Skip to content

Month: August 2019

A funny people: A Faithful Man (***½) By Dennis Hartley

Saturday Night at the Movies

A funny people: A Faithful Man (***½)

By Dennis Hartley

Humorist Matt Groening once defined “cinema’s greatest paradox” thusly: “Sex is funny. The French are a funny people. Then why is it that no French sex comedies are funny?”

In my observation, over decades spent sitting in dark auditoriums munching on popcorn while gazing up at flickering images, sex comedies with subtitles have never struck me to be any less funny, nor particularly funnier than…sex comedies without them. It’s a wash.

In other words, Groening had me at “sex is funny.”

In my review of the late French director Eric Rohmer’s 1996 (wait for it) “sex comedy” A Summer’s Tale, I described it as “a movie where the characters spend more screen time dissecting the complexities of male-female relationships than actually experiencing them.” I think that also serves as a good working definition of most French sex comedies.

That is not to say that there are no “good” French sex comedies. Take A Faithful Man (aka “L’homme fidele”). It is very good. And it is very funny. And it is very short. Although it clocks in at 72 minutes, I’m guessing A Faithful Man says more about life, love, and the pursuit of happiness than, say, Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw does in 136 minutes. Granted, I haven’t reviewed Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw-but seeing it took in $79,083,205 in its first week, it’ll limp by without my 2 cents.


Fashioning a narrative with the brevity of a fable, writer-director-star Louis Garrel and his veteran co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Belle de Jour, That Obscure Object of Desire, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Return of Martin Guerre, et al) dive right in. In the opening scene, 30-something Parisian Abel (Garrel) gets dumped by his girlfriend Marianne (Laetitia Casta). The double whammy: she tells Abel 1) she is pregnant by his best friend Paul and 2) they’ve set a wedding date.

Abel takes this in with relative calm. Perhaps it’s shock. Perhaps he was expecting this; perhaps not. Perhaps… he’s French. He asks a pragmatic question: this is sudden; may he keep his stuff at the apartment for now? She suggests it would be best if he starts packing.

Marianne marries Abel’s friend Paul. 8 years pass; Paul (we are told) dies unexpectedly.

One thing leads to another, and Abel and Marianne are back together (it’s been an eventful 10 minutes). There are, of course, complications this time around. There is Marianne’s son Joseph (Joseph Engel), now a precocious 8-year old not quite ready to give Abel his stamp of approval. And there is the departed Paul’s little sister Eve (Lily-Rose Depp, daughter of Vanessa Paradis and Johnny Depp), now a comely child-woman who (it turns out) has been infatuated with Abel since she was knee-high to a sauterelle.

It’s a messy love triangle that would make Eric Rohmer proud. What ensues recalls Hannah and Her Sisters (especially in how characters provide first person exposition via voiceover) with a touch of Dangerous Liaisons (interestingly, co-writer Carrière’s screenwriting credits include Valmont, the 1989 adaptation from the same source novel).

Despite obvious influences, Garrel’s film is original, inventive and engaging. Casta and Depp are charming and charismatic, and Garrel’s performance as a malleable pushover perpetually confounded by the mysteries of amour reminded me of Francois Truffaut muse Jean-Pierre Léaud’s recurring “Antoine Doinel” character (particularly in Love on the Run). Cinematographer Irina Lubtchansky makes good use of the lovely Paris locales.

In a movie season I’ve been known to label “big, dumb and loud”, A Faithful Man could be that romantic late-summer getaway that the adults have been craving at the multiplex.

Previous posts with related themes:

A Summer’s Tale
On My Way & Le Weekend
Let the Sunshine In
The Freebie

Top 10 romantic comedies

More reviews at Den of Cinema
On Facebook
On Twitter

Dennis Hartley

When America had some common sense about guns…

When America had some common sense about guns…

by digby


Politicians used to be able to deal with a problem when it presented itself:

They were the mass shooters of their day, and all of America knew their names: John “the Killer” Dillinger, Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, George “Machine Gun” Kelly.


In the 1930s, the violence by the notorious gangsters was fueled by Thompson submachine guns, or Tommy guns, that fired up to 600 rounds of bullets in a minute. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was pressing Congress to act on his “New Deal for Crime,” specifically a bill officially called the National Firearms Act of 1934. Informally, it was known as the “Anti-Machine Gun Bill.”


At the time, “Pretty Boy” Floyd was on a killing spree. Clyde Barrow and his girlfriend, Bonnie Parker, were blazing a bloody path through Oklahoma with submachine guns and sawed-off shotguns. “Machine Gun” Kelly had recently been captured and sent to Leavenworth prison.

Dillinger, “with a submachine gun in his hands and a big green sedan awaiting him, shot his way out of a police trap today and once more foiled the law,” the Associated Press reported from St. Paul, Minn., in the spring of 1934.

