“Bless America,” Centralia, Washington. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
“When even the dictators of today appeal to reason, they mean that they possess the most tanks. They were rational enough to build them; others should be rational enough to yield to them.”
– Max Horkheimer, The End of Reason
Trump has been gifted more power than he has taken. But now that he has accumulated so much authority through the weakness and political negligence of his opponents, he is in a position to seize and consolidate an unprecedented amount of power by himself, leaving the country almost defenseless against his vindictive whims and authoritarian aspirations.
We’re entering a time when the internal checks on unbridled executive power have either been unplugged or ignored with no meaningful resistance from the other branches of government. If there was one thing the founding fathers (if only there’d been founding mothers or sisters) feared more than slave rebellions, it was a king-like executive, whose control over the levers of government, including its military and police powers, was absolute.
The federalist structure of the US government set forth in the Constitution was largely designed by James Madison to prevent this outcome, much to the distress of figures like Alexander Hamilton, who argued that the constitutional checks on executive power would slow almost to a crawl sometimes the ability of the government to enact radical changes. (Madison’s friend and fellow Virginian George Mason refused to sign the Constitution because he felt it still conveyed too much power to the executive branch!)
But this system, once venerated as a bedrock value by conservatives, is in the process of being demolished from the inside-out by one Executive Order after another with even the “originalist,” Federalist Society-vetted members of the federal judiciary helping to press the detonator switch.
+++
+ John Adams: “I fear that in every elected office, members will obtain an influence by noise not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning.”
+ The best Gong Show Presidency Money Can Buy: According to documents obtained by Wired, corporate leaders and business tycoons are paying as much as $5,000,000 for meetings with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Earlier this month, Mar-a-Lago hosted a “Candlelight Dinner.” The cost to reserve a seat started at $1,000,000.
+ After the Chinese crypto mogul Justin Sun bought $75 million worth of the $Trump memecoin, the pending SEC civil fraud case against him was put on hold.
+ According to a report in the New York Times, “after six weeks in office, President Trump has not disclosed the names of the donors who paid for his transition planning, despite a public pledge to do so.”
+ The entire country is being hacked by its own government. In the latest intrusion, the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein reports that DOGE sought access to a sensitive database kept by the federal child-support office, which contains income info, Social Security numbers for nearly all U.S. workers.
+ What DOGE is doing goes far beyond the mass surveillance and data collection of emails & phone calls that Snowden exposed. DOGE–a quasi-government outfit of questionable legality–is collecting literally everything about you: SS numbers, mother’s maiden name, home address, bank accounts, employment records, tax records, health records, service records, government payments, all going into the hands and servers of outside contractors with no one keeping tabs on where they end up or how they’ll be used…
+ One member of the DOGE wrecking crew is making $195,000 a year, the maximum allowed for any federal employee after decades of service.
+ At a contentious White House meeting last week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confronted Trump and Musk over the DOGE wrecking crew’s plan to fire air traffic controllers: “What am I supposed to do? I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?”
+ Has DOGE cancelled a single dollar of any of Musk’s billions in contracts with the federal government? You’d think they’d cancel at least one already expiring contract, as a purely performative gesture…(even as he racked up twice as many no-bid deals.)
+ The French politician Claude Malhuret unloaded on the Trump administration this week: “Washington has become Nero’s court, with an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester high on ketamine in charge of purging the civil service.”
