Monthly Archives: June 2019

Just hours after I predicted it, Trump satisfies it, as CNN is reporting:

President Donald Trump said tariffs on Mexican goods are “indefinitely suspended” after negotiators from the US and Mexico were able to reach a deal on immigration enforcement.

“I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico,” Trump tweeted Friday. “The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended.”

The announcement was a dramatic reversal of a sudden tariff threat that Trump himself announced last week in an attempt to put more pressure on the Mexican government to stem the flow of migrants into the US. Trump spent much of the intervening period out of the country, visiting with European leaders and attending a state dinner in the United Kingdom, while US and Mexican negotiators worked feverishly in Washington to avoid another escalation in his foreign trade wars.

Sure, another big win – or so will go the narrative.

Too bad the Mexican officials didn’t dare to test Trump’s goofball threat. Even worse, unless the Federales are going to chase down immigrants and kill them, they won’t stop coming. The problems at home are too great to discourage most of them. And we’re not addressing those problems, either, so why should expect this to work?

Another thought: now that President Trump knows that threats of tariffs on Mexican goods will enforce his will on Mexico, will he try to use that threat again and again and again? Has Mexico screwed up big-time with this agreement? Or was Mexico wise enough to include a clause guaranteeing no tariffs will be imposed for the balance of the Trump presidency?

Démarche:

A démarche (/deɪˈmɑːrʃ/; from the French word whose literal meaning is “step” or “solicitation”) has come to refer either to

1. a line of action; move; countermove; maneuver, especially in diplomatic relations, or
2. formal diplomatic representation (diplomatic correspondence) of the official position, views, or wishes on a given subject from one government to another government or intergovernmental organization.

Diplomatic démarches are delivered to the appropriate official of the government or organization. Démarches generally seek to persuade, inform, or gather information from a foreign government. Governments may also use a démarche to protest or object to actions by a foreign government. Informally, the word is sometimes used as a verb to describe making or receiving such correspondence.

Noted in “Near-collision between U.S. and Russian warships in Pacific requires emergency maneuvers,” Paul Schemm and Paul Sonne, WaPo:

“The behavior is unsafe and unprofessional,” Shanahan said. “We’ll have military-to-military conversations with the Russians, and of course, we will démarche them. To me, safety at the end of the day is the most important. It will not deter us from conducting our operations.”

“I’m not going to vote on a disapproval of the president’s actions. That’s a longtime policy of mine,” Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Tex.), even as he expressed some reticence over Trump’s tariff threat. “I never voted against the governor when I was in the statehouse.”

Marchant added: “It would have to be very egregious, and I don’t find this to be that egregious.” [WaPo]

Currently with a TrumpScore of 95, he certainly is a very nice little lapdog indeed. It’s worth noting Rep. Marchant represents a Texas district, and with Trump’s threat of putting tariffs on all Mexican goods, and the damage that would do to Texas given its dependence on Mexican trade, he could really bad if he doesn’t vote for stopping those tariffs.

All that said, I do not expect the tariffs to be applied. I expect Trump to soon claim the Mexicans have promised to do thus and so, and that there’s no need for tariffs. Thus he’ll look like he’s done something for his base, but not damaged the Texas economy. He’ll try to spin it as a big win, because that’s how he functions – on supposed big wins.

It’s all a game he plays, and hopes he can continue to sucker all the other players.

On a day I’ve not felt any urge to write anything, I instead present my neighbor’s … trees.

Politico reports on the inner machinations of the Democrats:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi told senior Democrats that she’d like to see President Donald Trump “in prison” as she clashed with House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler in a meeting on Tuesday night over whether to launch impeachment proceedings.

Pelosi met with Nadler (D-N.Y.) and several other top Democrats who are aggressively pursuing investigations against the president, according to multiple sources. Nadler and other committee leaders have been embroiled in a behind-the-scenes turf battle for weeks over ownership of the Democrats’ sprawling investigation into Trump.

Steve Benen wonders if Pelosi wants to take what appears to be a more secure route to punishing President Trump:

But it’s possible there was a little more to this. What if Pelosi was pointing to an alternative approach to presidential accountability?

