The Conversation -- April 20, 2025
Vaughn Hillyard, et al., of NBC News: “Video from Friday night shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement buses full of Venezuelan migrants headed toward an airport in North Texas before abruptly turning around before the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must, for now, refrain from deporting Venezuelan men based in the state under the Alien Enemies Act. At least 28 detainees — most, if not all, understood to be Venezuelan nationals — were placed on buses Friday evening at ICE’s Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, and then driven toward Abilene Airport about 30 miles away. The motorcade — including at least 18 squad cars from various law enforcement agencies with flashing lights along the north Texas highways — left the ICE facility, with some men on board being told they were being deported to El Salvador and some told they were headed to Venezuela.... As the motorcade was headed for the airport, [District Judge James Boasberg was holding] a last-minute federal hearing on the matter.... 'We hear they are on buses on the way to the airport,' said Lee Gelernt, the lawyer for the ACLU ... [told Judge Boasberg].... Boasberg [then] asked Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign to make calls to ensure there were no flights deporting immigrants from Bluebonnet under the Alien Enemies Act on Friday night.... The Supreme Court heard the case overnight, after Boasberg declined to rule [on the case].” ~~~
~~~ Marie: As Mark Stern of Slate (linked below) noted, "... it is plain as day that the Supreme Court simply did not trust the Trump administration’s claims that it would not deport migrants over the weekend without due process." Clearly, the Supremes were right not to trust the Trump mob. One of them, however, did his best to aid and abet Trump's unlawful action: ~~~
~~~ Abbie VanSickle of the New York Times: “In his five-page dissent released on Saturday shortly before midnight, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that in his view, the court’s decision to intervene overnight was not 'necessary or appropriate.'... The order [to which Alito dissented] suggested a deep skepticism on the court about whether the Trump administration could be trusted to live up to the key part of an earlier ruling that said detainees were entitled to be notified if the government intended to deport them under the law, 'within a reasonable time,' and in a way that would allow the deportees to challenge the move.” MB: Moreover, Alito, who is the justice assigned to oversee the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas, had earlier declined to issue a stay and did not bring up the matter to the full Court. The ACLU had to go begging in the middle of the night. Clearly the Court's intervention was “necessary and appropriate.”
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Time for Some Easter Spuds! (Thanks to RAS for the link.) ~~~
~~~ But if you do choose old-fashioned Easter eggs, here's Eli Zabar's recipe for two "platonic" egg salad sandwiches (via the New York Times):
8 large eggs
Salt
Pepper
1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill
4 slices bread
Put the eggs in a medium pan and cover them with cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 10 minutes.
Place pan in the sink under cold running water until the eggs are cool.Peel the eggs. Remove the yolks from 4 of them (save the whites for another use). Chop the 4 yolks with the 4 remaining whole eggs.
In a medium bowl, gently and quickly mix the chopped eggs, mayonnaise, and salt and pepper to taste. Add the dill, mix the egg salad once more, and make into sandwiches.
You can use the leftover eggwhites for eggwhite salad.
Ben Johansen of Politico: “The White House’s annual Easter Egg Roll will have major corporations sponsoring activities this year, which ethics experts say would not have passed muster under previous administrations.... Ethics experts said the arrangement for Monday’s egg roll was highly unusual, and a break from tradition about not corporatizing the White House and its grounds.... The White House on Friday announced details for the annual event, which has taken place in some form for more than 100 years. Among the companies sponsoring stations are Amazon, Meta and YouTube — all tech companies whose leaders have sought a closer relationship with ... Donald Trump in his second term.
Jesus Jiménez & Minho Kim of the New York Times: “Thousands of protesters across the country once again took to the streets on Saturday to rally against ... [Donald] Trump and his policies, a sign of sustained resistance to his leadership just two weeks after cities and towns nationwide saw mass demonstrations.... In front of the White House, protesters repeatedly shouted a single word. 'Shame!'” The Washington Post's story is here.
