“He is failing to speak to the issues that are top of mind for women,” says Sarah Longwell, co-founder of Republican Voters Against Trump. “I’ve done about 50 focus groups over the last say three years. I’ve watched Donald Trump alienate these women in real time.” pic.twitter.com/Csw1JafRux
“It doesn’t seem like he’s trying…” because he isn’t.
“The George Floyd killing was a turning point — he’s pouring gasoline on the fire.” “He didn’t seem to care …”
The one that I heard from people in my personal orbit was that they were horrified by his behavior in that debate and didn’t want their kids to see it.
I have a hard time feeling sympathy for Trump voters. But if they are finally seeing the light then welcome to the resistance. Maybe their minds will be opened a bit as the focus groups in that video suggest. “Pro-life” means life for people who are already born, for instance ….
CNN runs down some of the legal issues facing Trump on January 22nd:
Without some of the protections afforded him by the presidency, Trump will become vulnerable to multiple investigations looking into possible fraud in his financial business dealings as a private citizen — both as an individual and through his company. He faces defamation lawsuits sparked by his denials of accusations made by women who have alleged he assaulted them, including E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine columnist who has accused him of rape. And then there are claims he corrupted the presidency for his personal profits.
As President, Trump has been able to block and delay several of these investigations and lawsuits — including a yearlong fight over a subpoena for his tax returns — in part because of his official position. Many of those matters have wound through the courts and will come to a head whether he is reelected or not.
But with the polls showing that Democratic rival Joe Biden is leading in the race, the stakes become much higher for Trump if he loses the election. A raft of legal issues, including a criminal investigation by New York prosecutors, will come into focus in the weeks after Election Day.
“In every regard, his leaving office makes it easier for prosecutors and plaintiffs in civil cases to pursue their cases against him,” said Harry Sandick, a former federal prosecutor in the Manhattan US attorney’s office. “For example, he is claiming a higher protection from subpoenas in the criminal cases and also in the congressional subpoena cases, [and that] is based largely on the fact that he is President.”
Some have suggested a formal apparatus for investigating Trump after he leaves office. Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, has floated the creation of a “Presidential Crimes Commission,” made up of independent prosecutors who can examine “those who enabled a corrupt president,” as he put it in an August tweet. “Example 1: Sabotaging the mail to win an election.”
The most serious legal threat facing Trump is the Manhattan district attorney’s broad criminal investigation into the financial workings of the Trump Organization. Prosecutors have suggested in court filings that the investigation could examine whether the President and his company engaged in bank fraud, insurance fraud, criminal tax fraud and falsification of business records.
In the course of that probe, Trump has challenged a subpoena to his accounting firm for eight years of tax returns and financial records. Five courts have ruled the subpoena is valid, and last week Trump faced the latest setback when a federal appellate court denied his appeal, ruling that the grand jury subpoena was not overly broad or issued in bad faith.
On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of the subpoena to allow it time to appeal to the court. Trump already lost an appeal to the highest court in July, when it ruled that the president is not immune from a state grand jury subpoena.New York prosecutors have said the tax records, working papers and documentation around business transactions are crucial to their investigation, which has been underway for more than a year.
There are legal questions as to whether a state prosecutor could file charges against a sitting president.”He’s so powerful right now. They know that they can’t indict him right now so there is an incentive to build their case and get ready. I think what happens if he loses and leaves office that things will move very quickly,” said Jennifer Rodgers, a CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor.
The New York attorney general is also proceeding with a separate civil investigation into the Trump Organization and whether it improperly inflated the value of certain assets in some instances and lowered them in others, in an effort to secure loans and obtain economic and tax benefits.Investigators are looking into the tax breaks taken at the Trump Seven Springs property in Bedford, New York, and the Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles.
They are also investigating the valuation of a Trump office tower on Wall Street and the forgiveness of a more than $100 million loan on the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago.Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, sat remotely for a deposition with civil investigators last week. The lawyers are seeking additional depositions with Sheri Dillon, Trump’s longtime tax lawyer.Lawyers for the Trump Organization have said in court documents that they believe New York Attorney General Letitia James is politically motivated, and they initially tried to push off Eric Trump’s deposition until after Election Day, but a judge rejected that request.
The state lawyers, who have said they are not coordinating with any criminal law enforcement agency, said their investigation is civil in nature. But they could make a criminal referral if they believe there is enough evidence.”With a big-time executive, when they do these multiple or hundreds of millions of dollar transactions, they’re always advised by lawyers and accountants,” said Dan Alonso, a former prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office. “There are a lot of layers between messing up the tax treatment and criminal liability on the part of the President, that’s a big leap.”
If Trump is not reelected, he will lose the deference that courts have given to sitting presidents, opening the floodgates for many lawsuits.
The state attorneys general of Washington, DC, and Maryland sued the President in 2017, alleging he corruptly profited off his position by placing his financial interests above those of American citizens.
The state investigators prepared more than 30 subpoenas, including to the Trump Organization, and others relating to the Trump businesses. Trump sued to block the lawsuit, which alleges he violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution by virtue of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that foreign governments and others have spent at his properties. Trump has appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, which has not yet decided whether to hear the case. A second emoluments lawsuit brought by hotel and restaurant operators in New York is also pending.
[An emoluments appeal brought by the Democrats was rejected by the Supreme Court last week.]