The next week in Wisconsin, Dillinger killed a federal law enforcement officer in a hail of submachine gun bullets.

[Notorious gangster John Dillinger will be exhumed from his grave. It could finally put rumors to rest.]

Roosevelt’s firearms bill also proposed requiring newly purchased pistols and revolvers to be registered and owners to be fingerprinted. In February 1933 in Miami, a would-be assassin had fired a pistol at President-elect Roosevelt and then killed visiting Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak.

A 1934 photo of John Dillinger wielding his weapons near Moore, Ind. (AP)

The gun-control effort foreshadowed the current debate over assault rifles, the weapons used last weekend in mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. President Trump said Friday he is seeking stronger background checks for gun purchases, but also acknowledged that he has been speaking to the National Rifle Association about any new restrictions. Earlier in the week, he said he sees “no political appetite” for banning assault rifles. The NRA and gun rights advocates argue that such a ban would violate the Second Amendment, guaranteeing the right to bear arms.

In 1934, more than two dozen states passed gun-control laws. West Virginia required gun owners to be bonded and licensed. Michigan mandated that the police approve gun buyers. Texas banned machine guns.

“Why should desperadoes, brazen outlaws of the period be permitted to purchase these weapons of destruction?” the Waco News-Tribune editorialized.

Rather than a federal ban on machine guns, the Roosevelt administration proposed taxing the high-powered weapons virtually out of existence. It would place a $200 tax on the purchase of machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. The tax — equal to about $3,800 today — was steep at a time when the average annual income was about $1,780.

“A machine gun, of course, ought never to be in the hands of any private individual,” Attorney General Homer Cummings said at a House hearing. “There is not the slightest excuse for it, not the least in the world, and we must, if we are going to be successful in this effort to suppress crime in America, take these machine guns out of the hands of the criminal class.”

Nobody expected “the underworld to be going around giving their fingerprints and getting permits to carry these weapons,” Cummings said. But if they were caught with a gun that wasn’t registered, they could be charged with tax evasion, just as Chicago mobster Al Capone had been. “I want to be in a position, when I find such a person, to convict him because he has not complied,” the attorney general said.

While the proposed action might seem drastic, he added, “I think the sooner we get to the point where we are prepared to recognize the fact that the possession of deadly weapons must be regulated and checked, the better off we are going to be as a people.”

“I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses,” testified NRA President Karl Frederick, a New York lawyer. But he was dubious about the proposed law. “In my opinion, the useful results that can be accomplished by firearms legislation are extremely limited,” he said. The NRA at the time represented “hundreds of thousands” of gun owners but not gun manufacturers.

The NRA and groups representing hunters opposed extending the tax to pistols and revolvers. “It is a fact which cannot be refuted that a pistol or revolver in the hands of a man or woman who knows how to use it is one thing which makes the smallest man or the weakest woman the equal of the burliest thug,” argued Milton Reckord, the NRA’s executive vice president. But as for a bill limited to machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, he said, “We will go along with such a bill as that.”

Congress eventually stripped the bill of regulations on pistols and revolvers. When Democratic Rep. Lee Doughton of North Carolina introduced the final bill, he declared that the law would mean that the public no longer would be at the “mercy of the gangsters, racketeers and professional criminals.” But “law-abiding citizens who feel that a pistol or a revolver is essential in his home for the protection of himself and his family,” he said, “should not be compelled to register his firearms and have his fingerprints taken and placed in the same the same class with gangsters, racketeers, and those who are known as criminals.”

Congress passed the firearms act in June, and Roosevelt signed it into law along with more than 100 other bills. By 1937, federal officials reported that the sale of machine guns in the United States had practically ceased. In 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that law didn’t violate the Constitution.

Hundreds of illegal machine guns were still around, but a crackdown by law enforcement basically ended the run of gangster gun violence.

They thought they had done similar in the 1990s with the assault weapon ban. George W. Bush and the Republicans let the law lapse and here we are.

.

The right’s snowflake Hollywood tears

The right’s snowflake Hollywood tears

by digby

Universal has scrapped the release of “The Hunt”. It’s entirely appropriate for the studio to pull a film like this in the wake of the spate of mass shootings. Recall that they held back Schwarzenegger’s Collateral Damage after 9/11 and delayed the release of the 2017 remake of Death Wish after the Las Vegas massacre.Regardless of the right wing’s phony handwringing, it’s the smart thing to do in any case:

The studio’s decision came a day after President Trump took aim at the film, saying it was “made to inflame and cause chaos.” The story follows a group of elites hunting “deplorables” for sport.

Universal has decided to scrap the release of The Hunt — an R-rated satire in which elites hunt “deplorables” for sport — following a series of mass shootings across the country. The film had been set to hit theaters on Sept. 27.

