Monthly Archives: April 2019

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Image result for mueller report

I have a rule in writing a film criticism: The entire plot must be reducible to a single sentence. If it takes longer, either you or the filmmaker is slow getting to the point.

I’d advise the same stratagem to the 24/7s and the politicians who love to appear on them. There are, at best, seven interesting points in the Mueller report that weren’t redacted. Both can be explained in two simple paragraphs. Forget where the report stands politically — people made that choice (unencumbered by facts) long ago. But no one has challenged the following findings, so let’s wrap this up and move on to bigger, more pressing issues. We’re flush with ’em.

  • ‘The end of my presidency’ 

Citing written notes from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff Jody Hunt, the report said that Trump “slumped back in his chair,” after Sessions informed him of Mueller’s appointment.

“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m f—–,” Trump said, according to Hunt. “How could you let this happen, Jeff?” he asked, telling the attorney general he had let him down and that he was supposed to protect him. “This is the worst thing that ever happened to me,” Trump said.

  • McGahn says Trump asked him to ‘do crazy s—‘

Former White House Counsel Don McGahn told investigators that Trump called him on two occasions to tell then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that Mueller had “conflicts” and needed to be removed as special counsel.

McGahn said that he agreed to do it to get off the phone, but that he planned to resign rather than carry out the order. He told former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and adviser Steve Bannon that he planned to quit. Priebus told investigators McGahn didn’t get into specifics, but that Trump had asked him to “do crazy s—.”

  • ‘Lawyers don’t take notes’ 

Trump later asked McGahn about notes he had taken of their meetings. “Lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes,” Trump said, according to the report. McGahn told him he took notes because he’s a “real lawyer” and it is important to create a written record.

“I’ve had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He did not take notes,” Trump said, referring to the controversial attorney who worked for Sen. Joseph McCarthy and who has been described as Trump’s mentor.

  • Request for Russia to hack Clinton was ‘in jest’

In his written answers to the special counsel, Trump told Mueller that when he said, “Russia if you’re listening” during a July 2016 campaign event and asked Russia to hack into his opponent Hillary Clinton’s emails, he made the comment “in jest and sarcastically, as was apparent to any objective observer.”

But, according to the report, within about five hours of Trump’s request, Russian military intelligence agents “targeted Clinton’s personal office for the first time.” And according to Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump “repeatedly” asked members of his campaign to track down emails Clinton was believed to have deleted.

  • Sarah Sanders’ words ‘not founded on anything’

After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, the then-deputy press secretary told reporters during a White House news conference that “the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director.” She had told reporters the claim was based on statements from “countless members of the FBI.”

But according to the report, when the special counsel’s office asked her about the claim, Sanders said it had been a “slip of the tongue.” She said she made the statement “in the heat of the moment,” and Mueller’s team concluded it “was not founded on anything.”

  • ‘You have friends in high places’ 

After the FBI raided the home, office and hotel room of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump reached out to Cohen publicly and privately, telling him to “hang in there” and “stay strong.” Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani set up a “back channel” through another lawyer, Robert Costello, who told Cohen he should “Sleep well tonight … you have friends in high places.”

Cohen told Mueller that he understood that as long as he stayed on message, Trump would take care of him – either with a pardon or by shutting the investigation down.

  • ‘I’ll get the president to send out a positive tweet’ 

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recalled a lunch at the White House with Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, where the president asked him to call Comey and “tell him he’s part of the team.” Christie refused. Christie also recalled that Flynn called Kushner during the meeting to complain about something that then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer has said during a news conference.

“You know the president respects you,” Kushner told Flynn, according to Christie. “The president cares about you. I’ll get the president to send out a positive tweet about you later.” Trump then nodded in agreement, Christie said, according to the report.

Say Cheese, For Old Times

Image result for polaroid camera

Nearly 50 years ago, Dr. Edwin Land, the genius who invented the Polaroid/Land Camera, made a cryptic short film — just him in a lab coat wandering through a gutted factory talking about the future of cameras. He pulled out a wallet that looked like an iPhone for size comparison  and spoke of “a camera that would be like, oh, the telephone…our long awaited ultimate camera that is a part of the evolving human being.”

The bold prediction underpins Instant Dreams, a trippy documentary about the film and device that not only made it possible to develop images in less than a minute, but ushered in the very era of immediacy that would eventually kill the Polaroid camera.  As much about the birth of digital photography as the death of the analog process, the film peeks into the lives of aficionados who still favor the point-and-shoot method over digital trickery.

“For a product to be truly new, the world must not be ready for it,” Land said in the home video, which unwittingly forecast the emergence of cell phones when he introduced the Polaroid in February 1947. What Land could not have envisioned were the photographers, artists and others who would not let go of his outdated technology even after his death in 1991 or his company’s demise in 2008.

