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This first person account of the stabbing in Portland from the Oregonian is just harrowing:
Even with headphones on, Rachel Macy said, she heard a man shouting and spewing foul language as soon as he boarded the eastbound MAX Green Line train Friday night at Lloyd Center.
"He was just being really belligerent and loud,'' she said.
The man, since identified as Jeremy Joseph Christian, entered through doors on one side of the train, and stepped across the aisle to a pole by the doors on the opposite side of the train.
"He was screaming that he was a taxpayer, that colored people were ruining the city, and he had First Amendment rights,'' Macy said.
Then he made anti-Muslim slurs.
"I didn't want to look. I was too afraid. It felt really tense,'' said the 45-year-old Southeast Portland resident of Native American descent. "I'm a woman of color. I didn't want him to notice me.''
The seats on the train were all taken, and other passengers were standing but it hadn't reached the rush-hour crush yet as the train headed toward the Hollywood station around 4:30 p.m., she said.
Macy noticed a young man quickly brush past her seat, while talking on the phone. He looked nervous and was moving away from Christian. Something didn't feel right, she said. She'd later learn that was Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23.
Rick Best, 53, stood closest to Christian. He was trying to calm Christian down, by letting him know he had heard him.
"He was repeating back what this guy was saying. Like, 'I know you're a taxpayer. But this is not OK, that he was scaring people,' '' recalled Macy, whose account provides the most detailed chronology of the chaos that ensued.
Christian didn't seem to respond; just kept shouting. "He was not hearing anybody, just talking louder,'' she said.
At one point, the train operator got on the loudspeaker, saying something like whoever is creating the disturbance needed to exit the train immediately, Macy said. The operator also threatened to call police.
Christian screamed out that he was getting off the train at the next stop, and that "if anyone (expletive) followed, they were going to die,'' Macy recalled.
Namkai-Meche turned back toward Christian and briskly walked over to him, and loudly implored him, "You need to get off this train. Please, get off this train.''
Passengers Best, Namkai-Mache and a third man, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, were trying to deescalate the tense situation, intervene and get Christian off the train, she said. Macy said she didn't know where the two teenage girls who were the target of his racist rants were seated. She said it appeared as if the men who were stabbed "were trying to be a barrier'' between Christian and the girls.
Someone attempted to move Christian away from the girls he was verbally harassing with a slight push or shove. "Touch me again, or I'm going to kill you,'' Macy heard Christian respond.
Namkai-Meche was holding up his phone, Macy said. She wasn't sure if Namkai-Meche was trying to show Christian something on the phone or was recording the interaction.
Suddenly, Christian hit the phone away and stabbed Namkai-Meche in the neck, she said.
"It was just a swift, hard hit,'' she said. "It was a nightmare.''
Macy said she didn't know which man was slashed with the knife first but believes the train may have been just pulling into the Hollywood station or had just stopped when the stabbings occurred.
The attacker looked at the other passengers, cursed at them and then fled.
"One minute people were on the train, and the next minute, next to nobody,'' she recalled.
Best didn't take more than a few steps and fell to the floor, she said. At least two men came to his aid. "Stay with us. You are strong. Stay with us,'' she recalled them saying.
Michael Kennedy was one of those men. He came up to the front car from the second car of the train, as other passengers raced away from the commotion. In written messages to The Oregonian/OregonLive, he said he and two other men started CPR chest compressions on Best until emergency medics arrived.
"It never occurred to me to do otherwise,'' wrote Kennedy. He said his training as a paramedic from more than a decade ago kicked in.
Namkai-Meche stumbled along the aisle away from Christian past Macy. She turned to face him. His flannel shirt was covered with blood; his face pale.
Holding his neck, he said, "I'm going to die,'' according to Macy.
"I looked at him and said, 'we can handle this. Lay down.' ''
He lay on the floor of the train. Macy crouched beside him, pulled off her black tank top and gave it to Namkai-Meche. He pressed the shirt to his neck wound. She placed her hand over his.
She noticed a deep, long gash along Namkai-Meche's neck.
Another man who she described as a veteran also tried to comfort Namkai-Meche and keep him from panicking. He told Namkai-Mache that his heart was beating, and he was OK, pointing out the sound of sirens and help on its way.
"I just kept telling him, 'You're not alone. We're here,'' Macy said. "What you did was total kindness. You're such a beautiful man. I'm sorry the world is so cruel.''
And she prayed.
"When I said 'pray with me,' he just closed his eyes and tried to keep breathing,'' she recalled.
Fletcher stumbled off the train holding his neck, she said.
Macy remained on the train until police and emergency medics arrived. Medical personnel tried to work on Best but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Medics put Namkai-Meche on a stretcher. Macy stayed by his side. Before he was carried away, he had a last message, she said: "Tell everyone on this train I love them.
Multnomah County GOP chair James Buchal told the Guardian that recent street protests had prompted Portland Republicans to consider alternatives to “abandoning the public square”.
“I am sort of evolving to the point where I think that it is appropriate for Republicans to continue to go out there,” he said. “And if they need to have a security force protecting them, that’s an appropriate thing too.”
Asked if this meant Republicans making their own security arrangements rather than relying on city or state police, Buchal said: “Yeah. And there are these people arising, like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters.”
Asked if he was considering such groups as security providers, Buchal said: “Yeah. We’re thinking about that. Because there are now belligerent, unstable people who are convinced that Republicans are like Nazis.”
Buchal ran for Oregon attorney general in 2012 and has stood for election to Congress and the state legislature. The Oath Keepers are described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the US”, recruiting current and former military and law enforcement personnel. They have recently appeared at rallies from Berkeley, California, to Boston, standing with activists from the far right, activists holding what were once fringe positions who have recently risen to national prominence.
The Three Percenters are described by Political Research Associates as “a paramilitary group that pledges armed resistance against attempts to restrict private gun ownership”. They were a highly visible presence in Burns, Oregon, before and during the occupation of the Malheur wildlife refuge by rightwing militia early in 2016.
Buchal told the Guardian it was important not to become involved with extremists, and said that on the Three Percenters website, “right there on the front page there is what looks like a solid commitment to this not being about race at all.
Evidently the stabbing of three men who were standing up against a right wing fanatic is seen as a threat to right wing fanatics. There is no circumstance in which these people are not victims. Just look at the whiner in chief who has never once taken responsibility for anything in his life.
And by the way, he calling for a private brownshirt "militia." It's just a local thing at the moment and probably not a big deal. But it's worth noting.
