Month: July 2019

The national shame at the border

by digby

“I’ve seen some of those places, and they are run beautifully,” he said. “They’re clean. They’re good. They do a great job.” — Donald Trump, July 5, 2019

If you read nothing else today, read this New York Times story about the border patrol’s concentration camp for children at Clint Texas. You have to know the details:

Inside the secretive site that is now on the front lines of the southwest border crisis, the men and women who work there were grappling with the stuff of nightmares.

Outbreaks of scabies, shingles and chickenpox were spreading among the hundreds of children who were being held in cramped cells, agents said. The stench of the children’s dirty clothing was so strong it spread to the agents’ own clothing — people in town would scrunch their noses when they left work. The children cried constantly. One girl seemed likely enough to try to kill herself that the agents made her sleep on a cot in front of them, so they could watch her as they were processing new arrivals.

“It gets to a point where you start to become a robot,” said a veteran Border Patrol agent who has worked at the Clint station since it was built. He described following orders to take beds away from children to make more space in holding cells, part of a daily routine that he said had become “heartbreaking.”

The little-known Border Patrol facility at Clint has suddenly become the public face of the chaos on America’s southern border, after immigration lawyers began reporting on the children they saw — some of them as young as 5 months old — and the filthy, overcrowded conditions in which they were being held.

Border Patrol leaders, including Aaron Hull, the outspoken chief patrol agent of the agency’s El Paso Sector, have disputeddescriptions of degrading conditions inside Clint and other migrant detention sites around El Paso, claiming that their facilities were rigorously and humanely managed even after a spate of deaths of migrant children in federal custody.

But a review of the operations of the Clint station, near El Paso’s eastern edge, shows that the agency’s leadership knew for months that some children had no beds to sleep on, no way to clean themselves and sometimes went hungry. Its own agents had raised the alarm, and found themselves having to accommodate even more new arrivals.

The accounts of what happened at Clint and at nearby border facilities are based on dozens of interviews by The New York Times and The El Paso Times of current and former Border Patrol agents and supervisors; lawyers, lawmakers and aides who visited the facility; and an immigrant father whose children were held there. The review also included sworn statements from those who spent time at El Paso border facilities, inspection reports and accounts from neighbors in Clint.

The conditions at Clint represent a conundrum not just for local officials, but for Congress, where lawmakers spent weeks battling over the terms of a $4.6 billion humanitarian aid package for facilities at the border. The lack of federal investment, some argue, is why the sites have been so strained. But the reports of squalor prompted several Democratic lawmakers to vote against the final bill, which did not have oversight and enforcement provisions.

By all accounts, the Border Patrol’s attempt to continue making room for new children at Clint even as it was unable to find space to send them to better-equipped facilities was a source of concern for many people who worked there.

“I can’t tell you the number of times I would talk to agents and they would get teary-eyed,” said one agent, a veteran of 13 years with Border Patrol who worked at Clint.

Mary E. González, a Democratic state lawmaker who toured the Clint station last week, said that Border Patrol agents told her they had repeatedly warned their superiors about the overcrowded facility, but that federal officials had taken no action.

“They said, ‘We were ringing the alarms, we were ringing the alarms, and nobody was listening to us’ — agents told me that,” Ms. González said. “I genuinely believe that the higher-ups made the Clint situation happen.”

[…]

Three agents who work at Clint said they had seen unaccompanied children as young as 3 enter the facility, and lawyers who recently inspected the site as part of a lawsuit on migrant children’s rights said they saw children as young as 5 months old. An agent who has worked for Border Patrol for 13 years — and who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the situation — confirmed reports by immigration lawyers that agents have asked migrants who are teenagers to help care for the younger children.

“We have nine agents processing, two agents in charge of U.A.C. care and we have little ones that need their diapers changed, and we can’t do that,” the agent said. “We can’t carry them or change diapers. We do ask the older juveniles, the 16-year-olds or 17-year-olds, to help us out with that.”

As immigration flows change, the scene inside Clint has shifted as well. The number of children in the site is thought to have peaked at more than 700 around April and May, and stood at nearly 250 two weeks ago. In an attempt to relieve overcrowding, agents took all the children out of Clint but then moved more than 100 back into the station just days later.

Unaccompanied boys are kept in a converted loading area that holds about 50 people. Until a few weeks ago, older boys were kept in a tent encampment outside.

Families, including adult parents, were also sent to Clint earlier this year, and Representative Will Hurd, a Republican whose Texas district includes Clint, said that 11 adult males “apprehended that morning” were also being held at the site when he visited on June 29.

Read on. It gets worse. And there have been many warnings…

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But what will Republicans say?
by Tom Sullivan

It’s a kind of Vietnam Syndrome. Democrats here with enough tenure to have lived through the electoral bloodbath of 1994 still flinch at the prospect of another big loss to Republicans. Like family members trapped in an abusive relationship, they shy from taking positions that might earn a metaphorical back of the hand from their Republican counterparts. Wouldn’t want to provoke another beat-down from Daddy. Fear of backlash keeps Democrats from taking a stand on what they supposedly stand for.

The syndrome is largely generational, Ryan Grim explains in the Washington Post. Or else not an affliction shared by politicians such as Elizabeth Warren. She did not become engaged in national politics until after 2000. Or Bernie Sanders. He was mayor of Burlington, Vermont during the Reagan years.

