Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Better late than never, I suppose. I was happy to learn that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame finally got around to acknowledging keyboard legend Nicky Hopkins in last week’s induction ceremonies. One could argue that Hopkins (who died in 1994 at age 50 from surgical complications ) was more a “legend” to peers and musos than to the public at large.

That said, his distinctive flourishes added essential color to classics like “Revolution” by The Beatles, “The Song is Over” and “Getting in Tune” by The Who, “She’s a Rainbow”, “Street Fighting Man”, and “Angie” by The Rolling Stones, “You Are So Beautiful” by Joe Cocker, “Imagine” by John Lennon, and “Wooden Ships” by The Jefferson Airplane, to name a few.

Hopkins also did session work on albums by George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, The Kinks, Cat Stevens, Donovan, Martha Reeves, Peter Frampton, Art Garfunkel, Harry Nilsson, Jennifer Warnes, Graham Parker, et. al., appearing on over 250 albums, all told.

Despite such a busy schedule, he managed to shoehorn in a few official band memberships, most notably with The Jeff Beck Group and The Quicksilver Messenger Service, as well as more short-lived stints with The Jefferson Airplane (performing with them at Woodstock), The Steve Miller Band, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and the one-off supergroup Sweet Thursday (which also featured future Mark-Almond Band vocalist Jon Mark). He also released 3 solo albums; his excellent 1973 effort The Tin Man Was a Dreamer is ripe for rediscovery.

And now Hopkins has received an additional “better late than never” nod, courtesy of Mike Treen’s documentary portrait The Session Man: The story of Nicky Hopkins (opening in UK cinemas November 21, and available now in the U.S. as a pay-per-view watch on various streaming platforms including Amazon Prime, Google Play, VUDU, and Apple TV).

Treen takes a fairly by-the-numbers approach in this low-budget but affable affair, narrated by longtime, dulcet-voiced BBC presenter “Whispering” Bob Harris (a bit of a legend himself). Interviewees include Bill Wyman, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Dave Davies, Pete Townshend, Jorma Kaukonen, Terry Reid, Peter Frampton, Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench, Graham Parker, and Harry Shearer (yes-Hopkins even played on a Spinal Tap album!).

Hopkins’ widow Moira speaks quite movingly of his bouts with substance addiction (which he eventually beat) and lifelong health struggles (his chronic Crohn’s disease played a large part in his untimely passing). Also sprinkled throughout are archival interview snippets with Hopkins, as well as performance clips (although I wish there had been more of the latter). All in all, I think fans should be pleased and Hopkins neophytes intrigued enough to take a deeper dive into his catalogue.

In my review of the 2025 documentary Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, I wrote:

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard-although I wish I could.

Allow me to explain.

I was all of 24, living in San Francisco. I didn’t own a VCR (they were exorbitantly priced), so I was still watching the tube in (*shudder*) real time. Perusing the TV Guide one December evening, I was excited to spot  Sunset Boulevard on the schedule for 8pm (I believe it was airing on independent Bay Area station KTVU).

For the uninitiated, Gloria Swanson’s turn as a fading, high-maintenance movie queen mesmerizes, William Holden embodies the quintessential noir sap, and veteran scene-stealer Erich von Stroheim redefines the meaning of “droll” in a tragicomic journey down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams (I’ve seen it many times since).

At any rate, I was comfortably ensconced on the couch, really digging the film (despite myriad commercial breaks). Approximately 20 minutes into the broadcast, the station unceremoniously cut away from the film for a news bulletin: former Beatle John Lennon had been shot and killed in New York City.

It was eerie kismet, as the film opens with the shooting death of the protagonist/narrator (played by Holden), and is ultimately a rumination on the dark side of fame.

Being an avid Fabs fan, it kind of harshed my mellow. Still does, actually-whenever the subject comes up.

It’s hard to believe that was 45 years ago (5 years longer than Lennon’s lifespan). Over the ensuing decades, there has certainly been no shortage of documentaries and biopics covering Lennon’s life and work. At this point, I think I’ve seen most of them.

Consequently, one would assume that there are very few secrets, revelations and angles left to explore. Yet, 2025 has seen the release of no less than two new Lennon documentaries (and the year is still young).

Now that the year is not so young (where does the time go?), and I’ve had an opportunity to screen One to One: John & Yoko (which had its HBO/MAX premiere November 14), I can share a few thoughts on yet another documentary about John & Yoko (enough already!).

Well I’ll be damned if co-directors Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September, The Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void, State of Play, Marley) and Sam Rice-Edwards haven’t assembled a fresh and absorbing take on an oft-told tale…but perhaps not for the reasons you may think.

