#and a person who is ''revived'' (particularly in a D&D setting) will likely bear some kind of scar or side effect from that.

[iainwrites]

The Rise of Skywalker Likes and Dislikes

This is going to talk very bluntly and blatantly about things that happened in the movie.  So if you’ve been holding off on seeing it, here’s your warning.  Or if you don’t want to read someone criticizing something you enjoyed.  Skip past everything.

Likes:

-Finn at the beginning.  It’s nice to see his character growth from oblivious and try-to-hard former Stormtrooper, to still a little blundering Resistance fighter but still shows he’s capable, to a man confident in himself/in himself/in his friends and allies.

-When Chebacca learns of Leia’s death.  That’s the look of someone who has lost their oldest friends and don’t even have the strength to be angry.  There’s just loss.  THAT is one of the most powerful moments in this whole movie.

-Fine.  Ben’s “Okay bitches.  Now we can do this.” shrug before carving through the Knights is a great bit of physical acting and (I guess) comedy.

-The new main trio meet at the end and… hug.  No kissing.  No pairing off.  Three people who just survived a war and are happy that each is still alive.  Especially Finn.  This is his family and they’re okay.  Not everything has to end with hook-ups or resolved love triangles.  

Dislikes and Opinions:

-Palpatine.  Why?  He did his bit in the prequels, died in the OT, had no bearing in either TFA or TLJ.  So why bring him back now?

-What was the point of Rose in this?  She gets limited screen-time and doesn’t move the plot along.  The movie could have used this as a means to continue its slow show of representation, but apparently that’s a bridge too far.  But we did get Naomi Ackie as a supporting character of color with screentime and lines?  So we… traded?  Maintained?

-The fuck was with that Finn “I have something to tell you” line?  There was no lead in from any of the prior movies at all.  And no, it doesn’t count if it was revealed in the novelisation of either of the previous films.

-So Rey can sense Chewie is on a ship… but can’t tell that he’s on a different ship than the one she blows up?  Or that he’s not on the ship that she’s telekinetically fighting over?

-D-O is cute factor and nothing more or better.  Add onto that: Babu was there for cute factor.  And people shit on Jar Jar (me included) because he was written as something to entertain children.

-Rey is a Palpatine.  Why was that a choice that was made?  Why does she have to be related to anyone pre-existing in the Star Wars canon?  And why did things have to be explained not in the movie, but in tweets, interviews, the novelisation, etc?  Like the fact that Rey is a Palpatine.  Movie made you think that one of her parents was Sheev’s child, right?  Which one?  Sorry, didn’t tell us.  Oh, and it was her father, by the way.  Oh, and he wasn’t Palpatine’s child; he was actually a failed clone of Palpatine.  And that’s just one part.

-How does the blade work in the grand scheme of things?  Was it made after the destruction of the Death Star (because how else would it be able to line up so well with the wreckage)?  Who made it?  Why didn’t they pillage Palpatin’s hidden room of important shit?  Why didn’t they pass it on immediately to Kylo if he’s the second coming of Vader?

-Leia’s death.  Yes, all they had was archival footage.  So you mean to tell me that they couldn’t have done anything with that miraculous CGI technology to create a facial/vocal facsimile?  That they had no point of reference of ever doing that?  That there was absolutely no budget?  Or that rewrites were an impossible thing?  Because “Leia lays down, dies, and gives her son a moment to pause and get stabbed” isn’t doing right by Carrie Fisher or respecting her legacy.  That’s “Well, this is what we have.  Guess all we can do is use only what we have to make something and not put any more effort into it.”

-”We have no source material!” Except the whole “Emperor trying to find a new body” thing was done in Dark Empire.  As was the fact that the Emperor we saw was a clone that decayed rapidly without a Force-strong host.  And the fleet of ships to turn the tide of things was done with the Katana Fleet.  And Force Heal has been done in games like the GBA version of Revenge of the Sith.  And and and.

-Han Solo forgives his son!  Except it’s not Han, or a Force Ghost of Han (because Han wasn’t Force sensitive or trained to become self aware in the Cosmic Force after he died because that’s the explanation that they’ve been establishing in the Clone Wars TV series since the end of Season 6), but a figment of Ben’s imagination.  So Ben imagined that his father forgave him for murdering him.  … That’s not how it works.  If you’re imagining your murder victim forgiving you, there’s probably some deep psychological shit to deal with.

-People have talked about it, so I’ll hop on the train: how in the hell did Lando travel quickly enough to get that many ships when a distress call put out by Leia herself couldn’t shift asses?  How can he cover that much area, gather all those ships, then get through the mists or whatever the shit surround Exogal when one of those tracking beacon/map thingies have been set up as the only way a ship can travel through?

-For everything that Abrams did to negate TLJ, Palpatine’s monologue of Rey’s actions is very similar to Snoke’s monologue of Ren’s actions.  Down to the “HAHA PSYCH!” moment.

-The Knights of Ren are just a shit-show.  The name sounds cool, though, right!  Aaannnddd they’re killed off without a single line said or them proving to be any sort of threat representative of their “feared” name.

-Here’s something: when all the past Jedi are talking to Rey, you’re told who the male voices belong to (including stuff like Young Obi-Wan and Kanan).  But you only get Female Jedi 1 and Female Jedi 2.  That’s kind of fucked up and sexist, right?

