On Sept. 15, 2008 Lehman Brothers failed. Within weeks the whole U.S. financial system was caught in the downward spiral of a massive bank run, on a scale not seen since the 1930s. Yet there was an important difference from the 1930s bank runs: in 2008, the panic mainly resulted in flight from “shadow banks,” nonbank institutions that performed bank-like functions. Conventional banks were largely immune from the 2008 panic because deposit insurance and federal regulations – a consequence of the 1930s bank runs – protected them.
While the U.S. economy was already in recession when Lehman fell, the financial crisis pushed it off a cliff into a deep recession. Despite frantic efforts to stabilize the financial markets, including large bailouts and huge lending by the Federal Reserve, America lost 6 million jobs in the year following Lehman’s fall. Total employment didn’t return to pre-recession levels until 2014. The share of prime-working-age adults with jobs remained depressed until the late 2010s:
The clear lesson of 2008 is that effective financial regulation is essential. For three generations after the great bank runs of 1930-31, America avoided “systemic” banking crises — crises that threaten the whole financial system, as opposed to individual institutions. This era, which Yale’s Gary Gorton calls the Quiet Period, was the result of New-Deal-era protections — especially deposit insurance — and regulations that limited banks’ risk-taking.
But post 1980, finance was increasingly deregulated. In particular, the government failed to extend bank-type regulation to shadow banks that posed systemic bank-type risks. And the crisis came.
In a way, the laxity that made the 2008 crisis possible was understandable. By the 2000s nobody in government or the financial markets remembered what a real financial crisis was like. And no, watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Christmas Day doesn’t count.
But here we are in 2025, and 2008 wasn’t that long ago. Many of us still have vivid memories of the gut-wrenching panic that gripped the world when Lehman fell. Yet Donald Trump’s allies and cronies are now moving rapidly to dismantle the precautionary regulations introduced after 2008 to reduce the risk of future financial crises. I say “allies and cronies” advisedly. There’s no indication that Trump himself has any idea what’s happening on his watch. But key players in Congress, within the administration, and, alas, at the Federal Reserve, are apparently determined to make a 2008 rerun possible.
The MAGA war on financial stability is being waged largely on two fronts. First, there’s an ongoing effort within some parts of the Federal Reserve to drastically weaken bank supervision — oversight of banks to prevent them from taking risks that could threaten the financial system.
The Fed has multiple roles: in addition to setting interest rates, it also has primary responsibility for bank supervision.
The Fed is supposed to be quasi-independent, and so far it has preserved its interest-rate-setting independence in the face of intense pressure by Trump to cut rates. Yet a Trumpian agenda is attempting to overtake the Fed’s bank supervision operations. In June, Michelle Bowman, a Trump appointee, became the Fed’s vice-chair of supervision. She is in the process of reducing staffing at the Fed’s supervisory and regulatory unit by 30 percent, while hiring new staffers drawn from the banking industry.
Bowman is expected to substantially loosen capital requirements. Capital requirements – requirements that a bank’s shareholders put a significant amount of their own money at risk to fund loans, and not just depositors’ money – are a critical component of reducing risk throughout the banking sector. Bowman has also sent out a memo sharply curtailing the ability of Fed staff to issue warnings about what they consider risky bank practices.
While it’s impossible to predict the precise effect of any of these moves, Bowman’s actions will clearly increase the banking industry’s profits in the short run while increasing the risk of another financial crisis – a risk that will inevitably fall on taxpayers’ shoulders, as they did in 2008.
The second front of MAGA’s war on financial stability is on behalf of the crypto industry. The Trump administration and its allies in Congress — including, I’m sorry to say, a number of Democrats in this case — are moving to promote wider use of crypto. In particular, the GENIUS Act (gag me with an acronym), passed in July, aims to promote stablecoins. And the fact is that stablecoins are effectively an alternative, weakly regulated and poorly supervised form of banking.
