Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Marshall Brickman

 That's Diane Keaton and Woody Allen in MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY -- a film directed by Woody Allen -- a comedy classic --and co-written by Woody and Marshall Brickman.  Marshall Brickman has passed away:






Marshall Brickman, who has died aged 85, was an Oscar- and BAFTA-winning screenwriter who helped redefine Woody Allen’s screen persona with his work on Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979).

Born four years apart, the pair had met a decade earlier, when the bespectacled, soft-featured Brickman was working as head writer on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (1962-92), the late-night chatshow Allen often guest-hosted. Both had Jewish roots and musical inclinations; both were frustrated at being ty​pecast as gagmen.

Accordingly, Allen recruited Brickman to expand the scope of his hitherto skittish movie endeavours. Razzing the largely mirthless science fiction that followed Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), their first collaboration Sleeper (1973) merely gestured towards comedy’s outer limits, scattering sight gags as it went. The pair’s next, however, emerged as a vastly more pointed and profound exploration.

Born of multiple rewrites and a free-ranging shoot, Annie Hall assumed haphazard shape in the edit suite, as Brickman later recalled: “When I saw the rough cut, I thought it terrible, completely unsalvageable. It rambled and was tangential and just… endless.”

Yet the more incisive 93-minute release version expanded comedy’s horizons, principally by allowing for the prospect of romantic failure and disillusionment. Critics were wowed; cinemagoers stirred to the extent that it remained Allen’s biggest hit for the next 34 years. With the director-star a no-show at the 1978 Oscars, Brickman duly collected a screenplay gong, one of four wins on the night, including Best Picture.



 Here's a clip from SLEEPER --  again with Diane and Woody.




I first learned of Marshall Brickman in college when I checked out a book by Michelle Phillips, CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'.  Michelle was one of the Mamas and the Papas (the other members were John Phillips, Denny Doherty and Cass Elliot).  She wrote about the band's history.  Before she and John were with Cass and Denny, they were in The New Journeymen with Marshall.


She noted in her book that Marshall went on to win an Oscar for ANNIE HALL.  From WIKIPEDIA:


Brickman was a 1956 graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School, where he was an honor roll student and a participant in WNYE. After attending the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he studied science and music and briefly aspired to be a doctor, he became a member of folk act the Tarriers in 1962, recruited by former classmate Eric Weissberg.[2] A banjo album that he and Weissberg recorded around this time was later re-licensed as the bulk of the soundtrack to the 1972 film Deliverance.[2][6] Following the disbanding of the Tarriers in 1965, Brickman joined the New Journeymen with John Phillips and Michelle Phillips, who later had success with the Mamas & the Papas.


MANHATTAN is another classic.


Marshall and Woody wrote four scripts together that were made into films: SLEEPER, ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN and MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY.  Those are four classic Woody Allen films.  They aren't his only classic ones but he and Marshall were good collaborators.  

He wrote and directed the cult classic SIMON and the box office bomb LOVESICK.  THE MANHATTAN PROJECT was the last film he directed. He also co-wrote it.  It bombed.  It's not a bad film but the cast was awful.  Some people do not like Cynthia Nixon.  That hurt the box office.  Many of us have always found Robert Sean Leonard off putting.  That's two.  Then they add in John Lithgow.  No one in the cast sold tickets and every one of the main cast was irritating to a large number of people.  So you tose them all in the film and it bombs.


And here's a clip from ANNIE HALL which is the one that won Marshall and Woody the Oscar for Best Screenplay.



To have co-written one of those films is amazing achievement.  To have co-written all four is beyond amazing.  


Going out with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Wednesday, December 4, 2024.  An actual analysis of the 2024 election takes place, MAGA hate abounds, behind the scenes with COMMON DREAMS and me (don't threaten me in an e-mail), and much more.



Starting with last night.



That's the African American Policy Forum's "Views from the 92%: Black Women Reflect on 2024 Election and Road Ahead."  "Conversations are going forward with us being relegated to a time out space."  Exactly.  Black women were largely silenced before the election and this has continued.  Now when it came to trashing the first Black woman to seriously run for president, DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE NATION, THE PROGESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES, COMMON DREAMS, etc.  The participants include law professor Kimberle Crenshaw, THE WASHINGTON POST's Karen Attiah, iONE DIGITAL's Kirsten West Savali, Black Voters Matter Fund's LaTosha Brown, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and Convener of Black Women's Roundtable's Melanie Campbell, the National Council of Negro Women's Shavon Arline-Bradley, the Transformative Justice Coalition, Atlanta Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta's Fran Phillips-Calhoun and Higher Heights' Glynda Carr.



