Settled legal precedent in the US is not “gospel” and in some instances may have been “something somebody dreamt up and others went along with”, the US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has said.
Thomas – part of the conservative supermajority that has taken hold of the supreme court over Donald Trump’s two presidencies – delivered those comments Thursday at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law in Washington DC, ABC News and other outlets reported. His remarks preceded the nine-month term that the supreme court is scheduled to begin on 6 October.
“I don’t think that … any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel,” Thomas said during the rare public appearance, invoking a term which in a religious context is often used to refer to the word of God. “And I do give perspective to the precedent. But … the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country and our laws, and be based on something – not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”
Among the various cases Thomas and his colleagues are expected to weigh in on is a request to overturn the 2015 Obergefell supreme court decision that legalized marriage for same-sex couples nationwide. Other cases being mulled by the supreme court for its 2025-2026 term involve tariffs, trans rights, campaign finance law, religious rights and capital punishment.
Thomas was in the 5-4 minority that voted against the Obergefell decision.
Remember, Roberts voted with the minority in that case so he’ll be there with Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch. Can we count on Kavanaugh or Barrett on this one? I don’t think so. Kavanaugh is having tantrums about being disrespected and Barrett is a Catholic fanatic.
Do I think they’ll do it? I don’t know. But I see no reason to assume they won’t. They don’t care about precedent that have been upheld for 50 or a hundred years. Why would they care about a ten year old precedent they truly find offensive?
They see Dobbs as their guiding principle.
They overturned Roe, knowing that it would cause a massive reaction. I see no reason they wouldn’t be willing to do the same with Obergefell.
Hegseth, a former Fox News host, last week called U.S. generals stationed around the world to Quantico, Va. The highly-unusual order, which will cost the U.S. millions of dollars to bring the generals to the U.S. on short notice, sparked concerns that the U.S. was on the brink of a major military conflict. However, insider reports indicate that the meeting is essentially a photo-op.
Hegseth plans to video himself giving a speech on “warrior ethos” to the generals, because “the guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint,” an insider told CNN.
Of course. But now Trump is stealing his thunder:
President Trump is gearing up to hold court at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s all-hands military meeting Tuesday.
The 79-year-old president’s appearance, first reported by Axios, adds much more scrutiny—and security presence–to what was already a controversial and expensive meeting.
He wasn’t going to allow Pete to have that big beautiful photo op with all that gold salad all to himself. No way.
It’s telling that the free speech warriors on the right who’ve been caterwauling about cancel culture don’t make up a majority of the GOP. What failures.
YouGov also finds an increase in the share of Democrats and political independents who rate civil rights as their “most important issue.”
Hmm. Maybe the MAGA agenda isn’t all that popular after all.
[T]he problem for Trump (and those who ignore the data) runs deeper than the topline indicates. It’s not just that more people disapprove than approve of Trump, but that the disapprovers feel their emotions much, much more intensely. Depending on the polls you pick for your average, between 46 and 50 percent of U.S. adults tell pollsters they “strongly disapprove” of the job Trump is doing as president. That is double the percent that strongly approve (24%):
This seems like an advantage for Democrats, don’t you think?
And if that’s the case it’s seems very counterproductive for strategists and candidates to rain on their parade by capitulating to the other side. Maybe don’t do that?
A man once appeared on Fox News’ morning show Fox and Friends to offer his opinion about an impending government shutdown over one of America’s perennial budget battles. He had a very clear idea of the problem and how it should be solved, telling the hosts:
Problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top. The president is the leader, and he’s got to get everybody in a room and he’s got to lead…I really think the pressure is on the president.
The man was Donald Trump speaking about President Barack Obama in 2013.
That was then. After agreeing to meet with Democratic leaders this week to try to head off the looming shutdown next week, Trump decided it wasn’t worth his time. In a long diatribe on Truth Social he claimed that unless the Democrats dropped a dozen demands they hadn’t actually made (“transgender operations for everybody!”) he would not meet with them. So much for presidential leadership.