In January 2001 after a protracted postelection legal battle that ended with the Supreme Court seating George W. Bush in a 5-to-4 partisan decision, the Beltway establishment was giddy that the jejeune Bill Clinton administration was finally out of office and responsible adult leadership was back in town. The late conservative commentator Kate O’Beirne memorably put it this way on the eve of the inaugural:
There’s a whole lot less Hollywood this weekend than there is Houston, and it’s not a boomer — baby boomer inaugural, despite the fact that George W. qualifies as a baby boomer. The grownups are back in charge.
Whatever reservations Washington may have had about the incurious George W. Bush, they were soothed by the presence of the old Republican guard represented by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and others who reminded them of a time before Bill Clinton and his boomer buds had roared into their “little village” and “wrecked the place.”
The new president himself was a man who acted like a frat boy most of the time and could barely string together a coherent sentence. Recall just a few of the memorable quotes from the man who would soon be sitting in the Oval Office as these pundits were excitedly welcoming the adults back to Washington:
“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.” — Nashua, New Hampshire, Jan. 27, 2000
“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?” — Florence, South Carolinea, Jan. 11, 2000
“We’ll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers.” — Houston, Sept. 6, 2000
“Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.” — LaCrosse, Wisconsin, Oct. 18, 2000
It was obvious that our new president’s antenna didn’t pick up all the channels, if you know what I mean. But the pundits didn’t care because it wasn’t important. The grand poobahs of the GOP establishment would make America great again.
We all know what happened: Sept. 11. Democrats rallied around the president and his approval ratings shot up to a 90 percent and stayed at 60 percent to 70 percent for the better part of the next two years. This was when the grown-ups led the nation — first into a war in Afghanistan that has really never ended, and then into Iraq, making their longtime fever dream of an occupation come true.
Their agenda had little to do with the challenges of terrorism. These men of the past were fighting the last war — the Gulf War of 1991, which many of them believed had been mistakenly left unfinished. Indeed, even the untried son, Bush Junior, openly proclaimed that he was proposing the war as an act of revenge for an earlier assassination attempt on his father, former President George H.W. Bush. And many members of the administration had signed on years before to an American imperialist agenda, with an invasion of Iraq serving as the fulcrum for “benevolent global hegemony.”
It turned out that these éminence grises, these respectable men in suits and ties who were going to bring honor and dignity back to the White House, were radicals. And the man they were charged to instruct in the ways of Washington was more than willing to be just as radical as they were.
One would have thought Americans had learned their lesson after having lived through the disaster of the Bush years. But 16 years later the Republican Party served up another unqualified, ill-equipped nominee, and he, too, became president without winning the most votes. Once again the establishment tried to reassure the public that he would be held in check by the vice president and the respectable appointees: Gen. Jim Mattis at the Pentagon, Gen. John Kelly at Homeland Security and — after the first choice was fired — Gen. H.R. McMaster as national security adviser. Since the military is the only institution left in America that maintains even the slightest respect among the public, this seemed like a good idea. These men had commanded legions; surely they could control the likes of President Donald Trump.
That’s not happening. The people who were supposed to help Trump become a responsible leader have instead followed their boss into his morass of lies, corruption and incompetence. As Tom Ricks (who encouraged these people to join the administration for the good of the country) pointed out in a piece for Politico, they have degraded their reputations without making the slightest improvement in Trump’s performance as a leader.
Defense Secretary Mattis embarrassed himself on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on this past Sunday by bizarrely asserting that by appointing him, a big supporter of NATO, the president had endorsed the alliance. This came despite the fact that Trump had behaved like an ill-mannered boor at the annual NATO meeting in Brussels and refused to publicly affirm the mutual defense imperative known as Article 5. Mattis claimed that it doesn’t matter what Trump said; we should be content that he deigned to attend the meeting at all.
Also on Sunday the secretary of homeland security, Gen. Kelly, appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” and blithely dismissed reports that President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner had asked the Russian ambassador to use secure Russian embassy communications facilities for a covert channel to the Kremlin. Kelly said, “Any time you can open lines of communication with anyone, whether they’re good friends or not-so-good friends, is a smart thing to do.” His reputation, already strained by his willingness to enact Trump’s draconian immigration agenda, is now no better than that of a partisan hack.
McMaster is the only one of the Trump “grown-ups” still in uniform. As Ricks points out, that means he is required to tell the truth and shun conduct unbecoming of his position. Ricks suggested that McMaster should feel compelled to resign rather than continue to spin Trump’s obviously inept behavior and now believes that these experienced hands are doing nothing more than enabling a president who will never listen to them.
The lesson in all this is that it is foolish to count on advisers and appointees to make up for what’s lacking in our leaders. These aides can be malevolent or ineffectual, but either way they can’t fix the fundamental problem of an unqualified president. The political establishment needs to stop assuming they can. The person sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office is the one who needs to be a “grown-up.” It’s a basic requirement of the job.
Donald Trump didn't have the guts to exit the Paris Climate Accord and say so, in person, to the faces of real world leaders.
The G7 summit ended a few days ago without the United States in the person of President Donald J. Trump pledging its commitment to the Paris accord, and without an affirmative U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter that pledges allies to mutual defense.
"I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week!" President Trump tweeted on Saturday. This is Donald Trump we're talking about, the man who makes decisions based on the opinions of the person with whom he last had a conversation.
ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods sent a letter to Trump urging him to keep the United States a part of the accord. Other business leaders, fossil fuel companies among them, have urged Trump to remain, including, "IT firms Intel and HP, the Dow Chemical Company, sportswear maker Nike, hotel chain Hilton, auction website Ebay, and food giants Mars and Mondelez, maker of Oreo's," reports Deutsche Welle:
Finally, and not least importantly, Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both act as close advisors to the president, have reportedly urged Trump to stay in the climate deal. White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, on the other hand, is pushing for an exit, along with Scott Pruitt, the director of the Environmental Protection Agency, who doubts that carbon dioxide emissions are a primary contributor to climate change.
Axios reported Saturday that Trump privately told several people, including Pruitt, that he plans to leave the accord.
"I'm quite certain the president is wide open on this issue as he takes in the pros and cons of that accord," Defense Secretary James Mattis told CBS on Sunday. Meaning there is no telling what he might actually do or who might talk to him about it last.
The upshot of the president's Tour de Chance is that under Trump the United States has exited the stage as a world leader. What's left is a petulant adolescent armed to the teeth. From this side of the Atlantic, Trump-in-Europe seemed more interested in measuring his manhood than in doing the job for which he was hired: in this instance, mastering complex policy issues and reinforcing historical alliances that have stabilized the world for nearly seven decades. The impression Trump left was not one of strength or resolve, but lack of seriousness and preparation. That he found time on his trip to block a comedy writer on Twitter puts exclamation point to that impression.
