Friday, September 19, 2025
D+318/214/-1221
1994 3,000 US Marines land on Haiti
2019 North America has lost 3 billion birds (29%) since 1970, according to an analysis published in "Science"
2020 Donald Trump vowed to swear in a new Supreme Court judge, despite the election being only 45 days away
In bed at 9, and up at 5. 66°, high of 73°, sunny day.
Meds, etc. Morning meds at 6:30 a.m. Trulicity injection at 7 a.m.
LTMW at 7 a.m., I see the posse of 7 male turkeys at our feeding station for breakfast. I threw out an ample supply of mostly safflower seeds late yesterday when I replenished the feeders, confident that they and the squirrels, chipmunks, and other ground-feeding birds would clean them up, but watching this voracious gang working the site, I wonder if there will be anything left for the others. I enjoy watching these guys, both their pecking at the seeds and their watchfulness as they feed, their bald heads popping up and looking around for danger. They weigh anywhere from 18 to 24 pounds, but the record for wild turkeys is about 38 pounds for big tom in Virginia. The turkeys didn't move on, to the south, until 7:14,
A day late & a dollar short? I usually start out my mornings loading & starting the dishwasher and cleaning up the kitchen before writing in this journal and reading the morning news on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and The Atlantic. At some point, I turn on the television to see what Joe Scarborough is ranting about and Mika Brzezinski is tsktsking about. Today I changed my routine, checking in on Morning Joe before opening my laptop. Not surprisingly, Joe, Mika, and all their regulars and guests were sounding the alarm about Trump's attack on Free Speech, most recently exercised by the silencing of Jimmy Kimmel's show ABC and its affiliated stations owned by the major media conglomerates Nexstar and Sinclair. We watched a number of news programs yesterday, starting as usual with Morning Joe and ending with Lawrence O'Donnell. All of them were focused on Trump's attack on Free Speech and all of them manifested something akin to panic over Trump's (and Brendan Carr's) threats to delicense media outlets unless they stop criticizing Trump and his government.
Some thoughts: (1) Is it too late to stop Trump? Doesn't he have most of the cards in this game? He's in office for another 3 years. He has a totally subservient Republican Party in control of the House, the Senate, all federal agencies, and the Supreme Court. He acts, we and they react. He acts and accomplishes his goal, his targets sue and start a long, slow, tedious, and expensive legal process that may or may not provide some incomplete relief. He has been acting ruthlessly since his proverbial "Day One" in office when he started the continuing process of signing executive orders shredding democracy and the rule of law, and he has gotten away with most of it. The fired federal employees are still out of work. The terminated federal programs created by Congress are still terminated. The retaliatory investigations that he has ordered are still being carried on. Not only has the Republican-controlled Congress been accommodating to his usurpation of power, the Supreme Court has also largely given him a free hand, most notably I suppose with its ruling that he is immune from criminal prosecution for almost anything he does as president, letting him claim credibly that "I run the country and the world."
(2) The media types squawk loudest when it's their own goose being cooked.
(3) Trump and his apparatchiks don't have to use their government power to accomplish their nasty ends; they can rely on their corporate capitalist cronies to do it. The government didn't take Kimmel off the air, ABC and its affiliated stations did it. It wasn't the government that decided Charles Colbert's show would not be renewed; it was CBS. It wasn't the government that forced CBS to settle its 60 Minutes lawsuit with Trump for $16 million; it was CBS. It wasn't the government that forced ABC and Stephanopolous to settle their defamation lawsuit with Trump, it was ABC and Stephanopolous.
(4) American corporate law justifies and arguably requires the settlement of Trump's specious lawsuits. Publicly-traded corporations exist to make profits for their shareholders, not to protect Free Speech, the Rule of Law, or the Public Interest. The "business judgment rule" allows managers to consider interests other than short-term profits for shareholders, but it's naive to think that corporate directors and officers don't think first and foremost of their company's bottom line, money and profit. This is related to the next thought.
(5) Major media companies are owned and controlled by corporate conglomerates. Their directors and officers are corporatists and capitalists, intent on profits and "growth, acquisitions and mergers that add to growth and their bottom line. ABC is owned by Disney, which also owns ESPN, ESPN+, the Disney Channel, FX, National Geographic, Hulu, Disneyland (California), Walt Disney World (Florida), Disneyland Paris, Hong Kong Disneyland, Shanghai Disney Resorts, Disney Cruise Line, and other resort properties. CBS is owned by Paramount Global and the Redstone family. NBC is owned by Comcast. They are all subject to federal regulation of all of their businesses, parent companies and subsidiaries. Each one of them, and thus the whole, is vulnerable to threats and extortion by whoever controls those regulatory agencies, now surrogates of the vengeful and extortionate Donald Trump. They are perhaps most vulnerable when they pursue a profitable acquisition or merger and need approval from a federal agency, such as the FCC or the FTC, for the deal to be consummated. Hence, Trump's immense power over them. He holds the cards and they don't, or, as others might say, he's got them by the balls. The same is true, by the way, of the big law firms and research universities that he has extorted. He was and is in a position to threaten both their missions and their existence. We ought not be too quick to damn those who settle with their extortioner. The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must.
Asbestos tile removal. Geri's been getting estimates of cost, all @ $5.000 plus. I submitted a claim to USAA under our homeowners' and umbrella policies, but I don't expect to have it honored, since it's flood-related. Fingers crossed. Deductible is $1,000.
What I was thinking about on this date two years ago:
It's their job. There is a report in this morning's WaPo on the new movie "The Zone of Interest" by director Jonathan Glazer. The film depicts the lives of the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, his wife and children. They lived in a 'dream house' with a beautiful garden that abutted the wall on the other side of which was the death camp. Glazer said he wanted to depict the Nazi's running Auschwitz as mere mercenaries: "They're doing it because it's their job. It's a career path for them. . . This is a movie about how anyone can be evil." Glazer's statement remined me of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's lines from The Gulag Archipelago:
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil.
and
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
I don't usually read the readers' comments following newspaper articles but I do I guess that I may learn something from them, and I did with this article. One reader commented:
While the following may not be quite on the same level as Rudolf Höss, consider:
1) The tobacco company CEOs, executives, propagandists, and advertising personnel who have promoted death and illness...because it's their job.
2) The petroleum industry folks who have sewn lies about climate change and damaged, perhaps irreparably, our planet...because it's their job.
3) The Sackler family and similar folks in various pharmaceutical industries who have promoted addictions and death and who conspire to keep the average person from getting affordable drugs...because it's their job.
4) The thousands of CEOs, executives, and workers in the American food industry who promote ultra-processed junk that sickens and kills millions of Americans...because it's their job.
5) The many politicians who deny necessary medical and social services to their constituents...because it's their job, it keeps them in power, and it helps them rake in money.
And so on, and so on.
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