According to Politico he was actually asked by the GOP congressional leadership not to meet with them as he’d planned. I would guess that’s almost certainly because they were afraid TACO Trump would make some kind of cockamamie deal that would put their members in jeopardy. The last thing you want to do is let Trump be alone in a room with anyone. He is so scattered and undisciplined you just never know which way he’s going to go.
Trump has always believed that government shutdowns would be good for him so he appears to have washed his hands of the matter. GOP elected officials know better. Politico reports that they are badly divided on the best strategy to handle the fact that the Democrats seem to be strangely united and unwilling to bend. They don’t have any practice in dealing with such an unusual phenomenon.
One side, led by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, wants to keep everything simple by saying that the Democrats are refusing to sign on to a clean continuing resolution to extend the budget negotiations (again) for another seven weeks. The idea is to portray the Democrats as being unreasonably obstructionist. The other side, led by House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to scream bloody murder that the Democrats are angling to reverse laws that give undocumented immigrants government benefits. I assume they each have their polling and focus groups backing up their strategies but at this point they’re just drowning each other out.
I made the point a couple of weeks ago that one of the main reasons Democrats were belatedly awakening to the fact that there is no margin in accepting handshake agreements or assumptions of good faith by the Republicans is the fact that the former author of Project 2025 and current Director of Office Management and Budget, Russell Vought, had basically thrown bipartisanship in the garbage and set it a fire when he promoted the highly controversial use of “pocket rescissions”, to unilaterally claw back spending that had already been signed into law. Vought went ahead and did it, using this contested mechanism to cancel $5 billion in congressionally appropriated foreign aid, proving that nothing will stop the administration from going back on its word.
Vought made clear how he feels about bipartisanship with these comments to the Christian Science Monitor last July:
“The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan. I actually think that over time, if we have a more partisan appropriations process—for a time—it will lead to more bipartisanship,
That last line brings to mind a comment by anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist years ago who famously said about Democrats, “they will only become acceptable once they are comfortable in their minority status. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate.” It is an article of faith among many Republicans that once Democrats learn to accept their permanent minority status they will happily do as they are told.
Last week Vought decided to deploy yet another scare tactic by ordering all agencies that are not considered “essential’ in a shutdown to prepare to permanently fire employees if the Democrats don’t bend to his will. This was a fear expressed in the last shutdown by Sen. Schumer but that was back in the early days of the DOGE purges and the Capitol was still a bit shell shocked. Today, nobody is cowed by threats of mass firings since they have been doing it for months. It doesn’t take a shutdown to give them the green light to fire anyone they choose.
Moreover, their mass firings have proven to be resounding failure. They are reportedly desperate to reinstate many of those who were dismissed and have actually wasted massive amounts of money due to the lack of necessary staff to keep the government functioning. Vought can fire everyone if he wants to and new cases can wend their way through the courts but there is no reason for the Democrats to make a deal with them to stop it since they just lie and do what they want anyway, no matter the cost.
It’s taken a while for Washington Democrats to accept that this is now the operating principle of the Republican Party. But they appear to understand it now. They are demanding that the Republicans restore the health care cuts that were in the Big Beautiful Bill which includes those massive cuts to Medicaid and the Obamacare subsidies that are going to hit millions of Americans very soon. They know that the Republicans are already feeling heat for what they did and it’s only going to get worse for them going into the mid-terms if they have to face more angry constituents in a shrinking job market who are losing their health care.
I don’t know how this is going to end up. The Republicans still hold the institutional power and I would never underestimate the willingness of some Democrats to delude themselves into believing that their fellows on the other side of the aisle are operating in good faith. But so far, they are holding the line. After all, Democrats have a base too, which is overcome with horror at what the Trump administration and its congressional toadies are doing to this country. They may not win in the end but the 263 million people in America who didn’t vote for this travesty deserve to have someone in Washington fighting for them.
Update: So Trump now says he’ll meet with the Democratic leaders on Monday. I guess someone told him that it made him look like a loser and a quitter to refuse to do it. The word is that he’s going to tell them to go fuck themselves. Really.
Update: They have deleted it from Truth Social but it’s already everywhere, especially in QAnon circles where the people are ecstatic.
