pentagon officers_ we quit if trump wins

thedailybeast.com

Pentagon Officers: We Quit if TrumpWins

Nancy A. Youssef

Photo Illustration by Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast

Pentagon Officers: We Quit if Trump Wins about:reader?url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/16/marilyn-mosby-baltimore-s...

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The plans of the next president are personal to the officers of the

Pentagon, who are threatening to quit if The Donald becomes

commander-in-chief.

Republican presidential candidate and business mogul Donald

Trump has repeatedly vowed to build up the U.S. military if elected

president.

But it is not clear he will have the experienced commanders within

the ranks to do it.

In the halls of the Pentagon, there is a different plan afoot for the

Trump presidency. Here, officers are privately contemplating what

they would do should Trump become their commander-in-chief.

And more often than not, they proclaim they will leave.

“By 2016 I will have my 20 years in and can get out of here,” one


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military official said, referring to the amount of time a service

member needs to collect retirement pay.

Spend enough time with a service member, and the topic of Trump

comes up, always unsolicited. It is far less political than it sounds.

Trump’s attack plans for the so-called Islamic State widely known as

ISIS—his call to ban Muslims from the United States, his

suggestions that cutting off the flow of information through the

Internet can protect the homeland—many said, are an affront to the

values they vowed to die to defend.

Each one of them took an oath to defend the Constitution, which

protects the freedom of speech and gives Congress, not just one

person, the power send the nation to war. They also swear to “obey

the orders of the president of the United States.”

In other words: The plans of the next president are personal to

them.

Some said repeatedly hearing Trump and the other GOP candidates

spelling out a plan that is only a more brazen—and perhaps reckless

—version of the current strategy was not reassuring. They noted


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that for all the talk of supporting the troops, Congress has yet to

pass an updated Authorization of the Use of the Military Force,

which would in effect mark a congressional buy-in to the war effort.

That some of the candidates have said they support a new AUMF,

but have yet to pass one, was only moderately reassuring, they said.

This Daily Beast correspondent has heard such sentiments from at

least a dozen commanders in the past few months. Such

conversations can also be heard at common areas—in cafeteria lines

and around lunch tables.

There are fears of being asked to carry out futile war plans that

would bring instability. Almost all of today’s commanders are

veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They all know

someone who died in combat; indeed, they may have sent someone

on a mission that ended with death. And because of that they bring

a unique vantage point to lessons learned, from the frontlines where

the cruelty of warfare is impossible to miss. Those who send them,

meanwhile, sit thousands of miles away and learn what is

happening through the filter of distance.

The U.S. military still is rebuilding after a decade of repeated


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deployments and overworn equipment. And the prospect of endless

quasi-war thousands of miles away—even if it’s fought mostly by

drones and elite special operations forces—is not tenable, they

argue. These commanders are too focused on recovering from the

last war to hear politicans talk about the prospect of a future one.

And so in the course of conversation, plots of a different kind

emerge—contingencies in case Trump really is elected to the White

House.

“By 2016 I will have my 20 years in and can get out of here,” one

military official said, referring to the amount of time a service

member needs to collect retirement pay.

“This is not the country I joined to defend.”

“I am turning in my papers.”

“I’m moving to a farm.”

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The words broadly echoed what flag officers have said in the past

about the reality show star: “Personally, I hope no one will be called

upon to serve under a President T… I can’t bring myself to type the

words,” retired Rear Admiral John Hutson, who once served as the

Navy’s top lawyer, told The Daily Beast in July.

To be sure, those views are not uniform. Commanders deployed

outside the Pentagon said they hear enlisted troops enthusiastically

support Trump. Some describe enlisted service members fighting

with family or other soldiers in defense of the real talk from the real

estate mogul. But the Pentagon is an unusual military posting, one

where it is easier to spot a general than a corporal. And if the divide

between the enlisted and officers is true, the former—the base of

Trump’s military support—are not a well represented population


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within the headquarters of the United States military.

Regardless, such fervor about political matters is a jarring thing to

hear at first from those in uniform; they serve in a part of

government that urges service members to drop any sense of

identity or partisan politics. It is unusual to see someone in uniform

even say whether they are Republican or Democrat, and if they do,

often it is whispered like a secret; the final case of “Don’t Ask, Don’t

Tell,” if you will.

Soldiers will spend years with a comrade and never know his

political leanings. Some generals refuse to vote, a signal that they

will obey whoever is commander-in-chief.

