s approval rating comes after a spate of bad news, including the conviction of his former campaign chairman on eight counts of fraud and a guilty plea on campaign finance charges by Trump’s former lawyer, which sparked a torrent of impeachment talk. Trump also caught flak for his handling of Sen. John McCain’s passing.

The sharp decline also comes with the midterm elections now just over two months away.

The broader IBD/TIPP Presidential Leadership Index plunged 11.6% to 40.4. That’s one of the biggest monthly drops since IBD started tracking this index in January 2000. The proprietary Leadership Index combines results from several questions on approval, favorability and strength of leadership.

Trump’s Approval: Losing GOP Support

Trump lost significant ground on job approval with Republicans this month, which fell from 83% last month to 76% this month. Among independents, Trump’s approval dropped 4 points to 33%. Democratic approval has never been above the low single digits.

He also saw a big drop in support from men (it went from 49% last month to 40% today). His backing among women, however, barely changed. It’s currently 32%.

Regionally, his biggest losses came in the Northeast, where his approval rating dropped 12 points. In the West, his approval declined only 2 points.

His support among rural dwellers plunged 15 points — going from 60% to 45%. It fell 7 points among suburban voters to 35%.

Trump’s sagging approval appears to be improving Democrats chances of taking control of the House after the midterm elections. Last month, the IBD/TIPP poll showed registered voters split at 45%-45% on whether Congress should be controlled by Republicans or Democrats.

The current poll shows Democrats with an 11-point advantage. Fifty percent now say they’d prefer Congress controlled by Democrats, with 39% favoring Republican control.

And while the public doesn’t approve of Trump’s overall job performance, 45% give him top marks for his handling of the economy.

“Despite an economy firing on all cylinders, President Trump still must contend with the sensationalism surrounding Special Counsel Mueller’s ongoing Russia investigation,” said Raghavan Mayur, President of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, which conducts the monthly IBD/TIPP poll. “He also faced criticism for his response to the recent passing of Senator John McCain.”

“In addition, the escalating feud between Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, along with news surrounding White House counsel Don McGahn, have given the impression of some disarray within the White House,” Mayur added.

“Trump’s approval numbers might also be a result of the public expressing concerns over rising consumer prices and the economic impact of potential auto tariffs,” he said.

We’ll see if this drop is replicated in the next spate of polls after the holiday. It’s hard to imagine after all this time but you never know. If he is losing altitude, it’s probably good news for the midterms. Fingers crossed.

.

Lovely people being lovely

Lovely people being lovely

by digby

Laura Ingraham’s site did a piece on the social media reactions to Meghan McCain’s eulogy yesterday in which she actually criticized some of the GOPers who slammed her. Here are a few typical comments:

  • The whole event reminded me of the 2002 Paul Wellstone Memorial. I was shocked by the political/personal attacks on our President, which in turn was an attack on his supporters, you know, the “Crazies” . He hated conservatives, the Tea Party and our President. He was a political traitor to his country, the constitution and his party. I am so glad that God term limited John McCain!
  • John McCain was NOT a hero. Being a prisoner of war does NOT make you a hero…. saving someone’s life at the expense of risking your own DOES. Just WHAT did McCAin do that made him a hero?…. graduate from Annapolis at the bottom of his class?, Abandoning his first wife, who was disabled to marry a rich heiress?, Catch an Aircraft carrier on fire because he was a sub standard pilot put in place by his Admiral Father?, or was it his telling all to the Vietcong while in captivity and have his statement recorded to be played on the radio? Maybe his staying in office to the very end, even though he was on death’s door for the last year, putting himself before his fellow countrymen and Arizonians. Or possibly his historical voting record as being the most Liberal of GOP Senators in the history of EVER, even being the deciding vote (he chose to keep it) to abolish Obamacare?
  • What exactly DID John McCain do that makes him a hero? I’d love to know.
  • I wholeheartedly supports Meghan McCain for Best Actress in her portrayal of Crocodile No Tears for John the hero McCain. Megs was Oscar winning her performance as there were not any tears to make her makeup run, and she lost weight for the role in only 4 meals a day, and just a few bags of Doritos, and saving herself up for the emotional scene which like her mum, Cindy kissing the casket was performed directly at her good angle by a pre positioned cameraman.
  • Megs reminds me of the great silent film stars in heavy make up, pale white ghostly faces to add that ghoulish glow and of course her hair pulled back as nothing is worse than a close up in having your hair in the way.
  • Meghan McCain is a trust fund baby who used her father’s political fame to get jobs in the entertainment business. Other than that, no one could have cared less about her.
  • Change Meghan’s name with Chelsea Clinton’s in your comment. They’re one and the same.
  • McCain might as well have called all of us Trump supporters “deplorables” as his good friend Hillary Clinton did. Anybody who wasn’t a “RINO” was a “crazy.” And in labeling us all “crazies”, he labeled Donald Trump a “crazy” too. A week later in Iowa, on July 18, 2015, Trump was interviewed and delivered his response to McCain’s calling Trump-supporters, and, by default, Trump himself, ‘crazy.’ Trump said, ‘He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.’
  • As usual, you can’t trust the fake news to report the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
  • “A “war hero” doesn’t finish 894th out of 899 at Annapolis Naval Academy and still get stationed at a Navy champagne unit and promoted ahead of all but two of his 898 other classmates. A “war hero” doesn’t crash three U.S. Navy jets out of sheer incompetence and ineptitude, including two during non-combat training sessions. A “war hero” doesn’t get written up on drunk-and-disorderly, fraternization, disobeying orders, and insubordination charges more than two dozen times in less than three years. A “war hero” doesn’t get promoted to squadron commander of the airfield named after his own grandfather immediately after crashing his third airplane. A “war hero” doesn’t have all the military records that cover his time in Vietnam and all disciplinary actions against him censored and sealed “as a matter of national security.” A “war hero” doesn’t get 28 medals awarded all after-the-fact “for bravery” for no other reason than being shot down and captured and then go on a celebrity public relations tour because he’s the son of two acclaimed Navy admirals. A “war hero” doesn’t repeatedly cheat on the wife who’s back in the states waiting for him, and then cheat on her more when he returns to the states, and then divorce and abandon her…
  • This is not unusual, McCain and his family were always unhappy and trashing others over anything. PERIOD! Just another group of unhappy people no matter how you try to appease them.
  • I never want to see any McCain again, they are hateful,spiteful arrogant people.
  • There was no come to Jesus moment for McCain. He knew where he was going.

But they love Trump.

Like I said,  lovely people.

.

How sturdy are we anyway?

How sturdy are we anyway?

by digby

This piece by Vinson Cunningham in the New Yorker asks the right question about the events of the past week:

[I]t made perfect sense for Meghan McCain to say that “we gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness. The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly.”

It was, of course, a jab at Donald Trump: such jabs abounded at the service, and seemed, by the end, to be its entire aim. But here, the younger McCain had explained, better than anyone who spoke subsequently, exactly why it was right for admirers of her father to regard the sitting President with contempt. If McCain was, at least symbolically, Americanism’s high priest, Trump is now its chief heretic. And, if McCain’s farewell statement is to be treated as the final word, this is true: Trump doesn’t have any reflexive sense of fairness, or freedom, or the dignity of anyone, even himself. The sublime seems permanently beyond him. It’s true, too, that his rise to the Presidency represents a passing away: the memory of his ugliness and stupidity ought to keep an entire generation of politicians, if not more, from invoking high-flown ideals as a guarantee of decent civic behavior, or of government worth even perfunctory, let alone pious, regard.

But for all of the scorn heaped on Trump—whose name was never mentioned outright—there were questions left unanswered at the service. First: Is it really possible for a person to rise to power in a country with which he has absolutely nothing in common? Isn’t it more likely that Trump, whose most fervent devotees are white evangelicals and proponents of the fraudulent prosperity gospel, is just as archetypically American as McCain, embodying an alternative set of equally real national principles: anxious acquisitiveness, a distaste for deep thought, endless aggrandizement?

Then, too: Even if the American religion is good, and inclusive of certain eternal truths, if it can be thrown so quickly into crisis, turned so violently on itself, how sturdy was it, really?