+ This is an insult to Nero, who wasn’t a war-monger, but a poet, a musician (and not only as a fiddler while Rome burned), an actor of Greek tragedies who spoke two languages and always kept his lions well fed. Nero presided over numerous infrastructure weeks and instigated one of the largest public works projects in the history of Rome, after the Christians (there’s plenty of evidence to suggest it) set fire to merchant shops near the Circus Maximus and the great conflagration quickly spread across the insula (blocks of shoody wooden apartment buildings) and up the Palatine and Caelian hills, leaving 70 percent of the city in ruins…
+++
+ Meanwhile, the Democrats are working hard to give new meaning to Reagan Democrats…
+ For those who believe in a Deep State, Slotkin is as deep as it gets. Slotkin was recruited by the CIA from grad school at Columbia in 2003, just in time to help plot the invasion and occupation of Iraq, where she did three tours of duty as a CIA officer. Bush later assigned her to the Iraq desk at his National Security Council. Despite the blunders, illegalities and atrocities committed by the Bush Administration (and the CIA) during the Iraq War, Obama kept her onboard in roles of escalating authority at the State Department and Pentagon, where she eventually ascended to the position of Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in 2015. Slotkin left the Obama administration in 2017 and immediately capitalized on her former career at the CIA and Defense Department by forming her own security firm, Pinpoint Consulting.
+ Choosing Slotkin to give the response to Trump’s 90 minute diatribe before Congress gives you an idea of where the party is headed. In short: off the cliff.
+ It’s almost as if they have a death wish.
+ A reminder: Kamala Harris got just 40% of her campaign money from small-dollar donors, and that’s not even counting super PAC spending, which is primarily huge donors…
+ Then there’s the big group of elite Democratic donors who are urging the party to return to the “third way” pro-corporate, militaristic policies of the Clinton era (when did they abandon them?) and scrub any remaining traces of Sanders’ woke (ie., FDR/LBJ) economic and DEI social policies from its dwindling ranks. In other words, it’s the same old…
+++
+ Justin Feldman on the so-called Health Freedom Movement: “The movement can be defeated by exposing it for what it is: unpopular, morally hideous, and—perhaps most importantly—a losing cause that poses a liability to any politician who chooses to embrace it. But that’s not enough. We need to fight for a right to health.”
+ With early detection of cervical cancers is almost 100 percent treatable. Yet both the incident and mortality rate of cervical cancers are rising in rural counties, increasing a gap with urban counties, according to a new study in JAMA.
+ Meanwhile, according to research published in Science, early-onset colorectal cancer is expected to become the leading cause of cancer death in ages 20 to 49 in the U.S. by 2030.
+ As RFK, Jr moved to quash new flu vaccines, the US finds itself in the grip of the worst influenza season in over a decade. The number of kids hospitalized by flu soared by a staggering 145%. More than 3% of all deaths in the US right in February were attributable to the flu, which has killed at least 19,000 people, including 86 children. It’s going to get worse as a result of premeditated governmental neglect. It’s going to get worse as a result of premeditated governmental neglect.
+ Two people have now died in the growing measles outbreak along the border of Texas and New Mexico, where vaccination rates are among the lowest in the country. Meanwhile, the Department of Health in Iowa reports declining measles vaccination rates among the state’s kindergartners. In 2024-25, 88.8% of kindergarten students were vaccinated, a drop from 89.1% in 2023 and down from 93.4% in 2020-21. The Iowa Health Department says that at least 95% of the population should be vaccinated to prevent measles outbreaks.
+ A Kaiser Family Foundation poll showed large majorities opposed to any cuts to Medicaid, now on the Trump/Musk chopping block. Indeed, more than 40% of Americans want to see Medicaid funding increased…
Medicaid Support
Total
Increase: 42%
Keep the same: 40%
Decrease a little: 8%
Decrease a lot: 9%Democrats
Increase: 65%
Keep the same: 31%
Decrease a little: 2%
Decrease a lot: 3%Independents
Increase: 39%
Keep the same: 46%
Decrease a little: 8%
Decrease a lot: 7%Republicans
Increase: 24%
Keep the same: 43%
Decrease a little: 16%
Decrease a lot: 17%Trump voters
Increase: 22%
Keep the same: 43%
Decrease a little: 17%
Decrease a lot: 19%Rural voters
Increase: 30$
Keep the same: 31%
Decrease a little: 10%
Decrease a lot: 13%
+++
+ Unlike many in the ranks of the Left (and I’m never quite sure whether, as they say in the French Quarter, I’m part of their number), I have great admiration for Zelensky. If not for his politics, then for his courage in standing up to two of the three biggest bullies of our time, Putin and Trump. (If only we could set him loose on Netanyahu.) So I was pleased to see him give no ground when he was set-up at the White House in an ambush staged for TV by Trump and the increasingly ridiculous JD Vance, where I’m pretty sure Trump counted on him folding before the cameras. He didn’t and I’m sure he’ll end up paying the price. But it was Trump and Vance who looked weak, not Zelensky.
