At this point, most Americans realize that Donald Trump doesn’t really care about the border wall; he just needs a fighting point to keep his base happy while former lawyer Michael Cohen receives a 3-year prison sentence. As those walls close in on Trump, he’ll focus on a different wall while making a new foe in Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
As if spotting a mirage in the Southwestern desert, Trump and his aides are seeing a wall standing along the Mexico border where none exists.
For months Trump has claimed that wall construction is underway and he’s brought the matter to the forefront again as the White House presses lawmakers to free up money for what he calls the “remaining sections.”
That’s like toeing the starting line and contemplating the remaining miles of a marathon.
In an argumentative Oval Office meeting Tuesday, Democratic leaders joined Trump in exaggerating the consequences of a partial government shutdown if a budget deal is not reached by Dec. 21.
Fact Checking The Border Wall
A look at some of the claims as Washington searched for that deal, with a border wall at the center of contention:
WHAT’S NEW?
TRUMP: “Tremendous amounts of the wall have already been built.” — statement in meeting with the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer.
TRUMP: “People do not yet realize how much of the Wall, including really effective renovation, has already been built.” ″We have already built large new sections & fully renovated others, making them like new.” — tweets.
THE FACTS: Tremendous portions of the wall have not been built. Yes, some barrier renovation has happened, but little wall construction has been completed under Trump.
Congress allocated roughly $1.4 billion in the spring — a bit more than 5 percent of what Trump wanted — for border security and specified that the money was not to be used for construction of the prototype wall sections that stand near San Diego. Instead, the money is to strengthen or replace existing fencing with more secure fencing.
Altogether, Trump promised in the campaign that he’d build a 1,000-mile (1,600 kilometer) wall, as high as 40 feet or 12 meters (and have Mexico pay for it, which isn’t happening). If some 650 miles (1,050 km) of existing fencing are considered in the equation, that leaves him with about 350 miles (560 km) of wall to build.
WHAT’S A WALL?
KELLYANNE CONWAY, Trump adviser: “You just want to keep saying ‘wall, wall, wall.’ … There are many ways to secure a border.” — to reporters asking Tuesday about Trump’s wall.
THE FACTS: Trump, of course, has been saying wall, wall, wall, since the 2015 Republican primaries, in a torrent of tweets and in countless rallies. Or, as he put it in Tuesday’s tweet, “the Wall.” He’s described the material, the dimensions and the beauty of it, and had prototype sections built, and they are of a wall, not a fence.
Federal officials — and Trump himself, at times — have tried to scale back expectations by noting, for example, that “there are places where you can’t have a physical wall,” as Conway put it Tuesday. “There are rivers. There’s brush.” But Trump already accounted for that when he promised 1,000 miles of wall to supplement another 1,000 miles of rivers and other natural barriers.
“The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it,” he tweeted in January, as if inviting voters to hold him to his literal promise.
GOVERNMENT ISN’T CLOSING
TRUMP: “If we don’t get what we want one way or another … I will shut down the government.” — in meeting with Pelosi and Schumer.
SCHUMER, asked after the meeting what happens if Trump doesn’t compromise: “He will get no wall and he will get a shutdown.”
PELOSI: A “Trump shutdown” could be his “holiday president to the American people.”
THE FACTS: Everyone’s exaggerating. The government is not at risk of closing if a deal is not reached by Dec. 21.
About three-quarters of the government will continue to have enough money to operate. But even a partial shutdown could be disruptive. Among the affected departments absent a deal: Homeland Security, Transportation, Agriculture, State, Justice.
Congress has approved continued financing of the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments, among other federal operations, and workers deemed essential would not be idled.
TRUMP vs. TRUMP
TRUMP: “Our Southern Border is now Secure and will remain that way.” — tweet.
TRUMP: “We need border security. People are pouring into our country, including terrorists. We have terrorists. But we caught 10 terrorists. These are over the last very short period of time — 10. These are very serious people.” ″Drugs are pouring into our country. People with tremendous medical difficulty and medical problems are pouring in, and in many — in many cases it’s contagious. They’re pouring into our country. We have to have border security.” — statements in Oval Office meeting.
THE FACTS: The fact is, Trump contradicted himself, declaring the border secure and insecure on the same day.
Moreover, the government has not announced the arrests of 10 terrorists. Trump’s statement appeared to be a clunky rendering of federal statistics showing that U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped an average of 10 people a day in the 2017 budget year who were trying to enter the U.S. from countries with suspected links to terrorism. That average applied to all points of entry, not just the southern border. And the primary points of entry for people coming from overseas are airports, not the two land borders.
As well Trump provided no evidence that people coming into the country are carrying contagious diseases at a higher rate than the U.S. population. He repeated the point at a bill signing, saying there’s a “tremendous medical problem coming in.” Medical screening is part of the process for vetting people who seek asylum.
As for the state of border security, U.S. arrests on the Mexican border jumped 78 percent in November from a year earlier to the highest level in Trump’s presidency. Increased arrests indicate that more people are trying to cross the border illegally.
Michael Cohen Gets 3 Years Prison Sentence
Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison, after he delivered an apologetic speech to the court in which he expressed regret and said that as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, it was “my duty to cover up his dirty deeds,” according to CNN.
“I take full responsibility for each act that I pled guilty to — the personal ones to me and those involving the president of the United States of America,” Cohen told the court, CNN reports.
“Recently the president tweeted a statement calling me weak and it was correct, but for a much different reason than he was implying,” Cohen told the court. “It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.”
Cohen’s legal team asked the judge for leniency, noting that he has provided information to special counsel Robert Mueller in his Russia investigation. But Cohen has no cooperation agreement.
Prosecutors had called to Cohen to face substantial prison time, after he pled guilty to a series of crimes including tax fraud, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress. “After cheating the IRS for years, lying to banks and to Congress, and seeking to criminally influence the presidential election, Cohen’s decision to plead guilty, rather than seek a pardon for his manifold crimes, does not make him a hero,” prosecutors said in a court filing last week.
Trump’s legal team has called Cohen a liar, who eventually turned on the president.
When he pled guilty to a series of crimes in August, Cohen implicated Trump in an effort to pay hush money in 2016 to Stormy Daniels and Karen Mcdougal, who claimed to have affairs with the real estate mogul.
I watched last week’s Supernatural episode at a Supernatural convention in Jacksonville with my friend, YouTuber Alana King. That meant we recorded our reactions live for her video, much of which consisted of me making stunned faces and needing lots of tissues, which our helpful friend Christina kept tossing over from off camera. Alana and I were in shock half the time, so there are long stretches of us frozen with our jaws hanging open (which is not very attractive NGL), but when we did get animated, there was a lot to say. Now that the con is over and I’ve had time to do a rewatch, I’ve got some deeper thoughts and some praise for pretty much everyone who had a hand in crafting this episode – and that makes me one happy fangirl!
The episode begins with Jack’s three dads sitting at his bedside, doing just what Rowena said – watching over him as he dies. (Cue my first wobbly lower lip). Sam is right there next to him, so much sadness in his expressive eyes. Dean is across the room, struggling to hold it together, hands gripping the sides of the dresser telegraphing all the emotion he’s trying not to show. Cas stands watching over all of them, blue eyes troubled.
Jack is the one dealing with his impending death the best, saying that maybe this is how it’s supposed to be and asking his dads not to be sad.
Dean: Don’t give me that meant to be crap.
Jack starts to cough, having trouble breathing, and Dean walks out, unable to watch someone he loves suffering. He’s angry, as he always is when life hands someone he cares about a raw deal. He punches the wall like he did when Bobby was dying, even as Jack asks Sam to tell Dean that it’s okay. The role reversal here at the end of Jack’s life is painful, Jack trying so hard to comfort the three men who are already grieving him.
Jack: Sam, what happens next, for someone like me?
Sam says he doesn’t know, but Jack is undeterred even then, saying that it will be an adventure.
I think I started to tear up at that point, and Sam looks the same.
Meanwhile, Cas tells Dean that he has to go back in there. That it’s not fair, of course, but Jack needs him.
Dean goes back and finds Jack still and Sam at his side.
Sam: He’s gone.
At that moment, Alana and I kinda lost our shit. He’s GONE??? Just like that??? I did not see that coming so quickly, only a few minutes literally into the episode. I still don’t know if I like it, but it certainly got an emotional reaction out of me! Interestingly, it was more shock than grief, which oddly mirrored the way humans react in real life. Alana and I stared at each other with our jaws hanging open for an alarmingly long time.
I also immediately worried for Dean, who must feel so guilty that Jack slipped away before he had a chance to come back. If you’ve ever been by a loved one’s bedside as they died, it’s stressful to leave for a cup of coffee or to make a phone call because you’re always afraid you won’t be there with them when they go, and that feels difficult somehow.
The camera goes close on Dean as he processes the information and struggles again with his emotions, and of course, Ackles shows us every complicated feeling. Ouch.
And we only now get to the opening graphic! What the hell, Show?!
The three plan “next steps”, wake and a bonfire, a hunter’s funeral – because that’s what Jack would have wanted.
Sam immediately walks off, clearly distraught, and Cas wants to go after him, gently saying “Sam…” as he walks away. Dean holds him back with a pat on the shoulder.
Cas: Your brother’s in pain.
Dean: Just let him be, he needs his space. We’re gonna give it to him.
He knows Sam, and understands the complexity of grieving, that back and forth and push and pull of needing solace from others and needing time to yourself. If anyone has experience with grieving, it is, unfortunately, the Winchesters.
Dean makes the difficult call to Mary, who I had forgotten doesn’t even know that Jack was sick! I can’t imagine Mary’s shock at getting the news that he got sick and oh, he’s already dead – ouch. It’s sort of a sad testament to how much Sam and Dean don’t depend on Mary as a mother that they didn’t reach out to her sooner. Dean finishes the call with a vulnerable sounding “anyway, it’d be really nice to hear your voice,” which threw me right back to that iconic phone call that Dean made to his absent father in season one when we all realized just how tragic it was that John Winchester was not returning his desperate sons’ phone calls. Oh, the pain, Show! When Dean is hurting like that, it’s almost unbearable to hear the vulnerability in his voice. Ouch ouch ouch.
Cas watches Sam leave the bunker, head cocked in confusion, but he doesn’t say anything. Next thing we know, Dean is looking for his brother, clearly worried. Uh oh. Dean and Cas set off to look for Sam, who also took the Impala, which looks really weird to see Cas driving and Dean riding shotgun.
Dean: How could you just let him leave, you saw what he was like?
Cas: Dean, you said to give him space.
Dean: Yeah, space – in the bunker with us!
I really felt for Cas there, gotta say. Grief is confusing for humans, and for Cas even more!
They find Sam sitting on the ground in the nearby woods, leaning up against the Impala, looking heartbreakingly broken.
Dean, already in a panic about not being able to find Sam, jumps to the very worst conclusion.
Dean: Tell me you didn’t make a deal!
Sam is totally confused at that – he was trying to build a pyre, not make a deal. We see Sam’s attempts in flashback, angry and chopping so hard at the trees that the axe splits apart and forces him to stop.
Sam: I couldn’t…I couldn’t even do that for him. I should’ve done more, tried harder. What good is any of the spells, the lore…
Me: Oh my heart!
Dean: Sam, at least you were there for him.
