Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 965
October 30, 2015
GOP “death spiral” shocker: “We’ve gone beyond the tipping point on the demographic changes”
America is now too diverse and progressive for President Obama's "third term" and entirely too liberal for the extreme anti-immigrant GOP to remain a winning national party in 2016, according to former President Bill Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg. Greenberg, whose new book "America Ascendant" argues that the nation will soon be "exceptional again" because of its cultural diversity, argued that the Democrats shouldn't be afraid to now advocate for "very bold policy changes." In an interview with the Huffington Post, Greenberg said that he was pleasantly surprised by the degree to which the all the Democratic candidates had embraced such boldly progressive policy prescriptions thus far. But speaking of Vice President Joe Biden's urging for Democrats to run on President Obama's legacy as he announced his decision not to run for president, Greenberg argued that a third Obama term is not what voters want, despite the President's recent proclamations. "The Democratic Party is waiting for a president who will articulate the scale of the problems we face and challenge them to address it," Greenberg argued. "The problem the president has had is that he's not tried to educate the country on how deep the downside is," Greenberg said, referring to Obama's selling of his domestic agenda. "He was trying to tell the country that we're on an upward path without being honest, leveling with them about how big a price we have [to pay] in the short term and how much government has to do in order to get us onto a different path." Noting that "we've gone beyond the tipping point on the demographic changes taking place in the country," Greenberg credited "ongoing, extraordinary, disruptive changes" with "producing a different kind of politics" that allows for a more robust progressive debate. "That bigger story is what is creating our politics," Greenberg explained. "There is a new American majority. It's growing at an extraordinary rate driven by these revolutions." "A rural, white, married, evangelical, religious," Republican Party, Greenberg argued, is waging a "furious counter-revolution" to blunt the rise of a more diverse, liberal populace, but is actually working to further marginalize itself. "The Republican Party essentially exists -- particularly in the last decade -- to deny that new American majority the ability to govern based on its values." This effort has "alienated the Republican Party from the country," according to Greenberg, who says a GOP "implosion" is already underway. A "shattering loss" for the Republicans in 2016, comparable to Democrats 1984 loss which eventually gave rise to Bill Clinton's successful 1992 moderation, Greenberg argued, could lead the GOP's "embrace of immigration and the country's diversity." List to Greenberg explain his prediction of an ascendant America as the GOP implodes and the nation grows more diverse: America is now too diverse and progressive for President Obama's "third term" and entirely too liberal for the extreme anti-immigrant GOP to remain a winning national party in 2016, according to former President Bill Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg. Greenberg, whose new book "America Ascendant" argues that the nation will soon be "exceptional again" because of its cultural diversity, argued that the Democrats shouldn't be afraid to now advocate for "very bold policy changes." In an interview with the Huffington Post, Greenberg said that he was pleasantly surprised by the degree to which the all the Democratic candidates had embraced such boldly progressive policy prescriptions thus far. But speaking of Vice President Joe Biden's urging for Democrats to run on President Obama's legacy as he announced his decision not to run for president, Greenberg argued that a third Obama term is not what voters want, despite the President's recent proclamations. "The Democratic Party is waiting for a president who will articulate the scale of the problems we face and challenge them to address it," Greenberg argued. "The problem the president has had is that he's not tried to educate the country on how deep the downside is," Greenberg said, referring to Obama's selling of his domestic agenda. "He was trying to tell the country that we're on an upward path without being honest, leveling with them about how big a price we have [to pay] in the short term and how much government has to do in order to get us onto a different path." Noting that "we've gone beyond the tipping point on the demographic changes taking place in the country," Greenberg credited "ongoing, extraordinary, disruptive changes" with "producing a different kind of politics" that allows for a more robust progressive debate. "That bigger story is what is creating our politics," Greenberg explained. "There is a new American majority. It's growing at an extraordinary rate driven by these revolutions." "A rural, white, married, evangelical, religious," Republican Party, Greenberg argued, is waging a "furious counter-revolution" to blunt the rise of a more diverse, liberal populace, but is actually working to further marginalize itself. "The Republican Party essentially exists -- particularly in the last decade -- to deny that new American majority the ability to govern based on its values." This effort has "alienated the Republican Party from the country," according to Greenberg, who says a GOP "implosion" is already underway. A "shattering loss" for the Republicans in 2016, comparable to Democrats 1984 loss which eventually gave rise to Bill Clinton's successful 1992 moderation, Greenberg argued, could lead the GOP's "embrace of immigration and the country's diversity." List to Greenberg explain his prediction of an ascendant America as the GOP implodes and the nation grows more diverse:
“F*ck the politicians”: Benedict Cumberbatch blasts inadequate response to the migrant crisis after “Hamlet” performance
According to The Guardian, Benedict Cumberbatch has taken to giving impassioned speeches about the European migrant crisis after his performances of “Hamlet” at London’s Barbican theater, and has raised more than £150,000 pounds in audience donations for Save The Children. But his remarks got particularly heated on Tuesday night when, according to theatergoers, Cumberbatch said “fuck the politicians” while discussing the tepid government response to the refugee crisis. https://twitter.com/govieburbie/statu... https://twitter.com/CharlotteyLF/stat... According to an audience member who spoke to The Daily Mail, Cumberbatch began by reading a poem by Somali poet Warsan Shire called “Home,” which laments “no one puts children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” "He then spoke about a friend who had come back from the Greek island of Lesbos a few months ago, where there were 5,000 people arriving a day, and how the [British] government was allowing just 20,000 refugees into the country over the next five years,” the audience member described. "Then, out of nowhere came this 'F--- the politicians' remark. It’s not quite what you’d expect when you go for an evening with the Bard, but it got a few cheers.” While the British government has agreed to admit 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years, critics have argued that this is an inadequate response given that four million refugees have fled Syria so far. Cumberbatch has been outspoken on this issue, recording a video for Save The Children and speaking out about the crisis in press appearances. "There is a huge crisis and not enough is being done," Cumberbatch told Sky News in a recent interview. "Yes, we need long-term solutions; yes, we need to get people out of the camps so they don't make a perilous journey. But to say 20,000 over five years when 5,000 arrive in one day? We've all got to wake up to this."According to The Guardian, Benedict Cumberbatch has taken to giving impassioned speeches about the European migrant crisis after his performances of “Hamlet” at London’s Barbican theater, and has raised more than £150,000 pounds in audience donations for Save The Children. But his remarks got particularly heated on Tuesday night when, according to theatergoers, Cumberbatch said “fuck the politicians” while discussing the tepid government response to the refugee crisis. https://twitter.com/govieburbie/statu... https://twitter.com/CharlotteyLF/stat... According to an audience member who spoke to The Daily Mail, Cumberbatch began by reading a poem by Somali poet Warsan Shire called “Home,” which laments “no one puts children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” "He then spoke about a friend who had come back from the Greek island of Lesbos a few months ago, where there were 5,000 people arriving a day, and how the [British] government was allowing just 20,000 refugees into the country over the next five years,” the audience member described. "Then, out of nowhere came this 'F--- the politicians' remark. It’s not quite what you’d expect when you go for an evening with the Bard, but it got a few cheers.” While the British government has agreed to admit 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years, critics have argued that this is an inadequate response given that four million refugees have fled Syria so far. Cumberbatch has been outspoken on this issue, recording a video for Save The Children and speaking out about the crisis in press appearances. "There is a huge crisis and not enough is being done," Cumberbatch told Sky News in a recent interview. "Yes, we need long-term solutions; yes, we need to get people out of the camps so they don't make a perilous journey. But to say 20,000 over five years when 5,000 arrive in one day? We've all got to wake up to this."According to The Guardian, Benedict Cumberbatch has taken to giving impassioned speeches about the European migrant crisis after his performances of “Hamlet” at London’s Barbican theater, and has raised more than £150,000 pounds in audience donations for Save The Children. But his remarks got particularly heated on Tuesday night when, according to theatergoers, Cumberbatch said “fuck the politicians” while discussing the tepid government response to the refugee crisis. https://twitter.com/govieburbie/statu... https://twitter.com/CharlotteyLF/stat... According to an audience member who spoke to The Daily Mail, Cumberbatch began by reading a poem by Somali poet Warsan Shire called “Home,” which laments “no one puts children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” "He then spoke about a friend who had come back from the Greek island of Lesbos a few months ago, where there were 5,000 people arriving a day, and how the [British] government was allowing just 20,000 refugees into the country over the next five years,” the audience member described. "Then, out of nowhere came this 'F--- the politicians' remark. It’s not quite what you’d expect when you go for an evening with the Bard, but it got a few cheers.” While the British government has agreed to admit 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years, critics have argued that this is an inadequate response given that four million refugees have fled Syria so far. Cumberbatch has been outspoken on this issue, recording a video for Save The Children and speaking out about the crisis in press appearances. "There is a huge crisis and not enough is being done," Cumberbatch told Sky News in a recent interview. "Yes, we need long-term solutions; yes, we need to get people out of the camps so they don't make a perilous journey. But to say 20,000 over five years when 5,000 arrive in one day? We've all got to wake up to this."