OH. MY. EFFING. GOD. The President of the United States just blocked me on Twitter because I hurt his feelings. #MAGApic.twitter.com/oB5zTAs7In
German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the G7 talks as “six against one” and “very difficult, if not to say very unsatisfactory.” In a speech upon her return from the summit she said:
The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over. I’ve experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands.
The Hill reports that after Trump's European meetings, a former U.S. envoy to NATO concluded the same:
“This seems to be the end of an era, one in which the United States led and Europe followed,” Ivo H. Daalder told The New York Times. "Today, the United States is heading into a direction on key issues that seems diametrically opposite of where Europe is heading."
“The president’s failure to endorse Article 5 in a speech at NATO headquarters, his continued lambasting of Germany and other allies on trade, his apparent decision to walk away from the Paris climate agreement – all suggest that the United States is less interested in leading globally than has been the case for the last 70 years.”
They really don't have a clue do they? The first daughter and top presidential adviser has an ongoing "lifestyle" business even as she works in the White House. On Memorial Day, a federal holiday to mourn America's war dead, her business is hawking champagne popsicles.
Two White House officials said Trump and some aides including Steve Bannon are becoming increasingly convinced that they are victims of a conspiracy against Trump's presidency, as evidenced by the number of leaks flowing out of government — that the crusade by the so-called “deep state” is a legitimate threat, not just fodder for right wing defenders.
Step out of line, the men come and take you away ...
These are people who pimped the birther nonsense and Pizzagate and Clinton Cash and dozens of other bogus stories designed to discredit and destroy their political rivals. They have benefited from foreign propaganda and disinformation.
Live by the conspiracy theory, die by the conspiracy theory.
Trump isn't alone in his fondness for the strongman types. Back in December of 2015 when he was still the hilarious gadfly all the pundits assured us would flame out any minute, I wrote this piece for Salon. I thought it was a good time to re-up it as we wait patiently for the Republicans to locate their consciences:
Despite the fact that this past weekend featured a Democratic Party presidential debate, the news continues to be Donald Trump and the GOP race. One assumes the press was not interested in the debate simply because the three candidates are professional, intelligent, well-informed and serious. In other words they are not a circus act. Luckily we still have Trump to entertain them, and he’s doing a bang up job.
For instance, when “Fox and Friends” ran a clip on Sunday of Clinton criticizing him in the debate the night before, Trump, on the phone, responded, “could you imagine that as president? I’m just watching and to see that as president just doesn’t work.” That got a big smile from one of the hosts, Tucker Carlson, who is know for a famous quip about Clinton which he repeated often in the last election:
“She scares me. I cross my legs every time she talks…every time, involuntarily. It is like those pictures you see of the soccer goalie when they’re about to get the free kick. That’s me when she talks. I can’t help it.”
But Trump’s comment about Clinton was a throwaway line. What the Sabbath Gasbags were most interested in were his comments about Vladimir Putin. Trump has been saying for some time that he and Putin would get along great. Months ago he told Anderson Cooper, “I think the biggest thing we have is that we were on ’60 Minutes’ together and we had fantastic ratings. One of your best-rated shows in a long time. So that was good, right? So we were stable mates.” They weren’t actually on “60 Minutes” together, there were simply stories about each of them on the same program, but that’s Trump. They made ratings together so that makes them blood brothers.
In fact, they’ve never met.
Nonetheless, on that and on numerous other occasions, Trump has said that he believed he and Putin would “probably work together much more so than right now.” And last week, Putin returned the compliment. In an end of year press conference he called Trump “a very bright and talented man,” and an “absolute leader.”
Trump nearly swooned at the compliment saying, “it is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.” It didn’t matter in the least that the media was gobsmacked, he was thrilled, telling Joe Scarborough “when people call you brilliant, it’s always good, especially when the person heads up Russia.” He even went out of his way to defend him against the charges that Putin had been responsible for the deaths of opposition journalists, saying “our country does plenty of killing.”
On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday he went to the mat for him:
“They are allegations. Yeah sure there are allegations. I’ve read those allegations over the years. But nobody’s proven that he’s killed anybody, as far as I’m concerned. He hasn’t killed reporters that’s been proven.”
He said it would be terrible if true, but “this isn’t like somebody that stood with the gun and taken the blame or admitted that he’s killed. He’s always denied it. He’s never been proven that he’s killed anybody. You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, at least in our country.”
This is the same man who calls for the summary execution of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in every stump speech, usually followed by a nostalgic comment about how we used to do such things “when we were strong.” It’s also the same man who routinely points to the press in the back of the hall at his rallies and calls reporters disgusting and “scum,” sometimes even naming names.
The GOP establishment is clutching their pearls over all this under the assumption that saying you admire Vladimir Putin surely will be the ultimate put-away shot. After all, we just had a debate in which the candidates were variously vowing to “punch Russia in the nose” and to shoot Russian planes out of the sky. Perhaps the most bellicose was Chris Christie who has long criticized President Obama for being soft, saying a few months back, “I don’t believe, given who I am, that [Putin] would make the same judgment. Let’s leave it at that.” Evidently, “who he is” is so macho that Putin will roll himself into a ball and have a good old fashioned cry if Christie looks at him sideways.
Mitt Romney tweeted furiously about Trump’s coziness with Putin and his former advisers were all up in arms throughout the week-end calling him a “seriously damaged individual.” Trump responded by saying, “they’re jealous as hell because he’s not mentioning” them.
Trump doesn’t care one whit about any of this carping. His reasoning is clear in this one comment:
“
He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.”
Later he said, “I think that my words represent toughness and strength.”
Trump understands the base of the GOP a lot better than Mitt Romney and the Sunday talking heads. These GOP base voters like Putin. Like so much else, Trump is just channeling an existing right wing phenomenon. Marin Cogan at National Journal wrote about the right wing Putin cult two years ago:
Putinphilia is not, of course, the predominant position of the conservative movement. But in certain corners of the Internet, adoration for the leader of America’s No. 1 frenemy is unexceptional. They are not his countrymen, Russian expats, or any of the other regional allies you might expect to find allied with the Russian leader. Some, like Young and his readers, are earnest outdoorsy types who like Putin’s Rough Rider sensibility. Others more cheekily admire Putin’s cult of masculinity and claim relative indifference to the political stances — the anti-Americanism, the support for leaders like Bashar al-Assad, the oppression of minorities, gays, journalists, dissidents, independent-minded oligarchs — that drive most Americans mad. A few even arrive at their Putin admiration through a strange brew of antipathy to everything they think President Obama stands for, a reflexive distrust of what the government and media tells them, and political beliefs that go unrepresented by either of the main American political parties…
[T]he Obama’s-so-bad-Putin-almost-looks-good sentiment can be found on plenty of conservative message boards. Earlier this year, when Putin supposedly caught — and kissed — a 46-pound pike fish, posters on Free Republic, a major grassroots message board for the Right, were overwhelmingly pro-Putin:
“I wonder what photoup [sic] of his vacation will the Usurper show us? Maybe clipping his fingernails I suppose or maybe hanging some curtains. Yep manly. I can’t believe I’m siding with Putin,” one wrote. “I have President envy,” another said. “Better than our metrosexual president,” said a third. One riffed that a Putin-Sarah Palin ticket would lead to a more moral United States.