+ One of the most amusing aspects of the entire debacle was Trump’s apparent outrage over Zelensky ignoring his “order” that he wear a business suit to his own execution. This is especially amusing considering how Elon Musk dressed to attend Trump’s first meeting with his new cabinet.
+ American attitudes toward the Ukraine War and US foreign policy…
Who does Donald Trump support more?
Russia: 41%
Ukraine: 13%
Who do you support?
Ukraine: 52$
Russia: 4%
Neither: 44%What role should the US play in world affairs?
The leading role: 16%
Work equally with allies: 67%
No role: 17%
+ Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on the Trump-Vance gang bang of Zelensky in the Oval Office: “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office. And Donald Trump is right: The Kiev regime is ‘gambling with WWIII.’”
+ Poland’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Paweł Wroński: “President Trump’s decision to suspend Ukraine aid was made without any information or consultation, neither with NATO allies nor with the Ramstein Group which is involved in supporting Ukraine.”
+ Nuclear brinksmanship, Macron-style: “Our nuclear deterrent protects us…I have decided to open the strategic debate on the protection, through our deterrent, of our allies on the European continent.”
+ Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for the Kremlin, on foreign policy under Trump: “the new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations…this largely aligns with our vision.”
+ Funding for Ukraine prior to Trump pulling the plug this week…
European nations: 49.5%
USA: 42.7
Other Countries: 7.8%
+ 950: the number of pounds of rare earth minerals in each F-35 jet.
+++
+ Trump Executive Order making English (not even American English, strangely) the official language of the US…
“From the founding of our Republic, English has been used as our national language. Our Nation’s historic governing documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, have all been written in English. It is therefore long past time that English is declared as the official language of the United States. A nationally designated language is at the core of a unified and cohesive society, and the United States is strengthened by a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in one shared language.”
+ Typically, this is both bad history and bad policy. The Founders explicitly rejected calls to make English the official language of the new Republic, primarily because they didn’t want to alienate the French, German, and Dutch supporters of the Revolution and new government. Today, at least 20 percent of the US population is multilingual.
+ Now that Trump has made English the official language of the United States, will he follow up with an Executive Order officially making “Covfefe” a word of the English language, and will the EO finally provide a definition?
+ Having provided the US a model for its constitutional form of government, Iroquoian should be the nation’s official language…
+ The Roman Empire, and Rome itself, was a multi-lingual society, which proved to be one of its strengths. Imperial Rome welcomed most of the residents of its conquered colonies as citizens and never outlawed the languages of the colonized. A highly educated society, most Romans were at least bilingual, speaking both Latin and Greek. The father of the stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a hero of today’s libertarian elites, was from Spain and his adopted father from Gaul. He wrote his famous Meditations in Greek. Rome may not have been “woke”–excepting Nero’s all-too brief bacchanalian imperium–but it embraced multi-culturalism. (See Mary Beard’s SPQR: a History of Ancient Rome)
+ Tacitus: “For the secret of empire was now revealed: that it was possible to make an emperor elsewhere than Rome.”
+++
+ Doug Ford, the Trump-like Premier of Ontario, on the Trump administration’s threats against Canada: “If they [the US] want to try to annihilate Ontario, I will do everything — including cut off their energy with a smile on my face.” Can’t these two bullies settle this in a mud-wrestling match?
+ Albert Camus: “Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”
+ Public sentiment in the US on Trump’s tariffs has shifted rapidly, with two-thirds of the country now convinced they will drive up prices.