But in the course of the 2016 campaign it is clear that the nation’s

political polarization has seeped into the military, particularly after

Wednesday’s debate, which focused on national security.

None of the candidates’ proposals appeared to gain traction at the

building Wednesday.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz announced that he wanted a bombing

campaign on places like Raqqa, Syria—ISIS’s capital—that was both


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indiscriminate—he used the term “carpet bombing”—and ultra-

precise.

“You would carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of

the troops. You use air power directed—and you have embedded

special forces to direction the air power. But the object isn’t to level

a city. The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists,” Cruz said.

“Did you hear what Cruz said? How the hell do we do prick point

carpet bombing?” asked one service member Wednesday to a

colleague.

“Like we can just level a city,” responded another.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he would shoot down Russian

jets flying in a no-fly zone that would be in place over Syria under

his presidency.

“I remember the no fly zone over Iraq [during the 1990’s]. That was

so expensive,” one Air Force officer responded about the proposal.

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson suggested that flattening ISIS-controlled

cities would be “merciful,” even if it killed civilians as it would


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eliminate the threat.

“How does brain surgery prepare you to be president?” one Marine

asked.

And Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said “we need to destroy ISIS in the

caliphate” by investing in the military, but didn’t spell out how that

would happen.

Still another soldier said, “Good luck with that.”


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Bryan Woolston/Reuters

The young attorney promised swift justice for Charm City’s killer

cops, but she wound up with a mistrial on her first attempt. This

doesn’t look good.

The hero of Baltimore has a big zero on her hands.

Marilyn Mosby, the state’s attorney for Baltimore, could not get a

jury to convict police officer William Porter in the death of Freddie

Gray. After several days of jury deadlock, a judge declared a mistrial

Wednesday. Now it will be up to Mosby to try her luck again with

Porter, or press on with the cases against five other officers.

It’s a huge setback for Mosby’s reputation months after thousands

of people demonstrated and rioted in the streets and she stood on

the steps of a courthouse promising to put away these cops. Instead,


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she put on a lackluster case that included, among others issues,

withholding a key piece of evidence from the defense.

“I have heard your calls for ‘No justice, no peace,’” she said to news

cameras earlier in April. “However, your peace is sincerely needed

as I work to deliver justice on behalf of Freddie Gray.”

It is rare that a police officer is charged in the death of a suspect.

Many, who watched the case of Eric Garner and Michael Brown,

quickly learned how infrequently a grand jury votes to indict

members of law enforcement. The fact that six were indicted and set

for trial in Baltimore was an extraordinary development. However,

getting a conviction in all but the most exceptional cases is highly

unusual.

Mosby had to know this going in.

She and her team had to understand the inherent difficulty of

prosecuting members of law enforcement. After all, she is the

daughter of two retired, veteran police officers, and Mosby says she

comes from “five generations” of cops. The evidence must be tight

and the charges levied must be spot-on.


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At least in this first case, the prosecutor got both of those things

wrong.

Officer Porter faced a slew of charges, including involuntary

manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and

misconduct in office. During the trial, prosecutors were forced to

admit that Gray had a prior back injury that allegedly occurred the

month before he was arrested.

Wednesday afternoon, the 12-member jury was unable to reach a

unanimous verdict and deadlocked on all counts.

Gray, who was 25, sustained what a medical examiner called a

“devastating” injury to his neck and spinal cord, lingering in a

hospital for a week until he died. The city paid Gray’s family $6.4

million before the family even sued them.

The 35-year-old Mosby—one of the youngest lead prosecutors in the

country—has been roundly criticized by police unions for bringing

charges against the officers who they said were being punished for

doing their jobs.

Wednesday afternoon, the 12-member jury was unable to reach a


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unanimous verdict and deadlocked on all counts. Some legal

observers thought Porter would be acquitted altogether.

“I’ve cringed when other analysts have said, ‘Oh, yeah, they’ll be

found guilty in #FreddieGray,’” attorney Eric Guster tweeted. “I

thought differently.”

Mosby must now decide whether to retry or abandon the case

against Porter. Five other officers, who were indicted along with

Porter, will stand trial separately. But, the implications of today’s

ruling are clear:

No one may ever be convicted in the death of Freddie Gray.