“Medbeds” are a big QAnon thing.
In a popular QAnon chat group, a woman named Julie was selling hope and a $22,000 cancer treatment.
For “those interested in medbeds,” she wrote in a 36,000-member QAnon group on the chat platform Telegram, “FYI My husband uses a #medbed generator and 4 tesla biohealers for his stage 3 inoperable and aggressive salivary gland tumor. THIS technology is very supportive!”
The message might have sounded like gibberish to outside readers. But in this corner of the internet, where conspiracy theories and alternative health practices run wild, it suggested something barely short of a miracle: the arrival of a much-hyped device that followers think could treat aggressive cancer.
An increasingly popular conspiracy theory falsely centers around the existence of “med beds,” a fabled medical instrument that does everything from reversing aging to regrowing missing limbs. The theory has grown in popularity among followers of far-right movements like QAnon, some of whom claim to be urgently awaiting a med bed to treat severe health conditions.
Some companies are capitalizing on the sudden demand. Julie, the woman advertising her husband’s med bed treatment in QAnon chat groups, is not an impartial med bed fan, but a marketer for Tesla BioHealing, one of multiple companies selling what they describe as “med beds,” sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars. The company credits its technology to a doctor who has previously been accused by the Federal Trade Commission of misleading advertisements for asthma treatments, and whose previous company board issued a resolution accusing him of sabotage, forgery, and sending company money to an online girlfriend.
The med bed conspiracy theory “serves two prophetic purposes,” said Sara Aniano, a Monmouth University graduate student who studies the rhetoric of the far right and has documented the spread of the med bed myth.
One of those prophecies promises a near future in which big pharmaceutical companies are obsolete. “Then of course there’s the more obvious appeal of having a magical machine, versions of which can diagnose you instantly or heal you instantly,” Aniano told The Daily Beast. “Some can grow back missing body parts instantly. So obviously, there’s a lot of hope that serves a very appealing narrative for those who believe this.”
Some QAnon sects have made med beds central to their conspiratorial claims. A Dallas-based group, which follows the Q influencer Michael “Negative 48” Protzman, has promoted med beds, in part because the devices address a plot hole in another conspiracy theory. The group falsely believes that John F. Kennedy is still alive and youthful, and attributes his remarkable longevity to the curative powers of med beds.
Romana Didulo, a QAnon-adjacent conspiracy leader who claims to be the rightful “queen” of Canada, has also hyped med beds. The devices “will be made available for FREE to all Canadians” following her revolution, she wrote in an August post. Followers of YamatoQ, a Japan-based QAnon movement, have also latched onto med bed theories, even making their own attempted version of the device with copper wires.
Some conspiracy theorists believe Trump is aware of med beds, and can release them to the public. Delays in the prophesied technology (like one frustrated Q fan noted in an open letter to Trump last year) have led some to speculate that Trump is reserving the devices for the most critical cases, and for military members.
There’s more at the link. It’s truly wacko stuff. And Trump put up a fake video saying that he was creating a whole new, free medical system featuring these medbeds. Why?
You have to read this story about a MAGA cultist living all the way down the rabbit hole who believes in the medbed. (gift link) It’s actually quite sad. The man’s in a lot of pain and he’s being conned. I guess he isn’t the first.
I have no idea if Trump actually posted that or some crazy staff member did it. Was his feed hacked? I know he doesn’t know how to embed a video, much less put together a phony AI clip and I don’t know why he’d have to do that. It’s very strange. But then his Truth Social feed is getting more and more out there every day.
What did he mean by this one? Was it an order? A joke? What?
All the president’s henchmen and henchwomen are furiously at work dismantling the country we once knew. So when anyone characterizes this or that presidential daily griefing merely as a distraction from Epstein files news, know that Donald J. Trump’s mob can Truth and chew democracy at the same time.
Sadly, they are hard at both. But let’s get to Friday’s Epstein news first. Then we’ll get to the destructive distractions.