A very good question. To me, these days, it appears that “American ideals” (never fully achieved of course) were pretty much bullshit cover for the shallow, self-serving, parochial, racism of a substantially larger number of my fellow Americans than I had imagined.

On the other hand, that antediluvian worldview has been with us from the beginning, waxing and waning depending on the circumstances. So maybe there’s some sturdiness after all. Either way, it looks like we’re going to find out.

.

Use his tweets to make the point

Use his tweets to make the point

by digby

I love this. I don’t know if it will make people stay home but it’s got to make a few of them feel a little uncomfortable about the cowardice of both these men:

Using the tweet is brilliant. It’s a familiar visual. I could see a national campaign in 2020 using that format.

Meanwhile, down in Texas:

.

Playing that funeral card again

Playing that funeral card again

by digby

The wingnuts are partying like it’s 2002, policing funeral behavior. You knew somebody would drag this old trope out again:

Democrats (and some Republicans) turned John McCain’s funeral into an orgy of Trump-bashing. Evidently they though it made political sense. It reminds me of another politicized funeral, 16 years ago.

In the fall of 2002, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone was running for re-election against Norm Coleman. Tim Pawlenty was running his first race for Governor. And, of course, it was the first midterm election of George W. Bush’s presidency. In the last days of the campaign, Wellstone’s campaign airplane crashed in northern Minnesota, killing Wellstone and a number of others. Former Vice-President Walter Mondale was hurriedly recruited to replace Wellstone on the ticket.

And leading Democrats from around the country assembled in the Twin Cities for Wellstone’s funeral. The funeral was broadcast live to the nation. To the shock of most who watched, the Democrats turned Wellstone’s funeral into a partisan hate-fest. Reaction was overwhelmingly negative.

Coleman went on to defeat Mondale handily. Pawlenty won his first term. And nationally, Republicans gained seats in both the House and the Senate. Revulsion against the Democrats’ politicized funeral was widely credited as a factor in Republicans’ success.

Scott and I started Power Line at the end of May of that year, and Paul joined us later in the Summer. It was Minnesota’s central role in the 2002 elections that gave this site its initial influx of readers from around the country.

Will the politicizing of McCain’s funeral by anti-Trumpers have a similar boomerang effect? Probably not to the same degree; standards have declined considerably since 2002. But it won’t help the anti-Trumpers’ cause, just as similar anti-Trump speeches at Aretha Franklin’s funeral won’t be helpful.

What can we conclude if there is a funeral for Person A, and the “eulogies” are mostly about Person B? For one thing, Person B is obviously a heck of a lot more important than Person A. John McCain was heroic in some ways, notoriously small-minded in others. It is perhaps a fitting coda to his career that his funeral was mostly about someone else.

That’s by the blogger formerly known as “Hindrocket” of the blog Powerline which once won “blog of the year” by Times Magazine. He’s reliving former triumphs with this post.

However, one of the people who subtweeted the hell out of Donald Trump yesterday was George W. Bush of whom Hindrocket once said:

POSTED ON JULY 28, 2005 BY JOHN HINDERAKER

A STROKE OF GENIUS?

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Hyperbolic? Well, maybe. But consider Bush’s latest master stroke: the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. The pact includes the U.S., Japan, Australia, China, India and South Korea; these six countries account for most of the world’s carbon emissions. The treaty is, in essence, a technology transfer agreement. The U.S., Japan and Australia will share advanced pollution control technology, and the pact’s members will contribute to a fund that will help implement the technologies. The details are still sketchy and more countries may be admitted to the group later on. The pact’s stated goal is to cut production of “greenhouse gases” in half by the end of the century.

What distinguishes this plan from the Kyoto protocol is that it will actually lead to a major reduction in carbon emissions! This substitution of practical impact for well-crafted verbiage stunned and infuriated European observers.

I doubt that the pact will make any difference to the earth’s climate, which will be determined, as always, by variations in the energy emitted by the sun. But when the real cause of a phenomenon is inaccessible, it makes people feel better to tinker with something that they can control. Unlike Kyoto, this agreement won’t devastate the U.S. economy, and, also unlike Kyoto, the agreement will reduce carbon emissions in the countries where they are now rising most rapidly, India and China. Brilliant.