Kimberle Crenshaw: Black women are disproportionately working class.  So any argument that foregrounds that Harris lost because she had no class analysis completely ignores Black women who voted overwhelmingly for her. And any analysis that fails to ask why the many policies she did offer that benefited the working class while the GOP's policies like tariffs, tax cuts, and attacks on workers that would harm them failed to dislodge White voters from Trump.  This is an alibi cloaking, covering up of the identity politics that underscores the MAGA nation.  In short, why do so many people believe that the economy is the standard explanation for the election out come as a race neutral one as opposed to an explanation that is racially loaded?  These are the frustrating details that too many of us are talking about with our friends, our loved ones and colleagues.  This is the tumor in the post-mortem that analysts unskilled in diagnosing the condition of the body politic that cannot address.  So, in typical fashion, we've got to do it for ourselves. 


You need to ask yourself about the media you consume because no one is addressing this.  Yes, there are racists like Katrina vanden Heuvel (part owner of THE NATION) and Amy Goodman (DEMOCRACY NOW!) -- White women who can't see a Black woman as anything other than a Maid or a Mammy.  The 'left' media -- THE NATION, DN!, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES, COMMON DREAMS, TRUTHOUT OUT -- isn't having this conversation.  They aren't even acknowledging it.  But you make a donation and they'll acknowledge your money with an empty thank you.  They will gladly take your money and then happily ignore you.

But expand beyond that.  

Sam Seder and his MAJORITY REPORT have repeatedly ignored this.  THE HUMANIST has ignored it.  SECULAR TALK has ignored it.  

These outlets are more than happy to repeat Bernie Sanders' racist analysis -- an analysis they're too stupid to grasp -- and they'll platform any other White person.

But they won't platform Black women and they do not want to discuss racism and sexism.

TABITH SPEAKS, Danielle Moodie's programs and Olay's program can and have discussed this. 

What's the common thread between those three and the others on YOUTUBE addressing this?  

They are Black women.

THE NATION and the rest have made it very clear that Black women are not welcome and they can't call out the racist and sexist attacks on Kamala because they were making them -- these 'left' outlets were part of these attacks.

COMMON DREAMS?  Check their archives.  A man runs for president for the Democratic Party?

They're not offering multiple daily attacks on what the candidate's representing or telling him how to word it or telling him what to focus on.  They're not doing that.  But when COMMON DREAMS wasn't outright attacking Kamala, they were still attacking her with their never ending implication that no Black woman was going to be able to decide.  No, they were going to order the Black woman around, they were going to disrespect her daily and trash her daily.

This is not a one day thing -- our noting the video above or our noting this issue.  Please stream it, we will talk about it more in Thursday and Friday's snapshot.  

And when you follow this topic, follow it beyond the election.  Follow the nonsense of these White speakers trying to use the election 'results' to sell out trans people, or gay people, or immigrants -- because these people don't want to work for votes and they don't want to work for voters.

'Results'?  I believe the Dems picked up two seats in the House.  I know that Donald Trump did not have a landslide or a mandate.  He barely won the popular vote.  

With almost all the states reporting at at least 99% of the votes counted, AP finds:

Harris:  74,898,009 votes (48.4%)

Satan:  77,193,105 votes (49.9%


More than anyone else, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell has led on combatting the lie that Donald received a mandate.   At THE GUARDIAN, Mehdi Hasan takes on the lie in a column:


In 2024, we have a new post-election lie from the Republican party. Trump didn’t just win, they say, but he won big. He won a landslide. He won an historic mandate for his “Maga” agenda.

And it was Trump himself, of course, on election night, who was the first to push this grandiose and self-serving falsehood, calling his win “a political victory that our country has never seen before” and claiming “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate”.

Republican politicians, masters of message discipline, quickly followed suit. The representative Elise Stefanik called his win a “historic landslide” while the senator John Barrasso called Trump’s a “huge landslide”. “On November 5 voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it,” wrote the “Doge” co-heads Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in the Wall Street Journal on 20 November.

None of this is true. Yes, Trump won the popular vote and the electoral college. Yes, Republicans won the Senate and the House. But, contrary to both Republican talking points and breathless headlines and hot takes from leading media outlets (“resounding”, “rout”, “runaway win”), there was really nothing at all historic or huge about the margin of victory.

Repeat after me: there was no “landslide”. There was no “blowout”. There was no “sweeping” mandate given to Trump by the electorate. The numbers don’t lie.