The studio’s Saturday announcement came a day after President Donald Trump took aim at the film — though he didn’t name its title — and Hollywood, saying on Twitter, “Liberal Hollywood is Racist at the highest level, and with great Anger and Hate! They like to call themselves “Elite,” but they are not Elite. In fact, it is often the people that they so strongly oppose that are actually the Elite. The movie coming out is made in order to inflame and cause chaos. They create their own violence, and then try to blame others. They are the true Racists, and are very bad for our Country!”

Even before Trump weighed in, the movie sparked an outcry on social media amid the public anger over gun violence and networks entered into the conversation when ESPN pulled an ad for the film that it had previously cleared. Subsequently, Universal pulled all spots.

“While Universal Pictures had already paused the marketing campaign for The Hunt, after thoughtful consideration, the studio has decided to cancel our plans to release the film,” the studio said in Saturday’s statement. “We stand by our filmmakers and will continue to distribute films in partnership with bold and visionary creators, like those associated with this satirical social thriller, but we understand that now is not the right time to release this film.”

The violent movie from producer Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions follows a dozen individuals who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals.

Directed by Craig Zobel, The Hunt is written by Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse. The movie stars Betty Gilpin (GLOW) and Hilary Swank, representing opposite sides of the political divide.

“This was a decision that the studio came to with The Hunt filmmaking team, but ultimately it was about making the right decision, right now. It was a tough call for the company, but studio leadership, led by Donna Langley, all agreed that this film could wait,” a studio source said. (NBCUniversal’s parent company is giant Comcast.)

But it should be understood by all that the hoopla on the right about this is totally bogus. The movie is a social satire that skewers the “elite liberals” and the Deplorables alike. It’s obviously based on this old film.

And keep in mind that Trump’s favorite movie is “Death Wish”

I have a license to carry in New York. Can you believe that? Nobody knows that, [Applause] somebody attacks, somebody attacks me, oh, they’re gonna be shot.

Can you imagine? Somebody says, oh, it is Trump piece easy pickings what do you say? Right? Oh, boy. What was the famous movie? No. Remember, no remember where he went around and he sort of after his wife was hurt so badly and kill. [Inaudible] What?

I — Honestly, Yeah, right, it’s true, but you have many of them.

Famous movie

Somebody

You have many of them. Charles Bronson right the late great Charles Bronson name of the movie come on.  Death Wish, remember that?

Ah, we’re gonna cut you up, sir, we’re gonna cut you up, uh-huh.

Bing

One of the great movies.

Charles Bronson great Charles Bronson.  Great movies

Today you can’t make that movie because it’s not politically correct, right? It’s not politically correct. But could you imagine with Trump? Somebody says, oh, all these big monsters aren’t around he’s easy pickings and then shoot.

As I mentioned, they did do a remake of “Death Wish.” In fact, it was being made when Trump made his speech. Revenge movies are always being produced. Just ask the Attorney General of the United States — he loves them too, says they reflect the very natural belief among the American people that the judicial system sucks and there’s no way to get real Justice in the United States.

.

“Unfathomable”

“Unfathomable”

by digby

Harry Litman:

For anyone familiar with Bureau of Prisons standard operating procedures, Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent suicide is more than mysterious; it is unfathomable.

The 66-year-old accused sex trafficker was found dead in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correction Center (MCC) Saturday morning, apparently after having hanged himself.

The Bureau of Prisons, the federal agency that runs the MCC, has said the FBI will investigate.

It had better.

Epstein’s death almost certainly means that astounding blunders occurred, perhaps by multiple personnel at the Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

If any prisoner in the federal system should have been a candidate for suspicion of suicide, it was the high-profile and disgraced Epstein. All administrative and structural measures should have been in place to ensure it could not happen. And yet it apparently did.

First, consider the MCC itself. It is a high-rise, forbidding administrative detention facility in the south of Manhattan. Its population consists almost entirely of prisoners, like Epstein, awaiting trial in federal court in Manhattan. It has been referred to as the “Guantanamo of New York” for its stringent security measures. It is the facility of choice for notorious federal defendants, often in special administrative segregation units, having previously housed John Gotti, Bernard Madoff, Omar Abdel Rahman and, recently, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

In other words, it is the very place to put a high-profile and potentially suicidal defendant such as Epstein.

Second, consider the BOP’s suicide prevention protocol. Epstein was found last month unconscious in his MCC cell with marks on his neck. If he was not on suicide watch, it would be astonishing. Yet if he were on suicide watch, his death would be virtually inconceivable.

The BOP’s suicide prevention protocol entails, first and foremost, human eyes on the prisoner 24 hours a day. It also requires a strict deprivation of anything — shoelaces, sheets, pillowcases — that could possibly be used to hang oneself. It also requires disabling anything that could be used to tie a noose — vents, sprinkler heads, etc.