Total
Go Up: 67%
Go Down: 12%
No impact: 12%Democrats
Go Up: 82%
Go Down: 7%
No impact: 7%Independents
Go Up: 64%
Go Down: 7%
No impact: 12%Republicans
Go Up: 51%
Go Down: 19%
No impact: 18%Source: Navigator
+ Canadian PM (for the time being) Justin Trudeau: “What Trump wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that will make it easier to annex us.”
+ According to stats released by US Customs and Border Control, since September, less than 1% of fentanyl seized by Americans was at the northern border with Canada.
+ When the Toronto Blue Jays come to Seattle on April 18 to play the Mariners at T-Mobile Park (née Safeco Field), will ticket prices to the games be 25% higher?
Americans who currently consider Canada to be an ally/friendly country: 82%
Canadians who currently consider America to be an ally/friendly country: 33%
+++
+ A new poll shows one in four Americans want to leave the country after Trump re-took office. Thinking of moving to Europe to escape rule by MAGA? You might want to reconsider. For the first time, “hard right” parties are the most popular across Europe “democracies.” They’ve been kept out of power so far, but that’s unlikely to last much longer…
+ According to 538, Trump’s approval rating has slumped into negative territory for the first time since the election…
Approval: 47.6
Disapproval: 47.9
+ On March 3, the Atlanta Fed released a GDP model predicting a recession, showing revised GDP growth of -2.8 percent for the first quarter of 2025.
+ Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNN that the US could eliminate the IRS by replacing the income tax with tariffs and selling visas to the US…
CNN: Trump wants to get rid of the IRS?
Lutnick: Of course! If we could have the outsiders pay. That’s a big objective: to have enough money coming in from the outside sources by selling, you know, visas, the ability to have a green card for the ability to come to America. Imagine if you sold a million of them, you’d pay off our deficit and have $15 trillion to spare. And that’s only 3 percent of America. It’s nothing. It’s replacing the concept of us paying. We have Stockholm Syndrome. We are so happy to pay that we forgot that maybe other people should pay and we should have the benefit of living in a great America.”
+ The US deficit is $1.9 trillion. The US issues around one million green cards a year. To pay off the deficit, each green card would cost: $1.9 million. To pay off the deficit and have $15 trillion left over, each green card would cost: $16.9 million.
+ Brian Cornell, CEO of Target, said that Trump’s tariffs will trigger price increases as early as this week, especially on winter fruits and vegetables imported from Mexico, including strawberries, avocados and bananas. “Cornell said Target relies heavily on Mexican produce during the winter months, and the tariffs could force the company to raise prices on fruits and vegetables as soon as this week.”
+ Senior official from the International Chamber of Commerce on the erupting tariff war: “Our deep concern is that this could be the start of a downward spiral that puts us in 1930s trade-war territory…the likelihood of a similarly severe blow to the global economy is high.”
+ A survey by the New York Fed found that most firms believe their costs will rise this year by more than last year, especially for goods (as opposed to services): “Many firms reporting that they were uncertain but concerned about tariffs and their impact on costs. Indeed, higher cost expectations were related to the import share of firms’ inputs—a measure of potential exposure to tariffs. About 82 percent of service firms and 86 percent of manufacturing firms in the survey reported some use of imported inputs, which speaks to the globally integrated nature of firms in the U.S. economy.
+ On Wednesday, the dollar index fell below its 200-day moving average for the first time since November.
+ Nearly half of people in homeless shelters and 40 percent of those living outdoors have jobs. The homeless crisis is mainly about the high cost of housing and the failure to pay people a living wage…
+ Rent prices have outpaced income gains in the US by 325 percent since 1985.
+++
+ What comes first this time around, a Dust Bowl or a Depression?
+ Laurie Laybourn, director of the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, on the failure to take decisive action to reduce carbon emissions: “It’s only really now that the penny is dropping that we didn’t prevent a global-scale climate crisis. We’re now in a global-scale climate crisis.”