-They set up Rey’s anger throughout the trilogy as being her path to the Dark Side (going as far to show what she could be like if she gives into those darker urges)... and never really do anything to resolve it.

-They REALLY lean into the idea that Finn is Force sensitive in this movie, don’t they?  Despite no evidence of it in any other movie.

-The random scene of just revived Rey grasping Ben’s hand and the frames drop (maybe that’s just my copy, but it's still a standout).  If it’s something everyone gets… then why the hell is something that glaring still in the movie.

-The kiss.  The novelisation said that the kiss was one of “gratitude,” but seriously?  Rogue One had a moment of gratitude where Jyn and Cassian are together and they… hug.  That’s it.  Piss off with your gratitude; there was a kiss because this movie substitutes sense with forced fanservice and they knew that people wanted to see Rey and Kylo together at some point.  Just like they likely kept Rose out of the movie because people gave Kelly Marie Tran shit.  Like that could have made the movie even possibly worse.

-Ben dies and fades away… and Leia’s body fades away at the same time.  Even though she’s been dead for a day+ at this point.  Because… she connected her spirit to her son?  See, that’s something I pulled completely out of thin air, but wouldn’t it be nice if that was the truth and the movie actually explained that was what happened instead of just giving random ass coincidences?

-Rey Skywalker.  Why does she have to be Rey Anybody?  There could have been such a positive spin to what she said earlier in the movie.  “Just Rey.”  Have her say it with pride and ownership now.  She’s her own person, unburdened by the names of those who have gone before.  She doesn’t have any name to live up to.

-Fuck you for your obvious, blatant and unecessary fanservice and self pleasing imagery where the twin suns are arranged to look like BB-8.  He’s not so important that one of the last lingering moments has to be of your new creation, Abrams.  You’re not so essential to Star Wars that you have to make a “HEY LOOK AT ME THE GUY WHO MADE THIS MOVIE” made-for-screenshots image.

Meh

-There’s no meh.  There are just rare moments of contentment amongst a constant feeling of disappointment and frustration.

Random Asides

-Kathleen Kennedy did an interview with Rolling Stone in November of 2019 leading up to The Rise of Skywalker.  You may have seen it float around, but she said “Every one of these movies is a particularly hard nut to crack. There’s no source material. We don’t have comic books. We don’t have 800-page novels.”  It’s in relation to how difficult it is to write and direct the movies, but come on.  There’s TONS of source material, dating as far back 1977 for the comics AND the novels.  There might not be 800 page novels, but there are trilogies, doulogies and massive story arcs that exceed those numbers (NJO and Legacy of the Force may not be your thing, but they’re there).  Rebels went and borrowed Zeb’s look from the original script AND took characters directly from Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy; Clone Wars pulled from Legends while Legends were still considered canon and afterwards.  Not all of it is good; it’d be difficult to translate a lot of it to screen without heavy edits these days.

“I love that we have these amazingly passionate fans who care so much. And I know sometimes they may think we don’t listen, but we do, and I thought it was fantastic that people got that engaged. It just showed me and everybody else how much they care. And that’s important for all of us that are doing this. We really look at them as the custodians of this story as much as [we are]. We look at it as kind of a partnership.”  Except when we’re not happy with a product that turns out to be sub-par.  Piss right off.

-Billie Dee Williams seems like he’s dropped in from a different movie entirely.  Not a bad thing; his delivery and presence is just so different from anyone else’s.

All In All

-It’s my least favorite of all the movies.  Worse than any of the prequels.  And say what you will about the prequels: at least they had a connecting story and the director didn’t try to kneecap something that happened in the middle movie before burying it in a shallow grave while taking a dump on the things left behind that didn’t fit in their vision.  It’s worse than Solo.  No amount of fanservice can fix the fact that the movie was by-and-large unenjoyable.   

#Iain rewatches #Star Wars #The Rise of Skywalker #I don't want to be an angry nerd but here we are

[topworldhistory]

The Civil War hero left the White House under a cloud, but he also had substantial achievements—like passing the 15th Amendment.

For decades after his death in 1885, Ulysses S. Grant suffered a reputation as one of the nation’s worst presidents, consistently ranking in the bottom 10 in polls of historians. But in more recent years, historians have taken another look at the Civil War hero. Popular biographies, such as Ronald C. White’s American Ulysses (2016) and Ron Chernow’s Grant (2017), have made compelling cases that Grant's presidency merits reexamination, and that his contributions while in office were more substantial than he's been given credit for in previous decades. At a time when the nation was still recovering from the trauma of civil war, he worked to knit together the frayed Union, lift up formerly enslaved people and advocate a humane, if not enlightened, policy regarding Native Americans.

No one might be more surprised by this reputational revival than Grant himself. His autobiography, published in two volumes in 1885, covers some 1,200 pages, beginning with a discussion of his ancestors and ending with his Civil War years. His presidency is hardly mentioned. 

Grant’s farewell message to Congress in 1876 shows he sensed that history might judge him harshly. “Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit,” he wrote. “But I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right, constitutional, within the law, and for the very best interests of the whole people. Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.”

Two years later, the New York Sun put it another way, calling Grant “the most corrupt President who ever sat in the chair of Washington.”

So how good (or bad) president was he? Here is some of the historical evidence.

READ MORE: 10 Things You May Not Know About Ulysses S. Grant

A swirl of scandals

There’s no denying that Grant left office under a very large cloud. From beginning to end, his Administration produced a swirl of scandals. While none rose to the notoriety of a Watergate or Teapot Dome, their sheer numbers must have been dizzying to Americans at the time.