The president’s niece, Mary Trump, is also suing Trump, his sister and the estate of their deceased brother for fraud, alleging they deprived her of her interests in the family real estate empire built by Fred Trump Sr.In these civil cases, where in some instances Trump has sought to avoid testifying or providing DNA evidence, Sandick said Trump will lose the ability to argue he is afforded certain protections by the White House if he ends up exiting the Oval Office. “If he’s not President, all of that goes away.”
One wild card is what would happen to a decade-long civil tax audit conducted by the IRS, which falls under the Treasury Department, and whether it could be escalated under a Biden administration to the Justice Department for review. According to The New York Times, the IRS is looking at a $72.9 million tax refund credit Trump claimed.
Lawyers say a less obvious factor that could change if Biden wins is the sway Trump has held over accountants, bankers and those in his inner circle who could be crucial witnesses to authorities.”They’re going to be much less afraid to talk about someone who is no longer the president,” Rodgers said. She added that a case involving allegations of false statements to banks or tax fraud would likely be heavily documented, which, once the subpoena for the tax returns is produced, could aid the investigation.
[…]
The Office of Legal Counsel memo has already insulated Trump from possible indictment in two instances: the special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller, which found evidence that Trump had committed obstruction of justice but didn’t charge him, and the investigation by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which cited Trump as “Individual 1” in charging his former lawyer Michael Cohen with campaign finance crimes for facilitating hush-money payments to two women who alleged affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs. Cohen pleaded guilty and said under oath that Trump had directed him to break the law. Cohen was reimbursed for those payments from the Trump Organization well into 2017, which could extend the statute of limitations on that crime into 2022. Some lawyers have speculated that it’s possible Trump would attempt to pardon himself from federal crimes before he leaves office.
The decision of whether to revive those investigations would fall to a Biden administration and top law enforcement officials leading the Justice Department and Manhattan US attorney’s office.In testimony before Congress, Mueller was asked by Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, “Could you charge the President with a crime after he left office?”
“Yes,” Mueller replied.
That seems like a long list but I think it’s probably the tip of the iceberg.
Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, paired with Democrats’ vague threats of retribution if they win power, are practically the only thing unifying conservatives in a state that President Donald Trump won by 14 points in 2016. It could be what saves Graham and, in turn, the Senate Republican majority.
But that’s far from a given. Graham (R-S.C.) has been forced into the race of his life. He’s facing an opponent who is the best-funded Senate candidate in American history; anger from the left over his metamorphosis from scathing Trump antagonist to fierce loyalist; and lingering distrust from a small but not insignificant slice of conservatives over his past as an aisle-crossing compromiser.
“Lindsey Graham, do you know why @harrisonjaime raised $57 Million?” asked the Lincoln Project. “Because America knows you believe in nothing but Lindsey Graham.”
The snarling chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is reduced to illegally pleading for donations in the halls of Congress.
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The acting president considers himself and his family exempt from the laws of man and nature. Many Americans followed his lead. To Sturgis. To the hospital. To the grave.
Within weeks of the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, northern tier states had the highest new coronavirus infection rate in the country:
The surge was especially pronounced in North and South Dakota, where cases and hospitalization rates continued their juggernaut rise into October. Experts say they will never be able to determine how many of those cases originated at the 10-day rally, given the failure of state and local health officials to identify and monitor attendees returning home, or to trace chains of transmission after people got sick. Some, however, believe the nearly 500,000-person gathering played a role in the outbreak now consuming the Upper Midwest.
More than 330 coronavirus cases and one death were directly linked to the rally as of mid-September, according to a Washington Post survey of health departments in 23 states that provided information. But experts say that tally represents just the tip of the iceberg, since contact tracing often doesn’t capture the source of an infection, and asymptomatic spread goes unnoticed.
In rural Tennessee, the number of those who have died from the virus is now double that reported in urban areas. “The number of coronavirus cases tied to President Donald Trump’s September rallies in Minnesota has risen to 23,” reports Daily Beast.
In rural Midwestern towns, victims may find no beds. The effects on small communities can be devastating:
“One or two people with infections can really cause a large impact when you have one grocery store or gas station,” said Misty Rudebusch, the medical director at a network of rural health clinics in South Dakota called Horizon Health Care. “There is such a ripple effect.”
Sunday family dinners can be deadly.
The reality of the administration’s failure to stop the coronavirus is sinking in, slowly, even in Trump country. Partisans stealing or defacing opponents’ yard signs are standard mischief during campaigns. But now it is difficult to know if Trump signs are quietly disappearing from supporters yards because of theft or eroding support.
It seemed everyone standing in line to vote wore masks as I stood as a poll observer outside an early voting station in the reddest part of this county last week. Maybe it is the reality of COVID-19 or maybe the misogyny. Perhaps both.
Even as Trump and his surrogates deliberately mutilate the name of Democrats’ female vice presidential candidate, the acting president begs suburban women, “Will you please like me?” Yes, it has come to that:
In 2016, the suburbs powered Mr. Trump’s victory, with exit polls showing that he won those areas by four points. Now, polling in swing states shows the president losing those voters by historic margins, fueled by a record-breaking gender gap. Mr. Biden leads by 23 points among suburban women in battleground states, according to recent polling by The New York Times and Siena College. Among men, the race is tied.
Mr. Trump’s suburban deficit has emerged as a significant problem for his re-election bid, one that’s left the president begging with women to come home.