Is it any wonder that Trump is saying he’s “honored” that Putin thinks highly of him?
But the pearl clutching about all this Putin love from the other presidential candidates is seriously hypocritical. They may not be tapping into the macho Putin cult as directly as Trump, but they are very much on Putin’s authoritarian wavelength. Just like Putin they are very upset at the idea gay people might have equal rights and they are prepared to use government power to discriminate against them:
Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee vowed to push for the passage of the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), legislation that would prohibit the federal government from stopping discrimination by people or businesses that believe “marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman” or that “sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”
The pledge is supported by three conservative groups: the American Principles Project, Heritage Action for America, and Family Research Council Action.
Apparently, Bush, Graham, Paul and Trump, have also publicly expressed support for FADA. In the name of freedom, of course, just as the old Soviets would have done. These liberty lovers may shake their fists and pretend they are in opposition to Putin’s tyrannical ways, but when you get down to it they’re all on the same page.
And the rest of us should probably stop laughing and start paying attention according to a warning from someone who knows what she’s talking about, Maria Alekhina, aka Masha of Pussy Riot:
“When Putin came to his first term or second term, nobody [in Russia] actually thought that this is serious. Everybody was joking about it. And nobody could imagine that after five, six years, we would have a war in Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, and these problems in Syria,” in which Russia has become involved.
“Everybody [is] joking about Donald Trump now, but it’s a very short way from joke to sad reality when you have a really crazy president speaking about breaking every moral and logic norm. So I hope that he will not be president. That’s very simple.”
Strongman cults of the likes of Putin and Trump are often dismissed as silly and unserious at first. And then, all at once, it’s too late. digby 5/29/2017 02:00:00 PM
Soldier's Things: A Memorial Day Mix Tape
By Dennis Hartley
Memorial Day, like war itself, stirs up conflicting emotions. First and foremost, grief…for those who have been taken away (and for loved ones left behind). But there’s also anger…raging at the stupidity of a species that has been hell-bent on self destruction since Day 1.
And so the songs I’ve curated for this playlist run that gamut; from honoring the fallen and offering comfort to the grieving, to questioning those in power who start wars and ship off the sons and daughters of others to finish them, to righteous railing at the utter fucking madness of it all, and sentiments falling somewhere in between.
1. The Doors- “The Unknown Soldier” – A eulogy; then…a wish.
2. Pete Seeger- “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” An excellent question. You may not like the answer. When will we ever learn?
3. Tom Waits- “Soldier’s Things” – Behold the power of a simple inventory. Kleenex on standby.
4. Bob Marley- “War”– Lyrics by Haile Selassie I. But you knew that.
5. The Isley Brothers- “Harvest for the World”– Dress me up for battle, when all I want is peace/Those of us who pay the price, come home with the least.
6. Buffy Sainte Marie- “Universal Soldier”– Sacrifice has no borders.
7. Bob Dylan- “With God On Our Side” – Amen.
8. John Prine- “Sam Stone” – An ode to the walking wounded.
9. Joshua James- “Crash This Train” – Just make it stop. Please.
10. Kate Bush- “Army Dreamers”– For loved ones left behind…
Some words from that up and coming young man, Frederick Douglass
by digby
The Unknown Loyal Dead
Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1871
Friends and Fellow Citizens:
Tarry here for a moment. My words shall be few and simple. The solemn rites of this hour and place call for no lengthened speech. There is, in the very air of this resting-ground of the unknown dead a silent, subtle and all-pervading eloquence, far more touching, impressive, and thrilling than living lips have ever uttered. Into the measureless depths of every loyal soul it is now whispering lessons of all that is precious, priceless, holiest, and most enduring in human existence.
Dark and sad will be the hour to this nation when it forgets to pay grateful homage to its greatest benefactors. The offering we bring to-day is due alike to the patriot soldiers dead and their noble comrades who still live; for, whether living or dead, whether in time or eternity, the loyal soldiers who imperiled all for country and freedom are one and inseparable.
Those unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously gathered here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and beautiful flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave spirits, reached, in their glorious career that last highest point of nobleness beyond which human power cannot go. They died for their country.
No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the benefactors of mankind than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers when we write above their graves this shining epitaph.
When the dark and vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious, preferring to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the Southern heart and stirred all the malign elements of discord, when our great Republic, the hope of freedom and self-government throughout the world, had reached the point of supreme peril, when the Union of these states was torn and rent asunder at the center, and the armies of a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad blades and bloody hands to destroy the very foundations of American society, the unknown braves who flung themselves into the yawning chasm, where cannon roared and bullets whistled, fought and fell. They died for their country.
We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration those who struck at the nation’s life and those who struck to save it, those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty and justice.
I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant; but may my “right hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,” if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.
If we ought to forget a war which has filled our land with widows and orphans; which has made stumps of men of the very flower of our youth; which has sent them on the journey of life armless, legless, maimed and mutilated; which has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain of gold, swept uncounted thousands of men into bloody graves and planted agony at a million hearthstones – I say, if this war is to be forgotten, I ask, in the name of all things sacred, what shall men remember?
The essence and significance of our devotions here to-day are not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these graves were brave in battle. If we met simply to show our sense of bravery, we should find enough on both sides to kindle admiration. In the raging storm of fire and blood, in the fierce torrent of shot and shell, of sword and bayonet, whether on foot or on horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the loyal soldier.
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause. We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the republic. We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation’s destroyers. If today we have a country not boiling in an agony of blood, like France, if now we have a united country, no longer cursed by the hell-black system of human bondage, if the American name is no longer a by-word and a hissing to a mocking earth, if the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army who rest in these honored graves all around us.
