Remember André Bauer? He was the South Carolina lieutenant governor (Republican, naturally) who in 2010 compared government food assistance to the poor to feeding stray animals:
“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals,” Bauer said during a town hall meeting, as the Greenville News reported over the weekend. “You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”
Bauer was saying the quiet part out loud before MAGA made it “conservative cool.” Cutting off poor people’s food is “a perennial Republican target,” observes Politicos’ Meredith Lee Hill.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wants to use food assistance as leverage in his 2023 negotiations over raising the federal debt limit:
McCarthy’s initial list calls for expanding the age bracket for people who must meet work requirements in order to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Food Assistance Program or SNAP, while closing what Republicans say are “loopholes” in existing restrictions, according to two people who were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
Cutting spending on federal food assistance programs is a perennial Republican target, and House conservatives are eager to make it part of any agreement to raise the debt ceiling, which the country must do later this year to avoid a default crisis. But Senate Democrats have said such measures are dead on arrival in the upper chamber, and with the help of key Senate Republicans, they have killed off a series of similar House GOP efforts over the years — including a 2018 push involving McCarthy and his current top debt limit lieutenant Rep. Garret Graves (La.). The early response from Senate Republicans this time around does not bode well for a different outcome in 2023.
Bess Levin observed at Vanity Fair after Minnesota’s legislature approved free breakfast and lunch for all the state’s schoolchildren that 26 Republicans voted against the measure. State Sen. Steve Drazkowski opposed the bill, arguing he has “yet to meet a person in Minnesota who is hungry.”
“Hunger is a relative term,” Drazkowski added. “I had a cereal bar for breakfast. I guess I’m hungry now.”
Drazkowski, Bauer, and McCarthy? Cut from the same cloth?
Huffington Post reported last month on a Republican bill introduced by Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) to use hunger as leverage for cutting holes in other parts of the federal safety net:
The program already limits benefits for able-bodied adults without dependents who fail to work at least 20 hours per week, though there are a variety of exceptions and states often waive the requirement. Roughly 13% of households served by SNAP contained able-bodied childless adults under age 50, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Roughly a quarter of such households earned money from working.
Johnson’s proposal would reduce state discretion over eligibility rules and expand the definition of able-bodied adults without dependents to include people in their 50s and early 60s; the current cutoff is 49.
“Work is the best pathway out of poverty,” Johnson said in a press release. “With more than 11 million open jobs, there are plenty of opportunities for SNAP recipients to escape poverty and build a better life.”
I have a friend who did just that. SNAP benefits supported her family along the way.
Hunger is not just an urban problem, as Republicans from upstate New York know.
Politico cites a Wisconsin Republican more sympathetic to the poor. He’s been there:
Derrick Van Orden, a Trump-aligned Republican who represents a swing district in Wisconsin, spoke during the listening session of his family’s struggle with poverty and reliance on food stamps when he was a child. While he acknowledges some flaws in the current system, he said, “I’m a member of Congress because of these programs.”
“There’s a lot of people who have not gone to bed hungry at night, and I have. And there’s no place for that in America,” Van Orden said.
At least Republicans haven’t recommend shooting the poor or, as Jonathan Swift famously suggested, eating them.
A big majority of Americans want to see the abortion pill mifepristone remain available. Even some who are more generally opposed to abortion hold this view.
On a broader level, American women feel access to reproductive health care is getting harder today rather than easier, by about four to one.
There’s a red-blue state divide on the outlook for abortion rights: most who live in “red” states think abortion access is going to become more restricted for them.
But people see national agendas at work from the parties, nonetheless: half of Americans, and especially those who want abortion to be legal, think the Republican Party is trying to ban it nationwide, rather than let states decide. And most think Democrats are trying to make abortion available nationwide.
Reaction in wake of initial federal court ruling
After a Texas judge halted the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, a two-thirds majority want to see the abortion pill mifepristone remain available in states where abortion is legal — a view that generally squares with the national majority who for years have said they’d prefer abortion remain legal in at least some instances.
But even among those who’d see abortion illegal in most cases, there’s still a substantial number — about four in ten — who’d prefer mifepristone remain legal.
And these views are not purely partisan: almost half of Republicans think the medication ought to be available.
What’s next?
So what should the Biden administration do if courts rule against it on the abortion pill?
Overall, views are split. And it really depends whether people are for or against the legality of abortion in general.
