 The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you. You sad pathetic humps. The House passes a 2000 page budget bill averting a government shutdown. Is this a victory for the new speaker Paul Ryan? Are we ushering in an era of bipartisanship in Washington, D.C.? Bernie Sanders gets slapped on the wrist by the Democratic Party. Is the DNC circling the wagons for Hillary? And I hope I'm not pronouncing his name properly. Martin Shkreli, the drug kingpin, is arrested. What's his connection to the Democrats? For all this, we are joined by Howie Klein. He is the founder and treasurer of the Blue America Pack, which raises money for progressive candidates. And he also writes the down with tyranny blog. Howie, should we be happy about the new budget bill? Well, no. The new budget bill, according to the omnibus, could have been worse. There were a lot of very, very right-wing Republicans saying, we control the House, we control the Senate, let's defund Planned Parenthood, let's do this horrible thing, let's do that horrible thing. So it could have been worse. But it's still really, really bad. So no, we should not be happy about it. People say, well, this is the best deal that could have been made in a democracy. You have to compromise. So that may be true. People I like and respect voted for it. Other people I like and respect voted against it. What's in the bill that should make your side our side happy? The best way to look at that actually, funny enough, is through the eyes of Rush Limbaugh. Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh had an absolute fit on the radio. He went completely insane complaining about what was in the bill and how this bill was going to be the end of America as he knows it and loves it or hates it or whatever he thinks about it. So he had a long list of everything that's wrong with the bill from the point of view of the right wing. So that would be the things that we care about. But a lot of that is just really the, what I was just talking about when I was saying it could have been worse. So in other words, there were Republicans who wanted to put in a lot of really terrible things into the bill and they didn't get in. So there's nothing really positive. There are a lot of really bad things in the bill. There are a lot of kind of bad things in the bill. To me, the worst thing, well, there are a lot of, I can't even say what the single worst thing is, but there's a domestic spying provision that was put in there. That's the worst domestic spying provision that we've ever had. So there's that. There is also, and the bill had like two parts, the thing that got passed this morning and then coming, they got passed yesterday. The thing that got passed yesterday was called tax extenders. And what that does basically is give lots and lots and lots of money in the form of tax reductions to wealthy Republicans and their supporters. And they also were able to fend off the cut in financing for Planned Parenthood, right? Yes, yes. But that isn't a positive thing. That's preventing the negative thing. Right. So there were lots of preventions of negative things. They did some damage to Obamacare. It could have been worse. But do you count that as a good, that we kept them just doing a little bit of harm to Obamacare instead of a lot of harm to Obamacare? I mean, it's a funny thing when you start talking about this type of an omnibus bill because it's bad. But the whole idea of something that could have been worse, that doesn't do it. I mean, Ryan himself was bragging that one of the things they accomplished was a repeal of the oil export ban. So the oil export ban is something that progressives wanted to hold on to. They didn't want the idea of exporting oil. Let's keep the oil in case we need it someday. Or let's keep the oil in the ground so that we don't cause more global warming, this kind of thing. But the Republicans wanted what the Republican, the oil companies, the finance Republican politicians, what they wanted was the ability to sell lots and lots and lots of oil to China. That's really what they were looking for, and they got it. And that was when Ryan went to his members and told them why they should vote for this thing, that was number one on his list. So that's something that they really wanted, that Democrats and progressives really wanted to prevent. Now remember, Ryan got 150 Republicans to vote for it this morning, which is still less than Bainter got on the last two omnibuses that he did before they kicked him out. I mean, he had 162 and 166 on his last two omnibuses. So, you know, Ryan just said what his goal was was to have a majority of the Republicans vote for it. He got it. He got a majority of Republicans to vote for it. Lifting the 40-year-old ban on oil exports, isn't that a giveaway to solar and wind in that we're flooding the markets now with more oil, which is going to lower the price of oil worldwide. And doesn't that... That doesn't do anything to help solar and wind. Well, it helps solar and wind