PS the bullshit occupation of South Station is coming. It’s being staged in a city north of here, Beverly. All week I’ve seen locals posting pix of South Station. How clean it is. How safe they feel there, etc.
I wake and exclaim, it’s Thursday and I don’t have anything! It’s been a relatively busy week so far so this makes me happy.
My immediate next thought: we’re on the fascism train.
And it’s left the station.
Feel free to skip the rest. Go outside. Take a walk. Read Mary Oliver or Robin Kimmerer. Have a nice bowl of yogurt and strawberries. But I need to place a marker this morning. As long as this is, it is in no way comprehensive.
On Monday Maddow highlighted another purge, this time of upper level intelligence and military personnel. Yesterday, Trump fired the CIA expert on Russia, who was at the Alaska Summit. The government, briefly took over the Amtrak station in DC. The occupation there, ongoing. Tyranny experts talk about the importance of controlling the Capitol, meaning it’s not just a distraction. It’s not just a scare tactic.
(And I’m with Tim Miller here: can we stop talking about “distractions” already? It’s a journalistic waste of breath and also misses the point that things can be both ugly, scary power grabs AND distractions and by distractions, lately, of course we’re talking about the ongoing cover up of trump’s crimes with cohort and bestie, Epstein).
Trump is targeting Lisa Cook, who sits on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve. In the history of that agency, not one single president has ever ousted one single serving economic expert. Not one. No surprise she’s a Black woman. It’s also abundantly clear he’s attacking her because he cannot yet risk trying to get rid of Jerome Powell.
Trump lacks the authority to fire Cook without cause and according to the NYTimes, the voluminous material produced by the Trump appointee at the Federal Housing agency fails to outline a crime (mortgage fraud. See also Adam Schiff and Letitia James).
The head of the CDC has been fired. The recent cancellation of vaccine research, the revamping of vaccine guidelines along non-scientific, conspiratorial lines is recent history. Threats to sue the American Pediatric Association for issuing their own (sane) vaccine recommendations came not long after. (Covid is not included in the vaccine liability law so the government cannot do this). It’s not a stretch to imagine that free Covid vaccines might be a thing of the past — maybe available for people 65 and over maybe not.
Meanwhile, the press continues its flaccid coverage. Sanewashing trump’s delusional and incoherent statements, for instance. People around the president know he’s declining. People who track down recordings and listen to Trump (MeidasTouch) know he’s more off the rails than ever. He looks like shit. Online debates about how far progressed his congestive heart failure is can be a great time waster but obviously everyone invested in America’s future wants to know: when is this fucker gonna drop dead?
On the subject of succession, it’s clear to many that the scary anti-democratic billionaires and others are busy behind the scenes getting ready for a JD presidency. Vance is often away when some of the worst things are going on, for instance, distancing himself from the administration.
Every single thread about Trump dropping dead has someone piping up, but JD Vance will be worse!
The most recent take on that, a view supported by what I know about Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin, suggests that it really won’t matter who’s president next given the unitary executive approach to governing which the Supreme Court has had no small hand in ushering along.
In other words, the absence of a cult following may not matter as much as we hope. Same with Vance’s across-the-board unlikeability.
I can’t follow what’s happening to the Palestinians right now. It throws me over a ledge. But even scanning headlines delivers outrageous news: targeting journalists and lying about it seems about par for the course for the raging war criminal at the helm.
And by “targeting” I mean slaughtering. By “war criminal at the helm” I mean Netanyahu.
We’ve got vocal brave fighters now. Newsome, Pritzker, Wes Moore. Others. That’s not nothing. There was an amazing special election result in Iowa this week, bolstering Robert Hubbell’s opinion that results matter more than polling or registration numbers (this candidate won by double digits in a state that Trump won by double digits).
So for now, I will continue to pin my hopes on the 2026 midterm elections.
For now my online porn will continue to be watching Republicans being yelled at and booed in town halls attended by very fed up constituents.
Reminder: it would only take a handful of Republicans to make a lot of this stop.
What happened to the Republican Party remains one of the most unanswerable and confounding issues of our day.
The sun has moved off the armoire and there’s coffee waiting for me downstairs. Time to rise and shine, in other words.
Check out this iteration of the turtle theme on the scrap-holding side of the pin board. Its chaotic clutter speaks to this moment better than any of the studied compositions.
Someone asked, and so I share this partial and ever changing list on August 22, 2025.