First, consider the popular vote. Yes, Trump became the first Republican for two decades to win the popular vote. However, per results from CNN, the Cook Political Report, and the New York Times, he did not win a majority of the vote. Barack Obama did in both 2008 and 2012. Joe Biden did in 2020. But Donald Trump failed to do so in 2024.

And the former president’s margin of victory over Harris is a miniscule 1.6 percentage points, “smaller than that of every winning president since 1888 other than two: John F Kennedy in 1960 and Richard M. Nixon in 1968”, as an analysis in the New York Times noted last month. In fact, in the 55 presidential elections in which the popular vote winner became president, 49 of them were won with a margin bigger than Trump’s in 2024.

In 2004, we were apparently smarter on the left.  Following that election and Bully Boy Bush's lie that he had a mandate didn't fly.  We collectively pushed back on that lie.  And when the cowards came forward to attack this group or that group and insist that the Dems had to drop support for abortion or for equality or for this or for that, we pushed back.

Well.

Stop me from lying.

Some of us pushed back.

Sam Seder didn't push back.  He platformed Simon Rosenberg (DLC baby) and let Simon lie non-stop on THE MAJORITY REPORT which then aired on AIR AMERICA RADIO.  He was rightly savaged in the comments on the AIR AMERIA RADIO blog.

But most of us, not Sam, were able to push back.

Today, it's one effort to gaslight after the other.

And we need to get it together if we're fighting right now.

If?

The topics addressed in the video above?  Many Black women are on vacation right now.  You refused to stand with us so you've given us no reason to stand with you.  



Hatred is all around.  MAGA spreads it like the flu.  And we can't count on the jokes like Seth Moulton to defend the people because cowards never do anything but advance themselves.  Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) reports:


A  far-right state lawmaker in Michigan called for the abolition of same-sex marriage on Monday immediately after returning from the holidays — and caught significant backlash on social media.
State Rep. Josh Schriver, who previously filed a lawsuit to restrict voting rights in Michigan and was stripped of his committee assignment after posting content promoting the white supremacist "great replacement theory," posted on X, "Make gay marriage illegal again. This is not remotely controversial, nor extreme."
He followed up with a second post reading, "20 years ago, Barack Obama was more conservative on marriage than many Republicans today. America only 'accepted' gay marriage after it was thrusted into her by a perverted Supreme Court ruling. America 2124 doesn’t have to be as dysfunctional as America 2024."


"Thrusted"?  Thrust works better but how effete of you, Josh, to reach for some archaic usage.  Thrust is the term your home schooled brain is struggling for.  Save us from the stupid.


And heaven save us from the closeted.

"Gay face" is a term describes facial features that call to mind stereotypes of what someone gay looks like.  Some may, many more do not.  And having "gay face" doesn't mean the person's gay.  That said . . .   If you look up "gay face" in the dictionary, this is what you find.









 




That's Josh Schriver and if he looks a little strange, it's probably because he doesn't have anything to wrap his lips around. 



Again, he reads gay.  He may be gay, he may not be, but he reads gay.  So is this for real or is he just a MAGA sub trying to tick off a dom so he can get some rough action?


I have no idea but I will not be surprised when he gets arrested for some public incident.  Not surprised one bit. 





In response to Schriver, Michigan's Democratic attorney general Dana Nessel posted to X, saying: "Please explain how dissolving my marriage, or that of the hundreds of thousands of other same-sex couples living in America, provides a benefit to your constituents or anyone else. You're not interested in helping Michiganders. You want only to hurt those you hate. Shame on you."

Newsweek has emailed Schriver for comment.

This is not the first time that Schiver has sparked conversation after posting on social media. Earlier this year, Schriver posted about "the great replacement," a racist conspiracy theory, to his social media, resulting in him being removed from the House Natural Resources, Environment, Tourism, and Outdoor Recreation committee as a punishment.

Schriver's post on X, which was originally created by right wing figure Jack Posobiec, showed a map of the world featuring white human figures over the U.S., Europe and Australia and black human figures across the rest of the map with the text "The great replacement!"

The "great replacement" is a conspiracy theory that white people are being overthrown and "replaced" by people of color. It has been used by violent extremists, and has been cited as leading to the 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, the 2019 mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.




MAGA subs are garbage and they're all over Twitter.  

Oh, COMMON DREAMS!

This will get attention -- the wrong kind for COMMON DREAMS -- and let's deal with it today in the hope of more eyeballs streaming last night's video.