Finally, we are not talking about inexperienced yokels. BOP personnel, especially at MCC, are the best professionals in the corrections industry, and they receive special training in administrating suicide prevention. Who better to guard against such a horrific development?

At this point, questions abound, and BOP has to address them promptly.

The first: Was Epstein on suicide watch, and if not, why not? Among the reports cascading out in the few hours since Epstein’s body was found areanonymous statements that Epstein had been on suicide watch but was taken off it. If so, the decision to remove him appears to have been a colossal error that must be thoroughly probed.

The second: How exactly did Epstein manage to kill himself, and why exactly was it that he had access to the tools?

Third, is there a video of Epstein’s cell at the crucial time? There should be, and it will reveal exactly how and when Epstein killed himself.

And none of this begins to address the royal mess it leaves in the efforts to take stock of Epstein’s crimes and their prior slap-on-the-wrist treatment, nor the shambles in which it leaves Epstein’s victims.

Almost certainly, we will know a lot more in a few days. But it seems certain that when the facts are known, this will stand as one of the biggest black eyes in the history of the Bureau of Prisons.

It will not matter what facts are known. This will never be over. It will be right up there with Oswald and Jack Ruby.

I mean, a fantastically wealthy accused sex trafficker of underage girls and friend of extremely powerful politicians including the current president of the United States, lawyers, royals, scientists and businessmen just “committed suicide” in a top security federal lock-up before he could be persuaded to give states evidence to reduce his sentence.

It’s Conspiracy A-Go-Go to the 10th power.

.

A normal headline in the Trump era

A normal headline in the Trump era

by digby

That isn’t even the leading story in America today. I’m not sure it will even make the evening news:

President Trump on Saturday appeared to side with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in renewing his objections to joint military exercises with South Korea, calling such drills “ridiculous and expensive” at a time when Pyongyang has ramped up tests of short-range missiles.

In a pair of morning tweets from his resort in Bedminster, N.J., where he arrived late Friday for a 10-day vacation, Trump said Kim objected to the exercises in a letter and suggested the missile tests would end once the drills, which began this week, are finished.

“It was a long letter, much of it complaining about the ridiculous and expensive exercises,” Trump wrote, asserting that the letter amounted to “a small apology for testing the short range missiles.”

Trump also said Kim suggested that negotiations over its nuclear weapons program, which have been dormant since a second summit in Hanoi broke off without an agreement in February, could resume after the joint exercises conclude.

“I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un in the not too distant future!” Trump added. “A nuclear free North Korea will lead to one of the most successful countries in the world!”

Pyongyang has repeatedly insisted the tests are a reaction to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, as well as Seoul’s import of F-35A stealth fighters from the United States. Trump appeared to accept that explanation. He offered no rebuttal to the idea that the exercises were not worthwhile, even though his own military say they are vital to maintain combat readiness.

If we somehow manage to survive the chaotic and dangerous Trump years, I think this is going to be one of the main things we will look back on and marvel that anyone could have voted for such a clearly incompetent person for president. How his delusional followers see him as a big brave hero when he insults everyone except Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin — even as they laugh in his face — is one of the great mysteries of life.

I think he actually believes those ruthless tyrants respect him (although on some level they scare the shit out of him too.) We have literally never seen anything like this. Ever. And yet our political system is unable to do anything about him — and there’s an excellent chance that he’ll be re-elected. We have sen the great flaw of democracy — it depends on human beings being rational.

Update:

These rich assholes like his racism too apparently, along with the fact that he’s a total moron:

President Trump cracked jokes about the Equinox scandal, the old days of rent-controlled New York and his dealings with North and South Korea among deep-pocketed pals in the Hamptons on Friday.

Trump was feted at two big-money fundraisers — first a lunch for 60 hosted by real estate guru Stephen Ross, whose company owns Equinox and Soul Cycle. Then Trump talked for an hour to a crowd of 500 at the sprawling Bridgehampton home of developer Joe Farrell. The two events raised a total of $12 million.

After Equinox members revolted over Ross’ fundraising for the president, with many threatening to cancel memberships, Trump said he had joked with Ross about how divided the nation is.

Noting the relentless attacks on himself by the media, Trump quipped, “Steve Ross got into a little bit of trouble this week, I said, ‘Steve welcome to the world of politics!’ ”

Of his fundraising visit, Trump went on to say, “I love coming to the Hamptons, I know the Hamptons well, everyone here votes for me but they won’t admit it.”

And of his tough stance on trade tariffs and US military aid, Trump told a story of going as a boy to collect rent checks with his father, adding, “It was easier to get a billion dollars from South Korea than to get $114.13 from a rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn, and believe me, those 13 cents were very important.”