Using beautifully restored performance footage from John and Yoko’s 1972 Madison Square Garden concert (a benefit for the children who were institutionalized at Staten Island’s Willowbrook facility) as a framing device, Macdonald and Edwards’ film is essentially an encapsulation of the intense sociopolitical turmoil in America from 1971-1973.

This time window encompassed an 18-month period when John and Yoko lived in a small Greenwich Village apartment, which coincided with their increasing political activism (which ultimately got them into hot water with the Nixon administration). Most of the “new” footage concerns John and Yoko’s behind the scenes plans for their “Free the People” tour, which was scrapped after a falling out with Jerry Rubin. The impetus for the 1972 Willowbrook benefit was a TV report by Geraldo Rivera on the shocking conditions in the children’s ward (believe it or not, there was a time when Geraldo was a real journalist).

On a more personal note, 1971-1973 also encompassed my high school years (I graduated in May of 1974), and watching the film triggered memories of witnessing mayhem and discord on Walter Cronkite’s nightly broadcast…images of police beating the shit out of protestors just a couple years my senior, the Attica prison massacre, hijackings, horrific scenes from Vietnam, and the emerging Watergate scandal as Nixon took office for a second term (is it any wonder many of us “of a certain age” entered adulthood with such a cynical worldview?).

The most unexpected takeaway from the documentary were the spooky parallels between then and now, vis a vis the political climate. The massive street protests against Nixon’s reactionary administration (No Kings, anyone?), the tribalism of “hardhats” (essentially the MAGAs of their day) vs. the antiwar protestors (“radical Leftist Democrats!”), footage of George Wallace from a 1972 presidential campaign speech where he goes off on a race-baiting diatribe about how Washington D.C. is (in so many words) a crime-ridden hellhole (sound familiar?).

The icing on the cake is when Nixon sics his justice department on John and Yoko and begins building a case for deportation, essentially as retaliation for their political activism . I mean, could you imagine that kind of thing happening in America in 2025?! Oh, wait…

(One to One: John & Yoko is now on the HBO schedule and available on-demand from MAX)

Previous posts with related themes:

The Killing of John Lennon

The U.S. vs. John Lennon

Revival 69: The Concert That Rocked the World

The Lost Weekend: A Love Story

The Alchemist: RIP Jeff Beck

More reviews at Den of Cinema

— Dennis Hartley

He believes in nothing:

Last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, stood in the Oval Office and lauded President Trump’s new drug pricing deal for weight loss drugs.

“It is going to have dramatic effects on human health in this country,” Mr. Kennedy said, and thanked the “extraordinary C.E.O.s” of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, who were standing beside him.

It was a stark contrast to Mr. Kennedy’s history of bashing weight loss medications and pharmaceutical companies. Just a year ago, he claimed Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, was “counting on selling it to Americans because we are so stupid and so addicted to drugs.”

The president’s deals with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly would lower prices and significantly expand coverage of the obesity drugs under Medicare and Medicaid. That would appear to run counter to Mr. Kennedy’s longstanding hostility toward the weight loss drugs, a view shared by some of his supporters. But neither he nor high-profile followers of the “Make America Healthy Again’’ movement would be likely to risk seeming disloyal to Mr. Trump.

As the nation’s top health official, Mr. Kennedy has been trying to navigate a balance between promoting the president’s goals and assuaging his supporters. He shifts between labeling weight loss medications as “miracle drugs” and renewing concerns about their safety.

[…]

It was a sharp change in tone from October 2024, when Mr. Kennedy dismissed Ozempic as inferior to a healthy diet. “If we just gave good food, three meals a day, to every man, woman and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight,” Mr. Kennedy said on Fox News.

His people are not happy:

“We shouldn’t be normalizing lifelong injections as a solution to the food environment that’s making people sick in the first place,” said Vani Hari, a Kennedy-allied influencer known as Food Babe and a prominent voice in the MAHA movement.

Alex Clark, the host of the popular Turning Point USA wellness podcast “Culture Apothecary,” said she was not enthused with Mr. Trump’s deal with the pharmaceutical companies. “But I understand why he’s doing it, and I understand why it’s being positioned as a MAHA standpoint,” she said.

Jillian Michaels, a fitness trainer who has become a vocal figure in the MAHA movement, said Mr. Kennedy had little leeway. “There’s no question that Kennedy’s wings have been clipped and he’s been brought to heel,” she said.