I heard of their latest e-mail to the public account and was thinking, "Do I respond?"  Yeah, actually it makes sense to do so right here.


Ava and I noted a lot that COMMON DREAMS was getting wrong.  And it hurt some little feelings.  One COMMON DREAMer insisted I was hurting and that's why I was slamming them   "We ignored you."

Uhm, no, but we can certainly talk about it if you need us to.  In June of 2023, CD contacted me about something I'd written here and wanted some of the stuff I had.  I was busy and doing chemo.  I dictated a response to Martha and told her to pull some URLs.  She sent it out.  I'm remembering six total e-mails from CD.  I believe each one got answered.

They never did anything with it that I know.  

I didn't do anything here with either.  I would've assumed that they had the same issue I did.  There were attempts to move the piece over to THIRD.  Betty and my objection to it was were we promoting it?  

Dona was concerned about how we did the visuals.  We could put black lines over some of the stuff, or black bars as needed.  But when we attempted to do a similar feature -- with the same censored type photos -- a decade before, it left us with nothing but problems -- including Blogger/Blogspot censorship.

In the case with CD, Twitter had a number of things they shouldn't have.

Remember Target getting targeted by MAGA nuts?  

Some people thought I wasn't hard enough on Target.  Target removed the LGBTQ+ merchandise to a degree.  Some stores completely, some just moved it around.  And, as I pointed out, I didn't approve of any of that but I also didn't approve of threats.

Those threats still posted.  Punk ass White boys threatening to shoot up Target over the LGBTQ+ displays.

So that was some of it but the bulk of it was what was supposed to be Glenn Greenwald's browsing history.

I believe it was his.

He's into shame and humiliation by straight men.  Or "straight" men.  MAGA men generally aren't straight.  They pretend to be and part of that pretense requires them hating who they really are.

So those URLs were the most vile and disgusting things you could imagine.  Naked women being beaten up, naked women being cut up.  The most racist images of Black men you could ever imagine with captions conveying just how scared and impotent MAGA truly is when around a Black man.  It was vile and it was disgusting.

The world is disgusting enough -- Betty and my point.  We were fine with writing about it but weren't fine with giving URLs in article or Twitter Names because we didn't want to popularize these hate sites.



Again, if CD did nothing with it, that's something for them to answer to.

Betty, Ava and I took it to the community newsletters and that's why, as a community, we knew so much better than others just what a threat MAGA was and how it really works and the reality of just how many closet cases are in MAGA -- and want to be outed and stripped of their rights.  

And to be clear, MAGA subs exist but so do MAGA tops and, as we've noted here before, they tend to be obsessed with Hasan Piker and the notion of forcing him into submission (including sexual).


MAGA is really just a bunch of flamers waiting for the match to strike.


That is Donald Trump's crowd and part of this in the community included bringing in a friend who had been an FBI profiler for a roundtable where he shared what he'd put together from the URLs.  


But again, I have no idea if CD followed up or didn't.  I honestly didn't care.  As noted, that was when I was going through chemo and if hadn't been CD, I would've ignored it because it was the nautious phase where I was throwing up constantly, could not retain body warmth and was constantly shivering (again, this was in June of last year) and just struggled to get through every day.  But it was COMMON DREAMS and I respected the work they did so I tried to pass on what I could in the limited amount of time I had. 

From the e-mail that was sent accusing me of being upset that they didn't write about it -- I'm guessing they did nothing with it.  Again, had no idea, I wasn't traipsing around the net, I was just trying to survive cancer.  Had a bit more on my mind.  

It's a shame they did nothing with it.  We get it, this community, because we addressed it in the newsletters.  We get the depth of the hatred MAGA carries and we get how far they will go.

I am surprised CD didn't even follow up regarding the posted threats by White MAGA males to shoot up Target.  

At any rate, it really has no bearing on why I am demanding that CD practice actual journalism.  But if CD thinks it's why I'm criticizing them, I've put this up here and I can certainly go into much more detail if I have to.  None of it makes me look bad -- surprising, no?  I have long noted that I pass things on to friends who are journalists, producers, etc.  We covered the Christus nonsense in newsletters and  I noted it here last week but that's something I tried to set up with two different friends.  Texas wasn't seen as big enough of a story.  I'm not friends with COMMON DREAMS -- I never initiated contact with them -- like Anthony Arnove, they came running to me.  

If it makes CD to feel better they can pretend I am angry that they ignored the story -- and that I knew they'd ignored it before they e-mailed.  But all I'm doing is saying DO YOUR DAMN JOB.  You take people's money and you pretend you're doing journalism.  So do it.  