Those who want abortion to be mostly legal say the administration should tell the FDA to ignore the ruling, and they say so by more than two to one.
Some of the outlook on what would happen if there were to be a nationwide abortion pill ban is tied to what people want in the first place. People who are most opposed to abortion — those who want it illegal in all cases — are also the most likely to believe stopping use of mifepristone will stop a lot of abortions. Half of those who want abortion to be legal in all cases don’t think it will stop any abortions.
With the Dobbs decision having sent abortion back to the states, Americans who live in “red” Republican-led states have different outlooks than those who live in “blue” Democratic-led states.*
Most who live in red states think abortion rights are going to become more restricted for them. Far fewer of those in blue states think it will be for them.
It’s especially Democrats and independents in red states, most of whom want abortion to be legal, who think abortion rights will instead be more restricted.
If women do travel out of state for an abortion, just a quarter of Americans would criminally punish that action.
It’s only among the one in 10 who think abortion ought to be illegal in all cases that such a view about criminality finds majority approval.
What are the parties trying to do?
Americans feel the parties have national agendas here, despite the fact that abortion access is now a state-level decision.
Republican leaders generally applauded sending the abortion issue back to states, but half of Americans think the Republican Party is trying to ban abortion nationwide rather than let states decide. That view is driven overwhelmingly by people who want abortion mostly legal, including independent women and Democrats.
People who want abortion mostly illegal say the Republican Party is trying to leave it up to the states by two to one.
Meanwhile, most Americans think that the Democratic Party is trying to make abortion available nationwide, in all states. Most of those who want abortion legal and those who want it illegal are in agreement on this point.
For context on a wider level, America’s women feel access to reproductive health care is getting harder today rather than easier, by about four to one.
That’s especially true for women who want abortion legal.
As an issue, abortion is important to most Americans, though it is not called “very important” at the same rate as things like the economy or inflation. Similar to what we saw in the 2022 midterm elections, most who feel abortion should generally be legal today place greater importance on the issue than those who feel abortion should generally be illegal.
It’s a voting issue for Democrats instead of Republicans now. It’s too bad it wasn’t before this happened. If it had been that orange monster might not have been able to appoint three Supreme Court justices and we wouldn’t be where we are today. Better late than never …
Wow. New pro-Desantis Super PAC ad against Trump called, ‘Trump the Gun Grabber.’ Played at the NRA Convention. Probably the best ad against Trump for the Republican primary I’ve seen. pic.twitter.com/Z7Vqw7WVpb
Proponents, like the author of the hard-line HB20, state Rep. Matt Schaefer (R), say that Texas faces an “invasion” from Mexico, specifying that drug cartels trafficking fentanyl constitute a threat to the state of Texas.
It’s not only a way to inflate the sense of crisis and potentially set the stage for a sea change in national immigration policy; it could, far-right lawmakers theorize, allow the state to seize border enforcement powers from the federal government.
During an invasion, the Constitution says, states have a right to defend themselves. Declaring an invasion under Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution, far-right legal theorists argue, could allow state law enforcement to assume certain powers that have been, until now, the province of the federal government, including letting state law enforcement deport undocumented migrants to Mexico.
That far-fetched legal reasoning has struggled in court when other states have attempted to make the argument in recent decades. But with an increasingly right-wing judiciary, Texas lawmakers and Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) have said that they believe they would face better odds.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) set the current bout of border fever in motion by launching Operation Lone Star, an effort that has encompassed a border blockade and an extremely costly, ongoing deployment of the state’s National Guard. But Abbott has stopped short of declaring an invasion, opening him up to criticism from those on the right who want him to use state law enforcement to repel and deport undocumented migrants.
“A lot of his supporters who are more conservative have been pushing him to declare this an invasion, and he’s done everything to stop short of saying that we’re facing an actual invasion,” Chelsie Kramer, a Texas organizer with the American Immigration Council, told TPM last month.
Over the past year, Abbott has faced criticism from the far, far-right for doing everything to present the border as a cartel-infested war zone and launch performative displays of force but for not going all the way.
Trump Administration Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli has criticized Abbott over the lack of an invasion declaration, while Fox News host Tucker Carlson confronted Abbott in December and asked why he hadn’t used the state National Guard to “block the border and save the country.” Texas Scorecard, an influential right-wing non-profit in the state, boosted the message, saying that Abbott was “failing” to “defend Texas from the ongoing invasion.”