On the morning after the presidential election, still reeling from the shock and struggling to wrap my mind around what had happened, I wrote this in my column for Salon:
We wake up today to a fundamentally different world than the one in which we woke up yesterday. The nation our allies looked to as the guarantor of global security will now be led by a pathologically dishonest, unqualified, inexperienced, temperamental, ignorant flimflam man. Things will never be the same. And we have no idea at the moment exactly what form this change is going to take, which makes this all very, very frightening.
It seemed a little bit hyperbolic even in that moment, but I’d been saying privately to friends for months before the election that a Donald Trump victory would automatically signal that the post-war security umbrella that had kept the world from another global conflagration had just been turned inside out. The world’s only superpower, after electing this sort of unqualified buffoon, could no longer be trusted.
I suppose that most of us, worried as we were, hoped that once Trump got into office he would sober up and settle down, hire some qualified people who would help him understand the job and reassure the world that the United States hadn’t turned the nuclear codes over to an imbecile. But it was always an open question. After all, it was only 16 years before, following yet another election in which an incurious lightweight had ascended to the presidency by a dubious process, that the world saw the U.S. invade a country that had not attacked us.
But that was after 9/11 and despite most of the world’s disapprobation, there was still perhaps some distant hope that America would be able to do as it promised and usher in a new, more peaceful stability in the region. Obviously that did not happen.
With that background, the rest of the world greeted the 2008 election of Barack Obama with relief. Here was a dignified, intelligent leader who garnered respect and esteem all over the world. The election of the first African-American president seemed to indicate that Americans were casting off the retrograde politics of the previous administration. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize mostly for reassuring the world that the U.S. had not gone crazy after all.
Then we did it again. Marx’s famous quote to the effect that history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce,” has never seemed more apt. Unfortunately when the farce is taking place in the world’s most powerful nation, it’s just as dangerous.
Trump’s first foreign trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Rome, Brussels and Sicily was one for the books. In Saudi Arabia he bragged about getting the wealthy royal family a “good deal” from American arms manufacturers and never even mentioned human rights. In Israel he bizarrely confirmed that he’d given the Russian ambassador Israeli intelligence secrets without permission and left a yearbook mash note at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial.
But when the president got to Europe, it really went south. His visit with the pope was weird enough to inspire Twitter wags to photoshop some memorable pictures:
When he got to Brussels for the NATO meeting, Trump’s true agenda came through. He practically yanked the arm off of newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron, in a truly bizarre show of physical force. He shoved aside the prime minister of Montenegro and then shoved out his chest like Mussolini on the balcony. All this strange behavior was noticed by Europe’s leaders. But it was his speech in Brussels and his unwillingness to confirm Article 5, the fundamental commitment to the NATO alliance, that has shaken the world.
Standing before the new monument to 9/11, Trump patted himself on the back for not mentioning the cost of the new headquarters and then rudely admonished the members to their faces for failing to pay up. He linked terrorism and immigration in ways that only the most nationalistic right-wing regimes normally do, daring the European leaders to defy him. It was an astonishingly graceless moment.
Throughout the meeting, Trump signaled that he was likely to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accords, but gave no good reasons for doing it. His apparent affinity for Russia was undiminished, but it was his display of overwhelming ignorance that left his supposed allies shaken.
The Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported that Trump told that nation’s prime minister, Charles Michel, that his view of the European Union was largely based on how long it took him to get permits for his golf courses.
In other words he had done no homework on the EU and believed, as usual, that his limited personal experience had taught him all he needed to know. Then he idiotically told EU leaders that the Germans were “very bad” on trade, threatening to put restrictions on imports of German cars — apparently unaware that German car manufacturers have plants all over the U.S. Neither he nor his team seemed to understand European trade policy at all, suggesting over and over that America had specific trade deals with various countries when the EU trades as a bloc.
On Sunday German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech that may signal just how important this trip was. She said:
The times in which we could rely fully on others — they are somewhat over. This is what I experienced in the last few days. We have to know that we must fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans.
The New York Times reported her comments as “a potentially seismic shift in trans-Atlantic relations.”
All that might be fine if it weren’t for the fact that this is happening largely because of the election of a man so crude and unsophisticated that the alliances that have kept the world intact in the nuclear age are coming apart at the seams, with no rational plan or goal to replace them. And getting rid of Trump, on its own, won’t be enough to fix this. His election has resulted in a loss of trust that’s going to be almost impossible to get back. Many countries in this world depend upon the American security umbrella and a predictable American foreign policy, even if they aren’t particularly happy about it. They’re going to look for other arrangements now. Asian countries will look to China. Europeans will look to Germany or Russia. Others will stick with the U.S. New spheres of influence will emerge.
Maybe all this will work out in the fullness of time. But blowing things up without a demolition plan creates strange incentives and invites risk and instability. It leads some people to make mistakes in judgment. If this first foreign trip is any indication, the most likely candidate to make such a catastrophic error is the president of the United States.
It is a weekend for barbecues, memorials, and war movies celebrating American resolve and sacrifice in pursuit of noble causes. Remember those? Memorial Day seems almost as "quaint" and as "obsolete" as Alberto Gonzales described the Geneva Conventions in one of the infamous torture memos that led to Abu Ghraib, the "Salt Pit," and Guantanamo Bay. So you won't find films from the Afghanistan or Iraq conflicts among the epics on Turner Classic Movies this weekend. We lost part of our soul in the post-September 11 madness that never seems to have abated.
There is plenty of madness still, not just in Manchester, but in Portland. But even in the madness, a few heroes to memorialize today for their sacrifice. Ricky John Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23 lost their lives defending others' humanity.
It becomes harder and harder to recognize each other as humans and fellow citizens in the glowering darkness of permanent fear-by-design. It is as exhausting as it is a burden that drags at the soul and closes minds. Hope has turned to ash not only among those who yearn for some halcyon American greatness, but among others who seek a more expansive freedom and a perfection of the American dream of equality.
Matt Taibbi reminds us that giving in to bitterness and retreating into our tribes is not the path to redemption:
Even as he himself was the subject of vicious and racist rhetoric, Obama stumped in the reddest of red districts. In his post-mortem on the Trump-Clinton race, he made a point of mentioning this – that in Iowa he had gone to every small town and fish fry and VFW hall, and "there were some counties where I might have lost, but maybe I lost by 20 points instead of 50 points."
Most people took his comments to be a dig at Clinton's strategic shortcomings – she didn't campaign much in many of the key states she lost – but it was actually more profound than that. Obama was trying to point out that people respond when you demonstrate that you don't believe they're unredeemable.
You can't just dismiss people as lost, even bad or misguided people. Unless every great thinker from Christ to Tolstoy to Gandhi to Dr. King is wrong, it's especially those people you have to keep believing in, and trying to reach.