Directed by Dutch filmmaker Willem Baptist, Dreams follows quirky camera buffs, including German-born artist Stefanie Schneider, who wanders the deserts of the American Southwest in a vintage pink bathrobe and Crocs, taking Polaroid art shots of her hen and whatever model she can engage for the day. She keep a hoard of foil-packet, expiration-dated Polaroid film stockpiled in her vintage fridge because “Colors show up in a very very different way, not what you actually see with your eyes” on these photographs. She relishes even the splotches, bars or streaks, the age-or-light induced imperfections of such images.

We meet  Stephen Herchen, a retired  chemist who continues to work with and touts Polaroid film as one of the most complex analog chemical processes “that’s ever been created.” We meet New York magazine editor Chris Bonanos, author of Instant: The Story of Polaroid, who provides the history the camera and preaches and practices its use, a prophet for an analog religion that has all but disappeared in the digital age.

We hear newsman Lowell Thomas on old newsreels, extolling the virtues of this “new” technology — “press a button, and have a picture.” Long-dead science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke discusses how tricky it is, predicting the future and being ahead of your time, as Land was.

Author Bonanos describes and even demonstrates (Baptist follows him to parties, out in public with his camera) the “social” interchange” that is part of why he thinks of this process as inherently human; waiting for the shot to develop, the writer says, “forces you to make small talk to fill in the moment.” The cameras were criticized back in the day for not providing images as sharp as 35mm film, an idea which Bonanos dismisses — “The eye forgives everything if it’s a good photograph.”

The film also does a canny job of illustrating the camera’s distinctiveness — the Polaroid remains the only camera that does not leave a trace of itself after taking a shot: no negatives, no digital storage capacity. Each picture, Dreams underscores, is distinct unto itself, like a fingerprint or snowflake.

What’s missing from the film is the sense of fun the camera itself provided. The score is often brooding, the testimonies of its demise usually melancholy. There’s little whimsy here, including the beauty of tactile connection with old technology, from wrist watches to turntables to instant cameras. Dreams could have used a scene or two shot in the fun, washed out, overexposed tone that made Polaroid so distinct. And it completely ignores the commercial resurgence of instant cameras; a casual glance at Amazon demonstrates instant film is hardly dead.

Which is a relief. Instant Dreams can be too somber at times, but, like the film itself, give it some time and its beauty comes into focus.

The Crown of Thorns

 

Leave it to president Numb Nuts to add a dumbness to every tragedy to afflict the earth (being one, I guess). Here’s what he tweeted.

So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!

10:39 AM – 15 Apr 2019
Of course, leave it to the fake news outlets to counter with facts. Following the tweet, the Trumpanzanian response to the it — a deluge of haranguing calls to American fire agencies to assist along with unsolicited advice for French firefighters (all of whom are former military by law) — led to this clarification by the International Association of Firefighters:
“Water is heavy,” an IAF spokesman told the 24/7 news outlets. “You can’t dump that much water on a lead roof. It would collapse.”
Thankfully, the French again dismissed the president as a clown with a bullhorn and put the fire out their own way, saving the spire and roof — and keeping alive hope it can be rebuilt. So we’ll similarly leave dumbass out of it for this memorial addition of Factslaps, dedicated to the awesome, hallowed structure that survived two world wars and Nazi occupation:
  • Notre Dame de Paris was built between 1163 and 1345. Its construction was ordered by Maurice de Sully, the Bishop of Paris, in 1160.
  • Notre Dame is located in the heart of Paris, on the Ile de la Cite.
  • Notre Dame was one of the world’s largest religious buildings.
  • Notre Dame was designed in a French Gothic style of architecture.
  • Notre Dame’s twin towers were 226 feet tall and had 387 steps.
  • The largest bell in Notre Dame was located in the South Tower. The bell was 28,000 pounds. It was known as the Emmanuel Bell and was created in 1681. It was rung to mark the hours each day and on special occasions.
  • The magnificent stained glass windows in Notre Dame were original to its construction in the 1200s.
  • Approximately 13 million people visit Notre Dame every year, making it the most popular monument in France. More people visit Notre Dame than the Eiffel Tower. It is free to enter the cathedral.
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame was written by Victor Hugo in an effort to increase the public appreciation for the cathedral.
  • In 1804 Pope Pius VII was invited by Napoleon to come to Notre Dame so that he could be crowned emperor. At the last minute Napoleon put the crown on his own head to crown himself instead.
  • The Crown of Thorns was kept at Notre Dame, along with one of the Holy Nails, and a fragment of the True Cross.
  • There were many small statues on the outside of Notre Dame that were placed there to serve as water spouts and to support columns.
  • The Cornerstone for Notre Dame was laid in 1163, signaling the beginning of construction.
  • In 1182 the choir and Apse were completed.
  • The work to build the western façade began in 1200. The western façade was completed in 1225.
  • In 1250 the western towers and the north rose window were completed.
  • Between 1250 and 1345 the remainder of Notre Dame was completed.
  • A crypt was built in 1965 to house the ruins discovered there during construction. The crypt was called the Archaeological Crypt of the Paris Notre-Dame.
  • Based on a 1905 law, Notre Dame is owned by the French State, but the Catholic Church has right to use it forever.