Bobby had to know that Trump didn’t give a damn about his “MAHA” policy. The man lives on Big Macs and diet coke and thinks exercise will sap and impurify his precious bodily fluids. It’s such a joke that the administration is pretending to believe in being “healthy,” especially after the right spent 8 years vilifying Michelle Obama for telling kids to eat their vegetables and go outside to play.

I can’t say I’m surprised that Bobby turns out to be a standard Trump whore. But it just goes to show that you don’t have to be a right winger to go there. Bobby spent his adult life railing against Big Pharma and now he’s going along with a drug that he and his followers have been hostile to for years.

The grift just keeps on grifting:

The Justice Department has been discussing settlements with two former officials from Donald Trump’s first term who — like the president — claim they’re owed major payouts from the US government as victims of politically-motivated actions.

The administration has been in talks since at least late summer to resolve lawsuits brought by Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and former senior White House lawyer Stefan Passantino, according to court filings. Flynn is seeking $50 million for what he alleges was a wrongful prosecution, while Passantino says a House committee probing the 2020 election harmed his reputation by leaking private information.

The negotiations mark a shift from the Justice Department’s position during the Biden administration, when government lawyers successfully fought both cases. Flynn lost the first round of his civil damages lawsuit last year. The US attorney’s office in Atlanta was defending a judge’s decision to toss out Passantino’s claims as recently as June.

By September, though, lawyers in Flynn and Passantino’s cases had notified courts about the settlement talks. The developments are the latest example of how the administration is seeking to provide legal relief and potentially taxpayer-funded compensation for those Trump considers aligned with him or wronged by his perceived political enemies.

Flynn pled guilty. Now he wants 50 million. And I would guess Trump will happily give it to him because he is appealing for 230 million himself!

The settlement agreement depends entirely upon the DOJ to make the decision. I think you can see the problem here.

As you may have heard, GOP Senators stuck a provision in the Continuing Resolution that would allow any senators for whom the January 6th special counsel obtained judicial warrants to look at their phone records, to sue for $500,000. The House Republicans are upset because they didn’t get a piece of that action and are raising hell. It’s enough to have the GOP Senators involved to back off saying they never wanted the money they just want Jack Smith’s head on a pike for having the temerity to see whether or not Trump was trying to get them to join his coup.

They are citing “separation of powers.” Lolololol!!!!!

I don’t know if this matters as much as people say it does but I think it’s worth mentioning:

ROGAN: “Trump is saying they stole the f*ckin’ election. And I feel like if you say that, you've got to have some really good evidence — 4 years later, no one has an answer… and now a Republican bought the Dominion voting machine company.”

Joe is finally starting to get it. pic.twitter.com/K6mUmBYoCE

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) November 12, 2025

The scale at which the President is profiting is staggering. Perhaps past presidents snuck out with a million or so — a briefcase full of cash. This time, it's billions, which you should visualize as a fleet of school buses filled with Benjamin Franklins. pic.twitter.com/2cHOxqgcJw

— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) November 15, 2025

Now imagine Elon’s wealth:

No one should have a billion dollars. A single person having a trillion is an obscenity.

Why?

President Trump has been dining with Wall Street bigwigs. He has embarked on an opulent revamp of the White House at a time when Americans are struggling to pay their bills. He has expressed support for granting visas to skilled foreigners to take jobs in the United States. He approved a $20 billion bailout for Argentina, helping a foreign government and wealthy investors at a moment when the U.S. government was shut down.

For a president who returned to office promising to avoid foreign entanglements, make life more affordable and ensure that available jobs go to American citizens, it has been a significant departure from the expectations of his loyal base. And it is starting to open a rift with his supporters who were counting on a more aggressively populist agenda.

The divisions within Mr. Trump’s movement, spawned by his own actions, have been only amplified by the latest developments on a story that he has been doing his best to quash: his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Much of the president’s MAGA movement, and many of his top aides, pushed for years for all the investigative files on the Epstein case to be made public, insisting that a rich and well-connected man — and his network of wealthy and powerful friends — needed to be held accountable for any abuse of young women.

It’s taking a toll. This survey is probably an outlier but the trend is clear:

According to a new poll from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just a third of respondents — only 33 percent — said they approve of how Trump is managing the federal government. That’s a 10 percent drop from the number of Americans who said they approved of his management in a similar survey taken in March.

The survey of 1,143 adults, conducted from Nov. 6 to Nov. 10, also found that Trump’s approval rating among self-identified Republicans has taken a hit amid what was the longest government shutdown in history.

The poll found that just 68 percent of GOP-identified respondents said they approve of Trump’s management of the federal government, down from 81 percent who said they approved in March.