Naftali Bendavid of the Washington Post: “Barack Obama urged Americans to resist ... Donald Trump’s bullying. Joe Biden warned that Trump is wrecking the 'sacred promise' of Social Security. Bill Clinton decried the emphasis on grievances and the need to dominate. In an extraordinary stretch of just over two weeks, three former presidents have taken to the public stage to sound the alarm against the current occupant of the White House, despite the tradition that former presidents generally refrain from publicly criticizing their successors. Obama, Biden and Clinton did not explicitly name Trump, but their message was unmistakable. The three Democrats said, as much by their presence as their words, that these are unusual times for American democracy, that norms are being disregarded and extraordinary measures are required. The only living president who has not spoken out since Inauguration Day is Republican George W. Bush, though he has made little secret of his antipathy for Trump.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Karoun Demirjian of the New York Times: “A number of prominent Republicans, including several former members of the first Trump administration, have signed an open letter decrying the president for using his power to punish two former administration officials who criticized him, likening his actions to those of a 'royal despot.'... The letter, signed by more than 200 people, criticized [Mr. Trump's] actions as part of a 'profoundly unconstitutional break' with precedent.” The letter, which is not firewalled, is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
David Sanger, et al., of the New York Times: “Iran and the United States wrapped up a second round of diplomatic talks over Tehran’s nuclear activities on Saturday, setting an agenda for rapid-paced negotiations that, according to Iranian officials, would not require the dismantlement of the country’s extensive nuclear infrastructure. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said after meeting Steve Witkoff..., [Donald] Trump’s envoy, that an expert group would meet in the coming days to discuss technical details, including setting the maximum levels to which Iran could enrich uranium, the size of nuclear stockpiles it could retain and how compliance with any agreement could be monitored and verified.” So, gosh, the emerging agreement looks a lot like John Kerry's nuclear agreement, which Trump “called a 'disaster' and ultimately ripped up in 2018.”
Edward Wong of the New York Times: “Edward Wong of the New York Times: “A draft White House executive order proposes a drastic restructuring of the State Department, including eliminating almost all of its Africa operations and shutting down embassies and consulates across the continent. The draft also calls for cutting offices at State Department headquarters that address climate change and refugee issues, as well as democracy and human rights concerns. The purpose of the executive order, which could be signed by ... [Donald] Trump this week, is to impose 'a disciplined reorganization' of the State Department and 'streamline mission delivery' while cutting 'waste, fraud and abuse,' according to a copy of the 16-page draft order obtained by The New York Times. The department is supposed to make the changes by Oct. 1. The signing of the executive order would be accompanied by efforts to lay off both career diplomats, known as foreign service officers, and civil service employees, who usually work in the department’s headquarters in Washington, said current and former U.S. officials familiar with the plans.... The draft executive order calls for ending the foreign service exam for aspiring diplomats, and it lays out new criteria for hiring, including 'alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision.'” ~~~
~~~ Marie: I'm going to guess that many of the State Department employees dedicated to working on sub-Saharan issues are African-Americans. So this is one way to get rid of a lot of Black federal workers while pretending no racial discrimination is at work here. Add to that the fact that Trump doesn't care about "shithole countries," and it's all a win-win for Trump.
Corruption Junction. Josh Marshall of TPM: "One of the most important stories in some time came out two days ago.... The game here is pretty straightforward. Trump and Musk are looking to hand some or all of the government’s $700 billion internal expense card program (SmartPay) over to Ramp. A bunch of the meetings were organized by Josh Gruenbaum, a private equity guy who Trump and Musk installed as chief acquisitions officer at the GSA.... The overall picture is a standard one: Come in, take over the data and financial architecture; discredit it by having your media arms dish out mountains of phony stories about fraud and abuse; fire all the employees and hand a cash-drenched, sweetheart contract to yours and your friends company." Read on. ~~~
~~~ Christopher Bing & Avi Asher-Schapiro of ProPublica: The General Services Administration "is eying [financial tech startup] Ramp to get a piece of the government’s $700 billion internal expense card program, known as SmartPay. In recent weeks, Trump appointees at GSA have been moving quickly to tap Ramp for a charge card pilot program worth up to $25 million, sources told ProPublica, even as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency highlights the multitudes of contracts it has canceled across federal agencies. Founded six years ago, Ramp is backed by some of the most powerful figures in Silicon Valley. One is Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who was one of Trump’s earliest supporters in the tech world and who spent millions aiding Vice President JD Vance’s Ohio Senate run.... To date, the company has raised about $2 billion in venture capital, according to startup tracking website Crunchbase, much of it from firms with ties to Trump and Musk [including Joshua Kushner, Jared's brother]."