Washington, D.C. — Today, Democrats on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released partial records from the third batch of documents produced by the Jeffrey Epstein Estate, which includes phone message logs, copies of flight logs and manifests for aircrafts, copies of financial ledgers, and Epstein’s daily schedule. The documents produced to the public include mentions of possible contact between Jeffrey Epstein and prominent figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon, and Prince Andrew. Further review of the documents, which were redacted to protect the identity of victims, is ongoing.
“It should be clear to every American that Jeffrey Epstein was friends with some of the most powerful and wealthiest men in the world. Every new document produced provides new information as we work to bring justice for the survivors and victims. Oversight Democrats will not stop until we identify everyone complicit in Epstein’s heinous crimes. It’s past time for Attorney General Bondi to release all the files now,” said Oversight Spokesperson Sara Guerrero.
Within documents of Epstein’s schedule, there is evidence that Thiel and Bannon had scheduled meetings with Epstein, as well as evidence of a pending trip by Elon Musk to Epstein’s island. Prince Andrew is listed as a passenger on Epstein’s aircraft, with financial disclosures providing possible evidence of payments from Epstein to masseuses on behalf of an individual identified as “Andrew.” Extensive redactions have been made to protect victims as Committee investigators continue to analyze the new documents. This is a rolling production, and the Committee expects to receive more documents in response to these and other requests.
In the third batch, the Oversight Committee received 8,544 documents responsive to the Committee’s subpoena from August. The following was received:
Phone Message Logs from 2002-2005, which were produced previously in litigation
Copies of flight logs and flight manifests for aircraft, including helicopters, that Mr. Epstein owned, rented, leased, operated or used from 1990-2019
Copies of ledgers reflecting transactions recorded as cash transactions for Mr. Epstein and business entities. These documents were previously shown to Committee staff at in camera review.
“It should be clear to every American that Jeffrey Epstein was friends with some of the most powerful and wealthiest men in the world,” said Sara Guerrero, a spokesperson for Oversight Democrats, in a statement. “Every new document produced provides new information as we work to bring justice for the survivors and victims.”
Musk, Bannon and a press contact for Thiel’s foundation did not immediately return a request for comment.
A GOP spokesperson for the Oversight panel blasted the Democrats’ decision to release information unilaterally.
In other words, don’t distract from our distractions, Democrats. As in….
Trump last week destroyed what was left of the country’s international reputation in his speech at the U.N. He lost a First Amendment fight with Jimmy Kimmel. He installed a former Miss Colorado contestant and insurance attorney as the acting United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Lindsey Halligan signed off on a wafer-thin indictment of former FBI director James Comey when no other attorney in her branch would.
US Magistrate Judge Vaala trying to untangle Lindsey Halligan's first adventure in indicting someone: pic.twitter.com/PZv2NWNjbM
Donald Trump has ordered the deployment of troops to Portland, Oregon, authorising use of “full force” if needed, to suppress protests targeting immigration detention centres.
The US president claimed the move would help protect “any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists”, characterising the city as “War ravaged” in a Truth Social post.
NEW: We just spotted masked federal law enforcement in a Homeland Security armored truck pulling into the federal building in Downtown Portland. @fox12oregon crews also saw many SUVs at PDX’s Customs & Border Protection headquarters leaving earlier today. pic.twitter.com/8IRDCsK3KG
People in Portland are floodingsocialmedia with dispatches from their “war ravaged” city. “Donald J. Trump’s latest use of the military against US citizens backfired spectacularly on Saturday after Federal troops arrived in Portland, Oregon and immediately formed indie bands,” quipped satirist Andy Borowitz.
Did you know there are beanie wearing peacoat-be-decked hipsters walking around carrying artisanal baked goods and oat milk cortados in broad daylight in Portland?! Send in the TANKS!!! pic.twitter.com/pWp4Es16GL
Last October, someone beat the UDC to erecting a monument to January 6 insurrectionists. The plaque reads: “This memorial honors the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021, to loot, urinate, and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election. President Trump celebrates these heroes of January 6th as ‘unbelievable patriots’ and ‘warriors.’ This monument stands as a testament to their daring sacrifice and last legacy.”