There is no doubt—at least in my mind—that Gray should be alive

today. We can debate the legality of his stop, arrest, treatment, and

even the propriety of the individual charges. But, once in custody,

those officers were obligated to ensure his safety. Somebody did not

buckle him into that uncushioned, metal-lined van. Somebody, I

believe, wanted Freddie to have a “bumpy ride.”

Proving that, beyond a reasonable doubt, is the prosecutor’s job.

She failed.


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SPONSORED CONTENT

We looked at a day in the life of the magical Kris Kringle himself

versus the not-so-magical but equally spirited mall Santa by the


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numbers.

There are a few enduring questions for skeptical Santa Claus

truthers. For instance, how does he get around the world in 24

hours? Does he actually eat all those cookies and drink all that

milk? And does he have a permit for those reindeers?

According to the North American Aerospace Defense Command

(NORAD), which has been tracking him for 60 years now, Santa has

time to burn off the calories. After all, he doesn’t really travel

around the world in 24 hours.

“His trip seems to take 24 hours to us, but to Santa it might last

days, weeks or even months,” says a NORAD fact sheet, concluding

that this must mean that, “Santa somehow functions within his own

time-space continuum.”

This might seem like NORAD just can’t admit what they don’t know

(Santa physics!), but supposing this is true, it still leaves a number

of questions. So, here’s a bit of math:

Suppose that all 2 billion children in the roughly 1,568,987,103

households in the world somehow find redemption before the


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holiday season and get their names on the “Nice list” earning a spot

on Santa’s holiday itinerary. To reach all those houses, Santa would

have to cover about 196.9 million miles, or the entire surface area of

Earth.

Once Santa and his sleigh are the air, the reindeer do the bulk of the

work. Let’s say most of the houses he visits are a story tall. That’s a

15.7 billion-foot climb, but to stack the odds in his favor, we’ll say he

can go as fast as world speed climbing champion Danylo Boldyrev at

a rate of 8.76 feet per second. Very fast, but Santa would still be

clocking in a lot of overtime—4.9 million hours to be exact, or 560

years.

Santa theoretically consumes roughly 226 billion calories in

cookies alone.

Working against Santa’s cross (continental) fit regimen are the

sugary offerings of 2 billion grateful children, which we’ll equate to

roughly 226 billion calories. Factor in the milk—we’ll use 2%— and

that’s another 244 billion calories, or 470 billion calories total.

How does this, err, heavy caloric intake balance out against the


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benefits of chimney-climbing? With that exercise, Santa would burn

a whopping 4.46 billion calories—but still not enough to beat out the

dangers of a few million freshly baked snickerdoodles. The only way

Santa has a chance of being able to fit into his iconic red suit next

year? He’ll need to ditch the sled and walk his route which would

take 49 million hours and burn about 20.3 billion calories.

Those are the numbers for the myth—sorry, kids, the legend—but

what about the man? Or, more accurately, the men? Every year,

hundreds of people dress up as Santa to bring a little bit of joy into

children’s lives. “Santa RG,” as he’s known in the mall Santa world,

is one of them.

With backtracking and hiding from children with insomnia, Santa

covers about 196.9 million miles, or the entire surface area of the

Earth.

RG is employed through the Noerr Programs, a company that

specializes in dispatching Santas nationwide, and is currently based

in that classic winter wonderland, Austin, TX. This will be his ninth

year as a mall Santa, but his history as St. Nick began in 1981. “It

was kind of an accident, I really kind of got drafted into it,” RG says.


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“But I tell you, the first time some kid came running across the

clubhouse and jumped in my lap and hugged my neck, I was

hooked.”

The holiday season can get pretty busy for a mall Santa, with the day

starting around 8 or 9 AM and sometimes stretching until 10 PM. “I

give a lot of consideration to my health,” RG says. “I try to get

adequate rest, eat a good breakfast, take vitamins and minerals and

supplements, and I do some mental preparation usually when I first

get up.”

When it’s particularly busy, RG says he loses count of how many

children visit him every day, but thinks the numbers reach into the

hundreds. He normally takes about four breaks per day to walk

around, about 800 yards (or, roughly 960 steps) to and from the

dressing area on average. He’ll occasionally also walk around and

interact with passersby at the edge of the set. All told, a whole day

might involve anywhere from half a mile to a mile of walking (that’s

about 2,112 to 3,168 steps), averaging about 100 calories burned

just during breaks. It’s a far cry from the official Santa’s workout,

but RG works just as hard at providing care and attention to the

children who visit him: “Except for the break time,” RG says, “I’m


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there in the chair waiting, talking to children.”