For Democrats with even more tenure, the syndrome dates not from 1994 but from the year Ronald Reagan (with an assist from John Anderson) swept Democrats from power for over a decade. Sens. George McGovern, Frank Church, and Birch Bayh lost their seats, and nine others. “When these leaders plead for their party to stay in the middle,” the D.C. bureau chief at The Intercept writes, “they’re crouching into the defensive posture they’ve been used to since November 1980, afraid that if they come across as harebrained liberals, voters will turn them out again.”

The lesson survivors took from 1980, Grim believes, is the Reagan Revolution was payback for liberal activism of the late 1960s and beyond.

The insurgent class of new Democrats on the Hill find their elders’ reflexive crouch as frustrating as it is puzzling. On issue after issue, leadership shies from taking a stand on points that progressive activists see as matters of principle and justice:

For people under a certain age, this slinking in the corner is deeply strange behavior. Young people in the 1990s watched Bill Clinton work with Republicans — to overhaul welfare, try to cut Social Security, deregulate Wall Street — only to see them turn around and impeach him. In the 2000s, they watched Democrats halfheartedly support a war they opposed. Then Obama tried to compromise with Republicans on the size of a post-crash stimulus and the nature of the Affordable Care Act.

None of it calmed Republicans, as younger lawmakers see it, so why not try something else? “The older members really cling to the idea that things are going to go ‘back to normal’ ” after Trump, Ocasio-Cortez told me. “For us, it’s never been normal, and before that the bipartisanship was s—ty anyway and gave us the War on Drugs, DOMA” — the Defense of Marriage Act, which barred federal recognition or benefits for same-sex couples — “and stripping the leg[islative] branch of everything.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has urged her House caucus to hew to the middle and “not engage in some of the other exuberances that exist in our party.”

Grim responds:

For the newcomers, this is completely foreign. To them, Republicans shouldn’t be feared, they should be beaten. Ocasio-Cortez told me that she treats Republicans like buffoons because that’s how they’ve behaved for as long as she can remember. “Even before I was of voting age, I saw Republicans accuse the Obamas of doing a ‘terrorist fist bump,’ so they’ve been clowns since I was a teen,” she said.

The hope and change Obama promised did not pan out as young progressives hoped. He had taught them to engage. They stayed engaged. Now they must push a party living in fear of the past to snap out of it.

Ocasio-Cortez said she has seen how fear shapes senior members of her caucus and their approach to politics. “When it comes to defending why we don’t . . . push visionary legislation, I hear the line so frequently from senior members, ‘I want to win,’ ” she said. “But what they mean by that is, ‘I only want to introduce bills that have a 100 percent chance of passing almost unanimously.’ But for new members, what’s important isn’t just winning but fighting. I don’t care about losing in the short term, because we know we’re fighting for the long term.”

It is the difference between investing for quarterly profits versus gains over the long haul. It is the difference between repeating year after year that this is the most important election of our lifetimes and the decades-long project movement conservatives undertook to pack the courts and gerrymander legislatures and Congress.

The Intercept strikes an anti-Democratic establishment posture evident in Grim’s op-ed. Nonetheless, the psychological tilt to that establishment he highlights stokes the tension with the new generation not bearing their elders’ scars.

Add to the risks that accompany over-caution the fact that after “expanding the use of drones to kill militants overseas, ramping up deportations of immigrants here, coming up short on health-care reform, failing to jail a single Wall Street executive for the lending and trading practices that blew up the global financial system or declining to investigate Bush administration officials for presiding over torture,” Republicans again cleaned Democrats’ clocks in 2010. One might argue that in itself is a product of Democratic reticence.

In 2017, I wrote here:

I used to love when the small liberal arts school I attended played football against bigger teams like Clemson. They had nothing to prove. They were expected to lose. Yet they would play their hearts out, use their heads, rise to the challenge, and play above their usual level. Sometimes against opponents a full head taller. It was as glorious as cheering for Rocky that very first time. That’s what American voters want to see. That’s who they want to vote for. Recklessness is a fault, but always playing it safe is not what leadership and heart looks like. And it is not what the times call for now. Legacy Democrats who call themselves “yellow dogs” risk being seen as just yellow.

No guts, no glory.

At a small gathering last weekend, someone asked who people supported for president. (I passed.) Joe Biden was the safe choice of everyone in the room except the one person under 40. He supported Harris. There is your generational divide.

In the mid-aughts, white kids in dreadlocks introduced a resolution to the Democrats’ state convention in support of industrial hemp as a replacement crop for struggling North Carolina tobacco growers. Veteran Democrats of a certain age were horrified. What would Republicans say at election time, they asked, and succeeded in shutting down the meeting. A decade later, the state authorized an industrial hemp pilot program and there are several CBD oil stores within a mile, one beside the neighborhood Chinese takeout.

Saturday Night at the Movies




Summertime Blus Part One: Best BD re-issues of 2019 (so far)

By Dennis Hartley

Since we’re halfway through 2019 (already?) I thought I’d apprise you of some of the latest and greatest Blu-ray reissues I’ve picked up so far this year. 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! In alphabetical order…

The Andromeda Strain (Arrow Films) – What’s the scariest monster? The one you cannot see. Robert Wise directs this 1971 sci-fi thriller, adapted from Michael Crichton’s best-seller by Nelson Gidding. A team of scientists race the clock to save the world from a deadly virus from outer space that replicates with alarming efficiency. The team is restricted to a hermetically sealed environment until they can figure a way to destroy the microbial intruder, making this film a nail-biter from start to finish. Arrow has done an outstanding restoration job (sourced from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative). The mono audio is clean and clear (highlighting Gil Melle’s electronic score). Extras include Bryan Reesman’s engaging commentary, critic appreciations, and more.