Grant dressed as a trapeze performer holds up corrupt members of his administration in this 1880 political cartoon.

Grant’s attorney general, secretary of war, secretary of the navy and secretary of the interior were all accused of taking bribes. His private secretary was implicated in a conspiracy to cheat the government out of tax revenue from the production of whiskey. The robber barons Jim Fisk and Jay Gould tricked Grant into aiding their scheme to manipulate the gold market, leading to a national financial panic known as Black Friday. Grant’s own brother Orvil, one of many relatives he put on the government payroll, was exposed in a kickback scheme that made the military overpay for provisions.

And that’s just a sampling.

READ MORE: The Whiskey Ring and America's First Special Prosecutor

A victim of his time?

Grant’s defenders, then and now, noted that he hadn’t personally benefitted from any of these crimes and maintained that he was an honest man surrounded by scoundrels—a line of argument that would be revived on behalf of Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal a century later.

The ex-general had taken office with little political experience, Hamlin Garland noted in an 1898 biography, and found himself “pitted against the keen, shrewd, practiced manipulators of public affairs.”

“It was a time of speculation, of cupidity, and of corruption,” Garland added. “The war being over, the people had turned their attention to making money, and the corruption that was in private life had...rotted official life. The administration shared the characteristics of the times.”

Chernow, writing from a 21st-century perspective, makes much the same case, also pointing out that Grant “never stopped prosecutions of guilty parties and was often insistent about having them prosecuted.”

Still, Grant might bear some responsibility for the people he chose and the haphazard way he went about it. “He wrongly assumed that the skills that had made him successful in one sphere of life would translate intact into another,” Chernow acknowledges. “He entered into no consultative process, engaged in no methodical vetting of people and sent up no trial balloons to test candidates.”

Grant’s reputation as president would pay the price for many years to come.

WATCH: Grant's Troubled Presidency

Overshadowed achievements

With his election in 1868, Grant inherited from President Andrew Johnson a nation in turmoil. Johnson, who had been impeached by Congress but avoided conviction by a single vote, impeded the Reconstruction of the defeated South and fought attempts to extend the full rights of citizenship to formerly enslaved African Americans. As the first president after the Civil War, writes Elizabeth R. Varon, professor of American history at the University of Virginia, “Johnson did more to extend the period of national strife than he did to heal the wounds of war.”

That job would fall to U.S. Grant. His record would be far from perfect but, according to recent biographers, he deserves credit for several major achievements:

Grant held the Union together.

Cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant in session. Depicted (L-R) are: Jacob D. Cox; Hamilton Fish; John A. Rawlins; John A.J. Cresswell; President Grant; George S. Boutwell; Adolph E. Borle. 

Preserving the Union and preventing a second Civil War were high on Grant’s agenda, and that outcome was by no means assured when he took office. While not as accommodating to Southern interests as Andrew Johnson, Grant oversaw the readmission of the Confederate states into the Union and took a far less punitive approach to the defeated Confederacy than other presidents might have.

In 1869, just months into his presidency, Grant invited his Confederate counterpart, Robert E. Lee, to meet in the White House. By the middle of 1870, all of the former Confederate states had made the required concessions and been readmitted to the Union. In 1872, Grant signed the Amnesty Act, which restored the voting rights and right to hold office of all but a few hundred former Confederates.

Did you know? In March 1872, Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, making Yellowstone the nation’s—and reputedly the world’s—first national park.

Grant fought to protect freed slaves.

While the 13th amendment to the Constitution had granted freedom to the former slaves, and the 14th amendment had recognized them as citizens, roughly 4 million African Americans throughout the South still had little political power or representation when Grant took office. In his inaugural address and from that day forward, Grant pushed for a 15th amendment, which would guarantee federal and state voting rights to all male citizens regardless of “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” 

Most dramatically, Grant used both federal troops and the newly established Justice Department to fight terrorism against Southern blacks, particularly by the Ku Klux Klan, which had grown into a large and formidable force in the years after the Civil War. “By 1872, under Grant’s leadership,” Chernow writes, “the Ku Klux Klan had been smashed in the South,” although another group of the same name would emerge in 1915.

“To him, more than to any other man, the Negro owes his enfranchisement,” Frederick Douglass remarked after Grant’s death. “When red-handed violence ran rampant through the South, and freedmen were being hunted down like wild beasts in the night, the moral courage and fidelity of Gen. Grant transcended that of his party.” Chernow concludes that, “Grant deserves an honored place in American history, second only to Lincoln, for what he did for the freed slaves.”

READ MORE: When Did African Americans Get the Right to Vote?

Grant advocated for humane treatment for Native Americans.

Red Cloud, chief of the Oglala Sioux, pays a peace visit to President Grant to accept the capitulation of the US authorities to his demands and to recommend peace between the Sioux and the settlers.

When Frederick Douglass praised Grant’s efforts on behalf of African Americans, he added that “the Indian is indebted [to Grant] for the humane policy adopted toward him.” By the time of Grant’s inauguration, wars between Native Americans, white settlers and the U.S. Army had been going on for decades, particularly in the expanding western U.S. Some prominent politicians and military leaders made no secret of their desire to rid the country of certain tribes by any means necessary. General William Tecumseh Sherman spoke favorably of exterminating the “men, women, children” of the Sioux, and Nevada Congressman Thomas Fitch, in a House floor debate, called for the “extinction” of Apaches.