What are stablecoins? They’re privately issued tokens supposedly fixed in value at one dollar. They are, in effect, sort of a digital version of the bank notes that circulated during America’s private banking era in the 19thcentury — an era in which gold coins were the only official U.S. currency, with paper money consisting of notes issued by private banks that promised to redeem these notes for gold or silver on demand. The most famous of these bank notes was the $10 “Dix” note issued by the Citizens’ Bank of Louisiana, which may have given the South its nickname:
Private banking had many serious problems: private banks frequently collapsed, thereby losing depositors’ money. Without effective government supervision, private banks could issue notes without the resources to honor their promise to redeem those notes on demand. Indeed, there was a proliferation of “wildcat banking” — establishing banks in remote locations “where the wildcats roamed,” thus making it difficult for noteholders to present their notes for redemption.
How do stablecoins compare with 19th century private banking? One fact rarely mentioned about the stablecoin industry is that it’s dominated by two big issuers, Tether and USDC, with the rest consisting of a grab-bag of minor coins that collectively are much smaller than either:
Tether has attracted the most scrutiny, in large part because it has, as The Economist puts it, become “money launderers’ dream currency.”
Leaving aside its role in facilitating global crime and viewing it as in effect a bank, how sound is Tether? On Wednesday S&P Global Ratings issued a scathing report, questioning the quality of Tether’s assets and noting that the company is highly secretive, giving outsiders no good way to assess its claims to be financially stable.
But aren’t government regulators keeping an eye on Tether? Um, no. Tether isn’t a U.S. company. It’s headquartered in and overseen by El Salvador, whose authoritarian ruler Nayib Bukele is best known in financial circles for his expensive, failing attempt to force Salvadorans to use Bitcoin as currency. El Salvador’s prudential guidelines for Tether are very lax, and how much faith do we have that even these weak rules are being enforced?
How did Tether respond to S&P’s assessment? With conspiracy theories, accusing S&P of being a tool of the “traditional finance propaganda machine.”
In short, as far as I can tell, Tether is a 21st century version of a wildcat bank, issuing tokens while deliberately making it hard for anyone to know whether it has the resources to honor them. And it’s not an outlier — it’s most of the industry.
Does Tether satisfy the rules of the GENIUS Act? No. This means that in principle, once the act is fully implemented, Tether won’t be able to issue its coins in the United States. The company has floated the idea of issuing a separate coin that does obey GENIUS rules, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Maybe other stablecoins will emerge that do honor U.S. rules. But there are worrisome loopholes in those rules that are likely to make stablecoins risky. And anyway, with resources and staff for financial supervision being slashed, how will these rules be enforced? A special source of concern is the worry that stablecoins will draw money out of conventional bank deposits into institutions that will, at best, be less well regulated.
Why are Trump and his allies undermining financial stability? There may be an element of free-market dogma. But as always with this administration, you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of simple corruption. Tether is closely connected with the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, formerly run by Howard Lutnick, Trump’s secretary of commerce. On joining the government, Lutnick left his role at Cantor Fitzgerald — and handed it over to his sons.
This post is already long, so I’ll stop with a warning: Along with its many other sins, the Trump administration is doing its best to make a future financial crisis more likely. I hope the Democrats are paying attention and won’t let themselves be seduced by Wall Street and, worse, the blandishments of the crypto bros. Because if they don’t, they could set themselves for a 2008-type crash during a Democratic administration. And we can guess who will get the blame.
It’s the corruption. We are awash in it and it’s getting worse every day.
Thanksgiving 2024 was one of the most dreary holidays we’ve had for many a year. It may have even been worse than the 2016 holiday, when half the country was in a state of stunned disbelief that Donald Trump had won the presidency. This time, though, we knew what we were in for — and that made it even worse.
Trump had been impeached twice, inspired an insurrection, convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual abuse of journalist E. Jean Carroll and guilty of massive fraud. He was indicted for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, and then he was indicted again for stealing classified documents. And yet Americans voted him back into the presidency? The turkey, dressing and pumpkin pie all tasted like dust that no amount of wine or cider could wash away.
When Republicans lose an election nowadays, they just say it was rigged and pretend they won anyway. Somehow, they apparently find that soothing. Democrats, on the other hand, don hair shirts and self-flagellate for months, ensuring that voters of all political stripes see they loathe themselves even more than the GOP does.
The good news is that after three seasons of remorse and penance, over the past month or so Democrats have broken out of their funk and are coming to grips with the reality of another three years of Trump.
Like the president himself, the Trump train, which looked like high-speed rail during the first few months of his second term, is slowing down. And it’s a much more rickety machine than it first appeared.