Atomic Cafe(Kino-Lorber) – This cautionary 1982 documentary was written and directed by Jayne Loader, Pierce Rafferty and Kevin Rafferty; a cleverly assembled mélange of footage culled from U.S. government propaganda shorts from the Cold War era. In addition to the Civil Defense campaigns (like the classic “duck and cover” tutorials) the filmmakers also draw from military training films. Harrowing, perversely entertaining, and timely as ever… it’s a must-see for anyone who cares about the future of humanity. Image quality of this 16mm production is excellent (be aware that not all the source archival footage has been restored, per se). Extras include a 2018 interview with the 3 co-directors, plus full-length versions of 11 vintage government propaganda shorts.

Backbeat  (Shout! Factory) – By the time the Beatles “debuted” on The Ed Sullivan Show in early 1964, they already had a rich 7-year history. The four polished pros in their slick suits didn’t just pop out of Liverpool fully formed as such; they had already paid their dues toiling in sweaty cellar clubs and seedy strip joints. The most formative (and tumultuous) time for the band was the pre-Ringo “Hamburg period”, a series of gigs in Germany from 1960-1962. Iain Softley’s 1994 drama is set during this period and lasers in on the close, volatile friendship between John Lennon (Ian Hart) and original Beatles bassist Stu Sutcliff (Stephen Dorff). The film also delves into Sutcliff’s star-crossed relationship with a beautiful German hipster named Astrid Kircherr (Sheryl Lee), who is credited for inspiring the band’s signature “mop top” haircuts. Kircherr also encouraged Sutcliff to pursue his painting (he was much more accomplished as an artist than as a musician). Absorbing take on a fascinating and bittersweet chapter of the band’s history, with sensitive acting and direction. Shout! Factory’s 2K transfer is sharp and audio is dynamic. Extras include commentary track by Iain Softley, Ian Hart, and Stephen Dorff.

Bellman and True  (Indicator Series; Region “B”) – This 1987 sleeper is an off-beat heist caper from eclectic writer-director Richard Loncraine (Brimstone & Treacle, The Missionary, Richard III, et.al.). Bernard Hill stars as a computer system engineer named Hiller who finds himself reluctantly beholden to a criminal gang he had briefly fallen in with previously. They have kidnapped his teenage son and threaten to do him harm if Hiller doesn’t help them disable the alarm system at the bank they’re planning to rob. The one advantage he holds over his “partners” is his intelligence and technical know-how, but the big question is whether he gets an opportunity to turn the tables in time without endangering himself or his son. A unique, character-driven crime film, with cheeky dialog and surprising twists (Desmond Lowden co-adapted the screenplay from his own novel with Loncraine and Michael Wearing). Indicator’s limited edition boasts a nice hi-def remaster and includes both the 122-minute pre-release version that premiered at the 1987 London Film Festival and original 114-minute UK theatrical cut of the film.

The Big Clock   (Arrow Academy; Region “B”) – I hesitate to tag John Farrow’s 1948 crime drama as a “film noir”, because it contains a fair amount of levity…but enough genre experts have labelled it as such for it to qualify, I suppose. Whatever you choose to call it will not detract from the fact that it is a marvelous film, from start to finish. The story (adapted by Jonathan Latimer from Kenneth Fearing’s novel) centers on a harried “true crime” magazine editor (Ray Milland), who is scrambling to tie up loose ends at work so he can finally split town on a long overdue vacation with his wife (Maureen O’Sullivan). However, his ever-demanding boss (Charles Laughton) obstructs his plans at the last minute…and apparently for the last time, as it prompts Milland to announce his resignation and storm out of the office. He ends up getting blind drunk with his boss’s mistress (Rita Johnson). Later that evening, she is murdered by Laughton-who craftily proceeds to frame Milland for the deed. A cleverly constructed game of wits ensues. Fabulous supporting cast; with Elsa Lanchester a standout as a kooky artist. The image quality is spectacular (taken from original film elements). Arrow adds a generous helping of extras, including a rare hour-long 1948 radio dramatization by the Lux Radio Theatre.

Bitter Moon (Kino-Lorber) – This 1992 entry from Roman Polanski seems to have been largely ignored and forgotten, but I think it’s due for serious reappraisal (especially considering the popularity of the comparatively juvenile “50 Shades of Grey” franchise…the parallels will become clear as you read on). Polanski adapted the screenplay (with Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn) from Pascal Bruckner’s novel, which centers on the twisted relationship between a misanthropic paraplegic (Peter Coyote) and his beautiful young wife (Emmanuelle Seigner). The couples’ dark history is recounted in flashbacks as Coyote gleefully shares his increasingly BDSM-leaning tale with a perpetually gob smacked Hugh Grant. Grant plays a young, uptight Englishman who is vacationing on the same cruise ship with his wife (Kristen Scott Thomas). Against his better judgement, Grant finds himself becoming wildly attracted to the flirty Seigner. Are they playing a sick game with him? No spoilers! I think it’s one of Coyote’s finest performances; even if he does seem cast against type. Dark and disturbing, yet blackly comic (Polanski’s specialty). An intelligently written drama for adults (yes, a rarity). Vangelis did the score. Great transfer, and an entertaining commentary by Troy Howarth.