“I think it would be a mistake,” Carlos Cascos, a former Texas Secretary of State who served during Abbott’s first two years as governor, told TPM when asked about declaring an invasion. “Because then, now what? What are you going to do?”
Abbott and his office have declined to weigh in specifically on HB20. That bill, in its current version, instead of relying on a finding from the governor that the states faces an invasion, would create a legislative finding of the same. It would establish a state-run Border Patrol Unit, empowered to deputize and train citizens, and to “repel” and “return” undocumented migrants seen crossing the border.
Abbott’s office has not returned TPM’s repeated requests for comment about the issue.
“The non taking a position — silence is loud,” Cascos added. “At the end of the day, I think his intentions are good, but you know what they say about intentions.”
Under Operation Lone Star, Abbott’s border protection scheme, the state has spent around $4.5 billion on state law enforcement and national guard deployments along the southern border. That’s included mass arrests of undocumented immigrants on trespassing charges, overloading rural Texas court systems that are left to process the cases.
In July 2022, Abbott issued an executive order which cited the Constitution’s invasion clause to allow state law enforcement to transport undocumented immigrants to ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border. But that’s opened Abbott up to criticism that he is, in effect, a RINO implementing a “catch-and-release” policy, as Cuccinelli said last year.
Though Abbott has remained silent on HB20, the bill’s supporters have downplayed the impact that the legislation would have on immigration enforcement.
Instead, Rep. Schaefer, the bill’s author, has portrayed the measure as a way of fighting the fentanyl epidemic.
To Jon Taylor, chair of the political science and geography department at UT-San Antonio, the messaging reflects an attempt to escape the true content of the bill.
“They’re trying as well as they can to dance around it to avoid angering what is appearing to be burgeoning Latino support for Republicans, particularly in South Texas along the border,” Taylor told TPM. “The Dems have just been merciless in talking about it being nothing but racism, harassment, profiling, and anti-immigrant.”
Texas Democrats dubbed the bill last month a “vigilante death squads policy.”
Texas officials like Paxton have said that lawmakers should declare an invasion in order to “test” a 2012 Supreme Court decision, U.S. v. Arizona, which affirmed that immigration enforcement powers reside with the federal government alone. HB20, which would do that, is likely to pass in some form, with the speaker of the state house calling its passage a “priority.”
And while Abbott has remained silent on the matter, few people TPM spoke with in Texas doubted that he supported the bill. Taylor, the UT-San Antonio professor, suggested that it was a reflection of him understanding the limits of his powers — and trying to find a way to move beyond them.
“He can say all he wants about it being an invasion,” Taylor said. “But he knows that that’s a federal responsibility.
I don’t think reality has any influence anymore. They do what they want.
The Overton Window has shifted a lot on abortion what with the extremists deciding lately on a total ban with no exceptions and proposing to limit interstate travel etc. It wasn’t long ago that these ideas weren’t even discussed among “pro-lifers.” Now it’s a mainstream Republican position. Is that going to be enough for them? Not bloody likely.
A new pro-forced pregnancy proposal in the South Carolina General Assembly that would make people who obtain abortion care eligible for the death penalty was portrayed as coming from the fringes of the Republican Party by one GOP lawmaker—but with 21 state Republicans backing the legislation, critics said the idea is representative of the party’s anti-choice agenda.
Proposed by state Rep. Rob Harris, the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023 would amend the state’s criminal code to give a zygote, or fertilized egg, “equal protection under the homicide laws of the state”—meaning obtaining an abortion could be punishable by the death penalty.
The bill does not include an exception for people whose pregnancies result from rape or incest, and political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen noted its language is vague enough to suggest that some people who suffer miscarriages could become eligible for the death penalty.
The exceptions provided by Harris include only people who are “compelled” by others to have an abortion against their will or people whose continued pregnancies carry the threat of “imminent death or great bodily injury,” although numerous cases since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade have demonstrated how exceptions to protect a pregnant person’s life often put their safety at risk.
[…]
“It’s not just one lone extremist,” wrote Tessa Stuart at Rolling Stone.
Harris and his co-sponsors—seven of whom have requested to have their names removed from the legislation as it’s garnered national attention—are just the latest policymakers to propose punishments for people who obtain abortions. Alabama’s attorney general said in January that residents should be prosecuted for taking abortion pills, and former President Donald Trump said as a presidential candidate in 2016 that “there has to be some form of punishment” for abortion patients before walking back the statement.
A number of Texas lawmakers have proposed making people who obtain abortions eligible for capital punishment in recent years.
