Maher had dinner with Trump (and Kid Rock) and says he couldn’t have been more wonderful:
“You can hate me for it, but I’m not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured,” Maher said. “And why isn’t that in other settings- I don’t know, and I can’t answer, and it’s not my place to answer. I’m just telling you what I saw, and I wasn’t high.”
The comedian showed up a printout of dozens of insults the president has thrown his way over the years, including calling him a “sleazebag,” “stone cold crazy,” a “really dumb guy,” and more. Maher revealed that Trump actually signed the list.
The Real Time host said he did not receive pushback from Trump when questioning some of his positions, and he was also shocked to hear Trump admit he “lost” the 2020 presidential election.
“I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And, honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump. That’s just how it went down. Make of it what you will. Me? I feel it’s emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days,” Maher said.
At one point during the dinner, Maher confronted Trump and accused him of “scaring” his own citizens too much with talk of a third term and more.
“At one point, I said to him, ‘you’re scaring people. Do you really want to be scaring your own citizens so much?,’” he recalled. “And I know now you’re all saying, ‘and what did he say to that?’ Honestly, I don’t remember. But it wasn’t, okay, I’ll stop. So MAGA fans, don’t worry. Your boy gave me nothing, just hats. Hats in a very generous amount of time and a willingness to listen and accept me as a possible friend, even though I’m not MAGA, which was the point of the dinner.”
Gag. As one of the guests on his show said, “it was nothing but PR for him and you were his prop.”
Yes, it’s dropping. But considering that we are supposed to believe that the only thing that matters to Americans is the economy you’d think it would have dropped a lot further by now. Those numbers suggest that the only people who are having second thoughts about him are those who didn’t vote for him but gave him the benefit of the doubt when he took office. That’s not going to be enough to slow him down.
At this point I am just very grateful to the financial markets for at least having a sense of self-preservation if nothing else. It’s the only thing that seems to have been able to make Trump change course.
You probably read the headline this week that said Bobby Jr. endorsed the measles vaccine and encouraged people to get them. According to jonathan Cohn at the The Bulwark, there’s more to the story:
If you clicked through and actually watched the full interview, you quickly discovered he was giving his endorsement grudgingly, following repeated prompts from interviewer Dr. Jon LaPook. And when he was eventually unable to avoid answering, Kennedy framed his endorsement as a description of official HHS posture rather than a personal belief. “The federal government’s position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine,” he said.
Kennedy then proceeded to claim, as he had so many times before, that “we don’t know the risks of many of these products because they’re not safety tested.” That’s not true; vaccines go through extensive safety testing. And in the case of the MMR vaccine, there is now also more than a half-century of widespread clinical use—amounting to a real-world track record of several hundred million doses, giving a very clear safety picture.
Kennedy also claimed that a particular type of vaccine, those that target one rather than multiple proteins on a germ, have “never worked” for respiratory disease. That’s also not true; multiple vaccines work that way.
All of this was after an extended exchange in which RFK suggested that the second Texas girl who died may have been a victim of some other illness: “She had extreme tonsillectomy . . . she was graph positive for bacteria in her bloodstream.”
“All of those are medical words,” Brown University professor Dr. Craig Spencer told me in an interview, referring to Kennedy’s invocation of an “extreme tonsillectomy” (which is not a standard medical term; it’s unclear whether he meant “radical tonsillectomy” or “an extreme case of tonsillitis”) and “graph positive” (the actual term is “Gram positive”). “It doesn’t mean that they actually reflect the reality of the medical case.”
He’s one of those fools who doesn’t understand that if you get pneumonia as a result of measles/COVID/whatever and die it still means you died of the disease. And he’s like a little kid playing doctor, throwing around terms he clearly doesn’t understand.
Cohn notes that Kennedy is promoting his “Make America Healthy Again” program touting diet and exercise and “and ridding the air, water, and food supplies of toxins” which I’m fairly sure his boss Donald “beautiful clean coal” Trump isn’t exactly on board with. But as he’s doing his health tour, he’s literally destroying the HHS. And the destruction is overwhelming.
Starting with the overall 25% reduction in force, it only gets worse. Research grants are down 60 percent from last year. And it’s so chaotic that it’s almost impossible to know exactly where and how it’s happening because there’s no transparency. The only way we know any of it is through various news stories making it hard to see the whole picture.
Cohn points out that this isn’t just Kennedy but rather a truly unfortunate combination of DOGE, the assault on universities and the lingering effects of the backlash against public health from both right and left in the wake of the pandemic (which is just plain infuriating.) But there literally couldn’t be a worse choice to head HHS than Kennedy and his henchmen at the various agencies appear to be just as fringe. The loss of expertise that’s happening in staggering.
I heard Cory Booker, a politician I have always admired, on Stephen Colbert last week and he talked a lot about how we had to forgive and make “good trouble” and his whole schtick is inspiring. But when asked about what’s happening under the Trump administration he’s clearly gotten the memo that Democrats need to focus intently on the kitchen table issues of the economy and health care by which they obviously mean mainly jobs and health insurance.
As I listened to it, I closed my eyes and could have sworn it was an indictment of the GOP from 2007. It sounded so stale even my eyes glazed over. And he’s not the only one. It’s all tired old Democratic talking points we’ve heard a million times.
If they want to talk about kitchen table issues, how about getting a little bit specific? The fact that Trump and Kennedy are destroying cancer and Alzheimer’s research? Demonizing vaccines so that kids are dying? Ending HIV and other communicable disease programs around the world? How Trump wants to raise the price of imported drugs? I don’t know about you but those are things that hit the kitchen table pretty hard when you or someone in your family gets sick.