There is a “The South will rise again” vibe to all things MAGA. Donald Trump means to have his revenge on all (in his mind) “what done him wrong.” Anyone and everyone associated with the Russia investigation and Trump’s impeachments must pay, starting with former FBI director James Comey. Vindictive prosecution, you say? You damn betcha. The January 6 insurrection sparked by Trump himself that we all watched live on television must be recast as the War of Deep State Aggression. The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) will start erecting a new set of monuments to the valorous MAGA combatants.
But first, MAGA Republicans on a new House panel will rewrite the history of the day (Politico):
It’s the latest sign that the deadly riot remains a wound on Congress that might never fully heal amid ferocious partisan sparring. Retribution, not reconciliation, appears to be the prime motivation behind the new probe, with the Republicans behind it still bitter over the work of the panel’s previous iteration, which was largely led by Democrats and concluded President Donald Trump was singularly to blame for the violence inflicted by his supporters.
One GOP member of the new panel, Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins, did not rule out questioning members of the prior committee.
“They were not invested in actual investigative work anyway,” said Higgins, who has pushed an unfounded theory that FBI agents helped coordinate the events at the Capitol. “That thing was never legitimate. It was always biased. And therefore, if we question them, it may be with the angle of having them implicate themselves in lies that they presented as truth.”
“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”
Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R) is “talking to different entities” and reviewing documents for potential targets of the new investigation. “We need to look at it from a factual standpoint,” he told Politico.
The history of the day must be deodorized to remove the stink from Trump and the roughly 1,500 convicted participants he pardoned and characterized as “political prisoners.”
That previous select committee concluded that Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, and months of false claims to sow doubt about his defeat in the 2020 election, inflamed his supporters shortly before he directed them to march on the Capitol. But the review also acknowledged that Capitol security officials were underprepared for the onslaught, leading to the breach of the building and severalnear-confrontations between rioters and lawmakers.
“They can’t even seem to settle on which conspiracy theory they want to advance,” said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who served on the previous Jan. 6 panel and serves on the new one. “Was it Antifa? Did it not happen at all? Did Donald Trump really win the election? They can’t figure out what it is they want to say, and it’s because it’s just a tissue of lies and conspiracy theories.”
Raskin is on Trump’s list. As is New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff. The showman will have his show trials. Convictions are a bonus for Trump. It is enough that he will drag his enemies through the mud and damage their reputations and family finances. He wants them to hurt.
The White House released a list of nearly 30 elected officials — all of them Democrats — who the Trump administration said incited violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents throughout the U.S.
[…]
The White House named the following elected officials on the list, as well as quoted each of them:
Gov. Tim Walz smeared ICE as the “modern-day Gestapo.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom likened ICE to “secret police,” calling them “authoritarian” and proclaiming a “right to push back.”
Gov. JB Pritzker claimed the country is becoming “Nazi Germany” because ICE is “grabbing people off the street and disappearing them.”
Rep. Robin Kelly smeared ICE as the “Gestapo” and a “betrayal.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett compared ICE to “slave patrols.”
Rep. Sylvia Garcia referred to ICE agents as “thugs.”
Rep. Delia Ramirez attacked ICE as “a terror force.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal called ICE agents “deranged,” accused them of “kidnapping,” and said “resistance” to ICE is “inspiring.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib said ICE is “terrorizing our communities” and “turning our country into a fascist police state,” and called it a “rogue agency.”
Rep. Ayanna Pressley said ICE is “terrorizing our communities.”
Rep. Max Frost compared ICE operations to “some of the worst horrors and crimes against humanity” in history.
Rep. John Larson said ICE is “the SS” and “the Gestapo.”
Rep. LaMonica McIver incited people to “shut down the city” because “we are at war.”
Rep. Stephen Lynch smeared ICE agents as “the Gestapo” and “nondescript thugs.”
Rep. Dan Goldman compared federal agents to “secret police” who must be unmasked.
Rep. Becca Balint called ICE agents “vigilantes” who can’t be trusted.
Rep. Ilhan Omar said ICE agents are “vile and beyond cruel,” and that the agency should be abolished.