in that it makes the oil companies less likely to drill. Right? They have fewer lower profits. So they stop... The amount of money from the analysis that I heard on the radio the other day is less than a penny. It's not a significant amount of money. Right. I mean, like I said, that was one example that he was bragging about. You know, he also said it keeps funding from some funding from Obamacare. It prevents the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to American soil. There were a bunch of things that harmed the EPA and other regulatory organizations that Republicans hate so much. You know, they're always trying to keep the hands of the people who do regulations tied so that industries don't get regulated so that they can do anything they want, dump toxic waste into rivers and streams, for example. So to them, that's a big deal. And they were able to accomplish that in this. Let's turn to Paul Ryan and the 2016 congressional race. Is he being responsible? He averted a government shutdown. Is that correct? Are we ending a period of sequester? Supposedly, there is some... I mean, according to how we read, there is going to be some lessening of sequester. I don't know that for... I have to read that portion very carefully and see what they actually did there. Are the Republicans ushering in a new era, or at least for the next year, a period of governance where they're showing that they have ideas, that they're not about shutting down the government, that Paul Ryan, who many say now is the most powerful person in Washington, D.C., is demonstrating to voters that they can make Congress work and he's going to save the historic congressional majority for the Republicans in 2016? I mean, I think that what you've just enunciated is exactly what Paul Ryan wants people to be saying, but it doesn't make it true. What Paul Ryan is going to try to do is to present this very, very negative Republican vision of governance as a positive thing. It doesn't work. He still wants to cut Social Security benefits and privatize Medicare and do everything he can to fly in the... I mean, to him, the great Satan is the new deal. And a Republican vision of governance is getting rid of the new deal and going back to the growing 20s. That's what Paul Ryan would like to accomplish. He can't say that. That isn't going to work. So he puts it in terms that make people think that he's preventing a government shutdown or something like that. Obama gave him a tip of the hat today, saying that he did a good job on getting this thing passed. And it was like I said, it was a compromise. It's unfortunate. It doesn't... Maybe it was the best that the Democrats could have gotten. Maybe it was the best the Republicans could have gotten. Well, are the Democrats... The word is, this is what the optimists are saying, they're saying that if Trump or Cruz gets the nomination, they're going to drag down the entire party and that the Democrats will regain the house despite cherrymandering. No chance that the Democrats will regain the house. They will regain the Senate, but they could regain the Senate no matter who's nominated, just because of what seats are up. So the Democrats are looking at regaining the Senate. Yes, in terms of the house, they will probably make some inroads into the Republican majority, but there's no possibility under any circumstances of them taking back the house basically because of the incompetence of the DCCC, their recruitment strategies. For example, I'll just give you one example. You can name any state in the country and I can give you examples. But let's just take Ohio. Everyone acknowledges that Ohio is a very important state. And that if Trump or Cruz is the nominee, and whether it be Bernie or the establishment of Democratic candidate, what's her name, no matter which one of them it is, they are going to beat Trump or Cruz and probably by a very, very, very big margin. So you think, oh, well, the Democrats probably have taken that into account and have recruited some amazing candidates. And the answer to that is no, they haven't recruited one, not one, not one, not one single person. And yesterday, the, what do you call it, the deadline, yesterday the deadline passed for recruiting candidates. So in other words, here we have one of the most important states in the country, the tons of Republicans, the Democrats are gonna probably win the state and there's not a single Democratic congressional candidate running against any of those Republicans. So your theory, although it's a good theory with the incompetence of the D triple C, the sheer incompetence of the D triple C, which you, I mean, you can't look at this thing year after year after year without scratching your head and saying, is Steve Israel working for the Republicans? Right. Could no one could be as incompetent as this? Why is Nancy Pelosi allowing him to still run this thing? They've lost 70 seats. How is he still running it? I thought he stepped aside. He, he's now the, you know, there's a new