This is a massive, national disaster, one of the worst things Trump is doing, and I don’t think most people know about it. The Democrats haven’t started to talk about it in a way that will register the scope of the horror. They need to start now because it takes a while for anything to penetrate through the cacophony of the Trump hellscape.
[Checkpoint in West Berlin, West Germany with sign “You are leaving the American Sector” in four languages] / TOH. Photo by Thomas J. O’Halloran, 1961 (via Library of Congress).
A couple of comments heard on Saturday.
The first was from a friend who teaches a political science class for local seniors. There is fear in their eyes, he said.
The second was from a retired Democratic official who asked if I’d heard the comment that while Democrats were buying TV ads, Republicans were buying TV stations. I had.
With those quotes in mind, let’s look at Dan Pfeiffer’s post today. It should be lost on no one that Russian President Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer in East Germany, is a big influence on Donald John Trump, convicted felon and corrupt businessman. The Trump administration’s crackdown started with allegedly violent undocumented immigrants. It expanded to visa-holders, work-visa-holders, and green card holders. He’s moved on to American citizens like night follows day.
Last week in the Oval Office, surrounded by his cabinet and the media, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders that instructed his Department of Justice to investigate two individuals for the crime of criticizing the regime. Miles Taylor is a former Trump staffer who anonymously wrote an op-ed criticizing Trump before going public and becoming a vocal critic of Trump. Christopher Krebs was a cybersecurity official in the first Trump Administration who dared to push back on the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
There’s no inkling or evidence that either committed any crime. No allegation, no probable cause. All they did was publicly criticize the President of the United States. For 250 years, being free to criticize those in power was fundamental to our democracy. Not anymore. Not with Trump back in the White House.
Wonder why those seniors are worried? If this were happening in another country, we would see it for what it is, Pfeiffer laments, a “democracy falling into dictatorship.” But a lot of Americans are in see-no-evil mode when it comes to the land of the free.
Democrats, for their part, are hung up on the price of eggs and hold onto kitchen table issues like a security blanket while treating “voters who care about democracy” as “college-educated political junkies” already on our team.
There are powerful survey tools out there now that “tell us what voters already care about. Perhaps the question Democrats should ask is, what do we want them to care about?”
“Voters are not sufficiently alarmed by American democracy crumbling,” he adds. “Instead of accepting that premise, Democrats should try to change it.”
Or as Anat Shenker-Osorio complained years ago, “Democrats rely on polling to take the temperature; Republicans use polling to change it.” For us, good messaging is not about saying what is popular, it is about making popular what needs to be said.
The U.S. turning into East Germany just might fit that latter category. While admitting some biases and possible errors, Pfeiffer makes a stab at what’s next:
No Fear: Senator Chris Murphy is one of few Democrats who have taken up this mantle. Despite a very successful record as a senator, Murphy was largely unknown only a few months ago. His national profile has grown significantly because he has become a Paul Revere of sorts — clearly and authentically explaining what Trump is doing and why it’s dangerous. He is sincere. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have taken a different approach, talking about the dangers of Trump through a class prism. Once again, it’s authentic. What do these messages have in common with each other — and with Obama in 2008? They are told without fear or political calculus. These are scary times; and Democrats seem more scared of their own shadow than whatever Trump is doing.
Don’t Try to Fuse Two Messages Together: The worst decision in politics is no decision. Pick a lane. Some of the Democratic messaging has been too cute by half. When Trump pardoned the January 6th rioters, Democratic politicians flooded Twitter with things like “Pardoning rioters does nothing to lower the price of eggs.” You can see how they got to this point. The communications director says we have to talk about what’s in the news to get coverage and the pollster says high egg prices are a top concern. Voila, a terrible message. Pardoning violent criminals who beat police officers is bad enough. No need to inauthentically tie it to egg prices.
Corruption Explains Everything: Democrats can’t abandon talking about the economy, but we can’t also stand by silently as Trump shreds the Constitution. The best way to do both is to explain why Trump is abridging people’s rights, weaponizing government, punishing speech, and pushing through his agenda without regard for the courts or Congress, all in service of the ultra-wealthy and politically connected. It’s a government of, by, and for the billionaires. Nothing and no one else matters. They are the ones who will get the tax cuts, the handouts, and the preferential treatment. It’s pay to play, and only the wealthiest of Americans can afford it. Everyone else must fend for themselves. Trump will destroy every entity and institution that stands in the way of his power. The more power he has, the better things will be for Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and the rest of the oligarchs ruling America.
Running on a Reform Agenda: This is easier said than done, but Democrats need to do more than identify the problem. We need solutions. We need a reform agenda to address money in politics and corporate influence in government. We also need to ensure that someone like Trump can never again muster such an assault on our system. In the coming weeks and months, I will be writing more about what our reform agenda could look like, but there is no question in my mind that we need one. Having a plan to fix a broken system is the best way to avoid becoming the defenders of the broken system.
So now what? So now change it.
The trick is, as my friend observed, while Democrats were buying TV ads, Republicans were buying TV stations. Having a good message is one thing. Getting voters to hear it in this media environment is another. The left still has a “tree falls in the forest” problem.
Carolina Forward mobile billboard passes N.C. Supreme Court Building in January. The N.C. state Supreme Court allowed most of those Wake Co. votes to stand on Friday, and ordered that other voters be disenfranchised.