The Democrats have forgotten this ... Democrats in general have lost the ability (and the inclination) to reach out to the entire population.
Taibbi is right. Wresting friends' focus (and my own) from the Trump sideshow to focus, not on where this country is, but on where we should be leading it is more challenging than ever. Sarcasm is a guilty pleasure. Bitterness is unproductive. Irony is dead. Peacemaking, a lost art.
That is why Memorial Day ceremonies I've attended have a certain nostalgic feel. They are Mass-like in their solemnity and pro-forma in their celebration of an America participants remember fondly but no longer inhabit. There are remembrances of veterans and acknowledgments for first responders. They bring together political adversaries, elected and not, in a kind of Christmas truce before they return to their trenches and exchanges of rhetorical artillery. A cold civil war is upon us.
I'm grateful for the example and sacrifice of the men on the Portland train, and wish a complete recovery for Micah Fletcher, 21, who for his heroism must depend on a Go Fund Me to pay for his medical bills. This is where America is. If we are to lead it to a better place, we cannot give up on our fellow citizens as beyond hope.
Had French President Emmanuel Macron been paying close attention, he would have recognized quickly just how fraught his coming exchange with Donald Trump was to be.
The two leaders had met briefly earlier that day, exchanging a firm, prolonged, “not innocent” handshake that drew attention for its unbound intensity. Now, hours later, as Macron approached Trump and other world leaders at the opening of NATO’s new headquarters in Brussels last week, the U.S. president offered several non-verbal cues indicating his desire to re-establish the global pecking order.
The first came well before he and Macron were face-to-face. Walking toward each other, Trump reached out to King Philippe of Belgium, who stood directly to his right, to offer an impromptu handshake. The King seemed caught off-guard. For good reason. No one in their group was making any such gesture.
Trump’s offer seemed out of place. But Florin Dolcos, a University of Illinois associate psychology professor and faculty member at the Beckman Institute’s Cognitive Neuroscience Group, suggested it was a deliberate. And the intended audience wasn’t Philippe but Macron.
“That’s a signal Trump was sending: ‘This is where you should come first because I’m the alpha here,’” Dolcos said. “‘Iinitiated with the other guy.’”
HUFFINGTON POST
Moments later, another cue. With the two still walking towards each other, Trump looked up at Macron and opened his arms ― a signal typically reserved for family and friends, not two world leaders who’d just met. Once again, Dolcos suspected Trump was making a nonverbal signal to his French counterpart.
“I think it is a learned behavior. Because typically you don’t do that. You do it with people very close to you in natural circumstances. Not people you don’t really know,” he said. “In a way it could be seen as a trap.”
HUFFINGTON POST
Macron didn’t fall for it. Instead, he greeted a few others before making his way to Trump. When he did finally arrive, Trump pounced, taking Macron’s hand and pulling it violently away from his body with enough force to turn Macron roughly 50 degrees.
HUFFINGTON POST
Dolcos again saw a tactical play. Unable to torque his arm, Macron was rendered powerless. He attempted to pull away and Trump refused to let him go.
HUFFINGTON POST
Macron put his other hand on Trump to pry himself loose. And when he finally freed himself, Trump gave him a pat on the shoulder, ending the exchange squarely on his terms.
HUFFINGTON POST
Another bizarre, dramatic, uncomfortable handshake with a world leader was in the books, bouncing its way across the Internet to the wonderment of all.
“It goes down to asserting dominance,” said Dolcos. “Why he wants to do that? I don’t know. It looks, to me, like he is trying too hard…. It looks ridiculous”
Macron blows off Trump, Trump responds by trying to rip his arm off? This is insane. pic.twitter.com/cPlPg7N72X
Who protects gun victims from bearing the costs of their wounds?
by Spocko
Gun goes off at health clinic after woman drops purse; 1 shot in leg
May 25, 2017 --Jackson Mississippi
Woman drops her gun in hospital waiting room, shoots another patient in the leg
The patient was hospitalised but said to have suffered "non life-threatening" injuries.
The question I'd like journalists to ask every time this happens:
Who will pay for the injured person's health care?
In this story in Politico about insurance they talk about the difference between the insurance that the states want to require gun owners to have, and the insurance the NRA is selling.
"Government-mandated firearms insurance shouldn’t be confused with the NRA’s insurance product—the former protects gun victims from bearing the costs of their wounds; the latter protects gun bearers from carrying the costs of their wounded."
- Matt Valentine, Politico
Gun owners are not required to have any liability insurance, but some have it; what does it pay for? Full medical care? Rehabilitation? Loss of time at work? Long term disability? Pain and suffering?
What if the injured person ends up having a pre-existing condition now because of the injury? "Non-life threatening" doesn't mean it's not life changing.
Journalists don't usually ask questions of who is going to pay for medical care, but given our current President and the hostility toward providing health care by the GOP, this needs to be asked right now. Lawmakers in Massachusetts, Washington, North Carolina, New York and Hawaii have introduced bills this year that would require gun owners to carry liability insurance. But all state and national level politicians need to be asked, "How are the costs of guns and health care going to be dealt with in your community?"
Watch the video and note how the UMMC police officer talks about what was legal or not legal. Part of this information will be used in the eventual criminal case--but it can also apply to civil legal cases. If the gun owner did something illegal, it changes things for the criminal prosecution case, but there is still a civil case that can--and should--be brought by the injured against the gun owner. If something is declared illegal it might also change what the insurance company does. They can decide not to defend a person insured or not pay out on a policy because of exclusions.
But gun owners aren't required to have insurance, so who pays for the injuries their negligence caused? The individual shot, and the community that picks up the bill. The gun lobby has blocked efforts to require "good guys with guns" to have insurance, complaining that they have to pay when criminals do not.
Debra McQuillen.
photo, HCSO
Debra McQuillen had a permit. She was still a law abiding citizen--up until the time she ignored the hospital's NO GUNS signs. If she was required to have liability insurance before she broke the law, she would be able to pay for the medical care of the woman she injured--due to her negligence.
When the argument is that law abiding gun owners shouldn't have to have insurance, since criminals don't, it exempts all the gun owners who go from law abiding to law breaking in an instant. This is also why the NRA works so hard to get rid of laws that make their members law-breakers. (Even acts that make gun owners an "accidental lawbreaker." if they bring their gun to a place that doesn't allow guns)
This line of reasoning --that members are super worried about being "accidental lawbreakers" --is used so that individuals can claim the "law-abiding citizen" moniker. But primarily it is used as a strategy by the gun lobby to avoid criminal prosecution and civil liability for gun owners.