I love Dean comforting his little brother, and that he said what many of us have been saying, because Sam really was there for Jack, from the beginning.
Cas: It doesn’t feel right, it’s not how I thought Jack’s story would end….it’s not right, Jack being taken before me.
All three of them are hurting so much, stuck in the wrongness of a death that happens out of time. Meredith Glynn’s script does a brilliant job of exploring grief and how it bowls us over, takes the breath out of us, renders us desperate and helpless and sometimes hopeless. Dean, Sam, and Cas all express the common and normal reactions we all have – the feeling that you didn’t do enough, that you weren’t there, that you should have died first, especially when the one you’ve lost is like a child to you.
Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, and Misha Collins and director Eduardo Sanchez did such a good job of showing us all those emotions that I could feel them all too, in sympathy and in empathy. We have all lost someone, and so those universal feelings hit us deeply. (As someone who both is a mom and has lost a mom, the Buffy episode where her mom died is still unwatchable for me. I watched when it aired and still can’t think about it without sobbing – the Supernatural episode where they lost Ellen and Jo is the same). That’s how powerful media can be in reflecting our own emotions, and Supernatural does that here.
“So what do we do?” Sam asks, which is something every bereaved person has felt and has asked, and which again worked perfectly here.
Dean, the big brother, steps up with an answer, and it includes Team Free Will’s version of a wake – “Tonight, we get loaded.”
“Take one last look before you leave,” the music says as the three toast Jack at the bunker kitchen table. The scene starts out solemn and sad, but as they drink and talk and presumably share what fond memories they did get to have with Jack, they start to smile and then to laugh.
I get what they were going for, but Alana and I immediately turned to each other as Castiel chowed down on some nougat and broke into a smile and said: “That’s Misha, not Cas!” Clearly the same with Sam and Dean – we were watching Jared, Jensen, and Misha goof off and crack each other up as they can do so well (something they confirmed at the convention). That threw me out of the story, unfortunately, but it was also really nice to see them having fun together, so I’m ambivalent about its inclusion. Actually, I’m not, because some brilliant person managed to remove the music and let a grateful fandom hear a bit of what Jared, Jensen, and Misha were actually saying and it is GOLD. Or it was, until it got taken down. Anyway, from a story standpoint though, it was a bit jarring. Maybe because the Winchesters and Cas have NEVER been that carefree and happy!
Sam leaves first, then Cas, and Dean is alone, still struggling to believe “we did everything we could, right?”
Dean: Here’s to you, Jack, wherever you are.
Lovely transition, and we’re with Jack in heaven. He’s on a road trip with his three dads, eating burgers and shakes and all of them teaching him to read an old-school map because there’s no cell service. Jack quickly realizes that it’s not real, but it’s a nice moment. He wanders out into the halls of heaven, which we soon see is under attack by an ominous roiling river of black goo that we recognize as the entity from the Empty. Jack runs down the hall Indiana Jones style while Alana and I yell “run Jack run!”
Dean wakes up passed out on the kitchen table to Sam and Cas returning – with Lily Sunder! (who was in the opening, so we knew she was coming).
After a few staggers, Dean joins them and does a double take when he sees her.
Dean: You got old.
Way to tell it like it is, Dean. She gave up magic; it turns out. Sam has had the brilliant idea to have Lily look through Kevin’s angel tablet translations. (Yay, Kevin mention!) Dean is skeptical, but Sam and Cas want to try having her help bring Jack back – which, you know, is just SO Winchester!
She can’t read the tablet but offers the use of her magic to draw power from his soul to save him. Sam and Dean are both cautious about losing any part of a soul, which makes sense considering their past experience with soullessness. Dean calls her on wanting something from all this, and Lily admits that she wants to go to Heaven to be with her daughter.
They summon Anubis to see if they can convince him to let Lily into Heaven.
Lily: You can summon a god??
Dean: We’ve done it before.
Me: Only on Supernatural.
Meanwhile, Jack is exploring Heaven – and has found his mother’s. It’s incredibly touching because Jack never got to meet his mom and she never got to meet him. Kelly says “Jack, it’s you!” and I have to admit I had to grab for the tissues.
When Jack tells her that she’s in heaven, she has a horrifying realization – if Jack is there, he’s dead too. (Cue more tears from me)
Kelly: No no no, baby no!
Jack assures her that Cas and Sam and Dean did their best, that they took care of him.
Castiel heads to heaven, which is in distress with all the gates open, even the ones that Metatron closed. Sam and Dean do what they do best, painting sigils and signs to summon a god. Sam leaves the room and encourages Dean to talk to Lily, and when he does, he knows there’s something she’s not telling them.
Angela Cartwright then gives a masterful performance, letting us see all Lily’s pain at the death of her daughter, Mae. She’s in heaven, and Lily desperately wants to be with her, with that sliver of her soul that is left. (Yes, she made me cry – again!)
Cas finds heaven full of dead angels dripping black goo. Duma is the only one who wakes up, asking Cas not to leave her and coming with him. Hmmm. Naomi appears, telling Cas that Jack is gone and that the Entity, the shadow that rules the Empty, wants him – and maybe they should give him to them. As they argue, and Naomi points out that millions of human souls will be cast into the wind and Cas still refuses, Naomi is consumed by the shadow, and Cas and Duma run.
Back at the bunker, Sam recites a lot of Latin, which Jared does extremely well, and Anubis appears – with his abacus. I’m amused that he knows the Winchesters and finds Dean “as snappy as advertised.” You have to wonder how often the Supernatural world discusses Sam and Dean and what they say – and how much of it is full of grudging appreciation!
Anubis tells Lily that she’s going to hell. The Winchesters try to bind him to make him make an exception, but Anubis insists he can’t so they let him go. Lily is crushed. I feel kinda crushed too, to be honest.
Back in heaven, Cas and Duma find Jack and Kelly, who are each trying to protect the other. Cas hugs Jack with such relief and joy, and then Kelly, and goddammit, I’m crying again.
Cas: I’m sorry, I failed you.
Kelly: You didn’t…Jack, he’s wonderful.
Meanwhile, Lily packs up to leave since she couldn’t get what she came for. Sam begs her to try anyway.
Sam: He’s our kid!
Dean: You know what I think? Burning all that soul, you’re not even human anymore. Otherwise, how could you ever, ever let anyone go through what you went through? The pain of losing a kid – don’t do this to us.
How anyone could say no to Sam and Dean saying THAT I have no idea – and Lily can’t. Looking at her picture of her daughter one last time (and I was sure it was one last time), she starts the spell, while Dean and Sam pray to Cas.
In heaven, Jack and Kelly are both reluctant to let Lily use a part of his soul, but Cas points out that it’s also the only way to save Heaven, and they agree. And of course, that’s when Duma is revealed to be the Entity, lying in wait while Cas led it right to Jack. There’s a fight, but they’re no match for the Entity.
Erica Cerra does a kickass job portraying the Entity with all the manic energy that Misha brought to his own portrayal of the creature. The way the Entity is so thoroughly unhinged and so sadistic is frankly terrifying.
Castiel, however, hears Sam and Dean’s prayer – and follows the Winchester code and offers to make a deal – he will go back to the Empty in Jack’s place. Misha also kicks ass in this scene, Castiel’s desperation and rage so palpable as he negotiates to sacrifice himself. The Entity agrees, but only if it can make Cas suffer. It will only take him when he gives himself permission to be finally, truly happy.
Me and Alana: Urgh.
And also in true Winchester fashion, Cas doesn’t want to tell Sam and Dean. Jack reluctantly agrees.
Jack: Why? Why did you do that?
Cas: Because I made a promise. Because I love you, Jack. Sam and Dean, they love you, and they are fighting for you this very minute.
Me: Tissues!!!
Jack says his goodbyes to Kelly.
Jack: We didn’t get enough time.
Kelly: It’s okay, go. Have a great life, I’ll be waiting. I love you so much.
Me: OMG more tissues!
It’s such a gift to jack, that he got to have that time with his mother, that he got to hear her say “I love you.”
Back in the bunker, Jack gasps and sits up. Sam and Dean gasp too, shocked that maybe it worked. Alana and I dab at our eyes. Okay, that was me.
Sam and Dean anchor Jack while he reads the spell.
Jack seems okay.
Lily coughs and sinks into a chair.
Dean leans in and hugs Jack, and Sam clasps him on the shoulder, smiling.
Sam: It’s good to have you back.
Dean turns to Lily.
Dean: Lily, thank you….Lily?
As I suspected, she’s gone.
And damned if I’m not crying again, saying please please please let her see Anubis again, and let him change his mind and let her into heaven. Sure enough, she faces Anubis, and he gets out the abacus.
Anubis: Care to try your luck again?
She does, and the black and white beads fly, me holding my breath and going please please please! And damn if she doesn’t get in.
Anubis: Say hello to your daughter for me.
Me: sobs like a baby
Naomi stops Castiel before he leaves Heaven, and thanks him for saving them.
Naomi: I think that deserves a reward, don’t you? For example, the archangel Michael’s location.
Me and Alana: OMG yes!
Jack and his three dads share burgers and beer, everyone unable to stop staring at Jack and smiling. They know where Michael is, and Sam, who was so hopeless and broken before, is now back to being the determined Winchester we know and love. They don’t know where Dark Kaia and the spear are, but…
Sam: We will. We’ll figure it out.
Dean: That’s right. And then Michael, that sonofabitch is gonna pay.
Caps by kayb625
They clink their beers and Alana, and I suddenly become terrified.
Alana and Lynn: Cas! Don’t get too happy!
I guess that’s gonna be a nagging anxiety now. Every time Castiel gets too contented, we’re gonna be worried he’s about to be zapped to the Empty. Oh Show, you’re so cruel.
When I talked to director Eduardo Sanchez about filming this episode, he mentioned that he really enjoyed it because it was an opportunity to tackle such emotional scenes, and he felt that the actors really brought it – and I have to say, he was so right! All of them – main cast and guest stars – made me feel every emotion, and the writing and the direction was spot on so that those emotions rang true each time. I got lots of Sam and Dean, a brave and determined Cas, more parent-child feels than this parent could handle without LOTS of tissues, and dialogue that felt organic and true in a psychological and emotional sense and in a story-telling sense.
I loved the way the episode was filmed, from the beautiful scenes of the Impala in the woods at night to the perspectives on the heartfelt hugs to the gorgeous close-ups that showed us every bit of the characters’ emotions. I loved the realistic way the episode treated grief and loss, which I’m teaching a graduate course on right now. Meredith? You got it right.
I also loved the in-depth exploration of parenthood, which is an equally complex and individual personal experience – not just Kelly’s feelings for her son, but Lily’s grief and longing for her lost daughter, and Sam and Dean and Castiel’s love for their son, which strikes me as a wonderfully non-traditional parenting and familial narrative that has a lot to say about found family.
This is one of those episodes that will stay with me. Thank you, everyone. I’m a happy fangirl!
We all have this picture of what the perfect holiday is. It might be something from a TV movie, that sickening Instagram feed or Pinterest board. More often than not our holidays fall short of that view. After all, we live in a real world. We just keep forgetting this when the holiday season rolls around.
The holidays may be even harder when you have a dysfunctional family that never acts normal any time of the year. You can’t expect to have everyone immediately change to happy-go-lucky people who forgive everything ever done just for the holidays. We love to create those templates of how we expect the family get together to go, but the minute it goes astray, anxiety kicks in followed by anger or a lot of drinking.