Late Friday, North Carolina’s Supreme Court issued an order regarding the nation’s last unsettled race of the 2024 season. Justice Allison Riggs (D) won the race to hold her seat on the state Supreme Court by 734 votes after a couple of recounts. Then the GOP’s legal effort on behalf of Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin (R) kicked into gear to challenge tens of thousands of votes with some Cleta Mitchell-level, creative interpretatin’ of election law. Pay attention. This tactic is coming soon to an election near you.
As a non-lawyer, bear with me.
First, this was an order, not a formal review of the Court of Appeals ruling. There was no hearing or review of the appellate case. By 4-2 a vote (with one Republican justice dissenting), the court simply overturned in part the lower court ruling in Griffin’s favor. Riggs has appealed to the federal court.
Per today’s ruling, around 60,000 ballots with incomplete registrations cast in the 2024 state Supreme Court election will be counted. The Court also issued a 30-day cure period for the roughly 5,000 overseas military voters who did not provide proper photo ID when they registered to vote. But the Court greenlit the decision of a lower court to reject around 200 ballots cast by overseas voters who are registered to vote in North Carolina but never resided in the state. Those ballots will not be counted.
The justices sent the case back to the lower court to work out the details of how the overseas and military voters might yet have their votes counted. “Cure” is a misnomer here. The majority, as the Appeals Court did, elected to clear statutory language on how their votes get counted.
This is disenfranchising of voters and raises the risk of election subversion. It’s unprecedented, as Republican lawyer Ben Ginsberg explained about the earlier Court of Appeals ruling, and it violates due process rights of voters (and potentially other federally protected rights) by changing the rules after the fact, as Rick Pildes and Justin Levitt explained.
Hasen quotes Justice Anita Earls from her dissent:
I have no doubt that this special order, upending years of precedent, violating due process, resulting in the discarding of thousands of legitimate votes, and issued with unseemly haste as though quickly ripping the bandage off the deep wound to our democracy will hurt less, marks one of the lowest points of illegitimacy in this I look forward to the day when our Court will return to the rule of law and act to resolve the critical issues implicated in matters such as this with clarity, transparency, and even treatment for all voters and candidates.
Earls was in town on Saturday for a couple of private events and, when asked, quoted from her dissent, as I will here:
It is no small thing to overturn the results of an election in a democracy by throwing out ballots that were legally cast consistent with all election laws in effect on the day of the election. Some would call it stealing the election, others might call it a bloodless coup, but by whatever name, no amount of smoke and mirrors makes it legitimate.
Griffin’s challenges focused on four of the bluest counties in North Carolina (including mine). It is not clear just which counties will be included in the 30-day period. But essentially, the court majority’s order threw the equal treatment principle out the window, Earls insists:
[T]he vote of an overseas or military voter who is registered in Wake County and who voted pursuant to the laws applicable at the time is counted. However, the vote of an overseas or military voter who is registered in Guilford County is presumed to be fraudulent and will not count unless that voter provides proof of their identity within thirty business days. Explaining how that is fair, just, or consistent with fundamental legal principles is impossible, so the majority does not try.
It is yet uncertain how the process will pan out. Riggs’s federal appeal will likely mean a stay on implementing the 30-day period for overseas and military voters to provide photo IDs to back up their ballots. These include foreign exchange students, businesspeople, missionaries, etc. The court let stand the Appeals Court ruling that overseas and military voters who did not include photo IDs with their ballots will not be counted unless they jump through additional hoops.
Two separate sections of NC election law handle absentee ballots. Article 20 covers domestic absentee ballot procedures. Article 21A covers military and overseas voters. The former requires absentee ballots to include a photo ID. The latter does not. Griffin’s argument is that since there is a constitutional amendment requiring voters “offering to vote in person” to present a photo ID, that this applies to military and overseas voters voting absentee. Some of our judges can read black-letter law but choose not to follow it.
For those hard of reading, Earls includes a chart in her dissent:
As for voters born overseas, now 18 or older, who never lived in N.C., the court majority let stand the Appeal ruling that these ballots will not count because of state constitution language requiring residency in the state. Never mind that state statute defines these voters a residents of their parent’s last state of residence, as does federal law. Earls explains at length the legal concept of “domicile” and how her colleagues erred gravely in dismissing their votes. These are American citizens being disenfranchised. Where else are they entitled to vote?
On we go to the federal level. As for how, if Griffin prevails, ballots already counted get removed from the count, that is a process I may include as an update later. It may erase Riggs’s 734 vote margin, as the GOP clearly hopes. Or it may not.
But wherever you live in this teetering republic, be forewarned. Republicans mean to make courts they control the final arbiters of who wins elections. And not you. Equal treatment under law is for losers.
UPDATE:
A reader from out of state asked if the disputed ballots are included in the totals so far. (Yes.) So how can these challenged secret ballots be removed from the tallies in this state Supreme Court race? (All other races have been certified.) This is my best effort to explain. If I get anything significantly wrong, someone is sure to correct me. Buckle up.
The 65k+/- challenged ballots are absentee-by-mail ballots or early vote ballots (a.k.a., “one-stop absentee” ballots from our 2-1/2 week early voting period). Because NC has same-day registration/voting during the early voting period, it is possible that not every same-day registration will pass muster before the official canvass 10 days after the election. In that case, that ballot must be retrievable to be voided.
Counties using scannable (fill in the bubble) paper ballots affix a bar code to each ballot issued during early voting. That bar code links to that particular ballot that gets scanned and retained. Should the ballot need to be retrieved, it can be via the batch scanners and (in this case) the votes for Riggs or Griffin can be subtracted from the local count for that race. For counties using electronic ExpressVote machines, the ExpressVote (paper) ballot strip gets issued to the voter with a bar code printed at the top that works the same way. Once the voter records her votes, that ballot strip gets scanned by the local scanner/tabulator, and the machine retains the paper record for recounts.