The GOP’s media warfare goes nuclear: How the RNC is trying to hold journalism hostage
The battle between the Republicans and the media reached ridiculous new heights on Friday when the Republican National Committee announced that it is suspending its partnership with NBC News for a presidential debate in February. RNC chief Reince Priebus told NBC that he was so incensed by the way the most recent debate on CNBC went that he is pulling out, writing, "We simply cannot continue with NBC without full consultation with our campaigns."
Let's put to one side the irony of CNBC—which is home to some of the most rabid free-marketeers around, and which, lest we forget, is where the Tea Party started—suddenly being portrayed as the ultimate symbol of radical left-wing bias. Priebus's letter represents a sharp escalation in hostilities towards the media in general.
The RNC's move must be read in the context of a simmering revolt from the individual presidential campaigns, which had begun banding together to force just this kind of action from the GOP hierarchy. Priebus must have been terrified that he would lose control over the debate process, so he moved to defuse the anger coming from below.
It would have been great if NBC News had responded with similar contempt. The CNBC debate may have been abysmal, but it's not for the Republican Party to dictate terms to a news network, or to look over its shoulder as it crafts the questions for a debate. NBC should have told Priebus to get lost.Sadly, that didn't happen. NBC almost immediately came out with a meek statement, saying,
"This is a disappointing development. However, along with our debate broadcast partners at Telemundo we will work in good faith to resolve this matter with the Republican Party."
Translation: we really, really, really don't want to lose out on this debate.
NBC has some very sound reasons for wanting to stay on the GOP's good side, and few of them are journalistic ones. The network has seen how much of a ratings bonanza the debates have been. They're a gold mine. NBC is surely salivating over the ad rates it can charge and the viewers it can bring in, but it can't do that if it has no debate to air, so it would rather look weak and keep the show on the road than take a stand and see all of that vanish. NBC likely also has some practical concerns about wading into a full-on war with a major political party. What if Republican candidates stop going on "Meet the Press"? Since these kinds of shows see their only guest options as Democratic politicians, Republican politicians and some combination of David Brooks, Andrea Mitchell and maybe a general, this would blow a huge hole in the lineup. NBC's potential capitulation means that Donald Trump will keep deigning to call Chuck Todd from one of his jets every Sunday. The likely outcome to all of this is that the two sides will come to some new agreement—possibly with increased participation from some conservative hosts—and that, once again, Republicans will claim another victory in their endless war against the media. Happy days all around.
“Simply appalling”: Bill Simmons slams ESPN for “callously” shuttering Grantland as fans mourn
ESPN announced today it was suspending operations at Grantland, the sports features and culture site founded by Bill Simmons. “After careful consideration, we have decided to direct our time and energy going forward to projects that we believe will have a broader and more significant impact across our enterprise,” said ESPN in a statement this afternoon. ESPN fired Simmons back in March, and he's since found a new home at HBO, where he will launch a new talk show next year. Simmons took to Twitter to lambast his former bosses for their decision: https://twitter.com/BillSimmons/statu... Despite the part of ESPN's statement thanking not only Simmons but "all the other writers, editors and staff who worked very hard to create content with an identifiable sensibility and consistent intelligence and quality," apparently at least some of those hard-working staff members did find out the callous way: https://twitter.com/MJ_Baumann/status... The fate of Grantland follows the news of lay-offs at ESPN earlier this month, with about 300 employees losing their jobs. CNN reports that some Grantland staffers will be hired by other ESPN divisions, but prospects aren't good for Gwriters who focused on non-sports coverage. "We're getting out of the pop culture business," a senior ESPN source told CNN. Fans mourned the end of the site, whose long-form features and insightful pop culture coverage will obviously be missed: https://twitter.com/Patrick_Wyman/sta... https://twitter.com/hhavrilesky/statu... And some took the time to troll ESPN over this video, too: https://twitter.com/espn/status/66016... https://twitter.com/JZWalker/status/6... https://twitter.com/james_bisson/stat... ESPN announced today it was suspending operations at Grantland, the sports features and culture site founded by Bill Simmons. “After careful consideration, we have decided to direct our time and energy going forward to projects that we believe will have a broader and more significant impact across our enterprise,” said ESPN in a statement this afternoon. ESPN fired Simmons back in March, and he's since found a new home at HBO, where he will launch a new talk show next year. Simmons took to Twitter to lambast his former bosses for their decision: https://twitter.com/BillSimmons/statu... Despite the part of ESPN's statement thanking not only Simmons but "all the other writers, editors and staff who worked very hard to create content with an identifiable sensibility and consistent intelligence and quality," apparently at least some of those hard-working staff members did find out the callous way: https://twitter.com/MJ_Baumann/status... The fate of Grantland follows the news of lay-offs at ESPN earlier this month, with about 300 employees losing their jobs. CNN reports that some Grantland staffers will be hired by other ESPN divisions, but prospects aren't good for Gwriters who focused on non-sports coverage. "We're getting out of the pop culture business," a senior ESPN source told CNN. Fans mourned the end of the site, whose long-form features and insightful pop culture coverage will obviously be missed: https://twitter.com/Patrick_Wyman/sta... https://twitter.com/hhavrilesky/statu... And some took the time to troll ESPN over this video, too: https://twitter.com/espn/status/66016... https://twitter.com/JZWalker/status/6... https://twitter.com/james_bisson/stat... ESPN announced today it was suspending operations at Grantland, the sports features and culture site founded by Bill Simmons. “After careful consideration, we have decided to direct our time and energy going forward to projects that we believe will have a broader and more significant impact across our enterprise,” said ESPN in a statement this afternoon. ESPN fired Simmons back in March, and he's since found a new home at HBO, where he will launch a new talk show next year. Simmons took to Twitter to lambast his former bosses for their decision: https://twitter.com/BillSimmons/statu... Despite the part of ESPN's statement thanking not only Simmons but "all the other writers, editors and staff who worked very hard to create content with an identifiable sensibility and consistent intelligence and quality," apparently at least some of those hard-working staff members did find out the callous way: https://twitter.com/MJ_Baumann/status... The fate of Grantland follows the news of lay-offs at ESPN earlier this month, with about 300 employees losing their jobs. CNN reports that some Grantland staffers will be hired by other ESPN divisions, but prospects aren't good for Gwriters who focused on non-sports coverage. "We're getting out of the pop culture business," a senior ESPN source told CNN. Fans mourned the end of the site, whose long-form features and insightful pop culture coverage will obviously be missed: https://twitter.com/Patrick_Wyman/sta... https://twitter.com/hhavrilesky/statu... And some took the time to troll ESPN over this video, too: https://twitter.com/espn/status/66016... https://twitter.com/JZWalker/status/6... https://twitter.com/james_bisson/stat...