For RG, who has a background working in child welfare, the kids

make it all worth it. He loves working with them and listening to

their requests. And these days, it’s Star Wars and Disney

princesses. No surprise there: according to the NPD Group, the

Disney movie Frozen had over 300 different types of toys and sold

made $513 million in 2014. There are 96 different types of Star

Wars toys in the Hasbro Force Friday catalog alone, and most of

those are action figures.

RG has noticed that recently, though, many children aren’t only

concerned with toys. Rather, they’ll ask after the wellbeing of

others. “They’ll be asking more for happy Christmas for children

that are less fortunate,” RG says, “or what really gets me is they’ll

ask for their family to be safe and happy and together at Christmas.”

Even though a mall Santa might not be putting in the same number

of hours as the “real” Santa, his work is just as important. And, after

the holidays are over, he’ll have almost as much work to do to get

into shape for next year.


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Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty

While Rome officials fret over terror and ISIS, fraudsters are trying

to make a killing on the Holy Jubilee by selling fraudulent blessings

and tickets to free events.


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VATICAN CITY — The labyrinth of cobbled streets crisscrossing the

famed Borgo Pio near St. Peter’s Square have always been among

this city’s most unholy. It is here where kitsch meets irreverence on

the sacred souvenir market, with items like pope soap-on-a-rope

and bobblehead Pope Francis sculptures for sale alongside Virgin

Mary prayer cards and bedazzled Mother Teresa rosaries.

These streets are also where anti-corruption cops recently

discovered a rocking business in fake papal blessings and other

counterfeit religious relics tied to the Jubilee year of Mercy

inaugurated by Francis last week. The sting operation, dubbed

Jubilaeum, netted more than 1 million fake trinkets in the week

since the event started. “It’s not just about security for fear of ISIS,”

Renato Fisichella, head of the Jubilee organizing committee, said

last week. “There has to be security to watch out for people’s

dignity.”

The Vatican is especially concerned with the discovery of some

3,500 counterfeit parchments (valued at more than $75,000)

purporting to hold special papal blessings—they were actually

produced in a makeshift print shop in the back of a souvenir store

near the Vatican gates. The genuine blessed parchments are


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produced inside Vatican City and are only available from authorized

souvenir shops for around $10-$25, with proceeds going to papal

charities. And they actually do contain papal blessings for events

like births, weddings, and anniversaries, written in a fancy typeface

for which the Vatican holds the patent.

Unsuspecting pilgrims who purchased the knockoffs written in a

lesser calligraphic script were even asked to complete a form with

their personal details, which the shifty vendors promised to submit

in the Holy See benediction register in line with the real blessing

procedure. A stack of completed cards was discovered along with

the fakes. Authorities have no idea how many fake blessings were

sold before the racket was discovered. “I can’t believe anyone would

sell a fake blessing,” a shopkeeper selling linen dishtowels with

crosses and the likeness of the Virgin Mary on the Borgo Pio told

The Daily Beast. “That is one step too far.”

Authorities also discovered more than 500 other religious gadgets

containing unauthorized papal seals being sold as originals, as well

as vendors selling tickets for free events. One shop even sold tickets

to walk through the Vatican’s newly opened Holy Doors even

though there is no entrance charge, and there is no one to give the


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fake tickets to once pilgrims pass through the security controls.

Pilgrims who do walk through the doors at any time during the Holy

Jubilee year are granted an indulgence if they are pure of heart and

follow up crossing the threshold with a heart-felt confession. The

holy year indulgences are thought to lessen the load of penance for

sins that have been forgiven and faithful believe they can even

knock off time in purgatory for those who get stuck on their way to

heaven.

Police say they have written nearly 9,000 complaints against

businesses involved in the various rackets, including one in which a

shop was selling medicine promising to cure cancer through divine

intervention. Many of the counterfeit goods are reportedly sold to

stores by either Chinese or Senegalese gangs who run a sort of do-it-

yourself business in fake holy goods, assembling them as supply

demands.

“The Jubilee has been attacked by crooks and fraudsters,” said

Italy’s Interior Minister, Angelino Alfano, when he announced the

results of the Jubilaeum sting operation. “And we were prepared for

the contrary.”


