My comments in the Wall Street Journal regarding the Trumpdown 12.25.2018
Only in Amerika. A total loser TV Star obtains Three Million fewer votes and becomes President. Hate to say it but this is the End Game for the dysfunctional political system set forth in 1789. Don’t be upset Americans. It was all inevitable. Deal with it.
Chesa Boudin – SF Deputy Public Defender in SF Chronicle – 12.25.2018
Excerpted from The Atlantic – Sophie Gilbert 11.3.2018
Homecoming, Amazonâs new dramatic series starring Julia Roberts, is pure Hitchcock. In one scene, a Department of Defense investigator, Thomas Carrasco (Shea Whigham), runs down a staircase thatâs shot from above, shown from a skewed, helter-skelter perspective that makes it seem like Carrasco is a human ball bearing tilting his way into the center of a labyrinth. The scene plays out over a swooping score of strings and brass so redolent of mid-20th-century thrillers that you half expect Tippi Hedren to be waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
But Homecoming is also Steven Soderbergh, between its tendency to introduce episodes with sound first, its jarring use of alternating aspect ratios and split screens, and its heady, brittle state of paranoia.
The result is a television series thatâs frequently breathtaking. Each frame of Homecoming feels meaningful, and most feel at least vaguely familiar. But itâs a curious way to approach telling a story that was first told in podcast form, without any visuals at all.
Roberts plays Heidi, the lead administrator of a program called Homecoming Transitional Support Center, which she tells Walter (Stephan James) is a âsafe spaceâ for him to process his military experiences and re-familiarize himself with civilian life. Heidiâs job includes weekly sessions with the Homecoming residents and sporadic phone calls with her boss, Colin (Bobby Cannavale), a buffoonish shark of a corporate middle manager who praises Heidi by saying âfist bumpâ out loud.
As Carrasco, Whigham (Boardwalk Empire) is the kind of G-man whoâs usually the bad guy, with a starchy, ironed short-sleeved shirt, short haircut, and spectacles that clip together at the front. But heâs one of the most compelling characters in the series, fully aware of his paper-pushing irrelevance but fiercely committed to doing the right thing anyway. Carrascoâs scenes also feel the most explicitly nostalgic, anchoring the character in a Twilight Zoneaesthetic with his 1960s haircut and his surreal experiences.
Roberts gives the most striking performance, flattening her natural charisma and absorbing her characterâs feelings until sheâs almost unrecognizable. Past Heidi is poised but clearly introverted; Future Heidi is totally deflated, biting her inner lip so intently that her mouth forms a permanent line. In one scene, Heidi gets a makeover at the mall, giving viewers a glimpse of Julia Roberts, megastar and LancĂŽme spokesmodelâand the contrast is so disconcerting that itâs a relief when Heidi awkwardly wipes the makeup off. Roberts almost never utilizes her infamous smile, and in the fleeting moments when she does, itâs to signal that Heidi is putting on an act.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 12.24.2018
A spokeswoman for the US Supreme Court said late on Sunday that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was up and working as she recovered from cancer surgery. Ginsburg, 85, is still at a New York City hospital and no date has been set for her return to Washington.
The news that Ginsburg is doing better will likely come as a relief to Democrats in Washington and progressives across the US, who worry that if anything serious happens to Ginsburg, President Donald Trump will be able to appoint a third Supreme Court justice in just one term. As these are lifetime appointments, a third Trump nominee could swing the court towards arch-conservatism for decades.
On Friday, Ginsburg underwent surgery to remove cancerous nodes from one of her lungs. Afterwards, her doctor said “there was no evidence of any remaining disease.”
From her hospital bed, Ginsburg cast a decisive vote blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to stop anyone who crosses the US border illegally from claiming asylum. Despite this, Trump took to Twitter to wish her a speedy recovery, as did her legions of supporters.
Supreme Court star
Ginsburg is known for her tenacity, and has not missed a single day of oral arguments in her 25 years at the court, even after suffering a previous cancer scare and a broken rib.
Only the second female justice ever to serve on the court, she has achieved a kind of star status that is uncommon amongst Supreme Court justices. This year she was the subject of an award-winning documentary and a fictionalized biopic starring Felicity Jones.
But at 85 she is also the oldest member of the Supreme Court.
Wall Street Journal Editorial 12.22.2018
Cabinet officers come and go in Washington with little lasting political impact, but the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday strikes us as a major political event that is likely to reverberate for the rest of Donald Trumpâs term and damage him in ways the President doesnât seem to appreciate.
It should be said that the former Marine General resigned in honorable fashion. If a cabinet officer or White House aide can no longer in good conscience serve a President on a matter fundamental to his duties, then resignation is the correct choice. The disreputable course is to write a newspaper op-ed under the byline Anonymous, or remain on the job and sabotage policies like a bureaucratic mole.
The resignation damage isnât that Mr. Mattis is indispensable or is the last âgrown-upâ chaperone for Mr. Trump, as the Washington cliche has it. The President will find someone to run the Pentagon, whether out of patriotism as Mr. Mattis did or ambition.
The more lasting damage will derive from the shoddy, humiliating way Mr. Trump treated the secretary and his generals on such a core military issue as deployments in Syria. Jim Mattis is not some neoconservative bent on staying in Syria for years. He is less hawkish on Syria and Iran than national security adviser John Bolton or Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Yet in deciding to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria, Mr. Trump acted on his own impulses with little more than cursory consultation with his military advisers. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has let it be known he wasnât consulted at all. A month ago Gen. Dunford told Congress that Islamic State wasnât defeated, but on Thursday Mr. Trump declared victory.