There’s one group missing from the talks to end the Syrian civil war: Syrians
A catastrophic civil war has devastated Syria for over four-and-a-half years. More than a quarter of a million people have been killed. Almost 12 million Syrians, over half of the entire population, are displaced, with four million external refugees registered with the U.N. Large chunks of what were formerly bustling cities have been reduced to rubble. Senior diplomats representing almost 20 countries are converging in Vienna in an attempt to reach a political solution to stop this disastrous conflict. Yet one group is missing: Syrians themselves. A.P. confirmed that the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, who support Syrian rebel groups; along with Russia and Iran, who back the Assad government; will be at the talks. In a press briefing on Wednesday morning, the State Department also noted that Egypt, Qatar, Lebanon, France, and the E.U. will participate. Syrian voices, however, will absent from the discussion. Syria's main political opposition body, the Syrian National Council, and other rebels were not invited to the international Vienna talks. The Assad government was not invited either. Rebel-aligned countries want Assad to step down. Many say they will consider a brief transitional period. Iran and Russia insist that Assad must stay in power for the near future. On Friday, nevertheless, Iran said it would support a proposal that would give Assad a six-month transitional period, before an election to determine Syria's next leader. In 2011, as uprisings spread around the Middle East and North Africa, Syrians began to protest the dictatorship of the Assad family, which has controlled Syria uninterrupted since 1970. Government forces crushed the demonstrations, which turned the uprising violent. The subsequent meddling of dozens of foreign nations has only exacerbated the conflict. The Syrian Civil War has widely been characterized as a proxy war. The U.S. and allied countries have supported a variety of rebel groups, which are greatly divided on ideological lines. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have also funded extremist groups that have committed war crimes and carried out sectarian attacks on civilians of other ethnic and/or religious groups. Specifically, these two U.S. allies have indirectly backed al-Nusra, Syria's al-Qaeda affiliate. Turkey has also been accused of helping ISIS quash Kurdish rebels. Russia and Iran, on the other side, have propped up the Assad government, which has bombed civilians areas in rebel-controlled cities for years. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a pro-rebel organization based in the U.K., the government is responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in the war. Officials who defected from the government say it is engaging in mass torture campaigns, brutally beating and abusing dissidents. Assad has also blockaded neighborhoods like the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk. In a shift away from U.S. policy, Israel has welcomed Russian intervention in support of the Assad government, and has even coordinated with the Russian military. The rise of ISIS in 2014 further complicated the already convoluted alliances. ISIS has fought most rebel groups, as well as the Syrian government. With the rapid spread of the extremist group, the U.S. also softened its rhetoric about Assad. In October 2014, the US did not invite the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to be part of a conference with the coalition fighting against ISIS (although extremist theocratic Gulf states were invited). That same month, the U.S. said it was no longer formerly coordinating with the FSA. In December, representatives of the FSA and Syrian National Coalition said they had "been almost completely cut off from what they saw as already meager support from the Western coalition led by the U.S." The Obama administration embarked on a new policy of training its own soldiers. It spent millions of dollars on a small handful of fighters who promised to only fight ISIS, not Assad, but who were promptly killed or kidnapped upon arriving in the country. This week, the U.S. announced a new strategy: After months of insisting there would be no American "boots on the ground," the Obama administration is deploying troops to Syria to fight ISIS. Today, over a dozen countries are involved in the war in Syria, many of which are bombing and/or funneling weapons to groups they support. The New York Times has called the conflict "a proto-world war." In the Vienna talks, these countries are working together to try to find a way to put out the raging fire upon which they have all dumped gasoline. And yet, what continues to be clear is that the input of Syrians themselves is seen as superfluous. For years, Syrians have had little say in the violent conflict that has destroyed their country. Now, Syrians are not welcome at the inter-imperial conference that will determine their fate.A catastrophic civil war has devastated Syria for over four-and-a-half years. More than a quarter of a million people have been killed. Almost 12 million Syrians, over half of the entire population, are displaced, with four million external refugees registered with the U.N. Large chunks of what were formerly bustling cities have been reduced to rubble. Senior diplomats representing almost 20 countries are converging in Vienna in an attempt to reach a political solution to stop this disastrous conflict. Yet one group is missing: Syrians themselves. A.P. confirmed that the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, who support Syrian rebel groups; along with Russia and Iran, who back the Assad government; will be at the talks. In a press briefing on Wednesday morning, the State Department also noted that Egypt, Qatar, Lebanon, France, and the E.U. will participate. Syrian voices, however, will absent from the discussion. Syria's main political opposition body, the Syrian National Council, and other rebels were not invited to the international Vienna talks. The Assad government was not invited either. Rebel-aligned countries want Assad to step down. Many say they will consider a brief transitional period. Iran and Russia insist that Assad must stay in power for the near future. On Friday, nevertheless, Iran said it would support a proposal that would give Assad a six-month transitional period, before an election to determine Syria's next leader. In 2011, as uprisings spread around the Middle East and North Africa, Syrians began to protest the dictatorship of the Assad family, which has controlled Syria uninterrupted since 1970. Government forces crushed the demonstrations, which turned the uprising violent. The subsequent meddling of dozens of foreign nations has only exacerbated the conflict. The Syrian Civil War has widely been characterized as a proxy war. The U.S. and allied countries have supported a variety of rebel groups, which are greatly divided on ideological lines. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have also funded extremist groups that have committed war crimes and carried out sectarian attacks on civilians of other ethnic and/or religious groups. Specifically, these two U.S. allies have indirectly backed al-Nusra, Syria's al-Qaeda affiliate. Turkey has also been accused of helping ISIS quash Kurdish rebels. Russia and Iran, on the other side, have propped up the Assad government, which has bombed civilians areas in rebel-controlled cities for years. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a pro-rebel organization based in the U.K., the government is responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in the war. Officials who defected from the government say it is engaging in mass torture campaigns, brutally beating and abusing dissidents. Assad has also blockaded neighborhoods like the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk. In a shift away from U.S. policy, Israel has welcomed Russian intervention in support of the Assad government, and has even coordinated with the Russian military. The rise of ISIS in 2014 further complicated the already convoluted alliances. ISIS has fought most rebel groups, as well as the Syrian government. With the rapid spread of the extremist group, the U.S. also softened its rhetoric about Assad. In October 2014, the US did not invite the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to be part of a conference with the coalition fighting against ISIS (although extremist theocratic Gulf states were invited). That same month, the U.S. said it was no longer formerly coordinating with the FSA. In December, representatives of the FSA and Syrian National Coalition said they had "been almost completely cut off from what they saw as already meager support from the Western coalition led by the U.S." The Obama administration embarked on a new policy of training its own soldiers. It spent millions of dollars on a small handful of fighters who promised to only fight ISIS, not Assad, but who were promptly killed or kidnapped upon arriving in the country. This week, the U.S. announced a new strategy: After months of insisting there would be no American "boots on the ground," the Obama administration is deploying troops to Syria to fight ISIS. Today, over a dozen countries are