As we’ve discussed, Trump has been implicated in a variety of alleged crimes, though as far as the Justice Department is concerned, Trump is shielded from prosecution so long as he’s in office. If he were to lose in 2020, however, that shield would disappear, and the prospect of an indictment would become quite real.

Indeed, by most accounts, the only way for Trump to ensure he faces no criminal liability is for him to remain president for another four years, effectively running out the clock on the statute of limitations.

If Pelosi said, “I want to see him in prison,” she may have been doing more than just expressing contempt for the Republican in the Oval Office. She may have also been signaling a way to hold Trump responsible for his alleged crimes in a way that would be more severe than impeachment.

Unfortunately for Benen, Trump could take the Nixon approach: resign and his successor simply pardons him for all federal crimes he may have committed.

It’s not a perfect solution, of course, as state indictments are still viable – no pro-active pardon will apparently stand for State violations. But it would remove at least some of the punishment that might be coming Trump’s way.

And Pence might get one day of being President.

Sub rosa:

Translated from Latin, this means “under the rose” and is a term frequently used for surveillance but can also mean any type of undercover or discrete investigation. We provide sub rosa/surveillance services both to private parties and to commercial firms. [The Urban Dictionary]

Noted in “Meet the GOP operatives who aim to smear the 2020 Democrats — but keep bungling it,” Manuel Roig-Franzia and Beth Reinhard, WaPo:

As it turns out, the truth or falsity of a Burkman-Wohl-concocted story is merely an inconvenience. Let the media’s “puritanical” fact-checkers puzzle it out: That’s the view of this twosome who fancy themselves as sub rosa players in the 2020 presidential contest and busy themselves trafficking in Internet rumors they hope will damage Democratic candidates.

And here’s the more forthright blooms of the rhododendron.

On National Review Jim Geraghty suggests that there might be corruption – grifters, to use his lovely word – in the fund-raising arm of the conservative movement:

Why is the conservative movement not as effective as its supporters want it to be? Because day after day, year after year, little old ladies get called on the phone or emailed or sent letters in the mail telling them that the future of the country is at stake and that if they don’t make a donation to groups that might as well be named Make Telemarketers Wealthy Again right now, the country will go to hell in a handbasket. Those little old ladies get out their checkbooks and give what they can spare, convinced that they’re making a difference and helping make the world a better place. What they’re doing is ensuring that the guys running these PACs can enjoy a more luxurious lifestyle. Meanwhile, conservative candidates lose, kicking the dirt after primary day or the general election, convinced that if they had just had another $100,000 for get-out-the-vote operations, they might have come out on top.

What’s more, most of these PACs thrive on telling conservative grassroots things that aren’t true. Clarke didn’t want to run for Senate in Wisconsin, Laura Ingraham wasn’t interested in running for Senate in Virginia, and Allen West wasn’t running for Senate in Florida. The PACs propagate a narrative in which they’re the heroic crusaders for conservative values, secure borders and freedom, up against corrupt establishment elites . . . when they’re in fact run by those coastal political operatives and keeping most of the money for their own operations.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “Oh, every PAC does this.” Nope. In that RightWingNews study, Club for Growth Action PAC had 88 percent actually went into independent expenditures and direct contributions. Republican Main Street Partnership had 78 percent, and American Crossroads was at 72 percent. That allegedly corrupt “establishment” is way more efficient at using donors’ money than all of these self-proclaimed grassroots conservative groups. Over on the liberal or Democratic side, ActBlue charges a 3.95 percent processing fee when passing along donations to campaigns.

Does Geraghty manage to carry this through to the entire conservative movement as currently constituted?

Imagine if instead of disappearing down rat holes and being spent on more fundraising, just $10 million of that $127 million to $177 million sum had been better spent. Imagine if that $10 million had gone to the campaigns of the GOP candidates in the 20 House districts that they lost by five percentage points or less in 2018. That’s $500,000 per campaign. If Mia Love had 625 more votes in Utah, she would have held her seat. Think she and her campaign could have identified and mobilized another 700 Love-supporting voters in her district if they had another half-million?