But I don’t suppose President Bush is holding his breath, waiting for the crowd to start applauding.

UPDATE: Of all the thousands of posts we have done over the years, this one seems to most outrage the Left, I suppose because it is so at odds with liberals’ cherished illusions about President Bush. The tone of the post is obviously tongue in cheek, but liberals never seem to notice. They are, to put it charitably, not big on nuance. More important, I’ve never seen a liberal respond to, let alone rebut, the point of the post: that President Bush’s proposal to share pollution control technology with the countries where carbon emissions are rising most rapidly made far more sense than the Kyoto approach, which combined ineffectiveness with economic disaster. That, too, is a sign of the intellectual vacuity of modern liberalism.

Obviously, Hindracker is one of those people who doesn’t understand the definition of irony. (“I was like being totally ironic and I don’t get why people didn’t take it seriously.”)

Either that or he’s a bit of a weasel. You decide.

.

Was it more than nostalgia? by @BloggersRUs

Was it more than nostalgia?
by Tom Sullivan

Was Sen. John McCain’s memorial resistance or nostalgia?

“We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness,” Meghan McCain said, holding back tears. “The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.”

The missing man in this formation was not John McCain but Donald Trump. In case Meghan McCain’s first salvo was too subtle for a president not known for it, she continued, “the America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.” A cathedral filled with generals, politicians, and former presidents from both parties senators burst into applause, although probably not all.

As Digby observed, the speeches yesterday at the Washington National Cathedral unnerved the right. While the sitting president’s name went unmentioned, the vacuum of stewardship or statesmanship in the White House formed the subtext to eulogies by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Charlie Pierce suggests the entire enterprise was a formal trolling of the uninvited sitting president:

It was said almost immediately after the conclusion of the funeral ceremonies on Saturday that, for a few hours anyway, we were back in a familiar country with familiar customs and manners and norms, a country with institutions built to last. That may well be true. I felt it, too. But in back of that is the realization that all of us, including the deceased, had taken those customs, manners, norms, and institutions terribly for granted. We thought they could withstand anything, even a renegade president* in the pocket of a distant authoritarian goon. We let the customs, manners, norms and institutions weaken through neglect and now we are in open conflict with an elected president and, make no mistake about it, John McCain’s funeral was a council of war, and it was a council of war because that’s what John McCain meant it to be.

Both former presidents included jabs that in the context of the day aimed squarely at Trump. Bush’s reference to McCain despising “bigots and swaggering despots” was unmistakable, but fleeting. Obama took his time:

“So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage. It’s a politics that pretends to be brave and tough, but in fact is born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that.”

“Heads nodded, writes The New Yorker‘s Susan Glasser:

Democratic heads and Republican ones alike. For a moment, at least, they still lived in the America where Obama and Bush and Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney could all sit in the same pew, in the same church, and sing the same words to the patriotic hymns that made them all teary-eyed at the same time.

But was it any more than that? Or only, as the Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe and Philip Rucker wrote, merely “a melancholy last hurrah for the sort of global leadership that the nation once took for granted,” as Pierce wrote.

McCain helped plan his own memorial. If he indeed meant it to be a war council, it was well-orchestrated. All offered paeans to McCain’s decades of service. Partisan divides subsided as mourners lost themselves in reverie and remembrance. From Paul Ryan to Elizabeth Warren, McCain’s death brought together official Washington under a flag-draped banner of truce. Knowing how many ears his memorial would reach, perhaps even after death McCain was not done doing the country a service. Having fought two presidents and lost, the crusty warrior would go to his grave battling a third.

It is difficult to muster the faith that the comity will last. Will a listing America right itself, find a star to steer by, and return to a true course, even as it tacks left and right getting there against history’s headwinds? I claim no higher purpose to my own efforts than it feeling more empowering to be in the fight than to feel like political roadkill. Obama acknowledged that in citing Theodore Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech:

Most of you know it, Roosevelt speaks of those who strive, who dare to do great things, who sometimes win and sometimes come up short but always relish a good fight. A contrast to those cold, timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. Isn’t that the spirit we celebrate this week? That striving to be better, to do better, to be worthy of the great inheritance that our founders bestowed.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. (Matthew 11:15)

We return you now to our regularly scheduled fight for America’s soul. With luck and determination, that fight — your fight — will turn Make America Great Again into the coda for this presidency, not its prelude.

* * * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

There’s (still) a riot goin’ on

There’s (still) a riot goin’ on

By Dennis Hartley

I know everyone is starting to get 50th anniversary fatigue, but… I think it is worth noting that it was 50 years ago this week that the infamous “police riot” broke out in the midst of protests during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. “The Battle of Michigan Avenue” (as it was later dubbed) was ugly, and a real wake up call for a lot of Americans.

From a retrospective in this week’s Chicago Tribune:

Across the country and in Chicago, tensions were already high by the time delegates to the Democratic National Convention arrived for the opening session on this date [in 1968]. The destruction of the King riots on the West and South Sides in April was still a vivid memory. In June, Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s final words had included the phrase, “On to Chicago,” when his presidential candidacy was cut short by an assassin’s bullet in California.

Colorful young activists such as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin had vowed to lead Vietnam War protesters to Chicago to disrupt the convention. Chicago police fueled the paranoia by publicizing reports that demonstrators were planning to spike the city’s water supply with LSD. Mayor Richard J. Daley made it clear he would brook no attempts to disrupt the convention or sully the city’s name. The Illinois National Guard was called up and roads to the International Amphitheatre were surrounded with such heavy security that the Tribune called the convention site “a veritable stockade.”

As the delegates jammed into Chicago’s downtown hotels, thousands of young demonstrators moved into Lincoln Park. Attempts to get city permits to spend the nights in the park had failed. So each night, police moved in, sometimes using tear gas and physical force to clear them out. At first, the news media focused on events at the Amphitheatre, where tempers flared during debate on the Vietnam War. CBS newsmen Mike Wallace and Dan Rather were roughed up on camera by security guards, causing anchor Walter Cronkite to intone to a national audience, “I think we’ve got a bunch of thugs here, if I may be permitted to say so.”

The clashes reached a pinnacle on Wednesday, Aug. 28. TV cameramen in the Conrad Hilton Hotel (the former Stevens Hotel) turned their cameras down on the crowd, which chanted “The whole world’s watching.” Someone threw a beer can. Police charged and dragged off protesters, beating them with clubs and fists. “Many convention visitors . . . were appalled at what they considered unnatural enthusiasm of police for the job of arresting demonstrators,” the Tribune reported the next day. It would later be called a “police riot.” That night in his speech nominating George McGovern, Connecticut Sen. Abraham Ribicoff criticized the “Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago.” Television cameras zoomed in on an enraged Daley, shouting back at the rostrum.

Good times.

If you are up for a wallow in this tumultuous moment in America’s history, I have a couple films to recommend. First, there is Haskell Wexler’s 1969 drama, Medium Cool. What Wexler’s film may lack in narrative cohesion is more than made up for by its importance as a sociopolitical document. Robert Forster stars as a TV news cameraman who is fired after he complains to station brass about their willingness to help the FBI build files on political agitators via access to raw news film footage and reporter’s notes.

He drifts into a relationship with a Vietnam War widow (Verna Bloom) and her 12 year-old son. They eventually find themselves embroiled in the mayhem surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention (in the films’ most memorable scene, the actors were actually sent in to improvise amidst one of the infamous “police riots” as it was happening). Many of the issues Wexler touches on (especially regarding media integrity and journalistic responsibility) would be extrapolated further in films like Network and Broadcast News.

One major corollary of those 1968 DNC demonstrations was the highly publicized trial of the “Chicago 7” (originally the “Chicago 8”), which began in September of 1969 and dragged on until February of 1970. For an overview of what transpired, check out Brett Morgen’s Chicago 10. Here’s my original Hullabaloo review, posted on March 22, 2008:

Allow me to demonstrate: Chicago 10 (***)

In September of 1969, Abbie Hoffman and fellow radical activists Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner were hauled into court along with Black Panther Bobby Seale on a grand jury indictment for allegedly conspiring to incite the massive anti-Vietnam war protests and resulting violent mayhem that transpired in the Chicago environs during the 1968 Democratic Convention. What resulted is arguably the most overtly political “show trial” in American history.