Over the past few weeks the Republicans have lost the argument — if not the process — on the government shutdown. Despite the best efforts of Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., Congress voted almost unanimously for the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. Trump failed to persuade the Senate to eliminate the filibuster and his “health care plan” has been rejected by the House’s MAGA caucus. Now, a contingent of congressional Republicans are rebelling against his proposed sell-out to Russia and his staunch ally, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., defied him and then announced her resignation, prompting whispers that she’s just the first of many House Republicans who are considering leaving Congress before the 2026 midterms — and possibly even prompting a shift in the majority.
For months, the media was mesmerized by Trump’s theatricality. Democrats in Washington, obsessed as they were with their compulsive navel gazing, were paralyzed. But that seems to be over now — and it’s largely due to ordinary Americans seeing the threats posed by Trump more clearly than the party’s leadership and successfully pushing back.
The latest polling breaks down along typical lines, with Republicans mostly backing Trump and Democrats pretty much unanimously rejecting him. But instead of the similar breakdown you usually find among Independents, who generally lean 50-50, a substantial majority of them are now siding with the Democrats. A recent CBS/YouGov poll found that a whopping 76% disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 24% approve.
Those numbers reflect a very serious erosion in support for Trump and Republicans, and it’s doubtless contributed to his approval rating sinking below 40%. This decline has occurred despite a massive propaganda effort by the White House to present the president’s first year as successful on every front — including this week’s ludicrous claim that he has the highest poll numbers of his career. He is actually at the weakest point in his presidency.
Americans are rejecting Trump’s policies across the board. He’s drastically underwater on the economy, immigration, inflation and trade, all supposedly his strong suits, and people are blaming him — and not former President Joe Biden — for all of it. While most Republicans love the cruel ICE raids in Democratic-led cities, large majorities of Democrats and Independents disapprove, and it’s personal to many of them. Most people, too, are well aware that Trump is using law enforcement to target his political enemies.
But we don’t have to read the polls to know that Democrats and Independents see what’s happening. In June, the “No Kings” protests brought out five million people nationwide, and the subsequent marches and rallies on Oct. 18 saw 7 million turn out in the largest protest in U.S. history.
As anyone who perused the many clever protest signs could see, there were many reasons why Americans turned out. But the common message was contained in the name of the protest itself: People don’t like the authoritarian methods Trump and the GOP are employing to get their way. The protests demonstrated that millions see the president as a clear and present threat to American democracy and our system of government.
These aren’t the only signs that the stakes are setting in for people. As historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her newsletter this week, there is a burgeoning consumer protest movement as well. In response to Trump’s appointment of Tesla CEO Elon Musk to take his famous chainsaw to the federal government, average folks organized “Tesla Takedowns” at the company’s showrooms to persuade people not to buy his cars. The results were major brand damage and sinking stock prices. ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, following pressure from Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr and Trump himself, proved that consumers have the kind of clout that can move a giant corporation — Disney in this case — to defy the administration’s attempts to crackdown on free speech. The loss of subscribers and again, brand damage, was substantial.
Richardson recounted the history of successful consumer movements, particularly those run by women in the years before they were allowed to vote. Her conclusion? These movements have teeth — and they work. Richardson mentioned the upcoming “We Ain’t Buyin’ It!” campaign scheduled for Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Its organizers are urging people to pause their shopping at Target, Amazon and Home Depot from Nov. 27 to Dec. 1 in an effort to protest what they call “corporations enabling the Trump Administration’s abuses of power.”
Finally, there were the overwhelming victories of Democrats in the recent elections. In a normal political environment, off-year elections have limited value in predicting the following year’s midterms. But this year, in this abnormal time, something interesting happened. Young people and Latinos who had voted for Trump in 2024 swung back to Democrats in droves, from the big marquee races to local school boards.
This comes as a huge relief. The most disorienting and disheartening aspect of the Trump restoration has been the idea that so many of our allies would support Donald Trump after all we knew about him. Today, I think we can see that many of them realize they made a mistake and are prepared to help save America from the creeping authoritarianism we are witnessing.
Just as it should be in a democracy, the people are inspiring the Democratic establishment to follow them. And that’s something to be thankful for.