involved in the war in Syria, many of which are bombing and/or funneling weapons to groups they support. The New York Times has called the conflict "a proto-world war." In the Vienna talks, these countries are working together to try to find a way to put out the raging fire upon which they have all dumped gasoline. And yet, what continues to be clear is that the input of Syrians themselves is seen as superfluous. For years, Syrians have had little say in the violent conflict that has destroyed their country. Now, Syrians are not welcome at the inter-imperial conference that will determine their fate.A catastrophic civil war has devastated Syria for over four-and-a-half years. More than a quarter of a million people have been killed. Almost 12 million Syrians, over half of the entire population, are displaced, with four million external refugees registered with the U.N. Large chunks of what were formerly bustling cities have been reduced to rubble. Senior diplomats representing almost 20 countries are converging in Vienna in an attempt to reach a political solution to stop this disastrous conflict. Yet one group is missing: Syrians themselves. A.P. confirmed that the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, who support Syrian rebel groups; along with Russia and Iran, who back the Assad government; will be at the talks. In a press briefing on Wednesday morning, the State Department also noted that Egypt, Qatar, Lebanon, France, and the E.U. will participate. Syrian voices, however, will absent from the discussion. Syria's main political opposition body, the Syrian National Council, and other rebels were not invited to the international Vienna talks. The Assad government was not invited either. Rebel-aligned countries want Assad to step down. Many say they will consider a brief transitional period. Iran and Russia insist that Assad must stay in power for the near future. On Friday, nevertheless, Iran said it would support a proposal that would give Assad a six-month transitional period, before an election to determine Syria's next leader. In 2011, as uprisings spread around the Middle East and North Africa, Syrians began to protest the dictatorship of the Assad family, which has controlled Syria uninterrupted since 1970. Government forces crushed the demonstrations, which turned the uprising violent. The subsequent meddling of dozens of foreign nations has only exacerbated the conflict. The Syrian Civil War has widely been characterized as a proxy war. The U.S. and allied countries have supported a variety of rebel groups, which are greatly divided on ideological lines. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have also funded extremist groups that have committed war crimes and carried out sectarian attacks on civilians of other ethnic and/or religious groups. Specifically, these two U.S. allies have indirectly backed al-Nusra, Syria's al-Qaeda affiliate. Turkey has also been accused of helping ISIS quash Kurdish rebels. Russia and Iran, on the other side, have propped up the Assad government, which has bombed civilians areas in rebel-controlled cities for years. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a pro-rebel organization based in the U.K., the government is responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in the war. Officials who defected from the government say it is engaging in mass torture campaigns, brutally beating and abusing dissidents. Assad has also blockaded neighborhoods like the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk. In a shift away from U.S. policy, Israel has welcomed Russian intervention in support of the Assad government, and has even coordinated with the Russian military. The rise of ISIS in 2014 further complicated the already convoluted alliances. ISIS has fought most rebel groups, as well as the Syrian government. With the rapid spread of the extremist group, the U.S. also softened its rhetoric about Assad. In October 2014, the US did not invite the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to be part of a conference with the coalition fighting against ISIS (although extremist theocratic Gulf states were invited). That same month, the U.S. said it was no longer formerly coordinating with the FSA. In December, representatives of the FSA and Syrian National Coalition said they had "been almost completely cut off from what they saw as already meager support from the Western coalition led by the U.S." The Obama administration embarked on a new policy of training its own soldiers. It spent millions of dollars on a small handful of fighters who promised to only fight ISIS, not Assad, but who were promptly killed or kidnapped upon arriving in the country. This week, the U.S. announced a new strategy: After months of insisting there would be no American "boots on the ground," the Obama administration is deploying troops to Syria to fight ISIS. Today, over a dozen countries are involved in the war in Syria, many of which are bombing and/or funneling weapons to groups they support. The New York Times has called the conflict "a proto-world war." In the Vienna talks, these countries are working together to try to find a way to put out the raging fire upon which they have all dumped gasoline. And yet, what continues to be clear is that the input of Syrians themselves is seen as superfluous. For years, Syrians have had little say in the violent conflict that has destroyed their country. Now, Syrians are not welcome at the inter-imperial conference that will determine their fate.
October 29, 2015
“It felt like the bullsh*t was flowing directly at us”: Morgan Spurlock turns fact-checking the outrageous GOP debate into a game
Is Donald Trump really funding his own campaign? Did he ever file for bankruptcy? Does Ben Carson have any relationship to dodgy nutritional-supplements company Mannatech? Will his flat tax stimulate the economy? Does the Federal Reserve need to be audited? These are some of the questions batted around last night at the Republican debate on CNBC. They’re also elements of an interactive video that documentary filmmaker and general trouble-maker Morgan Spurlock has put together to highlight the number of lies and half-truth being tossed around in politics today. The video – "Call Bullsh#t" – helps sort out the truth behind the claims and should be of interest to fans of the Jon Stewart-era “Daily Show.” (It was put together in collaboration with the video production company Interlude.) We spoke to Spurlock and Jeremy Chilnick, COO of Spurlock’s production company, Warrior Poets, from New York. The interviews have been lightly edited for clarity. Politicians have been lying or shading the truth for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Why did this seem like the right time for a fact-checking video? Spurlock: I feel like throughout history we’ve heard bullshit from politicians, but now we’re at the perfect intersection of technology and entertainment where we can, in real time, produce something that holds people accountable. That’s an exciting time to be living in. Chilnick: Morgan and I, and Interlude, are very interested in politics and interactive storytelling. From the moment we saw the last Republican debate – how audacious it was – it seemed like the perfect time to launch this. Has the lying, the deception, gotten worse over the years? Spurlock: I don’t know if it’s gotten worse – there are just a lot more places where it can be amplified. I think it’s probably been consistent. But now there’s more places to tweet about it or Facebook about it, broadcast it – there are more people picking [misinformation] up. But the harder part is that there are not as many people calling it out. We wanted to engage people in this election, and do it in a way infinitely more entertaining than just watching it and talking about it. Did this debate seem as full of deceptions as that awful second debate? Spurlock: It was a lot shorter. It limited the amount of bullshit to half, because it was half as long time-wise. But I feel like it was a little bit more reigned in. Some candidates has a specific purpose in mind, others were trying to clamor and get attention. Does it make sense to do this for the Democratic debate, or is this something that only Republicans deserve? Spurlock: There were 10 people onstage, and when you have 10 people onstage together trying to say something that will get them headlines the next day, people reach a bit more. Chilnick: There there were so many candidates onstage – it was an arena atmosphere, everyone was trying to outdo everyone else. It created a perfect storm of bullshit. Spurlock: But I’ve already been contacted by so many people saying, “I didn’t see Hillary or Bernie in this video.” Hillary and Bernie weren’t in the debate. But there are already people itching for the Democrat version. Did one of the candidates seem to stay closer to the truth, and another stretch out into falsehood more often? Spurlock: Marco Rubio was doing everything he could to stand out. So did Chris Christie. But they did it in very different ways. Rubio was trying to be this team-builder on the Republican side. But Christie was still out for blood – he was playing the bullshit shark. Or someone like Ben Carson – he’s in a position where he’s saying anything he can to get elected. He was full of bullshit