Rep. Nikki Budzinski called ICE agents “dangerous and reckless.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders asked people to “figure out a way to stop ICE from what they are doing as soon as possible.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren claimed ICE is “intentionally stok[ing] fear” and “tear[ing] communities apart.”
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries implored people to “fight” the Trump Administration “in the streets” and declared ICE agents “will be unsuccessful” in protecting their identities “no matter what it takes.”
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu compared ICE agents to the neo-Nazi group NSC-131.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson accused ICE of being “secret police” who are “terrorizing our communities.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass spread a disgusting, fabricated hoax that ICE “kidnapped” a woman on her way to work.
Rep. Gil Cisneros claimed ICE has “terrorized” people through “racial profiling.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell said it was his “priority” to ensure ICE agents “are no longer faceless,” comparing them to “some 1800s bank robber or some KGB officer in Russia.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said ICE “should not exist.”
Rep. Kweisi Mfume challenged the Trump Administration to “a street fight.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler accused ICE agents of “hiding misbehavior because otherwise why would they be wearing masks?”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Bluesky account issued a statement:
The White House knows exactly what it was doing when they published a list of Democrats who have used their voice to call out Trump & Miller’s ICE abuses.
The list is now being used by the far right as an enemies list. It’s reckless. It’s dangerous. And it puts lives at risk.
Again: MAGA disciples who once raged at Hillary Clinton over her deplorables comment bristle today at comparisons to 1930s Germany. Just not enough to reconsider behaviors that evoke them.
“May I start by saying how thrilled we are to have you here. We are such fans of your music and all of your records. I’m not speaking of yours personally, but the whole genre of the rock and roll.”
– Lt. Hooksratten (played by Fred Williard), from This is Spinal Tap
Hello, Cleveland! May I start by saying how thrilled I am that 2025 has yielded Blu-ray reissues of three classic music biz-related films that span “the whole genre of the rock and roll”. Fasten your seat belts…
This is Spinal Tap (The Criterion Collection) – Has it really been 41 years since one of the loudest English bands that never lived set off to “tap into America” on their imaginary comeback tour? (Checks calendar) Yes, that tracks. Director Rob Reiner co-wrote this 1984 mockumentary with Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean, who play Spinal Tap founders Nigel Tufnel (lead guitar), Derek Smalls (bass) and David St. Hubbins (lead vocals and guitar), respectively (several actors portray the band’s revolving door of drummers, who tend to meet untimely ends such as spontaneous combustion, “a bizarre gardening accident”, and perhaps most famously, choking on “somebody else’s vomit”).
Reiner casts himself as “rockumentary” filmmaker Marty DiBergi (a goof on Martin Scorsese, who similarly interjected himself into The Last Waltz) who accompanies the hard rocking outfit on a tour of the states (“their first in six years”) to support the release of their new LP “Smell the Glove” (DiBergi has been a fan since first catching them at the “Electric Banana” in Greenwich Village in 1966).
By the time the film’s 84 minutes have expired, no one (and I mean, no one) involved in the business of rock ’n’ roll has been spared the knife-musicians, roadies, girlfriends, groupies, fans, band managers, rock journalists, concert promoters, record company execs, A & R reps, record store clerks…all are bagged and tagged.
Nearly every scene has become iconic in muso circles; ditto the plethora of quotable lines: “These go to eleven.” “I mean, it’s not your job to be as confused as Nigel.” “You can’t really dust for vomit.” “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” “No…we’re NOT gonna fucking do ‘Stonehenge’!” “We’ve got armadillos in our trousers-it’s really quite frightening.”
The great supporting cast includes Tony Hendra (who steals all his scenes as the band’s prickly manager, clearly modeled after Led Zeppelin’s infamously fearsome handler Peter Grant), Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley, Jr., Fran Drescher, Parick Macnee, June Chadwick, Billy Crystal (“C’mon…mime is money!”), Howard Hesseman, Paul Shaffer, and Fred Williard.