Scarcely a day after I went to see Brett Morgen’s new documentary, Chicago 10, which recounts the events leading up to the “police riots” in the streets, the tumultuous convention itself and the subsequent trial of the “Chicago 7”, I saw this story on the local TV news here in Seattle and thought to myself, “Yippee!”…

TACOMA, Wash. – About 150 people — those opposed to the Iraq War and those supporting it — gathered noisily outside a Tacoma Mall office building on Saturday. A group known as World Can’t Wait had organized an anti-war protest to mark the coming fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. But long before their protest was scheduled to begin, counter-protesters arrived.

The counter-protesters surrounded an office building that houses military recruiting offices, which anti-war protesters had said they planned to “shut down.” They shouted “God bless our troops” and waved American flags. As the two groups faced off, dozens of police officers, including some in full SWAT gear, served as a buffer zone. They formed a human line to divide the groups. But there were no arrests or injuries. The two groups shouted insults at each other and waved posters and flags. The demonstrators shouted insults at each other and each side attempted to out-yell the other side.

“They don’t appreciate our soldiers and what they do for our freedom,” said Cheryl Ames. “I am on this side because I do not agree with the way the war started,” said Tommie CeBrun. Protesters held up photos of Iraq detainees tortured at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. They also laid out 281 pairs of shoes on the sidewalk in front of the building, including 81 pairs of combat boots that carried tags bearing the name of a U.S. military member killed in Iraq who listed Washington as his or her home state. The protesters said the 200 pairs of shoes represented the 200-to-1 ratio of the Iraqi-to-American death rate.

But the act was met with a volley of insults. Warnings for military families to avoid the mall had been circulating for days, since some recent protests, including one at the Port of Olympia, have seen increased violence. Meghan Tellez and her children planned to avoid the mall. Her husband is in the Navy Reserve. “I love that mall, but I don’t want my children around that,” she said.

Up against the mall, motherfucker.

Yes, it’s been nearly 40 years to the day since the tumultuous 1968 Democratic Convention, but it would seem that the more things change, the more they stay the same; which is all the more reason that you need to rush out and see Chicago 10 immediately.

First, let’s solve the math story problem that addresses the disparity between the film’s title and the conventional “Chicago 7” reference. There were originally 8 defendants, but Bobby Seale was (for all intents and purposes) “banished” from court early in the proceedings after heated verbal exchanges with presiding judge Julius Hoffman. After draconian physical restraint methods failed to silence him (Seale was literally bound, gagged and chained to his chair at one point), Judge Hoffman had him tossed out altogether.

His crime? Demanding his constitutional right to an attorney of his choice, for which he eventually served an unbelievable 4 year sentence for contempt (“unbelievable” in the pre-Gitmo era). The group’s outspoken defense attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, also rubbed the judge the wrong way and were cited for contempt (although they never did time). Hence, the answer is “10”.

Using a mélange of animation, archival footage and voiceover re-creation by well-known actors, Morgen expands even further on the eye-catching multimedia technique that he and co-director Nanette Burstein used in their 2002 doc The Kid Stays in the Picture.

The bulk of the animated sequences are re-enactments from the trial, with dialog from courtroom transcripts (no rewrites were required, because you couldn’t make this shit up). This visual technique perfectly encapsulates the circus atmosphere of the trial, which was largely fueled by Hoffman and Rubin’s amusing yet effective use of Guerilla Theater to disrupt the proceedings and expose what they felt to be the inherent absurdity of the charges. The courtroom players are voiced by the likes of Nick Nolte (as prosecutor Thomas Foran), Jeffrey Wright (as Bobby Seale) and the late Roy Scheider in full “fuddy-duddy” mode as Judge Hoffman.

Do not, however, mistake this film as a gimmicky and superficial “cartoon” that only focuses on the hi-jinx. There is plenty of evidence on hand, in the form of archival footage (fluidly incorporated by editor Stuart Levy) to remind us that these were very serious times. In one memorable clip, the normally unflappable Walter Cronkite, ensconced in the press booth above the convention arena, shakes his head and declares the situation in Chicago to be tantamount to “…what could only be called a police state”.