If McQuillen did everything the same, except it was in a location where it was okay to bring in her guns, the injury would still happen. No law would have been broken, no criminal charges would be filed--but there could still be a civil case brought by the injured person against the gun owner. This is a key part of the way financial responsibility is avoided by the gun lobby. They shift the status from illegal to legal. Intent is a huge part of the issue, and by having the police and the media verbalize the word accident and legal instead of negligence and illegal they change the perception of what is happening.
I don't expect journalists to start asking these questions, so we will need to prompt them. I don't expect gun owners to accept being financially responsible for the damage their negligence caused as part of being a responsible gun owner. We will need to ask them. The next time you are in person talking to a gun owner ask them, (And I recommend doing this in person, because online no one is under oath, and you can't see their eyes if they lie to you.)
"Do you have liability insurance? Who provides it? What does it cover? Does the insurance cover you or the person who is injured? Do you think all gun owners should be required to have liability insurance? Why or why not?"
There are a lots of different gun shooting scenarios to ask about. If you need one to choose use this one with McQuillan, or the one I wrote about last week with a 7-year old boy, Gage Meche or the one tomorrow, or the next day and the next and the next...
Fiscal responsibility must be part of the definition of a responsible gun owner.
We wake up today to a fundamentally different world than the one in which we woke up yesterday. The nation our allies looked to as the guarantor of global security will now be led by a pathologically dishonest, unqualified, inexperienced, temperamental, ignorant flimflam man. Things will never be the same. And we have no idea at the moment exactly what form this change is going to take, which makes this all very, very frightening.
Well ...
Here's the video of Merkel's speech in Munich saying that Europe can't rely on the US & the UK anymore and "must take destiny in own hands". pic.twitter.com/dq8cUOeT37
While he was away there was a lot of talk about staffer getting lawyers and others to keep him off twitter.
Nah gah happen:
Psychologists would call this "denial." And I would guess that it's genuine. He doesn't have the psychological strength to deal with the fact that everyone around him is betraying him. And his followers are probably going to go along with it. But at some point, reality bites and it will happen to them too.
It would be sad if it weren't for the fact that this man is a cretinous bully whose narcissistic ignorance will get people killed.
In Brussels, where he attended a series of events celebrating NATO, Trump looked downright bored. As the king of Belgium and other leaders took turns at the lectern, Trump got fidgety, shifting in his seat, looking up to the sky and down to his feet, and crossing his arms over his chest.
The president — whom aides say has little patience for listening to other people speak — then endured a dinner session in which the leaders of all 28 NATO partners gave remarks.
And here in picturesque Taormina, at the Group of Seven summit on the rocky Sicilian coast, Trump struggled to look interested during long meetings with allies in a room decorated with the flags of other countries. As the other G-7 leaders strolled the streets of this ancient fortress town, Trump followed along in a golf cart.
A weight seemed to lift from Trump’s shoulders when he touched down by helicopter at the U.S. Naval Air Station Sigonella, on the Sicilian island, for a pep rally with military families before flying home to Washington.
He took a golf cart in Saudi Arabia too but I think they blamed it on the king rather than him.
Golf Cart Update: Line in story makes it sound like more than was. Leaders depart, Trump follows in cart, meets them, seems to walk the rest pic.twitter.com/pFjAjwvWxk
I wouldn't normally mock him if he's feeling infirm on a long trip like this. It could happen to anyone. But he was such an asshole in the campaign toward Clinton and his other rivals about being "weak" and failing to have the "strength and stamina" that he deserves it.
A Freedman Bureau agent stands between armed groups of whites and Freedmen in this 1868 sketch from Harper's Weekly.
You've got to admire their tenacity. Here in North Carolina, Democrats have been fighting a radicalized Republican Party for some years now. At least since they gained control of the legislature in the 2010 sweep election. Since that time, they have worked assiduously at consolidating their power at every turn using every method at their disposal.
The 2013 omnibus election law intended to suppress black turnout in the state "with almost surgical precision" lost in the Supreme Court this month. Their 2011 gerrymandering of state congressional districts designed to limit the influence of black voters lost in the Supreme Court a week later. Gerrymandering cases involving state legislative districts are working their way through the courts.
The New York Times observes that in spite of repeated losses, the Republicans are unbowed:
But if North Carolina Republicans have been chastened in Washington, there is scant evidence of it here in the state capital. Quite the opposite: Hours after the court nullified the elections law, for example, party officials said they would simply write another.
They keep pressing on. To say "with a vengeance" is no exaggeration.
“What we’re seeing in North Carolina is an effort at political entrenchment that is unparalleled,” said Allison Riggs, a senior staff lawyer at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a Durham advocacy group that sued Republican leaders over the election law. “It requires a complete disregard for the will of the voters and political participation, and a disregard for the independence of the judiciary.”
That last statement refers to Republican efforts to prevent the new Democratic governor from filling vacancies on the state's Court of Appeals. (Merrick Garland knows all about how that works.) Republicans have also passed measures to make it more difficult for cases to rise to the state Supreme Court where Democrats now hold a slim majority. First-on-the-ballot placement in a nonpartisan Supreme Court race allowed a black Democrat to win a Supreme Court seat in November in the year of Trump. So that arrangement had to change.
In March, a state commission charged with improving the state’s courts urged the legislature to scrap the requirement that judges win election to the bench, saying it forced candidates to seek contributions from people who appeared before them.
Eight days later, the legislature voted to change lower-court elections from nonpartisan to partisan affairs, requiring nearly 400 judges to run under party labels in a bid to put more Republican loyalists on the bench. (The legislators had earlier made appeals and Supreme Court elections partisan.) Two Republican legislators filed a bill to split Charlotte’s Democratic-leaning Mecklenburg County judicial district into three new ones that would give Republicans a better shot at victory.
The assaults are not limited to elections or to the courts. Cities themselves are under attack. Public schools and universities are under assault. Public lands and infrastructure are being privatized. It is, as I've said before, the next phase of the conservative effort to defund the left.
Here is the GOP playbook: 1) Find the line. 2) Step over it. 3) Dare the courts to push them back.
If the courts push back, try, try again. If the courts don't, they've drawn a new line to be stepped over at the next opportunity. It is important for progressives to understand that winning a single victory, winning the presidency or a single court case (or a series) will not stop them. Like the Borg, they adapt and keep coming. Tenacity is a trait progressives will need for these fights.
The Times notes that much of this is "full-bore payback for Democratic abuses in the past."* But since Republicans have not seen this level of control in a hundred years, they are settling scores few Republican legislators serving today were alive to see, and visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation.
* Prior to losing the majority, friends had urged the Democratic Senate Majority Leader to move to partisan redistricting. They were rebuffed, the story goes. "Democrats draw great districts," he said.