In an address to Congress in 1869, Grant argued that “a system which looks to the extinction of a race is too horrible for a nation to adopt without entailing upon itself the wrath of all Christendom.” While his proposed solution—“placing all the Indians on large reservations, as rapidly as it can be done”—hardly seems enlightened today, he also insisted on “giving them absolute protection there.”

Grant appointed a Native American, General Ely S. Parker, as his commissioner of Indian Affairs. He also set about to reform the notoriously corrupt system that licensed traders to do business with—and often cheat—the tribes, asking respected religious groups, starting with the Quakers, to nominate worthy candidates for those positions.

As a long-term goal, Grant favored extending full citizenship to Native Americans, an injustice that wouldn’t be addressed until 1924. “Grant saw absorption and assimilation as a benign, peaceful process, not one robbing Indians of their rightful culture,” Chernow writes. “Whatever its shortcomings, Grant’s approach seemed to signal a remarkable advance over the ruthless methods adopted by some earlier administrations.”

Grant helped professionalize government.

Ironically, for a man whose administration was marked by nepotism, cronyism and graft, Grant became a leading voice for reforming the political patronage system. At the time, elected officials could dole out government jobs, regardless of the person’s qualifications, to reward supporters or in return for kickbacks. In 1871, Grant pushed for civil service legislation, and the following year appointed the first Civil Service Commission. Its aim was to replace patronage with competitive exams and other initiatives to ensure that the people who won federal jobs were actually qualified to do them.

Unfortunately, the experiment in good government would last only two years. Many legislators resented having to give up one of their most lucrative perks, so in 1874 Congress failed to fund the commission, ending its work. Some historians now question whether Grant gave up the fight too easily, but George William Curtis, a respected reformer who had chaired the commission, argued that Grant’s capitulation was “the surrender of a champion who had honestly mistaken both the nature and the strength of the adversary and his own power of endurance.”

Grant’s presidential legacy

Grant left the presidency in March 1877. Urged on by his wife, among others, he considered a third term, which would have been unprecedented—but still legal. “Painfully aware of his mistakes as president,” Chernow writes, “Grant fantasized about reentering the White House to correct those errors and redeem his reputation.” However, that was not to be. At the Republican nominating convention in June 1880, Grant narrowly lost to James A. Garfield, who went on to win the presidency. 

from Stories - HISTORY https://ift.tt/2ztPDQw April 25, 2020 at 04:35AM

#Worldhistory

[elizabethcariasa]

Congress extends some extenders, makes other tax changes in last-minute holiday funding spree

Congress just came up with more tax breaks to wind down 2019 than the number of ornaments we have on our upstairs' mini Christmas tree! (Photo by Kay Bell)

Congress finally decorated its Christmas tree early this morning. The ornaments were myriad tax breaks. Or, in some cases, elimination of taxes.

With Dec. 25 bearing down and special interest groups sending more requests to Capitol Hill than kiddos' letters to Santa, the House and Senate negotiators finally agreed on, among other things, what to do about those expired tax provisions popularly known as extenders.

They OK'ed a handful of them and plan to tack them onto government fiscal year funding legislation that must become law by Friday, Dec. 20, to avert shutdown of federal offices.

Extended tax gifts for individuals: Yep, Representatives and Senators operate most Decembers just like you and me doing our holiday shopping.

We have the wish lists from all our loved ones — in Congress' case, they're "I want" requests from constituents and lobbyists — but we don't pick up the present — or enact the law authorizing the tax breaks — until the last minute.

Among the gifts to individual taxpayers is renewal of a handful of popular tax breaks that technically had expired.

Around two dozen of these tax breaks ended with the 2017 tax year. A few were renewed retroactively just for the 2018 tax year and then evaporated again.

Now they have another new life, retroactively for the 2019 tax year and through the 2020 tax year.

The resurrected, at least temporarily, Internal Revenue Code provisions include:

The ability to exclude from gross income the amount of discharged debt in connection with the reworking of a mortgage on your principal residence.

The option to count private mortgage insurance (PMI) premiums as qualified residence interest and deduct it as an itemized expense.

The continuation of the 7.5 percent deduction floor for itemized medical expenses;

The renewal of the educational above-the-line deduction for tuition and qualified fees.

That certainty is welcome by those who can benefit from these tax breaks, both from filing and planning perspectives.

If any of these provisions apply, you can file your 2019 return on time next year. There's now no need to extend filing in the hopes the provisions will be renewed.

As for planning, with the extension through the coming New Tax Year, you also can evaluate your 2020 tax moves with more confidence.

Retirement changes included: The massive spending measure — both in size (1,773 pages without the add-on tax provisions) and cost ($1.4 trillion over 10 years) — also makes substantive changes to retirement provisions, many of which will affect our taxes.

The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019, or SECURE Act, was rolled into the funding bill. The House handily approved the retirement bill 417-3 in May, but had stalled (like most other measures sent over by Representatives) in the Senate.

Here are some key provisions that could affect you and me as we save for our post-work years.

Part-time workers would be allowed to participate in 401(k) plans.

The age at which required minimum distributions (RMDs) must be made would go from 70½ to 72.

Contributions could be made to traditional IRA contributions by those older than 70½.

New parents, including adoptive moms and dads, could make penalty-free retirement plan withdrawals from qualified retirement plans.