Many of the female voters who have abandoned Trump recoil from his divisive language and disapprove of both his handling of race relations and the pandemic. But he has tried to convince them to support him through a campaign of fear and xenophobia, with claims about the Democratic agenda that plunge deep into the realm of the ridiculous and would be believed only by the most naïve, low-information voters.
His speech Saturday night in Michigan exemplified those political miscalculations when it comes to women he has referred to as the “suburban housewives of America” as he tried to create fear about crime from immigrants and argued that Joe Biden will upend life in the suburbs by putting public housing projects in the middle of leafy neighborhoods — a reference to an Obama-era housing regulation aimed at ending segregation.
It’s not just the rest of us who have tired of Trump’s shtick.
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The Royal Theater, as it appeared in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971)
The Guild 45th Theater in Seattle, Washington (2020)
In 2017, my neighborhood theater, Seattle’s legendary Guild 45th shut down. I took the above photo about a month ago. It breaks my heart to witness the results of 3 years of dilapidation. The witless taggers surely have no clue as to its history.
Sadly that blank marquee could portend the future of theaters, period. From Variety:
[Film critic Peter DeBruge] I saw “Tenet” in a theater […] and it was an unnerving experience. I understand why many people don’t feel comfortable taking the risk. I caught COVID back in early March, so I was operating on the principle that I must have at least some protection from the antibodies — and if that’s not the case, then we can kiss the idea of an effective vaccine goodbye. After driving all the way down to a Regal Cinemas in Orange County, I was disappointed by the way the dozen or so people in that enormous RPX auditorium were all clustered in the center with just a single empty-seat buffer between them. What’s more, nearly everyone had bought concessions, treating an $8 soda as a ticket to remove their masks for the entire film, whether or not they were actively eating or drinking at the time. […] I found myself distracted by the question of whether I could get re-infected by all these inconsiderate fans surrounding me.
DeBruge’s observation regarding the “inconsiderate fans” resonates with me, because that is my personal greatest fear about returning to movie theaters: my innate distrust of fellow patrons. While I haven’t worked out since March, it’s the same trepidation I have for returning to my gym. After a 5-month closure, they sent me an email in early August:
We have good news! We are re-opening the rest of our clubs in Washington on Monday, August 10th at 6am. Thank you for your patience, loyalty and support while waiting for this to happen! You have been missed and we are looking forward to welcoming you back in person. While closed, we’ve been working on changes aimed at making our clubs the safest place you can work out.
The email continued with a 12-point list of caveats and precautions and reassurances and meow-meow and woof-woof, but the paragraph at the bottom was a deal-breaker:
We also encourage you to help keep yourself and your fellow members safe by familiarizing yourself with, and following, current state and local guidelines. As these guidelines stress, please do not visit the club if you are sick or experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, and consider postponing your use of the club if you are an at-risk individual.
Thanks, but no. I can trust myself to adhere to a common-sense approach, but it’s been my observation throughout this COVID-19 crisis that everybody isn’t on the same page in regards to taking the health and safety of fellow humans into consideration.
OK. I’m being too polite. This may be an exclusively “American” problem at this point:
[Variety’s executive editor of film and media Brent Lang] The problem is that [the film industry] needs rescuing now — it doesn’t have time to evolve into a high-end indulgence. Just as our libertarian-leaning nation was poorly suited to deal with a pandemic that probably demanded a massive government response to curb the outbreak, so too is hyper-conglomerated Hollywood poorly positioned to meet this current crisis.
[…]
[Peter DeBruge] What’s frustrating to me right now is that the studios won’t even show [their big-budget releases] to press. Variety is an international publication, and we’ve always reviewed movies whenever they open in the world. But Warner Bros., Disney and even STX won’t show their films to American critics, either by link or in safe, limited-capacity screenings. But they will show them to critics abroad. What’s the difference? How is London any safer than Las Vegas for “Tenet” or Pixar’s “Soul”? Private screening rooms have been operating in Los Angeles since at least April, and I’ve been to eight in-theater movies in as many weeks. It is possible, and I can attest: The safe but solitary at-home experience is no comparison.
[Film critic Owen Gleiberman]: Peter, that’s just one more example of the cognitive dissonance factor. Why show movies to critics abroad and not in the U.S.? Because the very idea of seeing a movie on the big screen in America has been tainted by COVID. No one is questioning that the experience needs to be made supremely safe. Yet there’s a perception-and-reality dynamic at work. Some people are scared to go back to the movies, but the larger issue is that between the streaming revolution, the rise of COVID, and the fact that so many viewers have been grousing about the theater experience for years (the ads, the cell phones, the sticky floors — we all know the mythic litany of complaints), the notion that going out to a movie simply isn’t worth the trouble has taken root.
But that’s a perception; it’s not a reality. It’s something that can change if we have the will to change it. This is an issue so layered it goes right to the top — by which I mean, it could be profoundly influenced by the presidential election. If Biden and the Democrats win big, I could easily envision them mobilizing to find the funds that could help sustain and ultimately save movie theaters; whereas Trump and the Republicans aren’t interested in saving anything but themselves. Years from now, we’ll look back on this moment not only as a health and financial and political crisis, but as one that raised essential cultural questions. Such as: Does this culture still believe in movie going?