“The MAGA crack-up has begun,” declares Michael Tomasky. I’m here for it. Tomasky offers some bullet points:
• Trump tried to sell Ukraine down the river to Putin. The howls of outrage were instant, loud, and bipartisan to some extent….
Who knew “Which Side Are You On?” predicted Trump?
• Trump, bumbling around on domestic policy because he knows nothing, desperately said he was considering extending the Obamacare coverage subsidies on Monday. Congressional Republicans were up in arms….
They’d just shut down the government for 43 days to prevent that.
• Trump and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth’s push to reinstate Senator Mark Kelly as an active-duty soldier (he’s 61!) so they can court-martial him is quickly turning into one of the leading disasters of this administration. There is no chance they’re going to convince a majority of Americans that a guy who flew 30-something combat missions is a disloyal American.
Does that old line about men wearing their brains between their legs apply to getting revenge?
• It was a disastrous week for Attorney General Pam Bondi as she stood there watching a federal judge dismiss the laughable indictments she directed against James Comey and Letitia James. And she stood up there, in perfect East German Communist Party circa 1957 fashion, repeating the assertion that everyone knows to be a lie, that Lindsey Halligan is “an excellent U.S. attorney.”
So it goes for FBI Director Kash Patel who looks to be headed out the door. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defied a court order to halt a deportation flight to El Salvador. She could face a contempt of court charge and jail time. Don’t expect her to get access to a puppy in prison.
There’s more, Tomasky offers, from a “whole murderers’ row of Trump’s awful appointments.”
Everywhere you look, in other words, Trump and his people are wrecking the country. He doesn’t know what to do about the economy. Presidents don’t have a ton of power to lower prices in the first place, and people are now understanding that fact, and that Trump swindled them last year. He’s going to give Putin most of what he wants. His pursuit of his perceived political enemies is going to be massively unpopular and drive his numbers down into the mid-30s before too long if he keeps it up. And all these incompetent and corrupt henchpeople aren’t helping. The movement is collapsing.
I can dream, can’t I?
I’m of an age that I remember the late “king of deadpan” comedy, Jackie Vernon, from “The Ed Sullivan Show.” One of his signature bits involved calmly describing his (imaginary) vacation slides he “advanced” using a hand clicker. Imagine this with Trump administration officials:
“Here I am touring the Everglades. That’s my guide. Guido the Guide.”
“[CLICK!] Here’s Guido leading me around a bed of quicksand…”
“[CLICK!] Here’s Guido from the waist up…”
“[CLICK!] There’s his hat.”
There’s a rescue party … and more hats. Trump 2.0 won’t get a rescue party.
From the cover of “Alt America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump,” by David Neiwert (2017). Dave previewed the cover for me in Atlanta the night of the Charlottesville car attack that killed Heather Heyer.
Donald Trump could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot an immigrant and not lose any voters. You know he believes it. You know he wants to. Killing Venezuelans in small boats is just previews. Threats to execute Democrats are pure, Trumpish id. Listen to the howls of outrage from the right over six elected Democrats reminding service members that the Universal Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) requires them to uphold the Constitution and not to follow orders that are clearly criminal.
Trump’s antipathy toward, well, pretty much everyone is well established in speech and in practice. He’s long ascribed to racehorse theory, even alluding to it in a 2020 presidential debate. “You could never have done the job we did,” Trump said to former Vice President Joe Biden. “You don’t have it in your blood.” Trump believes in the superiority of his genes. And thus, in the inferiority of others’.
Project 2025’s plans for closing the borders, eliminating asylum, and a program of mass deportation may be driven primarily by the authors’ desire to solidify political power in the hands of a shrinking white, Christian majority. But for Trump it is more visceral. As Trump’s mind and body have visibly declined, he’s simply more prone to let his beast out in public. He did late on Thanksgiving in a series of Truth Social posts. In the wake of the shootings of two National Guard members in D.C. this week by an immigrant, Trump is itching for some collective punishment.
Trump described immigrants and refugees as unproductive parasites and criminals, the source of high crime, urban decay, housing shortages, etc. And backward. Especially Somalis like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D) of Minnesota.
Trump declared his intent to “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States” (including the stray European), to “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility,” and to “deport any foreign national who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible” with Western (read: white) civilization. Trump declared a program of “REVERSE MIGRATION” (read: ethnic cleansing).