This is what the “personhood” movement is all about. Granting fetuses all the rights of fully formed humans means that a woman commits homicide if she has an abortion. They have always tried to finesse this. They know that people are appalled. But at some point it can’t be avoided and it appears that it’s rapidly becoming something they no longer want to avoid.
Sarah Posner wrote this piece about Jordan’s latest attack on the FBI for something truly stupid:
Conservative media outlets, fueled by distortions from Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, arepromoting a falsestory that the FBI has an anti-Catholic bias and is targeting traditionalist Catholics for criminal investigation.
At the center of this new smear campaign is a single internal intelligence memo, dated Jan. 23 and written by the bureau’s Richmond, Virginia, field office,assessing far-right extremist threats stemming from “Radical-Traditionalist Catholic” ideology. When a right-wing site published the document a few weeks later, the FBI headquarters promptly denounced and shelved the memo.
But Jordan and his foot soldiers nonetheless have been using it as a battering ram to discredit law enforcement — just as multiple criminal investigations against former President Donald Trump are heating up. On Monday, Jordan subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray to appear before the new “weaponization of government” subcommittee, which Jordan chairs with a mix of grandstanding and sound bites calculated to mislead the public into a state of high disinformation anxiety. For Jordan, the prospect of agitating the Christian right is apparently a far loftier goal than pursuing the truth.
The FBI’s swift response is of no consequence to Jordan and his allies. Nor do they care that both Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, under oath, already unequivocally denounced the memo, confirmed its elimination from use and pledged to prevent any similar occurrences. Appearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in March, Wray testified that he was “aghast” upon learning of the memo. “It does not reflect FBI standards,” he told the committee. “We do not conduct investigations based on religious affiliations or practices, full stop.” He noted that the memo was a “product” of just one field office, amid “scores” of internal intelligence memos turned out by the bureau and its field offices on a regular basis. In other words, one misguided field office has been schooled on bureau policy, and the memo and its methods have been discredited and rejected.
Similarly, in his March appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Garland testified that he found the document “appalling” when he first saw it. “The FBI is not targeting Catholics. As I’ve said, this is an inappropriate memorandum, and it doesn’t reflect the methods the FBI is supposed to be using,” he told lawmakers. Garland emphasized, “We have a rule against investigations based on First Amendment activity, and Catholic churches are obviously First Amendment activity.” (Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, eager to notch a propaganda victory, ignored the attorney general’s testimony and accused the Justice Department of “targeting Catholics, targeting people of faith, specifically for their faith views.”)
Fixating on a single occurrence or mistake within the vast federal bureaucracy and blowing it up into an ongoing scandal is a hallmark of the GOP’s long-running efforts to paint Democratic administrations as anti-Christian. In addition to the memo brouhaha, Republicans have recently attacked the bureau for the arrest of a Catholic anti-abortion protester for allegedly assaulting a clinic escort outside an abortion clinic. (He was later acquitted.) And they are also up in arms over the decision by the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center not to renew a contract for pastoral care with an order of Franciscan priests.
The latter is similar to a firestorm in 2011 when Republicans accused the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services of anti-Catholic bias after it declined to renew a contract with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to provide services to victims of human trafficking. The HHS made that decision because of the conference’s refusal to refer clients to a full range of reproductive health care, including abortion, contraception and sterilization, even as many survivors of trafficking have been subjected to sexual violence. Furthermore, the bishops’ conference continued to receive millions in federal grants to provide a variety of other services.
By combining fables, leaders of the Christian right create a new way to tie their voters to Trump.
Claiming Democratic administrations are anti-Catholic or anti-Christian is old hat for the GOP. But this new offensive against the FBI comes at an opportune time for them to consolidate opposition to the government with support for Donald Trump, who needs to keep the Christian right base agitated against his perceived enemies in his latest run for the White House. The charge of the FBI’s anti-Catholic bias melds well, for instance, with the Christian right’s anger over the raid at Mar-o-Lago last year.
By combining fables about a lawless FBI and a virulently anti-religious government, leaders of the Christian right create a new way to tie their voters to Trump. As Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., put it, “If they can come for Trump, they will come for you.” Now the GOP can both energize the base with a new myth of an anti-Christian government and simultaneously inject them with a strong dose of relatability with their revered leader.
There’s always some new grievance. When they can call it a religious bias all the better.