Inherited IRAs, instead of being stretched out tax-deferred over beneficiaries' lifetimes, now must be drawn down completely within 10 years.

Obviously, these provisions will variously and simultaneously delight and enrage affected individuals.

Also obviously, each of these provisions is worthy of a blog post on its own. Until I get around to unwrapping at least some them here on the ol' blog in the coming weeks, I suggest you check out a couple of Forbes' articles with more on the SECURE Act from staff writer Ashlea Ebeling and contributor Jamie Hopkins.

Toasting the bill: In addition to the individual extenders, the tax proposal also renews breaks for several industries.

Among those literally toasting the late-night tax work are specialty brewers and distillers.

"We are thrilled that lawmakers included a one-year extension of the federal excise tax reduction for distillers in the year-end legislative package," Distilled Spirits Council President and CEO Chris Swonger said in a statement.

The Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act's provisions were rolled into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) back in December 2017. That reduced federal excise taxes for a range of producers, including brewers, winemakers, distillers and even importers.

But unlike other parts of TCJA that are permanent for big business, this potent potables tax break was temporary. Without the extension that is set to be part of the federal government measure, craft distillers and brewers across the country could have faced a tax increase up to 400 percent on Jan. 1, 2020.

Presents for other businesses, too: Other industries also thrilled with the Congressional tax gifts are

A cause near and dear to extender supporting Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (D-Iowa) and his corn-growing constituents made it into the measure — the $1 per gallon biodiesel blender's tax credit. It will be extended through 2022 and retroactively to when it expired beginning in 2018, a move welcomed by an industry that has seen 10 plants shut since the credit lapsed.

The credit began in 2005 as a way to help farmers and reduce petroleum imports by supporting biofuels, particularly biodiesel, a fuel made from cooking oil, soybean oil and animal fats. It costs nearly $2 billion per year, making it among the most expensive U.S. energy subsidy programs.

Added tax horsepower also is gifted to owners of racehorses and motorsports complexes.

The healthcare industry also was rewarded rewarded with the elimination of three Affordable Care Act, still popularly known as Obamacare, taxes that had been disliked by both Republicans and Democrats. The so-called Cadillac tax on health insurance benefits, an excise tax on medical devices and the Health Insurance Tax, an excise tax paid by, you guessed it, health insurance companies are axed under the measure.

And a TCJA provision that was bipartisanly disliked also is gone. The 21 percent unrelated business income tax (UBIT) on certain benefits churches and other nonprofits offer to their employees, such as parking benefits, will be repealed.

Congressional coal for others: In both personal and Congressional gift-giving situations, some folks don't get what they wanted.

That's true with this Congressional package. Although it's huge, lawmakers couldn't find a way to include provisions that both Democrats and Republicans were hoping would be in the year-end legislation.

Democrats had wanted tax extenders to be paired with the expansion of tax credits benefiting low- and middle-income families. The also wanted expansion of several renewable energy tax credits.

Republicans had wanted to use the end-of-year effort to fix some errors in the hastily written 2017 tax reform law.

Both sides were disappointed.

And advocacy groups across the ideological and political spectrum who wanted Congress to let the expired extenders stay that way were upset. Their main complaint is with the cost of the bill and tax amendments.

"This budget deal just keeps getting worse," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "After massively increasing spending caps earlier this year and agreeing to eliminate important revenue sources designed to fund the Affordable Care Act and slow health care cost growth, policymakers now want to charge more to the national credit card by reviving zombie tax extenders. When will the madness stop?"

Holiday legislative tree trimming: Such end-of-year legislation gets lots of attention because of its timing and also because, in large part, the bills usually are, well, large.

But the tactic is not new. The latest-until-now example is the previously-mentioned TCJA, which didn't become law until Dec. 17, 2017.

I lived in the D.C.-area for almost two decades, spending my working hours first in House and Senate offices, then as part of a government relations — OK, lobbyist — office in the National Capital. I saw and participated in this procrastination firsthand.

Since becoming a [semi]normal U.S. resident, I've blogged over the years about the tedious Congressional tradition of "decorating" an annual legislative Christmas tree.

This metaphorical holiday fir even has made it into official legislative glossaries.

Lexis Nexis says Christmas tree legislation is "Any bill 'adorned' like a Christmas tree with unrelated amendments. Generally occurs when the Senate takes up a relatively minor House-passed bill and 'trims' it with any number of non-germane amendments. Frequently occurs at the end of a Congress, but recently supplanted by omnibus reconciliation legislation."

The Senate glossary is more succinct, avoiding sugarcoating of who, per its definition's last sentence, tends to get the best gifts:

Christmas tree bill — Informal nomenclature for a bill on the Senate floor that attracts many, often unrelated, floor amendments. The amendments which adorn the bill may provide special benefits to various groups or interests.

Even in the few years when there is no last-minute, just-before-holiday-recess scramble, I still think about the process, thanks to the Congressional ornaments — those are pictures of some of them scattered throughout this post — that are on our own Christmas tree.

When we take down the holiday paraphernalia in early (maybe) January, I and other taxpayers still will have this year's Congressional trimmings to provide tax cheer through 2020.