Trump has already declared his interest in remaking the Gaza Strip into “the Riviera of the Middle East” with a program to relocate the entire population. Say it: ethnic cleansing.
The United Nations advises that ethnic cleansing is not an independent crime under international law. Its 1993 report on genocide in the former Yugoslavia nevertheless defined ethnic cleansing as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area” and contrary to international law.
Whatever dry technical immigration reforms Project 2025 proposed, Trump just declared that his goal is a purge of the non-native born population through mass deportation to render the United States more ethnically homogeneous. Forget all that talk about enforcing immigration law. Trump means to enforce with extreme prejudice a whiter United States.
Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had best look in the mirror and reconsider just what they are really engaged in. History will not be kind to them. If there is any justice left in this world, neither will juries.
It’s been reported that the person who shot the national Guard soldiers in DC yesterday was an Afghan national who worked with the CIA and came to the U.S. as part of the evacuation in 2021 and was granted asylum in 2025 by Trump’s DHS.
Republicans are dramatically ramping up their anti-immigration rhetoric after the shooting of two National Guard members in D.C. by a suspect who is an Afghan national, with some calling to end Muslim immigration entirely and “deport every single Islamist.”
The Trump administration is already taking steps in that direction by suspending all immigration applications from Afghan nationals — a move even some Republican moderates aren’t fully dismissing.
[…]
Trump said Wednesday the shooting “underscores the single greatest national security threat facing our nation,” and that the U.S. “must now reexamine every single alien from Afghanistan who has entered our country under Biden.”
He added that the administration “must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country.”
Some Republicans in Congress want to go much further that just suspending Afghan immigration.
“We must IMMEDIATELY BAN all ISLAM immigrants and DEPORT every single Islamist who is living among us just waiting to attack,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said Wednesday in a post on X. The sentiment was similar among House members, with Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) writing: “Deport them all. Now. “We know the solution,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) posted. “Stop importing Islamists. Deport Islamists.”
[…]
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is pushing for a vote on his bill to require “recurrent and periodic vetting” of Afghan refugees who came to the U.S. in 2021 and 2022 without certain documentation. He wrote on X: “We must pass my Afghan Vetting Accountability Act to identify and conduct recurrent vetting of evacuees from Afghanistan found not to be properly vetted before entering the United States, so this NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN!”
I’m pretty sure they’ve just been looking for an excuse to deport Muslims. And now it’s going to happen. At the moment the only people Trump is welcoming to the United States are racist white South Africans and foreigners to do manual labor at his properties.
The assessment by the majority on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released late on Sunday, said the Biden administration chose “optics over security” as it oversaw a withdrawal agreement reached by former President Donald Trump and the Taliban in 2020.
Democrats, meanwhile, released their own minority report on the 18-month investigation on Monday, accusing Republicans of shutting them out of the probe and choosing partisan politics over the pursuit of truth.
The Republican report said the Biden administration “had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government”. Such planning would have allowed Washington to “safely evacuate US personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies”, said the more than 350-page report, titled Willful Blindness.
Now, of course, they are in another Charlie Kirk fugue state looking for blood anywhere they can find it. Sadly, I suspect this is going to be their reflexive response to any violence they can portray as left/foreign/Muslim violence. They have a taste for it now.
She was sort of a MAGA queen – and she made a scene Obsessed with finding conspiracies, liked her QAnon Any stance, she could sure double down! She defied everyone Took her chance, getting more media rounds Her parents had named her “Marjorie” – which was kind of mean Maybe it led her to try to dream of ownin’ a gun That’s her answer to all that goes wrong! She wrote lots of stories ‘bout shootings in the schools Went around spreading junk and hurt (hee-hee) And then in 2016, she chased the moon for Trump But be careful what you do (oh-oh) ‘Cause the tide could turn on you (oh-oh, hey-ey) [or keep original: ‘Cause the lie becomes the truth] Taylor Greene has broken cover! She’s just the first of many Republicans Wish they did not vote for Trump She said he was “the one” But her confidence has gone On Trump’s campaigns and on Party nights, she was by his side She played her hand and had few demands Her screams and rants Brought him fans from bizarre stomping grounds But it came at a price Just a tool in a fool’s paradise! (Do think twice) do think twice (ah-hoo) She wasn’t happy with policy – and got crotchety She goaded him about all his lyin’ – then just resigned (oh, no) Took a stand, final straw, honour-bound (ooh, hee-hee-hee) She’s no quiet piggy … she dared to have a feud She went to town on his Epstein farce He can say that she is wacky Just a traitor he’ll deplume It’s happened much too soon Has he lost the locker room?! MTG has broken cover! She found the world insane inside Washington But don’t kid yourself she’s done No-no-no (hoo) MTG’s now under cover She’ll just return, repainted, firing her guns So expect more hit and runs Has the blowback begun? Well, the mid-terms might be fun!
