A casual fan's take on college football anarchy

Tis the season of what I call the "East Armpit Bowls." These are the contests between (mostly) unheralded college football teams which have winning, but undistinguished, regular season records (think 6-6 or 7-6) often played before Christmas or immediately after in warm tourist spots. This is college football for the unserious and I revel in it. The high class serious Bowls come later. I consider having the space and time to watch the East Armpit batch a great seasonal pleasure; this doesn't prove convenient every year but it sure is a good way to unwind after a election campaign season.

It used to be the distinguishing characteristic of the best of these seasonal bowl games that, in one their one chance of wide TV exposure, both the college in question and its gladiators took the opportunity show their stuff, to strive violently, and sometimes skillfully, to demonstrate their passion for the game. 

(And they still do. Yesterday I saw a contest between Pitt and Toledo in the "GameAbove Sports Bowl" that went to 6 OverTimes and ended with scores in the mid-forties.)

The changing structure of college athletics, the demise of enforced amateurism, and of enforced penury for the "student" athletes, is changing all that, even at the lower levels.

A series of legal rulings have released college football players from what was a sort of indentured servitude. Once recruited and signed by a college's football program, and often its domineering coach, young men were awarded a scholarship and perhaps a small stipend, while losing their freedom. Including the freedom to decide they should play somewhere else. No more. Now college football is shaped by the "transfer portal." Moving between school and football programs is constant, though regulated.

ESPN explains:

At the FBS level [the Bowl stratum of college teams], more than 25% of scholarship players transferred after the 2023 season. Thousands of players becoming available each offseason is forcing programs to adapt and rethink how they construct their rosters to stay competitive.

The NCAA transfer portal is an online database that lists student-athletes who are interested in changing schools. In major college football, players can enter their name in the portal during transfer windows in the winter and spring. For this 2024-25 school year, the winter window is Dec. 9-28 and the spring window is April 16-25.

When a player puts their name in the portal, schools can immediately begin contacting and recruiting them. ... once a player enters the portal, their school can decide to cancel their athletics aid and remove them from the roster. ...When programs go through head-coaching changes, their players are granted an immediate 30-day window during which they can enter the portal. However, players are not allowed to play for multiple teams in one season.

There's no more penalty to the athlete of having to sit out of football for a year when jumping to another college. An increasing number of players jump every year. And football programs can accumulate as many transfer players as they can recruit with no limiting rules. Concurrently, when popular and successful coaches jump to new jobs, the players they've accumulated can jump along with them!

The disruption has been huge -- and it is complicated by court rulings that the college athletic association (NCAA) cannot enforce amateurism (and poverty) on the athletes. A scholarship that comes with an obligation to the football program is not fair compensation for many athletes. Collectives of rich boosters and the colleges themselves can contract with the athletes for the use of their  "names, image, and likeness" (NIL). The best players, usually quarterbacks, can earn serous money.

Many coaches feel they are having to navigate a new world:

"You're not building a program anymore," Coastal Carolina coach Tim Beck told reporters Thursday. "This isn't a program. Each year, you just build a team. You try to find the best team that you can put out there every year, and you know the team is going to get hit by free agency."

Some make the case that the new wild world of unfettered college sports will teach athletes new skills:

The portal process has evolved into a sophisticated professional development opportunity. Athletes gain real-world experience in personal branding, contract negotiation, and business relationships.

Well, maybe. But for many of these young men, this may be a dangerous opportunity. There are a lot of sharks out there, wanting a piece of the new money that comes with the new freedom.

Naturally, with all that money floating about, there are moves to try to organize college football players into something like the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) at the professional level. Some coaches have even encouraged this effort -- a union would simplify and clarify a very murky and potentially exploitative situation.

[Last May University of Alabama Birmingham] football players say their entire roster ... signed up for Athletes.org, making them the first Division I football team to publicly join the players' association. They were introduced to the group by an unexpected source: their head coach.

[Former NFL quarterback] Trent Dilfer gathered his team for a voluntary meeting in mid-April to encourage them to prepare for a future when college athletes might be able to negotiate for a larger share of their sport's revenue.

"They're going to have a seat at the table," Dilfer told ESPN. "I wanted to make sure I helped pour gasoline on something that is going to happen no matter what. I might as well use my influence to help it happen faster on behalf of our players."

A union to protect the majority of players seems like a necessity. 

All this is unsettled, changing every year as colleges struggle to organize themselves to grab the largest possible TV broadcast contracts, winning coaches command ever higher salaries, and players demand their piece of the pie. Football truly is the all-American game.

A cheer for sand in the gears

Especially on the left, it's popular this year to dump on the response to Donald Trump's first ascension to the presidency in 2016.