Jonathan Edwards & Susan Svrluga of the Washington Post: “Harvard University on Saturday challenged anonymous Trump administration officials who said a mistake had sparked the escalating confrontation between a U.S. president and one of the country’s most prestigious colleges.... Harvard on Saturday ... point[ed] out that the Trump administration had 'doubled down' on its threats. After Harvard refused to comply with the letter’s demands, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal funding to the university and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status.” Related NYT story linked yesterday.
Adam Lynch of AlterNet: "The Daily Beast reports the Justice Department is helping ... Donald Trump with his personal appeal of a defamation award and leaving the attorney fees with taxpayers. In 2023, a federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse against advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay her $5 million. Instead, Trump continued to deny all allegations and appealed both cases. Later, in 2024, a a different federal jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages for defamatory comments he made denying allegations of sexual abuse that was already affirmed by the 2023 jury. Trump is still appealing that order, only now the Justice Department has moved to substitute itself as defendant in the Carroll v. Trump defamation case." (Also linked yesterday.)
Natalie Allison, et al., of the Washington Post: “Vice President JD Vance met with Pope Francis on Easter Sunday, the Vatican confirmed, a remarkable encounter between the ailing head of the global Catholic church and a high-profile convert to the faith who has publicly criticized some of the church’s social teachings.... The 'private meeting' occurred at 11:30 a.m. at the papal residence, Casa Santa Marta, and happened while Easter Mass was being said in St. Peter’s Square. 'The meeting, which lasted a few minutes, gave them the opportunity to exchange Easter greetings,' the Vatican said in a statement.... The encounter found Vance in the position of greeting the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Catholics who has preached humility, mercy and inclusion at a time when ... Donald Trump’s administration has sought to project dominance at all cost....
“A meeting with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state and Francis’s No. 2, took place Saturday.... A Vatican readout portrayed Vance’s meeting with Parolin as a substantive discussion on a wide range of issues. It noted 'cordial talks' and an expression of 'satisfaction' over 'good existing bilateral relations' and a common commitment to protect the right to 'freedom of religion and conscience.' It also mentioned an 'exchange of opinions' on war, political tensions and humanitarian situations, with 'particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners.'” Politico's story is here.
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: “On Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance wrote a long defense of the administration’s anti-immigrant rendition program, slamming critics who want the White House to obey a court order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. It is a notable example of the lengths the White House has gone to try to deceive the public as it deals with political fallout from its open defiance of the federal judiciary.” Bouie goes on to catalog JayDee pack o' lies. You can find JayDee's screed here on X. (Also linked yesterday.)
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: “... the [Supreme C]ourt can move fast when it wants to, busting through protocols and conventions. It did so around 1 a.m. on Saturday, blocking the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under a rarely invoked 18th-century wartime law. The court’s unsigned, one-paragraph order was extraordinary in many ways. Perhaps most important, it indicated a deep skepticism about whether the administration could be trusted to live up to the key part of an earlier ruling after the government had deported a different group of migrants to a prison in El Salvador. That unsigned and apparently unanimous ruling, issued April 7, said that detainees were entitled to be notified if the government intended to deport them under the law, 'within a reasonable time,' and in a way that would allow the deportees to challenge the move in court before their removal.... In a typical case, the Supreme Court would await a ruling from the relevant appeals court ... and ask for a response from the administration, on a deadline set by the justices.