Detour  (Criterion Collection) – Many consider Edgar G. Ulmer’s artfully pulpy 1945 programmer as one of the greatest no-budget “B” crime dramas ever made. This is the “one” that hardcore film noir aficionados have been praying for “someone” to properly restore, and Criterion has delivered in spades (the movie had been languishing in “public domain” for years, precipitating a seemingly infinite number of fuzzy home video iterations of varyingly horrid quality). Clocking in at just under 70 minutes, the story follows a down-on-his-luck musician (Tom Neal) with whom fate, and circumstance have saddled with (first) a dead body, and then (worst) a hitchhiker from Hell (Ann Savage, in a wondrously demented performance). In short, he is not having a good night. Truly one of the darkest noirs of them all. I cannot say enough about the 4K digital restoration…it is a revelation and should help the film garner a new generation of fans (I also suspect that aspiring filmmakers can learn much about how to do more with less by studying it!).

The Earthling   (Kino-Lorber) – The late William Holden had a distinguished career that began in the late 1930s and ended with his untimely death in 1981 (his final role was in the Blake Edwards comedy S.O.B., released that year). In an interview on TCM last year, his widow (actress Stephanie Powers) stated one of his favorite roles was playing the lead in this small 1980 drama. Holden plays a terminally ill drifter who returns to his native Australia for the first time in years, to take one final solitary hike to the isolated homestead where he grew up. By chance, he crosses paths with a dazed young boy (Ricky Schroeder) who is wandering around the wilderness after witnessing the death of his parents in a freak accident. At first, he is gruff and indifferent to the boy (almost cruelly so); but necessity sparks a “master and apprentice” relationship between the two as they forge on through the wild. Peter Collinson directed this unique and moving film. No extras, but Kino’s new 2K mastering nicely accentuates the beautiful scenic locations.

Summertime Blus Part II coming next week — just in time for Amazon Prime day …

More reviews at Den of Cinema
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— Dennis Hartley

Then Again, It Likely Won’t 

by tristero

Maureen Dowd sits down with Pelosi:

While the number of House Democrats who want an impeachment inquiry is growing — it’s up to 80 now — Pelosi knows that giving in to that primal pleasure could backfire.

Then again, it likely won’t.

As president, Trump has demonstrated that he is existentially dangerous. Seriously, there is no excuse not to impeach. Doesn’t Pelosi realize she will go down in history — assuming there’s anyone left to write it — as the person who failed to do everything within her power to prevent a global catastrophe?

There are many things in American poltics that are close calls, but impeaching Trump is simply not among them. This is disgraceful.

PS Despite what Dowd cynically writes, no one with an ounce of civic integrity — absolutely no one, — will take any pleasure in impeaching a president. But it has to be done.

More Trumpies at the mall

by digby

All sides have their weirdos and their cranks who show up at big public gatherings. But the Trump followers are really something else:

Arriving early at the Mall for Donald Trump’s “Salute to America” event on Independence Day, I saw no tanks. But I did see, everywhere, the face of John F. Kennedy, Jr.—on hand fans, on signs, and, in one instance, as a cutout fixed to the back of a chair. The chair belonged to a dark haired and trimly bearded forty-something man and a blonde woman of about the same age. Both wore red T-shirts prominently featuring the letter Q and some other indecipherable text. I asked the woman what “Q” meant. She smiled warmly.

“What I believe it is, is a military operation that is communicating with the public,” said the woman, a follower of Q, a mysterious online conspiracy theorist who claims to have top-secret information about various plots and intrigues involving the Trump Administration and the wider political world. “I don’t think it’s just one person,” she added, explaining that posts on the Web site were perhaps written by Donald Trump himself. I then asked what the J.F.K., Jr. cutout was all about.

“You know how he died, right?”

“A plane crash,” I replied.

“So there’s a theory that there’s a possibility, that, maybe . . . ”

She smiled almost apologetically.

“ . . . he didn’t actually perish.”

“I see,” I said.

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“That he staged his own death. In order to not only avenge his father’s death—J.F.K., who was assassinated—but also to take back our government. So it’s for the people, not an elite group.”

“So, he’s working with Trump to do that?” I asked.

“Possibly. Wouldn’t it be a neat ticket for 2020?”

I replied that it would be an interesting one.

As the President’s speech drew closer, the crowd thickened. Conversations broke out. I overheard a short blonde woman in a parka talking to a young man in an American flag shirt about clashes that had taken place between the far-right group the Proud Boys and anti-fascist protesters in Portland. The woman argued that the Mafia would not have tolerated open violence in the streets back in its heyday. She was Italian, she said by way of explanation. A minute or two later, the pair turned to the annual Independence Day parade that had taken place that morning.

“You know what I found interesting about the parade?” she asked. “The Taiwan-Americans, the Sikh-Americans, the Chinese-Americans playing ‘I’m proud to be an American, where at least . . . ,’ you know?”

“How did that make you feel?” the young man asked.

“It actually made me cry,” she said. “It was so nice to see them be grateful to America for giving them a better life!”