Third time’s a charm for Criterion, who released previous editions on LaserDisc and DVD. The label does their usual voodoo with a sparkling new 4K transfer (supervised and approved by director Reiner) and 5.1 Surround DTS MasterAudio (“Big Bottom”, “Hell Hole”, and “Sex Farm” have never sounded so…robust).
Extras include an engaging conversation between Rob Reiner and Spinal Tap superfan Patton Oswalt, three audio commentaries, media appearances, trailers, and music videos. The 90 minutes of outtakes is a real treat for fans of the film; when you see the quality of what ended up on the cutting room floor, you marvel even more at the cast’s improvisational skills (Reiner had 100 hours of footage to pare down).
Breaking Glass(Fun City Editions) – Released on the cusp of the Thatcher era, writer-director Brian Gibson’s 1980 film is a No Wave take on A Star is Born, with a nod to the classic UK kitchen sink dramas of the 1960s. 26 year-old singer-songwriter Hazel O’Connor delivers a naturalistic performance as a disenfranchised young gas station attendant who aspires to be a rock star…but strictly on her own terms. To wit, the lyrics she furiously scribbles into her notebook are not exactly “moon-June” love sonnets; take “Big Brother”, for instance:
They’ll tear out your heart, throw it knee-deep in a cart Cause that’s what they do with the scum like me and you And you feel as if you died, whilst you’re standing on the line And you wonder all the time why can’t you cry? But the people in control don’t care for you They are just a robot with a job to do And when your used, exhausted, they’ll be rid of you As soon as look at you, go to the back of the queue!
Not destined to be a chart-climber, that one. Despite the ridicule and sexism she constantly weathers, she eventually gets the attention of a street-hustling manager (Phil Daniels) who sees her potential and helps her put a decent band together (including a young Jonathan Pryce on sax). However, when she lands a recording contract, the inevitable compromises begin once a more seasoned, smooth-talking (and weaselly) industry exec (Jon Finch) begins to wrest control of her career (let the eternal battle between Art and Commerce commence).
O’Connor does her own singing (she also co-wrote the songs with soundtrack producer Tony Visconti). I see the film as a companion piece to Lou Adler’s 1981 Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains and Gillian Armstrong’s 1982 rock musical Starstruck (I wrote about both films here).
Fun City’s 2025 edition is a bit light on extras, but boasts a long-overdue restoration, improved audio, and (most notably) reinstates the original UK cut (the previous Olive Films reissue was not restored, and featured the U.S. cut, which is 10 minutes shorter).
Slade in Flame(BFI; Region ‘B’ only) – Akin to Mott the Hoople, it may be arguable among music geeks as to whether Slade was truly “glam” (they were a bit on the “blokey” side- as the Brits would say), but they are nonetheless considered so in some circles, and this 1974 film was released during the heyday of space boots and glitter, so there you go.
The directorial debut for Richard Loncraine (Brimstone and Treacle, The Missionary, Richard III) the film is a gritty, semi-biographical “behind the music” drama (don’t expect A Hard Day’s Night) about a working-class band called Flame (suspiciously resembling the four members of Slade, wink-wink) who get chewed up and spit out of the star-making machine (this just in: managers and A & R people are back-stabbing weasels).
It’s admittedly not a genre masterpiece, but the film is bolstered by a great soundtrack (all Slade originals, naturally) and the casting of Tom Conti (playing a soulless record exec with great aplomb). An amusing scene where lead singer Noddy Holder’s character gets locked into a stage coffin presages a similar hardware malfunction depicted in This Is Spinal Tap. Another memorable scene has the band risking life and limb to access the broadcast booth for an on-air interview at an offshore pirate radio station (the story is set in the late 60s).
BFI’s 2025 remastered Blu-ray edition is a vast improvement over Shout! Factory’s 2004 DVD, in both image and sound quality. Extras include a newly recorded audio commentary with the director and film critic Mark Kermode, a new 9-minute interview with Tom Conti, a 54-minute 2002 interview with Noddy Holder, and more. Note: Requires an all-region player.
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon are all named in copies of Jeffrey Epstein‘s daily schedules released Friday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
The schedules make reference to Musk possibly flying to an “island” in 2014, and Thiel and Bannon apparently dining with Epstein as recently as 2017 and 2019, respectively.