SIFF is showing 400 films over 25 days. Navigating such an event is no easy task, even for a dedicated buff. Yet, I trudge on (cue the world’s tiniest violin). Hopefully, some of these films will be coming soon to a theater near you…
Angry Inuk – Canadian film maker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril hails from an Inuk community near Baffin Island, where locals rely on traditional subsistence sealhunting; not only to literally put food on the table, but to earn a living from commercial sales of sealskin products. In 2009, the European Union banned commercial trade in all seal products except for those from Indigenous hunts. While that seems a reasonable concession, the director and her fellow Inuk activists feel that the legislators and animal rights groups miss the fact that the ban has all but killed the market for the products-thus putting the Inuk people in dire economic straits. Aranquq-Baril’s documentary is wise, witty and thought-provoking, offering up a unique perspective on this controversial issue.
Rating: *** (Plays May 28 & May 29)
A Date for Mad Mary – The phrase “star-making performance” is overused, but it’s apt to describe Seana Kerslake’s turn in Darren Thornton’s dramedy about a troubled young woman who is being dragged kicking and screaming (and swearing like a sailor) into adulthood. Fresh from 6 months in a Dublin jail for instigating a drunken altercation, 20 year-old “mad” Mary (Kerslake) is asked to be maid of honor by her BFF Charlene. Charlene refuses her a “plus-one”, assuming that her volatile friend isn’t likely to find a date in time for the wedding. Ever the contrarian, Mary insists that she will; leading to a completely unexpected relationship. The director’s screenplay (co-written with his brother Colin) is chockablock with brash and brassy dialog, and conveys that unique penchant the Irish possess for using “fook” as a noun, adverb, super verb and adjective. Kerslake’s remarkable debut reminds me of Emily Lloyd in Wish You Were Here (1987).
Rating: ***½ (Plays May 27 & May 28)
Endless Poetry – Ever since his 1970 Leone-meets-Fellini western El Topo singlehandedly redefined the meaning of “WTF?” for cult movie aficionados, Chilean film maker/poet/actor/composer/comic book writer Alejandro Jodorowsky has continued to push the envelope on all creative fronts. His new film, the second part of a “proposed pentalogy of memoirs”, follows young Alejandro (the director’s son Adan, who also composed the soundtrack) as comes into his own as an aspiring poet. Defying his naysaying father, he flees to Santiago and ingratiates himself with the local bohemians. He caterwauls into a tempestuous relationship with a redheaded force of nature named Stella. What ensues is the most gloriously over-the-top biopic since Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers. This audacious work of art not only conveys that its creator possesses the soul of a poet, but stands, in and of itself, as an almost tactile evocation of poetry’s soul.
Rating: **** (Plays May 29 & June 5)
Finding Kukan – The first documentary to win an Oscar was the 1941 film Kukan: The Battle Cry of China. There are two unfortunate footnotes. 1.) The film, a unique and historically important “front line” document of Japan’s 1937 invasion of China, has since all but vanished from the public eye. 2.) The female producer, Ling-Ai Li, was uncredited. With two tantalizing mysteries to solve, film maker Robin Lung had her work cut out for her. The director’s 7-year quest yields two separate yet convergent narratives: a world-wide search for prints of Kukan for possible restoration, and the fascinating life of a previously unsung female filmmaking pioneer. Lung nicely ties the threads together.
Rating: *** (Plays May 27, May 28 & June 2)
Godspeed – This neo-noir “buddy film” from Taiwanese writer-director Chung Mung-Hong’s concerns an aging, life-tired taxi driver (Hong Kong comedian Michael Hui) who unwittingly picks up a twitchy young drug mule (Na Dow). Blackly comic cat-and-mouse games involving rivalling mobsters ensue as the pair are pushed into an intercity road trip, with their fates now inexorably intertwined. If the setup rings a bell, yes, it is very reminiscent of Michael Mann’s Collateral, but unfortunately not in the same league. It’s not the actors’ fault; the two leads are quite good. The problem lies in the uneven pacing (an overlong and gratuitous torture scene stops the film in its tracks). Likely too many slow patches for action fans, yet too joltingly violent for anyone partial to road movies. It does have its moments, and I’m sure there is an audience for it, but I’m just not sure who.
Rating: **½ (Plays May 28, June 1 & June 2)
Lane 1974 – This episodic road movie/coming of age story may be too episodic for some tastes, but for those of a certain age (ahem), it hearkens back to the quietly observant character studies that flourished from the late 60s through the mid-70s like Scarecrow, The Rain People, and Harry and Tonto. Writer-director SJ Chiro adapted her screenplay from Clane Hayward’s memoir. 13 year-old Lane (Sophia Mitri Schloss), her little brother, and their narcissistic hippie-dippy mom (Ray Donovan’s Katherine Moennig adopt a vagabond lifestyle after they’re kicked out of a Northern California commune. Schloss delivers a lovely, naturalistic performance as an adolescent coming to the sad realization that she is the responsible adult, as her mother is really the self-centered child.
Rating: *** (Plays June 2 & June 3)
A Life in Waves – While her name isn’t a household word, Suzanne Ciani is a musical polymath whose work has been heard by millions…from New Age fans to pinball enthusiasts. Brett Whitcomb’s film is an inspirational portrait of this innovative artist’s 40-year career. An early electronica pioneer, the classically-trained Ciani was in one respect too ahead of her time, because she hit the glass ceiling fairly quickly (the late 60s synth scene was a boy’s club). Undaunted, she reinvented herself as a “sound designer”, making a ton of loot devising ad jingles (and effects, like the Coca-Cola “pop and pour” sound), theme songs, game sound effects, you name it. She kept composing, eventually founding her own New Age record label and becoming a genre star. A fascinating look at a creative genius who’s managed to ride the wave at the crest between art and commerce.
Rating: ***½ (Plays May 29, May 30 & June 7)
Time Trap – The discovery of a rusted-out VW van near the entrance of an underground cavern prompts a Texas professor/spelunker to investigate what happened to his parents, who mysteriously vanished decades before. Concerned that the professor himself may have now disappeared, two of his students organize a search party, dragging several other friends and young siblings along. From that point forward, it’s an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink mish-mash of time portals, Spanish conquistadors, Neanderthals, aliens, The Fountain of Youth, a magic ring and the end of the world. The only thing missing is a cohesive narrative (and perhaps a MST3K riff track?). Co-directors Mark Dennis and Ben Foster desperately want us to connect the dots with 1980s films like The Goonies. So I’ll play along: this is the most indecipherable sci-fi mess since Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce.
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