You also might find these items of interest:

Tax extenders 2015 winners and losers

Extenders one of top tax issues for 2019

3 fiscal & tax matters facing Congress as 2019 winds down

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[medialiterates]

D. W. Griffith and Birth of a Nation: Racist Filmmaker or Filmmaking?

          Of all the films in the history of cinema, perhaps none is as important to the medium or as controversial as D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915.) The film is broken into two halves. The first follows two families, the Campbell family from the South and the Stoneman family from the North, as they fight in the Civil War. The egregious second half is the story of reconstruction in the South. It tells the false history of how the congress allows the free slaves to take over the South and oppress the white people. The movie ends with Ben Campbell forming the Ku Klux Klan, who save the South and restore the white people to power. I first saw Birth of a Nation on the second day of class in my Art of Film course. I knew it was going to be racist, but I did not understand the full extent of its racism. One particularly horrible scene in the movie was when the sister of Ben Cameron is running away from a black man who intends on marrying or raping her. She ultimately decides to jump off a cliff and die to escape. This was horrifying to watch. I feel even more conflicted about Birth of a Nation as an admirer of film because without this despicably racist film, the modern film industry would not be what it is today. Without D.W. Griffith, the language of film would not be what it is today.

           When I saw the options for the blog posts this week, the Birth of a Nation documentary immediately caught my eye. I watched it over the weekend thinking it would be about the film. Rather, it was about the public outrage the film caused. In many American cities, African Americans protested the film. The documentary, Birth of a Moment, focused on Boston and the work of William Monroe Trotter. William Monroe Trotter was the publisher of the Boston Guardian, an African American newspaper. He worked hard, using tactics that would be used again 40 years later during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, to protest and censor the film. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on one’s view of censorship, William Monroe Trotter was unable to censor the film, but his legacy was carried on by future African Americans to protest that which they deem wrong.  

           During the film, though, there were a few quotes that stood out to me. The first was from director Spike Lee, who, talking about D.W. Griffith, said, “Racism is racism no matter what form… ‘Father of racist cinema’ that’s even better,” which is referring to D.W. Griffith’s title as the “Father of Cinema.” Another quote that stood out was from Harvard University’s Vincent Brown who said, “some of our greatest cultural products have also been some of our worst. Spectacular and great things are done with evil intent and have evil effects, but that’s just part of history.” These quotes stood out to me because the underlining assumptions would be that D.W. Griffith was racist, which raises the question: Was he racist and did he make Birth of a Nation with an evil intent?  To answer this question, I will examine his upbringing, his approach to the art of the cinema, and his filmography.

           To attempt to answer the first question, I read “D. W. Griffith in Black and White” from Slate Magazine by Bryan Curtis and the D. W. Griffith’s biography on PBS.org. From those sources, I learned that D. W. Griffith was born in 1907 in Kentucky into a poor family. His father, a former confederate officer, died when D. W. Griffith was only ten-years-old. In the documentary, D. W. Griffith said that when he was a boy, he would listen to his father recount his tales from Civil War. From this upbringing and the culture of the South at the time, D. W. Griffith would have racist ideas so integrated into his mind that it would not seem like racism, rather just how the world worked. Curtis says in his article “racism was no more a dominant factor in conditioning his sensibility than the hard times he and his family endured” (Curtis). So, is that considered racism? In my opinion, it is a type of non-overt racism. He did not actively hate African Americans, rather he was ignorant because the facts he knew were not the true facts. Additionally, D. W. Griffith did not have strong political leanings. Although he made the racist Birth of a Nation, Curtis writes the D. W. Griffith “never publicly lobbied for segregation or black disenfranchisement; he defended the Klan only as a historical relic” (Curtis). He was in a bubble that made him view the world in the way he was brought up.

          Next, when looking at his approach to cinema, he was going for spectacle. As it said in the PBS documentary, D. W. Griffith knew how to harness the power of cinema to affect people. As a director, D.W. Griffith is one of the most important figures in early film history. He set the course for all filmmaking to come by redefining and utilizing “varied camera distances, close-up shots, multiple story lines, fast-paced editing, symbolic imagery” (Campbell). These all culminated in producing a greater effect on the audience’s emotions. Additionally, in Birth of a Nation, he knew he needed a good enemy to increase the spectacle. In Bryan Curtis’s Slate article, he writes “the director chose stories not for their political content but for their potential to thrill audiences” (Curtis). While this does not excuse his racist choice of making the Ku Klux Klan heroes against the evil black people of the South, it shows that it was not done in a with malice thought. In fact, it was said in the documentary that he was surprised by the reaction to his film because he thought he was telling the truth.

          Also, when looking at the rest of his filmography, people see a different side of D. W. Griffith. In one of the short films he directed called The Rose of Kentucky, the evil villain was a Klansman attacking a country girl (Curtis). The same person who had the Klan as heroes in one movie had the group as villains in another. In the article “Pioneer Film Director Dishonored by Those Who Follow in his Footsteps,” the author argues that D. W. Griffith, in response to Birth of a Nation, became the “Social conscience of Early Hollywood” (Jacobs). Following Birth of a Nation, he made Intolerance (1916), which had a very strong message of tolerance. His other films of this time were Broken Blossoms (1919), a tragic story about a white woman and Chinese man who fall in love, but run into trouble with her bigoted father. Another was Orphans of the Storm (1922), a story about two orphaned girls of an aristocrat in France leading up to the French Revolution. The film was very critical of over-bearing governments. A reason for this shift in story telling in his movies is “Griffith was more concerned with filming stories he believed were cinematic, entertaining, and portrayed inner human truths than with maintaining a consistent politically correct attitude” (Jacobs). The story was always the most important part to D. W. Griffith. The content of the story came second to him. If it was a good story that could produce an effect on his audience, D. W. Griffith was happy to make it.