Election Day ballots are not retrievable. Only certified registrants vote on Election Day. If any of those voters’ records are deficient by Judge Griffin’s reckoning, he’s SOL for retrieving and voiding them.
Absentee-by-mail users get issued the old-style paper ballot. Once opened and evaluated by the local Board for compliance with election rules, approved paper ballots also get scanned and retained. Any military and overseas ballots rejected under this court challenge (over lacking a photo ID), as well as the small group of overseas voters rejected as so-called “never-residents” can have their ballots retrieved, and their votes in this race subtracted the same way.
You may have missed this tidbit, amongst the ongoing mass firings across numerous government agencies…but back in February, a funny thing happened on the way to the Apocalypse:
National Nuclear Security Administration officials on Friday attempted to notify some employees who had been let go the day before that they are now due to be reinstated — but they struggled to find them because they didn’t have their new contact information.
In an email sent to employees at NNSA and obtained by NBC News, officials wrote, “The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel.”
The individuals the letter refers to had been fired on Thursday and lost access to their federal government email accounts. NNSA, which is within the Department of Energy and oversees the nation’s nuclear stockpile, cannot reach these employees directly and is now asking recipients of the email, “Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people’s personal contact emails.”
The Department of Energy did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment.
President Donald Trump’s administration has acted with unprecedented speed — and in some cases, questionable legality — in seeking to cut large portions of the federal government, laying off staff and ending contracts. But that speed has resulted in complications, including firing people agencies actually want to keep.
The emails come after multiple staff — all civil servants — at the NNSA received termination notices late Thursday, according to a source with direct knowledge of the notifications. NBC News reviewed the termination notification, which included the subject line: “Notification of Termination During Probationary/Trial Period.”
The NNSA is tasked with designing, building and overseeing the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
The termination notices, which read “effective today,” came within hours of a Russian drone striking the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine. NNSA tracks nuclear risks in Ukraine, including through sensor systems.
Whoopsie!
Speaking of Europe…and the rest of the world, for that matter:
Would America be safer if more countries had nuclear bombs? We are about to find out. For the first time in 60 years, European nations are considering arming themselves with nuclear weapons.
The urgent talks in March among Europe’s leaders were triggered by what Germany’s next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, termed a “profound change of American geopolitics” under President Donald Trump. “We must brace ourselves for the fact that Donald Trump will no longer unconditionally honor NATO’s mutual defense commitment,” he said. […]
So far, this is just talk. There are formidable technological, political and economic barriers to building nuclear weapons. It could take even an advanced nation 10 years and tens of billions of dollars to build the facilities to produce the highly enriched uranium or plutonium needed for bombs, then to construct, test and deploy even a small arsenal.
But that is why European leaders feel the urgency to begin discussions now. Should they proceed, the spread of nuclear weapons would not be limited to Europe or our allies. The nuclear reaction chain could quickly spread to Asia, where Japan, South Korea and Taiwan face similar worries about the reliability of their defense agreements with America.
We have seen this dynamic before. In the 1950s and 1960s, all these nations and more explored getting their own nuclear weapons. Two initiatives convinced them not to do so.
The first was America’s ironclad commitment to come to their aid if they were attacked. That extended deterrence — enshrined in the NATO treaty signed in Washington on April 4, 1949 — was not, by itself, enough. The United Kingdom got nuclear weapons in 1952 and France in 1960, despite the security assurances.
Another framework was needed: the arms control and disarmament commitments embodied in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), negotiated in 1968 and ratified under President Richard Nixon in 1970.
That treaty and the associated mechanisms provided the diplomatic and legal framework that assured countries that if they choose not to get nuclear weapons, their neighbors would not either, and that the world was moving toward nuclear disarmament. […]
Trump is now tearing down these two pillars of global security. If any of these nations were to leave the NPT (as is their right) and launch a weapons program, others would soon follow. The nuclear dominoes would topple globally.
We would be thrust back into the nuclear anarchy of decades past, when President John F. Kennedy warned of “nuclear weapons in so many hands, in the hands of countries large and small, stable and unstable, responsible and irresponsible, scattered throughout the world.”
This will be the nuclear nightmare Donald Trump has unleashed.
Now, I don’t mean to be alarmist, but I recently posted this on Bluesky:
I know, I know…there is enough happening right now to keep you up nights without adding that old chestnut to the mix. That said…there must be something in the air:
As Netflix hit Adolescence continues to make waves and potentially inspire policy, the team behind it has turned its attention to a new impactful project – a Threads reboot.
Warp Films has confirmed it will be turning the BBC’s pivotal TV film into a series. For those unfamiliar, Threads aired on BBC Two in 1984 and depicted the devastating effects of a fictional nuclear apocalypse.
Mark Herbert, founder and chief exec of Warp, said: “Threads was, and remains, an unflinchingly honest drama that imagines the devastating effects of nuclear conflict on ordinary people. This story aligns perfectly with our ethos of telling powerful, grounded narratives that deeply connect with audiences.
“Re-imagining this classic film as a TV drama gives us a unique opportunity to explore its modern relevance.”
Emily Feller, chief creative officer and exec producer, added: “This adaptation will allow us to uncover fresh interpretations in light of today’s world. We imagine highlighting how resilience and connection can offer hope even in the most challenging of times. […]
Not much else is known about the reboot at this stage, or which, if any, original cast members might make a return.
“The most challenging of times”, indeed. So tonight I thought I’d mosey on over to the war room and do a little “reboot” myself. Oh…and Shug? Don’t forget to say your prayers.