+ From a new study in Nature Food: At 1.5C warming scenario, more than half of the 30 crops examined would experience a decrease in the extent of their global potential cropland. Wheat, barley, soya beans, lentils and potatoes would suffer the most significant declines. A 2C warming scenario shows more precipitous declines in suitable areas for the 30 crops with some crops surpassing 50%. At 3C warming, all of the 30 crops studied would have their suitable cropland area reduced.
+ Over 1,000 people came out this week to protest the firings of NOAA scientists in Colorado: “We used to attract people even with our lower pay because we had a good mission and it was a mission valued by the public,” said Nancy McLean, a retired NOAA manager.
+ In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court just gutted the Clean Water Act’s limitations on raw sewage discharge into drinking water sources…Things really are turning to shit.
+ Increasing tree mortality, attributable primarily to climate change, has resulted in Colorado’s forests now emit more carbon than they absorb.
+ According to documents obtained by Wired, the Pentagon is expected to slash nearly 75 percent of the staffers working to monitor the global proliferation of chemical, biological and nucelar weapons: “A 60% cut would fundamentally eliminate America’s role in preventing the spread of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, the documents warn, and increase the likelihood of a lab accident or theft of potentially dangerous biological material.”
+++
+ In 2021, 55% of Republicans supported gay marriage. But that support has plummeted over the last four years, dropping to a mere 24% in the latest YouGov survey.
Support same-sex marriage
Support 52%
Oppose 36%By party
Democratic
Support 77%
Oppose 12%Independent
Support 45%
Oppose 35 %Republican
Support 24 %
Oppose 65%
+ The day after workers at Sesame Workshop, the non-profit that produces Sesame Street, voted to unionize, the company’s CEO, Sherry Rollins Westin, fired 200 employees.
+ From the Economic Policy Institute’s new report on the low-pay for domestic workers in the US:
Domestic workers are the 2.3 million workers nationwide who provide vital support to our elders and chronically ill or disabled family members, care for our children, and help maintain our households. Despite their vital role in supporting U.S. households and the economy, the typical domestic worker was paid only $20,926 per year in 2023, less than half as much (44%) as non-domestic workers ($47,270). In the South, the typical domestic worker earned just $18,252 annually in 2023, the lowest level of any region and 61% less than the typical non-domestic worker in the United States.
Most domestic workers across the country are women (88.1%). In the South, domestic workers are even more likely to be women (90.9%), and the majority (61%) are women of color. Black women make up 9.5% of non-domestic workers in the South, but they compose 30.5% of domestic workers, the highest share of any region. Immigrants are also a key part of the domestic care workforce. This means that the Trump administration’s and aligned state lawmakers’ anti-immigrant actions pose an immediate threat to these workers and the communities that depend on their care.
+ Tesla’s great fall…In 2024, as Musk revealed himself to be a political reactionary, Tesla’s total unit sales fell for the first time. In the EU, Tesla sales fell by 50%, while in China Tesla shipments dropped by 49%. In Germany, Tesla sales collapsed by 76% in February and by 70% over last years numbers in Australia.
+ So, Musk “lost” more than $100 billion due to the collapse of Tesla sales. That’s nice. But the bulk of his wealth is secure because it’s guaranteed by contracts with the government he’s now running and thus immune from consumer boycotts and the judgment of the marketplace on the shittiness of his products.
+ In 2019, as Trump’s first term raids on immigrants became more and more brutal, Illinois passed the Immigrant Tenant Protection, which banned renters from being harassed or evicted because of their immigration status. This week the law was invoked for the first time against a Chicago landlord, who had threatened to call ICE on renters. The slumlord was ordered to pay his former tenants $80,000 in restitution.
+ The bigger shame is that so many Democrats voted for the Laken Riley Bill that authorized an unconstitutional and inhumane pogrom against immigrants in the US.
+ When it takes the IRS to stand up against the ethnic cleansers at ICE, you know you’re country’s in trouble…
+ Is there much doubt that the risible Nancy Mace would have informed on Jan and Miep Gies for helping to hide Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis…?