          Overall, was D. W. Griffith a racist? I would have to say no based on the evidence presented. Was he ignorant of both history and potential consequences of making a film like Birth of a Nation? Absolutely, I would agree with that. However, I want to draw the distinction between committing a racist action and being a racist. Birth of a Nation for all its acclaim and innovation is a very intolerant and racist film, but to call D. W. Griffith a racist for this one film would be irresponsible when considering his other films and his approach to filmmaking. I would say that D. W. Griffith committed a racist action by making a racist film, but this one film should not reflect on him a as person. Yet, this raises far more questions than it answers. For example, can art still be art if it is racist? Is it acceptable for D. W. Griffith to exploit people with his knowledge of how films work? Do his other films excuse D. W. Griffith for Birth of a Nation? Can D. W. Griffith be blamed for the results of the movie, like the second revival of the Ku Klux Klan and hate crimes against African Americans after the movie premiered? These require timed and nuanced responses. The fact of the matter is that Birth of a Nation is here it stay. It is not only as a remembrance of a twisted way of thought in American history, but also as one of its greatest films. Will people be able to separate the artist from the art and the art from the content to see the art hidden beneath the racism?

  Works Citied

“About D. W. Griffith.” American Masters. PBS, 29 December 1998. Web. 9 March 2017.

“Birth of a Movement.” Independent Lens, written by Kwyn Bader and Dick Lehr, directed by Susan Gray and Bestor Cram, PBS, 2017.

Campbell, Richard, Fabos, Bettina, Martin, Christopher R. Media & Culture 10: Mass Communication in a Digital Age. Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston/New York, 2015.

Curtis, Bryan. “D. W. Griffith in Black and White.” Slate, 3 January 2003. Web. 9 March 2017.

Jacobs, Christopher P. “Pioneer Film Director Dishonored by Those Who Follow in his Footsteps.” High Plan Readers, 6 January 2000. Web. 9 March 2017.

[onewhodresses-blog]

Week In Review

The Week In Review is a roundup of interesting, inspiring or thought-provoking things I've read this week. "How are you to imagine anything if the images are always provided for you? To defend ourselves...we must learn to read. To stimulate our own imagination, to cultivate our own consciousness, our own belief system. We all need these skills to defend, to preserve, our own minds." -- Adrien Brody  

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I'm so sorry things have been quiet around here! There's a bit [ok, a lot] of change in the air in my life and I'm eager to tell you about it in the days to come...until then, here's the week in review.

  Fashion

Hypernormalisation and the Cult of Prada | Olivia Singer, AnOther Magazine

“I didn’t want to do the 70s… but it came out naturally,” [Miuccia Prada] said backstage. “It was an important moment for protest, for humanity. Now, protest is very necessary.” It would be too easy for Prada’s current sentiment to refer simply to the right-wing bent of contemporary politics. In fact, the liberal left finds itself, presently, in a particularly strange situation, fractured by competing discourses and isolated within digital echo chambers...

Here, Mrs Prada seemed to be reminding us of those activists who once determined the personal to be political and sought revolution through action rather than Facebook status; of the importance of authentic, human reality during a time when detachment is bearing particularly frightening consequences.

 Trump is obsessed with what his staff wears. Don’t let their costumes distract you. | Robin Givhan, The Washington Post

Appearance matters, particularly at the White House. In some small way, the unruly, inartful, messy nature of politics is tempered by the dignity and solemnity of the place. There is something laudable about dressing in a manner that shows respect for everything that the White House represents. President George W. Bush understood that when he decreed jackets and ties for men entering the Oval Office. And in 2009, when President Obama loosened those rules, it caused a stir in official Washington. It also makes sense that if one wants to be taken seriously by a wildly diverse populace, it helps to embrace the universal style markers of professionalism, seriousness and authority. People also tend to stand up straighter and be more focused when their attire is more formal and elegant...But image is always secondary to substance. It may briefly distract from a narrative or add to it. But surely, it can’t change it.

 As Trump pushes for U.S. manufacturing, 'Made in America' is losing its luster in the fashion world | David Pierson, Los Angeles Times

Long before Trump campaigned on the promise of reviving domestic manufacturing, time-tested labels such as Gitman Bros., Filson and Red Wing Shoes were touting their “Made in USA” roots and encouraging customers to buy American menswear at a time when competitors had long fled to cheaper countries. They rode a wave of popularity in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis as trendsetters began rejecting fast-fashion brands like H&M and embracing traditionally stodgy ones like Brooks Bros. — an acknowledgment that it was better to buy pieces that lasted than support wasteful fads...

Now, some of those same companies, as well as more recently established ones, are wondering what the “Made in USA” label will mean under the new administration. Will it continue to stand for craftsmanship and style, or amount to an endorsement of Trump’s policies — or even the president himself?...“Is ‘Made in USA’ in danger of becoming ‘Make Made in USA Great Again’?” said Jonathan Wilde, editor of GQ.com...

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Politics

Donald Trump, the refugee ban, and the triumph of cruelty | Dylan Matthews, Vox

...what is uniquely repulsive about Trump’s travel restrictions and refugee ban. It’s not just that they’re dumb, or wrong-headed, or unjustified. They’re cruel...Public cruelty, the cruelty of governments and the men and women who run them, has an end; it is meant to achieve something, whether that be racial purity and national rebirth, or a classless industrialized society, or more modest goals, like satisfying nativist urges to preserve the racial and religious character of the nation, or at least not let it change too much. And this kind of goal-oriented cruelty is enabled by the unique and vast ability of governments to instill fear in those over which they wield power.