“It would not have been unusual for a single justice to issue an 'administrative stay' — a brief pause — to let the court consider the matter in a more deliberate fashion. But each of the nation’s 13 federal circuits is supervised by an assigned justice, and the member of the court responsible for overseeing the Fifth Circuit is Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. He was apparently not inclined to issue a stay on his own.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ ⭐ A post by Mark Stern of Slate is firewalled, but Scott Lemieux, in LG&$, republishes the gist of it: “There are three remarkable aspects of the court’s decision. First, it acted with startling speed — so quickly, in fact, that it published the order before Alito could finish writing his dissent; he was forced to note only that a 'statement' would 'follow.' It is a major breach of protocol for the Supreme Court to publish an order or opinion before a dissenting justice finishes writing their opinion, one that reflects the profound urgency of the situation. Relatedly, awkward phrasing in court’s order may imply that Alito — who first received the plaintiffs’ request — failed to refer it to the full court, as is custom, compelling the other justices to rip the case away from him.... Second, it is plain as day that the Supreme Court simply did not trust the Trump administration’s claims that it would not deport migrants over the weekend without due process. If the court did believe these representations, it would not have acted in such a rapid and dramatic fashion....”
Lemieux writes, “It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that Alito wanted to just sit on the case, first by refusing to refer it at all and then if necessary further delay the Court from issuing the order while his clerks polished off The Concept of the Political (Sam’s Version), until the detainees were in CECOT [the El Salvadoran prison].... The Court has been using the shadow docket to delay cases that are unfavorable for Trump for many years. For a majority of the Court’s Republicans to act like a Democratic president is in the White House suggests that something is actually happening here.” ~~~
~~~ Ian Millhiser of Vox: "Thus far, the Supreme Court has been extraordinarily tolerant of Trump’s efforts to evade judicial review through hypertechnical procedural arguments.... Though it is just one order, Saturday’s post-midnight order suggests that the Court may no longer tolerate procedural shenanigans intended to evade meaningful judicial review.... Still, it remains to be seen how this case will play out once it is fully litigated. The post-midnight order is only temporary. And it leaves open all of the most important issues in this case, including whether Trump can rely on a wartime statute to deport people during peacetime."
Stories like the following soon will become so commonplace that news outlets won't carry them: ~~~
~~~ Danyelle Khmara of Arizona Public Media: “19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, who is visiting Tucson from Albuquerque, says he was lost and walking near the Border Patrol headquarters when an agent arrested him for illegally entering the country. Hermosillo was not carrying identification. Court documents say a Border Patrol agent arrested Hermosillo 'at or near Nogales, Arizona, without proper immigration documents' and that Hermosillo admitted to illegally entering the U.S. Hermosillo and his girlfriend, who have a 9-month-old child together, live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and are visiting family in Tucson.... The family later provided officials with his birth certificate and social security card. 'He did say he was a U.S. citizen, but they didn't believe him,' [a family member] said.... A magistrate judge in Tucson dismissed his case on Thursday, and family says he was released much later that night.”
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Idaho. Even Here, Sometimes There May Be Some Justice. Kaye Thornbrugh of the Coeur d'Alene/Post Falls Press: “City prosecutors have filed criminal charges against six men involved in a chaotic legislative town hall, including the private security guards who dragged a Post Falls woman out of the Coeur d’Alene High School auditorium. Paul Trouette, Russell Dunne, Christofer Berg and Jesse Jones, all of whom are associated with the security firm Lear Asset Management, are charged with the misdemeanor crimes of battery and false imprisonment. The five men and Alex Trouette were also cited for security agent uniform violations and security agent duties violations. Post Falls resident Michael Keller is also charged with battery, a misdemeanor. The charges stem from Feb. 22, when Teresa Borrenpohl shouted from the audience during a town hall hosted by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.... Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris approached Borrenpohl and told her to leave. When she refused, Norris tried to pull her from her seat. He then appeared to gesture to plainclothes security personnel, who dragged Borrenpohl out of the auditorium.... Police identified Norris as an 'involved' party. No criminal charges have been filed against him.” MB: As I wrote, some justice. Thanks to RAS for the link to a post by digby on the topic. According to digby, Borrenpohl has not been charged in the incident. (Also linked yesterday.)