Trump self-soothes by telling himself that the polls are all hoaxes. But on some level he knows they aren’t. With the exception of the Epstein mess, which he seems genuinely upset about, I’m not sure he cares much anymore. He’s enjoying the love he gets from all the important people who are working him for favors and never has to face the voters again. He’s really semi-retired, spending at least half of his time redecorating, socializing and Mar-a-lago and playing golf. I think he is content with bullshitting himself into believing that his legacy will be what he deems it to be.

Other Republicans don’t have that luxury. This is starting to take a toll as you can see by the high profile defection of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Apropos of nothing, I thought this was interesting:

The latest YouGov/Economist polling, conducted between November 7 and 10, shows that Trump’s support among the oldest voters has fallen sharply since October. Last month, Baby Boomers were evenly split, with 49 percent approval and 49 percent disapproval. In the new November data, approval drops to 42 percent while disapproval climbs to 57 percent—a 15-point net decline in just one month.

I think it’s because he’s obviously demented. They (we) recognize it when they see it. They’ve also been around long enough to know just how corrupt his behavior is. I think they fooled themselves into believing that it was all a hoax but the evidence is accumulating.

Tom sent this to me this morning noting that not all AI is terrible….

Let’s hold a competition

As I mentioned in my first Saturday offering, Donald Trump in a Truth Social post Friday morning directed A.G. Pam Bondi to investigate others associated with the late, convicted sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. He is desperate to deflect attention from himself and the Epstein files the public demands released. Trump left off “Thank you for your attention to this matter” in this case, but Bondi got the message five by five. But note that Bondi took a full 3 hours and 37 minutes to respond to Donald Trump’s 10:35 a.m. order via Truth Social.

Surely you can do better, Pam. Usually, Trump’s people are pretty snappy about shouting, “Yes, sir! How high?” whenever he says jump.

Why not a competition on the White House South Lawn? Let’s see who can jump faster and higher for their king. Consider it a trial run for the UFC fight the former reality TV star has planned there for the country’s 250-year anniversary. His entire boot-licking cabinet, plus Stephen Miller and OMB Director Russ Vought. Open the games with a solemn quote from King Lear: “Which of you shall we say doth love us most?“

The prize? A preemptive pardon bordered with gold leaf.

Make it a benefit for one of Trump’s phony charities where proceeds wind up in his pocket. He’d love that. The world will take bets on the winner and on which competitor will fill her/his rivals with lead shot.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

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As some day it may happen that a victim must be found

Donald Trump is acting like a cat obsessively scraping the sides of the litter box to hide any signs of the poop he’s already covered up. He is desperate, desperate not only to derail release of government-held Epstein files but to change the subject. Or turn whatever is in them into a story about anybody else. Anybody Democrat.

Heather Cox Richardson summarizes succinctly:

In a transparent attempt to distract from the many times his own name appears in the documents from the Epstein estate members of the House Oversight Committee released Wednesday, President Donald J. Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Democrats whose names appeared in the documents. He singled out former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, and Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn and who is a Democratic donor.

Although the attorney general is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and is supposed to be nonpartisan in protecting the rule of law, Bondi responded that the Department of Justice “will pursue this with urgency and integrity.” Maegan Vazquez and Shayna Jacobs of the Washington Post note that reporters have already covered the relationship of Epstein with Clinton, Summers, and Hoffman for years, and that in July, Justice Department officials said an examination of the FBI files relating to Epstein—a different cache than Wednesday’s—“did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

“Don’t bother me with details, just do it.” That is the clear message Trump sent Bondi via Truth Social post.

In normal times, it would be a major scandal for the President to direct his AG to criminally investigate his political opponents to deflect from his own involvement in a major scandal — and for the AG to immediately announce she is doing it. The Epstein scandal and cover up just got even bigger.

— MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com) 2025-11-14T22:10:23.609Z

Courtesy of a Wall Street Journal graphic, we can see what Trump is desperate to cover up. Trump isn’t just mentioned in the emails released by the Epstein estate. He’s mentioned in over half and far more than the people he’s siccing AG Pam Bondi on.

Wag the Dog

Turning from cats to dogs, Trump sees Venezuela as an easy target for deflecting attention from the Epstein files. See Wag the Dog, the 1997 film summarized thusly: “Shortly before an election, a spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer join efforts to fabricate a war in order to cover up a Presidential sex scandal.”

Two months ago, Charlie Sykes asked, “Is The Dog About To Be Wagged?” He noted a deployment of stealth fighters to Puerto Rico.

“Why would you need F35 stealth fighter jets for a counternarcotics mission?” asked Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin.