But you can still find ways to enjoy the holidays without the Grinches stealing your plans.
Your Holiday Survival Plan
Lowered Expectations
The first thing you want to do is to lower your expectations. You probably have high expectations of what you want, and it is going to be a recipe for disaster since most of us have family members that totally drive us insane. Know that it’s not going to be perfect and learn to enjoy it as it is.
Let Those Old Wounds Bleed
Another thing to remember is that you aren’t going to heal old wounds. Instead, when dealing with a crazy and difficult family, keep your conversations light. Don’t get drawn into their drama or begin a debate with them. Instead of lashing out, excuse yourself from the room. It’s not necessary to apologize or make excuses. At all costs, religion and politics are to be avoided.
Changes
Don’t expect them to change who they are. If they are the relative that drinks too much and gets obnoxious, don’t expect them to be any different. Or if it’s the brother’s new wife who acts like she is a step above the family, be prepared for it. Hoping people will be different will only lead to you being disappointed.
Dysfunction Rules
Figure out how to have fun with the dysfunction by having a positive attitude. The troubles often arrive during unstructured family time so instead plan things for everyone to do. Try watching a favorite family movie or playing a game that involves everyone.
Don’t Take That Bait
Of course, don’t take things personally. Set boundaries. How others act or talk is a reflection of them. It has nothing to do with you. Remind yourself not to take the bait when hurtful comments are said and instead seek to remain calm. Be willing to forgive.
Coping Strategies
Have a few go-to coping strategies set up for things you think will happen. Drive your own car, for instance, so you can leave if you need to. Take a walk when it feels like things are becoming too heated. Don’t instantly lash out when your mom tells you that you don’t need any more pie or Uncle Ted begins debating politics after he’s indulged in too much alcohol.
Control Yourself Not Others
Take control over what you can control: your thoughts. No matter what someone does or says to hurt or offend you, they cannot control your thoughts. So laugh to yourself, think what you want, and love yourself while visiting with your dysfunctional family.
Create Your Joy
Create moments of joy that are special to you. Forget about having that perfect holiday. Find the good in others, even the ones who irritate you or have hurt you. Worst case scenario is you can walk away from this holiday season feeling like you’re growing.
Conclusion
Remember this is real life. We all have family members that can drive us crazy. And then when we attempt to stick them all together at one table, engorging on carbs, sugar, and alcohol, you can expect at least a little disaster. The trick to surviving it is how you react to it. When you know someone is trying to push your buttons, you can push their buttons harder by pretending you’re not aware of what they’re doing and kill them with a smile.
Finding the right gift for friends or loved ones can often be a challenge. But gift giving can get doubly difficult when either you or the person you are shopping for, is very environmentally conscientious. After all, a lot of the gift giving way involves novelty and finding that special personalized gift.
When shopping for someone who is a true eco-warrior, it can be as easy as putting yourself in their shoes. When looking for something to buy them, ask yourself whether they need it, will love it, and will have no ethical objections to it. If the answer to all three is “yes,” then it’s a great, thoughtful gift. If it is not useful and environmentally conscious, then they may not appreciate it, even if they are polite when they receive it.
If you’re really struggling to come up with a gift which meets all three criteria, here are some ideas to get you started:
1. A charitable donation
If your loved one supports or speaks passionately about any particular charities, then a charitable donation in their name might not go amiss. There are many ways you can do this. You could simply donate a certain amount of money to a cause they approve of and include the certificate in their card. Or you could buy them a subscription or sponsorship package, whereby they get access to grounds or events held by the charity, or receive updates from a person, animal, or cause they have sponsored. This way they can be more in touch with their charity of choice, still benefit from their present but have most of the value go towards those who truly need it.
2. Something biodegradable
Another option is to get them something that does not place much of a burden on the planet. It can be hard shopping for all your eco-friendly needs, and some products are consistently bad for the environment, hard to find alternatives for, and when you find the alternative, it is expensive. So it is a wonderful thing to receive biodegradable options. Biodegradable baby wipes and nappies, eco-neutral soaps and detergents, and card-based disposable plates and cutlery are all great ideas. You could even go a bit wacky and get them some edible gelatin dinnerware, or some hemp clothes. Try and provide six months to a year worth, to make the present’s impact last. It will really improve their life, and help the planet.
3. Something reusable
If your friend is against all landfill waste and all consumerism, then a great swap for biodegradable goods is reusable goods. We use and dispose of countless different items every single day. Take-out boxes, cardboard coffee cups, female sanitary products, tissues, baby nappies, etc. But almost all of them have a reusable alternative. Talk to your loved one about how far they would be willing to go to save the planet, and consider any of the following swaps:
Writing paper for a whiteboard booklet
Take-out boxes for personal glass Tupperware
Cardboard coffee cups for reusable travel mugs
Female sanitary products for reusable pads or cups
Tissues for handkerchiefs
Disposable diapers over cloth ones
4. Something digital
Of course, the ultimate zero waste product is one made entirely from pixels. There is so much digital content available right now that if you don’t want to give a potentially wasteful present, you can always turn to digital media. Musical albums are a wonderful option, as almost everyone loves music of some kind or another, and supporting their favorite artist may be important to them. Digital film files, or an online music or television streaming service are also wonderful options. Or perhaps you could buy them some digital artwork from one of their favorite painters, supporting an artist and presenting them with some meaningful commissioned art? Finally, another great gift option is a device on which to use this media. An e-reader, or a tablet, or a streaming box may be a great way of gifting digital content now and in the future.
5. An experience
Another great non-physical option is to gift an experience. Almost everyone has something they love doing. Some of these activities are free, but others may cost regarding travel, materials, equipment hire, venue hire, etc. So if your loved one has a hobby that is expensive, or something they have always wanted to try but could never afford to, you could buy them a session of it. Examples of this include a holiday abroad, diving lessons, or a music festival. Or, if it is something cheaper, which they indulge regularly, you could buy them an annual subscription or membership. Examples of this include a gym, an arts group, or access to trails.
6. A plant or animal
Not a great gift for someone young, inexperienced with living things, or who may not have the time or space. But if you have a loved one who already keeps, for example, fish, snails, or stick insects, you could consider adding an animal to their collection. If they have green fingers, perhaps you could gift them a rose bush, or a small tree to grow on their own. If they have long talked about getting a pet, you could help them with the setup costs or the initial vet bills. Or if they already have pets, you could consider giving them something which their pets will use.
7: A qualification
Some people are definitely more of the go-getter, career-loving, studious types. So if your loved one is not big on physical gifts, a bit of a minimalist, or really into their work, then maybe a qualification would be a good option. You don’t need to look at putting down money on a degree, though! A first aid certificate, patisserie course, basic accountancy diploma, etc., are all available as online courses or short weekend courses. They will not cost you too much but could be a great start or addition to a career.
8. Nothing at all
Perhaps even after all this, you are feeling a little stuck. The person you are shopping for will definitely be unhappy if you bring home a meaningless knick-knack, an ornament, or another piece of unethical clutter. But none of these more environmentally aware gifts seem right for them either. They have all the biodegradable and reusable stuff they need, you’re not clued into any charities they want to support, and a plant or animal is out of the question. But, likewise, they have no digital goods, qualifications, or experiences they are desperate for either. If you’re really stuck, remember: when it comes to someone who hates waste and consumerism, no gift is better than a bad gift. Just explain why you could not give them a gift, and they are sure to understand and respect your decision.
Shopping as an environmentally aware gift giver
When shopping as an environmentally-aware gift giver, you may find your task is suddenly getting a bit more difficult. If you put yourselves in the shoes of the person you are shopping for, you could probably find something they would love, use, and not object to. But when giving gifts we should not have to sacrifice our own ethics. If you want to make a less eco-conscious loved one happy, but not burden the planet, there are definitely ways of finding a middle ground.
1. A new twist on a conventional gift
When it comes to gift giving, sometimes you have to reach a compromise. They have to accept what you can offer, or you have to give something you don’t wholly approve of. When it comes to matters of faith or fashion, these compromises may be hard, but possible. But you do not always need to make this compromise when it comes to being eco-friendly. Because there are eco-friendly versions of almost everything out there when you look around for them. You can look at our first list for some great ideas that might make an amazing gift for someone who is not as much of an environmentalist as yourself. A gym enthusiast will love a full annual subscription, a gardener will have great fun with a selection of new seedlings, a new mother will appreciate some safe and eco-friendly baby toiletries, and an IT student may be interested in having one of their modules paid off. You’re still giving them what they want, just without compromising value.
2. Something they really need
If you can’t find something that has an eco-friendly alternative, or where the alternative may not be appreciated by them, you might need to compromise a little bit and get them something which isn’t completely aligned with your values. But a great way of doing this and making sure it is worthwhile is to get them something they really need. You may not approve of using your own vehicle, but if that is the only realistic option for them, then covering some new tires on their bike or an MOT on their car could be appreciated. Their degree may be in something you consider wasteful or exploitative, but if they need to get a degree and make a living, then it would be considerate to put some money towards it. This way at least you know your gift will be used, reducing waste.
3. Something they will get some mileage out of
Another compromise that is not too hard to handle is to get them something they will use again, and again, and again. It is one thing to say they should not drink so much take-out coffee, but if this is something they intend to continue doing, then getting them a reusable travel mug could help save the planet, and even save them money at some shops. Likewise, you may feel their love of fashion is a bit too wasteful, but then you could get them some biodegradable clothes produced ethically and sustainably, or an item of clothing with unlimited repairs, such as certain shoe brands offer. Or perhaps you could get them some items to extend the life of their household gadgets and goods, such as dryer balls which soften clothes by pummeling them, or fridge gadgets that keep food fresher for longer.
4. Something digital
It’s not just environmentally aware gift recipients who will love digital things. The digital world is very much a part of our everyday lives, and our friends and family from all walks of life probably consume digital media, on some level, every single day. So if you want to give a gift with virtually no carbon footprint and literally no landfill potential, give a digital gift. Some great ideas for everyone include:
An album, or a collection of albums, by their favorite artist
A digital copy of one or more movies
A digital copy of one or more games
A streaming service for music or movies
Add-ons or upgrades for games or gaming systems
A mobile phone contract
Mobile phone extras
A subscription to an online service
An app-store voucher
5. Food and drinks
Everybody loves food and drinks, and everyone has their favorites. If you are not too convinced about your options this holiday season, a food or drinks gift is sometimes a great way of getting around giving gifts you ethically do not agree with. You could get your loves ones a luxurious, absolutely ethical, gourmet food item. Or you could get them a gift card for their favorite restaurant. Or you could make them something yourself. Or you could give them an IOU for a meal out at their favorite place, or your favorite place, and go together and enjoy it. Besides, there’s something about food where, so long as you don’t get it horribly wrong, everyone is always happy to get it.
6. Money
So, you’ve gone through both lists, and you are still scratching your head. There is nothing at all that seems right, that they will like and you will be happy giving. But, at the same time, they’re not the sort of person who will accept not getting a gift, or you will feel bad about not giving them one. It may sound cliché, but a money gift is rarely frowned upon. It might not be very warm or personal, but if nothing on these lists inspires you, there probably isn’t a personal option for this gift-giving situation. Just don’t give a gift-card unless it’s for a place they love, because cold hard cash is always welcome, but gift cards can wind people up.