There’s plenty to criticize the FBI for. It’s a powerful police agency that requires oversight. That this case is now being made by the right is new and it’s especially rich since they’re forced to make up silly shit like this. It’s all about a desire to protect Trump and the right wing extremists who now form a solid part of their base. Most FBI agents are probably conservatives (cops generally are) and the institution is anything but liberal but when a president starts inciting insurrections and stealing classified documents they have no choice but to act. And when right wingers are all over the internet plotting violent acts they can’t put their heads in the sand. These people are dangerous.
Believe me, if Biden was a criminal the likes of Trump and there was a violent left wing extremists movement in the Democratic Party they would be clamoring to give the FBI a free hand to execute people on the spot. And they will be more than happy to let Trump or DeSantis or any other Republican conscript the FBI to wreak revenge on their enemies and the FBI will probably do it.
Ben Collins of NBC News last night posted to the Bird site a photo of himself “downloading” the Woke Mind Virus (by drinking Bud Light). Collins was satirizing the right’s latest paroxysm of outrage over capitalism platforming anyone other than big, white swinging dicks.
The right-wing fever swamp’s hair-afire fury over rainbows on beer cans and a video featuring a transgender influencer is beyong parody. But it’s not beyond felony (Patch):
LOS ANGELES, CA — The Anheuser-Busch Budweiser factory in Van Nuys was targeted with a bomb threat Thursday, prompting a sweep of the sprawling campus, the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed.
An Anheuser-Busch employee confirmed to Patch that several Budweiser facilities across the nation were targeted with bomb threats as the company faces massive backlash for an advertising partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
[…]
The partnership with Mulvaney triggered intense rightwing backlash and informal boycotts of the brand, leading to a nearly $5 billion drop in the Anheuser-Busch stock value Wednesday, Fox News reported.
“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth said Friday in a formal statement on the controversy. “We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
Bud Light caves to a mob that was shooting at and running over its product for giving a one-minute sponsored Instagram post to a trans person. pic.twitter.com/ZqWDGPM36z
It wasn’t enough for those infected with the MAGA Mind Virus to machine gun and crush cases of the company’s beer with heavy equipment. Someone(s) moved on to domestic terrorism:
“The safety of our employees is always our top priority. We are working with local law enforcement to ensure the security of our people and our facilities,” an Anheuser-Busch spokesperson said in a statement to Vox.
These clowns think of themselves (and some may be) the type who, on the sergeant’s orders, would march into a hail of enemy machine gun fire for God, country, and freedom. But they can’t abide sharing the country (or political power) with people free not to be just like them.
America’s original sin cannot be waved way or wished away. But if there is one way in which the country is as exceptional as it believes, it is in its ability to avoid dealing with harsh realities. The Silents seemed particularly good at this, but they perhaps learned it from their parents and their parents’ parents.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy devoted decades and dollars, along with erecting Confederate monuments, to rewriting the history of the Civil War so Southerners might avoid confronting their treason and defeat in defense of slavery. So was born the myth of The Lost Cause. Even now, the history of Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election loss and the violent insurrection he inspired is being Lost Caused by his seditious supporters. Election denialism grows out of that long tradtion and generational reflex.
Theodore R. Johnson considers our aversion to confronting the legacy of race in this country and why he writes frequently about it nonetheless. It represents unrepaired cracks in our nation’s foundation (Washington Post):
If you want to know the ways in which our practice of democracy or republicanism falls short of our professed ideals, pay attention to race. Look to the struggles that racial and ethnic minorities have faced when attempting to exercise the right to vote or have their policy concerns prioritized. If you want to identify flaws in our economy, note all the instances where Black and Latino folks, in particular, are left behind — employment, wages, housing, wealth and credit. If you want to see the flaws in policies concerning immigration, national security, the legal system, health care, poverty and the social safety net, pay attention to the disparities experienced by those outside the racial majority.
I write about race because I care about America. That sentiment might come as a shock to some. It is rare today to hear someone who talks forthrightly about the ills of structural racism lead with a declaration of patriotism or pride in the nation’s progress. But this is squarely within the tradition of Black America, from historic stalwarts Ida B. Wells and Langston Hughes to modern-day activists such as the Rev. William J. Barber II and Colin Kaepernick.
Race isn’t the problem with the American experiment so much as it is the best indicator of the experiment’s structural problems. Consider slavery: It’s not the nation’s original sin because a significant number of White Americans enslaved Black people; it looms so large for America because the nation was supposedly founded on the idea of human equality yet allowed this grossest of inequalities to persist and expand.