last night – it was great. Chilnick: Marco Rubio did seem to be the most honest, came across as the most level-headed, and connected at the most human level. On the flip side of that, Chris Christie seemed to be seizing every moment to really demonstrate that he was still in the race. That need to justify himself as a candidate led to hyperbole and outright bullshitting – the way he was talking direct to the camera, ignoring the audience in the room. It felt like the bullshit was flowing directly at us when we were sitting in our room watching the TV — we were sort of ducking out of the way of the bullshit coming our way. So you plan to keep this up through the Republican and Democratic debates? Spurlock: That’s the plan. As long as everyone who worked 27 or 28 hours straight yesterday can go home and get some rest, and be enthusiastic about it, we can do it again.Is Donald Trump really funding his own campaign? Did he ever file for bankruptcy? Does Ben Carson have any relationship to dodgy nutritional-supplements company Mannatech? Will his flat tax stimulate the economy? Does the Federal Reserve need to be audited? These are some of the questions batted around last night at the Republican debate on CNBC. They’re also elements of an interactive video that documentary filmmaker and general trouble-maker Morgan Spurlock has put together to highlight the number of lies and half-truth being tossed around in politics today. The video – "Call Bullsh#t" – helps sort out the truth behind the claims and should be of interest to fans of the Jon Stewart-era “Daily Show.” (It was put together in collaboration with the video production company Interlude.) We spoke to Spurlock and Jeremy Chilnick, COO of Spurlock’s production company, Warrior Poets, from New York. The interviews have been lightly edited for clarity. Politicians have been lying or shading the truth for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Why did this seem like the right time for a fact-checking video? Spurlock: I feel like throughout history we’ve heard bullshit from politicians, but now we’re at the perfect intersection of technology and entertainment where we can, in real time, produce something that holds people accountable. That’s an exciting time to be living in. Chilnick: Morgan and I, and Interlude, are very interested in politics and interactive storytelling. From the moment we saw the last Republican debate – how audacious it was – it seemed like the perfect time to launch this. Has the lying, the deception, gotten worse over the years? Spurlock: I don’t know if it’s gotten worse – there are just a lot more places where it can be amplified. I think it’s probably been consistent. But now there’s more places to tweet about it or Facebook about it, broadcast it – there are more people picking [misinformation] up. But the harder part is that there are not as many people calling it out. We wanted to engage people in this election, and do it in a way infinitely more entertaining than just watching it and talking about it. Did this debate seem as full of deceptions as that awful second debate? Spurlock: It was a lot shorter. It limited the amount of bullshit to half, because it was half as long time-wise. But I feel like it was a little bit more reigned in. Some candidates has a specific purpose in mind, others were trying to clamor and get attention. Does it make sense to do this for the Democratic debate, or is this something that only Republicans deserve? Spurlock: There were 10 people onstage, and when you have 10 people onstage together trying to say something that will get them headlines the next day, people reach a bit more. Chilnick: There there were so many candidates onstage – it was an arena atmosphere, everyone was trying to outdo everyone else. It created a perfect storm of bullshit. Spurlock: But I’ve already been contacted by so many people saying, “I didn’t see Hillary or Bernie in this video.” Hillary and Bernie weren’t in the debate. But there are already people itching for the Democrat version. Did one of the candidates seem to stay closer to the truth, and another stretch out into falsehood more often? Spurlock: Marco Rubio was doing everything he could to stand out. So did Chris Christie. But they did it in very different ways. Rubio was trying to be this team-builder on the Republican side. But Christie was still out for blood – he was playing the bullshit shark. Or someone like Ben Carson – he’s in a position where he’s saying anything he can to get elected. He was full of bullshit last night – it was great. Chilnick: Marco Rubio did seem to be the most honest, came across as the most level-headed, and connected at the most human level. On the flip side of that, Chris Christie seemed to be seizing every moment to really demonstrate that he was still in the race. That need to justify himself as a candidate led to hyperbole and outright bullshitting – the way he was talking direct to the camera, ignoring the audience in the room. It felt like the bullshit was flowing directly at us when we were sitting in our room watching the TV — we were sort of ducking out of the way of the bullshit coming our way. So you plan to keep this up through the Republican and Democratic debates? Spurlock: That’s the plan. As long as everyone who worked 27 or 28 hours straight yesterday can go home and get some rest, and be enthusiastic about it, we can do it again.
Victory for the douchebags: Not taking sides is the easiest way to help the worst guys win
I think at this point it’s safe to say, even though SXSW 2016 is still several months in the future, that SXSW’s leadership has made some considerable errors. It’s not a good day for PR when you’re a major conference/festival in the hipster tech world and you’ve got Buzzfeed and Vox both pulling out in protest of your recent actions, when you’ve got ex-NFL star Chris Kluwe’s excoriation of your cowardice going viral on Twitter, and when “dramatically announcing you’re not going to SXSW” is the new “rescinding Bill Cosby’s honorary degree”. It’s easy to point fingers at outsiders over this and I’m sure people at SXSW are doing just that right now. You could blame the charming folks at the r/KotakuInAction and their less-presentable brethren at /baph/ on 8chan, who have a distressing tendency to try to cause as much trouble as possible “for the lulz” whether or not it hurts their ostensible cause. You could join the legions of other people who’ve blamed “Twitter outrage culture” for making you guys “look bad.” You could blame any of the specific individuals who tweeted mean things. You could blame Joan Walsh, or John Scalzi, or U.S. Representative Katherine Clark. You could blame me. After biting my tongue since August I finally decided to write a long tell-all article my and others’ treatment during SXSW’s “PanelPicker” process, in hopes that it would cause some trouble for SXSW. It appears to be succeeding. But while it’s tempting to cast blame on the outraged for giving you a hard time, it bears asking what, exactly, led to all these people having something to be outraged about. In this case, as in so many others, SXSW screwed themselves over. By the time they got to the point of creating a big public stink by canceling two panels they’d already announced were approved and making sanctimonious references to the “sanctity of the big tent” as they did so, it was already too late. No one would’ve consciously chosen to be in that position. Even the lowest-level intern at SXSW must’ve known that there’s no good outcome from doing something like that. SXSW didn’t get to that quandary by making any particular decision. They did it by making a series of non-decisions. Like so many big, clueless organizations before them, SXSW screwed itself over by thinking it could always take the safest, easiest path of least resistance, the (non-)choice that pleased everyone. The problem is that that doesn’t work for serious issues where there are real stakes. I get that SXSW wants to keep things “positive,” in the shallow sense of “positive,” by which I mean generally avoiding upsetting, unpleasant conflicts and pretending things are already basically okay. It wouldn’t make a very good recruiting landscape for Goldman Sachs otherwise. And that’s fine. I really mean it, it is. Concern trolls defending SXSW’s actions keep coming up to me and my friends saying “SXSW has no obligation to host a ‘fight’ if they don’t want to.” Of course they don’t. But if they wanted to keep it light and fun and avoid stuff that might attract controversy or bum people out at the afterparties then the time to make that decision was before putting panels about the topic of Internet harassment up on the Internet to be harassed. This isn’t just them, this applies to a lot of people across the board. I can’t count how many times I’ve experienced or observed people trying to “start a dialogue” or “draw attention” to online harassment doing it in exactly the wrong way such that all they do is increase harassment. We have generally agreed-upon rules for how to report on suicide and
Beyond a three-way in 3-D: The awkward delights of “Love,” Gaspar Noé’s gorgeous real-sex movie