(The following was originally posted on August 3, 2024)
Happy end of the world: Top 15 Anti-Nuke Films
“The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.”
-J. Robert Oppenheimer
Hiroshima, following the 1945 nuclear bombing that killed an estimated 66,000 people in seconds.
[Shame mode] All the times I’ve zipped by the I-82 turn-off to Richland, Washington while driving on I-90 and thought “hey, isn’t that where that Hanford superfund nuclear thingy is?” I’ve never stopped to ponder its historical significance. Adjacent to the Hanford Nuclear Site that was built in the early 1940s to house nuclear government workers at the height of the Manhattan Project, Richland is, in essence, a company town; a true “atomic city” with a problematic legacy.
Then again, according to Irene Lusztig’s absorbing documentary Richland (which I caught at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival), how “problematic” depends on who you talk to. Many current residents don’t see why anyone would fuss over the local high school football team’s “mascot”, which is …a mushroom cloud.
The town manufactured weapons-grade plutonium for decades following the end of WW2-to which they had a direct hand in “ending”, via providing the plutonium for the ”Fat Man” nuclear bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Lusztig incorporates archival footage for historical context; these segments reminded me of the 1982 documentary The Atomic Cafe. I wasn’t able to track down whether Richland is streaming anywhere; but here’s the trailer:
Speaking of which…we are several days away from the 79th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. So what have we learned since 8:15am, August 6, 1945-if anything? Well, we’ve tried to harness the power of the atom for “good”, however, as has been demonstrated repeatedly, that’s not working out so well (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, et al).
Also, there are enough stockpiled weapons of mass destruction to knock Planet Earth off its axis, and no guarantees that some nut job, whether enabled by the powers vested in him by the state, or the voices in his head (doesn’t matter-end result’s the same) won’t be in a position at some point in the future to let one or two or a hundred rip. Hopefully, cool heads and diplomacy will continue to keep us above ground and rad-free.
After all, if history has taught us anything, it doesn’t take much to trigger a global conflict. Interestingly, just last week TCM ran their premiere showing of Nathan Kroll’s 1964 documentary The Guns of August. The film is based on historian and journalist Barbara W. Tuchman’s eponymous Pulitzer Prize-winning 1963 book, which focuses on the first year of World War I (1914) and the events leading up to it (Kroll’s film covers the entire conflict through 1918).
I hadn’t seen the film in decades; I’d forgotten how straightforward and sobering it was in illustrating how an unfortunate series of blunders, miscalculations, misinterpretations and failed diplomacy among the ruling houses of Europe triggered a conflict that ultimately led to 20 million people dead and 21 million wounded (military and civilian casualties combined).
Most famously, the flashpoint occurred on June 28, 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne) and his wife Sophie, the Duchess of Hohenberg by a Bosnian Serb revolutionary (and the rest, as they say, is History).
Now we’d like to think that such arcane regional bickering and random acts of political violence half a world away from our comfortable living rooms cannot possibly lead to a horrific global conflict ever again…right? I mean, in this day and age? What are the odds?
The U.S. is adding to its military presence in the Middle East in an effort to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies in the coming days, as well as to protect U.S. troops, the Pentagon says.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Friday that he ordered more ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the Middle East and Europe. An additional fighter jet squadron will also be sent to the Middle East. Austin added that the U.S. is also taking steps “to increase our readiness to deploy additional land-based ballistic missile defense.”
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group will also be moved to the Middle East in order “to maintain a carrier strike group presence.” It will replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group after the end of its deployment.
This week, tensions in the Middle East pushed to a critical point after top leaders from the militant groups Hamasand Hezbollah were killed and Iran and its proxies vowed revenge. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Saturday that Tehran’s retaliation will be “severe and (taken) at an appropriate time, place, and manner,” Reuters reported. […]
Austin said in a statement on Friday that while the U.S. is taking additional measures to support Israel, its priority is to prevent a wider war in the Middle East.
Let’s hope so. In such volatile regions of the world, prevention is preferable to escalation.
Speaking of which …in light of the upcoming presidential election in November, one of the most pressing questions (no pun intended) voters should ask themselves before marking their ballots is this:
Whose finger would you rather see hovering over the proverbial “red button”? Which candidate is less likely to fumble the “nuclear football”? The what?
Officially called the “ Presidential Emergency Satchel, ” the “nuclear football” is a bulky briefcase that contains atomic war plans and enables the president to transmit nuclear orders to the Pentagon. The heavy case is carried by a military officer who is never far behind the president, whether the commander-in-chief is boarding a helicopter or exiting meetings with world leaders.
Today, nearly 80 years after the beginning of the nuclear age, the risks posed by nuclear weapons are escalating. U.S. presidential leadership may be the most important factor in whether the risk of nuclear arms racing, proliferation, and war will rise or fall in the years ahead.
As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a June 7 statement: “Humanity is on a knife’s edge. The risk of a nuclear weapon being used has reached heights not seen since the Cold War. States are engaged in a qualitative arms race. [W]e need disarmament now. All countries need to step up, but nuclear weapons states must lead the way.”
American voters are increasingly aware and, according to recent polling, deeply concerned about nuclear weapons dangers. A 2024 national opinion survey found that a majority of Americans believe that nuclear weapons make the world more dangerous. Overall, just one in eight Americans (13 percent) think nuclear weapons are making the world a safer place, while 63 percent think the opposite, and 14 percent say neither.
In 2024, the candidates’ approaches to these dangers deserve more scrutiny.
How exactly the winner of the 2024 race will handle the evolving array of nuclear weapons-related challenges is difficult to forecast.
