Monday, December 22, 2025
Days grow longer, Spring draws nearer, rough months ahead
1894 Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison
1984 Bernhard Goetz shot 4 black muggers on NYC subway train
2001 British Islamic militant Richard Reid attempted to ignite explosives hidden in the soles of his shoes aboard a passenger airplane.
2010 Barack Obama signed the legislation repealing the military policy of "Don't ask, don't tell', clearing the way for gay Americans to serve in the military
2023 UN Security Council voted to speed up delivery of desperately needed aid for Gaza 13-0 with Russia abstention
In bed at 9, up at 5:35. 31°, w/c 22°, high 37°, low 28°, a little snow
Meds, etc. Morning meds at 6:30 a.m.
Freedom of the press under Trump: In this morning's New York Times, a story by Michael M. Grynbaum, "‘60 Minutes’ Pulled a Segment. A Correspondent Calls It ‘Political.’
In a move that drew harsh criticism from its own correspondent, CBS News abruptly removed a segment from Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” that was to feature the stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a “brutal” prison in El Salvador.
CBS announced the change three hours before the broadcast, a highly unusual last-minute switch. The decision was made after Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, requested numerous changes to the segment. CBS News said in a statement that the segment would air at a later date and “needed additional reporting.
But Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, rejected that criticism in a private note to CBS colleagues on Sunday, in which she accused CBS News of pulling the segment for “political” reasons.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
. . .
Sunday’s unusual events have once again placed “60 Minutes” at the center of a media and political fracas.
Ms. Weiss was appointed in October after David Ellison, the owner of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, acquired her independent news and opinion site, The Free Press.
Mr. Ellison’s acquisition of Paramount earlier this year was approved by the Trump administration after Paramount paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit that President Trump had brought against “60 Minutes.”
Mr. Ellison is currently making a hostile bid to outmaneuver a rival company, Netflix, and acquire the media behemoth Warner Bros. Discovery. He has been courting Mr. Trump’s support for his bid, but the president has used recent episodes of “60 Minutes” to suggest he is displeased with Mr. Ellison’s stewardship of CBS.
“For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover,’ than they have ever treated me before,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.
The segment was focused on Venezuelan men who were sent by the Trump administration to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious prison in El Salvador. In a news release on Friday promoting the segment, CBS News said that Ms. Alfonsi had spoken with several men now released from the prison “who describe the brutal and torturous conditions they endured.”
One of Ms. Weiss’s suggestions was to include a fresh interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, or a similarly high-ranking Trump administration official, two of the people said. Ms. Weiss provided contact information for Mr. Miller to the “60 Minutes” staff.
So it goes in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Money makes the world go around. To believe that we have a government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people' is to be a fool. And they have 3 more years to work their wickedness and destruction.
What should civics teachers be teaching in our schools now about America and democracy? about 'the land of the free'? about what is happening in this country? Do they pursue the truth? Can they?
Art toss. I bit the bullet and tossed some old art projects into the trash cart this afternoon, including a nude I dated "81". I suppose I ought to toss a lot of other ones, and maybe I will. Not much sense waiting until both the paintings and the painter are ready for the landfill, Omega Hills for them and Forest Lawn for me. I made progress in setting up my 'studio' and could probably start painting now. Whether I have the motivation to do so is another question.
Looking at my paintings from the early 80s, I could see that I have managed to get better at applying paint to a surface, no increase in talent or creativity, just in applying paint to a surface, but I'm glad for that.
Frank Bruni's essay in today's NYT is "The Most Important Thing We Learned From Susie Wiles", about her now infamous Vanity Fair set of interviews. I was first struck by these words:
Briefing Whipple on Trump’s tropisms, she observed: “He’s said it a million times — ‘I judge people by their genes.’” That nugget drew less notice than the digs at Vance and Vought. But it’s a doozy, especially given Trump’s frequent rants about immigration and I.Q.
Trump is at heart a racist and a eugenist. It's part of his nazism. He's a believer in genetically superior people and families, and races. He deep-down believes in shithole countries and shithole people. Most shithole countries are in Africa. Most genetically superior countries and people are in northern Europe, especially Scandinavia. In mid-twentieth-century Germany, eugenics led to Auschwitz. Where will he lead twenty-first-century America?