Interestingly, the iconic, oft-used footage of reporter Dan Rather being manhandled by security officers on the convention floor is conspicuously MIA; Morgen seems determined to avoid the conventional documentary approach in order to give us a fresh perspective on the story. The footage of the Chicago police wildly bludgeoning any and all who crossed their path (demonstrator and innocent bystander alike) still has the power to shock and physically sicken the viewer. There is a protracted montage of this violence that seems to run on for at least 10 minutes; sensitive viewers may find this sequence particularly upsetting.

For once, a film about the “turbulent 60s” does not feature “Fortunate Son” by CCR, “Get Together” by the Youngbloods or (most notably) “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield (you can always re-watch Forrest Gump if you wish to wallow in trite 60s clichés). Rather, appropriately incendiary music by Rage Against the Machine, The Beastie Boys and Eminem infuses seamlessly with well-chosen period songs from Black Sabbath (“War Pigs”), Steppenwolf (“Monster”) and the MC5 (“Kick Out the Jams”).

I understand that Steven Spielberg is currently in pre-production on a dramatized version of the story, written by Aaron Sorkin and tentatively titled The Trial of the Chicago 7. Rumor has it Sacha Baron Cohen will play Abbie Hoffman, which is a perfect match on many levels (if someone can prove to me that his alter-egos “Ali G” and “Borat” don’t have deep roots in the political guerilla theater of the 60s, I’ll eat my Che cap). With the obvious historical parallels abounding vis a vis the current government’s foreign policy and overall climate of disenfranchisement in this country, I say the more films about the Chicago 7 trial that are out there, the merrier.

If I have any quibble with Chicago 10, it is a minor one. Although some of us are old enough (ahem) to remember the high-profile media coverage of the trial and grok the circumstances surrounding it, a little hindsight analysis or discussion of historical context would have been helpful for younger viewers. But perhaps Morgen wanted to steer clear of the usual clichés, like parading a series of talking heads with gray ponytails, sentimentalizing and waxing poetically about the halcyon days of yore. Besides, if you “remember” the 60s, you probably weren’t there anyway, right?

Previous posts with related themes:

Monkey Warfare

More reviews at Den of Cinema
On Facebook
On Twitter

–Dennis Hartley

You can’t take him anywhere

You can’t take him anywhere

by digby

If you want to know why nobody wants Trump at any ceremony that requires dignity, just look at him with the queen:

According to Politico, he’s even worse at funerals:

To judge from Trump’s performance at the funeral of his own father, Fred, in June 1999, McCain made the right call.

More than 650 people, including Joan Rivers, Donald Trump’s ex-wife Ivana, and scores of politicians and other real estate figures, attended the service, held at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan. The long-time head pastor, Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking, had died, but Fred Trump and his son Donald had remained firm adherents of Peale’s admonition to keep laser-focused on success. Early in the proceedings, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani offered a brief thank you to the man who had built homes for thousands of New Yorkers. Then Donald’s three siblings offered loving tributes to their father, and his nephew Fred Trump III, spoke of his grandfather’s ongoing connection to ordinary people.

At an earlier wake for his father, Trump had recalled his father as “wonderful,” “the best,” “a fine man” who “gave us all a good start,” according to the New York Post. But when it came time to eulogize his father at the funeral, the focus shifted noticeably. He began by saying it was the toughest day of his own life. It was ironic, he said, that he’d learned of his father’s death right after reading a front-page story in the New York Times about the success of one of his own developments, Trump Place. He then enumerated all his other projects and said his father supported each one, and he finished by noting that on everything he’d ever done, Fred had known he would be able to pull it off.

Decades earlier, Alice Longworth Roosevelt, the sharp-tongued daughter of Teddy, famously and fondly said of her father that he “wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.” Presumably, she was overstating the behavior of our 26th president for effect. But as Donald Trump’s performance at his own father’s service proved, her words provide a remarkably apt description of our 45th commander in chief.

The funeral of Fred Trump wasn’t about Fred Trump; it was an opportunity to do some brand burnishing by Donald, for Donald. Throughout his remarks, the first-person singular pronouns—I and me and mine—far outnumbered he and his. Even at his own father’s funeral, Donald Trump couldn’t cede the limelight.

Its always all about him.

.