It is easier to be cruel as a public official, because it is easier to see one’s victims as an abstraction.

 All the times Republicans expressed moral outrage at Donald Trump’s threats to bar Muslims from the US | Dan Kopf, Quartz

Republican leaders vehemently condemned the suggestion from the billionaire upstart who was then leading in the GOP primary race. “Offensive and unconstitutional,” were the words of Mike Pence—before he joined Trump’s ticket as his vice president. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said it was “not conservatism.” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell called it “completely inconsistent” with American values. Even former vice president Dick Cheney said it “goes against everything we stand for and believe in.”

...Still, since Trump signed yesterday’s executive order, no major Republican leader has yet spoken out against Trump’s order. 

 The Economist’ Just Downgraded the US From a ‘Full Democracy’ to a ‘Flawed Democracy’ | John Nichols, The Nation

A country must maintain an 8.00 rating (on measures of the electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture). The US rating was 8.05 last year. It is now 7.98; and index ranking for the US has fallen to number 21—just behind Japan, just ahead of the Republic of Cabo Verde. The United States is not ranked with the world’s authoritarian states; it’s in the company of Bulgaria, France, India, and Mongolia. But the US is no longer ranked in the “full democracy” category with Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. And it is ranked well below social democracies such as Norway (#1 on the 2016 Democracy Index), Iceland (#2), and Sweden (#3).

For small-d democrats who are worried about Trump and Trumpism, the latest Democracy Index provides vital perspective. The new president is a bad player. He disrespects and disregards democratic values, encourages distrust of democratic infrastructure, and expresses disdain for the essential source of information in a democracy: a free and skeptical and questioning press that is willing to speak truth to power.

But even before Trump entered the presidential race, the crisis was real, and it was metastasizing...the combination of big-money politics; lobbying abuses that tip the balance of power to corporate interests; underfunded and dysfunctional media; assaults on labor rights; the gutting of voting rights; and the manipulation of election systems by partisans was undermining the infrastructure of democracy.

 West Africa - from dictators' club to upholder of democracy | BBC News

And as one democracy stumbles, others rise.

For a long time, [the political situation in West Africa] was an all-male club and members called each other "my brother president". Indeed they still do, even though there have been two female interlopers in the past decade. Members did not care very much how "the brothers" came to be heads of state. You could be elected to the position in dodgy elections, or in fairly conducted elections and then change the rules, you could assume the position through a coup d'etat. For as long as you could show you had firm control over your country, you were a "brother president"...It is difficult to determine exactly when things began to change but gradually fortunes changed for the personalities who had appeared to be perpetual opposition figures.

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Environment & Humanity

How A Hollywood Prop Artist Could Help Stop Poaching At Its Source | Jason G. Goldman, Good Magazine

Though the nation’s indigenous cultures have eaten sea turtle eggs for centuries, illegal poaching has drastically reduced populations...Yet a poacher is just one cog in a massive criminal enterprise: Arrest one and he or she will quickly be replaced. Addressing the problem means identifying middlemen who transfer eggs into the global marketplace, as well as their transportation routes and storage facilities. To stop this crime before sea turtles and their eggs disappear forever, wildlife rangers will need to trick thieves into revealing their networks. 

Biologist Kim Williams-Guillén, who directs scientific research for conservation group Paso Pacífico, is working with Hollywood prop stylist Lauren Wilde to test a creative solution: a handcrafted decoy called the “InvestEGGator.” A poacher who swipes one will unwittingly help map out a vast criminal system via GPS and a trail leading authorities and conservationists to a potential bust.   

 How Bucking the Climate Change Accord Would Hinder the Fight Against HIV/AIDS | Brian King via Truthout

While there have been remarkable improvements in combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Global South, managed HIV faces other challenges beyond accessing lifesaving drugs. Food production and food security, which are tied to shifting climate dynamics, place additional burdens upon social and natural environments in resource-scarce settings.

Managed HIV is survival, and this survival depends not just on access to antiretroviral drugs but also on a gamut of social and environmental resources that have become necessary to meet health needs in the era of global climate change.

 Our New Age of Contempt | Karen Stohr, The New York Times 

It may seem as though the best response to Trump’s contempt is to return it in kind, treating him the same way he treats others. The trouble, though, is that contempt toward Trump does not function in the same way that his contempt toward others functions. Even if we grant that Trump deserves contempt for his attitudes and behaviors, his powerful social position insulates him from the worst of contempt’s effects. It is simply not possible to disregard or diminish the agency of the president of the United States. This means that contempt is not a particularly useful weapon in the battle against bigotry or misogyny. The socially vulnerable cannot wield it effectively precisely because of their social vulnerability.

The better strategy for those who are already disempowered is to reject contempt on its face. Returning contempt for contempt legitimizes its presence in the public sphere. The only ones who benefit from this legitimacy are the people powerful enough to use contempt to draw the boundaries of the political community as they see fit. Socially vulnerable people cannot win the battle for respect by using contempt as a way to demand it.

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What did you read this week?

 Feature image: A family of immigrants arrive at Ellis Island, courtesy the National Park Service, Statue of Liberty National Museum

#Week in Review