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No King’s One Million Rising movement
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
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Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
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Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
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!
I saw it live and almost died of laughter:
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.
As unbelievable as the episode sounds, it was actually rooted in real radio-world lore.
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.”
Classic.
Update: More goo to go…
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.
And while the nearly two-thirds of nuts harvested in the U.S. come from California, the pecans for that sweet potato casserole topping are likely from Georgia. In that state, most agricultural workers are foreign-born.
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 Examiner reported 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 Times reported 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.
Word.
“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.
Let’s review a line I read once and never forgot:
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:
“The highest year-over-year inflation rate observed in the U.S. since its founding was 29.78% in 1778.” – Investopedia
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.
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.”
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No King’s One Million Rising movement
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
I remember wondering if it was wise for youngsters to apply for DACA before we had a law in place that could protect them. It was clear even then that the Republicans were hankering to deport themselves some foreigners. But I couldn’t have predicted the cruelty they are employing now.
Here’s a New York Times story (gift link) about some people married to US citizens being grabbed for deportation at their green card appointments:
The married couples filed into a federal building in San Diego last week for green card interviews that they believed would secure their future together in the United States. Half of each pair was American. Stephen Paul came with his British wife and their 4-month-old baby. Audrey Hestmark arrived with her German husband, days before their first wedding anniversary. Jason Cordero accompanied his Mexican wife.
It was supposed to be a celebratory milestone, the final step in the process to obtain U.S. permanent residency. Instead, as each interview with an immigration officer wrapped up, federal agents swooped in, handcuffed the foreign spouse and took him or her away. “I had to take our baby from my crying wife’s arms,” Mr. Paul, 33, said, recalling the moment that agents said they were arresting his wife, Katie.
Ms. Paul was sent to an immigration detention center with hundreds of other people swept up in the Trump administration’s crackdown. Her husband had to take a leave from his job at the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department to care for their child and try to secure her release. “It’s insane to have them rip our family apart,” Mr. Paul said. “Whoever is directing this has completely lost touch with their mission to the country.”
In recent weeks, immigration lawyers in several cities have seen a surge in arrests of foreign spouses of Americans during interviews at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices.
In San Diego alone, immigration lawyers in the region estimate that several dozen foreign-born spouses have been detained since Nov. 12, when the new tactic first surfaced, according to Andrew Nietor, an immigration lawyer. A former chair of the San Diego chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Mr. Nietor said the estimate was based on members’ communications about their clients. The exact number of spouses detained is unclear because many couples attend the routine interviews without lawyers, who would alert colleagues. The government has not disclosed a tally of such detentions.
In every case, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the applicants that they had overstayed tourist or business visas. An arrest warrant, reviewed by The New York Times, states that “there is probable cause to believe” that the named spouse is “removable from the United States.”
All the stories are the same. Some minor infraction or something that’s been policy for years and now the Trump administration has arbitrarily decided to change it resulting in the spouse of an American citizen being detained at their last green card hearing before their case is fully resolved.
The pain and suffering they are causing in order to literally rid this country of foreigners is more stunning every day.
Another institution prostrates itself at the feet of Donald Trump:
Earlier this month, you may recall, President Donald Trump angrily threatened to sue the British Broadcasting Corporation for $1 billion over its use of footage of his speech just before the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Unlike Trump’s other lawsuits against media companies, this threat wasn’t entirely baseless: The BBC ended up admitting that its edit of the footage did misleadingly create the “impression of a direct call for action,” and several executives resigned, citing a need to be “transparent” about what had happened. Trump celebrated their ouster.
Now the BBC has overcorrected—albeit in the other direction. On Bluesky, historian Rutger Bregman just charged that the broadcaster cut a line from a BBC lecture he delivered, in which he described Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.”
Is it really now beyond the pale for the BBC to air an accurate description of Trump’s open and explicit corruption and to correctly situate it in the American historical context? The answer, unfortunately, appears to be yes.
Asked for comment on Bregman’s charge, a spokesperson for the BBC emailed me this: “All of our programmes are required to comply with the BBC’s editorial guidelines, and we made the decision to remove one sentence from the lecture on legal advice.