Just something to keep in mind come November. No pressure.
With those happy thoughts in mind, I thought I’d share my picks for the top 15 cautionary films to watch before we all go together (when we go). Uh…enjoy?
The Atomic Café – Whoopee, we’re all gonna die! But along the way, we might as well have a few laughs. That seems to be the impetus behind this 1982 collection of cleverly reassembled footage culled from U.S. government propaganda shorts from the Cold War era (Mk 1), originally designed to educate the public about how to “survive” a nuclear attack (all you need to do is get under a desk…everyone knows that!).
In addition to the Civil Defense campaigns (which include the classic “duck and cover” tutorials) the filmmakers have also drawn from a rich vein of military training films, which reduce the possible effects of a nuclear strike to something akin to a barrage from, oh I don’t know- a really big field howitzer. Harrowing, yet perversely entertaining. Written and directed by Jayne Loader, Pierce Rafferty and Kevin Rafferty (Kevin went on to co-direct the similarly constructed 1999 doc, The Last Cigarette, a take down of the tobacco industry).
Black Rain– For obvious reasons, there have been a fair amount of postwar Japanese films dealing with the subject of nuclear destruction and its aftermath. Some take an oblique approach, like Gojira or I Live inFear. Other films, like the documentary Children of Hiroshima and the anime Barefoot Gen deal directly with survivors (who are referred to in Japan as the hibakusha).
One of the most affecting hibakusha films I’ve seen is Shomei Imamura’s 1989 drama Black Rain (not to be confused with the 1989 Hollywood crime thriller of the same title that is also set in Japan). It’s a simple tale of three Hiroshima survivors: an elderly couple and their niece, whose scars run much deeper than physical. The narrative is sparse, yet contains more layers than an onion (especially considering the complexities of Japanese society). Interestingly, Imamura injects a polemic which points an accusatory finger in an unexpected direction.
The Day after Trinity– This absorbing 1981 film about the Manhattan Project and its subsequent fallout (historical, political and existential) remains one of the best documentaries I have seen on the subject. At its center, it is a profile of project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose moment of professional triumph (the successful test of the world’s first atomic bomb, three weeks before Hiroshima) also brought him an unnerving precognition about the horror that he and his fellow physicists had enabled the military machine to unleash.
Oppenheimer’s journey from “father of the atomic bomb” to anti-nuke activist (and having his life destroyed by the post-war Red hysteria) is a tragic tale of Shakespearean proportion. I think this documentary provides a much more clear-eyed (and ultimately moving) portrait than Christopher Nolan’s well-acted but somewhat overwrought 2023 blockbuster Oppenheimer.
Two recommended companion pieces: Roland Joffe’s 1989 drama Fat Man and Little Boy, about the working relationship between Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz) and military director of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves (Paul Newman); and an outstanding 1980 BBC miniseries called Oppenheimer (starring Sam Waterston).
Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb- “Mein fuehrer! I can walk!” Although we have yet to experience the global thermonuclear annihilation that ensues following the wheelchair-bound Dr. Strangelove’s joyous (if short-lived) epiphany, so many other depictions in Stanley Kubrick’s seriocomic masterpiece about the tendency for those in power to eventually rise to their own level of incompetence have since come to pass, that you wonder why the filmmakers even bothered to make it all up.
It’s the one about an American military base commander who goes a little funny in the head (you know…”funny”) and sort of launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Hilarity and oblivion ensues. And what a cast: Peter Sellers (as three characters), George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn, James Earl Jones and Peter Bull. There are so many great quotes, that you might as well bracket the entire screenplay (by Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George) with quotation marks.
Fail-Safe– Dr. Strangelove…without the laughs. This no-nonsense 1964 thriller from the late great director Sidney Lumet takes a more clinical look at how a wild card scenario (in this case, a simple hardware malfunction) could ultimately trigger a nuclear showdown between the Americans and the Russians.
Talky and a bit stagey; but riveting nonetheless thanks to Lumet’s skillful knack for bringing out the best in his actors. Walter Bernstein’s intelligent screenplay (with uncredited assistance from Peter George, who also co-scripted Dr. Strangelove) and a superb cast that includes Henry Fonda (a commanding performance, literally and figuratively), Walter Matthau, Larry Hagman, and Fritz Weaver.
There’s no fighting in this war room (aside from one minor scuffle), but there is an almost unbearable amount of tension and suspense. The final scene is chilling and unforgettable.
I Live in Fear-This 1955 Akira Kurosawa film is one of the great director’s most overlooked efforts. It’s a melodrama concerning an aging foundry owner (Toshiro Mifune, unrecognizable in Coke-bottle glasses and silver-frosted pomade) who literally “lives in fear” of the H-bomb. Convinced that South America would be the “safest” place on Earth from radioactive fallout, he tries to sway his wife and grown children to pull up stakes and resettle on a farm in Brazil.
His children, who have families of their own and rely on their father’s factory for income, are not so hot on that idea. They take him to family court and have him declared incompetent. This sends Mifune spiraling into madness. Or are his fears really so “crazy”? It is one of Mifune’s most powerful and moving performances. Kurosawa instills shades of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” into the narrative (a well he would draw from again in his 1985 film Ran).
Ladybug, Ladybug– I didn’t have an opportunity to see this chilling 1963 drama until 2017, which is when Turner Classic Movies presented their premiere showing (to my knowledge, it had never been previously available in any home video format). The film marked the second collaboration between husband-and-wife creative team of writer Eleanor Perry and director Frank Perry (The Swimmer, Last Summer,Diary of a Mad Housewife).