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Ukraine, et al. Siobhán O'Grady, et al., of the Washington Post: “Russia continued to fire artillery at Ukraine after President Vladimir Putin declared a 30-hour truce for Easter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, but Kyiv will honor the ceasefire if Moscow does. Both sides appear eager to show an interest in peace talks before an increasingly impatient Trump administration. Putin declared a unilateral truce to begin at 6 p.m. Moscow time Saturday and said he expected Ukraine to follow Russia’s example.... On Sunday morning, Zelensky said Russia had shelled Ukrainian positions hundreds of times since the ceasefire declaration, although no major attacks occurred on cities overnight.”
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Reader Comments (16)
Man, some cheating Democrat-supportin’, Dear Leader-hatin’ rich guy spent a packet paying all those millions of fake news “protesters” who showed up all over the country yesterday to pretend they didn’t love fascism, er, I mean patriotism. I mean, that guy really got hid money’s worth. Those people looked like for real! Like they really hated all this great stuff that Trump and Vance, and that nice Elon Musk are doin’.
Of course you’d never see a great man like Trump payin’ actors to cheer for his fat ass.
Good thing the lamestream media mostly ignores these fake rallies.
I see where Netanyahu sez he has “no choice” but to keep bombing hospitals full of wounded and injured children, moms and dads, and medical personnel his bombs missed first time around.
Got most of ‘em this time, though. Good job, Bibi!
The jukebox in my head is always playing something. Could be a Beatles song, a Mozart piano piece, or a John Coltrane riff. Last night, for some reason, I had this one on a loop:
Marie: I don't have the right to republish the copyrighted lyrics Akhilleus included in his comment (and which I have deleted), but maybe this site does. Anyway, there they are.
Sermon time again in this weekend's edition of the local paper.
FRACTURED FAIRY TALE
“Rocky and his Friends,” was my favorite cartoon show in the early 1960’s. Amusingly cockeyed, it featured Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle the Moose battling Boris and Natasha, two bumbling Russian spies (remember the Cold War when Russia was the enemy, long before we were cozy with Putin?), enlivened by other segments with their own goofy characters. Professor Peabody, a dog, used his Wayback time machine to display famous historical events to his boy Sherman, and Fractured Fairy Tales retold well-known fairy tales in a delightfully wacky fashion.
The news of the last few weeks seems equally cockeyed, if not so amusing. Tied to Trump’s fractured account of American history that placed the nation’s Golden Age in the 1890’s, before the progressive income tax, when much of the federal government’s revenue was derived from tariffs, was his promise that levying high tariffs on imports “would make America wealthy again.”
But in fact, the United States today is anything but poor. With only 4.2% of the world’s population, America possesses nearly one third of the world's wealth. It is followed by China, which has about 22%, then in order Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom (wikipedia.org).
If anything, the United States is far richer now than it has been at any time in our history, far more so than in the Golden Age of high tariffs that Trump would like to return to. Per capita GDP in 2022 was twelve times higher than it was in Trump’s tariff heaven version of history (factcheck.org). So where did the notion that the United States is poor come from?
Sadly, while Trump’s dream of a tariff heaven is fantasy, millions of Americans know poverty is not. “Poverty, by America” (Crown Publishers. 2023) by Matthew Desmond tells the brutal story. In our immensely rich country, one in 18 Americans lives in deep poverty, having incomes less than half of what the government defines as the poverty line, which is currently $32,150 a year for a family of four (smartasset.com). In raw numbers that’s roughly 18 million people, more than half of them children. Measured against 25 other western countries, the percentage by which poor Americans’ income is below the poverty line exceeds 24 of them (ConfrontingPoverty.org).
How did we get here? Since the 1980’s, our tax and spending policies have redistributed wealth upwards at breakneck pace. By the first quarter of 2024, almost two-thirds of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.5 percent of the total wealth (statista.com). That lower fifty percent, that half of our country, has a right to feel poor--because they are.
Since the 1970s, labor unions have been substantially weakened. The federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour has not been raised since 2009. Bank fees, usurious credit card and payday loan interest charges disproportionately affect the poor. And each year, the lack of affordable housing forces a greater percentage of Americans out of homes and into rentals or into tents or cars and even onto the street.