Wrapping and presenting in an eco-friendly way
Wrapping and presenting gifts can be an incredibly wasteful practice. A lot of wrapping materials are non-recyclable and loaded with artificial dyes and plastics that make them non-biodegradable too. We tend to use a lot of raw materials when wrapping, too, adding all sorts of stickers, labels, and ribbons which will end up in the bin on Christmas day or the birthday.
But we don’t need to wrap gifts in a way that isn’t eco-friendly. There are plenty of adorable, simple, and affordable ways of presenting an attractive gift without using wrapping paper, tape, and plastic bags.
1: Bare naked presents
This might be a wise option if you are completely against the wastefulness of modern gift giving and do not want to perpetuate it one bit. There is no real reason why we wrap gifts up, other than perhaps the convenience that the receiver might look in your bag and see the gift before it is time. But all you need to do is keep is somewhere private or secret before presenting it, not wrap it up at all.
2. Biodegradable paper
A cool option for people who like the traditional present wrapping methods, but are not keen on the materials found in store-bought wrapping paper; you can always buy biodegradable, eco-friendly wrapping paper online. You could opt for a more elaborate option, or you could buy a plain one and choose to decorate it yourself. Either way, it’s just like a conventional present, but eco-friendlier.
3. Fabric wrapping
If you are not keen on the idea of shopping online for your eco-friendly paper, and/or you want to wrap your gift in a new and interesting way, you can always opt for fabric wrapping. This is where you cut a length of fabric and carefully use it to wrap up your present, resulting in a beautiful, uniquely wrapped gift. You can even use this to support your local community by buying fabric from a local store, thrift shop, or small business owner. That way you are saving a lot of fuel and man hours, and reducing your impact on marginalized communities abroad.
4. Getting rid of tape
Tape is a difficult one for many environmentally aware people. It is clearly plastic, and the glue is made out of god only knows what, but it is so useful. And alternatives to it, such as blue tack, or staples, are not always clear about their resource use, carbon footprint, or toxic impact on the planet. So what are we to do? Well, before the invention of tape people usually did one thing when wrapping something: they tied it. Choose some natural twine, or some natural material ribbon, and use it to tie your parcel firmly together after wrapping it.
5. Bags and boxes
If wrapping seems like a pointlessly annoying hassle and you never quite get it to look right anyway, then perhaps a bag or a box is more your gift-giving style. With a bag or a box there is no paper, folding, tape, or neatness to worry about. Of course, you will want to make sure that your bag or box are eco-friendly, but there are many options for this nowadays. You can get fully biodegradable gift bags and boxes, use a fabric tote bag or a reusable box, or even go traditional and use a fabric stocking.
6. Card alternatives
Giving a gift usually involves giving a card, or at least sticking a label on the gift to let the person know it’s theirs. Like with all paper products, you can always get a biodegradable, eco-friendly one made from reused paper. Or you could get creative and make your own reusable name tag with a message on it.
7. Reusing your wrapping
Finally, remember that there are always reusable options for everything. If you give your partner their gift in a cloth stocking, then you can use it again next year. If you use ribbon to wrap presents, you can bet anything it will be reused somehow. And when it comes to the wrapping your own gifts arrived in, make sure to recycle, use it for scrapbooking, or save it for regiving, to prevent wastefulness.
It might have been a quiet weekend at the box office, but Jason Momoa’s “Aquaman” is riding a huge wave heading the Christmas melee as “Ralph Breaks the Internet” took a third week topping the box office charts.
The upcoming DC Comics superhero film “Aquaman” arrived with a titanic sized splash in Chinese theaters letting us be ready to the typhoon it will be bringing to North America. Warner Bros. was validated by this risky plan to open there rather than everywhere at once.
Hollywood has learned a lot about Chinese moviegoers in recent years, but releasing films in the country — the world’s No. 2 market behind the United States — remains a crapshoot for American studios. Warner and other Hollywood companies cannot distribute their own movies in China; they must rely on the state-owned China Film Group. Chinese censors often do not clear American films for distribution until the relative last minute, hindering marketing efforts.
And Chinese audiences have grown more selective about Hollywood movies, at times displaying a new preference for locally made movies like the extravagant “Operation Red Sea,” directed by Dante Lam, known as the Michael Bay of Asia.
The upshot: “Aquaman,” starring Jason Momoa as the DC Comics superhero and directed by James Wan, could have easily flopped in China, which would have left a stink on the movie ahead of its global rollout. “Aquaman,” which cost an estimated $350 million to make and market worldwide, will arrive in 40 more countries on Friday. Audiences in North America will have the chance to see it starting on Dec. 21.
Warner decided to pursue an early release date for “Aquaman” in China to avoid the country’s traditional end-of-year blackout period for American movies. Opening first in China — where Wan has a following, having directed the smash hit “Furious 7” — would also allow Warner to limit the impact of piracy, which is rampant in the country. Piracy was a major factor in the recent failure of Warner’s “Crazy Rich Asians” at the Chinese box office; the romantic comedy’s release in China came three months after its rollout elsewhere in the world.
Why didn’t Warner just release “Aquaman” this weekend in North America as well?
The two weekends after Thanksgiving in the United States are typically among the slowest moviegoing periods of the year, as holiday shopping and related festivities (school pageants) take priority.
So, for the second week in a row, no new wide releases opened in North American theaters, allowing Disney’s animated sequel to again lead domestic ticket sales with $16.1 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The top six films at the box office were all unchanged. Universal’s “The Grinch,” still a major draw in its fifth weekend, trailed in second with $15.2 million.
But the weekend’s biggest new arrival was in China, where Warner Bros.′ “Aquaman” debuted with $93.6 million in ticket sales. That marked a new opening-weekend record for both Warner Bros. and DC in China. Considering the recent checkered history of DC films (“Justice League,” ″Suicide Squad”), the big launch in China was a promising sign for the spinoff starring Jason Momoa.
“Adding to the success of ‘Wonder Woman,’ this is a really solid performance and portends big numbers for North America in two weeks when it opens,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “This is a movie, along with ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ and ‘Bumblebee’ and other movies, that’s going to give December that boost that a ‘Star Wars’ movie would give us.”
“Aquaman” will expand to 40 international countries next week and arrive in North American theaters Dec. 21.
“Aquaman” wasn’t the only big-budget holiday season release receiving a lift this week. Paramount’s “Transformers” prequel “Bumblebee” played a one-night sneak preview in 326 theaters nationwide ahead of its Dec. 21 release.
Paramount declined to share ticket figures, but domestic distribution chief Kyle Davies said theaters were mostly sold out. Perhaps more importantly, the film directed by Travis Knight and starring Hailee Steinfeld aided its word of mouth with largely glowing reviews — a rarity for the “Transformers” franchise.
Disney’s “Mary Poppins Returns,” due out Dec. 19, also helped its cause with four Golden Globe nominations Thursday, including best picture, comedy or musical, and acting nods for Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
The feel-good interracial road trip period tale “Green Book” fared even better at the Globes (five nominations, including best picture, comedy or musical, and acting nods for Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen) and had good results at the box office to show for it. In its fourth week of release, “Green Book” held with a rare 0 percent drop, earning $3.9 million in 1,181 theaters. It has grossed $20 million in total.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ comic period drama “The Favourite” continued to pick up steam. The acclaimed Fox Searchlight release, starring Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz, expanded into 91 theaters over the weekend to gross $1.4 million ($15,000 per theater).
A more traditional royal drama, “Mary Queen of Scots,” also opened strongly in limited release. The Focus Features title, starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary Stuart and Margot Robbie as Elizabeth I, debuted in four theaters with a robust $50,045 per-theater average. Lis Bunnell, president of distribution for Focus, said the film’s modern spin “made it resonate with audiences in a powerful way paralleling so much of what is still going on today for women.”
Also opening in limited release were “Ben Is Back,” the family addiction drama with Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges (a $20,243 per-theater average in four theaters), and the caustic pop music critique “Vox Lux,” with Natalie Portman (a $27,000 per-theater average in six theaters). This is one of the worst big screen debuts every for Julian Roberts, who stars in the film as Mother of a drug-addicted son, played by Lucas Hedges (who we interviewed here).
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” Universal re-released the Holocaust epic in 1,029 theaters. But it failed to turn out large crowds, grossing a modest $551,000.
Next weekend, the box office is expected to be significantly busier with the release of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” ″Once Upon a Deadpool” and Clint Eastwood’s “The Mule” and “Mortal Engines.”
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included.
North American Box Office
Ralph Breaks the Internet, The Grinch and Aquaman
“Ralph Breaks the Internet,” $16.1 million.
“The Grinch,” $15.2 million ($25.9 million international).
“Creed II,” $10.3 million ($5.2 million international).
“Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald,” $6.8 million ($22 million international).
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” $6 million ($29.2 million international).
“Instant Family,” $5.6 million ($1.7 million international).
“Green Book,” $3.9 million.
“Robin Hood,” $3.6 million ($7.5 million international).
“Possession of Hannah Grace,” $3.2 million ($4.8 million international).
“Widows,” $3.1 million ($4.5 million international).
International Theaters Box Office
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada), according to Comscore:
“Aquaman,” $93.6 million.
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” $29.2 million.
“The Grinch,” $25.9 million.
“Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald,” $22 million.
Dick Cheney is alive and well for the 76th Golden Globe Awards nominations as Adam McKay’s dark satire scored the most nominations at six alongside Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born,” followed closely by the interracial road-trip drama “Green Book” and the period romp “The Favourite.”
“Vice” topped all contenders Thursday in nominations announced at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, including best picture, comedy and best actor nominations for Christian Bale’s nearly unrecognizable performance as the former vice president. It also earned nominations for Amy Adams’ Lynne Cheney, Sam Rockwell’s George W. Bush and both the screenplay and direction by McKay, the veteran comedy filmmaker who once skewered politicians as a “Saturday Night Live” writer.
For even the often-quirky selections of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a collection of 88 mostly less-known freelance film journalists, the strong support for “Vice” (which arrives in theaters on Dec. 25) was a surprise. Even its categorization of the film — a highly critical portrait of Cheney as a power-hungry, behind-the-scenes tyrant — as a comedy raised some eyebrows, just as Globes recent comedy selections “Get Out” and “The Martian” did.
Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic “Vice” leads the nominations for the Golden Globe Awards, narrowly edging Bradley Cooper’s tear-jerking revival “A Star Is Born,” interracial road-trip drama “Green Book” and period romp “The Favourite.” (Dec. 6)
“It’s a movie that’s a lot like the times we live in. there’s part of it that’s absurdist and comedic and then there’s another part of it that’s darkly tragic and dramatic, but they are definitely both there,” said McKay by phone from London. “But I do know I’m glad we’re in that category because we will take ‘Mary Poppins’ out. I’m not competitive with the other movies but I am competitive with ‘Mary Poppins.’ Dick Cheney is going for her.”
But it was far from a runaway win for “Vice” since the press association typically spread its awards around. Oscar front-runners “A Star Is Born,” ″Green Book” and “The Favourite” trailed close behind with five nominations each.
On the television side, awards were even more widely dispersed among the likes of “The Americans,” ″Barry,” ″Homecoming,” ″The Kominsky Method” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Leading all small-screen nominees was the FX anthology series “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” with four nods.
