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This month started with the terrible Oval Office abandonment of Ukraine by Trump. It’s really embarrassing. If there’s any silver lining in this, it’s that Trump has completely discredited his ability to broker any kind of solution. Even honest conservatives in the USA will find this assholery hard to rationalize…
THE DELIGHTFUL JOHN LITHGOW: Lithgow reads lines from characters he has played and tries to recall which movie or TV show they were from. (I enjoyed playing this game a lot). (YT) . Here he picks his favorite Criterion Collection movies. (YT)
I first discovered Lithgow from Third Rock from the Sun. Even though the entire cast was stellar, Lithgow particularly stood out. I was actually shocked at how many serious roles he had played before and after Third Rock.
WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO HAVE RIGHTS? Here’s a letter from Mahmoud Khalil whom the Trump Administration wrongly and unfairly labeled as a “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigner.” “For decades,” Khalil writes, “anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.”
Notes from a Canadian citizen wrongly arrested by ICE:
“Ice detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit. Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts. The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense…
(From Bill McKibben’s Substack). WOW! Chinese Car Maker BYD announce that their new $30,000 model due in April will charge in 5 minutes and go 400 miles. Luo Hongbin, BYD senior vice president, said the motor “not only significantly boosts a vehicle’s speed, but also greatly reduces the motor’s weight and size, enhancing power density.” McKibben wryly comments,
“BYD did not waste its time giving Nazi salutes. It didn’t buy a social media platform so it could make obscure marijuana jokes and make fun of poor people. It didn’t devote itself to helping a nincompoop win the presidency and then decide it would be exhilarating fun to fire a bunch of government workers. Instead, BYD did, you know, engineering. It must sting for Musk to watch that kind of progress, especially on a week when he had to recall all 46,000 cybertrucks (and thus disclose for the first time that he’d only sold 46,000 cybertrucks) in order to keep them from dropping parts on the road.”
“Being the genius I am I left Fox soon afterwards for the relative safety and sense of mutual trust I could find at NBC.” (Conan O’Brien talking about why he left his writer’s gig on the Simpsons). (YT)
Frankly I am enraged every single day at actions by the Trump Administration. I already knew how bad it was going to be if Trump won, and still remain a constant state of fury. Even Facebook seems to have a lot of shares of anti-Trump news.
It is both shocking and horrifying how many international graduate students have been forcibly detained by ICE officials for the flimsiest of reasons. The Trump Administration quickly is establishing itself as a force for anti-intellectualism and lawlessness. International students have always enriched the lives of college campuses. We should be encouraging them to visit USA and be candid in their opinions. In contrast, the voters that supported Trump and his party have endorsed lawless behavior, bigotry and intolerance. They commit crimes and pardon people who commit (sometimes very serious) crimes. The Founding Fathers would probably have been more comfortable with a country full of Rumeysa Ozturks and Mahmoud Khalils than Donald Trumps and Stephen Millers and Paul Manaforts and Steve Bannons. What happens when international students decide that studying in America is too trouble? They forget about USA and bring their research and innovations to freer countries which can benefit economically from their contributions.
Tim Snyder on THE BIGGER SCANDAL: “Using Signal enables American authorities to violate the rights of Americans. Signal is attractive not because it is secure with respect to foreign adversaries, which it is not, but because it is secure with respect to American citizens and American judges. The autodelete function, which Mike Waltz was using, violates the law. But what is most essential is the purpose of that law: to protect the rights of Americans from their government. The timed deletion function allows American officials to be confident that their communications will never be recorded and that they can therefore conspire without any chance of their actions being known to citizens at the time or at any later point.” The Guardian concludes, “”The leak exposes a system of broken accountability, where high-ranking officials can spill military secrets with apparent near-total immunity. Despite potential violations of classification protocols, federal record-keeping laws and promises of operational security, the leaders look to face no meaningful legal consequences.”
I confess, I find the news story about the US Secretary of Homeland Security having her purse stolen in front of Secret Service workers the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. I hope SNL, Daily Show and Stephen Colbert have a great time with it…
“But her equally bizarre cash stash looks much more explicable when you consider two other peculiar items she had in her handbag: her passport and a set of blank checks. If it’s strange to bring $3,000 to a burger joint, it’s completely incomprehensible for a government official to be carrying her passport around D.C. on a family visit. And who uses checks for anything but rent these days? Taken together, the contents of this stolen purse sound less like what you might find in an average pocketbook and more like what someone might store in a go-bag. Does Noem fear the possibility of an impending indictment—or, dare I say, a coup—that would force her to flee the country at a moment’s notice? Could be! With her meds, her cash, and her makeup bag, she’d be ready for life as an official in exile. But with all the vigilance and forethought it takes to prepare for such an eventuality, you’d think she’d keep a closer eye on her purse.” (Snark from Christina Cauterucci (Paywalled).
To be fair, I have no idea if the person who did it was some person with nefarious or sinister intentions — maybe to blackmail or publicly embarrass the politician. Let’s assume it’s just a bandit with ordinary motives. But if the director of homeland security can’t manage her own purse, that suggests a level of incompetence we have never seen before. Also, the most shocking thing is that they STILL have not caught the thief.
TEXAS UNIVERSITIES ARE COWARDS! As of this morning, 403 university presidents have signed a public statement speaking out against the “unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” Out of those 403, there are ZERO presidents from universities (public or private) in Texas. RELATED: The Trump Administration has continued to “Pinochet” various graduate students and professors in Texas.
TRUMP V. UNIVERSITIES: Between 2000 and 2014, more than 1/3 of the Americans who won Nobel Prizes in science were immigrants. In 2019, almost 40 percent of all software developers were immigrants. And in the major cancer centers in 2015, the percentage of immigrants ranged from around 30 percent in Fred Hutchinson to 62 percent at MD Anderson. But this is changing fast. Students are being rounded up to be deported, and graduate students and researchers from China now face the prospect of constant FBI investigations. China has created generous incentives to welcome its best and brightest back home. Many others are choosing to go elsewhere. From Europe to Canada to Australia. Last month, “Nature” magazine asked its readers who are American researchers, whether they were thinking of leaving this country. After more than 1,600 who responded, a stunning 75 percent said that they were.(Fahreed Zakaria)
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