Those ideals still mean something. They still inspire two and a half centuries after the Declaration. It is why we get up each morning and write in this space, why we pore over the news and support campaigns and issues bearing on personal freedoms and equality, why we point out the glaring failure of the American Dream that has clearly left Gen Z and much of the middle class behind.
Why can’t we have the nice things that other wealthy nations have few problems providing them for their populations? It’s not just the greed and the power-hungriness of America’s richest. It’s race. But that’s impolite to mention.
The nation’s trouble is not that it has a racist bone that simply needs removing but that it is disturbingly slow to recognize that racism is the sharp pain that helps us locate the fractures. I write about race because finding the fractures in our society and our democracy is a necessary step toward healing and strengthening, not destroying, the whole of the nation.
Race is that locked door of the mind behind which our macho, therapy-averse culture refuses to look. Until it does, the pathologies will pass from generation to generation as in dysfunctional families.
“Shame is a toxic emotion, and it often causes people to direct hostility outward rather than inward,” Peter Wehner wrote last week.
What is “neo-noir”, as opposed to “film noir”? The easiest explanation? Most of your film scholar types generally define the “classic film noir cycle” as cynical, dark, and moody B&W crime dramas produced between 1940 and 1959; consequently, any similar entries going forward automatically get tossed into the “neo” noir bin. Now, there are those who would say (with a certain air of haughtiness) “actually, that’s an oversimplification” (yes, I hear you).
But I’m a simple kind of man. I take my time; I don’t live too fast. Troubles will come, and they will pass. So, for the purposes of this study (and to spare you further Lynyrd Skynyrd quotes) I’m just going to dive in with my picks for the top 10 neo-noirs of the new millennium (so far) …suitable for late night viewing, with a stiff shot of your favorite adult beverage on standby.
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead – It’s a testament to the late director Sidney Lumet’s gift that his final film (which he made in 2007, at age 82) was just as vital and affecting as any of his best work over a long career. Recalling The King of Marvin Gardens, it’s a nightmarish noir-cum Greek tragedy, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as a stressed-out businessman with bad debts and very bad habits, which leads him to take desperate measures. He enlists his not-so-bright brother (Ethan Hawke) into helping him pull an ill-advised heist of a jewelry store owned by their elderly parents (Rosemary Harris and Albert Finney). Also with Marisa Tomei, Michael Shannon, and Amy Ryan. Great ensemble work, with a taut screenplay by Kelly Masterson.
Collateral – Tom Cruise is unarguably the most popular movie star on the planet; in fact so synonymous with market-tested box-office mega-product that he seems more of a “brand” than a human being…which is why I’m always blind-sided when he occasionally reminds me that he can still act (when he wants to). One case in point: Michael Mann’s 2004 film.
Cruise disappears into his role as a suave sociopath, a contract killer who enlists an unsuspecting L.A. cabbie (Jamie Foxx) to be his wheel man as he coolly checks off his “to do” list for the evening. Equal parts neo-noir, hostage drama, and psychological thriller; incredibly tense. Brilliant cinematography by Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron captures the vibe of L.A. at night in unique fashion (nice little unexpected touches, like a glimpse of a coyote sauntering across a downtown street). The populous supporting cast includes Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Debi Mazar, Peter Berg, and Javier Bardem. Stuart Beattie wrote the screenplay.
Drive – Ryan Gosling gives one of his best performances to date as a Hollywood stuntman by day, a wheelman-for-hire by night in this richly atmospheric, top-notch 2011 crime thriller from Danish director Nicolas Winding (with a screenplay by Hossein Amini and James Sallis). Paradoxically (and in true Steve McQueen fashion) Gosling is technically giving more of a non-performance; he is not quite all there, yet he is wholly present (i.e. the less he “does”, the more intriguing he becomes). From a purely cinematic standpoint, the director proves himself to be on a par with masters of modern noir like Michael Mann, David Lynch and Christopher Nolan. Perhaps the biggest surprise is Albert Brooks, whose quietly menacing turn as a mean, spiteful, razor-toting viper goes against type (don’t expect Albert to be the “ ha-ha” kind of clown in this outing; more like the John Wayne Gacy kind of clown). (Full review)
The Guilty – Essentially a chamber piece set in a police station call center, this 2018 thriller is a “one night in the life of…” character study of a Danish cop (Jakob Cedergren) who has been busted down to emergency dispatcher. Demonstratively glum about pulling administrative duties, the tightly wound officer resigns himself to another dull shift manning the phones.