Well, Mr. Gleiberman…I still believe in movie going. I miss sticky floors, the smell of stale popcorn, and paying $8 for a Diet Coke with too much syrup and too little CO2. With that in mind, I’m re-posting my 2017 tribute to the Guild 45th (sorry about the 1000-word intro. Think of it as the cartoon before the movie). Have you found a good seat? Lights down. Psst: Remember to vote on November 3rd…vote as if the future of your favorite neighborhood theater depended on it. OK, previews are starting. Shh…
(The following piece was originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 17. 2017)
The Guild 45th Theater, Summer 2017
This is the song at the end of the movie When the house lights go on The people go home The plot’s been resolved It’s all over
– Joan Baez
“How tall was King Kong?” asks Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole), the larger-than-life director of the film-within-the-film in Richard Rush’s 1980 black comedy, The Stunt Man. Once you discover that King Kong was but “three foot, six inches tall”, it’s clear Cross’s query is code for a bigger question: “What is reality?” Or perhaps he’s asking “What is film?” Is film a “ribbon of dreams” as Orson Welles once said?
Those are questions to ponder as you take Rush’s wild ride through the Dream Factory. Because from the moment that its protagonist, a fugitive on the run from the cops (Steve Railsback) tumbles ass over teakettle onto Mr. Cross’s set, where he is filming an art-house World War I drama, his (and our) concept of what is real and what isn’t becomes diffuse.
Despite lukewarm critical reception, it is now considered a classic. A 43-week run at the Guild 45th Theater in Seattle (booked by Rush himself, out of his frustration with the releasing studio’s lackluster support) is credited for building word of mouth and assuring the film’s cult status. There is symbiosis in that story (recounted in Rush’s 2000 documentary, The Sinister Saga of Making the Stunt Man); for as surely as The Stunt Man is a movie for people who love movies, the Guild is the type of “neighborhood theater” that people who love movies fall in love with.
The Guild’s buff-friendly vibe stems from the ethos established by former owner-operator Randy Finley. As Matthew Halverson writes in his 2009 Seattle Met article, “The Movie Seattle Saved”:
Randy Finley didn’t like to take chances when booking movies for the Guild 45th Theatre. He took it so seriously that during his 18 years as owner of Seattle’s Seven Gables Theatres chain, he recruited a small cadre of film-buff confidantes who would join him at screenings and then debate whether what they’d seen met Seven Gables’ standards: Could it generate compelling word of mouth? Would it get great critical support? Did they like the people behind the picture? He took a lot of pride in having run movies like “The Black Stallion” and “Harold and Maude” in his theaters when others wouldn’t. And he took even more pride in turning them into art house hits. “If you went to the Guild 45th when I was booking it,” Finley says, “you would walk out thinking you’d just seen one of the best pictures of the year—if not the best.”
The Guild originally opened circa 1920; it was called The Paramount until the Seattle Theater (downtown) adapted the name in 1930. It went through several ownership changes (Finley purchased it in 1975, adding the venue to his local Seven Gables chain). In 1983, Finley added a smaller auditorium two doors down (The Guild II). In 1989, both theaters (along with the rest of the Seven Gables properties) were sold to Landmark, who have run them ever since.
On Monday afternoon, Griffin Barchek, a rising junior at UW, headed to Wallingford to work a shift at the Guild 45th, as he had been doing roughly 30 hours a week for the past year-and-a-half. He heard the bad news before he even stepped inside. “I was the second person to get there,” Barchek said. “I was told immediately by a disgruntled co-worker outside. Then there was a sign on the counter that said ‘We’re closed for renovations.’”
Though he had no hard evidence to support the hypothesis, he believes the sign is a pipe dream. “Renovations are very unlikely,” he speculated. “It’s probably just closed for good.”
Once inside, Barchek said a representative from Landmark’s corporate office was on hand to inform him and his co-workers that both the Guild and the Seven Gables would be closed indefinitely (“for renovations”), that their services were no longer required, and that they’d all be receiving three weeks’ severance. Barchek said he earned the $15/hr minimum wage for his work as an usher, in the box office, and behind the concessions counter.
“She just kept saying ‘I’m sorry’ and kind of making a duck face,” he said of the Landmark representative. (As has been the case with all press inquiries regarding the sudden closure of these theaters, Landmark has refused to comment beyond saying they are closed for renovations.)
I was blindsided by this myself. Last Sunday, I was checking the listings, looking for something to cover for tonight’s weekly film review (preferably something/anything that didn’t involve aliens, comic book characters, or pirates), and was intrigued by Sofia Coppola’s remake of The Beguiled. Being a lazy bastard, I was happy to discover that the exclusive Seattle booking was at my neighborhood theater (the Guild 45th!), which is only a three-block walk from my apartment.
Imagine my surprise when I went to their website for show times and was greeted by this message: “The Seven Gables and Guild 45th Theaters have closed. Please stay tuned for further details on our renovation plans for each location. During the down time, we look forward to serving you at the Crest Cinema Center.” The Crest (now Landmark’s sole local venue open for business) is another great neighborhood theater, programmed with first-run films on their final stop before leaving Seattle (and at $4 for all shows, a hell of a deal). But for how long, I wonder?
It’s weird, because I drive past the Guild daily, on my way to work; and I had noticed that the marquees were blank one morning last week. I didn’t attach much significance to it at the time; while it seemed a bit odd, I just assumed that they were in the process of putting up new film titles. Also, I’ve been receiving weekly updates from the Landmark Theaters Seattle publicist for years; last week’s email indicated business as usual (advising me on upcoming bookings, available press screeners, etc.), and there was absolutely no hint that this bomb was about to drop.