chairman who we portray on my blog as a sock puppet. So Israel still runs it, although he has a different title now, he's not chairman anymore, but he's still running it. He's still making the day to day decisions. He's still pretty much in charge. And the Indusil, Ben Ray Lujan who's running it now is just some dumb guy who's never Israel to do. What is the DSCC? And what is their relationship to Mr. Shkreli? Well, the DSCC is the Senate version of the D triple C. So the D triple C is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The DSCC is the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Their job is to keep the Democrats who are in the Senate reelected to keep them being reelected and to and to recruit and to help elect new candidates. So that's what it is. And in terms of Shkreli, as I mentioned the other day in my blog, he gave a great deal of money to them. I think it was something between 30 and $35,000 just recently. So it wasn't like, you know, I mean, some time ago, years ago, he gave money to Hillary Clinton. He gave money to Mitt Romney. He gave money to all sorts of people that he thought would be helpful and useful to him while he was doing the crimes. So in other words, in real time, he was committing all these crimes. He knew probably that at some point they would catch up to him like they did yesterday when he got arrested and he wanted to buy some political friends. So if you want political friends, you give them big donations. So, you know, there's no one that you're going to be able to get to who's more corrupt and more vile in the Senate than Chuck Schumer. He is the epitome of vile and he is the top Democrat in the Senate coming up as Harry relieves. He was the former chairman of the DSCC. Now he's going to be the Democratic leader of the Senate. And he's got a little sock puppet of his own named John Tester, who runs the DSCC. And Shkreli gave them, I think it was $32,000. They didn't return that money to him. They didn't give him that money back. They knew he was a criminal, but they didn't give the money back. When Shkreli gave that gave a couple of grand to Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders was outraged and the same day that that check came in, he was on TV yelling about it and donating it to a clinic like that gets medicine for people who can't afford medicine because of criminals like Shkreli. Right. And now Bernie Sanders got his hands slapped today by the DNC. What did he do and why is the DNC going after him? Well, the DNC is I mean, as Jim Webb tweeted today, Jim Webb, the former senator, conservative, Democrat, former senator of Virginia, a guy who is in the Reagan cabinet, but somehow is a Democrat as well. As he tweeted today, the DNC is just an offshoot of the Hillary Clinton campaign. They do whatever they can to do to undermine and sabotage Bernie Sanders. I mean, Hillary Clinton, who has 100 percent name recognition, doesn't need any any debates, is very, very happy that they're debating tomorrow, the Saturday before Christmas. I mean, the Republicans haven't had any Saturday debates. That's what the Democrats do. They sat they have Saturday night debates right before Christmas when there'll be no one who will be watching it. That's what Hillary wants. And that's what Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who's the hard head of the DNC, the Democratic National Committee. That's what she does to try to make things go better for Hillary. I mean, it's interesting that this should have happened the day after Bernie Sanders hit the two million donor mark, hit, got an endorsement from DFA and got an endorsement from the communication workers of America. Those groups pulled in their members. So in other words, the kind of labor unions that don't pull in members like Liuna, the laborers union, they just get some corrupt boss. And he says, we are endorsing Hillary Clinton. End of story. The union members have nothing to do with it. Whereas the communication workers of America, they voted. And they voted almost 90 percent for Bernie. That's why they got it. That's why Bernie got endorsed. The postal workers of America, they voted, they voted for Bernie. All the unions that let their members vote are going for Bernie, the ones that are ruled authoritatively. Those are those are the ones that are delivered to the Clinton machine. Right. DFA voted. Their members voted to 200, 270,000 members voted. And Bernie got 89 percent of the votes, 89 percent. Right. They've endorsed Bernie. So the day after this all comes down, suddenly Debbie Wasserman Schultz brings something up that happened last October when a Bernie staffer noticed that that the vendor who supposedly is in charge of keeping all this data safe didn't put up the right firewalls or something. And Bernie, Bernie's campaign immediately reported it. This is something that happened yesterday. It's something that happened in October. And Bernie reported this to the DNC, the DNC sat on it and then released it the day after Bernie's