In California’s 21st District, David Valadao lost by about 900 votes. In Maine’s 2nd, Bruce Poliquin needed about 3,500 more votes. In Georgia’s 6th, Karen Handel needed 8,000 more votes.

If Leonard Lance had about 16,000 more votes, he would have kept his seat. Maybe not every one of these close races would be reversed if each one of those GOP candidates had another half million for GOTV. But right now, Republicans need to flip 19 seats to regain control of the House. Doing just 2.25 percentage points better in 2018 would have saved 13 seats!

It doesn’t occur to him that the rot may have spread, does it?

Look, it’s not impossible that the GOP elected officials have remained pristine while the conservative PACs have become infected with grifters, but the antics we’ve seen from elected GOP officials since the turn of the century have to make one dubious, don’t they? Sure, there seems to be a few, such as Senator Paul Rand (R-KY), Governors Hogan and Kasich, and a few others who seem to be operating on some sort of honor system, even if Rand is a flake; but so many of the rest, from Gingrich to McConnell to Nunes to, well, how far do I have to go? Hunter? Collins? Gianforte? Everyone who votes for second-class conservative judges? Throw in the legislation such as faux tax reform of 2017, the failed ACA-replacement, the utterly exotic behavior of the NRA, and it’s just a little hard not to think that Geraghty is indulging in wishful thinking, rather than sober assessment of the conservatives.

Conservative folks come in two brands. There are those who think it’s me and me only, taking offence at the very thought that society contributes to their success.

And then there’s the social conservatives who are part of that social web that shows up at the houses of the physically afflicted, help drive them to medical appointments, that sort of thing. The backbone of the community, as it were.

The first brand preys on the second, while the second prays for the first.

Kevin Drum has his opinion as well, which just may be mine in different words.

Last night I heard that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra seemed to be in trouble, including the sudden cancellation of the summer season. I figured I could go to the news to do more research – or I could simply consult my cousin Scott Chamberlain’s blog, Mask of the Flower Prince, to get at least some insight. He has two posts available, the first of which starts out with:

What on earth is the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s management thinking?

As you all know, I’ve weighed in on my share of classical music labor disputes over the years. I was, obviously, deeply involved in the Minnesota Orchestra’s lockout… and over that year-and-a-half disaster, I pretty much saw it all. I had hoped that the lessons learned in Minneapolis would keep organizations from going down a similar path, but alas that was not to be the case. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, MET Opera, San Diego Opera, and too many other ensembles decided to take a similar path of trying to impose brutal new business models on their organizations in the name of “fiscal responsibility” or “sustainability.” And similar to what happened in Minnesota, they got burned as a result.

And now the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) management has taken up this misbegotten fight.  And they did so with gusto; they chose to preemptively cancel the entire summer season, which had only been announced just five weeks ago.  More surprisingly, they did so days after the announcement that Maryland’s General Assembly had promised $3.2 million to stabilize the BSO’s finances while all sides worked to build a comprehensive, shared plan to rebuild the organization’s fiscal health.

Based on decades of work as an arts administrator, board member, board president of an arts organization, and a classical performer myself, let me say unequivocally that the BSO’s decision is a disaster. Well, “disaster” hardly covers it—one could argue that it’s a hot mess of a train wreck careening toward a wheel-less bus parked next to a red-flag factory.

In his second post, he draws parallels with the decline and demise of that restaurant juggernaut, Howard Johnson’s:

So what happened? Why did such a successful company go by the wayside?

Well, there was a change in leadership. The eponymous founder, with his devotion to customer service, exceptional quality, and the highest standards, gave way to a new generation of leadership under his son Howard B. Johnson that adopted a new cost-savings strategy as the guiding principal of the company. The new management also embraced a new way of thinking that suggested the customer wouldn’t be able to discern the difference between a great product and a pretty good product.