However, if he was hoping for something exciting to break the monotony, he’s about to fulfill the old adage “be careful what you wish for” once he takes a call from a frantic woman who has been kidnapped. Before he gets enough details to pinpoint her location, she hangs up. As he’s no longer authorized to respond in person, he resolves to redeem himself with his superiors by MacGyvering a way to save her as he races a ticking clock.
Considering the “action” is limited to the confines of a police station and largely dependent on a leading man who must find 101 interesting ways to emote while yakking on a phone for 80 minutes, writer-director Gustav Möller and his star perform nothing short of a minor miracle turning this scenario into anything but another dull night at the movies. Packed with nail-biting tension, Rashomon-style twists, and bereft of explosions, CGI effects or elaborate stunts, this terrific thriller renews your faith in the power of a story well-told. I haven’t seen the 2021 U.S. remake…but I don’t see how you could improve on perfection. (Full review)
Killer Joe– This 2012 film is a blackly funny and deliriously nasty piece of work from veteran director William Friedkin. Jim Thompson meets Sam Shepherd (with a whiff of Tennessee Williams) in this dysfunctional trailer trash-strewn tale of avarice, perversion and murder-for-hire, adapted for the screen by Tracy Letts from his own play. While the noir tropes in the narrative holds few surprises, the squeamish are forewarned that the 76 year-old Friedkin still has a formidable ability to startle unsuspecting viewers; proving you’re never too old to earn an NC-17 rating. How startling? The real litmus test occurs during the film’s climactic scene, which is so Grand Guignol that (depending on your sense of humor) you’ll either cringe and cover your eyes…or laugh yourself sick. (Full review)
Man on the Train–There are a only a handful of films I have become emotionally attached to, usually for reasons I can’t completely fathom. This 2002 drama is one of them. Best described as an “existential noir”, Patrice LeConte’s relatively simple tale of two men in their twilight years with disparate life paths (a retired poetry teacher and a career felon) forming an unexpected deep bond turns into a transcendent film experience. French pop star Johnny Hallyday and screen veteran Jean Rochefort deliver mesmerizing performances. There apparently was a 2011 remake; but as in the case of The Guilty (above)…I don’t see the point.
Memories of Murder –Buoyed by its artful production and knockout performances, this visceral and ultimately haunting 2003 police procedural from director Joon-ho Bong (Parasite) really gets under your skin. Based on the true story of South Korea’s first known serial killer, it follows a pair of rural homicide investigators as they search for a prime suspect.
Initially, they seem bent on instilling more fear into the local citizenry than the lurking killer, as they proceed to violate every civil liberty known to man. Soon, however, the team’s dynamic is tempered by the addition of a more cool-headed detective from Seoul, who takes the profiler approach. The film doubles as a fascinating glimpse into modern South Korean society and culture.
No Country For Old Men – The bodies pile up faster than you can say Blood Simple in Joel and Ethan Coen’s masterfully constructed 2007 neo-noir (which earned them a shared Best Director trophy). The brothers’ Oscar-winning screenplay (adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel) is rich in characterization and thankfully devoid of the self-conscious quirkiness that has left some of their latter-day films teetering on self-parody.
The story is set among the sagebrush and desert heat of the Tex-Mex border, where the deer and the antelope play. One day, good ol’ boy Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) is shootin’ at some food (the playful antelope) when he encounters a grievously wounded pit bull. The blood trail leads to discovery of the aftermath of a shootout. As this is Coen country…that twisty trail does lead to a twisty tale.
Tommy Lee Jones gives a wonderful low-key performance as an old-school, Gary Cooper-ish lawman who (you guessed it) comes from a long line of lawmen. Jones’ face is a craggy, world-weary road map of someone who has reluctantly borne witness to every inhumanity man is capable of, and is counting down the days to imminent retirement (‘cos it’s becoming no country for old men…).
