2025
We haven’t had enough fresh snow lately, so wind on the dry roads, driveways, and parking lots is kicking up a lot of sand, salt, and other things that’ve made me reach for a rescue inhaler today. Cough. Hack. 😷
Thinking of a member of Orange Oaf's cast of terrible characters…
Don't Kill Our Wild Life – Department of the Interior, National Park Service – By Works Progress Administration – Federal Art Project NYC – [ca. 1936–40]
Via Library of Congress.
Group portrait of a Tuskegee Airmen squadron, U.S. Army Air Corps, ca. 1939–45. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL Digital Collections, image ID 1823641.
“Air Force says recruits will again learn about Tuskegee Airmen” by Sig Christenson, San Antonio Express-News, January 26, 2025.
The head of the service’s San Antonio-based training command said a video about the famed Black aviators would remain in the Air Force basic training curriculum. The course had been shut down in response to President Trump’s DEI ban.
Apparently overly zealous interpretations of executive orders can be turned back in some cases. It’s a small win for military training and tradition building, but it also suggests that military professionals can get through, at least on something like this. Trump’s pardon of war criminals in his first term tell a different story, however.
Office of Strategic Services, Simple Sabotage Field Manual (Washington, DC, 1944) via the Internet Archive.
Feel like I could use a little American history, starting with Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (Knopf, 2012). 📚
“From Maine to Florida. The Annual Migration of the Bathing-Girl.” By Gordon Ross for Puck, January 11, 1911. Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011648855/.
Quoth Darth Putin: “Chomsky: Greenland is clearly in US sphere of influence. Denmark should trade land for peace. Mearsheimer: Great powers always ruthlessly pursue their own interests. Denmark should be pragmatic. Varoufakis: Denmark’s aggressive joining of EU provoked Trump. It’s their own fault.” /sarcasm
Valuable multilingual resource: “Immigrants' Rights,” www.aclu.org….
Sergio Olmos, “A surprising immigration raid in Kern County foreshadows what awaits farmworkers and businesses,” Cal Matters, January 10, 2025, calmatters.org….
“If this is the new normal, this is absolute economic devastation,” says one local economist.
This and more recent stories suggest that ICE was chomping at the bit before the rotten orange began his second term.
Finished reading Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020). Highly recommended. Good antidote to feelings of confusion and helplessness in these troubled times.📚
Valuing loyalty over expertise and allowing violence to become an end in itself can result in a deprofessionalized and demoralized military, especially if misguided wars end in defeat.
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen (Norton, 2020), concl.
“Heeding Trump, Air Force won’t teach recruits about Tuskegee Airmen” by Sig Christenson, San Antonio Express News, January 24, 2025, expressnews.com….
A video describing the exploits of the groundbreaking African American airmen, who flew combat sorties during World War II, has been removed from the instructional curriculum for new recruits at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, the hub of Air Force basic training.
According to Politico, Vance broke a tie vote for the Colon-in-Chief’s choice of Sec Def.
All Democrats opposed Hegseth. Three Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—and, notably, former GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—voted against him.
Seems McConnell no longer has any influence at all over his caucus. Or he elected not to use what little he might still have. Somehow fitting.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune sure has some strange notions about military professionalism. (“Senate is preparing to confirm Hegseth…” apnews.com…) The GOP circus is playing a dangerous game with our national security.
“Apple Intelligence to Be Enabled on All Compatible Devices” by Adam Engst, TidBITS, January 24, 2025, tidbits.com. At least it can be turned off, though that seems to be an all-or-nothing proposition.
Digital Transgender Archive – Trans History, Linked
www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net. 🏳️⚧️
“‘Make a Molotov Cocktail’: How Europeans Are Recruited through Telegram to Commit Sabotage, Arson, and Murder,” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, September 26, 2024, www.occrp.org….
Pro-Immigration Cartoon, 1903
“Captains Courageous” by Udo J. Keppler for Puck, July 1, 1903, centerfold, via Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010652280/.
Pro-immigration cartoon with Theodore Roosevelt on the left. A U.S. flag is marked by a rainbow with the text “Liberty.” To the right is a ship in the dark marked “Immigration” that is trying to escape the storms of “Prejudice.” The president has shot a rescue line that forms the word “Tolerance.” The quote in the lower right corner reads:
I feel that we should be peculiarly watchful over them, because of our own history, because we and our fathers came here under like conditions. Now that we have established ourselves, let us see to it that we stretch out the hand of help, the hand of brotherhood, toward the new-comers, and help them as speedily as possible to shape themselves and to get into such relations that it will be easy for them to walk well in the new life.
– The President’s Reference to Immigrants
Source of the quote: “At the Consecration of Grace Memorial Reformed Church, Washington, D.C., June 7, 1903,” in A Compilation of the Messages and Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Alfred Henry Lewis Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1906), pp. 481–83, quote 482.
Sharpies seem like a pretty good metaphor for a manbaby’s presidency.
I’m trying to remember how long it took me to get used to Orange Oaf in the White House last time. Was it six years? Longer? It took me no time at all to grow used to his departure from the Oval Office.
Snapshot of frost on the inside of my windshield this morning