The CBS sitcom aired from 1978 to 1982 and built a devoted audience, but no episode became as iconic as this one. In “Turkeys Away,” station manager Arthur Carlson (Gordon Jump) attempts a top-secret holiday promotion that goes terribly, hilariously wrong: dropping live turkeys out of a helicopter in a shopping mall parking lot. On-the-ground reporter Les Nessman (Richard Sanders) provides the now-famous play-by-play, including his dead-serious tribute to the Hindenburg disaster: “Oh, the humanity!”
Fans still search for it every year — “WKRP turkey drop full episode,” “WKRP Turkeys Away streaming,” “As God is my witness WKRP,” “Can turkeys fly?” are all searched en masse on Turkey Day, proving the episode remains one of TV’s most enduring Thanksgiving traditions.
Series creator Hugh Wilson, who began his career in Atlanta advertising, based fictional station WKRP on “Quixie in Dixie,” the real top-40 station WQXI-AM. Many characters were inspired by station personalities, including Dr. Johnny Fever (loosely based on Bobby Harper), Herb Tarlek (influenced by salesman Clarke Brown), and Arthur Carlson (drawn partly from station manager Jerry Blum).
And according to multiple people who were there? Something like the turkey drop did happen.
Wilson said that Blum told him about a disastrous turkey giveaway he orchestrated in Texas — throwing turkeys from a helicopter, only to learn (too late) that turkeys don’t exactly soar. Others later insisted the incident happened in Atlanta, and that the birds were tossed from a truck instead. Either way, the stories all ended the same: absolute chaos, confused crowds and stunned radio staffers discovering firsthand that turkeys cannot fly.
Wilson immediately knew the tale was sitcom gold. “Jerry said it was a horrible disaster,” Wilson recalled. “So I said to him at the time, ‘Jerry, I think you just won me an Emmy.’”
Unfortunately, WKRP in Cincinnati did not win an Emmy for this episode, though it was nominated for 10 Emmys over its run, winning once for editing.
When “Turkeys Away” aired on October 30, 1978, it was meant to be a simple Thanksgiving episode — until it unexpectedly turned WKRP into something of a pop-culture phenomenon. Much of the comedy comes from what viewers don’t see: the turkeys themselves never appear on camera. Instead, Les Nessman’s breathless narration paints the entire catastrophe with radio-drama intensity:
“One just went through the windshield of a parked car!”
“This is terrible! Oh, the humanity!”
“The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement!”
Back at the station, Johnny Fever, Bailey, Venus and Andy listen in horror as the carnage unfolds live on-air.
And then comes the line — famous enough to be printed on T-shirts, mugs and Thanksgiving memes for 45 years and counting. As Carlson returns, dazed and feather-covered, he delivers the single most quoted moment in WKRP history:
“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
Happy Thanksgiving! Check out cartoon by artist Lalo Alcaraz: This #Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for farmworkers! #WeFeedYouFeliz día de acción de gracias. Vea la caricatura del artista Lalo Alcaraz: ¡Este Día de Acción de Gracias, estoy agradecido por los campesinos! #SoyEsencial
As a Californian very familiar with those who work in the Central Valley vegetable and fruit basket of America, I endorse this Thanksgiving missive from Gabe Ortiz:
You may not see them, but they are very much welcome guests at our Thanksgiving table. Most of us won’t actually see the farm and meatpacking workers at our family feast this year, but that doesn’t mean their presence won’t be felt or should go unappreciated. From delicious side dishes like green beans and corn, to main courses like turkey with gravy or roasted ham, to desserts like pumpkin pie served with a healthy dollop of whipped cream, these essential workers labored in fields, orchards, dairy farms, and factories to feed us, our families and friends.