I'm not going to name the person who initiated that year ago conversation.  I'm assuming he told at least one person at COMMON DREAMS about it since another CDer is writing and insisting I'm angry and -- get this -- hiding something.  

You can tell the story, I don't think I come off badly.  And, again, it's known I actively shop around stories to friends in the media.  It's known that in the past, I would help any campaign that read something in a snapshot where I was reporting on a Congressional hearing I attended and they needed help finding it.  So if I didn't remember, I would consult my notes and reply back, that the exchange took place in the second round of questioning, for example.  Now when these campaigns then wanted me to stream a hearing online and find that exact moment for them?  That's when I stopped helping because I don't work for you and if you're too lazy to stream a hearing yourself, there's no need for you in Congress.  


But by all means, COMMON DREAMS," come at me, bro."

The reason you're getting criticized by me is because you're doing horrible journalism.  That was the whole point of what Ava and I wrote earlier this week in "Media: Journalistic Malpractice:"

Now let's wind down with, you guessed it, COMMON DREAMS.  Yes, them again.  Yes, Jake Johnson again.  The article is entitled "Is Bernie Sanders Launching a Third Party? 'Not Right Now, No'."  One thing you have to understand about COMMON DREAMS is that they have no common sense when it comes to Senator Bernie Sanders.  They lust after him so, we're surprised that they have yet to feature Bernie in a tasteful nude pictorial.  

There's never a moment of Bernie that COMMON DREAMS doesn't rush to celebrate -- not a single moment in Bernie's long list of one non-accomplishment after another.  He's on the verge of serving his 34th year in Congress and yet there are current members of the Congress who will be starting their third year next month and can point to actual accomplishments.  


That some idiot thought an 83-year-old man was going to start a new political party was bad enough but that they thought it would be do-nothing Bernie is much, much worse.


And while it would be great if COMMON DREAMS could stop acting like TMZ and also stop pretending Bernie was Drake, that's not the worst of it.

 

This is: 


The senator said the upstart campaign of Independent Dan Osborn—a union steamfitter who launched an unexpectedly close challenge to two-term Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) while shunning the state's Democratic establishment—"should be looked at as a model for the future."

"He took on both political parties," Sanders said of Osborn, who outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris by 14 percentage points in Nebraska and is now launching a PAC aimed at helping working-class candidates run for office.

"He took on the corporate world," Sanders continued. "He ran as a strong trade unionist. Without party support, getting heavily outspent, he got through to working-class people all over Nebraska. It was an extraordinary campaign, and it tells me that the American people are sick and tired of seeing the rich getting richer. They think billionaires dominate both political parties. They want real change, and Dan's campaign raised those issues in a very significant way."


Wow.  At last, a path forward for the party!  At last, no faux nonsense that's really an attempt to push the Dems to the right.  


Oh.


Wait.


That's exactly what Bernie's doing (yet again) and what COMMON DREAMS is enabling them.


Who's the moron from Nebraska?  We don't know.  We're not Bernie groupies.  So we looked him up.  And found one unimpressive detail after another as well as the fact that Bernie's yet again lying.  We could provide multiple examples but we think Jacob Crosse, at WSWS, did it better than we ever could:

 

Sanders presents Osborn as a champion of the working class in opposition to both the Democrats and Republicans, when the reality is the opposite. Prior to running for Senate, Osborn was the president of Local 50G of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) in Omaha, Nebraska. Throughout his Senate campaign, Osborn touted his stint as a union bureaucrat to posture as a friend of the working class.

However, Osborn used his role not to fight for the workers against the corporation, but to strangle their struggle and impose a pro-company sellout. During the 2021 Kellogg’s strike, Osborn waged a national chauvinist campaign to keep striking workers in the US isolated from their class brothers and sisters internationally.

In a broadside against Mexican workers, Osborn said in an interview at the time:

A lot of Americans probably don’t have too much issue with the Nike or Under Armor hats being made elsewhere, or even our vehicles, but when they start manufacturing our food down where they are out of the FDA control and OSHA control, I have a huge problem with that.

In a preview of his anti-immigrant Senate run, he campaigned for a boycott of “made-in-Mexico Nabisco products.”

After the workers had struck for 77 days, Osborn helped Kellogg’s push through a contract betrayal that expanded the hated “two-tier” wage and benefits system and led to the closure of the Omaha plant and destruction of 550 jobs.

