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Jimmy starts us up:
Colbert joins in:
Bari good news, from Variety: “CBS Evening News” viewership has fallen below 4 million since Tony Dokoupil took over as anchor thanks to Bari Weiss. By comparison, ABC’s “World News Tonight” draws nearly 8.48 million viewers.
Trump Says Newsom Shouldn’t Be President Because He Is Dyslexic
President Trump said “a president should not have learning disabilities,” prompting criticism from a group that advocates equal opportunities for people with learning disabilities.
Then there’s this from El Presidente:
I do believe I’ll be the honor of, having the honor of taking Cuba. That’d be good. That’s a big honor. Taking Cuba, in some form, yeah, taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I could do anything I want with it, if you want to know the truth. They’re a very, uh, weakened nation right now.
Glad to see that Venezuela won the World Baseball Classic championship for the first time, by 3-2, upsetting the super arrogant United States team, with players saying they wanted to show “dominance” because that’s the American way. Trump may bomb that country again and install A-Rod as the new leader.
Ethics are not dead? Kalshi, a betting market, said it would not pay out millions of dollars in expected winnings from bets on the demise of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, citing a prohibition on wagers involving death.
What a shock: The company that organized Trump’s fateful rally on Jan. 6, 2021, has become the government’s highest-paid event planner.
A Hollywood find: She needed a new rug for her apartment. The dumpster outside the Oscars had a nice one — and it was red. But now does she have to dress up every night?
Trump’s SAVE Act went to the Senate yesterday. Heather Cox Richardson:
The Republicans won the House, the Senate, and the presidency in 2024, making it hard to argue that Republicans cannot win without new voting rules, but as G. Elliot Morris of Strength in Numbers noted today, since then Trump has lost the working-class white voters and Latino voters who put him in office. Republicans could woo them back but instead are trying to push voters off the rolls by demanding proof of citizenship to vote.
It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections—such voting is vanishingly rare— and states, which run elections, already require ID. According to the Brennan Center for Justice and the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, Trump’s demand that voters provide proof of citizenship—a passport or a birth certificate and matching REAL ID—when registering to vote and again at the polls would cut as many as 21 million voters off the rolls.
Music Picks
I know that Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” will be a big part of this year’s “250” commemorations/celebrations in our country. That’s great, even though Woody might have opposed some of the uses. But actually his lesser known but possibly even greater “Pastures of Plenty” hits some wider notes, from workers and migrants (picking grapes to supply the fancy wine drinkers) to people fighting for their rights—and also willing to fight for their country to keep it “free” (Woody would soon join the Merchant Marine and Army in World War II). Here are three live versions.
Judy Collins with Ani DiFranco:
Bobby Dylan in early 1960s before his first album:
Woody himself in 1949 in a rare live recording as Huntington’s disease about to take its toll:
From Tunes to Toons
Anderson:
Bramhall:
Luckovich:
Ella Baron:
Bagley:
Goris:
Hanif:
Photo Finish
From my camera to you: Peregrine Falcon, Alpine, NJ
Ella Baron nails it! These fuc*ers belong at the end of a “short drop!”
The Baron toon is so powerful. In part because the Palestinian girl is posed very much like Phan Thi Kim Phuc in the famous 1972 photo taken during the Vietnam War, titled The Terror Of War.