Gaspar Noé is a French filmmaker (although he’s originally from Argentina) who very much belongs to the ambitious, pretentious, self-reflective art-cinema tradition of his country. He also perceives that tradition as a trap, as did Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, two earlier America-obsessed French directors that Noé has carefully avoided emulating, but who are his obvious forebears. He has deliberately pursued controversy and confrontation and extreme storytelling modes in all four of his features, in an effort to tear down the walls of the “art film” ghetto and restore some of the transgressive sizzle that adventurous cinema carried in his youth (and mine, and quite likely yours too). If you’ve heard of Noé and his films, it’s almost certainly because of these confrontational tactics: He made his big international splash in 2002 with “Irreversible,” a story told backward (in far more disorienting fashion than “Memento”) that featured a brutal rape scene, set in a pedestrian underpass and shot in one nine-minute take. More recently he made “Enter the Void,” which is, among other things, an overt homage to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and a hallucinatory journey through the afterlife of a recently deceased Tokyo drug dealer, balanced between the debauched and painful world he has left behind and the unknown infinity ahead. If you’ve heard anything about Noé’s new film, “Love,” which premiered at Cannes last spring and is now reaching American theaters, you know two things: It was shot in 3-D and it features actors having actual sex, rather than the simulated action that is customary for even the most explicit Euro-sexy films (e.g., “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” whose young female stars were not lesbians and did not have sex with each other). It would be worse than useless for me to pretend, movie-critic style, that the 3-D three-way in “Love” – or the POV shot of an impressive male orgasm, almost literally in your face -- is somehow secondary or irrelevant to its cinematic quality. The sex scenes in “Love” are the principal reason why I’m writing about it and you’re reading about it, and why a 3-D film by a little-known foreign director will play in every major American city. To be fair, most of the film takes place before and after and in between the hot sexual escapades of Murphy (Karl Glusman), an American film student in Paris, and Electra (Aomi Muyock), his on-again, off-again Parisian girlfriend. But the sex is literally and figuratively the action of “Love.” It is central to the visual craft and identity of the film, to its plot, its central narrative theme, its everything. Why should you pay money to watch people fucking, if you’ll pardon my French? (Ha! But since we’re on the subject, such dialogue as there is in “Love” is almost entirely in English.) I can’t answer that in the abstract, but Noé and his cinematographer, the endlessly inventive Benoît Debie, have captured some of the most gorgeous sex scenes in film history, largely in a series of fixed-camera overhead shots that allow us to see the protagonists from a slightly detached or semi-divine perspective. Students of Noé’s work will find innumerable references to “Enter the Void” here, and one way of understanding the sex scenes is the possibility that the characters are viewing them from the future, or the afterlife. (Murphy insists at one point that there is nothing after death, but Noé’s metaphysics, we might say, involve an elaborate conception of nothingness.) Glusman and Muyock are unquestionably beautiful specimens of the human physique (and, ahem, well suited for this activity in various notable respects). But “Love” bears no resemblance to pornography, and not just because it depicts a naked female body with ample pubic hair. I never found it even borderline arousing, or at least not in the “prurient interest” sense. When Murphy tells a girl at a party that he wants to make a sentimental, emotional movie about sex (right before he accompanies her into the bathroom, for some sex of a more perfunctory variety), he is serving as an overly obvious directorial stand-in, not for the first or last time. But it’s a perfect description of the movie he’s in, which possesses a raw, naked, gauche honesty that has always been embedded within Noé’s work but is fully exposed here, sometimes with hazardous results. Despite all the screwing Murphy and Electra do – sometimes with the erotic, chaotic and ultimately destructive addition of their neighbor, a petite Nordic gamine named Omi (Klara Kristin) – “Love” is by far the least confrontational or overtly challenging of Noé’s four features. This movie is overloaded with film-school gamesmanship: Electra’s older, richer ex-boyfriend is named Noé, and the infant son Murphy doesn’t want is named Gaspar. There are numerous in-joke references to Pasolini’s “Salò” and D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” and “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein,” three controversial and divisive spectacles, the last of which (not actually made by Andy Warhol) was also a 3-D sex movie. But “Love” will surely strike some viewers as not nearly subversive or “progressive” enough, at least in sexual-political terms. Murphy is an overly possessive alpha-male hothead, who is eager to sleep with Electra and Omi at the same time, but refuses to do it with Electra and another guy. When she hires a trans sex worker, as a “compromise,” Murphy gets so wasted that he doesn’t remember what happens – and Noé doesn’t show us. I think it’s obvious in context, and from the multiple points of similarity between Noé and Murphy, that “Love” is more like an Augustine-style confession – “Here’s how I screwed up my relationship, maybe there’s a lesson there for you” – than a sexual or moral prescription for how to live and whom to love. But our culture has great difficulty figuring out how to value honesty, in case you hadn’t noticed, and to a certain extent I get it. Gaspar Noé is entitled to his own degree of misogyny and homophobia and sexual narcissism – although transfigured or embodied here as a virile young American, in life Noé is a bald French dude in his 50s – and is at liberty to tell us the truth about it. Whether people actually want to share that experience, along with the peculiar combination of artful, spectacular sexuality and artless, painful emotional exploration in “Love,” is quite another matter. I might be the guy this movie was made for, pretty much – I’m not far away from Noé in terms of age or artistic temperament or life experience – but I don’t question anyone’s right to find “Love” massively exasperating, and perhaps a step backward after “Irreversible” and “Enter the Void.” It exasperated me too, with its scenes of overly direct, searching and sophomoric dialogue, especially as delivered by Glusman (who was, I’m just saying, perhaps not hired for his acting chops). But the level of risk here – the risk of saying what you really feel, of not being cool -- goes way beyond the expected limits of movies, or the expected limits, period. “Love” is as bewildering and contradictory as its subject, which Electra repeatedly assures Murphy he will never understand. Neither will I, but even with its abundant flaws and its willingness to embarrass itself this strange and extraordinary film never lost me and never let me go; it wrapped me in a dreamlike rapture and then in a sense of profound and nearly universal personal tragedy. “Love” is now playing at the Angelika Film Center and the Village East Cinema in New York, and opens Nov. 6 at the Aero Theatre in Los Angeles, with a national rollout to follow.Gaspar Noé is a French filmmaker (although he’s originally from Argentina) who very much belongs to the ambitious, pretentious, self-reflective art-cinema tradition of his country. He also perceives that tradition as a trap, as did Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, two earlier America-obsessed French directors that Noé has carefully avoided emulating, but who are his obvious forebears. He has deliberately pursued controversy and confrontation and extreme storytelling modes in all four of his features, in an effort to tear down the walls of the “art film” ghetto and restore some of the transgressive sizzle that adventurous cinema carried in his youth (and mine, and quite likely yours too). If you’ve heard of Noé and his films, it’s almost certainly because of these confrontational tactics: He made his big international splash in 2002 with “Irreversible,” a story told backward (in far more disorienting fashion than “Memento”) that featured a brutal rape scene, set in a pedestrian underpass and shot in one nine-minute take. More recently he made “Enter the Void,” which is, among other things, an overt homage to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and a hallucinatory journey through the afterlife of a recently deceased Tokyo drug dealer, balanced between the debauched and painful world he has left behind and the unknown infinity ahead. If you’ve heard anything about Noé’s new film, “Love,” which premiered at Cannes last spring and is now reaching American theaters, you know two things: It was shot in 3-D and it features actors having actual sex, rather than the simulated action that is customary for even the most explicit Euro-sexy films (e.g., “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” whose young female stars were not lesbians and