I was also struck by these words in the same paragraph:
But when Trump beckoned [Wiles] to join him as he returned to the White House, she came. She came despite her awareness of how quickly he’d cycled through chiefs of staff and other senior aides during his previous term. She came despite knowing — as does any sensate creature even casually observing America over the past decade — how vicious and volatile he can be. She came with eyes open to his biases, having worked on all three of his presidential campaigns.
These words reminded me of what I posted on Facebook during the hearings of the January 6th Committee about the witnesses from the first Trump administration who testified before the Committee:
On July 22, 2022, I posted on Facebook the following:
Donald Trump is a bad man. He was a bad man on January 6, 2021. He was a bad man on January 20, 2017, when he was inaugurated, and on November 8, 2016, when he was elected. He was a bad man on June 15, 2015, when he magisterially rode down the escalator to announce his candidacy and to denounce Mexicans as criminals and rapists, though "some, I assume, are good people." Trump's personal wickedness, dishonesty, and perfidy have been open and notorious throughout his adult life. I am mindful of that every time I watch the Republican witnesses called by the January 6th Committee. They are all Trump enablers. Pat Cipollone, his White House counselor, is the most flagrant, successfully fending off Trump's first impeachment in 2019-2020, enabling Trump to stay in power, to run for reelection, and to put all of us through the wringer of the 2020 election and its aftermath, especially January 6th. That said, while I acknowledge the testimonies of Cipollone, Pottinger, Matthews, Hutchinson, and the other Trump administration officials, I never lose sight of the fact that they were all voluntary Trump enablers. Ditto the 'Christian first, conservative second, republican third' Mike Pence. Each hitched his or her wagon to the evil star of a bad man, a very bad man. Forgive me if I don't applaud them.
Ditto for Susie Wiles and every other enabler of DJT in his infinitely more dangerous second term.
Today's Wall Street Journal has an article titled "America’s Seniors Are Overmedicated", by Anna Wilde Mathews, Christopher Weaver, Tom McGinty and Josh Ulick. Excerpts:
One in six of the 46 million seniors enrolled in Medicare’s drug benefit, which pays for most drugs taken by older Americans, were prescribed eight or more medications. . . . In 2022, 7.6 million seniors were simultaneously prescribed eight or more medications for at least 90 days. Of those seniors, 3.9 million took 10+ drugs at once. Among the seniors in the Journal analysis who were taking eight or more drugs, 3.6 million had prescriptions for at least one medication that geriatricians say elderly patients should generally avoid.
I'm one of those taking 8 prescription drugs every day, and I suspect that the number will increase after the results of my pulmonary function tests, Holton monitor, and perhaps referral to the Cardiac (congestive heart failure) clinic are known. Blood pressure -2; gout -1; prostate -2; TIA - 1; cholesterol - 1; GERD -1. In addition, I use a number of prescription creams and lotions and eye medications, as needed. Plus, a doctor-prescribed multi-vitamin, a potassium horse pill, and an OTC dry-eye medication. and eye drops. Plus, the most expensive stuff: once a week Trulicity injections for diabetes and bi-weekly Kevzara injections for polymyalgia rheumatica. What am I missing? Yikes. I used to wonder whether all these chemicals were killing me, but now I am persuaded they have probably kept me alive for as long as I've lived, particularly the blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes drugs.
After my PFT this morning, I stopped at the Gold Clinic to see whether I could get a Covid vaccination. No luck. I needed an order from my primary care provider, Kali. This afternoon, I got a call from VA scheduling office to set a date for the vaccination, January 2, after the Holton monitor mounting and my urology appointment. I decided that it was irresponsible not to get the vaccine since, if I caught Covid, I could spread it to Geri, or anyone else.
Lunacies, Obscenities
New battleships: President Trump announced on Monday that the Navy would build two new “Trump Class” battleships, with the eventual goal of acquiring 25. The announcement by Mr. Trump was the latest example of the president rebranding an aspect of the federal government in his image.
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