The Democrats failed to field a candidate and Osborn only narrowly lost his Senate race against incumbent Republican Deb Fischer. In the course of his campaign, Osborn never once pointed out Trump’s fascist politics or condemned him for having tried to overturn the 2020 election. Instead, Osborn solidarized himself with Trump and claimed “Fischer stabbed Donald Trump in the back” for calling on Trump to drop out of the presidential race in 2016.

During and following his campaign, Osborn pledged to work with Trump to “secure the border,” including through the completion of Trump’s border wall.

[. . .]

 

In addition to Sanders, those endorsing Osborn’s anti-communist, anti-immigrant, pro-bureaucracy campaign include Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara and elements of the trade union bureaucracy, such as United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain and Dustin Guastella, director of operations for Teamsters Local 623.

In a November 22 article published in the Guardian, Sunkara and Guastella praised “Osborn’s ideas” and his “class background,” which, they wrote, “was key to his being able to deliver a credible populist appeal.”

Sunkara and Guastella called on the nationalist labor bureaucracies to recruit “talented candidates” and work with “organizations like Osborn’s to get these candidates the funds they need to win elections.”

The “organization” to which Sunkara and Guastella were referring is Osborn’s political action committee (PAC), known as the “Working Class Heroes Fund.” The PAC, which allows anonymous donors, raised nearly $8 million by mid-October, according to the Nebraska Examiner, which noted that Osborn “benefited from roughly $20 million in outside spending on his behalf” during the campaign.

The “about” section on the Working Class Heroes Fund website explains that the purpose of the PAC is provide money for politicians to get elected and unite “the working class across party lines.” In other words, to forge pro-imperialist “national unity.”

 

Get it?  


We're being tricked and lied to over and over by a left media that wants our money, that wants us to donate to them.  A left media that rightly calls out Mika and Joe but we'll never, ever own up to their own mistakes.  Congratulations to MEDIASTOUCH NEWS which is setting new streaming records and to other YOUTUBERS such as TABITHA SPEAKS, COACH D and Danielle Moodie who are increasing their subscribers due to strong and important work.  But the bulk of left media is being produced by idiots who, forget actual research, can't even carry out a basic GOOGLE search.  It has to stop and, if it doesn't, maybe it's time for Americans to join together in a class action lawsuit against this continued journalistic malpractice. 


  You need to stop your Bernie worship.  That's the first way you improve the quality of your journalism.


We're going to wind down with this joint-press release from Senators Elizaveth Warren and Richard Blumenthal:


Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote a letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, urging them to issue a policy directive prohibiting the mobilization of active duty military or federalizing National Guard personnel to be deployed against Americans unless specifically authorized.

This comes after President-elect Trump recently indicated that he could invoke the Insurrection Act “on his first day in office.” He has called his political opponents “the enemy from within” and said they “should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.” When asked to clarify these remarks in late October, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance reiterated that President-elect Trump would use force against Americans. 

The senators asked for the directive to state the Insurrection Act should be narrowly applied and that the President must consult with Congress to the maximum extent practicable. The senators also point out the urgent need for this policy directive given questions raised by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Trump v. United States decision, which significantly expanded presidential immunity for official acts.

“Given the disagreement amongst scholars on the serious implications of the recent Supreme Court decision, it is reasonable to assume that service members, other DoD personnel, and the broader military community may not be aware of or fully understand their rights and responsibilities,” wrote the senators.  “If unaddressed, any ambiguity on the lawful use of military force, coupled with President-elect Trump’s demonstrated intent to utilize the military in such dangerous and unprecedented ways, may prove to be devastating.”

Specifically, the senators are urging President Biden to issue a policy directive that includes that:

  • The narrow application of the Insurrection Act should be limited to instances when State or local authorities are so overwhelmed and that the chief executive of the State requests assistance or attacks against the U.S. government overwhelm State or local authorities;
  • In instances when federal forces are necessary to protect or prevent violations of individuals’ civil liberties, federal forces should only be authorized when state, local, or federal civilian law enforcement personnel are unable, fail, or refuse to protect their rights;
  • Any armed forces employed must operate under the Standing Rules for the Use of Force and cannot violate the writ of habeas corpus, federal law, or where applicable, federal or state law;
  • The President must consult with Congress to the maximum extent practicable before exercising this authority, as well as transmit to the Federal Register the legal authorities.

“As many of us wrote previously, ‘it is antithetical to what those in uniform have sworn to protect and defend, and a serious threat to our democratic system’ to weaponize the military to advance the president’s political interests,” wrote the senators. 

###





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