Where was the “ka-boom”?! There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering “ka-boom”. Oh, well.
It would appear that the very concept of a “neighborhood theater” is quickly becoming an anachronism, and that makes me feel sad, somehow. Granted, not unlike many such “vintage” venues, the Guild had seen better days from an aesthetic viewpoint; the floors were sticky, the seats less than comfortable, and the auditorium smelled like 1953…but goddammit, it was “my” neighborhood theater, it’s ours because we found it, and now we wants it back (it’s my Precious).
My gut tells me the Guild isn’t being “renovated”, but rather headed for the fires of Mount Doom; and I suspect the culprit isn’t so much Netflix, as it is Google and Amazon. You may be shocked, shocked to learn that Seattle is experiencing a huge tech boom. Consequently, the housing market (including rentals) is tighter than I’ve ever seen it in the 25 years I’ve lived here.
The creeping signs of over-gentrification (which I first started noticing in 2015) are now reaching critical mass. Seattle’s once-distinctive neighborhoods are quickly losing their character, and mine (Wallingford) is the latest target on the urban village “up-zoning” hit list. Anti-density groups are rallying, but I see the closure of our 100 year-old theater as a harbinger of ticky-tacky big boxes.
Some of my fondest memories of the movie-going experience involve neighborhood theaters; particularly during a 2 ½ year period of my life (1979-1981) when I was living in San Francisco. But I need to back up for a moment. I had moved to the Bay Area from Fairbanks, Alaska, which was not the ideal environment for a movie buff. At the time I moved from Fairbanks, there were only two single-screen movie theaters in town. To add insult to injury, we were usually several months behind the Lower 48 on first-run features (it took us nearly a year to even get Star Wars).
Keep in mind, there was no cable service in the market, and VCRs were a still a few years down the road. There were occasional midnight movie screenings at the University of Alaska, and the odd B-movie gem on late night TV (which we had to watch in real time, with 500 commercials to suffer through)…but that was it. Sometimes, I’d gather up a coterie of my culture vulture pals for the 260 mile drive to Anchorage, where there were more theaters for us to dip our beaks into.
Consequently, due to the lack of venues, I was reading more about movies, than actually watching them. I remember poring over back issues of The New Yorker at the public library, soaking up Penelope Gilliat and Pauline Kael; but it seemed requisite to live in NYC (or L.A.) to catch all of these cool art-house and foreign movies they were raving about (most of those films just didn’t make it out up to the frozen tundra). And so it was that I “missed” a lot of 70s cinema.
Needless to say, when I moved to San Francisco, which had a plethora of fabulous neighborhood theaters in 1979, I quickly set about making up the deficit. While I had a lot of favorite haunts (The Surf, The Balboa, The Castro, and the Red Victorian loom large in my memory), there were two venerable (if a tad dodgy) downtown venues in particular where I spent an unhealthy amount of time in the dank and the dark with snoring bums who used the auditoriums as a $2 flop: The Roxie and The Strand.
That’s because they were “repertory” houses; meaning they played older films (frequently double and triple bills, usually curated by some kind of theme). That 2 ½ years I spent in the dark was my film school; that’s how I got caught up with Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Terrence Malick, Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet, Peter Bogdanovich, Werner Herzog, Ken Russell, Lindsay Anderson, Wim Wenders, Michael Ritchie, Brian De Palma, etc.
Of course, in 2017 any dweeb with an internet connection can catch up on the history of world cinema without leaving the house…which explains (in part) why these smaller movie houses are dying. But they will never know the sights, the sounds (the smells) of a cozy neighborhood dream palace; nor, for that matter, will they ever experience the awesomeness of seeing the classic films as they were originally intended to be seen-on the big screen. Everybody should experience the magic at least once. C’mon-I’ll save you the aisle seat.
The US is the unique among peer countries in having a 3-crest pandemic (so far).
We are trending upwards now, as is much of Europe – with the key difference that Europe didn't have the summer wave that we did. pic.twitter.com/gvslrIFWa3
Here are the hardest-hit Europeans. US per-capita death rate is slightly worse than Italy, marginally better than Spain, UK.
Notably though, bulk of their deaths came at the very beginning, then stabilized. They failed but turned things around. We have just kept on failing. pic.twitter.com/xSQpopCAFE
(Quick note on methodology – all calculations take the differences in FT's reported country net fatality-per-million figures and multiply by the US population of 328m in order to estimate the fatality differentials)
Trump, speaking in Macon, has made amplifying a Russian disinformation campaign against the Bidens a centerpiece of his reelection rallies pic.twitter.com/XO3E9Y56BN
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton repeatedly told his staff to actively remove themselves from conversations and meetings with Rudy Giuliani after Bolton received warnings from intelligence officials that the president’s personal lawyer was propagating conspiracy theories that aligned with a Russian operation to undermine the 2020 presidential election.
Bolton even warned his subordinates to avoid meetings in which Giuliani or his agenda might be raised. According to three sources with direct knowledge of the situation, Bolton told his team not to attend an Oval Office meeting May 23, 2019 with President Donald Trump following the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The meeting, over Bolton’s objections, included former European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland, former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and ex-Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker. In the meeting, Trump told the group to “talk to Rudy,” who did not attend, about setting up a White House visit with Zelensky. Two sources said that the May directive from Bolton followed a series of warnings not to participate in meetings where Giuliani may attend.