I subscribe to the NYTimes (Sunday paper, the rest digital), The Boston Globe (TH to Sunday paper), Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic. I listen to Maddow’s Monday program and catch as many Lawrence O’Donnells as I can. I used to religiously listen to the first hour of Nicolle Wallace but stopped after the election not sure why.
Late night: I often catch Colbert and Kimmel recordings with my lunch.
However, most of my news intake is from reading online and a couple of podcasts. I prefer reading to watching videos, otherwise MeidasTouch would be on this list (it recently surpassed Joe Rogan I heard).
Rebecca Solnit: brilliant, incisive, inspiring. Recent post entitled: On Not Surrendering in Advance (Or At Any Point Thereafter). Her thoughts on hope are must-reads. I’ve read that Substack has some Nazi influencers (or owners?) so I’m guessing that’s why she has her own website: Meditations in an Emergency.
Robert Hubbell: like Heather Cox Richardson, his enormously popular newsletter started as a way to keep his kids informed. He combines to-the-moment news coverage with a grounded optimism. I listen to him almost every morning while I get dressed because he has an audio link (I listen at 1.5 speed bc he talks slowly). I subscribe to free version of Substack but sts wish I paid because he interacts actively with his audience.
Tim Miller of The Bulwark is one of my favorite commentators. (I almost said, “one of my favorite former Republican commentators” but he’s just one of my favorites, period). He does a lot of good interviews on his podcast. Here’s today’s. He is gay and lives in New Orleans.
Charlie Sykes, also of The Bulwark. Here’s Sykes’s his interview with Ben Wittes on the Alaska Summit. I like him a lot. He has two gorgeous German Shepherds (used to see them more over on Twitter).
Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American: hugely popular and increasingly influential historian offering daily updates, often with in-depth historical background. She teaches at Boston College (or used to?) and lives in Maine. I used to read daily and don’t anymore. Again, not sure why.
Democracy Docket, Marc Elias et al fighting for voting rights in the courts. Paid and free versions. I get the free email daily.
Stephen Beschloss: Journalist (not related to historian Michael). Good analysis of the news. I get free version of his Substack newsletter by email.
Today from him I learned that Bryan Stevenson wisely erected his Legacy Museum and Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama without taking a penny from state or federal funders, so he is exempt from the current push to whitewash slavery from our history.
Joyce Vance, a former federal appellate litigator from Alabama, can be relied upon to “get in the weeds” with the legal status of cases. I listened to her more when there were active cases against Trump. She has a newsletter, Civil Discourse, (again, I subscribe to the free version) and a podcast, Sisters in Law, which she hosts along with Barb McQuade, Jill Wine-Banks, and Kimberly Atkins Stohr (start podcast at 8 minutes — lots of chatter and ads before content). Her father in law, formerly a judge in Alabama, was murdered and she has four kids, so she brings not just legal expertise to her discussions.
I guess going to hear them live makes me a super fan?
Andrew Weissman and Mary McCord have renamed their podcast to Main Justice. I used to listen more often when there were active cases against Trump. Weissman teaches at NYU Law and among other things, served with Mueller on the Russia investigation.
McCord teaches at Georgetown Law School and according to their website: McCord was the Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2016 to 2017 and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for National Security from 2014 to 2016.
I love the way she says, “rhetoric” (RE-TRICK).
Sherrilyn Ifill, civil rights lawyer, democracy warrior. I pay for her newsletter.
For pure inventive satire, I read The Borowitz Report. That guy is brilliant.
Another irreverent commentator, Jeff Tiedrich, is among my favorites. He eschews capital letters and employs a crude, no-holds-barred style of writing. Recent headline: insane dictator wanna-be hosts batshit European leader play date. Substack, free and paid versions.
For incisive, SCARY, analysis of the “international crime syndicate,” with special expertise on Russia and Ukraine, read Sarah Kendzior. I stopped listening to her podcast, Gaslit Nation, because I got sick of the “I told you so’s” (justified, but still). She’s a midwesterner who has written books, one called, View from Flyover Country.
Boston protest signs quote from Sarah Kendzior
I occasionally listen to The Daily, a podcast of The New York Times. Runs about 30 minutes. A good supplement to read-news.
I pay for Roxane Gay’s substack newsletter, The Audacity. It’s focused on books but she does an interesting weekly roundup.
I still sometimes check in with the Pod Save America guys. Dan Pfeiffer, the smartest of the lot in my view, is on Monday’s.