In the Guardian, someone named Dustin Guastella condemns that "resistance" was "big on spectacle and short on substance." Watch out -- when someone says something lacked substance, you can be pretty sure they wanted that something to mean what they preferred, rather than being content to observe what it meant on its own terms. I kinda think getting millions marching for women, for science, against corruption was inherently a good thing, even if the on-the-ground consequences are not immediately apparent. 

And by the way, ignorance of the magnitude of the obstacles ahead sometimes enables progress in overcoming them.

Or take Michael Schaffer in Politico. He regrets that...

The bulk of those great public protest moments, for instance, were organized around issues of identity: The Women’s March, the mobilization against the Muslim ban, the fury about the Charlottesville protests, the 2020 racial-justice protests. ...

True -- but should insults from Trump and the MAGAs to civilized decency have been unmarked? 

Note also, he misses the vital category of efforts to protect immigrants.

Schaffer goes on to complain that "the resistance" launched mainstream press on a kind of sugar high but failed to save the legacy media, which seems to be true. Aside from the New York Times, legacy media is not longer where information is widely found. And even the Times kowtows to power often.

All this seems ridiculously short sighted to me. Present circumstances are different than 2016. Trump and the GOP actually won a tiny, but real, presidential victory; lots of Americans demonstrated their discontent with what Joe Biden had on offer. That matters.

Lawyers and other professionals will carry on a fight for rule of law. Democrats with any power (and guts) will stick up for a more benign version of both federal and state action on behalf of a better society. But for sure it is going to be a shit show.

But at some point, large groups of people are going to be moved to collective action on behalf of better values. That's what we do. 

Opinion columnist Charles Blow (gift article) who was very vocal during the last round makes some interesting observations:

It may not be clear what issue or person or group will galvanize opposition to Trump’s second term. But any assumption that an opposition won’t rise or any revisionist history that casts resistance as something unique to Democrats would be a misreading of contemporary movements...

... As Democrats look for a way forward, it should not be a surprise if what emerges as Trump’s opposition is ... hostile to the Democratic Party as presently constituted.

... when Trump takes office again, the response of the public to his policies will have sway, and if that response is disapproval, and if it becomes organized and focused, it could be a formidable obstacle to Trump fully realizing his aims.

Note that Tolkien opined this while looking at fascist Europe.

Meanwhile, millions of us are not going to take the repeat of the sociopath's ascendancy lying down. We're going to do the little things that make society more humane. We already are; see #strikeseason.

As events develop, we'll be looking for stress points, for where ordinary people can throw sand in the gears of theft, hatred, and cruelty. We won't know where we'll find them; but these MAGA frauds and blowhards are not some coherent, unstoppable force.

Merry Christmas to all

A confession: Christmas is not my favorite holiday. Yes, I know, I'm not alone in that.

As a secular holiday, the great American consumption fest is, well, sort of gross. Do we really need all this stuff? I know, I'm lucky to have been able to embrace the gospel of "Enough." I buy things to delight myself, so my feelings are a little hypocritical. But there it is.

The 90% celebrating Christmas contrasts with the 68% of Americans who report identifying with a Christian faith, indicating other faiths partake in the holiday. Gallup

As a religious holiday, I get Christmas, sort of. Embracing the holiday as the birth of the Christ child, the eruption of Godself into the humanity, requires the ability to swim comfortably within myth. Myth is important to humans, but not my best mode. I do better floating within consciousness of horrible, terrible, grace-filled, good, and all-too-human realities. Yes, that's Holy Week and Easter.

The Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton offers this for Christmas which captures a bit of how I apprehend the holiday:

Emmanuel means God with us. Think about that for a minute. It really does help to put things into better perspective.

Christmas is about being in the consciousness of where Christ is in life and where he is not.

The question of Christmas is not what to buy for whom or what you might get for Christmas. The question of Christmas is where Christ is and where Christ is not in your life.

And note, please, that now, we are talking about Christ, not Jesus, per se. We are talking about the spirit of the Resurrected Jesus, which is The Messiah, the Christ.

Let's all enjoy this time in our own ways.

It's cold in Ukraine this winter

Here I pass along observations from Kateryna Kibarova, a Ukrainian economist and resident of Bucha, writing in Persuasion. 

If you live in Ukraine today, checking the news is your morning routine. You have to understand what is going on—how can you not?

You have to understand which direction the drones are flying from, whether it is dangerous to go outside. If you want to protect yourself, you have to constantly monitor the situation. When the air raid alarm goes off, immediately everyone’s phones in the office start howling. Everyone has the alerts set up.