At a talk I attended a few years back, [book author] Carbone (who worked briefly with HoJo in the 1970s) recalled what happened next. He suggested that one specific change the new regime instituted—the change from a signature 4-ply napkin to a much more modest 2-ply napkin—encapsulated both the thinking behind the new strategy and its unfortunate consequences.

The idea behind this change seemed fairly straightforward: since the napkins were hardly central to the customers’ experiences, they offered a harmless way to save money by cutting corners where no one would notice.

This change, unfortunately, represented the tip of the iceberg. Satisfied at the money saved, the management fully embraced this new culture of cost-cutting, hunting down savings wherever possible. The length of drinking straws was shortened. The number of ice cream flavors was reduced. Cheaper ingredients were used in the restaurants and smaller portion were mandated. Cleaning schedules were reduced, employee training reduced, and building maintenance was reduced.

And so HoJo’s, as it was known, lost the essence of what made it a memorable place to go. Management ate the goose, and there were no more golden eggs.

I might only add that BSO is not only selling musical performances, but also something that is a mixture of trust, prestige, a shared story, access to the past … and I have to wonder if BSO management understands that.

But go read what Scott has written, he’s an excellent communicator and has the relevant experience to go along with it.

And the rhododendron is off and running. First, the peek:

And then some white-tips.

In the slice of life category I’ll slide The Best Man (1964), a story about the nominating process of a fictional American political party for the 1964 election. This is a story which gets by with a minimum of information. We know that William Russell, the top candidate for the nomination, has money and a reputation for womanizing, while his most significant opponent is a hard driving young man by the name of Senator Joe Cantwell, who seems to be very serious.

We get further information through the instrumentality of former President Hockstader, whose endorsement would be invaluable to any of the candidates. Not only do we learn about the top two, such as Russell’s hesitancy, but we learn about the President himself: his own view of how to win the Presidency, what he considers to be important in a candidate. He fills in important blanks.

For all that it’s slice of life, though, we swiftly run up on the rocks of a moral dilemma: what are the limits, if any, that may not be transgressed by those who chase power? Russell has not quite got that straight in his head, while Cantwell has no hesitancy to use any means necessary to find dirt on Russell, beyond that of womanizing, and it’s Russell’s secret nervous breakdown.

But when there comes news of Cantwell’s display of homosexuality during a recent war, still considered ruinous deviancy at this juncture of American life, Russell is torn. He’s a believer in playing fair, but if he does so and loses, a man driven by a religious mania may win the Presidency. His meditations in this context are significant, if perhaps underplayed, but are fascinating as the background is the very end of the trail: the nominating convention, complete with party delegations from the States, the shouts of where this round of votes will go, all a bracing background of power, contempt, toadying, and other displays of what raw power brings out in people.

And so Russell is facing failure when Cantwell offers him the VP slot on the ticket. The thought of working with a man apparently without a true moral system leaves Russell with a hard, hard choice. And that’s what makes this a good movie: it practically forces the audience to consider how they would react in a similar situation – and what that would cost them.

I won’t quite recommend it, but it’s certainly worth a watch if you enjoy Henry Fonda mulling moral conundrums. Enjoy!

Our orange azalea opened up a couple of days ago.

My Arts Editor thinks we should use some of this season’s pictures to construct greetings cards.

When Julian Assange was finally arrested by the UK after the Ecuadorian embassy decided it was tired of housing him, the United States requested extradition and filed charges against him – and some of those charges upset the journalistic community. It’s worth understanding why, so here’s Jack Goldsmith, writing on Lawfare, from a couple of weeks back:

I have written a lot on how hard it is to distinguish WikiLeaks from the New York Times when it comes to procuring and publishing classified information. One implication of the comparison is that any successful prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would have adverse implications for mainstream U.S. news publications efforts to solicit, receive and publish classified information. The May 23 indictment of Assange makes clear that these concerns are real. As Susan Hennessey said, “[I]t will be very difficult to craft an Espionage Act case against him that won’t adversely impact true journalists.” I don’t think this is an accident. I think the government’s indictment has the U.S. news media squarely in its sights.
The first sentence of the indictment reads:

To obtain information to release on the WikiLeaks website, ASSANGE encouraged sources to (i) circumvent legal safeguards on information; (ii) provide that protected information to WikiLeaks for public dissemination; and (iii) continue the pattern of illegally procuring and providing protected information to WikiLeaks for distribution to the public.