Itâs one thing to advise a President and be overruled. But it undercuts the Pentagonâs authority to learn after the fact that the Commander in Chief has acted without so much as fare thee well. As Gen. Dunfordâs immediate supervisor in the chain of command, Mr. Mattis must have been embarrassed as well.
This is about more than two egos, though both the general and Mr. Mattis are modest men. This is about the message Mr. Trump is sending to the men and women under their command. He is telling soldiers that he will act on uninformed impulse, after a phone conversation from a Turkish dictator, without deliberation or due respect. Mr. Trump should know that tens of thousands of his âdeplorablesâ are in uniform or are veterans. He has stuck a finger in their eye.
Then there is the disdain his Syrian withdrawal shows for allies, especially the Kurds and Arabs in the Syrian Democratic Forces. These have been our ground forces in clearing out the Islamic State caliphate. They took the casualties. Yet now, and without any warning, the U.S. President is telling these comrades-in-arms to fend for themselves. If they are slaughtered by Turkish tanks or Iranian barrel bombs, Mr. Trump will share responsibility.
As Mr. Mattis wrote in his resignation letter, âMy views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues.â
If Mr. Trump were wise, he would ruminate on these words from an adviser who has worked hard and long to reassure allies around the world that Mr. Trumpâs word is good. The alarm many of Mr. Trumpâs voters feelâmen and women who have stuck with him so farâis that the President will instead interpret this only through the lens of his own ego.
Journalist Robert Merry, who is sympathetic to Mr. Trumpâs overseas restraint, wrote recently with regret that Mr. Trump is likely to lose re-election through âbehavioral incontinenceâ and that the âbiggest losersâ will be his voters. Mr. Trump should ruminate on that too.
Why is Julian Assange still under House Arrest? It’s the American Hegemon* harassing the Custodian of the Empire’s Secrets.
 *Hegemony derives from a Greek term that translates simply as âdominance overâ and that was used to describe relations between city-states.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 12.20.2018
Two members of the German parliament, the Bundestag, visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London on Thursday to pass on their “greetings of solidarity from the [opposition] Left party and his many supporters from Germany,” and to discuss the possibility of a “humanitarian solution” to the WikiLeaks founder’s legal situation.
Sevim Dagdelen and Heike HĂ€nsel, who also sit on the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, traveled to London as Ecuador increases the pressure to end Assange’s six-year stay in the embassy.Â
“He was really happy to see us, he hugged us tightly when we left,” Dagdelen told DW after the hourlong meeting, which she said was his first visit from parliamentarians in at least eight months. “It was obvious that he was happy about our visit.”
Even the “liberal” New York Times excoriates American withdrawal from Syria.
My perspective, being of the Vietnam generation, is the following.
The last sentence of Barbara Tuchman’s 1971 book “Stilwell and the American Experience in China,” reads “In the end China went her own way as if the Americans had never come.” Substitute Syria for China. When will Americans get over this Pax Americana complex, embedded since 1945, and admit this country is not the world’s policeman?
Wall Street Journal Editorial 12.19.2018
For a flavor of politics in Washington next year, take a look at this final week of the lame-duck Congress. Republicans on Wednesday essentially agreed to sign letters of safe passage out of town, kicking spending and immigration issues into 2019 with a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government for two months.
The GOP rout was probably inevitable after President Trump volunteered last week to take credit for a government shutdown that would begin on the weekend before Christmas. He dared Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi not to give him the $5 billion he demanded for border security, and they were only too happy to oblige.
The price of retreat, alas, appears to be worthy legislation that Republicans had hoped to pass, including a Jobs 3.0 package of reforms for capital markets that passed the House in July with huge bipartisan majorities. Mr. Schumer is killing it. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell had hoped to confirm a batch of judicial and executive-branch nominees in the usual end-of-term rush, but Mr. Schumer is blocking that too.
Welcome to 2019. Democrats are arming to rout Mr. Trump from first day to last, and they are hoping the President will help them with similarly self-harming public gestures like his shutdown boast. If Mr. Trump has any hope of winning even small victories he is going to have to unite Republicans behind him and make the public case with discipline and consistency. We know thatâs all but impossible for Mr. Trump, but itâs the truth. His failed border wall funding strategy is the exact opposite of the way he will have to maneuver.
This is the first film by Brady Corbet whose newly released film Vox Lux, appearing earlier in this Blog, has been well received.
Excerpted from The Guardian of London – Peter Bradshaw, 8.16.2016
This steely, sinister and utterly gripping movie is the feature debut of 28-year-old actor-turned-director Brady Corbet. Itâs an inspired provocation, jabbing its audience with a fictional variant on history, and loosely based on Jean-Paul Sartreâs 1939 short story of the same name.
The film imagines the wealthy, dysfunctional and unhappy childhood of someone fated to become a fascist leader: the action, disturbing enough in any case, is retroactively charged with this poisonous destiny. Newcomer Tom Sweet plays Prescott, the unhappy 10-year-old son of an American career diplomat (Liam Cunningham), who is in France in 1919 as part of US president Woodrow Wilsonâs retinue, there to establish postwar settlement terms to be imposed at Versailles on the defeated Germans.
The Childhood of a Leader is structured around Prescottâs tantrums: a conceit that might bring to mind Hitlerâs creepy diplomatic practice of pretending to be very angry, while not really being angry at all. This young leader is growing up in a world where all of the adults are telling him about the importance of rejecting anger, embracing forgiveness. The local priest gives sermons on this theme, and Prescottâs tutor makes a deep impression on him with the Aesop fable about the virtues of gentleness in power; the lion who befriends a humble mouse. Yet Prescott can see that power is actually working in quite another direction.
Lee's Perspective 