Musk went to the island? How interesting. Can’t say I’m surprised though. He probably saw an opportunity to spread his valuable seed to some young, fertile, females.
As recently as 2019 — as mounting press coverage and renewed investigations were closing in before his arrest at Teterboro Airport on sex trafficking charges, as most everyone else in Jeffrey Epstein‘s orbit had already shunned the 66-year-old — Bannon was still standing by his man. The rumpled former Trump aide reportedly advised Epstein from the shadows, joined strategy calls, and ultimately helped stage a behind-the-scenes media makeover, arranging a series of videotaped sessions at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in which Bannon served as his interlocutor.
The setup looked like a documentary shoot — a small crew, professional lighting, with Bannon lobbing tough, prosecutorial questions from off-camera. They were a kind of debate-prep, seemingly designed to get Epstein ready for an image-changing sit-down interview with a news outlet like 60 Minutes, with Bannon playing the part of Mike Wallace. But Epstein, The Hollywood Reporter has learned, may have footed the bill for it all, throwing ownership of the footage into question.
The interview never took place — some PR rehabs are just too daunting — but for months now, Bannon has been publicly promoting that footage of his erstwhile friend — 12 to 15 hours, by his own count — as the foundation of a planned docuseries, working title The Monster. He’s been pitching it as journalism, a raw look inside Epstein’s pathology. In fact, though, those tapings seem to have been far from journalistic.
According to author Michael Wolff, who was there for the first taping and reviewed transcripts of others — and who first revealed the existence of these tapes in his 2021 book Too Famous — the point wasn’t exposure. It was spin. “There’s no question the tapes were media training,” he tells THR. “And there’s no possible way Epstein would have signed off on them being used in a documentary.”
That context — his alleged financial arrangement with Epstein, the coaching role he played, the purpose of the tapings — has been conspicuously absent from Bannon’s own public commentary about the Epstein scandal over the past few months. The onetime Trump advisor has been among the most vociferous critics of Epstein and has loudly denounced the administration for its refusal to release the Epstein files.
[…]
Bannon, who did not reply to repeated calls and emails, has in the past denied Wolff’s account and reports of his friendship with Epstein. But over the past five years he’s been considerably more hazy about the release of the Epstein tapes, waving off any inquiries about their whereabouts. Then, last February, he appeared on The Jimmy Dore Show and finally spoke about the footage, claiming he was producing a documentary series around them — “maybe for Netflix” or another streamer. “He’s a product of the elite,” Bannon said of Epstein, “and everything that’s been put out about him is not exactly the truth.”
To Wolff, who knew both Bannon and Epstein well, Bannon’s recent attacks on Epstein belies the cozy nature of their relationship. He claims the two men were good friends, meeting sometime around 2017, shortly after Bannon’s forced exit from the Trump White House, and remained close right until his death in August of 2019. During those years, Wolff claims, Bannon was a frequent visitor to both Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse and his Paris apartment, and the two exchanged calls and emails almost every day. Their affinity was not altogether surprising: The two men shared a Wall Street background, a taste for the high life and a complicated relationship with Donald Trump — both were close to the president before being iced out. (Bannon’s break with Trump came soon after the publication of Wolff’s bestselling Trump exposé Fire and Fury, for which he was widely rumored to be a major source.)
In fact, it wasn’t until years after Epstein’s alleged prison-cell suicide that Bannon publicly changed his tune on Epstein.
Of course Bannon was an Epstein bud. He’s drawn to money and power like a horsefly to horse dung. Maybe he doesn’t have the rights to the footage but if so the Epstein estate does and they are subject to subpoena. If Bannon has it and hasn’t released it his MAGA followers should really wonder why.
We all answer to Laura Loomer in America. She is the Executive VP of the country’s HR Department. They’d better do as she says, or else.
The good news is that the right has ended cancel culture which is a huge relief.
(I do love how he constantly recites the ever growing list of the alleged “hoaxes” against him. I wonder if any Republicans will ever look at that and wonder if may, just maybe, he protests too much… Nah.)