had this big success. And the day before they're having their Saturday before Christmas debate. Apparently, the DNC is shutting down Bernie's access to have shut down. Yeah, that's his own voter file. So all of the work that Bernie's campaign has done in terms of contacts addresses phone numbers, what they're going to be doing in New Hampshire, what they're going to be doing in Iowa, what they're going to be doing in South Carolina, the DNC has seized that and is refusing to turn it over to Bernie's campaign, which is why Bernie's campaign is saying that they're going to sue them in court. And so tomorrow night, is it going to be heated? What should we be looking for? It could be heated. I don't I hope so. I, you know, Bernie has a long career in politics. He's never been negative, must be hard for him to, you know, bite his tongue and not go after that monster that he's running against. I think he's realizing what she really is and what she represents. But I don't know that he'll do it. I watched Donald Trump last night with some friends. Just watch the speech. I think he's replacing Reagan as the great communicator. I've never seen a candidate who just gets up and talks extemporaneously. Is conspiratorial, makes you think you're smarter than you are, even though he's basically an idiot. I just don't see how anyone can beat this guy. He's, you know, it's interesting. They ran his vocabulary through some system. And it turns out he's speaking directly to fourth graders. Yeah. Yeah. All of his speeches, you put them all together. You put all the words he uses, all that stuff. It's very scientific and it comes up as someone talking to fourth graders. So he's too smart for the Republican Party. No, I don't know that he's smarter or he's an idiot. I have no idea. I mean, maybe that's the way he talks. So maybe he's really, really smart and because this is what my audience is. And I'll cater to that. I don't know the answer to that. I was making a joke. I was saying fourth grade was too high. For most Republicans. How he climbed is the founder and treasurer of the Blue America pack. And he writes the down with tyranny blog as always. Thank you. My pleasure. This is the David Feldman radio network. Joining us is our resident film critic, Michael Snyder. He will be talking about the following film Star Wars, Son of Saul, the Big Short and Macbeth Star Wars opens tonight today. How is it? Well, it actually opened for me a week ago because I had the good fortune to catch it as an advanced screening. And of course, there was heavy security. There were people glowering at us and many, many wristbands to get into the actual screening. And guess what? It is, in fact, the best of the Star Wars movies since the Empire Strikes Back, which was the second released. And if you're thinking chronologically, when you look at the prequels and what have you, it was the fifth of the films. And this is the seventh episode seven, The Force Awakens. And it is under the purview now of J.J. Abrams, who appear appears to be Hollywood's go to outer space franchise guy now having revitalized Star Trek with kind of a reboot that he did a few years back, followed by the way by a kind of half ass sequel to that. He has taken the reins from George Lucas and his company, Bad Robot, is even listed in the it's the shingle before the movie actually starts. It says a Bad Robot production, although, of course, Lucasfilm gets the big fancy logo at the top and it is rather good. And I'm wondering why is it so good? Why am I enjoying this so well? Is it just the return of a admittedly more elderly Han Solo played by Harrison Ford, Princess Leia played by Carrie Fisher and Luke Skywalker played by Mark Hamill? Is it that? No. What it is is Lucas not only didn't direct, he didn't have anything to do with the script. The script is the work of J.J. Abrams. But I think primarily it's so entertaining and charming and witty and clever and properly plotted because Lawrence Kasdan was a major force in writing the script, as was Michael Arndt, who was responsible for Little Miss Sunshine. Now Kasdan is the guy who wrote one of the greatest Hollywood scripts ever, Raiders of the Lost Ark. He also wrote what is generally considered the best of the Star Wars movies, which is Empire Strikes Back. And he's in the mix here. And I have to tell you it introduces new characters. It catches up with familiar ones like the ones we already mentioned years down the line and because they've all gotten older and because this has set the exact same number of years after they actually completed their last Star Wars movie. There's a real vitality and resonance and continuity going on here. And admittedly this movie without any spoilers, this movie does parallel in a lot of ways. The first film that it was ever released, which was again chronologically episode for A New Hope, where we first meet Han Solo, Luke and Leia. And that's not a problem. The supporting actors and the new actors, all good. I have to point out John