This is exactly what national security reporters and their news publications often ask government officials or contractors to do. Anytime a reporter asks to receive information knowing it is classified, that person encourages sources to circumvent legal safeguards on information. The news organizations’ encouragement is underscored by the mechanisms they provide for sources to convey information securely and anonymously. (The New York Times’s menu includes SecureDrop, an “encrypted submission system set up by The Times [that] uses the Tor anonymity software to protect [the] identity, location and the information” of the person who sends it.) Like WikiLeaks, these reporters and organizations encourage the sources to provide the “protected information” for public dissemination. And also like WikiLeaks, they often encourage the sources to engage in a “pattern of illegally procuring and providing protected information.”

The quoted indictment, if you’re not a journalist, sounds rather reasonable, doesn’t it? But Goldsmith disagrees:

The government alleges that “ASSANGE designed WikiLeaks to focus on information, restricted from public disclosure by law, precisely because of the value of that information” and adds that Assange “predicated his and WikiLeaks’s success in part upon encouraging sources with access to such information to violate legal obligations and provide that information for WikiLeaks to disclose.” This is pretty much a description of what the New York Times and its national security reporters do. The indictment makes a big deal out of the fact that WikiLeaks posted a “Most Wanted Leaks” list. U.S. journalists don’t do exactly that. But they sometimes have a general list of asks, they often have specific requests and SecureDrop constitutes an open-ended request. The indictment also makes a big deal out of Assange’s interactions and encouragements with Chelsea Manning. These interactions, again, are not unlike the ones that must occur all the time between national security reporters and their sources. The government makes much of the fact that WikiLeaks describes itself as “intelligence agency of the people,” but that is how many people and institutions in the U.S. media see their role.

This is the sort of thing that fascinates me – surprising glimpses into the lives of other people. So it suggests that Assange, regardless of his alleged sexual offenses, is (or was) simply upgrading a service offered by the traditional media for the digital age. Is that so bad?

Goldsmith is not alone in worrying about this, as Margaret Sullivan of WaPo makes clear:

All [the stories on the Pentagon Papers, the NSA’s global surveillance programs, and the monitoring of calls and emails of Americans without court-approved warrants] won Pulitzer Prizes, and all informed citizens about activities their secrecy-obsessed government didn’t want them to know.

That kind of reporting — perhaps the most important journalism there is — may have become an endangered species Thursday with a new indictment of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act.

For good reason, press-rights advocates are far more alarmed now than they were last month when Assange was initially indicted.

“This is unlike anything we’ve seen before, and it crosses a bright red line for journalists,” said James Risen, a longtime national security reporter for the Times and now director of the First Look Media’s Press Defense Fund. While a Times reporter, Risen (co-author of the warrantless wiretapping story) struggled for years to avoid testifying about his confidential source during the leak investigation of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer.

Gabe Rottman, director of the Technology and Press Freedom Project at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, has similar concerns.

So, briefly speaking, the traditional risks have lain with those willing to break faith with their government, not so much with their publishers, but with caveats concerning reporters and their sources, and subsequent legal harassment by the government. This brings us back to Assange: is he a publisher?

Let’s establish some attributes of a publisher: an entity which searches for, solicits, and makes public, or semi-public in the case of subscription services, information, aka “news”. As part of the survival skills of such an entity, “fact-checking” was, at one time, an important attribute of being a publisher, as was a reputation for presenting all relevant information in a neutral manner.

By these criteria, Assange is doubtful as a member of the traditional publishers guild, isn’t he? He may cry that his specialty is “classified” information, but primarily because that’s the constraint of his organization, WikiLeaks, it makes it very difficult to judge whether he is a reputable publisher, or a fly by the night biased operation, unworthy of the name. For those of us who pay attention to reporting on Assange, we know he is passionately anti-Clinton, and communicated with the Trump Campaign concerning Clinton. Is this neutral?

