David Andrews

See article linked below. The Executive Office is now strengthened beyond the means available to Clinton and GWB. Unlike Andrew Johnson, the Congress-rescued Trump will not be denied office by the electorate. No urine-splashed Russian hotel room, or Ukrainian phone calls, can blacken his reputation as Jefferson and Hamilton once did Aaron Burr's. We have met, and exceeded, the fears that Hamilton and Madison claimed in The Federalist would never come to pass under our system: https://www.salon.com/2020/02/04/trump-will-be-acquitted-of-course-what-in-gods-name-will-he-do-next/ I can't wait for Trump's forthcoming campaign slogan: "Haters Gonna Hate..."

I believe Gaeton Fonzi's written account of David Atlee Phillips' discomfort at encountering Veciana, of whom he demonstrably (in Fonzi's opinion) had some knowledge. I wouldn't put it past Veciana, however, to have a motive other than truth telling for agreeing to that encounter, or to do the bidding of an outside motivator. We have to look at Newman's argument in his own words to evaluate what happened.

Watching Hawks's Rio trilogy is like being on a desert island -- you get to know every grain of sand personally. Good Oscars quiz: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/04/quiz-how-much-do-you-really-know-about-the-oscars

The first one was Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, which pointedly presses the theme of loyalty against High Noon's metaphor of the abandoned hero. The casting co-opts not only two pop music idols (Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson) in place of Frankie Laine, but also two future Kennedy admin hangers-on (Martin and Angie Dickinson). The underwhelming Dino-Ricky ballad heard in the trailer didn't exactly tear up the charts: El Dorado, the follow-up, pairs Wayne with Robert Mitchum as the drunk, in a retread of the Rio Bravo plot. By the time Hawks made Rio Lobo, one of the worst lousiest westerns ever, there was no enthusiasm for budgeting a big-name co-star for Wayne. In the 1970s, when HBO was a smaller outfit, National Lampoon published a parody of the monthly guidebook the cable company used to mail to subscribers. Rio Lobo was on four times a day, which wasn't far from the truth. Nonetheless, you can make a case for Rio Bravo as a political film, and also as an influential film, since its town jail besieged by outlaws went on to appear in John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 and other standoff movies, keeping it more current than Wayne's own The Alamo. The best parts belong to Dean Martin, though Wayne plays off him well, and with generosity, in and out of character.

Wayne had been offered the High Noon script and turned it down. While Gary Cooper was shooting the film, Wayne ran into him and confronted him, demanding to know how Cooper could participate in anti-American propaganda.

F*Yeah, apparently. See Guardian page: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/a-man-lies-dead-in-the-street-the-image-that-captures-the-wuhan-coronavirus-crisis We shouldn't be surprised. During the worldwide Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, people dropped dead in the streets of US cities, bundled up in wool scarves instead of surgical masks. Boston, Philly, St. Paul, Minnesota -- all the places named in Chuck Berry songs. Bio-weapon, y'all say? That photo reminds me of 3rd Street and First Avenue in Manhattan. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/feb/03/coronavirus-live-updates-china-wuhan-outbreak-evacuations-flights-latest-news-death-toll-climbs-passing-sars Staff immediately began to clean the ground as the van drove away, disinfecting the streets where the body had lain.

I'm wondering how sales of Corona beer will be affected. No joke in Wuhan. Man's dead in the street:

I really don't see how you could have read Seven Pillars, plus any Lawrence biographies, and think so. That's Ryan's Daughter you're talking about. To say that the politics of Lawrence of Arabia is equivalent to those of Hamlet is to call the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans window dressing. The politics of Hamlet are as far from a diegetic element as they are in Babar the Elephant - a fairy tale about a king. Lawrence is defined by the initial success and eventual failure of the Arab fight against colonialism. There's no point in making a picture about him otherwise.

I would venture that it wasn't only Dulles's perception of Bissell as an idea man that got him the DDP job over Helms in 1958, but Bissell's family and social connections to Dulles's circle, and Helms' lack of them. That lack may have caused Hunt to be in Helms' favor for a time, as Hunt came from outside the network also.

Lawrence of Arabia ! Prince Feisal: With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.

I've predicted, without joy whatsoever, that Trump will survive impeachment hearings unscathed. Here's one view on the process: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/trump-acquittal-impeachment-history.html When 'Hamilton wrote that the Senate should try impeachments because it is “dignified” and “independent,” “unawed and uninfluenced,” suffused with “the necessary impartiality” to render a just verdict,' he was echoing the rhetoric of the Constitution itself, which establishes practices and modes on little but hope and faith in the character of the participants, and their willingness to abide by the document's values. Perhaps a closer phrasing of Hamilton's ideal is: 'The Senate is large and a majority cannot possibly be swayed to anti-American conduct.' As we have seen...

Depardieu is in three of the four films I posted, making him the type of l'homme politique..

Andrej Wajda, Ashes and Diamonds:

Andrej Wajda, Danton:

Claude Berri, Germinal:

Bernardo Bertolucci, 1900 (Novecento):

I don't remember this guy's research findings, which says something. I do remember sitting through one of his videos once and experiencing a lot of wind, plus a maximum sales pitch for his publication.

It's not beyond our intelligence services to be literal minded. Cold War paranoia was certainly the climate for it.

Another Trump voter. Here's a useful Hoffa mini-doc from Al Profit:

Is the sweater-vest in the photo traceable to photos of the Russian defection period, when LHO (or "LHO") dressed for climates colder than Texas or Louisiana? Also, is the viewer intended to associate the sweater-vest with the defection? As in, a photo selected for the visa application that could be said to have been in possession of the Soviets from the defector period (or that Oswald had retained from that period), though after the assassination no one went so far as to spell it out? Does one really need a sweater-vest in Mexico City in September? Chilly much, up in the stands at the corrida?

Of course, it's still #toosoon to mention Vice, the Dick Cheney film by Adam McKay, or the deregulation politics of McKay's The Big Short. This is a feel-good list for cross-Beltway housewives that kisses its own a$$ by making All the President's Men number 2, and thinks it's edgy for citing Bulworth. So nobody should feel hurt that Z goes unremembered. Of interest: the header illustration by Stephen Bliss references the neopolitik kitsch of Jon McNaughton, "Trump's favorite painter," whose work (e.g., The Forgotten Man and You Are Not Forgotten) is too nuanced to be dismissed. https://www.salon.com/2020/01/26/trump-propaganda-painter-jon-mcnaughton-greatest-artist-of-our-time/

I'm curious whether it had anything to do with the stabbing incident in Oak Cliff that Tippit responded to before he was shot, but it probably doesn't.

Maybe somebody should send military aide Richard Lipsey some good JFKA books: https://countryroadsmagazine.com/art-and-culture/history/eyewitness-to-history/ (*...sound of buttons being pushed...*)

Is there a way to change DPF's new background color to make it more readable? Some of it, especially the quotes, looks really dim.

I see why people like this Downfall movie. It's historically accurate, at least in translation.