Based on an incident that occurred during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the story centers on how students and staff of a rural school react to a Civil Defense alert indicating an imminent nuclear strike. While there are indications that it could be a false alarm, the principal sends the children home early. As teachers and students stroll through the relatively peaceful countryside, fears and anxieties come to the fore. Naturalistic performances bring the film’s cautionary message all too close to home.
Miracle Mile- Depending on your worldview, this is either an “end of the world” film for romantics, or the perfect date movie for fatalists. Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham give winning performances as a musician and a waitress who Meet Cute at L.A.’s La Brea Tar Pits museum. But before they can hook up for their first date, Edwards stumbles onto a fairly reliable tip that L.A. is about to get hosed…in a major way.
The resulting “countdown” scenario is a genuine, edge-of-your seat nail-biter. In fact, this modestly budgeted, 90-minute sleeper offers more heart-pounding excitement (and much more believable characters) than any bloated Hollywood disaster epic from the likes of a Michael Bay or a Roland Emmerich. Writer-director Steve De Jarnatt stopped doing feature films after this 1988 gem (his only other feature was the sci-fi cult favorite Cherry 2000).
One Night Stand – An early effort from filmmaker John Duigan (Winter ofOur Dreams, The Year My Voice Broke, Flirting, Sirens), this 1984 sleeper got lost in the flurry of nuclear paranoia movies that proliferated during the Reagan era (Wargames, The Manhattan Project, Red Dawn, et.al.).
Four young people (three Australians and an American sailor who has jumped ship) get holed up in an empty Sydney Opera House on the eve of escalating nuclear tension between the superpowers in Eastern Europe. In an effort to quell their anxiety over increasingly ominous news bulletins droning from a portable radio, the quartet find creative ways to keep up their spirits.
Uneven, but for the most part Duigan (who scripted) deftly juggles romantic comedy, apocalyptic thriller and anti-war statement. There are several striking set pieces; particularly an affecting scene where the group watches Fritz Langs’s Metropolis as the Easybeats “Friday on My Mind” is juxtaposed over its orchestral score. Midnight Oil performs in a scene where the two young women attend a concert. The bittersweet denouement (in an underground tube station) is quite powerful.
Special Bulletin– This outstanding 1983 made-for-TV movie has been overshadowed by the nuclear nightmare-themed TV movie The Day After, which aired the same year (I’m sure I will be raked over the coals by some readers for not including the aforementioned on this list, but frankly I always thought it was too melodramatic and vastly over-praised).
Directed by Edward Zwick and written by Marshall Herskovitz (the same creative team behind thirtysomething), Special Bulletin is framed as a “live” television broadcast, with local news anchors and reporters interrupting regular programming to cover a breaking story.
A domestic terrorist group has seized a docked tugboat in Charleston Harbor. A reporter relays their demand: If every nuclear triggering device stored at the nearby U.S. Naval base isn’t delivered to them by a specified time, they will detonate their own homemade nuclear device (equal in power to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki). The original airing apparently panicked more than a few South Carolinian viewers (a la Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938). Riveting and chilling. Nominated for 6 Emmys, it took home 4.
Testament- Originally an American Playhouse presentation, this film (with a screenplay adapted by John Sacred Young from a story by Carol Amen) was released to theaters and garnered a well-deserved Best Actress nomination for Jane Alexander. Director Lynne Littman takes a low key approach, but pulls no punches; I think this is what gives her film’s anti-nuke message more teeth and makes its scenario more relatable than Stanley Kramer’s similarly-framed but more sanitized and preachy 1959 drama On the Beach.
Alexander, her husband (William DeVane) and three kids live in sleepy Hamlin, California, where afternoon cartoons are interrupted by a news flash that nuclear explosions have occurred in New York. Then there is a flash of a different kind when nearby San Francisco (where DeVane has gone on a business trip) receives a direct strike.
There is no exposition on the political climate that precipitates the attacks; this is a wise decision, as it puts the focus on the humanistic message of the film. All of the post-nuke horrors ensue, but they are presented sans the melodrama that informs many entries in the genre. The fact that the nightmarish scenario unfolds so deliberately, and amidst such everyday suburban banality, is what makes it very difficult to shake off.
As the children (and adults) of Hamlin succumb to the inevitable scourge of radiation sickness and steadily “disappear”, like the children of the ‘fairy tale’ Hamlin, you are left haunted by the final line of the school production of “The Pied Piper” glimpsed earlier in the film… “Your children are not dead. They will return when the world deserves them.”
Thirteen Days– I had a block against seeing this 2000 release about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, for several reasons. For one, director Roger Donaldson’s uneven output (for every Smash Palace or No Way Out, he’s got a Species or a Cocktail). I also couldn’t get past “Kevin Costner? In another movie about JFK?” Also, I felt the outstanding 1974 TV film, The Missiles of October (which I recommend) would be hard to top. But I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be one of Donaldson’s better films.
Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp make a very credible JFK and RFK, respectively. The film works as a political thriller, yet it is also intimate and moving at times (especially in the scenes between JFK and RFK). Costner provides the “fly on the wall” perspective as Kennedy insider Kenny O’Donnell. Costner gives a compassionate performance; on the downside he has a tin ear for dialects (that Hahvad Yahd brogue comes and goes of its own free will).
According to the Internet Movie Database, this was the first film screened at the White House by George and Laura Bush in 2001. Knowing this now…I don’t know whether to laugh or cry myself to sleep.
The War Game / Threads– Out of all of the selections on this list, these two British TV productions are the grimmest and most sobering “nuclear nightmare” films of them all.