“Yeah, it really is!”

“But what you didn’t see,” she continued, “were Muslims. Muslim-Americans. Almost every different sect was represented except for the Muslims. They don’t want to assimilate.”

At about this point I decided to ask the woman, who had said she was Italian, how her ancestor or ancestors had come to the country; perhaps through Ellis Island?

“He was a stowaway, actually,” she replied. “He killed a man.” Then she turned away.

Some seconds passed in silence. I then asked her, with an apology for the question, whether she believed that a Mexican immigrant who had killed a man should be allowed to cross the border and enter the country. She considered this for half a moment.

“It was a different time,” she said. “Around the turn of the century! And, I mean, this was an honor killing, you know? The man was flirting with his girlfriend.”

Well, ok then.

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Ugly America

by digby

Our history is replete with ugliness. Progress has been made in fits and starts. But we are going backwards at warp speed at the moment. People with the worst impulses of the America psyche are in power and they are out of control.

We are quickly becoming a global pariah. And for good reason. Just one example:

A German-Iranian father who wanted to travel to the United States to attend his son’s funeral was denied a three-day visa because the US said he was using “fraud or willfully misrepresenting a material fact” to obtain it.

Dr. Seyed Shahram Iranbomy’s 20-year-old son Irman (pictured above) died in a car accident in the capital Washington on June 10. He had been studying at a university in the US where his mother also lives.

Iranbomy, a human rights and discrimination lawyer who runs his own law firm in Frankfurt, told DW that the US consulate said he was taking advantage of his son’s death to immigrate to the US.

‘Using the death of your son’

DW has received photographs of official US consulate documents from Iranbomy that state he was denied a non-immigrant visa because he “sought to procure a visa, other documentation, admission to the US, or immigration benefit by fraud or willfully misrepresenting a material fact.”

“You’re using the death of your son to immigrate to America, you’re not telling the truth,” Iranbomy quoted the US consulate as saying. He said he was also told that he “did not have roots in Germany.”

Iranbomy was born in Iran but has German citizenship and has lived in the country for more than 40 years. “I am more German than Iranian,” he told DW. He said he was not interested in moving to the US.

The US consulate in Frankfurt declined to comment on the outcome of his visa application to DW, saying that all such cases are confidential and can only be discussed with the applicant. Iranbomy said he had appealed the decision but was yet to receive a response.

Iranbomy was denied the US visa he needed to attend his son’s funeral

During Barack Obama’s presidency, he had received a 10-year visa for both business and leisure travel, but this was revoked in May 2017 after current US President Donald Trump took office.

Iranbomy’s story has been picked up by local German media outlets, including daily newspapers Frankfurter Rundschau and Frankfurter Neue Presse.

Iranbomy told DW his son was an active young man. He had attended a youth parliament session at the German Bundestag in Berlin just a few days before his death, and was also a commander in the youth fire brigade.

Frankfurt Mayor Peter Feldmann wrote a letter of support to Patricia Lacina, the current consul general at the US consulate in Frankfurt, to advocate for Iranbomy and asked her to review his visa application.

Iranbomy described himself to DW as “an American friend.” He is listed on the website of the US Consulate in Frankfurt as a lawyer for US citizens who need legal services in Germany. He said he has represented numerous Americans.

Meanwhile, we are putting little children in cages and leaving them in dirty diapers without enough to eat.

The president says they should decide not to come to America and then this wouldn’t happen to them. Basically, he’s punishing babies and children for the actions of their parents.

And his followers — tens of millions of our fellow Americans — are applauding that sadistic policy.

Yet the leaders of the opposition appear to be completely impotent. I’ve barely seen a congressional Democrat on TV this week-end. And it’s not even an election year so they don’t have to be door knocking or phone banking right now.

They’re coasting — while the country hurtles backwards.

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Dispatch from the freak show

by digby

The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer covers the Proud Boys and other far-right groups. Here’s the latest. It’s not going well for them:

A far-right rally scheduled for downtown Washington on Saturday has been thrown into disarray by dramatic allegations centering on cocaine, a love triangle, and the far-right Proud Boys men’s group.

“The Proud Boys? More like the Joke Boys,” Republican congressional candidate Omar Navarro, a key player in the bizarre feud, told The Daily Beast.

The drama has torn apart one-time allies prominent on the pro-Trump internet and cost the so-called “Demand Free Speech” rally at least one speaker, after other prominent right-wing celebrities already cited other reasons for not appearing. While the rally was meant to protest the banning of conservative figures from social media, the surrounding drama has cast a shadow over the event.

On one side of the fight: Navarro, a perennial challenger to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) whose losing campaigns against the liberal stalwart have become a cause celebre on the right.

On the other: the Proud Boys, the all-male group of self-described “Western chauvinists,” and DeAnna Lorraine, a self-styled MAGA relationship expert and Navarro’s ex-girlfriend.

The clash became public late on Wednesday night, when Navarro tweeted that Lorraine had been using cocaine and “sleeping with the proud boys.” Navarro declared that he would no longer speak at Saturday’s rally, which was organized in part by top Proud Boy leaders.

“I found this girl I dated is doing cocaine and sleeping with the proud boys I cannot agree with the drug lifestyle they follow,” Navarro tweeted.