This creates significant doubt in my mind that he’s a traditional publisher.

But let’s return to the attributes of a publisher and talk about one more such attribute. Let’s do so by citing some other notable publishers of “classified” information: The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times. What do they all have in common?

They’re all nationally based.

What is WikiLeaks? American, Russian, Australian (Assange may be from Australia), hell, Sicilian? Does it even matter? WikiLeaks is Internet based, and that means it’s not clear where the allegiance of those in control of it may lie. The traditional sources I’ve cited above are American and primarily report on American affairs, and as much as one may disagree with their editorial opinions, only the paranoid will indulge in the injustice of thinking they would betray their country by publishing information which they know to be false, contaminated, or misrepresented. That would destroy their reputations, and soon after their enterprises.

It’s far harder to make that assertion about WikiLeaks. Not much of a history, a bias in the publisher, and who knows if the information published is complete – or biased?

OK, all that said, I’m not disputing anything Sullivan and Goldsmith have said; I’ve really just used them as a jumping off point to think about WikiLeaks and how it’s easy to believe it’s little more than a mouthpiece for Assange. That the indictment is an overreach is worrisome, but hopefully a judge will reject it as inappropriate.

It’s certainly worth keeping an eye on it. And perhaps asking whether Assange deserves the title of ‘publisher.’

And then came that day when you were overrun by communist hordes.

If you’re in the mood for some manipulative propaganda, Invasion, U.S.A. (1952) as an American mouthpiece for anti-Soviet forces fits the bill. In this movie, various enemies of a military build up, including elected members of Congress and various heavy industry bosses, are targeted for refusing to take the threat of the Soviets seriously, as the United States is invaded and we find ourselves unable to adequately defend ourselves. Characters come and go, dying in various grisly ways, and the whole thing is hard to take at all seriously, at least from this vantage point in history.

1952 places it in the latter third, roughly, of what we have termed the McCarthyism period of American history, when Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) attempted to rid the country of suspected Communists through tactics which most Americans, when introduced to them, found to be highly disagreeable and even un-American. I do not know if this movie was allied with McCarthyist forces, but it seems quite likely, given the anti-communist tilt of the story, and its blatant advocacy for a highly militaristic state.

But all that said, don’t bother with this one unless you have an historical interest. It’s really dull, poorly made, and occasionally quite laughable.

Our front yard fern garden just popped. The bleeding hearts and virginia bluebells look good, too. And the industrious may glimpse some ginger root lurking as well.

Valorize:

1. To establish and maintain the price of (a commodity) by governmental action.
2. To give or assign a value to, especially a higher value: “The prophets valorized history” (Mircea Eliade). [The Free Dictionary]

Noted in “Low-cost high-efficiency system for solar-driven conversion of CO2 to hydrocarbons,” Tran Ngoc Huan, et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America:

Carbon dioxide electroreduction may constitute a key technology in coming years to valorize CO2 as high value-added chemicals such as hydrocarbons and a way to store intermittent solar energy durably. Based on readily available technologies, systems combining a photovoltaic (PV) cell with an electrolyzer cell (EC) for CO2 reduction to hydrocarbons are likely to constitute a key strategy for tackling this challenge. However, a low-cost, sustainable, and highly efficient PV–EC system has yet to be developed. In this article, we show that this goal can be reached using a low-cost and easily processable perovskite photovoltaic minimodule combined to an electrolyzer device using the same Cu-based catalysts at both electrodes and in which all energy losses have been minimized.

I think there’s a word missing.

Homonormative:

And so we come to gay men and straightness. For queer theorists, gay men who have conventional lives are sometimes deemed “homonormative” — a riff on the term “heteronormative”, which means conforming to straight culture. Being “homonormative” means not totally conforming to queer, alternative culture, or being able to pass as “straight” or simply being yourself in much of the country. It’s all a form of mockery, rooted, of course, in insecurity.

Noted in the third part of Andrew Sullivan’s weekly tripartite diary entry at New York here.

The same iris, different angle.