But what about all those government handouts, we might ask. From SNAP (food stamps), from Medicaid, from the Earned Income Tax Credit, from other tax credits and deductions like those for mortgage interest, 529 education plans, subsidized student loans and employer-provided medical insurance? Desmond has a surprising answer. Added together, he says, “the biggest beneficiaries of federal aid are affluent families,” who receive almost 40% more in government subsidies than the poorest, because their relative wealth allows them to take advantage of tax deductions and credits unavailable to those with low incomes.
Now we have the on-again, off-again tariffs, which will shift the federal tax burden even farther away from the wealthy, with Congressional Republicans trusting tariffs to generate sufficient revenue to partially offset the cost of renewing the 2017 tax cuts that primarily benefitted those in the top two percent (donnellonlaw.com).
In short, by using tariffs to subsidize another round of tax breaks, Trump’s tariffs will not make America wealthy again. They will make the wealthy even wealthier.
Ala “Rocky and his Friends,” we are living a fractured fairy tale, one that will further divide our already divided country. Under the tariff regime, the rich will get richer, the poor poorer.
It’s happened before. The Golden Age of Tariffs Trump would like us to return to was mostly an age of grinding poverty. In the following decade, the immense gap between the few rich and the many poor led to great social unrest and major progressive reforms.
A short trip in Dr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine could have told Trump that.
.
How generous of Naftali Bendavid to give W. credit for doing nothing, "The only living president who has not spoken out since Inauguration Day is Republican George W. Bush, though he has made little secret of his antipathy for Trump." Not as if we are in a Constitutional crisis or a Republican president speaking out might reach people who don't listen to dirty Democrats. But a round of applause for doing nothing for The Decider!
Dictatorship for Dummies
Marie,
Yeah, sorry about that. I took out a couple of verses but that wasn’t enough to satisfy copyright rules. At least sometime here respects the law.
Initially I only wanted to use the line about bodies floating in the Jordan River (thanks to Bibi) but then I realized that the entire song “Eve of Destruction” was apropos.
Yes, things were bad back in the 60’s when Barry McGuire recorded this song, but at least we still had a country.
Ken,
I was a big fan of Rocky and Bullwinkle, also Mr. Peabody, and the Fractured Fairy Tales, a gentle send up of classic children’s stories voiced by the inimitable Edward Everett Horton.
When you think of it, Boris Badunov could be a sort of manqué for the Orange Monster, a small man of sinister intent, who speaks broken English and plots against the United Stated but is outwitted at every turn by a flying squirrel and a talking moose. “Boris! Moose and squirrel…they are getting away!”
Fatty would make a great cartoon villain if only he could be restricted to Saturday morning kid shows.
@Akhilleus: Yes, we certainly knew then that the "idea" of the U.S. remained aspirational, but it wasn't unreasonable then to maintain those aspirations and believe that they were, at least in part, possible.
In the early '70s, I was the traffic manager at KABC, the ABC Radio O&O in Los Angeles. At some point, a possibility of a strike of engineers & on-air personalities loomed, so as an ostensible member of management, I had to get a 3rd-class radio operator's license in case I had to go on-air (a horrifying possibility) or do some other studio work. As you may know, a third-class license doesn't require any degree of expertise, but there is a test you have to take. Anyway, I had to go downtown to a federal building, either to take the test or pick up the license (I forget which).
To get into the building, I had to make my way through a Viet Nam war protest that was going on outside. That didn't bother me much because I was on the side of the protesters. But the raw anger on some of their faces sticks with me to this day. The country looked shaky.
The federal building where I had to do the license thing was also the federal courthouse. When I got past the crowd and inside the building, all was quiet. In the great central hall, lined with marble, there were only two people: me and a guy pacing around waiting for a court proceeding. That guy was Daniel Ellsberg.
Yes, the country was very fragile then. But there was hope. Later, a judge would dismiss the case against Ellsberg. Nixon would quit in disgrace. And even Nixon, for all of his deep flaws, was not nearly as bad as Donald Trump. And the Republican party then, on the whole, was not nearly as bad as the party today.
What we have to get through now is worse than Nixon's America. I hope to live to see the advocates of democracy overcome the dark forces that underpin Trump and his mob. But I'm not as optimistic as I was in the early 1970s.