The cast is outstanding. Javier Bardem picked up a Best Supporting Actor statue for his turn as a psychotic hit man. His performance is understated, yet menacing, made all the more unsettling by his Peter Tork haircut. Kelly McDonald and Woody Harrelson are standouts as well. Curiously, Roger Deakins wasn’t nominated for his cinematography, but his work on this film ranks among his best. (Full review)
Rampart – In a published interview, hard-boiled scribe James Ellroy once said of his (typical) protagonists “…I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity.” Later in the interview, Ellroy confided that he “…would like to provide ambiguous responses in my readers.” If those were his primary intentions in the screenplay that drives Oren Moverman’s gripping and unsettling 2011 film (co-written with the director), I would say that he has succeeded mightily on both counts. If you’re seeking car chases, shootouts and a neatly wrapped ending tied with a bow-look elsewhere. Not unlike one of those classic 1970s character studies, this film just sort of…starts, shit happens, and then it sort of…stops. But don’t let that put you off-it’s what’s inside this sandwich that matters, namely the fearless and outstanding performance from a gaunt and haunted Woody Harrelson, so good here as a bad, bad, bad, bad L.A. cop. (Full review)
Whelm– Set in rural Indiana during the Great Depression, writer-director Skyler Lawson’s 2021 debut feature centers on two brothers: Reed (Dylan Grunn) and August (Ronan Colfer), a troubled war veteran. Desperate for money, the siblings get in over their heads with a suave, charismatic but felonious fellow named Jimmy (Grant Schumacher) and a cerebral, enigmatic man of mystery named Alexander Aleksy (Delil Baran). Equal parts heist caper, psychological drama, and historical fantasy. A handsomely mounted period piece, drenched in gorgeous, wide scope “magic hour” photography shot (almost unbelievably) in 16mm by Edward Herrera. The film evokes laconic “heartland noirs” of the ‘70s like Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven and Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us. (Full review)
Charlie Pierce on the recording obtained by the Tennessee Holler which shows the conversation among those pigs in the legislature after they expelled the two Justins:
Much of the first part of the recording consists of a re-education session aimed at Rep. Jody Barrett, who jumped the fence after voting to expel the two Black guys and voted against expelling the white lady. The other members of the congregation jumped all over Barrett allegedly because he didn’t give the GOP leadership a heads-up, but really because expelling the two Black guys and not expelling the white lady made the rest of the House majority look…racist. Rep.Jason Zachary found his dudgeon achieving orbit status.
“I’ve listened to Democrats trash us for three days, calling us racists. I’ve never had anybody call me a racist, and for the last three days, all I’ve heard from them is how this is the most racist place…They are not our friends. They destroy the Republic and the foundation of who we are, or we preserve it. That is the reality of where we are right now….and I feel that we were hung out to dry by a couple of members.”
They then dogpiled on Barrett for a while. But the full aria came from Rep. Scott Cepicky, who looked out from the height of his seat representing District 64 and saw armageddon approaching from all sides. Cepicky sought to steel his comrades against the onslaught of wokeness, inconsistent pronouns, and books about gay penguins. And, Lord have mercy on him, he actually resorted to profanity.
“I think the problem I have is that if we don’t stick together — If you don’t believe we’re at war for our Republic — with all love and respect for you, you need a different job. The left want Tennessee so bad. Because, if they get us, the Southeast falls and it’s game over for the Republic. This is not a neighborhood social gathering. We are fighting for the Republic of our country right now. And the world is staring at us. Are we gonna stand our ground? I’ve gotten phone calls from other reps, going ‘We sure hope you guys stand up. Because maybe it will give us the courage to stand up and push back against what’s going to destroy our republic. [More Barrett bashing here] … I’ve been called a racist, a misogynist, a white supremacist more in the last two months than I have been in my entire life, and, by golly, I’m biting my tongue.
“And I’m telling you, Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, those days are wearing thin right now. And I’m going to have to swallow this seeing Mr. Jones back up here, walking these hallowed halls, that the greats of Tennessee stood in, and watch them disrespect the state that I chose to move to, and by golly, it’s got to stop. I’m sorry for getting angry here. My father was D-Day Plus-4 and he fought for this freaking country and many of his friends died. You gotta do what’s right even if you think it might be wrong. [Ed. Note: I don’t know, either.] And you gotta protect this freaking republic here in Tennessee or, you know what, let’s all go the hell home. I’m getting gray hairs sitting here listening to this freaking bullshit.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Republican farm team. A couple of these guys are better than even odds to end up in Congress, where they can inflict this whinging paranoia on the rest of the nation. And if they don’t get their way, and if people point out that their way is revanchist crapola seeking to return this country to the 1880s, America is simply finished. They are standing at the gates. Gay penguins, beware.
Oh god. He’s right. This is the next generation. They make Marge Greene look like a sober stateswoman.