The reluctance of Bolton’s NSC team to engage with Giuliani shows that as early as the spring of 2019, the former New York mayor was seen as a conduit for Russia’s evolving efforts to manipulate the forthcoming election. One former senior White House official recalled a series of discussions in the early days of 2019 that Russia was working on a scheme to leak “forged” or “fake” emails through intermediaries in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election. Officials viewed Giuliani as a possible target for such a leak, that person said. Another former official said Russia’s penetration of the servers of Ukranian energy company Burisma—where Hunter Biden once sat on the board—prompted “informed speculation among professionals that this would be the entree to fabricate material connecting Hunter Biden to corruption inside Burisma, and it wouldn’t take more than 10 percent truth.”
This was before Trump was impeached for his attempted extortion of the Ukrainian president to flog this very same Russian disinformation.
HE WAS IMPEACHED FOR THIS!
And I will remind you that every last Republican voted to protect him. They are all accomplices in his betrayal. They kept him in office and are trying to get him re-elected.
Never Trumper Charlie Sykes was a Wisconsin wingnut, supporting Scott Walker and Paul Ryan. Back in 2017, he said he was a man without a country and I think that’s probably true.
In 2016 Sykes emerged as one of Donald Trump’s most prominent critics, a stance that outraged listeners, strained longstanding friendships and left him questioning much of what he once held true.
What it means to be a conservative. The role of race in politics. The wisdom of voters.
More troubling, Sykes believes he and others in the shoutrageous world of talk radio contributed mightily to the rise of Trump, to the contagion of fake news that abetted his presidential candidacy and to invigorating the racist, sexist and xenophobic elements drawn to his caustic campaign.
“Reaping the whirlwind,” Sykes calls it, and though his heresy has opened new avenues, including a commentary role on left-leaning MSNBC, many erstwhile foes question both his motivations and avowedly sudden self-awareness — the leitmotif for a book due out in October.
They liken him to a pyromaniac grieving over the ashes he created, or, as former Wisconsin Democratic Chairman Mike Tate put it, “a guy who slowly fed poison to his dog for 10 years then, when the dog dies of poisoning, throws up his hands and says, ‘My God, how did that happen?’”
For Sykes, it presents something of an existential crisis. Reviled by old allies on the right — “Judas goat!” “Benedict Arnold!” — and distrusted by many on the left, he quit his radio show and finds himself a bit at sea.
“Kind of the man without a country at the moment,” Sykes said.
I don’t know how much has changed since 2017 and I think we’re going to see how deep the the introspection of these guys goes if Trump loses. I don’t think we’ll be surprised if a lot of them revert to form.
But Sykes’ indictment of the Republican party during the Trump years is as good as anything I’ve seen. And it brings up something I think could affect this dynamic going forward. How likely is it that these people who blew up their careers and made enemies of their tribe will be willing to forgive those who acted like pusillanimous hacks and now want to everyone to forget about it? Even if you assume these Never Trumpers are simply opportunists, it’s very likely they have an ax to grind that may motivate them to keep their ire focused on the Republicans. It’s personal with them.
Anyway, here’s Sykes making the case against the Trump collaborators:
Before the election, they could have broken decisively with him over his support for a ban on Muslims, his comments on prisoners of war, his denigration of Gold Star families, the “Access Hollywood” video, allegations of sexual assault, and his other multiple frauds.
During his presidency, they went along with Trump even as he savaged fiscal conservatism, free trade, the global world order, our allies, common decency, truth and the rule of law.
While some of them became fanatical fan-boys a la Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, most of them behaved differently. They knew exactly who Trump was from the beginning, and they didn’t like it much. Many of them were willing to share their concerns privately.
But in public, they were pusillanimous. When they weren’t applauding, they turned a blind eye, and another, and another.
Frightened by the prospect of a presidential tweet, they ignored his crude xenophobia, his exploitation of racial divisions, his personal corruption, and his fascination with authoritarian thugs.
They could have said “stop” at any point. They could have raised their voices and used their votes to rebuff him. But they didn’t.
They told themselves that judges or tax cuts made it all worthwhile. They told themselves that this is what the GOP base wanted.
So they didn’t push back as a torrent of falsehoods flowed from the White House, or even when he targeted their own Senate colleagues with insults.
They watched impotently as Trump attacked and betrayed our allies and threatened to withdraw from NATO. They could have bailed when he downplayed the Russian attack on our elections, or when he sided with Vladimir Putin rather than our own intelligence agencies in Helsinki.
GOP senators had a chance to take an off-ramp when Trump fired the FBI director, or referred to immigrants from “shithole countries,” or when he praised the racist protesters in Charlottesville as including “very fine people.”
In October 2017, Jeff Flake tried to prick their consciences. Speaking on the floor of the Senate, the Arizonan made a plea for a return to decency.
“We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals,” he said. “We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.”
Rather than join in an awakening, not a single one of his colleagues joined Flake. Instead, they watched his Putinesque political defenestration and cowered in fear that they would share his fate.
Last fall, Trump critic Sasse, who many conservatives considered a bright light of the Senate, made his peace with Trump in exchange for the president’s support for his re-election.
“For Sasse,” wrote The Washington Post’s James Hohmann, “the past several months have represented something akin to surrender in the war for the soul of modern conservatism.”