It is truly saying something to say that any day in the 70's was better than any day DiJiT is president. That decade used to be so duh!
Talk of traffic managers and favorite cartoons reminded me of this 9 minute one from 1967 where Canadians mock the car-culture of the US (shockingly easy for google to find)
When martians visit Earth, they naturally assume cars run the world
Laura,
Great cartoon. Never seen it before. Love the idea of “strange libraries” and the “parasites” that infect the cars/earthlings.
If the same aliens came back today they’d be mighty puzzled by Teslas Cybertrucks and assume they must be the odd physically and mentally handicapped earthlings who have a strange habit of shedding body parts and occasionally self immolating, likely the result of birth defects passed on from a mutant parent.
Marie,
Love the idea of management types having to replace on air talent (not to mention engineers and technical personnel). It would have been a howl to see managerial types go on air at some of the stations I’ve worked at, or seeing them try to operate cameras, audio boards, and master control switchers.
But Daniel Ellsberg, eh? A Daniel Ellsberg these days wouldn’t get their day in court. They’d be in chains on the way to the Black Hole of El Salvador quicker than you could say “Pentagon Papers”.
Where is our Macduff?
Our old pal Will from Stratford upon Avon developed a nice dramatic strategy for ending his tragedies. After several hours of murder, mayhem, and mendacity, with bodies littering the stage, Shakespeare made sure to have some not-crazy figure of authority show up to put thinks aright.
This escape from the madness usually took the form of a nobleman, viceroy, or even a king entering stage right, looking around and saying “Holy Christ! What the fuck happened here? Well, carry those bodies off, clean up the blood, and let’s get back to a life without (bad guy’s name here).”
In “Macbeth”, as soon as Macduff dispatches the title character, he introduces Malcolm, who takes over as king. Malcom says “Holy Christ! What the fuck happened here?…blah, blah, blah, and you’re all invited to my coronation.”
In Othello, the Venetian nobleman Ludovico plays that role, instructing the murdered Desdemona’s uncle to grab Othello’s house and loot and get busy torturing that sumbitch Iago.
The horror show that is the 4,167 lines of Hamlet, with more dead people on stage than living, ends with Fortinbras, the Norwegian king, ordering Hamlet to be carried off decently, as he restores order to Denmark.
So who will do that for us? How do we end the Tragedy of Trump’s destruction of America? Who will be our Macduff who places (metaphorically, of course) Fatty’s fat head on a pike and puts things aright?
No idea, but as Ira Gershwin once put it, “Won’t you tell him (or her), please to put on some speed…”
@Akhilleus: Back in the day, many of the people in radio management had been D.J.s or news readers or even engineers. Before I went to KNBC, I worked at KNX, which was CBS's O&O. KNX at the time was an all-news station. The engineers did strike while I was there and the other union personnel went out in sympathy. That must have included the newsroom, but there were a couple of news managers who were non-union, so I suppose they did all the writing. The overall news director was Jim Zaillian, a real character. (His son is Steve Zaillian, the screenwriter, director & producer.) Some of the people who went on-air were salesmen who had been D.J.s. And they did know how to rip and read. I was not management there, so I didn't have to do anything unusual. But I still had nightmares for years of having to go on-air with no copy. The strike went on for only about a week, as I recall, and I doubt many listeners even noticed. The management guys did quite a good job.
Marie,
Yeah I suppose back then a lot of people in the business, especially in LA, had come up through the ranks. That hasn’t been the case over the last 20 years though.
See that an earlier version of my Alito comment didn't make the trip, so this repeat.
Read his dissent and was unimpressed twice-over. No lawyer I, but his legal reasoning seemed a bit thin, concerned exclusively with process instead of substance.
More to my point, however, is the cold inhumanity he reveals. There were people, for goodness sake, whose lives he was willing to ignore while their fate plodded through the courts. By then, of course, it would have been too late for them.
And this is the same clown so desperate to save fetuses that he sought legal advice from a judge who oversaw witch trials.... Maybe he had something too say about immigration, too.