Trump thanked a number of people at the event, held in a huge tent in the garden of Farrell’s famous home, titled “Sandcastle,”
Trump said, “There’s Don Jr., I didn’t think he liked politics, but actually he’s really good at it. And so is Kimberly. Don Jr. is my gun expert, he knows more about guns than anyone I know.”

Turning to the tragic events of this past week Trump said, to applause, “We need meaningful background checks. It is time.

“I spoke to Lindsay Graham on the way over in the car, I spoke to Nancy Pelosi, I called her, she called me, I talked to Chuck Schumer . . . we are all in agreement about this. It is time for meaningful background checks.”

Trump kept returning to hit back at the “fake news” media attacks on him, saying of claims from the Democrats that he is a racist, “That is the only ammunition they have.”

Trump also made fun of US allies South Korea, Japan and the European Union — mimicking Japanese and Korean accents — and talked about his love of dictators Kim Jong Un and the current ruler of Saudi Arabia.

He started by saying how the EU had not paid its share to NATO and he insisted it does so.

Talking about South Korea, Trump said it makes great TVs and has a thriving economy, “So why are we paying for their defense. They’ve got to pay.” He then mimicked the accent of the leader Moon Jae-in while describing how he caved in to Trump’s tough negotiations.

On his remarkable friendship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, “I just got a beautiful letter from him this week. We are friends. People say he only smiles when he sees me.

“If I hadn’t been elected president we would be in a big fat juicy war with North Korea. “

Turning to Japan, Trump then put on a fake Japanese accent to recount his conversations with Shinzo Abe over their conversations over trade tariffs.

Trump spoke about his friendship with Abe and how fascinated he was with Abe’s father, who had been a kamikaze pilot. Trump asked Abe if the kamikaze pilots were drunk or on drugs. Abe said no, they just loved their country. Trump remarked, “Imagine they get in a plane with a half a tank of gas and fly into steel ships just for the love of their country!”

Of the midterm elections he said the media predicted a disaster for the Republican Party, but in the end it won seats in the Senate with only a few shocking defeats (the Democrats won the House). Trump added, “We got rid of two nasty ones,” perhaps referring to some politicians he claimed at the time hadn’t shown him enough love.

And he couldn’t resist a real estate joke or two. Noting that the very house the event was at is currently on the market for $39 million, Trump joked to Farrell, “What would you rather have, Joe, this beautiful house for $40 million or the White House for free?”

Among the 500 people at the Joe Farrell event were Somers and Jonathan Farkas, Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross and wife Hilary Geary Ross, Rory Tahari, Joe Piscopo, Geraldo Rivera, Rudy Giuliani, Andrew Giuliani, Phil Falcone and wife Lisa Maria, Jean Shafiroff and Neal Sroka.

Also at the event were Estee Lauder billionaire and philanthropist Ronald Lauder, financier Leon Wagner, Vornado founder Steve Roth, co-chair of the RNC, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Bob Castellani, CEO of North American Rescue, real estate mogul Richard Le Frak, financier Peter Worth, commercial real estate developer Bill Stern, Rob Godfrey, former First Lady of Florida Carole Crist, Monica Crowley, Cantor Fitzgerald’s Howard Lutnicki, Steve Witkoff, Bill Ford, Joe Thal, Andrea Catsimatidis and Ed Cox.

All that money and they are just a bunch of crude, insular fools, happy to allow this crude imbecile to kill their golden goose, just for a couple of pennies they can’t bear to leave on the sidewalk.

.

Let the conspiracy theories begin

Let the conspiracy theories begin

by digby

Jeffrey Epstein, the multimillionaire accused of sex trafficking, was found dead in his New York jail cell Saturday morning in an apparent suicide. Details of his death emerged first through ABC News and quickly circulated among New York media outlets, but Lynne Patton, regional administrator at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, had another idea of what happened.

“Hillary’d!!” she posted on Instagram around 10 a.m., alongside a screenshot of a Daily Mail story that described Epstein’s manner of death. She added the hashtag, “#VinceFosterPartTwo,” a reference to the former Clinton aide whose death by suicide has fueled conspiracy theories for more than two decades.

Patton, one of the highest-ranking officials at HUD, was not alone in seizing on conspiracy theories. Within hours of Epstein’s death, “Clintons” and “ClintonBodyCount” were among the highest-trending topics on Twitter. Among the biggest drivers of the latter hashtag were an Infowars host and two accounts associated with the QAnon conspiracy, according to Alex Kaplan, a Media Matters researcher who focuses on far-right media.

On her Instagram page, Patton has waded into controversial territory before. In April, she posted a message mocking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for “cying” over the deluge of death threats she received after President Donald Trump tweeted an out-of-context attack on her. “In response, a few of Patton’s 84,000 followers took the opportunity to comment and some added death threats of their own,” Mother Jones’ Nathalie Baptiste reported at the time. “One Instagram user said he was surprised that no one had killed the congresswoman yet. Another user said someone should ‘just do it’ rather than just threatening Rep. Omar.