If only Sasse’s surrender were an outlier. For Republicans, that has been the story of the last four years.
They continued to support Trump even when they saw families being separated at the border and kids in cages. They remained loyal when he helped the Saudis cover up the murder of a Washington Post journalist, and when it was revealed that he had called American soldiers “suckers and losers.”
They could have spoken out when he spread baseless conspiracy theories, or when he obstructed justice by dangling or giving pardons.
They could have declared their independence when Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned, warning about threats to “an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values and we are strengthened in this effort by solidarity of our alliances,” or when Trump openly tried to extort the Ukrainian president to help him dig up dirt on Joe Biden.
They had a chance to take an off-ramp during impeachment, but with the exception of Mitt Romney (who is not up for re-election this year), they all voted not to even hear witnesses at his trial.
Time and again, they swallowed their principles along with their pride, pretending that a few Democratic legislators on the fringes were a bigger threat than the man leading the nation.
When Trump bypassed the Senate to name acting Cabinet members, clearly violating the law, they shrugged. When he gutted the ranks of inspectors general in a clear attempt to stifle genuine accountability of the executive branch, they barely protested.
Every time they allowed Trump to cross a line, it became harder to hold the next one. After a while, they stopped even pretending. By this year, it had become obvious they had no intention of providing a meaningful check on Trump.
Instead, many of them actively Trumpified themselves. In primaries, they vied with one another to prove their fealty to the Orange God King.
Few of them, however, matched the fawning servility of Lindsey Graham, who as a candidate for president called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic bigot” and many other accurate descriptors, then reinvented himself into a full-blown MAGA Man, complete with tights and cape. Now, he finds himself facing the possibility of a humiliating electoral defeat.
It’s now far too late for Graham to pivot again. One spine is all he had to sacrifice for his country.
The bluntness of Sasse’s criticism last week made headlines.
Catch up on the day’s top five stories every weekday afternoon.
“The way he kisses dictators’ butts. I mean, the way he ignores the Uighurs, our literal concentration camps in Xinjiang. Right now, he hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong-Kongers,” Sasse said on the call.
“The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership, the way he treats women, spends like a drunken sailor,” he said.
“The ways I criticize President Obama for that kind of spending; I’ve criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He’s flirted with white supremacists.”
I’d say the torrent of truth is welcome, but this is all the equivalent of changing the recipe for a disgusting cake 10 seconds before it’s due to go in the oven.
The batter can’t be saved. It’s going in the oven one way or another. It smells awful. It’s going to taste terrible. Republicans are going to have to eat what they have made — and then prepare for the gastrointestinal reckoning.
If you have the time and inclination, this creepy”Army for Trump” video shows how they plan to disrupt the polling stations. There are a bunch of these and they’re all over facebook and instagram. Maybe it’s just a few cult members cosplaying at being an “army.” But the stuff they’re telling people to do is quite often illegal.
And then there’s this:
The US Marshal’s service is one of the four DOJ law enforcement agencies. The only “side” they’re on is upholding their oath to enforce the Constitution. The AG needs to affirm that. https://t.co/by23sOWCGI
This is just horrifying. They are literally willing to kill mass numbers of Americans because they’re listening to a man who has no idea what he’s talking about:
In late September, a Nobel Prize-winning economist emailed Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a White House coronavirus adviser, in what he saw as a last-ditch effort to persuade the Trump administration to embrace a sharp increase in testing and isolating infected patients. The plan, meant to appeal to a president who has complained that positive tests make his administration look bad, would not “generate any new confirmed cases.”
Dr. Atlas, a radiologist, told the economist, Paul Romer of New York University, that there was no need to do the sort of testing he was proposing.
“That’s not appropriate health care policy,” Dr. Atlas wrote.
Dr. Atlas went on to mention a theory that the virus can be arrested once a small percentage of the United States population contracts it. He said there was a “likelihood that only 25 or 20 percent of people need the infection,” an apparent reference to a threshold for so-called herd immunity that epidemiologists have widely disputed.
The call for more widespread testing and isolation, Dr. Atlas wrote, “is grossly misguided.”
The exchange highlights the resistance in the White House toward adopting a significantly expanded federal testing program, including efforts to support infected patients in isolation and track the people they have been in contact with, even as cases and deaths continue to rise nationwide. That resistance has become a sticking point in negotiations over a new economic stimulus package, with the administration and top Democrats yet to agree on the scope and setup of an expanded testing plan.
Many public health experts, and some economists like Mr. Romer, say that a far more sweeping program would save lives and bolster the economy by helping as many Americans as possible learn quickly if they are infected — and then take steps to avoid spreading the virus.
Dr. Atlas and other administration officials playing influential roles in the government’s virus response effectively say the opposite: that more widespread testing would infringe on Americans’ privacy and hurt the economy, by keeping potentially infected workers who show no symptoms from reporting to their jobs.
Congressional Democrats have grown so frustrated with the administration’s testing efforts that as part of any agreement on a new aid package, they insisted on language that would force the government to carry out a far more prescriptive national program for administering and distributing tests.
While White House negotiators resisted those demands for months, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said he will accept such wording with minor edits. Top Democratic staff, including the top health adviser to Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, walked Mr. Mnuchin through the party’s proposal on Friday, according to a person familiar with the discussion, but they had yet to announce agreement on language by early evening.