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“The Jubilee has been attacked by crooks and fraudsters and we

were prepared for the contrary.”

North End Productions


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The Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker discusses his new film

‘Where to Invade Next,’ gun violence in America, the Sandy Hook

anniversary, and his anti-Trump campaign.

Trump Tower is, in many ways, a 68-story monument to the

hypocrisy of Donald Trump. The Midtown Manhattan monstrosity,

whose gold entryway sign bearing his name screams off-Strip Vegas

casino, used concrete from a firm owned by the Genovese and

Gambino crime families. It was built by 200 undocumented Polish

immigrants who claimed they were paid meager off-the-book

wages. And if that weren’t enough, Haitian dictator Jean-Claude

“Baby Doc” Duvalier, who massacred thousands of his people, used

to be the proud owner of apartment 54-K, while Prince Mutaib bin

Abdulaziz Al Saud, a senior member of the Saudi royal family, owns

an entire floor in the building.

Thus, it was the perfect setting for Michael Moore’s latest stunt:

Yesterday, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker/provocateur

stood outside the tacky erection with a sign that read “We Are All

Muslim.” The 61-year-old did so in order to protest the Republican

presidential candidate’s proposal to ban all Muslims from entering

the U.S. in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting. One of the


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shooters, Tashfeen Malik, likely became radicalized in Saudi Arabia.

A day before, I sat down with Moore at a downtown office to discuss

his Trump sneak attack, as well as his new documentary Where to

Invade Next—a travelogue of sorts that follows Moore as he visits

foreign countries like Italy, Finland, and Norway to observe their

quality of life compared to ours. The film exudes Moore’s trademark

humor, and has been shortlisted for the Best Documentary Oscar.

What convinced you to take the show on the road? Were

you frustrated with the quality of living in America?

Why does Slovenia have things we don’t? We are the richest

country. We have incredible resources at our disposal. So why don’t

we have the things that these other countries have? I wanted to find

out why. The things we think we should have—free universal

healthcare, free university, a different attitude towards

drugs—how’s it working in those places where they’re trying

something different? It seems to be working pretty well. Pretty,

pretty well.

Although some of the countries you visited in the film,


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like Italy, aren’t doing so well. Italy’s economy is in

shambles.

Yeah, but we’re in the midst of… 320 mass shootings in the United

States this year alone?

I believe San Bernardino was No. 353. The epidemic of

mass shootings reminds me of your Bowling for

Columbine, which was sadly quite—

—Prescient. I don’t take it as a compliment. I said it to the MPAA

last week when I was appealing the R rating on this film, I said, “I

came in here 13 years ago and you gave Bowling for Columbine an

R rating because you didn’t want teenagers to look at a school

shooting.” And back then it was once or twice a year, and now it’s

once or twice a month. So how did that work out, not showing our

kids all of these mass shootings?

I don’t understand why people are allowed to purchase

assault rifles like the AR-15 that was used in the San

Bernardino, Oregon, and Aurora shootings, or the

Bushmaster that was used in Sandy Hook. These weapons


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are not for hunting or self-defense.

“...if they ever showed the crime scene photos of Sandy Hook, that

would be the end of the NRA that night—to see the heads of 20

first-graders blown off.”

It’s to kill humans—that’s what they’re used for. The deer are not

armed, so you do not need an assault rifle because the deer are not

shooting back. There’s an absolute conspiracy among the gun

manufacturers and the NRA to have this be the way it is. Everyone

acknowledges that. It’s our job to get the debate focused on what it

needs to be focused on. The other day was the three-year

anniversary of Sandy Hook. At the time I said I wouldn’t want this

to happen to the parents, but if they ever showed the crime scene

photos of Sandy Hook, that would be the end of the NRA that

night—to see the heads of 20 first-graders blown off.

Seriously, what would happen if they showed the security cam

footage of 20 six-year-olds being mowed down? What do you think

would happen? Because I’ll tell you something: That three-year-old

that washed up on a beach in Turkey this summer? That was the

end of that. Every country stopped prohibiting refugees from


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coming in, and welcomed them. They couldn’t take it. People

respond to the visual image. What I do for a living has a huge

impact.

In the wake of a mass shooting, the left tends to focus on

guns while the right tends to try and steer the

conversation away from guns by talking about mental

health, even though in the wake of the Charleston

shooting, the GOP shot down the Dems’ proposed

amendment for the CDC to study the underlying causes of

gun violence.