From Mother Jones

She’s a lovely person.

#onlythebestpeople

Also, he was in a DOJ jail. Not sure how the Clintons can be seen as the likeliest suspects …

Did you know that Epstein introduced Melania to Trump? Neither did I.

Update:

Oh no:

Statement from Attorney General William P. Barr on the Death of Jeffrey Epstein

Attorney General William P. Barr issued the following statement: 

“I was appalled to learn that Jeffrey Epstein was found dead early this morning from an apparent suicide while in federal custody. Mr. Epstein’s death raises serious questions that must be answered. In addition to the FBI’s investigation, I have consulted with the Inspector General who is opening an investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Epstein’s death.”

God only knows what Trump’s malevolent, loyal henchman has in mind.

.

It’s ba-ack! by @BloggersRUs

It’s ba-ack!
by Tom Sullivan

The proposal to ruin one of Alaska’s most important fisheries with a massive copper and gold mining operation in Bristol Bay had dropped off my radar. Blogger Shannyn Moore (Just a Girl from Homer, Mudflats, Anchorage Daily News) put it there eight years ago. Native and environmental groups have fought the Pebble Mine for the last decade. The Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration eventually blocked the project expected to cause the “complete loss” of the Bristol Bay’s fish habitat.

You know what comes next:

(CNN) — The Environmental Protection Agency told staff scientists that it was no longer opposing a controversial Alaska mining project that could devastate one of the world’s most valuable wild salmon fisheries just one day after President Trump met with Alaska’s governor, CNN has learned.

The EPA publicly announced the reversal July 30, but EPA staff sources tell CNN that they were informed of the decision a month earlier, during a hastily arranged video conference after Trump’s meeting with Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The governor, a supporter of the project, emerged from that meeting saying the president assured him that he’s “doing everything he can to work with us on our mining concerns.”

The news came as a “total shock” to some top EPA scientists who were planning to oppose the project on environmental grounds, according to sources. Those sources asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

Where would the Trump administration be without retribution? And the mining company behind the project, Northern Dynasty? It is not a U.S. firm. It’s Canadian. America first, eh?

Trump met with Dunleavy during a on June 26 stopover on his way to the G20 summit in Japan. Dunleavy had put the project back on the front burner, Alaskan Kim Heacox wrote in April (The Guardian):

How to sell it (and his draconian budget cuts, and lavish tax breaks for Big Oil) to Alaskans? Dunleavy hosted town hall meetings orchestrated by Americans For Prosperity, the billionaire Koch brothers front group with its many-tentacled operation critics call “Kochtopus”. Their goal: suppress democracy with a drumbeat war against any scientific truth they don’t like.

Behind the curtain we find CEI, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a rightwing organization that pressures the EPA to downplay, if not ignore, the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment, which, according to the Alaska-based salmon conservation organization, Inletkeeper, “went through rigorous peer review, and multiple comment periods, to find that a mine like Pebble poses significant risks to the fish, water and people in Bristol Bay”.

Pebble CEO Tom Collier alleges outside environmental groups simply use opposition for fundraising because “no one gives a rat’s ass what happens in Alaska.”

Heacox counters that 65% of Alaskans and 80% of Bristol Bay residents oppose the Pebble Mine. They’ve certainly put a lot of time and effort into opposing it.

This and Dunleavy’s budget cuts have spawned a recall effort:

Organizers of the effort to remove Gov. Mike Dunleavy from office announced Thursday that one week after launching, they had gathered more than 18,000 signatures and were more than two-thirds toward completing a first-round signature drive.

“It’s fair to say that Alaska has never seen anything quite like this,” said Scott Kendall, attorney for Recall Dunleavy and previously chief of staff to former Gov. Bill Walker.

The recall effort gained a prominent supporter Wednesday when the board of a major Alaska Native regional corporation, Cook Inlet Region Inc., announced it was endorsing the campaign.

Anchorage officials with the recall group said Thursday they had 18,198 signatures in hand. Close to 2,000 additional signatures had yet to be mailed in from cities and towns outside Anchorage, said Meda DeWitt, chair of Recall Dunleavy, in a statement.

I haven’t seen Shannyn Moore in a few years, but likely she’s still fighting to keep the economic wolves at (out of the) bay.

Friday Night Soother

Friday Night Soother

by digby

After a week like this, only one thing soother will do: baby otters.

The staff at Banham Zoo are ‘otterly’ delighted with the birth of two Asian Small-clawed Otter pups. The babies have recently started coming out of the den to play with their one-year-old sibling Makati, mother Tilly, and father Sam.

The two cubs were born on May 22 and are the second litter for Tilly and Sam. As experienced parents, Tilly and Sam share care of the pups are showing excellent parenting skills.