I got lazy with links, but all can be found easily with an online search.
I also get Talking Points Memo, Simon Rosenberg, Peter Beinhart, Jess Craven. And more. So maybe there will be a part two.
I know some who follow Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway’s podcast, Pivot. It’s long and I just haven’t added it to the rotation. Both incredibly smart.
Drop your favorites in the comments, if you feel like it.
Today: bliss. No rowdy kids’ camp over the fence, no yard crews, no tree work, road work, or house renovations. Comfortable shade. A trickling water feature. AND BIRDS!
We have: sparrows, grackles, cardinals, blue jays, nut hatches, woodpeckers, finches, and titmice.
There were three grackles on the feeder moments before this photo, looking positively mythic.
The brads which Ken hammered into the fence post have helped deter squirrel launches but don’t appear to be particularly bothersome to the lightweight sparrows.
Such peace is necessary, always, but maybe especially on a day that began with footage of our traitorous, delusional leader meeting with Putin. The red carpet! The changed tactics! The grinning, handshaking, the references to Alaska as Russia (a third gaffe on the jet saying he was ‘going back to the States’?)
Picture this: me propped up with pillows reading my phone. It’s after nine and I’ve just woken. Ken comes in, refreshed after a shower. He’s been up since seven. I say (first words of the day to him), “You gotta read Masha Gessen’s piece in the Times today.”
So yeah, birds. Flapping, swooping, bathing, pecking, bickering, flying, calling, feeding — BIRDS. Doing their thing.
*****
Here’s a gift link to the opinion piece if you’re interested.
When my younger son was in high school he wrote an essay entitled, The American Dream is Dead.
This was before Trump. However, it was already evident that he and his brother might not be able to afford a home without substantial help from us. It was also clear that a college degree might not be the ticket it once was. Not only that, but the climate crisis was accelerating with no apparent political will to do with anything about it.
The American dream was always conditioned on white privilege, on inherited wealth, on the color of one’s skin, on where one was born — I’m saying the same thing over and over again, aren’t I?
Still, I think we can agree that we used to live in a country with a thriving middle class where at least some offspring could reasonably expect to do better than their parents economically, could rationally anticipate that they might live longer than their parents, and could expect without resorting to fantasy that they would have a healthy environment to pass on to their kids.
I grew up in the white suburbs in the 60’s and 70’s — a member of the Jones generation (tail-end Boomer with a lot in common with Gen X). Both of my parents were first generation college-goers. Both of them, through hard work and decent educations (and white privilege) surpassed their parents by almost any measure you can devise (except longevity — a story for another time). That I would go to college was baked in. My degree in English (with a focus on medieval literature, of all practical things) garnered me a professional job in radio. That’s what we expected. That’s what we got.
Now? My boys were alive on 9/11. They watched us worry our way through the financial meltdown of 2008. They saw how we had to remortgage the house to afford college. More recently, they’ve experienced (up close) wildfires and drought. Even though my older son makes more money than I did as a first year associate at a swanky downtown law firm in the 90’s, he can’t afford to buy a home. The other son is finishing up his degree in communications and worries how many vocational avenues will be foreclosed by AI.
All of this to say, The Moonwalkers, movingly loud, visually gorgeous, and packed with information was hair-raising and inspiring and made me deeply sad.
I was riven with a painful nostalgia watching a country celebrate the moon landing. I teared up thinking of all the expertise that came together to make such a seemingly impossible feat possible. You couldn’t help but wonder if such a mission would be feasible today. With the GOP’s wanton expulsion of expertise in every scientific field, I’m doubtful. In fact, I’m not sure we can still accurately forecast the weather, for Christ’s sake.
At one point my husband pointed to the glowing exit sign on one of the surround-screens and quipped, “That’s how you know it was fake.” A perfect joke.
Let’s end on an upbeat note, shall we?
It turns out that Tom Hanks, a year older than us, was a real space aficionado as a kid. His recollections added a personal dimension to our shared history — like the time he tried to simulate being in space by grabbing a couple of bricks, arranging the garden hose so he could breathe through it, and sinking to the bottom of their 3-foot above-ground pool. He recounted his devoted position in front of the TV again and again. We could relate.
So much to remember! Those clunky-looking TV’s. How viewing was a shared experience. The trust we had in Walter Cronkite and John F. Kennedy, voices so familiar to those of us of a certain age.