+++
+ MAGA version of the Three-Body Problem: The Claremont Institute, a fringe right white paper mill for some of the most lunatic ideas in contemporary politics, wants Trump to order federal workers to undergo “re-education” and “deprogramming” through training courses run by Claremont. Will there be struggle sessions and denunciation rallies?
+ Mary Comans, a senior FEMA official, fired by the Trump administration, is suing saying she’s been falsely smeared as illegally funding hotels for migrants in NYC. The lawsuit argues that her firing violates the law and right to due process.
+ During his interview with Joe Rogan, Musk called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
+ They want to privatize Social Security and dump your retirement savings, such as they are, into the stock market, where traders make money even if you lose your shirt, shoes and the tent you’re sleeping on the sidewalk in. How’s that working out for you this week?
+++
+ As Trump and his misogynistic Sec. of Defense threaten to invade Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum’s approval ratings have broken the record for a sitting Mexican president, reaching 85% in February, even higher than her predecessor AMLO’s previous record of 83%…
+ Here’s one reason why: Sheinbaum’s calm, resolute and absolutely fearless. In the face of US military strikes on Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum highlighted that more than 80 of the people arrested at the border for fentanyl trafficking are American citizens:
“For humanitarian reasons, we collaborate to prevent illegal drug trafficking to the United States, but as we have said many times, the US government must also confront the opioid crisis that has caused so many deaths in its own country. This is a severe public health problem that they must address. They must also act against the criminal groups that illegally bring fentanyl precursors through their ports, airports, and those that illegally produce, distribute, and sell fentanyl and other drugs in their territory, poisoning their people.
CBP data from 2024 published by the Cato Institute in Washington shows that 80 percent of those detained at US ports of entry for fentanyl trafficking between 2019 and 2024 were American citizens. Even the US Sentencing Commission reports that 81.9% of those prosecuted for drug trafficking are Americans.
+ During his first address to the General Assembly, Uruguay’s new Leftist President Yamandú Orsi condemned the predatory libertarianism now ascendent in neighboring Argentina and the US and called for a new politics of co-existence for Uruguay and the rest of South America:
There is an ultra-individualistic concept of ‘freedom’ that preaches domination by the strongest. This will never be our notion of freedom. The individual freedom in which we believe is the key to co-existence and the equality of opportunities in the essential aspects of life.
How much ‘freedom’ can be exercised or enjoyed by a compatriot who has to spend weeks going on a pilgrimage to a health center to get their medicine?
How ‘free’ is someone who suffers from serious problems with housing or work?
How ‘free’ are women who feel violated on the street or behind closed doors in their homes?
+++
+ Two bumperstickers on the same truck at Jiffy Lube: “Money talks and my always says goodbye.” “LGBT: Liberty, Guns, Beer, Trump”
+ Americans are applying for UK citizenship in record numbers. Will they be sent to Rwanda to await a decision like the other asylum seekers?
+ Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott embraced being a ‘DEI hire’: “It used to be that they would just outright say n—-r. They just don’t say that anymore.”
+ In his effort to reinstate a “Warrior Ethos“, Sec. Defense Pete Hegseth fired the top JAG lawyers in the Pentagon. Hegseth is the guy who, as a FoxNews commentator, pushed Trump to pardon Eddie “the Blade” Gallagher, who stabbed a wounded Iraqi boy, posing for selfies with his body as the 17-year-old bled out and then threatened to kill any fellow Navy SEALs who informed on him…
+ According to an internal memo, the Trump administration plans to slash over 80,000 employees from Veterans Affairs. Trump only likes Veterans who are winners and can fend for themselves!
+ Having vanquished the penny, Trump should get rid of the dime, since he’s erasing every other vestige of FDR in the federal government…
+ Trump explaining why Russian aggression is Europe’s problem: “There’s a big ocean between the US and Russia.” Uh, the distance between mainland Russia and mainland Alaska is 55 miles, and only 2.5 miles between a US island and a Russian island in the Bering Strait. I mean, Sarah Palin could see Russia from her outhouse, couldn’t she?