For the first time, FX bested heavyweights like HBO, Netflix, and Amazon with a network-best 10 nods, even though the exalted second season of its “Atlanta” received only a single nod for Donald Glover’s acting.
Curiously, the Hollywood Foreign Press doesn’t consider foreign-language films for best film, so Alfonso Cuaron’s acclaimed Netflix drama “Roma” was left out of the Globes’ top category. It was still nominated for best screenplay, best director and best foreign language film.
For the first time, the Globes nominated three films directed by African-American filmmakers for best picture, drama: Ryan Coogler’s superhero sensation “Black Panther,” Spike Lee’s urgent white nationalist drama “BlacKkKlansman” and Barry Jenkins’ James Baldwin adaption “If Beale Street Could Talk.” The other nominees are “A Star Is Born” and the Freddie Mercury biopic.
All earned nods in other categories, too, including Rami Malek’s prosthetic tooth-aided performance as Mercury, and the leading turn by John David Washington in “BlacKkKlansman,” who said his father, Denzel, woke him up for the nominations announcement.
“I had flashbacks when I was watching the (NFL) draft when they never called my name,” said Washington, a former football player. “When I heard them say my name, it happened in slow motion.”
While Sam Elliott’s supporting performance in “A Star Is Born” was unexpectedly overlooked, the Warner Bros. hit (which elected to compete on the more hefty drama side of the Globes despite its many songs) earned the expected nods for Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, as both actor and director, and the song “The Shallow.”
Up for best picture comedy alongside “Vice” are Yorgas Lanthimos’ wild palace power struggle “The Favourite,” Peter Farrelly’s divisive crowd-pleaser “Green Book,” the upcoming Disney sequel “Mary Poppins Returns” and the rom-com hit “Crazy Rich Asians.”
The Oscar path for both “Green Book” and “The Favourite” appeared to be solidified, with nods for all of the leads for each: Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali for “Green Book”; and Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone for “The Favourite.”
While some critics have taken issue with “Green Book” for relying on outdated racial tropes, the uplifting drama’s once flagging Oscar campaign has lately received a boost with both better ticket sales and accruing awards love. Farrelly, best-known for broader comedies with his brother, Bobby, like “There’s Something About Mary,” also received a best director nod for his first dramatic film.
Performers like Constance Wu (“Crazy Rich Asians”), Regina King (“Beale Street”), Ali and Washington, insured a somewhat diverse field of nominees. Spike Lee was nominated for directing “BlacKkKlansman,” three decades after last being included in the category for “Do the Right Thing.”
“The first word that came to mind was ‘BOOM SHAKALAKA,’” Lee said in a statement.
But the Globes also didn’t nominate any of the year’s acclaimed female filmmakers for best director, and none of the 10 best picture nominees were helmed by a woman. At the previous Globes, presenter Natalie Portman pointedly introduced the “all-male” directing nominees.
Damien Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong biopic “First Man,” which has seen its awards hope wane in recent weeks, failed to liftoff, scoring neither a best film nod, nor one for Ryan Gosling’s leading performance. (It did land nominations for Claire Foy and its score.) The news was worse for Steve McQueen’s heist thriller “Widows,” which was shut out entirely.
Also left out, to gasps heard across social media, was Ethan Hawke’s performance as an anguished pastor in “First Reformed” and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Polish stunner “Cold War,” his follow-up to the Oscar-winning “Ida.” (The nominees for best foreign language film alongside “Roma” were “Capernaum,” ″Girl,” ″Never Look Away” and “Shoplifters.”) Some of the TV snubs — “Atlanta,” ″This Is Us,” ″Better Call Saul” — were even more surprising.
But the Globes also handed nominations to some up-and-comers, including Lucas Hedges (“Boy Erased”), Timothee Chalamet (“Beautiful Boy”) and Elsie Fisher, the 15-year-old star of the coming-of-age tale “Eighth Grade.” ″WHAT,” said Fisher on Twitter. When reached by phone Thursday morning and told she was trending, Fisher — whose character is a little-liked YouTuber — replied “Hell yea!”
And the press association made room for one old favorite: Robert Redford, in what he has said may (or may not) be his final acting performance, received his 10th Globe nomination for “The Old Man & the Gun.” He was given the group’s Cecil B. DeMille achievement award in 1994.
Glenn Close, nominated for her performance in “The Wife,” said Thursday morning she had done two performances of the off-Broadway play “Mother of the Maid” the day before and said her voice was “gone.”
“Maybe today it’ll be tequila,” she said of her celebration plans. Or maybe not. “I have a show tonight. And I’ll probably have to go back to sleep at some point today.”
In film and television, the nominations guaranteed the Globes what it most craves for its famously frothy broadcast: stars. Among them: Julia Roberts (“Homecoming”), Amy Adams (“Sharp Objects”), Nicole Kidman (“Destroyer”), Hugh Grant (“A Very English Scandal”), Melissa McCarthy (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“Patrick Melrose”), Emily Blunt (“Mary Poppins Returns”), Charlize Theron (“Tully”) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Mary Poppins Returns”).
The nominees for best animated film were: “Incredibles 2,” ″Isle of Dogs,” ″Mirai,” ″Ralph Breaks the Internet” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”
Though the major studios like Disney (“Black Panther,” ″Mary Poppins Returns,” ″Incredibles 2″), Warner Bros. (“A Star Is Born”) and Universal (“Green Book”) are more in thick of awards season than usual, indies carried the day. Annapurna Pictures (“Vice,” ″Beale Street”) and Fox Searchlight (“The Favourite,” ″Can You Ever Forgive Me?) led the studios with 10 nods apiece, especially welcome news for billionaire heiress Megan Ellison’s Annapurna, which struggled through financial difficulties this fall.
Still, Disney could in, a way, claim supremacy. Its soon-to-be-finalized acquisition of Fox would make its nominations tally 21. The nod for its “Black Panther” marked Marvel Studios’ first best picture nomination at the Globes, a feat it is hoping to repeat at the Academy Awards.
The ratings for last January’s broadcast, hosted by Seth Meyers and graced with an impassioned speech by Oprah Winfrey, dipped 5 percent with approximately 19 million viewers. As the first major award show following the Harvey Weinstein revelations and subsequent launch of the #MeToo movement, the usually more frivolous ceremony had an atypical edge of seriousness. In a demonstration organized by the then-just-founded Time’s Up, many women wore black on the red carpet.
Whether this year will return the Globes to their more lighthearted celebrations will rest partly with its unexpected pairing of Andy Samberg and “Killing Eve” star Sandra Oh, who on Thursday was nominated for best actress in a TV series drama. They were announced as hosts to the Jan. 6 ceremony, to be broadcast live on NBC.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook just can’t stay out of trouble as it’s been revealed that the social media titan does actually use users data in ways they have no idea about. They work hard to weaponize our data while making sure we have no idea how it’s being used.
Facebook’s Data Weaponization Revealed
Internal Facebook documents released by a U.K. parliamentary committee offer the clearest evidence yet that the social network has used its enormous trove of user data as a competitive weapon, often in ways designed to keep its users in the dark.
Parliament’s media committee accused Facebook on Wednesday of cutting special deals with some app developers to give them more access to data, while icing out others that it viewed as potential rivals.
In other documents, company executives discussed how they were keeping the company’s collection and exploitation of user data from its users. That included quietly collecting the call records and text messages of users of phones that run on Google’s Android operating system without asking their permission.
The U.K. committee released more than 200 pages of documents on the tech giant’s internal discussions about the value of users’ personal information. While they mostly cover the period between 2012 and 2015 —the first three years after Facebook went public — they offer a rare glimpse into the company’s inner workings and the extent to which it used people’s data to make money while publicly vowing to protect their privacy.
The company’s critics said the new revelations reinforced their concerns over what users actually know about how Facebook treats their data.
“These kinds of schemes are exactly why companies must be required to disclose exactly how they are collecting and sharing our data, with stiff penalties for companies that lie about it,” Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said in a statement.
Facebook called the documents misleading and said the information they contain is “only part of the story.”
“Like any business, we had many internal conversations about the various ways we could build a sustainable business model for our platform,” the company said in a statement. “But the facts are clear: We’ve never sold people’s data.”
In a Facebook post, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg sought to put the documents in context. “Of course, we don’t let everyone develop on our platform,” he wrote. “We blocked a lot of sketchy apps. We also didn’t allow developers to use our platform to replicate our functionality or grow their services virally in a way that creates little value for people on Facebook.”
The U.K. committee seized the documents from app developer Six4Three, maker of a now-defunct bikini-picture search app. Six4Three acquired the files as part of a U.S. lawsuit that accuses Facebook of deceptive, anti-competitive business practices. The documents remain under court seal in the U.S.
In a summary of key issues pertaining to the documents, the committee said Facebook “whitelisted,” or made exceptions for companies such as Airbnb and Netflix, that gave them continued access to users’ “friends” even after the tech giant announced changes in 2015 to end the practice.
“Facebook have clearly entered into whitelisting agreements with certain companies, which meant that after the platform changes in 2014/15 they maintained full access to friends data,” the committee said in a statement. “It is not clear that there was any user consent for this, nor how Facebook decided which companies should be whitelisted or not.”
The documents “raise important questions about how Facebook treats users’ data, their policies for working with app developers, and how they exercise their dominant position in the social media market,” said committee chair Damian Collins. “We don’t feel we have had straight answers from Facebook on these important issues, which is why we are releasing the documents.”
The cache includes emails from Zuckerberg and other key members of his staff. The emails show Zuckerberg and other executives scheming to leverage user data to favor companies not considered to be threats and to identify potential acquisitions.
Collins said the emails raise important issues, particularly around the use of the data of Facebook users. “The idea of linking access to friends’ data to the financial value of the developers’ relationship with Facebook is a recurring feature of the documents,” Collins said.
The committee’s summary said Facebook collected data about the mobile apps its users favored to help it decide which companies to acquire. It also said Facebook knew that an update to its Android mobile app phone system — which allowed the Facebook app to hoover up user call logs and text messages — would be controversial.
“To mitigate any bad PR, Facebook planned to make it as hard as possible for users to know that this was one of the underlying features of the upgrade of their app,” the summary said.
In a post Wednesday, Facebook continued to stand by its stance that the feature was “is opt in for users and we ask for people’s permission before enabling.”
The Android data collection practice was unearthed in April as the Cambridge Analytica scandal roiled Facebook. The data mining firm, employed by the 2016 Trump campaign, exploited lax Facebook data-sharing policies to obtain data on millions of users without their consent.
Facebook executives clearly understand the material is valuable. An unsigned memo setting policy for a system upgrade known as “Platform 3.0” laid out a case for shutting out any app developer who could be construed as a competitor.
“There are a small number of developers whom no amount of sharing to FB or monetary value can justify giving them access to Platform,” the memo said. “These developers do not want to participate in the ecosystem we have created, but rather build their own ecosystem at the expense of our users, other developers and, of course, us. That is something that we will not allow.”
The documents also suggest Facebook would jealously safeguard its interests. In a January 2013 email exchange, Zuckerberg signed off on cutting access to Twitter’s Vine video-producing app, which had allowed users to find their friends on Vine by pulling in data from Facebook.
“Unless anyone raises objections,” Facebook Vice President Justin Osofsky wrote, the company would cut Vine’s access to users’ friend networks. “We’re prepared reactive PR.”