Navarro’s withdrawal from Saturday’s rally comes after the event has already lost other speakers. Former Pizzagate conspiracy theory promoter Mike Cernovich had also been on the event’s bill, but said earlier this week that he wouldn’t attend. Fellow former Pizzagate advocate Jack Posobiec has also suggested he may not attend, despite being listed as a speaker on the rally’s website.

In his tweets, Navarro made a series of allegations, claiming that Lorraine had, through the Proud Boys, threatened him “because I said I would expose the cocaine use including hers.” (Lorraine has denied using cocaine, while the Proud Boys describe themselves as “pro-drug.”)

“I denounce the proud boys as of today,” Navarro wrote. “@DeAnnaTLorraine used the proud boys to threaten my life with eminent danger [sic] because I said I would expose the cocaine use including hers. I don’t mind getting kicked out of free speech rally to stand for truth”

Complicating matters further, Navarro is still married to another woman, who he describes in a tweet as “my soon to be ex-wife.” In one tweet, Navarro chastised Lorraine, who says she dated Navarro for a few months earlier this year, for having a relationship with him while he was married.

“@DeAnnaTLorraine didn’t have a problem having an affair with me, so you shouldn’t be dating married men,” Navarro wrote.

Navarro’s tweets followed a tense confrontation that night at Harry’s Restaurant, a divey downtown Washington restaurant popular with that set of pro-Trump personalities.

Lorraine and other conservative figures associated with the rally had gathered at Harry’s the night before the Trump-centric 4th of July celebration in Washington. They were joined by the Proud Boys, a far-right club designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Proud Boys have been charged with violent attacks against their political opponents and must adhere to a series of rules, including restrictions on how much they can masturbate.

Just a few months earlier, Navarro and Lorraine had organized a “Tribute to Men” at the same restaurant. But when Navarro arrived there on Wednesday night, he wasn’t in a celebratory mood.

Accounts differ on what happened at the restaurant. Navarro claims that he was upset about organizational details of Saturday’s rally, and was confronted by a Proud Boy behaving “like an animal.”

Lorraine and other witnesses, meanwhile, claim that Navarro was acting aggressively towards Lorraine and had to be separated from her by a Proud Boy.

“He started intimidating and threatening me and another woman,” Lorraine said.

Rally organizer Adrienna Dicioccio told The Daily Beast that Navarro “tried to start a situation” at the restaurant.

“He got really disgusting that night,” said Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio.

As Navarro left the restaurant, the Proud Boys yelled that they were banning him from their men’s club, according to Lorraine.

“They said ‘we’re disavowing you, you are no longer one of us, you can’t claim to be one of us,’” she said.

In response, Lorraine said, Navarro vowed to blast the Proud Boys on social media.

“He said at the bar, ‘I’m going to go off on you guys on Twitter,’” Lorraine said, adding that Navarro had regularly threatened in the past to ruin her career as a conservative personality with allegations on Twitter.

Navarro denies any wrongdoing at the restaurant.

“The Proud Boys are just as bad as antifa is,” Navarro said. “The Proud Boys are a bunch of drunk guys who are accusing me of being drunk.”

Navarro sent his tweets shortly after leaving the restaurant. But the feud didn’t end there.

The Proud Boys responded to Navarro on Wednesday with a late-night Periscope livestream shot in a backyard somewhere in the Washington area, starring right-wing personality and former InfoWars staffer Joe Biggs.

“A punk-ass bitch named Omar Navarro is running his fucking mouth, and he’s about to get the smackdown, know what I’m saying,” Biggs said, adding that Navarro was attacking the Proud Boys because “he can’t satisfy his motherfucking woman.”

Tarrio chimed in, claiming that Navarro runs his quixotic campaigns against Waters in an attempt to make money from gullible conservative donors. Navarro lost his last two races against Waters by more than 50 percentage points.

“He admitted to me that he stands no chance against Maxine Waters, and he admitted to me that he’s doing it just to get donations from you guys,” Tarrio said in the video.

Ethan Nordean, who has become something of a celebrity Proud Boy in the group because of a viral clip of him punching a left-wing antifascist in a fight, fumed in the background.

As the video ends, Biggs declares that Navarro has been “fucking banished” from the Proud Boys.

“The helicopter blades are spinning,” a person off-camera warns as the clip ends, a reference to the Proud Boys’ fondness for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose regime executed its opponents by throwing them from helicopters.

Navarro said the Proud Boys in the video were clearly on drugs.

“They’re disgusting, they’re reprehensible, they are a joke of an organization,” Navarro said. “They should be the Proud Jokes, not the Proud Boys.”

The feud has also drawn in other right-wing personalities. On Telegram, anti-Muslim British activist and Saturday rally speaker Milo Yiannopoulos called Navarro “a piece of work.”

Now that he’s on the outs with his one-time allies, Navarro is happy to detail more allegations against them. He urged The Daily Beast to find evidence of Lorraine using cocaine at Harry’s, and asked The Daily Beast to send a reporter to the Proud Boys annual Las Vegas convention, where he promised there would be “some pretty compromising stuff.”

“These guys are completely disgusting—they sleep with women that are married,” Navarro said.

Lorraine denied using cocaine, and said she has never had a relationship with a Proud Boy.

“I’ve never even kissed a Proud Boy,” Lorraine, the author of pro-Trump relationship guide Making Love Great Again, said.