For the first eight to 10 weeks of life, Otter pups remain tucked away in the den with mom and dad. In fact, the keepers were only able to discern that Tilly had given birth when she stopped coming outside to be fed. Once the pups were heard squealing from within the nest box there was no doubt that babies had been born.

The pups are now beginning to venture out of their nest box to explore their outdoor habitat. They will soon undergo their first veterinary exam, where their genders will be determined.

In the coming weeks, Tilly and Sam will start giving swimming lessons and impart other essential skills to their offspring, just as they would in their native habitat.

The Asian Small-clawed Otter is the smallest of all Otter species. These Otters inhabit shallow, fast-flowing waters in southeast Asia and feed on crabs, snails, frogs, young birds, eggs, fish and small mammals. The species is classified as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Habitat destruction from farming, water pollution, hunting, and overfishing have led to a rapid decline in the Otters’ numbers in the wild. The IUCN estimates the global population of Asian Small-clawed Otters has declined by up to 30% over the last 30 years.

Via Zooborns

.

Come on people. The “Liberal Hunting License” has been a right-wing staple for years

Come on people. The “Liberal Hunting License” has been a right-wing staple for years

by digby

In case you are wondering why Trump is suddenly blathering hysterically about Hollywood all of a sudden

It’s about this via Snopes:

Right-leaning websites expressed a measure of outrage in the summer of 2019 after details appeared to emerge about the content of the forthcoming Universal Pictures film “The Hunt.”

PJ Media reported that “The Hunt” “depicts Trump supporters being hunted for sport by liberals,” writing that:

Universal Pictures is set to release a thriller called The Hunt on September 27, which features left-wing ‘elites’ hunting Trump supporters for sport. In the past few days we’ve been hearing a lot about how Donald Trump’s rhetoric is apparently to blame for the El Paso shooting, yet Hollywood apparently lacked the foresight to think that a movie promoting violence against ‘deplorables’ might be in bad taste until after the shootings in El Paso and Dayton, as only now is Universal rethinking their promotional strategy for the film.

The Epoch Times described “The Hunt” as “a movie showing liberals stalking supporters of President Donald Trump,” claiming that “According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie’s script features blue-state characters choosing to hunt red-state characters who expressed pro-life positions or were deemed racist.”
The conservative Blaze website similarly described “The Hunt” as a “horror film about liberal elitists hunting ‘deplorables.’”

Here’s what the movie is really about:

After days of seeming to focus on comforting mass-shooting victims, pushing expanded background checks for gun purchases, lashing out at political nemeses, and making fun of Fox host Shepard Smith, President Trump took time out of his busy Friday to highlight yet another personal grievance: an upcoming “Racist” movie from “Liberal Hollywood,” the satirical point of which the president couldn’t understand or seemingly didn’t care to grasp.

“Hollywood, I don’t call them the elites,” Trump complained to reporters at the White House on Friday. “I think the elites are people they go after in many cases, but Hollywood is really terrible. You’re talking about racists? Hollywood is racist.”

He added, “What they’re doing with the kind of movies they’re putting out, it’s actually very dangerous for our country. What Hollywood is doing is a tremendous disservice to our country.”

Later, he posted to Twitter, “Liberal Hollywood is Racist at the highest level, and with great Anger and Hate!” and that “the movie coming out” is made to “inflame and cause chaos. They create their own violence, and then try to blame others.”

Though he did not name the movie, Trump was almost certainly referring to The Hunt, an upcoming, blood-soaked satire starring Hilary Swank, Betty Gilpin, Ike Barinholtz, and Emma Roberts, and produced by Jason Blum. The thriller takes place at “the manor,” where wealthy, liberal elites hunt and kill for sport a group of political “deplorables” who’ve been captured as prey. On Tuesday, The Hollywood Reporter published a story revealing that The Hunt features “blue-state characters” selecting their targets based on whether they expressed anti-abortion opinions or uttered the N-word on Twitter.

“‘War is war,’ says one character after shoving a stiletto heel through the eye of a denim-clad hillbilly,” THR reported.

It remains unclear what, exactly, Trump thinks is “racist” about this movie.

The satirical premise of the film appeared to turn on lampooning well-off, angry liberals, portraying them as villainous psychos and the abducted right-wingers as victims in a horror scenario.

The nuance seemed lost on the president, whose annoyance at the picture had been brewing for days. Before his outbursts on Friday, Trump had privately complained in the White House about “the movie” made “by people who hate Trump,” according to an administration official who had heard the president make the comment this week. The official said that at the time, they had no idea what Trump was talking about, but assumed it was about something the president had seen on TV.

As it were, The Hunt has been extensively covered this week on Fox News and the Fox Business Network, two of the president’s favorite channels and sources of information and advice.