“Yup, go for it,” Zuckerberg replied.
The documents also suggest robust internal discussions about linking data to revenue.
“There’s a big question on where we get the revenue from,” Zuckerberg said in one email. “Do we make it easy for (developers) to use our payments/ad network but not require them? Do we require them? Do we just charge a (revenue) share directly and let (developers) who use them get a credit against what they owe us? It’s not at all clear to me here that we have a model that will actually make us the revenue we want at scale.”
“Friends” Come At A High Price For Netflix
Netflix will still be there for fans of the old TV series “Friends,” but maintaining the relationship will come at a steep price.
The video streaming service paid $100 million to keep showing “Friends” in the U.S. through 2019, according to a report in the New York Times. That’s more than triple the $30 million a year Netflix had been paying for the long-running TV series about six 20-something friends in New York. The report cited two unidentified people with direct knowledge of Netflix’s deal with the series’ rights holder, AT&T.
Netflix tweeted that it will continue showing “Friends,” but didn’t disclose financial details. The Los Gatos, California, company declined further comment Tuesday.
Netflix’s willingness to pay so much for a series that ended in 2004 is the latest sign of intensifying competition in video streaming.
Besides current rivals such as Hulu and Amazon, Netflix is also facing a significant threat next year when Walt Disney Co. plans to roll out a video streaming service featuring its popular movies and TV shows. As part of its move into streaming, Disney will be pulling much of the entertainment that it has licensed to Netflix for years.
That setback may have figured into Netflix’s calculations about how much “Friends” is worth to its service. But Netflix is still spending far more on original programming such as “Stranger Things” and “The Crown” to distinguish itself from its rivals. The strategy has forced Netflix to take on billions of dollars in debt to pay for the programming, but it has helped the company build the world’s largest video streaming service with 137 million subscribers.
AT&T also is planning to offer a video streaming service, and there is nothing in its deal with Netflix that prevents it from featuring “Friends” on that service beginning in 2020, according to the Times.
Lyft Ready To Go Public
Lyft is another step closer to becoming a publicly traded company.
The San Francisco ride-sharing service said Thursday that it confidentially submitted a draft registration statement for an initial public offering of shares with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The company was valued at just over $15 billion earlier this year.
Uber, Lyft’s fiercest competitor, is planning its own IPO next year. It’s well-documented problems have left it vulnerable to challenger Lyft.
Uber’s attempt to develop self-driving cars have also been bogged down during the past year amid allegations that it stole technology from a Google spinoff, as well as a fatal collision involving one of its robotic cars.
Both companies have been diversifying in an attempt to provide whatever sort of transportation people might want.
Last month, Lyft completed its acquisition of Motivate, the nation’s largest bike-sharing company. Uber acquired bike-sharing company Jump Bikes earlier this year. Uber also invested in Lime, a bike and scooter-sharing company.
Donald Trump introduced the world to his alter ego superhero in the form of Tariff Man. No, it’s not really a superhero, but it’s the latest nickname Trump has assigned to himself that trended quickly on Twitter. The only problem is that superheroes pretty much know what their superpowers really do, but not so in the case of the president.
His biggest superpower proved to be causing the stock market to nosedive on Tuesday afternoon as investors began to reconsider the trade war ceasefire the White House claimed to have reached with China. Tariff Man was clear that he intended to keep using tariffs as a negotiating tactic if he could reach a set deal with Beijing.
President Donald Trump promised on Twitter that tariffs would maximize the country’s economic heft and “MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN.”
Almost all economists say the president is wrong. That’s because tariffs are taxes on imports. They can cause higher prices, reduce trade among countries and hurt overall economic growth as a result.
The president’s tweet on Tuesday followed an announcement that the U.S. would not increase a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods in 2019. The two largest countries are in the middle of negotiating their terms of trade, after Trump said cheap imports from China were impoverishing the United States.
After Trump announced steel and aluminum tariffs earlier this year, the University of Chicago asked leading academic economists in March whether Americans would be better off because of import taxes.
Not a single economist surveyed said the United States would be wealthier.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler answered the survey by saying, “In net we want more trade not less. This is unlikely to help and runs the risk of starting a trade war. SAD.”
How Donald Trump’s Tweet Compares To Real Facts
Tariff Man
TRUMP: “I am a Tariff Man. When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. It will always be the best way to max out our economic power. We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs. MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN.”
THE FACTS: Trump seems to be claiming that tariffs are some kind of a membership fee for foreign companies to trade in the U.S. economy.
They’re not. Tariffs are a tax, per Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
The costs of this tax are borne by U.S. consumers and businesses, often in the form of higher prices. Foreign companies may end up selling fewer goods and services if the United States imposes high tariffs. So they pay a price, too.
In some cases, the tariffs exist to protect industries that are vital for national security. Or, the tariffs exist to retaliate against the trade practices of other countries. Or, they might protect politically connected companies.
In the past, White House aides have insisted that Trump’s tariff hikes are a negotiating ploy. Yet the president offered no such qualifications on Tuesday.
Tariffs are not seen as some easy way of generating massive wealth for an economically developed nation. Nor do the budget numbers suggest they can come anywhere close to covering the costs of the federal government.
Trump is correct that tariffs did generate $41.3 billion in tax revenues last fiscal year, according to the Treasury Department. But that is a pittance in a federal budget that exceeds $4.1 trillion.
The taxes collected on imports were equal to about 1 percent of all federal spending.
Wondering what Uncle Ed will say to embarrass you around the holiday table this year? Thinking that Tums and Tylenol won’t be enough to endure the extra helpings of “sarcasm served cold,” that’s dished out by your mother in law?
If you dread family holidays with your kooked-out clan, you’re not alone. The Christian Post posted results from their recent survey: Twenty-four percent of individuals surveyed they dreaded seeing relatives and 16% stated that they did not look forward to attending holiday parties and events.
According to this article from Entrepreneur.com, more than 60% of baby boomers, gen Xers and millennials report feeling increased stress at holiday time. This is at least partially owed to strained relationships and forced interactions with family during the most socially overbooked and financially burdensome time of year.
So why, when we think of celebrating another year coming to a close, and celebrating that with our relatives, does this incite panic attacks and neurosis rather than a peaceful, and benevolent feeling? And a better question, how to avoid conflict at Christmas? Below, some reasons and solutions to family stress at the holidays.
Clashes of Personality
Not everyone has the same ideas about things, and that’s no more apparent than when the entire family gets together. Whether it’s quibbling over how long to cook the turkey, arguing over who gets to host and who gets to make the trip… not agreeing on how much to spend on presents, or navigating conversational minefields… different family personality types can come into conflict at holiday time for sure.
What to Do About It
The best way to deal with personality conflicts at family holiday gatherings is to put each person in charge of a specific task or job and then just let them handle it without interference. If socializing sends sparks flying around the holiday table, strategic seating works wonders. Finally, if a few different people really don’t know how to play nice at family get-togethers, you might consider hosting different events for different sets of family members.
Money Matters
Financial stress ranks high on the list of reasons why families argue during the holiday season. Different people may have very different thoughts about what is a reasonable amount to spend, whether it’s on gifts, parties, outings or something else. Grandma’s idea for having the entire family board a plane to Disney during winter break may not have been in your budget plan for the year.
What to Do About It
The key to avoiding family arguments over money is to initiate frank discussions and come to a compromise. The first step is to give enough lead time to allow each branch of the family tree enough time for budgeting and planning. A sit-down discussion or group email conversation may be of help if you need to hash out details. Questions like “How much do we all agree to spend on each child in the family” “Will adults be exchanging Christmas gifts, and what’s our budget for this?” can help put everyone in a cooperate frame of mind. Some fun workarounds to keeping the holiday gift budget low and minimizing Christmas shopping confusion include Secret Santa, Grab Bag, and the “Take Or Pass” Christmas Present Game
Family Members Who Drink Too Much
Family members who imbibe to excess take family holiday celebrations to a new and exciting level of dysfunction. The most obvious objection to this is the possibility of someone getting behind the wheel while intoxicated. Barring that, just being in the presence of a drunk person affects all members of a family. Mood swings, aggressive behavior, unpredictable antics, and of course the trickle-down effect of having to take responsibility for someone who won’t be responsible for themselves or their children if they’re a parent, can really do a number everyone involved.
What to Do About It
Tipsiness happens during the holidays. So if someone has a few too many glasses of wine, doesn’t plan to drive and isn’t impacting anyone else other than maybe laughing too loud, that’s forgivable. However, if you find yourself enabling an alcoholic or addict over the holidays or that things are getting ugly, it may be time for a family intervention. You might first approach the loved one closest to the problematic drunk in question, such as a spouse, parent or live-in partner. If that doesn’t seem to be working, you do have permission to not include alcoholics at family gatherings with the understanding that they will be welcomed back into the fold after they learn to control themselves and get a handle on their addiction.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has made bold predictions and lived up to them, but his dream of Amazon delivery drones might have to be put on hold. Customers got excited thinking they could have shipments quicker than ever, but sometimes technology has to wait for other things to catch up.
Amazon customers are still waiting. And it’s unclear when, if ever, this particular order by the company’s founder and CEO will arrive.
Bezos made billions of dollars by transforming the retail sector. But overcoming the regulatory hurdles and safety issues posed by drones appears to be a challenge even for the world’s wealthiest man. The result is a blown deadline on his claim to CBS’ “60 Minutes” in December 2013 that drones would be making deliveries within five years.
The day may not be far off when drones will carry medicine to people in rural or remote areas, but the marketing hype around instant delivery of consumer goods looks more and more like just that — hype. Drones have a short battery life, and privacy concerns can be a hindrance, too.
“I don’t think you will see delivery of burritos or diapers in the suburbs,” says drone analyst Colin Snow.
Drone usage has grown rapidly in some industries, but mostly outside the retail sector and direct interaction with consumers.
The government estimates that about 110,000 commercial drones are operating in U.S. airspace, and the number is expected to soar to about 450,000 in 2022. They are being used in rural areas for mining and agriculture, for inspecting power lines and pipelines, and for surveying.
Amazon says it is still pushing ahead with plans to use drones for quick deliveries, though the company is staying away from fixed timelines.
“We are committed to making our goal of delivering packages by drones in 30 minutes or less a reality,” says Amazon spokeswoman Kristen Kish. The Seattle-based online retail giant says it has drone development centers in the United States, Austria, France, Israel, and the United Kingdom.
Delivery companies have been testing the use of drones to deliver emergency supplies and to cover ground quickly in less populated areas. By contrast, package deliveries would be concentrated in office parks and neighborhoods where there are bigger issues around safety and privacy.
In May, the Trump administration approved a three-year program for private companies and local government agencies to test drones for deliveries, inspections and other tasks.
But pilot programs by major delivery companies suggest few Americans will be greeted by package-bearing drones any time soon. United Parcel Service tested launching a drone from a delivery truck that was covering a rural route in Florida. DHL Express, the German delivery company, tested the use of drones to deliver medicine from Tanzania to an island in Lake Victoria.
Frank Appel, the CEO of DHL’s parent company, Deutsche Post AG, said “over the next couple of years” drones will remain a niche vehicle and not widely used. He said a big obstacle is battery life.
“If you have to recharge them every other hour, then you need so many drones, and you have to orchestrate that. So good luck with that,” he told media outlets.