In an interview on Thursday, Dr. Atlas, who is not involved in the stimulus talks, said that the United States had a “massive” testing program over all, but that it should be used strategically to protect vulnerable populations, like nursing home residents — not young, healthy individuals who he said were at low risk of contracting the disease. He said that large-scale government test and isolate programs infringed on civil liberties, and that new research had persuaded him that herd immunity might be achieved once 20 or 40 percent of Americans are infected.
“The overwhelming majority of people who get this infection are not at high risk,” Dr. Atlas said in the interview. “And when you start seeking out and testing asymptomatic people, you are destroying the workforce.”
[Needless to say, the fact that these asymptomatic people will spread it to vulnerable populations, which make up close to 40% of the country, doesn’t seem to penetrate the minds of these quacks.]
Many congressional Republicans, who prefer to leave testing decisions to states, share Dr. Atlas’s concerns about federal testing programs, a complication if Mr. Mnuchin and Ms. Pelosi do agree on a nearly $2 trillion economic stimulus deal.
Mr. Mnuchin said on Thursday that the pair had settled on spending an additional $75 billion for testing and tracing. But the sides have not yet reached agreement on the language that Democrats have demanded for a national testing strategy, including timelines and benchmarks for allocating testing supplies and testing communities heavily affected by the virus. Democrats have been wary that the administration would actually spend the money as intended without specific legislative parameters.
Ms. Pelosi said she had not received proposed changes from Mr. Mnuchin as of early Friday evening, saying in an interview on MSNBC, “we’re making progress — we have to have clarification in language.” The pair are scheduled to speak Saturday evening.
“The devil and the angels are in the detail,” she said, adding that she was opposed to “giving the president a slush fund” instead of “a prescription for what we need, what scientists tell us to need to stop the spread of this virus.”
Experts from a wide range of fields have repeatedly denounced the lack of testing in the United States. Despite Mr. Trump’s repeated affirmations that the country has done more testing than any other nation, researchers have noted that 991,000 or so tests done each day were still not enough to keep in check a virus that has infected more than eight million people nationwide. Tests can individually diagnose people who might unknowingly carrying the virus. At the population level, they can also help health officials monitor any spread and pinpoint and quash outbreaks before they spin out of control.
Others have cautioned against an overreliance on testing as a preventive measure, noting that, in the absence of standards like physical distancing and mask wearing, testing alone cannot fully contain a virus that spreads wherever people tend to gather, regardless of whether those infected are exhibiting symptoms.
“No testing scheme, no test is perfect. There will always be people who go undetected,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University who has researched and written about herd immunity. “The best way to protect the most vulnerable is to reduce the amount of virus that’s in the population that can get through all of those testing schemes and cause destruction.”
Dr. Atlas’s position has been challenged by medical advisers around him who have backgrounds in infectious disease response, revealing a significant rift in the White House over the right approach. Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, has pushed for aggressive, broad testing even among young and healthy people, often clashing with Dr. Atlas in meetings.
“I would always be happy if we had 100 percent of students tested weekly,” Dr. Birx said on Wednesday in an appearance at Penn State University, “because I think testing changes behavior.”
Dr. Atlas at one point influenced the administration’s efforts to install new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance that said it was not necessary to test people without symptoms of Covid-19 even if they had been exposed to the virus, upsetting Dr. Birx and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the C.D.C. director.
The administration’s efforts to fund federal and state testing have long been fraught. In July, as administration officials and top Senate Republicans clashed over the contours of their initial $1 trillion proposal, the White House initially balked at providing billions of dollars to fund coronavirus testing and help federal health agencies.
Since the early days of the pandemic, Mr. Romer has argued for a wide-scale testing program, costing as much as $100 billion. He had hoped to persuade Dr. Atlas that if officials could quickly identify and isolate people carrying the virus, they would slow its spread and allow normal economic activity to resume more quickly.
In his email, sent to Dr. Atlas’s personal account, Mr. Romer proposed additional testing and isolation efforts that could allow far more Americans to return to work and shopping, generating economic activity that would be 10 or 100 times larger than the cost of the testing program itself.
In an interview, he said he also “went out on a limb” to propose a version of an expanded testing plan that might appeal to Mr. Trump, who said this year that he had instructed federal officials to slow the rate of testing because “by having more tests, we have more cases.”
Mr. Romer wrote that an increase in positive test results could be “interpreted as a sign of a policy failure.” He said the administration could instead consider a plan to send Americans tests they could administer themselves at home, then allow people to voluntarily self-isolate if they tested positive, which would not officially generate new “confirmed” cases.
Dr. Atlas replied that the push for such testing was the result of “a fundamental error of the public health people perpetrated on the world.”
Mr. Romer said he was taken aback by the answer: “Atlas just responded in a way that just honestly made it seem like he was in over his head,” he said.
Yeah, no kidding. But when you have a narcissistic moron running the country it’s inevitable that he will surround himself with quacks, cranks and fools. So here we are.
And note that this isn’t just Trump and his accomplices. Republican governors are on board with this mass death strategy. What do they think is going to happen? The virus will magically go away? Vaccines will come to rescue and everyone will forget about the preventable deaths?
I guess it’s possible that everything will turn out just fine. But I think they vastly overestimate the economic health of a country that isolates at least a third of the population. Good luck with that big economic resurgence if all those people, yours truly included, don’t spend money because the government is pushing for the virus to spread like wildfire.