Boyega, who is an Afro-Brit actor, who was one of the stars of the incredibly clever science fiction film Attack the Block, which is about aliens invading a poor council block in London and meeting a bunch of gang members that give them more than they bargain for. He's in here as a stormtrooper who decides he doesn't want to lead that life, doesn't want to be a part of the the Empire's return in what they call the first order and gives it all up and goes on the run. Daisy Ridley plays a young woman who is a scavenger named Ray, who ends up being embroiled in all of this. And Adam Driver, who most people know as the boyfriend of Lena Dunham's character on Girls, he plays basically the big bad, who is this horrible kind of Darth Vader wannabe by the name of Kylo Ren. Plus you get a guy who's been in every movie this year, it seems like Domino Bleson as a kind of new general in the, I guess we'd call it, the return of the of the Empire. Are there any important themes addressed in this movie? Well, yeah, that might be relevant to, let's say, the election coming up. Well, clearly, Donald Trump is, again, this, this generation's Darth Vader. No, you can reflect anything you want into this. You can look at it and read any political allegory you like. But it's basically about freedom versus oppression. So in that regard, maybe you have something. But the effects are pretty fine. It moves along. Like I said, there's a lot of wit. Harrison Ford is so charismatic and entertaining. And this was one of his greatest film roles, one of his earliest as well. And though he's great as has his wookie companion Chewbacca, yet there's a little gray on that fur. He really, he still brings it. Oh, come on. This is years later. Did they really put gray on it? Yeah, a little bit. Chewbacca is gray at the temples. Okay. I tell you what, I really enjoyed it. That's all I'll say. Okay. Son of Saul. Son of Saul is the exact antithesis of this. Instead of fantasy, it is the horrible and harsh reality of life in Auschwitz in 1944. Where in we meet Saul, who was a Hungarian prisoner, who is part of what they call the Sander commandos, which is, he's a Jew that has been tasked by his Nazi captors to basically shepherd new Jewish arrivals to the concentration camp to their deaths. And it is, you know, you think about previous films that dealt with concentration camp life, like Life is Beautiful, Roberto Benini's strange mixture of warmth, whimsy and horror. And that, you know, that of course seems ridiculous now by comparison. This is close in. It's shot in a film aspect ratio that's more like a square old time movie ratio, black and white, and incredibly visceral, incredibly brutal. And in the circumstance, when he's like trying to deal with with getting these people bringing them to their deaths, he tries to help the this boy that is kind of a survivor of the gas. And the scientists want to and the Nazi medicos want to work on them and see why. And he's trying basically to save the kid. And it's powerful stuff. Again, you know, it's not fun. Laszlo Nemez is the guy who wrote and directed it. It is a Hungarian film. But man, high marks and running out of time very, very quickly. We let's get to the big short and Macbeth very quickly. Sure. The big short is basically my favorite film of the year. Yeah, it's hard to believe that Adam McKay who directed the anchorman movies and other silly wolf feral comedies is behind this incredibly fascinating movie about the prescient but derided brokers and speculators who predicted the housing mortgage and banking crisis that triggered the 2008 recession. But this is a crackling I wouldn't call it the docu comedy inspired script peppered with wit note perfect casting the standout work from Christian Bale Steve Carell Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt and great cameos and the most educational film about this ever imagined. Absolutely. We know nobody understands how we got into this mess and they do a magnificent job explaining it. Macbeth I saw Macbeth. I have to say it's beautiful. It's stunning. I couldn't understand a single word they were saying. Well, come on, they're speaking the king's English and the king, of course, is Macbeth who was actually a thing and he becomes the king by killing his own King King Duncan and of course, another fantastic performance by Michael fast pender as Macbeth and as Lady Macbeth knocking it out of the park, Marianne Cotillard. I don't think she's got enough recognition for a great performance of the ambitious Lady Macbeth directed by Justin Curzel. Look, you know, shot out there in the wilderness like in the Highlands. It's beautiful. It's beautiful to look at but not enough Shakespeare. They did cut it out here and there. No double double toil and trouble and that's it. That's it, man. That's insane. That's insane. That's basically kind of quasi funny. Alright, Michael Snyder is our resident film critic. I'll talk to you next week. Thank you, sir. 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