The Proud Boys, on the other hand, aren’t as reluctant to discuss drug use. In a post to Telegram, which Proud Boys and many of their allies have been forced to use after being kicked off Twitter and Facebook, the Proud Boys mocked Navarro for his prudish attitude towards cocaine.

“I’m sure people are shocked to hear there was cocaine at a party in DC too!” the group wrote. “Shocking development asshole.”

Tarrio said he wasn’t sure what cocaine use Navarro was referring to, but wasn’t concerned about the allegation.

“Regardless, we’re pro-drugs,” Tarrio said.

As for Navarro, he’s running against Waters in 2020—this time without even the right-wing allies who helped him in the past. While he had been planning to protest social media bans at the rally on Saturday, he now says Twitter was right to ban some of the people coming to the event.

“Most of them are blocked on Twitter for the right reasons,” he said.

If Trump didn’t have so many red hats in law enforcement (especially the federal agencies at the border) we could all rest easy that these are his “shock troops.” They are violent but they are also ridiculous.

Update: The rally

The DC right wing rally includes these people who claim Prince — and a lot of other celebrities who died tragically — were actually murdered. They claim they have “psychic evidence.” pic.twitter.com/EOsJmOppQZ— Will Sommer (@willsommer) July 6, 2019

There are about 200 or so people at the Proud Boys rally. Many more across the street at the counter protest. pic.twitter.com/GtQ3IUbF4i— Will Sommer (@willsommer) July 6, 2019

Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes takes the stage in fake handcuffs to make a point, but then can’t get them off. Someone has to help him. pic.twitter.com/lUKRZ4C63y— Will Sommer (@willsommer) July 6, 2019

Milo Yiannopoulos takes the stage dressed in a not particularly flattering Laura Loomer costume, starts unrolling her litany of gripes with other conservative activists. pic.twitter.com/qbtILviJwE— Will Sommer (@willsommer) July 6, 2019

Crowd is not really digging Milo’s surprisingly vicious Laura Loomer impression. People drifting away towards barrier separating them from Antifa, as Milo as Loomer declares she’s been “banned from the hotel buffet.”— Will Sommer (@willsommer) July 6, 2019

Ok.

A Trump voter

by digby

Reporter @EmmaVigeland: Do you think Joe Biden is a socialist?

Trump supporter: Yes.

Reporter: How would you define socialism?

Trump supporter: I define socialism as when you bring down your own country, your own race, because he’s not black.

🎥@TheYoungTurks pic.twitter.com/KWE7h3gXfR— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) July 6, 2019

I esepcially like a Trump voter condemning Biden for having a big ego. It’s exactly what Trump would say.

They are him and he is them.

.

Real Americans don’t ask
by Tom Sullivan

F-35 Lightning. Photo Public Domain via Wikipedia.

“After spending trillions on endless wars in the Middle East over the past few decades,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) tweeted July 4, “I don’t want to hear one person tell me that we can’t afford to invest in free public colleges and universities.”

For that matter, how exactly do we “pay for” Medicare for All? Yves Smith asked facetiously in an April 2018 post:

• The same way that we just “paid for” $700,000,000,000 for a single year of military funding.
• The same way that we just “paid for” $1,500,000,000,000 in tax cuts for the wealthy.
• The same way that we “paid for” a $1,300,000,000,000 fighter jet in 2016.
• The same way that the United States has always “paid for” all of the fantastically-expensive things that benefit the powerful: Immediately and without discussion. Because they want it.

Khanna linked to a July 2018 Buzzfeed opinion piece by Lindsay Koshgarian, National Priorities Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies. Koshgarian challenges Village thinking on such spending as well as the cost of maintaining a global empire:

When Donald Trump lashed out at our NATO allies for not spending enough money on defense, he unintentionally highlighted just how expensive the US’s military spending addiction really is. If we trimmed our defense budget down to the 2% of GDP that Trump demanded of the NATO countries, it would free up about $3 trillion over the next decade, as the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein noted.

Estimates are all over the place on just what the U.S. spends annually to maintain its global empire. In part, because the Pentagon hides an unspecified chunk of it. The Institute for Policy studies estimated in 2009 the United States “spends approximately
$250 billion annually to maintain troops, equipment, fleets, and bases overseas.” Well over 800 foreign bases, to be inexact, part of a military complex that included (at the time) 545,000 facilities at 5,300 sites both in the United States and around the globe. Politico estimated the costs of overseas adventurism at $160 to $200 billion for 2014.

The Nation published new estimates in January 2019 based on the Pentagon’s 2017 Base Structure Report. Nick Turse elaborates:

Officially, the Department of Defense (DoD) maintains 4,775 “sites,” spread across all 50 states, eight US territories, and 45 foreign countries. A total of 514 of these outposts are located overseas, according to the Pentagon’s worldwide property portfolio.

The most recent report fails to list bases known to exist but officially unacknowledged.

The Department of Defense even boasts that its “locations” include 164 countries. Put another way, it has a military presence of some sort in approximately 84 percent of the nations on this planet …

Bases. Sites. Facilities. Installations. Outposts. Locations. How many there are and what they cost depends on what they’re called and how they’re counted. Many, out of sight, out of mind, and off-budget.

Real Americans™ don’t ask, “How you are going to pay for it?” Until it comes to domestic spending.