did not have sex with each other). It would be worse than useless for me to pretend, movie-critic style, that the 3-D three-way in “Love” – or the POV shot of an impressive male orgasm, almost literally in your face -- is somehow secondary or irrelevant to its cinematic quality. The sex scenes in “Love” are the principal reason why I’m writing about it and you’re reading about it, and why a 3-D film by a little-known foreign director will play in every major American city. To be fair, most of the film takes place before and after and in between the hot sexual escapades of Murphy (Karl Glusman), an American film student in Paris, and Electra (Aomi Muyock), his on-again, off-again Parisian girlfriend. But the sex is literally and figuratively the action of “Love.” It is central to the visual craft and identity of the film, to its plot, its central narrative theme, its everything. Why should you pay money to watch people fucking, if you’ll pardon my French? (Ha! But since we’re on the subject, such dialogue as there is in “Love” is almost entirely in English.) I can’t answer that in the abstract, but Noé and his cinematographer, the endlessly inventive Benoît Debie, have captured some of the most gorgeous sex scenes in film history, largely in a series of fixed-camera overhead shots that allow us to see the protagonists from a slightly detached or semi-divine perspective. Students of Noé’s work will find innumerable references to “Enter the Void” here, and one way of understanding the sex scenes is the possibility that the characters are viewing them from the future, or the afterlife. (Murphy insists at one point that there is nothing after death, but Noé’s metaphysics, we might say, involve an elaborate conception of nothingness.) Glusman and Muyock are unquestionably beautiful specimens of the human physique (and, ahem, well suited for this activity in various notable respects). But “Love” bears no resemblance to pornography, and not just because it depicts a naked female body with ample pubic hair. I never found it even borderline arousing, or at least not in the “prurient interest” sense. When Murphy tells a girl at a party that he wants to make a sentimental, emotional movie about sex (right before he accompanies her into the bathroom, for some sex of a more perfunctory variety), he is serving as an overly obvious directorial stand-in, not for the first or last time. But it’s a perfect description of the movie he’s in, which possesses a raw, naked, gauche honesty that has always been embedded within Noé’s work but is fully exposed here, sometimes with hazardous results. Despite all the screwing Murphy and Electra do – sometimes with the erotic, chaotic and ultimately destructive addition of their neighbor, a petite Nordic gamine named Omi (Klara Kristin) – “Love” is by far the least confrontational or overtly challenging of Noé’s four features. This movie is overloaded with film-school gamesmanship: Electra’s older, richer ex-boyfriend is named Noé, and the infant son Murphy doesn’t want is named Gaspar. There are numerous in-joke references to Pasolini’s “Salò” and D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” and “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein,” three controversial and divisive spectacles, the last of which (not actually made by Andy Warhol) was also a 3-D sex movie. But “Love” will surely strike some viewers as not nearly subversive or “progressive” enough, at least in sexual-political terms. Murphy is an overly possessive alpha-male hothead, who is eager to sleep with Electra and Omi at the same time, but refuses to do it with Electra and another guy. When she hires a trans sex worker, as a “compromise,” Murphy gets so wasted that he doesn’t remember what happens – and Noé doesn’t show us. I think it’s obvious in context, and from the multiple points of similarity between Noé and Murphy, that “Love” is more like an Augustine-style confession – “Here’s how I screwed up my relationship, maybe there’s a lesson there for you” – than a sexual or moral prescription for how to live and whom to love. But our culture has great difficulty figuring out how to value honesty, in case you hadn’t noticed, and to a certain extent I get it. Gaspar Noé is entitled to his own degree of misogyny and homophobia and sexual narcissism – although transfigured or embodied here as a virile young American, in life Noé is a bald French dude in his 50s – and is at liberty to tell us the truth about it. Whether people actually want to share that experience, along with the peculiar combination of artful, spectacular sexuality and artless, painful emotional exploration in “Love,” is quite another matter. I might be the guy this movie was made for, pretty much – I’m not far away from Noé in terms of age or artistic temperament or life experience – but I don’t question anyone’s right to find “Love” massively exasperating, and perhaps a step backward after “Irreversible” and “Enter the Void.” It exasperated me too, with its scenes of overly direct, searching and sophomoric dialogue, especially as delivered by Glusman (who was, I’m just saying, perhaps not hired for his acting chops). But the level of risk here – the risk of saying what you really feel, of not being cool -- goes way beyond the expected limits of movies, or the expected limits, period. “Love” is as bewildering and contradictory as its subject, which Electra repeatedly assures Murphy he will never understand. Neither will I, but even with its abundant flaws and its willingness to embarrass itself this strange and extraordinary film never lost me and never let me go; it wrapped me in a dreamlike rapture and then in a sense of profound and nearly universal personal tragedy. “Love” is now playing at the Angelika Film Center and the Village East Cinema in New York, and opens Nov. 6 at the Aero Theatre in Los Angeles, with a national rollout to follow.
Toke or treat: Another Halloween, another erroneous wave of panic over drug-laced candies
Halloween is just around the corner, and that means it's time for the annual unsubstantiated freak-out about twisted druggies dropping dope in little kids' trick-or-treat bags. Never mind that there's no evidence of such things happening (and no one questions why drug users would give away valuable drugs to strangers), just be afraid, very afraid. The cops are. "If your kids get these for Halloween candy, they ARE NOT CANDY!!!" the Jackson, Mississippi, Police Department warned on Facebook below a photo of MDMA (ecstasy) tablets shaped like skulls, dominos, and the Nintendo logo. "These are the new shapes of 'Ecstasy' and can kill kids through overdoses!!!" Ohio cops quickly got on the bandwagon, telling CBS Cleveland affiliate WOIO that giving ecstasy to trick-or-treaters would be bad news. "They'd be in the emergency room without a doubt. The ecstasy, amongst other things, it causes you to grind your teeth and you hallucinate. That would be extremely frightening for the child, the parents as well," Capt. Guy Turner of the Westlake, Ohio, police told the station. The tablets pictured in the photo are indeed ecstasy tablets and ecstasy can kill, but there are no reported cases of any Halloween trick-or-treaters being given ecstasy, let alone dying from it. The rumor-debunking website Snopes.com has addressed the Halloween ecstasy threat: The "ecstasy in Halloween candy" warning looked to be a variant of age-old rumors about poison (and other dangerous substances) being randomly handed out to children in trick-or-treat loot, a persistent but largely baseless fear that's dogged Halloween celebrations for decades. Despite long-held beliefs that Halloween candy tampering is both commonplace and regularly results in harm to children, reports of actual attempts to do so are virtually non-existent (or based on half-truths).Snopes isn't alone in scoffing at the tainted Halloween candy bogeyman. Joel Best, who is on the criminal justice faculty at the University of Delaware, has been studying the frightening phenomenon of passing contaminated goodies to trick-or-treaters for the past 30 years. He's found that the phenomenon is the fear, not the kiddie poisoning. He's placed a number on the verified reports of kids killed or injured by poisoned candy handed out by strangers: zero. “It’s a great thing to worry about, because it happens one day a year,” Best said. “People are imagining this terrible person, who lives down the block, is so crazy that he poisons little children at random. But he’s so tightly wrapped that he only does it one day a year.” Despite all the fearmongering around Halloween candy, only two deaths in the past 45 years have been linked to poisoned candy. One was a 5-year-old Detroit boy thought to have died from ingesting heroin hidden in his candy in 1970. But the boy actually found the drug in a relative's home, and his familyput heroin in the rest of his candy in an attempt to shift blame. The other case, from 1974, was an 8-year-old Houston boy who died fromcyanide-laced Pixie Stix. But it was not a deranged neighbor who did it, but the boy's father, who wanted a $20,000 life insurance pay-out. Dear dad was later found guilty and executed. If you want to worry about something in your kids' Halloween candy, it's probably more productive to worry about sugar and chocolate than dangerous drugs.