Starting with The Ingraham Angle—hosted by Trump’s close friend Laura Ingraham—on Wednesday evening, the movie has been the focus of at least 21 segments on Fox News and Fox Business Network as of Friday afternoon. (This counts late-night reruns of certain programs.)

The segments have generally portrayed the upcoming movie in an extremely negative light, especially on the president’s favorite opinion shows.

For instance, during Thursday night’s broadcast of Lou Dobbs Tonight, host and top informal adviser to the president Lou Dobbs described the film as a “sick, twisted new movie,” adding that the prospect of “globalist elites hunting deplorables sounds a little too real.” His guest, Fox News contributor and close Trump ally Robert Jeffress, further noted that this “revealed the hypocrisy of the left” and if the movie “was about conservatives killing liberals, you would see an outrage on the left.”

On Friday evening, The Daily Beast followed up with Pastor Robert Jeffress, asking what he thought of the reported premise of conservatives actually being the victims and protagonists, and the bloodthirsty liberals being the bad guys. The Dallas megachurch pastor replied that he hasn’t seen the film and “was reacting to a description that was given to me.” He continued that “anything that creates divisiveness in our country is not good at this particular time in our nation’s history,” and said movies “should not be glorifying violence in any way,” whether Trump-related or otherwise.

(As a contrast, when asked about Kingsman, a 2014 spy comedy in which—spoiler alert—the heroes blow up President Barack Obama’s head, and how that film didn’t provoke any serious backlash among Democrats, Jeffress said if he had known about that in 2014, he would’ve “spoken out against” that movie, just as he has The Hunt.)

The following hour on Thursday, on FBN’s Trish Regan Primetime, far-right Fox contributor Todd Starnes said that the “truth of the matter is deplorables have been hunted by the left and Hollywood for a long time,” adding that the plot of the film is right “out of the DNC playbook when it comes to attacking Trump supporters.”

During Friday’s Fox & Friends First, meanwhile, former Home Improvement actor Zachary Ty Bryan used The Hunt to take aim at Hollywood liberals and, for some reason, the Mueller investigation.

“In the wake of these shootings, in general, promoting political violence is always dangerous if you ask me,” he said. “Especially in the political climate we are in. What I’m learning is basically what they are accusing conservatives of doing they are doing.”

“Whether it goes back to the Russian probe, we see celebrities—starting with Kathy Griffin and the Trump severed head. Snoop Dogg, assassinating the president in his music video, Madonna saying she wanted to blow up the White House,” he added. “They say we are divided and we need unity but you don’t see it coming out of Hollywood. Do as I say, not as I do.”

The president, during his week of trying to play the role of the nation’s consoler-in-chief, took notice, and as of Friday is now targeting the film from his White House perch.

The wingnuts are working themselves into a full-fledged hissy fit over this, based upon rumors about the film and the fact that the marketing department decided to pull some ads in the wake of the mass murders last weekend. (That’s SOP, just as airlines pull ads in the wake of an airline crash.)

Let’s just say I doubt the right’s sincerity and suspect they are just trying to turn the tables and pretend they are the Real Victims, as usual. How do I know they are full of it? Because they’ve been peddling this shit for years. When called on it they say it’s all in good fun:

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Lock And Load

by digby

Such funny guys, especially with the death threats and all:

Congressional District 11 GOP candidate Brad Goehring is drawing fire for his confrontational Facebook statement today: 

“If I could issue hunting permits, I would officially declare today opening day for liberals. The season would extend through November 2 and have no limits on how many taken as we desperately need to “thin” the herd.”


He later said he meant to “thin the herd” with votes, not bullets and that he just hit the send button to early and then just left it there because he didn’t think anyone would take it seriously. That’s nice.

But the truth is that this is a very old joke, which I’m sure this numbskull has seen:


These are the kind of things they sell CPAC every year. It’s perfectly common right wing rhetoric.

.

They sell them online.

Oh, and how about this one, also a big seller:

These are hilarious, you must admit. Well, they’re funny to humorless, racist, assholes anyway.

By the way, the frightened conservatives having a hysterical fit this week about public lists of political donations and this movie also wear t-shirts like this:

The babies don’t know monsters are real. @spockosbrain

Don’t blame the babies. They don’t know monsters are real.

by Spocko

From @flotus Twitter feed. The baby’s parents were shot while protecting their infant at the WalMart in El Paso.
The child is under the care of his aunt and uncle, Trump supporters, who brought the baby back to the hospital to meet the so-called president.

Newt:
My mommy always said there were no monsters – no real ones – but there are, aren’t there?

Ripley:
Yes, there are.

Newt:
Why do they tell little kids that?

Ripley:

Most of the time it’s true.

Engelsina Markizova with Stalin. The photo at first helped her, then her father was accused of being a spy and killed. Later her mother was imprisoned, deported and died at 32 in an accident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelsina_Markizova