And a major percentage of these skilled and essential workers are immigrants, many of whom lack legal immigration status.
In fact, of the roughly 2.4 million farmworkers who help feed our nation from coast to coast, at least half are undocumented. This number is even more pronounced in agriculture-rich states like California, where as many as 75% of workers lack legal immigration status. Meatpacking plants similarly rely on foreign-born labor, with immigrants making up nearly 40% of meat processing workers. Not only are these workers the backbone of these industries, our Thanksgiving celebrations simply couldn’t happen without their labor and contributions.
For example, green bean harvesting can be a grueling experience for farm laborers, UnitedFarm Workers (UFW) noted last year. “Stephanie is shown picking green beans in Fresno, CA. She spends up to 8 hours on her knees filling buckets amid temps that can reach 103° or higher. This work is piece rate, instead of workers being paid an hourly wage.” While certain varieties of green beans must be harvested by hand, sturdier ones can be picked by machine, the union noted.
How about a sweet potato casserole with a crunchy pecan topping? Some of the California laborers who help get sweet potatoes from farm to table begin their day as early as 4 in the morning. “‘Marie’ shared this pic from where she is sorting sweet potatoes based on their shape and size in Merced county CA,” UFW wrote on Bluesky this month. “Each day our team of six people usually fill about 8-10 of these bins that could weigh more than 1,000 lbs each,” Mari said.
If your Thanksgiving specialty is a charcuterie board, it also wouldn’t be possible without the contributions of farmworkers in dairy states like California, Idaho, Utah, Vermont, South Dakota and Wisconsin, which are largely responsible for producing the fresh milk, delicious cheeses, and other dairy products that are enjoyed by Americans all over the country.
“Workers from Mexico and other Latin American countries make up an estimated 70% of the labor force on Wisconsin dairy farms,” the Wisconsin Examinerreported in 2024. And, many may not realize that dairy work can be dangerous work. Idaho dairy worker “Rosa” starts her day by ushering thousands of cows into a milking area. Each can weigh up to 1,000 pounds. “There are a lot of ways to get hurt on a dairy farm, and being crushed by cows is one of them,” the New York Timesreported last year. “The animals are languid and gentle, but they startle easily. In a panic, they can move fast.”
There’s no dispute among dairy experts about what would happen without the skills and contributions of essential immigrant workers like Rosa. “When I mentioned to Pete Wiersma, the president of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, that I’d read a study predicting that the price of milk would nearly double if foreign-born workers were removed from the industry, he shook his head,” wrote the NYT’s Marcela Valdes. “‘I don’t think there would be milk,’ Wiersma said. ‘I just don’t think we could get it done.’”
How about some pumpkin pie with whipped cream? Every fall, immigrants are among the essential farmworkers who help harvest approximately two billion pumpkins so we can all carve, decorate, and bake our way through Thanksgiving. “The local workers wouldn’t do this work,” one Pennsylvania pumpkin farmer said in 2019. “I couldn’t operate without [migrant labor], and I wouldn’t even try to.”
Of course, we can’t forget the star of the Thanksgiving feast: turkey. The factories where meat and poultry products are processed before heading to consumers “are filled with hard-working immigrants like the Martinez family,” who “moved to Iowa from California in the 1990s to work in Tyson’s Perry plant for double what they were earning in California,” WFYI reported in 2021.
It also can be dangerous work, and not just because of sharp cutting tools. During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, meatpacking plants were hit hard by the virus, nearly killing Concepcion Martinez, the patriarch of the Martinez family. 730 workers were sickened at his Perry, Iowa plant alone, WFYI said. Mr. Martinez, described as a workaholic by his son Amner, initially refused to say how sick he really was. Risks extend to other essential workers. Extreme heat can be deadly for workers who labor outside. It’s why advocates continue to urge the passage of heat standards that ensure outdoor workers get water, shade, rest breaks, and relevant training needed to protect their lives.
“I know exactly the hard part of [the job],” Amner told WFYI. “And I also know the opportunity that has provided my entire family to just move out of poverty, really.”