+ According to Quinnipiac, the approval rating for New York City Mayor Eric Adams has crashed to 20 percent, the lowest for a NYC mayor in polling history. More than 56% of New Yorkers think he should resign…but not New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who continues to resist calls for Adams’ eviction from office.
+++
+ Last week, Ashley St. Clair (no relation, according to the Mormon geneaologists at Ancestry.com) announced she was the mother of Musk’s 13th child and is suing him for custody and child support. This week Musk welcomed his 14th (known) child with the Canadian venture capitalist, Shivon Zillis, who has worked on AI projects at both Tesla and Neuralink, where she’s now an executive. This is their fourth child. Even though Musk regularly decries the pollution of white culture by immigrants, Zellis’s mother is an Indian Hindu from the Punjab. They’re popping out at the rate of one a month now, most of them reportedly by IVF. Does he just FedEx out turkey basters full of his Afrikaaner seed with insemination instructions?
+ Overheard at the Ace Hardware checkout line: “Elon’s kids should unionize.”
+ My Oscar picks this year actually included two winners, Flow and No Other Land…
Best Film: No Other Land (doc),
All We Imagine of Light (fiction)
Best director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Evil Does Not Exist
Best Actress: Léa Seydoux, The BeastBest Actor: Josh O’Connor, La Chimera
Best Supporting Actress: Isabella Rosellini, La Chimera
Best Supporting Actor: Yura Borisov, Anora
Best Animation: Flow
+ On the same weekend No Other Land (still lacking a US distributor) won the Oscar for Best Documentary, the editorial page editor of the Palm Beach Post, who describes himself as a supporter of Israel, was fired for running this cartoon by one of the most acclaimed political cartoonists in the US, Jeff Danziger, son of a Jewish dad…
+ Hey, it’s almost Spring Break. Why don’t you pack up the Tesla CyberTruck and bring the kids to the Island of Dr. Moreau Petting Zoo. What could go wrong?
+ I’ve been going through the MLB spring training 40-man rosters and it struck me how many Latin players have the first name, “Oswald.” They can’t all be Cubans, can they? Also, Alexander Cockburn, who pretty much hated all sports, would have appreciated the sure-handed second-baseman for the Chicago White Sox, Lenyn Sosa.
+ Look, I don’t know how Gene Hackman, his wife and dog died, but it does seem like a parable for our future under DOGE. When our present net value drops below zero, they’ll just zap our Neuralinks, and down we go, no longer a money-losing drain on the efficiency of the government.– Please don’t neuro-chip your dogs…
+ On the eve of Dave Marsh’s 75th birthday, two of his best friends, Daniel Wolff and Danny Alexander, engage in a wide-ranging discussion of Dave’s latest collection of essays on rock, soul, politics and American culture, Kick Out the James.
+ The New York Dolls were one of the greatest American rock bands. They were killed in the cradle by close-minded critics who just didn’t get it. A couple of years later, punk owed almost everything to them. RIP: David Johansen.
Personality crisis, you got it while it was hot.
It’s always hard to know when frustration, heartache is all you’ve got…
Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…
Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance
John Berger
(Verso)
Toxic Tropics: A Horror Story of Environmental Injustice
Jessica Oublié
Illustrations by Nicola Gobbi
(Street Noise Books)
The Village of Ben Suc
Jonathan Schell
Introduction by Wallace Shawn
(NYRB)
Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…
Tears of Injustice
Mdou Moctar
(Matador)
Arboresque
Artemis
(Blue Note)
Dirty Talk
Michi
(Stones Throw)
Flag-Wavers and Patriots
“Property-owners are the most energetic flag-waggers and patriots in every country, but only so long as they enjoy their possessions: to safeguard those, they desert God, King and Country in a twinkling.”
– CLR James, The Black Jacobins. Toussaint L’Ouverture and the Santa Domingo Revolution