He threatened them with a billion dollar lawsuit, they apologized and now they’re self-censoring.
The media is killing itself.
Yes, he called the reporter ugly…
This is going to get worse and worse. He’s always been a crude and ignorant brute but he’s losing more and more control.
Here’s a gift link to the NY Times article he rails against in that social media feed. It is actually far too kind to him because it only discusses his reduced energy not his clearly declining mental faculties. But it sure made him mad…
xenophobia: fear and contempt of strangers or foreigners or of anything designated as foreign, or a conviction that certain foreign individuals and cultures represent a threat to the authentic identity of one’s own nation-state and cannot integrate into the local society peacefully. The term xenophobia derives from the ancient Greek words xenos (meaning “stranger”) and phobos (meaning “fear”). Xenophobia implies the perception that not only is it impossible for certain people designated as foreign to integrate into one’s own society but also that they pose a threat to the integrity of that society.
We are awash in that bullshit and it’s simply bizarre in a country that was settled and populated by immigrants over two centuries. The only people who have a right to say this are Native Americans and these so-called “patriots” hate them too!
I can’t wrap my mind around how dumb this is.
By the way, Nick Sorter is that guy in Portland who grabbed the protester’s burning flag and became a MAGA cause celebre with Kristi Noem stepping in to say they would prosecute the protester.
They were all over each other in public but behind the scenes Trump and MBS had a little spat. Unsurprisingly, it’s because Trump seems to think that he can flatter Muslim countries into embracing Israel after what it did in Gaza, which is simply daft:
White House officials told the crown prince ahead of the meeting that Trump expected progress on normalizing Saudi relations with Israel.
- During the Nov. 18 meeting, Trump was the one who raised the issue and pressed hard MBS to join the Abraham Accords, U.S. officials say.
- The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020, normalized relations between Israel and several other Arab nations. They were a key foreign policy achievement in Trump’s first term.
- At that point the conversation got tense, the officials say. As Trump pressed, MBS pushed back.
- MBS explained to Trump that although he wants to do move forward with normalization with Israel, he can’t do so now because Saudi public opinion is highly anti-Israel in the aftermath of the Gaza war. He said Saudi society isn’t ready for such a move now, the three sources told Axios.
Trump and MBS were civil but the conversation was tough, one source with knowledge of the meeting and a U.S. official said.
- “The best way to say it is disappointment and irritation. The president really wants them to join the Abraham Accord. He tried very hard to talk him. It was an honest discussion. But MBS is a strong man. He stood his ground,” the source said.
- MBS demanded that in return for a peace deal with Saudi Arabia, Israel should agree to “an irreversible, credible and time-bound path” for a Palestinian state. MBS also made that clear publicly, after the meeting.
- Israel’s government opposes any path for a Palestinian state.
- “MBS never said no to normalization. The door is open for doing it later. But the two-state solution is an issue,” a U.S. official said.
Duh. Trump is really dreaming here:
- “Now that Iran’s nuclear program has been totally obliterated and the war in Gaza has ended, it is very important to President Trump that all Middle Eastern countries join the Abraham Accords, which will advance peace in the region,” the White House official said.
Trump also told MBS that he was going to supply them with the same F-35 fighter jets that Israel has (obviously trying to bride them) which outraged Israel and Rubio had to rush in to clean up the mess by telling Israel that we are just selling the Saudis the inferior F-35s.
We know Trump defended MBS ordering the killing and dismembering of Jamaal Kashogi but he also failed to defend the 9/11 families. As usual.
During his meeting with MBS, Trump didn’t raise the terrorism lawsuit that 9/11 victims’ families filed against Saudi Arabia. A judge recently allowed the lawsuit to go forward, citing overwhelming evidence of the kingdom’s complicity in the attack that killed 2,977 people.
It’s a good thing that a reporter didn’t bring it up or they would have been scolded for embarrassing their guest and Trump would have threatened to withdraw their broadcast license.
It’s just one embarrassing bull-in-a-china-shop moment after another. They all pretend to love him because he’s easily manipulated and hasn’t got a clue. But they’re not going to do anything they don’t want to do.