CSotD: Weekend Roundup
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It’s a good day to round up a few topics that have been waiting for a good day to be rounded up. BTW, some people solve this rebus immediately while others get hung up trying to be too specific about the image in the middle. Don’t overthink it.
Alcaraz declines to knuckle under. It would be lovely if Carr were the only member of Trump’s administration trying to impose policies in place of the law, but at least the Jimmy Kimmel thing drew a lot of attention and went badly for the administration.
Alcaraz lists officials at Nexstar and Sinclair as accomplices, and, for the moment, they’re carrying out the administration’s desire to keep Jimmy from picking on Donnie.
However, their plan to cancel Kimmel on the ABC affiliates they own may be temporary and performative.
Network affiliates sign contracts that give them a limited number of times they can cancel the network feed, typically to bring in a local production, like a high school championship game, or to cover a major local election.
But to dump a full hour five nights a week indefinitely would be a breach of contract.
That’s assuming the local citizenry doesn’t pressure local advertisers into telling their local ABC affiliates to put the show on the air.
Zyglis celebrates the initial First Amendment win, and while the world doesn’t revolve around Jimmy Kimmel, it is indeed a good example and inspiration for people to stand up against other attacks on freedom and the law.
Smith exaggerates Trump’s goal, or maybe not, given how much he enjoys being on the air. His goal, however, is to control what people see and hear, and, he hopes, what they think.
I remember a Soviet journalist asking me if we carried Brezhnev’s speeches in our paper, and I had to explain that we could only run as many pages as we had advertising for and that we didn’t even carry (George HW) Bush’s speeches in their entirety.
Which I thought of because Dear Leader’s inability to stick to the script would probably mean that the national news would come on at 6:30 but then run until whenever he stopped talking, and the selection of stories to be covered would jump around the way that UN speech did.
Another laugh, this one based on the farcical indictment of Comey for lying to Congress. Comey may or may not have misstated something or other, but Buss is right to suggest that, if lying to Congress is going to be prosecuted, Kash Patel could be in big trouble.
Good thing Trump only sics the law on his enemies or he’d have to hold Cabinet meetings in Leavenworth to get a quorum. Though if they appealed to the Supreme Court, I can think of a few justices who would agree that lying to Congress should not be a prosecutable offense.
And here’s another joke that isn’t funny: Trump is trying to prosecute Letitia James, Adam Schiff and Lisa Cook for mortgage fraud for holding two mortgages on primary residences.
Aside from the irony of Dear Leader having been found to have practiced a bit of mortgage fraud himself, there’s a greater irony in that three members of his Cabinet have also claimed multiple primary residences, which isn’t necessarily illegal anyway.
And Joy of Tech points out that Dear Leader’s cunning plan to bring Tik Tok under American control has its hazards, given that he steered the deal into not just American but very friendly American hands.
Murphy has nailed one outcome of the effort to beatify Charlie Kirk. If Trump did have a substantial Black voter base, he’s risking it, just as the abuses of his ICE squads are threatening a substantial portion of his Latino support (which is far more diverse than pundits claim).
Another example of selective prosecution seems to be at work with Border Czar Tom Homan, who got caught very literally holding the bag: A paper bag filled with cash, which was part of an FBI sting.
This might remind older readers of Abscam, an FBI sting in which bribes were offered to US legislators on behalf of a fictional Arab company, but that’s different, because in those days the FBI prosecuted crooked politicians. Six congressmen and a senator were convicted.
It was a long time ago.
We don’t operate that way anymore, at least not with Trump allies, as long as they continue to be loyal to Dear Leader, though his attorney general may be kicking herself that she settled for only half what Homan took home.
In other news, France, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada have recognized Palestine, bringing the total of nations acknowledging the ad hoc existence of a nation to 157, though Al Jazeera’s analysis notes the huge difference between a theoretical and an actual state.
Ramirez is pushing back, citing an event from a quarter century ago that involved Saudi terrorists with Taliban assistance, and a more recent terrorist horror, which was carried out by Hamas.
But conflating Hamas and the Palestinian people muddies an already complicated issue.
Hamas has limited support in Gaza and on the West Bank, and establishment of an actual Palestinian state would not likely place the group in charge.
Moreover, Hajjaj argues, the Balfour Declaration guaranteed Palestinian as well as Jewish rights in the region, and his point would likely prevail in the United Nations, assuming the US did not exercise its veto.
Unlike in the US system, there is no provision for overriding a veto by one of the permanent members of the Security Counsel: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Jennings suggests that Trump has enough personal interest in his proposed Gaza resort that there’s no chance of the US budging.
Rowe expresses the opinion that the US itself is no longer recognizable.
Can we restore the original country?
It will take more than removing the Dollar Store decor of the Oval Office, more than replanting the Rose Garden. It will require knowing what we’ve lost.
Like the citizens in Fahrenheit 451, we must commit to memory that which others would destroy.
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