The Russians have gotten more sophisticated with the air raids. Now they fly lower, at altitudes that make our air defense system operators fear that interceptions will hit houses or schools or kindergartens. They launch drones along the highways so low that they are almost level with cars, or along riverbeds so that they cannot be tracked and shot down. On the one hand, in Kyiv, the sheer number of drones—sometimes 150 per attack—makes it impossible to intercept them all. On the other hand, the cities closer to the front, like Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv, are simply defenseless. They are in a constant state of fear—without air defenses, facing more complex attacks, tougher and more precise than ours in Kyiv. It’s an impossible situation.

The scariest thing is how cold-blooded you become. You're out there driving to work, and you’re turning up the radio, listening to YAKTAK and Svyatoslav Vakarchuk,1 in the car so you don't hear the suicide drones fly overhead. They’re launching the Shaheds2 in just incredible numbers to deplete our missile defense systems, so that we have no protection. And the Russians are constantly threatening to blow up the nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia. In my bag, next to my documents, I keep a special pill. In case of a nuclear explosion or meltdown, it has to be taken to neutralize the first of the waves of radiation. I carry it everywhere I go.

 ...  Many of my friends have gone abroad with their children. I think it’s the right decision because it’s so dangerous for kids to be here right now. This summer, 200,000 more Ukrainians left the country. Now that the winter blackouts are coming, more will leave.

But probably the strangest and scariest part of this situation is that there is already an abyss between us, between those who live in Ukraine and those who have left. Those who have left—even my friends who come here to see their parents or just to see their friends—aren’t embedded in the context of what is happening here anymore. I’m about ninety percent sure they’re not coming back. They have learned the languages of the countries where they live now; their children are going to school; they themselves have got jobs or are receiving welfare support.

Those of us who remain have become very wounded internally, in our spirit. For example: I feel strange when my girlfriend, who emigrated, comes to visit. She’ll make some ordinary comment and laugh, and I’ll get scared that I no longer have these simple, unburdened feelings. ...

Go read it all. Many Ukrainians seem to think something good could come for them from Donald Trump; I doubt this, but I hope they are right and I am wrong.

For the fourth Sunday in Advent: we work in joyful hope

Bill McKibben is one of the best of us. Diana Butler Bass asked the Methodist environmental activist for his 2024 Advent reflection.

... Even in 2024, there are some things to be looking forward to. For me, the most important is the real possibility that in the next few years, we could be seeing quick end to human beings making their living by setting things on fire, coal, gas, oil, anything else.

Because all of a sudden, we've really figured out how to capture the power of the sun that the good Lord hung 93 million miles up in the sky. That star that we need to make our North Star in the climate fight.

This year, just to give you one example, so many people just went out in the country of Pakistan and installed solar panels on their roofs, on their farms, everywhere else, that the use of diesel fuel dropped 30% in a year. Those are the kind of numbers that help us deal with climate change

And they're because we're using our God-given wits to make the most of the world around us. It won't be easy. It'll require lots of activism and pushing to make it happen. We'll have lots of opportunities to do that. But there are powerful forces afoot in God's world that give us some real chance.

He's not blowing hot air. Quite separately in his own substack, McKibben has described the progress humankind is making on ending our dependence on fossil fuels which pollute the atmosphere and alter the climate. 

Here’s a contestant for the dumbest headline of all time (and no shade on the writer, because They Do Not Write The Headlines). The normally insightful team at Bloomberg produced an article about the remarkable fact that as the Chinese market breaks decisively for EVs, this is driving down demand for gasoline. Instead of heralding this as a potentially mammoth breakthrough in the climate fight, here’s how they titled it: “China’s EV Boom Threatens to Push Gasoline Demand Off a Cliff.”

The more rapid-than-expected uptake of EVs has shifted views among oil forecasters at energy majors, banks and academics in recent months. Unlike in the US and Europe - where peaks in consumption were followed by long plateaus — the drop in demand in the world’s top crude importer is expected to be more pronounced. Brokerage CITIC Futures Co. sees Chinese gasoline consumption dropping by 4% to 5% a year through 2030.

“The future is coming faster in China,” said Ciaran Healy, an oil analyst at the International Energy Agency in Paris. “What we’re seeing now is the medium-term expectations coming ahead of schedule, and that has implications for the shape of Chinese and global demand growth through the rest of the decade.”

For a global oil market, which has come to rely on China as its main growth driver for most of this century, that will erode a major pillar of consumption. The country accounts for almost a fifth of worldwide oil demand, and gasoline makes up about a quarter of that. The prospect of a sharp drop from transport is also coming on top of tepid industrial consumption due to slowing economic growth.  ...