“It just seems like their pockets are only empty when we’re talking about education and investing in human capital in the United States: education, healthcare, housing, and investing in the middle class,” future member of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told Pod Save America last August.

Yves Smith continued:

Spending even one more second discussing how we will pay for Medicare for All (or any program that benefits the powerless) is a supreme and cosmic waste of time. In fact, the entire “pay for” question is a sham and a scam, and a trap and a trick. It is cruel and unfair to the millions and millions of Americans that are suffering from ailments, stress, red tape, and bankruptcy.

Smith appended an April 2018 LOLGOP/Eclecta Blog interview with Stephanie Kelton, professor of public policy and economics at Stony Brook University. Kelton is a former chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee in 2015 and in 2016, and was senior economic adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign. Without diving into Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)* and pretending I understand it, I’ll offer her moral and strategic argument for not getting tripped up by the “pay for it” ploy:

I am a strong advocate of encouraging Democrats to pick separate fights. [I believe they should stop linking] the fight of increasing taxes on the rich with the desire to increase spending on programs the Democrats like. For example, to say that you want to make public colleges and universities tuition free and the way we’re going to do that is through a tax on Wall Street speculation. Or we’re going to tax the rich to pay for Medicare for All. Or we’re going to close tax loopholes to do infrastructure. Or whatever the case may be.

I am absolutely in favor of dealing with disparities [such as] income and wealth inequality, and concentrations of wealth in the hands of a smaller and smaller few. It’s bad for democracy, it’s bad for the functioning of our economy. There are a whole bunch of reasons why I will make the case for increasing taxes on the wealthy.

I will not make the argument that we need to increase taxes on the wealthy in order to pay for crumbling infrastructure and take care of the elderly and so forth. Here’s the reason why: I think it’s cruel and unfair to the sick and the poor and the hungry and to our environment and everything else. To tie these fights together in a way that says, “unless and until.” Unless and until we can “win” on higher taxes, whether it’s carbon tax or [any other kind]. Unless and until we can get the money from “them,” we can’t take care of our people or communities or planet.

That drives me mad. I don’t think we have time to wait around while we try to pick a few [billions] off the billionaire class before we deal with the really serious threats that we face today. We have to decouple these fights. You fight for higher taxes by all means. Go and have that fight. But don’t link success on the other front to your success on [this one]. I’ve watched it fail and fail and fail.

If modern fiscal conservatives were running the show in 1941, they might have dithered over costs while Europe and the Pacific fell to tyranny. Except they wouldn’t have. Real Americans™ don’t ask, “How you are going to pay for it?” when the exercise involves war spending that lines the right people’s pockets. Nor do they ask when a would-be autocrat — another “small man in search of a balcony” — asks taxpayers to finance his militarized effort to show other autocrats he is one of them. They have their priorities. It’s just that their priorities are not those of sixty-plus percent of the American public.

Meanwhile, starved of funds, the birthplace of American liberty descends further into disrepair.**

* What Is Modern Monetary Theory (with Stephanie Kelton, Pitchfork Economics podcast April 23, 2019)

** [h/t Susie Madrak]

Friday Night Soother

by digby

Baby snow leopards!

These rare snow leopard brothers are the first products of four years of attempts to breed the endangered animals at a U.K. sanctuary.

The cubs are part of an international breeding program to help maintain genetic diversity in the captive population. https://t.co/9kRafNCCJe pic.twitter.com/XO8NCuRP7S

— ABC News (@ABC) July 5, 2019

Some more snow leopard cub footage:

The cub is the second-generation offspring of Leo – a Snow Leopard who was rescued as a young orphaned cub after being found in the high mountains of northern Pakistan in 2005. Leo was brought to the Bronx Zoo in 2006 as part of a historic collaboration between WCS and the U.S. and Pakistani governments.

The cub’s father, Naltar, was sired by Leo in 2013.

“This Snow Leopard cub is special not only because it is an ambassador for its species, but because of its lineage,” said Dr. Patrick Thomas, WCS Vice President and General Curator, and Bronx Zoo Associate Director who was part of the delegation who brought Leo from Pakistan. “Leo and his descendants, including this cub, will help bolster the health and genetics of the Snow Leopard population in AZA-accredited zoos.”

More than 70 cubs have been born at the Bronx Zoo – more the than any other zoo in North America – and the Bronx was the first zoo in the United States to exhibit the species in 1903. The Bronx Zoo breeds Snow Leopards as part of the Species Survival Plan (SSP), a cooperative breeding program designed to enhance the genetic viability of animal populations in zoos and aquariums accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).

Snow Leopards are native to remote mountains of Central Asia and parts of China, Mongolia, Russia, India and Bhutan. WCS has worked for decades on Snow Leopard conservation programs in the field with current projects in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and western China. Past projects have also included work with Snow Leopards in Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia.

In Pakistan, WCS has been implementing a community-based conservation program since 1997 to help protect the Snow Leopard and other wildlife. The program includes education, training, and institution building for community resource management. WCS has helped create over 60 natural resource committees and trained over 100 community rangers to monitor Snow Leopards and other wildlife and stop deforestation and poaching that threatens these species and local livelihoods.

As a result of ongoing conservation efforts, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently reclassified Snow Leopards from Endangered to Threatened. The species’ survival is still at risk and continues to face threats that stem from human activities such as habitat loss and illegal killings.