Halloween is just around the corner, and that means it's time for the annual unsubstantiated freak-out about twisted druggies dropping dope in little kids' trick-or-treat bags. Never mind that there's no evidence of such things happening (and no one questions why drug users would give away valuable drugs to strangers), just be afraid, very afraid. The cops are. "If your kids get these for Halloween candy, they ARE NOT CANDY!!!" the Jackson, Mississippi, Police Department warned on Facebook below a photo of MDMA (ecstasy) tablets shaped like skulls, dominos, and the Nintendo logo. "These are the new shapes of 'Ecstasy' and can kill kids through overdoses!!!" Ohio cops quickly got on the bandwagon, telling CBS Cleveland affiliate WOIO that giving ecstasy to trick-or-treaters would be bad news. "They'd be in the emergency room without a doubt. The ecstasy, amongst other things, it causes you to grind your teeth and you hallucinate. That would be extremely frightening for the child, the parents as well," Capt. Guy Turner of the Westlake, Ohio, police told the station. The tablets pictured in the photo are indeed ecstasy tablets and ecstasy can kill, but there are no reported cases of any Halloween trick-or-treaters being given ecstasy, let alone dying from it. The rumor-debunking website Snopes.com has addressed the Halloween ecstasy threat: The "ecstasy in Halloween candy" warning looked to be a variant of age-old rumors about poison (and other dangerous substances) being randomly handed out to children in trick-or-treat loot, a persistent but largely baseless fear that's dogged Halloween celebrations for decades. Despite long-held beliefs that Halloween candy tampering is both commonplace and regularly results in harm to children, reports of actual attempts to do so are virtually non-existent (or based on half-truths).Snopes isn't alone in scoffing at the tainted Halloween candy bogeyman. Joel Best, who is on the criminal justice faculty at the University of Delaware, has been studying the frightening phenomenon of passing contaminated goodies to trick-or-treaters for the past 30 years. He's found that the phenomenon is the fear, not the kiddie poisoning. He's placed a number on the verified reports of kids killed or injured by poisoned candy handed out by strangers: zero. “It’s a great thing to worry about, because it happens one day a year,” Best said. “People are imagining this terrible person, who lives down the block, is so crazy that he poisons little children at random. But he’s so tightly wrapped that he only does it one day a year.” Despite all the fearmongering around Halloween candy, only two deaths in the past 45 years have been linked to poisoned candy. One was a 5-year-old Detroit boy thought to have died from ingesting heroin hidden in his candy in 1970. But the boy actually found the drug in a relative's home, and his familyput heroin in the rest of his candy in an attempt to shift blame. The other case, from 1974, was an 8-year-old Houston boy who died fromcyanide-laced Pixie Stix. But it was not a deranged neighbor who did it, but the boy's father, who wanted a $20,000 life insurance pay-out. Dear dad was later found guilty and executed. If you want to worry about something in your kids' Halloween candy, it's probably more productive to worry about sugar and chocolate than dangerous drugs.
“Lights out for Jeb”: The most brutal responses to Jeb Bush’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad debate
"I'm pretty damn glum tonight," vocal Jeb Bush advocate and CNN political commentator Ana Navarro lamented on-air immediately after the debate. Her favored candidate not only failed to steal the spotlight for a much needed momentum boost, but managed to open himself up to the biggest slap down of the night via his one-time protégé, Marco Rubio. Troubled by his disastrous performance, Navarro implored Bush to "take the next 10 days ... to really figure out how to dominate in debates." "It's a long haul. Ana, hang in there, girl," Bush said in a post-debate interview, responding to his longtime friend. "It's a long haul, baby. A few more debates to go. I'm out-campaigning everybody. I'm working hard and we're raising the resources." But others in Jeb's orbit and the political punditry at-large don't seem to agree with Jeb's rosy assessment of his chances following last night's dreary performance. Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum broke down Jeb's debate stage demise: "Jeb Bush is chronically unstrategic ... Jeb Bush does not improvise ... Bush does not improvise because he dreads confrontation ... When Bush fails, he discourages easily ... When discouraged, Bush—although a physically big man—psychically shrinks into his own feelings of hurt and rejection." Top Jeb fundraiser David Beightol conceded that the "format was tough" but shrugged off Jeb's poor performance. "Jeb is a doer, not a debater," he told CNN. But one family friend suggested to Politico that Jeb schedule another family huddle to discuss his campaign's future soon. “He has some tough decisions to make over Thanksgiving.” Another nameless Republican who has reportedly endorsed Bush told Politico “Jeb tried too hard" during the CNBC debate, while another said he has a hard time imagining how Jeb recovers from his flailing performance. Conservative columnist Ramesh Ponnuru, whose wife still works for Jeb having apparently survived last week's massive campaign layoffs, wrote that "Bush needed a good debate after having to make staff cutbacks last week, and this wasn't it."' Fox News contributor Guy Benson said Jeb "fizzled," deeming Rubio's slap down "lights out for Jeb." "Bush was MIA. Rubio won," Republican strategist Liz Mair told Business Insider. Former senior John McCain adviser Steve Schmidt called Wednesday the worst day of Jeb's campaign on MSNBC. "Marco Rubio knocked Jeb Bush out tonight, flat on his butt." MSNBC's Joe Scarborough laughed that Jeb's "donors are running for the exit.” Matt Drudge predicted Jeb's impending doom and return to life off the Paleo diet with this Twitter quip: https://twitter.com/DRUDGE/status/659... Daily Caller's Matt Lewis called on Jeb to quit the race for the sake of the Republican establishment:
At this point, it seems the likelihood of Bush a) tarnishing his reputation and b) inadvertently helping Donald Trump win the GOP nomination greatly exceeds the chance that he could turn things around. His body language betrays a guy who doesn’t really want to do what it takes to win today — and who is out of step with the current Republican Party. [...] Thoughtful conservatives, if they are to stop Donald Trump and Ben Carson, must — at some point — coalesce around an alternative. Marco Rubio seems the most likely choice. Unless Jeb Bush destroys him. Does Bush really want that to be his legacy?And it's not just conservatives piling on the Jeb's dead bandwagon. CNN's Alisyn Camerota criticized Bush for not appearing on "New Day" Thursday to recap his debate performance the night before, noting that various other candidates made the time to appear post-debate. Nate Silver said "Jeb Bush is toast,” noting that FiveThirtyEight's staff straw poll gave "Bush’s average grade was a C-, putting him at the bottom of the 10-candidate group." “Bush needed to appear as the strongest establishment candidate,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “He didn’t achieve that.” As for Rubio, who delivered the knockout punch to Jeb on the debate stage, his nomination prospects have surged to more than one-in-three in the wake of the CNBC debate, according to the prediction markets.