“Despite these conditions, immigrant farm workers continue to toil in our fields, serving as the backbone of America’s food production. Without their labor, many farms would struggle to produce enough food,” the American Immigration Council said last year. “The threat of mass deportations under the current political climate looms large. Undocumented workers make up a sizable portion of the agricultural workforce, and their removal could have devastating consequences. Beyond the immediate impact on farms, such actions could disrupt supply chains, increase food prices, and strain communities that rely on agriculture.”
It’s a shameful way to treat workers who are deeply enmeshed in our society as contributors, parents to U.S. citizen children, and long-settled community members of a decade or more. The simple fact is, that without these workers, no matter their legal immigration status, farms and factories couldn’t operate and we couldn’t enjoy our everyday meals, much less Thanksgiving. As many of these workers now face unprecedented attacks, this year more than ever, it’s essential to recognize these invisible guests at our tables and to continue fighting for them.
The International Court of Justice, which has its seat in The Hague, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls,” Thomas Paine wrote in December 1776 in “The Crisis.” At least it does for those who have them.
I finished Sarah Stillman’s “Disappeared to a Foreign Prison” last night and it was everything I’d feared. Bush-Cheney goons 20 years ago snatched suspected terrorists off the streets (sometimes mistaken terrorists) and shipped them off to prisons in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan for torture out of sight of the press. Trump-Miller-Noem & Co. are deporting to third-country prisons immigrants they’ve snatched who cannot be sent back to their home countries. What happens to them after that is not Trump 2.0’s problem, much like they attempted with CECOT in El Salvador but got caught. So now they have enlisted more remote African nations to do their dirty work.
The remorseless lies and deep wells of cruelty behind these actions will make them notorious in time. The masterminds behind Bush-Cheney extraordinary rendition campaign never stood in the dock in the U.S. or The Netherlands. I despair that those Shanghaiing undocumented immigrants off to African hell-hole prisons won’t either.
A long time ago, in a high school far, far away, a decade before the breakup of Ma Bell, I read a book about corporate rip-offs.
It included a tale of a private school bus service in Greensboro or High Point, NC that (IIRC) had a run of burned-out clutches in its fleet of brand new buses. Despite his repeated complaints, the owner kept getting the runaround from the maker’s regional manager who claimed that no other customers had experienced similar problems. This was a lie. The owner had contacted other fleet owners by long distance and letter (remember when this was) and had a file of receipts. Yet the regional manager insisted the breakdowns must have been caused by the service’s drivers.
The money quote went something like this: “He was lying to me. I knew he was lying to me. He knew I knew he was lying to me. But he lied anyway, not because he had anything to gain from the lies, but because it was company policy.”
Behold Stephen Miller:
Grok: When has the United States seen 30% inflation?
The United States has never experienced an official annual inflation rate of 30% or higher in its modern history (i.e., since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and the widespread use of the Consumer Price Index). https://t.co/ZQYUVoJntBpic.twitter.com/RyvzIagjU2
David Bier of Cato assembled a pie chart to show how few of those rounded up by DHS for deportation fit the administration’s “worst of the worst” narrative.
NEW data I've received: Just 5% of people detained by ICE since October 1 have had violent criminal convictions, 3/4 had no criminal convictions at all. Most "criminals" had immigration, traffic, and vice offenses. Not the "worst of the worst"… pic.twitter.com/KASOlWz1v9
DHS spokesliar Tricia McLaughlin responded that Bier had made it up.
Bier replied with a link to data from DHS itself and wrote, “Just checking in on Tricia’s soul now that she knows that my data is accurate. Is her “soul” better now?”
Lying is company policy.
But the rot goes deeper. See the relentless cant from the right that Democrats they’ve branded [I’m not going to repeat it] instructed soldiers in a video to disobey legitimate orders from the God Emperor of Mar-a-Lago. They did just the opposite.
It’s not clear which of the denizens of the online fever swamps suffer from a severe lack of reading and listening comprehension and which simply know their mission is to lie anyway. Because lying is company policy.
Today give thanks that you have a soul. After reading Stillman’s story and the New York Times piece Digby spotlighted yesterday, I feel like these will end up in the evidence files of trials that will never happen. There is evil afoot with a capital “E.”
MASSIE: Kash Patel has weaponized the FBI and is using it to threaten Thomas Massie’s staff with criminal investigations if they continue speaking up about Israel and the Epstein files. pic.twitter.com/ZwTRfzCI10