Since then, Trump has diverted the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to the Caribbean. It arrived “on Tuesday, adding to the capability of the United States to strike boats suspected of carrying drugs or targets on land in Venezuela as the Trump administration weighs further military steps aimed at ousting the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.”

Sykes added in September:

And what better distraction from badeconomicnewsEpsteinglobalhumiliations than a quick, bloody war with a country led by a leftist dictator? A country not only rife with gangs and drugs, but with massive oil reserves. What’s not to like?

Yes, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio would like to topple the government of Venezuela and President Nicolás Maduro. And Secretary Pete Hegseth is eager to flex his Crusader tattoos. But as I say regularly, Republicans love a twofer.

Canada’s Daily Scrum News considers how starting a war with Venezuela might help Trump’s Epstein file problem:

To understand why requires returning to the core definition of wagging the dog. In political terms, it describes a leader facing a domestic storm so powerful, so revealing, or so personally damaging that the only available move is to create a crisis bigger than the scandal itself. The external threat becomes the story; the internal decay becomes background noise. The war, or threat of war, becomes an anesthetic powerful enough to mute outrage, paralyse critics, and redirect the nation’s emotional energy outward. It is not a conspiracy. It is a pattern, one that has appeared throughout history: during impeachment proceedings, economic downturns, collapsing approval ratings, corruption investigations, electoral disasters, and national humiliation. It is the oldest sleight of hand in the repertoire of empire.

And, hoo-boy, does Trump have a plateful of economic problems of his own creation.

And then comes the most explosive destabilizer of all: the Epstein files. Their contents, their implications, and their potential connections pose a direct threat to the highest circles of American power. The release of information, the opening of sealed documents, and the revelations about networks of influence, wealth, and exploitation create an existential political crisis. The question is not what is in the files, but who. The fear is not speculation—it is exposure. In this atmosphere, with the public demanding accountability and figures across the political and financial elite preparing for reputational devastation, the impulse to shift national focus elsewhere grows irresistible.

This is where Venezuela becomes the stage.

Donovan Martin Sr, Editor in Chief of The Daily Scrum considers the possibility that starting a war with Venezuela might have been a premeditated move by Trump:

In the end, the question becomes whether this escalation is a strategic defence of national interest or a strategic defence of political survival. The indicators point heavily toward the latter. The American public, and the global community, now stand at a pivotal moment. If the path to war with Venezuela proceeds unchallenged, the world may soon witness not only a catastrophic conflict but one born not of necessity, not of emergency, but of calculated distraction. A war designed not to protect America, but to protect the president. A tail powerful enough to drag the entire dog into the fire.

How very Trumpish.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

The San Diego Zoo offers an hour of soothing meditative music and baby Condo feeding. I was surprised at how soothing it really was.

Here’s one featuring the zoo’s aviaries:

Some of you old-timers will remember these bits with Joan Embry:

Ok, ok, here’s an adorable baby tiger:

It’s Fox. Of course it’s Fox:

When President Donald Trump told reporters on Sept. 5 he’d started looking at sending the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, he said it was because of something he saw on television.

He said the city was being destroyed by paid agitators. “What they’ve done to that place, it’s like living in hell,” he said, a comment that became an internet meme as some Portland residents juxtaposed it with tranquil images of the city.

Trump didn’t say which channel he watched; he said at one point he saw something “today” and at another “last night.”

The evening before, on Sept. 4, Fox News aired a two-and-a-half-minute segment spotlighting protests outside a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Portland. Similar footage aired the morning of Trump’s remarks. The president went on to announce Sept. 27 on Truth Social that he would send troops, saying that he was “authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”

He later said he’d told Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, that “unless they’re playing false tapes, this looked like World War II. Your place is burning down.”

ProPublica examined months of Fox News’ coverage and reviewed more than 700 video clips posted to social media by protesters, counterprotesters and others in the three months preceding the Sept. 4 broadcast.

The review found that the news network repeatedly provided a misleading picture of what was happening in Portland.

They used footage from 2020 and mislabeled the dates off actions on the screen. And:

Fox News chyrons about Portland the week of Trump’s remarks carried phrases like “violent demonstrators,” “protesters riot,” “anti-I.C.E. Portland rioters” and “war-like protests.” One host said protesters were attacking federal officers.

The same thing happened later when Trump saw a segment on Nigeria and ordered Hegseth to get ready to invade to “save the Christians.”

Fox news is Trump’s most important adviser. That’s not news, we know that. But with Trump being so unrestrained and violent, their lies are even more dangerous than they used to be. And they know exactly what they’re doing.