Writer-director Peter Watkins’ 1965 docudrama, The War Game was initially produced for television, but was deemed too shocking and disconcerting for the small screen by the BBC. It was mothballed until picked up for theatrical distribution, which snagged it an Oscar for Best Documentary in 1967. Watkins envisions the aftermath of a nuke attack on London, and pulls no punches. Very ahead of its time, and it still packs quite a wallop.
The similarly stark and affecting nuclear nightmare drama Threads debuted on the BBC in 1984, later airing in the U.S. on TBS. Director Mick Jackson delivers an uncompromising realism that makes The Day After (the U.S. TV film from the previous year) look like a Teletubbies episode. It’s a speculative narrative that takes a medium sized city (Sheffield) and depicts what would likely happen to its populace during and after a nuclear strike, in graphic detail.
Both productions make it clear that, while they are dramatizations, the intent is not to “entertain” you in any sense of the word. The message is simple and direct-nothing good comes out of a nuclear conflict. It’s a living, breathing Hell for all concerned-and anyone “lucky” enough to survive will soon wish they were dead.
When the Wind Blows– This animated 1986 U.K. film was adapted by director Jimmy Murakami from Raymond Brigg’s eponymous graphic novel. It is a simple yet affecting story about an aging couple (wonderfully voiced by venerable British thespians Sir John Mills and Dame Peggy Ashcroft) who live in a cozy cottage nestled in the bucolic English countryside. Unfortunately, an escalating conflict in another part of the world is about to go global and shatter their quiet lives.
Very similar in tone to Testament (another film on this list), in its sense of intimacy amidst slowly unfolding mass horror. Haunting, moving, and beautifully animated, with a combination of traditional cell and stop-motion techniques. The soundtrack features music by David Bowie, Roger Waters, and Squeeze.
First they came for his cars with insane tariffs and now they want to screw with Space-X? Oh no!
Elon Musk said reports that President Donald Trump’s budget proposal would drastically cut NASA’s science funding were “troubling,” the latest public break between the president and his close adviser.
Musk’s Friday morning comments mark his second major public split with Trump in areas that impact the entrepreneur’s companies, amid reports that Musk will soon step back from his role at the Department of Government Efficiency.
The billionaire has also appeared to diverge from the party line on tariffs — repeatedly targeting Peter Navarro, one of the public faces of Trump’s trade agenda — as the administration launched sweeping duties on global trading partners, causing major market volatility and resulting in billions of dollars of losses for Musk’s Tesla.
Musk’s latest swipe at the administration’s policies comes as reports of cuts to NASA funding surfaced Friday. Musk’s SpaceX is one of the agency’s largest contractors. The SpaceX CEO replied to a report from technology news outlet Ars Technica that the Office of Management and Budget’s draft budget proposal for NASA would cut roughly 20 percent of the agency’s overall budget, and 50 percent of its science agency funding, calling the news “troubling.”
Imagine that. He’s taken a chainsaw to the rest of the government and now it’s coming for him. There’s a lesson in that.
President Trump on Friday put the Pentagon in charge of a narrow strip of land along the U.S.-Mexico border, authorizing the military to detain immigrants suspected of crossing illegally.
The latest directive builds on Trump’s January executive order declaring illegal immigration a national emergency and ordering the military to secure the border.
Under the order, the military now has jurisdiction over the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60-foot-wide strip of land along the border with Mexico.
The military can use that land to stage operations and detain immigrants suspected of crossing the border illegally.
We really are turning into East Germany. The order says:
“Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats. The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past.”
Right. Except:
Illegal border crossings have already fallen to their lowest level in decades as a result of policies in place before Trump took office combined with his immigration crackdown, researchers have said.
As we know, Trump has been planning military action against Mexico since his first term. He’s just getting the troops in place.
Trump has convinced himself and his followers that everyone loves everything he does and polls like this are just fake news so I doubt it will change his direction. But other Republicans have to run for re-election and while foreign policy is rarely dispositive in elections, this just adds to the overall sense of chaos.
And those Chinese tariffs are going to be bad news…
One good reason why so many people seem to be fleeing everything American when it comes to finance may just be the open, blatant corruption:
Executives from cryptocurrency exchange Binance met with Treasury Department officials last month and discussed loosening U.S. government oversight on the company, while it was also exploring a business deal with a Trump family crypto venture, according to people familiar with the talks.
The Binance executives asked Treasury officials in Washington to remove a U.S. monitor that oversees the exchange’s compliance with anti-money-laundering laws, some of the people said. The move would mark a first step toward returning the company, which in 2023 pleaded guilty to violating those laws, to the U.S. market.
Binance has also been in talks to list a new dollar-pegged cryptocurrency from World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture backed by President Trump’s family, other people familiar with the discussions said. Listing the token, known as a stablecoin, could catapult it into a huge market and potentially bring in billions in profit for the family.
Those dealings mark the progression of a growing alliance between the Trump family and Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which paid a record $4.3 billion fine for allowing terrorists, drug traffickers and sanctioned actors to move billions of dollars through its exchange. The Treasury talks took place after Binance had already begun discussing deals with representatives of the Trump family.
Everyone’s been talking about the weird circumstance of people fleeing the bond markets at a time when equities are going over a cliff. To say it’s unusual is an understatement. The words you keep hearing is that they’re “selling America” which will have huge effects on the ability of the U.S. to function going forward.
I suspect that the fact that Trump and his oligarch cronies are now just openly corrupt is part of this. (Look at Elon…) The instability resulting from Trump’s insanity is overwhelming enough, but without the rule of law or even any necessity to keep up the appearance of honesty it’s pretty easy to see why people would look elsewhere to put their money