Appel said human couriers have another big advantage over drones: They know where customers live and which doorbell to ring. “To program that in IT is not that easy and not cheap,” he said.
Analysts say it will take years for the Federal Aviation Administration to write all the rules to allow widespread drone deliveries.
Snow, the CEO of Skylogic Research, says a rule permitting operators to fly drones beyond their line of sight — so critical to deliveries — is at least 10 years away. A method will be needed to let law enforcement identify drones flying over people — federal officials are worried about their use by terrorists.
While the rules are being written, companies will rely on waivers from the FAA to keep experimenting and running small-scale pilot programs.
“People like DHL and the rest of them (will say), ‘Hey, we can deliver via drone this parcel package to this island,’ but that’s not the original vision that Amazon presented,” Snow says.
There is a long list of FAA rules governing drone flights. They generally can’t fly higher than 400 feet, over many federal facilities, or within five miles of an airport. Night flights are forbidden. For the delivery business, the biggest holdup is that the machines must remain within sight of the operator at all times.
In June, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said the FAA was being overly conservative in its safety standards for drones. The group said FAA’s risk-averse attitude was holding back beneficial uses, such as drones helping firefighters who are battling a fierce blaze.
Even before the criticism by the scientific panel, the FAA had begun to respond more quickly to operators’ requests for waivers from some rules, says Alan Perlman, founder of the Drone Pilot Ground School in Nashville, Tennessee. He said it is also getting easier and cheaper to buy liability insurance.
Bezos was mindful of the safety issues, telling “60 Minutes” back in 2013, “This thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighborhood.”
That didn’t stop him from predicting that drones fed with GPS coordinates would be taking off and making deliveries in “four, five years. I think so. It will work, and it will happen.”
To Perlman, the billionaire’s optimism made perfect sense.
“When you’re in his world you think more about technology than regulations, and the (drone) technology is there,” Perlman said.
While many are focusing on how the upcoming Olympics could change surfing, Australia’s Stephanie Gilmore has her eyes set on something much bigger and meaningful.
Gilmore, who is talked about as possibly the greatest athlete of all time in her sport, takes pride in being on the ground floor in the fight for a prize that could have a longer-lasting impact: equal pay for women on the professional tour where she and her rivals make their living.
The World Surf League put itself in rare company earlier this year with its decision to begin paying women the same as men, starting in 2019. While the majors and a few other tournaments in tennis have committed to paying women and men equal prize money, the WSL is the first U.S.-based global sports league to make that move.
The fight for equal pay begun decades ago by Billie Jean King on the tennis courts — and still waged daily in corporations across America that have nothing to do with sports — has found a toehold on the beach.
“Sports are the perfect platform to show equality,” Gilmore said last week, after capturing her record-tying seventh season title. “In most workplaces, what people make is completely private. In ours, the prize money is public knowledge.”
When the 30-year-old champion started surfing on tour, women typically made around $12,000 for a win, while men — led by 11-time champion Kelly Slater — would rake in around $40,000.
“Surfing was not a career path,” Slater recalled of his youth, in the HBO surf documentary “Momentum Generation.” ″It was just something you enjoyed doing.”
Especially so for the women. And even next year, when women and men are both expected to make around $100,000 for a victory (men made $100,000 and women $65,000 in 2018), it’s hard for anyone but those at the very top to get rich riding waves. Competitions are only a piece of the puzzle. Sponsorships, filming, and free-surfing make up the rest.
Could the Olympics change that?
It’s a debate coursing through the sport that is now experiencing some of the same growing pains as other so-called “lifestyle” sports — namely, snowboarding — two decades after their counter-culture vibe was welcomed into the stiff-suited, tradition-bound world of the Olympics. For the most part, snowboarders have accepted the Olympics and benefited from the platform it provides.
“It’s definitely new territory, and some people are a little unsure about it,” Gilmore said. “They think it’s not authentic surfing. I think it’s kind of cool. I grew up watching (Australian 400-meter sprint champion) Cathy Freeman, thinking ‘I want to go to the Olympics.’ But I thought that, as a surfer, I’d never get that chance.”
Now she will.
Gilmore grew up only 400 meters (1,300 feet) from the beach. Her father loved surfing, and Gilmore and her sisters “really had no choice” but to learn how to ride, she said. By the time she was 11, she knew this was what she wanted to do for a living.
The moment that triggered the run to her seventh world title came at the same beach where she learned how to surf.
Gilmore finished a disappointing fifth in this year’s season-opening event, the Roxy Pro Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. Three years had passed since her last season title, and, she conceded, some doubt was starting to creep into her mind as to whether her best days were behind her.
“It sort of killed the confidence and made me think, ‘Do you still want this? Do you still have it?’” Gilmore said. “I got quite overwhelmingly emotional. And that’s when I realized, ‘You obviously still really care about this.’”
Gilmore refocused. She won three events in 2018 and finished second in three more. After the season’s final event in Maui last week, she had captured her seventh title, which ties her with another Australian, Layne Beachley, for the most for a woman. (The title came with a $150,000 bonus.) Only Slater, with 11, has more.
Already a household name among surfing fans and her peers, an Olympic gold medal would clearly go a long way toward expanding Gilmore’s reach.
In many ways, though, she has already sent quite a powerful message.
“Women like Stephanie are competing in the same conditions, on same waves, showing the same bravery as the men,” said the WSL’s CEO, Sophie Goldschmidt. “It’s incredibly inspiring. They are positive role models, pushing boundaries and gaining audiences. But it’s not where it should be. There’s still room to grow.”
Donald Trump has always had trouble getting his facts straight, but when it comes to Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation, things go really awry. As Mueller closes in, the president is spinning plenty of Tweets that are adding up to reality.
Facing pressure as his former advisers are caught lying by special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump is launching fresh attacks on the probe as politically biased and Mueller as hopelessly “conflicted.” This runs counter to ethics experts in Trump’s Justice Department who concluded that Mueller — a Republican — could fairly lead the probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.
Trump also suggests that the crimes of his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, have “nothing” to do with him. That’s also wrong. Cohen was the first to implicate the president in open court of a crime. Last week, Cohen also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his efforts during the 2016 campaign to line up a Trump Tower Moscow project, saying he did so to align with Trump’s “political messaging.”
Meanwhile, Trump displayed a slippery grasp of the environment as well as trade policy. He also spread around to his millions of Twitter followers a wildly false claim that people in the country illegally get more aid from the federal government than Americans get in Social Security benefits.
A Closer Look At Donald Trump’s Facts
RUSSIA INVESTIGATION, MICHAEL COHEN
TRUMP, on Cohen: “He was convicted with a fairly long-term sentence on things totally unrelated to the Trump Organization — having to do with mortgages, and having to do with cheating the IRS perhaps. A lot of different things. I don’t know exactly, but he was convicted of various things unrelated to us. …So, very simply, Michael Cohen is lying and he’s trying to get a reduced sentence for things that have nothing to do with me.” — remarks to reporters Thursday.
THE FACTS: Cohen definitely was in trouble for what he did for Trump. He pleaded guilty in August to several criminal charges and stated in open court that Trump directed him to arrange payments of hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to fend off damage to Trump’s White House bid.
Cohen said one payment was made “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” and the other was made “under direction of the same candidate.”
The Justice Department says the hush money payments were unreported campaign contributions meant to influence the outcome of the election. That assertion makes the payments subject to campaign finance laws, which restrict how much people can donate to a campaign and bar corporations from making direct contributions.
It is true that Cohen did not identify Trump, but there was no ambiguity in court documents or in his statement.
Cohen’s extraordinary statement at his August plea hearing marked the first time any Trump associate, in open court, has implicated the president himself in a crime.
Cohen’s guilty plea last week, meanwhile, featured Trump and conversations he and his family had with Cohen about a possible Russian business deal during the 2016 campaign at a level greater than previously known.
Trump is, however, correct that other previous charges which Cohen admitted to didn’t involve the candidate or the campaign and were for tax deception.
WITCH HUNT
TRUMP: “The Phony Witch Hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of Angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other. …Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue.” — tweet Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Trump makes a baseless charge that Mueller is a “conflicted” prosecutor whose team is a bunch of “angry” Democrats.
Mueller, a longtime Republican, was cleared by the Justice Department to lead the Russia investigation. The department said in May 2017 that its ethics experts “determined that Mr. Mueller’s participation in the matters assigned to him is appropriate.” The issue had come up because of his former position at the WilmerHale law firm, which represented some key players in the probe.
Some on Mueller’s team owe their jobs largely to Republican presidents, while some others have indeed given money to Democratic candidates over the years. But Mueller could not have barred them from serving on that basis because regulations prohibit the consideration of political affiliation for personnel actions involving career attorneys. Mueller was appointed as special counsel by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee.
China Fentanyl
U.S. President Donald Trump is claiming victory in getting China to designate fentanyl a controlled substance, but China took that step against the deadly opioid years ago.
What’s actually on the table is a far more sweeping shift in the way China regulates synthetic opioids. The question is how China will follow through on its words.
China’s stated intention is to expand controls on all varieties of drugs that mimic fentanyl, a step advocated by U.S. officials eager to end the game of regulatory whack-a-mole with chemists who can manufacture novel opioids faster than they can be banned.
TRUMP, about his meeting at the G-20 summit in Argentina with Chinese President Xi Jinping: “What he will be doing to fentanyl could be a game changer for the United States — and what fentanyl is doing to our country in terms of killing people. Because he’s agreed to put it at the highest level of crime in his country.” — aboard Air Force One on Saturday.
WHITE HOUSE: “Very importantly, President Xi, in a wonderful humanitarian gesture, has agreed to designate Fentanyl as a Controlled Substance, meaning that people selling Fentanyl to the United States will be subject to China’s maximum penalty under the law.” — statement Saturday.
THE FACTS: That’s a misreading of what China agreed to do, at least as far as Chinese authorities are concerned.
Fentanyl has been a controlled substance in China for years, according to Chinese regulators . All told, China has already put 25 variants of fentanyl, plus two precursors — chemicals used to make the drug — on its list of controlled substances, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said last week.
Now, “China has decided to list all the fentanyl-like substances as controlled substances and start working to adjust related regulations,” says China’s foreign ministry.
Doing so could help block China’s opioid merchants from skirting the law by inventing new chemical variants of fentanyl faster than regulators can declare them illegal.
The standard approach of regulating drugs one by one has failed to control the proliferation of new and deadly synthetic opioids in the United States.
In February, the U.S. said that for at least the next two years, all new chemical versions of fentanyl that weren’t already regulated would be classified as illegal controlled substances. U.S. officials had been urging China to do something similar.
But China hasn’t always followed through on its promises. “Similar suggestions have failed to gain approval from Chinese regulators in the past,” the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in a report last week that criticized China for “slow and ineffective” regulation of fentanyl.
In 2016, U.S. negotiators thought they had secured an agreement with Beijing that China would target U.S.-bound exports of substances that were illegal in the United States, even if they weren’t illegal in China, but Beijing never implemented the policy, according to the commission, a group formed by the U.S. Congress to monitor economic relations with China.
China’s new approach could indeed be game-changing, as Trump said. But so far there’s no timeline for implementation of the policy.
On Monday, Geng, the foreign ministry spokesman, said, “I think this is just an announcement from the Chinese side. The specific work still needs further development.”
FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH
TRUMP, on the passing of former President George H.W. Bush: “As a young man, he captained the Yale baseball team, and then went on to serve as the youngest aviator in the United States Navy during the Second World War.” — statement Saturday.
THE FACTS: Trump mixes up Bush’s timeline, in which he put off college to enlist in the Navy after the U.S. entered World War II. Bush joined the Navy in 1942 upon graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, at age 18, six months after the December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was the youngest pilot in the Navy at the time.
Bush received an honorable discharge in 1945 and enrolled at Yale, where he was captain of the baseball team. “A lot of us on the team were veterans and we had come back from the war, so maybe that made it a little less apprehensive,” Bush told media outlets in 2007. “On the other hand, it didn’t deduct from our enthusiasm and our desire to win, which we did not do.”
TRADE
TRUMP: “Billions of Dollars are pouring into the coffers of the U.S.A. because of the Tariffs being charged to China, and there is a long way to go. If companies don’t want to pay Tariffs, build in the U.S.A. Otherwise, lets (sic) just make our Country richer than ever before.” — tweet Thursday.
THE FACTS: That’s not how it works. Yes, money from tariffs is going into the federal treasury, but it’s coming from U.S. businesses, not from overseas. Tariffs are paid by the importer, not the exporter or government in another country.
Beyond that, tariffs paid by U.S. companies tend to result in higher prices for consumers. So a tariff is a transfer of wealth from business to government, and sometimes from consumers to government as well. It is not a foreign payment to the U.S.
TRUMP, on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement: “The USMCA is the largest, most significant, modern and balanced trade agreement in history. All of our countries will benefit greatly. It is probably the largest trade deal ever made, also.” — signing ceremony Friday.
THE FACTS: It’s not the largest trade deal ever made. It covers the same three countries as its predecessor, NAFTA. In contrast, the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations concluded in 1994 created the World Trade Organization and was signed by 123 countries. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found the following year that the WTO’s initial membership accounted for more than 90 percent of global economic output.
TRUMP, on the pact with Canada and Mexico: “This is a model agreement that changes the trade landscape forever.” He also referred to the pact as a “landmark agreement.” — ceremony Friday.
THE FACTS: Actually, the pact preserves the structure and substance of NAFTA, which was unquestionably a landmark, whether for better or worse.
In one new feature, the deal requires that 40 percent of cars’ contents eventually be made in countries that pay autoworkers at least $16 an hour — that is, in the United States and Canada and not in Mexico — to qualify for duty-free treatment. It also requires Mexico to pursue an overhaul of labor law to encourage independent unions that will bargain for higher wages and better working conditions for Mexicans.
But the agreement is largely an incremental revision of NAFTA. Philip Levy, senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a trade official in Republican President George W. Bush’s White House, says: “President Trump has seriously overhyped this agreement.”
MANUFACTURING
TRUMP: “Remember the previous administration said, oh, manufacturing jobs, that will never happen. I kept saying, what’s he talking about? Manufacturing, we got to make things, right? They said manufacturing jobs would never come back. You’d need a magic wand. Well, we found the magic wand. And they’re great jobs. They’re high-paying jobs. They’re brilliant jobs. They’re important jobs.” — Biloxi, Mississippi, rally on Nov. 26.
THE FACTS: No magic wand has swept across manufacturing.
Yes, manufacturing jobs have been added under Trump, but the sector is nowhere close to its old glory.
As of October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 8.53 percent of the 149.8 million U.S. jobs were in manufacturing. Back in October 2008, 9.65 percent of U.S. jobs were in manufacturing. Even if factories keep hiring workers, factories are unlikely to return to the prominence of Trump’s childhood because so many other segments of the U.S. economy — such as health care — have grown.
In 1946, the year Trump was born, nearly a third of U.S. workers had manufacturing jobs.
Growth in manufacturing employment began in President Barack Obama’s second term, when 386,000 jobs were added, and accelerated under Trump, with 416,000 more jobs in his first 21 months.
TRUMP: “Our steel industry a year ago was dead, and now it’s one of the most vibrant anywhere in the world, because we stopped the steel dumping and we put a big tax on. When they steel dump, they can dump all they want, but they pay 25 percent on everything they dump, and our steel now is doing great. Our industry has come back.” — Mississippi rally.
TRUMP: “Big Steel is opening and renovating plants all over the country.” — tweet Thursday.
THE FACTS: He’s exaggerating the recovery of the steel industry.
As of October, there were 381,700 jobs in the manufacturing of primary metals such as steel. That figure seesaws based off commodity prices and global economic performance. But it’s clearly trended downward since 2000 when the sector had 621,800 jobs.
It’s difficult to know just how many jobs will be added by newly planned mills. But construction spending on factories has yet to take off significantly after having been in decline between 2016 and much of 2018. Still, the spending has rebounded in recent months. Construction spending on factories has increased 4.3 percent in the past year, according to the Census Bureau.
A year ago, the steel industry employed 141,200 people, says the Labor Department. Now, 145,100. That’s a gain of 3,900 jobs during a period when the overall economy added 2.5 million jobs.
Steel wasn’t at death’s door a year ago and it isn’t “back” in any historic sense.
AUTOMAKERS
TRUMP: “General Motors is very counter to what other auto, and other companies are doing. Big Steel is opening and renovating plants all over the country. Auto companies are pouring into the U.S., including BMW, which just announced a major new plant. The U.S.A. is booming!” — tweet Thursday.
THE FACTS: This auto industry boom doesn’t exist.
Automakers have been steadily hiring since 2010 when Obama was president. But the pace of job gains has slowed considerably since Trump took office, according to the Labor Department. That’s probably a reflection of slowing sales rather than any policy changes by Trump.
U.S. auto sales are down 0.2 percent through October largely because of a 13 percent plunge in car sales. Truck and SUV sales are up 8 percent. All the factories GM wants to close make slow-selling cars.
The Labor Department found that automakers added 30,600 jobs during Obama’s last year in office. That fell to 8,200 in 2017 after Trump became president. Automakers were on pace before the GM layoffs to add 8,660 jobs this year.
Despite the job growth in recent years, auto companies employ far fewer workers than they did in 2000. More than 1.3 million people held auto jobs in 2000, a total that now stands at roughly 970,000.
General Motors Co. is not alone in cutting workers. Crosstown rival Ford Motor Co. is just starting to restructure its white-collar workforce, and thousands are expected to be let go by the middle of next year.
Also, BMW didn’t announce a major new plant. Its CEO said Tuesday the company is considering a new U.S. engine factory to supply assembly plants in South Carolina and Mexico. The German automaker now imports engines and transmissions from Europe for SUVs made in the U.S., and it’s building a new factory in Mexico.
ENVIRONMENT
TRUMP: “You look at our air and our water and it’s right now at a record clean.” — interview Tuesday with The Washington Post.
THE FACTS: No, the air isn’t the cleanest ever. The air generally has been getting cleaner since the 1970s, but the downward trend in pollution has made a bit of a U-turn since Trump took office.
His Environmental Protection Agency released data that showed traditional air pollution — soot and smog — increased in 2017 and that the air is not the cleanest it has ever been.
The days with an unhealthy number of small pollution particles, often called soot and linked to heart and lung problems and deaths, jumped from 2016 to 2017 in 35 major metropolitan areas. In 2017, there were 179 unhealthy soot days, up 85 percent from 97 in 2016. Last year had the most unhealthy soot days since 2011.
The number of days with unhealthy smog levels was down from 2016, but higher than 2015, 2014 and 2013.
The number of days when the air quality index was unhealthy was 729 in 2017. The number of days is higher than a year because it counts each city’s unhealthy reading on a certain day as one and there are numerous cities involved.
Last year’s level was the highest since 2012 and a 21 percent increase over the cleanest air in 2014.
TRUMP: “I mean, we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia. It just flows right down the Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from?” — Post interview.
THE FACTS: Singling out Asia for America’s dirty Pacific beaches is an evasion.
Pacific currents do bring some trash from Asia, most noticeably during the 2011 tsunami, but it is rare that scientists can trace trash to a specific geographic location, said oceanographer Kara Lavender Law at the Sea Education Association, who said Trump’s “statement is not supported by the data.”
Americans dirty their own coastlines because “we produce double more trash per person than most of the people living in Southeast Asia,” said Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia environmental engineering expert who studies marine debris.
CLIMATE CHANGE
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, on Trump rejecting a dire White House report’s conclusion on the economic costs of climate change: “This report is based on the most extreme modeled scenario, which contradicts long-established trends. …This is the most extreme version and it’s not based on facts.” — press briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: She’s wrong. The 29-chapter report actually lays out various scenarios that the United Nations’ climate assessments use. Economists say the cost estimates are credible and may even understate the economic impact.
The National Climate Assessment report considers three scenarios in estimating future costs. One is the business-as-usual scenario, which scientists say is closest to the current situation. That is the worst case of the three scenarios. Another would envision modest reductions in heat-trapping gases, and the third would involve severe cuts in carbon dioxide pollution.
For example, under the business-as-usual scenario in which emissions of heat-trapping gasses continue at current levels, labor costs in outdoor industries during heat waves could cost $155 billion in lost wages per year by 2090. Modest reductions in carbon pollution would cut that to $75 billion a year, the report said.
The report talks of hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses in several spots. In one graphic, it shows the worst-case business-as-usual scenario of economic costs reaching 10 percent of gross domestic product when Earth is about a dozen degrees warmer than now with no specific date.
Economist Ray Kopp, a vice president at the think tank Resources For the Future and who wasn’t part of the assessment, said the economics and the science in the report were sound.
Yale economist William Nordhaus, who won the 2018 Nobel prize for economics for his work on climate change, told media outlets that his calculations show climate change would cost the United States an even higher $4 trillion a year at the end of the century with a reasonable projection of warming. He said the White House report’s economic conclusions used standard economic modeling.
IMMIGRATION
TRUMP’s retweet: “Illegals can get up to $3,874 a month under Federal Assistance program. Our social security checks are on average $1200 a month. RT (retweet) if you agree: If you weren’t born in the United States, you should receive $0 assistance.” — posted Wednesday.
THE FACTS: Wrong country, wrong numbers, wrong description of legal status of the recipients. Besides that, immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally do not qualify for most federal benefits, even when they’re paying taxes, and those with legal status make up a small portion of those who use public benefits.
The $3,874 refers to a payment made in Canada, not the U.S., to a legally admitted family of refugees. It was largely a one-time resettlement payment under Canada’s refugee program, not monthly assistance in perpetuity, the fact-checking site Snopes found a year ago in debunking a Facebook post that misrepresented Canada’s policy. A document cited in the Facebook post, showing aid for food, transportation and other basics needs, applied to a family of five.
Apart from confusing Canada with the United States, the tweet distributed by the president misstated how much Americans get from Social Security on average — $1,419 a month for retired workers, not $1,200.
Overall, low-income immigrants who are not yet U.S. citizens use Medicaid, food aid, cash assistance and Supplemental Security Income aid at a lower rate than comparable U.S.-born adults, according to an Associated Press analysis of census data. Non-citizen immigrants make up only 6.5 percent of all those participating in Medicaid, for example.
Despite that, the administration wants to redefine the rules for immigrants to further restrict who can receive benefits and for how long.