The shooter at Sandy Hook’s dad was the vice president of GE. He

had perfect health insurance. He was seeing two shrinks. So, it

wasn’t that he was without mental health help. There’s a bigger

problem here.

A typical argument on the right is, “Well, if they were

armed the violence would have been prevented, or greatly

diminished.”

I know the answer to it, by the way—the question of, “What if they


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were armed?” See, life is not a movie. It’s very hard to hit somebody

when you’re firing a gun and you’re an untrained civilian. If you’re a

gun owner and you’re buying it for protection, you have to go to the

range every Saturday, or every other Saturday. You have to be

trained, and keep training yourself, to be able to use that gun

properly. If you’re worried about an invader in your home in the

middle of the night, to wake up out of a dead sleep, in the dark, grab

a gun and think you’re going to hit something? It’s the nuttiest idea.

It’s just plain nutty.

Or there’s the rhetoric of Donald Trump. In the wake of

the terrorist attacks on Paris, he said he witnessed

“thousands of Muslims” in New Jersey cheering as the

Twin Towers fell. Of course, this is a bold-faced lie. The

footage he saw came from Palestine. We all saw it.

Yeah. It was about 20 people in Palestine. I can see the footage in

my head!

Then, in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, he said

all Muslims should be banned from entering the country.

This type of rhetoric is not helping our cause, but instead


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pulling us ever closer to a global conflict between the West

and the Muslim World, which is exactly what ISIS wants.

I wrote Trump a letter. I’m going to see what he does in the debate

tonight. If he doesn’t walk it back, I’m going to post the letter. I’m

also going to go down to one of his buildings, stand there with a sign

outside—I can’t tell you what’s on it, but it will be good—and have

myself photographed with it.

What are the contents of the letter?

I describe the first time we met in the ’90s. We were in a greenroom

for Roseanne’s talk show, and Trump was afraid to go out on the

sofa with me. And remember this is the ’90s, so I’m still very

Michigan-based. The producer says, “Mr. Trump is very worried

about going out there on the show with you, because he thinks you

might rip him apart.” I said, “I’m from Michigan. All I know about

him is his name is on a lot of things.” I said, “Do you want me to go

talk to him just to calm him down a little bit?” She said, “Yeah, I’d

really appreciate that.” So I go up to him and say, “Hey, I’m Michael

Moore. She said you were a bit worried about me. You don’t have

anything to worry about, we’re just going out to have some fun with


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Roseanne.” He goes, “Oh, well I just don’t want…” blah blah. I’m

thinking, “Man, what a big wuss!”

For someone as allegedly self-confident as he, Trump does

seem to be remarkably thin-skinned. Every time someone

criticizes him he lashes out.

All men have estrogen in them. We all have a bit of estrogen in us.

Sometimes, I’ve noticed in our gender the guys who have to do a lot

of huffing and puffing, they may be better embracing the female

side of themselves. They may be a little happier. He might be one of

those people.

So, you said you went to the MPAA to contest this film’s R

rating and invoked Bowling for Columbine’s R rating.

How did that go?

They also gave Roger & Me an R rating because a little bunny rabbit

got clubbed. When you think of my films, it’s hard to think “R.” The

first thing I said to them was, we know from our own research that

the studio will make more money if this is an R rated film, so I’m

arguing against our own financial interests here by asking you to


32 of 33 17/Dec/2015 10:23 PM

rate it PG-13. A teenager should not have to have their parents go

with them to watch this. There are some F-bombs, which kids hear

all the time, the nudity is a second and a half and it’s old people

getting into a hot tub. The violence is Eric Garner being killed by the

NYPD on the sidewalks of Staten Island, which has been on the

news. And we show drug use in Portugal without consequences, or

punishment.

Do you feel it’s the source—or message—that’s the issue?

That you’re being targeted by the MPAA?

If this were released by the Baptist Church, it would get a PG-13. I’m

held to a different standard because they’re smart enough to know

that within the film—it’s not visible, but it’s there for the whole two

hours—there’s a fuse, and the audience is getting angrier and

angrier watching how people get to live in these other countries, and

they know what I’m up to. I’m up to igniting the population to rise

up and demand the American Dream—not a dream, but a reality.

yipee! an advertisement


33 of 33 17/Dec/2015 10:23 PM

pentagon officers_ we quit if trump wins

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