The Kansas City Star is reporting on growing concerns about Kansas Republican, for Secretary of State for Kansas, and purveyor of dubious information concerning immigrants Kris Kobach:

National Republicans are prepared to intervene in the Kansas Senate primary to ensure that conservative firebrand Kris Kobach does not win the party’s nomination should he run, multiple sources told the Kansas City Star.

Kobach said last week that he is still “actively considering” a bid for the U.S. Senate next year in Kansas. The seat will come open with the retirement of Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, 83, who announced in January that he would not run for re-election.

Any anti-Kobach efforts by groups such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee or the Senate Leadership Fund likely would take the form of undermining Kobach without actively supporting any of the other GOP candidates running against him.

Presuming he does decide to run in the Senate primary, his result will be diagnostic for the state of the Kansas Republic Party. If he wins or shows well, it may well indicate that the Party continues its right-wing plunge into irrelevancy, while a rejection might indicate an incipient return to sanity – and a rejection of Trump and his incoherent agenda.

I expect the former. Remember, in the last few months four active Kansas GOP legislators not only dropped out of the Republican Party, but joined the Democrats. This indicates to me that the Kansas Republican Party is not susceptible to reformation, and will have to burn itself out through repeated failures and defections.

Whatever the result, it may bode for the national party as well.

It’s an odd sort of party, yes.

The storytellers behind House Of Secrets (1936) play their cards close to their vests in this mystery story, but unfortunately it’s unconvincing. American Barry Wilder, while sojourning, penniless, in London, receives a call from a London solicitor. He’s heir to the Hawk’s Nest and a small fortune! Bing bing bing!

But upon visiting his new property, supposedly unoccupied, he discovers squatters, and armed squatters at that: two men and their dogs. Kicked off his own property, he doesn’t glimpse a third occupant, a young, attractive woman he had rescued from an assault on the boat that took him across the Channel.

Barry finds the entire situation puzzling: his detective friend, Starr, starts in on the situation, and discovers a highly unfriendly Home Secretary and a chief of Scotland Yard who changes from warm to cold when he hears the name Hawk’s Nest, and then Starr abruptly tells Wilder to go home to America.

Meanwhile, Wilder himself, on a late hours visit to the Nest, has discovered yet another squatter, a madman treated in a most odd manner by the other three. The madman likes to indulge in crazed laughter, which tends to be accompanied by screams from the woman, who Wilder has by now discovered is also there. Wilder keeps getting caught on the property, yet the angry squatters refuse to shoot him, and when he goes to the police, they just laugh him off. It’s all a bit surreal.

Into the soup then trips three gangsters from New York. They know what’s going on: the squatters are searching for treasure, and the gangsters will be horning in on the action if they, and their secret information, have anything to do with it!

Well, it all plays out, but the treasure is at odds with the madman, isn’t he? I shan’t give the game away.

But I will say the movie fails because of three problems.

First, and perhaps my most shallow objection, is the quality of the print of the movie. The day time scenes are fuzzy; the night time scenes, of which there are several, are almost supernaturally odd in how the human body tends to echo. Perhaps this is an effect of ‘casting a movie of low technical quality in HD.

Second is the pacing of the movie. It’s very homogenuous, with little apparent attempt to take our breaths away. The script calls for this, this, and this to happen, and by God we’ll plod our way there.

Third, it’s full of shallow characters. Wilder saves the woman on the boat and falls in love with her at the same moment, yet why? She may be pretty, but there’s more to chemistry than looks. Who’s Wilder, anyways? A guy with no money, apparently, just charm, good looks, and an accent that keeps changing. And surely the squatters must have a few juicy conflicts to keep us interested!

Part of what makes a story work is a depiction of how being part of that story, that situation, and how it’s resolved, affects the people involved, and while there may be some limp efforts to do so here, they are very ineffective.

And that wrecks what might have been a clever solution to the conundrum of a treasure hunt colliding with a captive madman. There might be the bones of a good story, perhaps even as good as The Usual Suspects (1995), though not nearly as noir, but without the character involvement, the whole thing falls utterly flat.