The U.S. may not be at its best. But though we're often a shortsighted, self-centered species, we humans collectively do have an instinct leaning toward trying to leave something for future generations.

It's winter on the Vineyard

What was coming was clear late last night.

And indeed, by morning the white stuff was everywhere.

Ganesh looks almost comfy under a light covering of the white stuff.

I think this day is for staying inside and watching football.

#MerryStrikemas #strikeseason

Just a random sample of the worker activism bursting out all over this Friday before Christmas:

From the Starbucks baristas: 

 

 

From Amazon Teamsters workers who know better than their Trumpist leader ...

The UFW leads mushroom workers in Washington State; I remember a UFW mushroom strike in Gilroy.

Hospitality workers from UniteHERE march outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Francisco:

A message for the season:

An introductory penalty for mass folly

Josh Marshall's observation on the national shit show tickled my curiosity. Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Mike Johnson, and the Republican Congressional majority are giving the American people an early taste for this Christmas of what it is like to flunk governing. Marshall, grounded in history as usual, observes:

Trump has sewn himself into a sack with Elon Musk, a few billion dollars, a cat and a snake, and had the sack tossed into the Tiber [river]. That’s the story here. And it will go on for a while.

I had a dim notion of the ancient execution practice Marshall is referencing here, but it seemed worth a little superficial research. Fortunately, Wikipedia is strong on this one; it's the sort of topic on which some devoted volunteer editor produces extensive, probably reasonably accurate, history.

Apparently the Poena cullei  (Latin, 'penalty of the sack') was a punishment  for parricide, murder of the father, in the Roman-influenced world. A variant was still practiced all the way up until the mid-18th in a few German city states

The punishment consisted of being sewn up in a leather sack, with an assortment of live animals including a dog, snake, monkey, and a chicken or rooster, and then being thrown into water. 

The variation that included a cat seems a late addition; the viper and a chicken seems to have been a more prominent early version. 

Hell of a way to go and possessed of a dramatic cruelty that suits the cruelty of these men who are playing at being a government. 

Meanwhile, somehow, funding for children needing cancer treatment got stripped from the pending legislation. Thanks Elon.

Queers for the win

I have a counterintuitive opinion to share today.

All the visibility currently wreaking suffering on many trans people is going to be the prelude to eventual normalization of the underlying reality that a rigid gender binary simply isn't true of the human species. (Or, actually, many species.)

We're going to get there. Radical as this seems, we know how this works: first they try to kill you, then they kick you, then they meet you, then they let you live off in a corner, eventually you are just you. 

There are heroes along the way whose lives are teaching our society that trans folk exist and thrive. In the last month, I think of Delaware Congresswoman Sarah McBride who, for pure grandstanding spite, has been denied access by Republicans to the Congressional bathroom that agrees with her gender presentation. There is lawyer and advocate Chase Strangio who argued a doomed case for transgender adolescents and their parents before our regressive Supremes this month. 

But perhaps even more important in this process of trans and gender fluidity are the little local victories all over the country, when nonstandard people meet their neighbors and prevail. 

Here's a recent instance by way of The Advocate: 

It didn't pay off to neglect garbage pickup while campaigning on fear.

Craig Stoker, the executive director for Meals on Wheels in Odessa, won his November election for at-large City Council member with 56 percent of the vote — in the same county President-elect Donald Trump won 76 percent of the vote.

Stoker beat Denise Swanner by campaigning on infrastructure — specifically roads and garbage pickup — in contrast to the incumbent, whose campaign sent out mailers comparing the two's opposite positions by listing their only similarity as the fact that they are both in relationships with men.

... The Odessa City Council banned transgender individuals from using bathrooms, locker rooms, changing areas, showers, and similar public facilities that align with their gender identity after a contentious open meeting in October. Those who violate the ban could be convicted of a class C misdemeanor and receive a fine of up to $500, also giving legal standing to alleged victims to sue for damages up to $10,000 in civil court.

... “None of it was truly about me. It was their fear of losing a seat, losing an election, losing the title," Stoker continued. "I came into this campaign with the mindset that I'm going to have to rely on the work I've done in the community and the reputation I've built preceding me. That's all I got.”

When we fight, we win. Even in Texas.

We cannot cower; Mangi does not

Too often, the best Americans -- the people who best embody the aspirations of this terrible, conflicted country -- are the relative newcomers rather than the old timers like me (a Mayflower descendant through and through.)

Adeel Mangi is a distinguished Pakistani-American New Jersey litigator, both in private practice and in pro bono civil rights cases. Joe Biden nominated him to an appellate court judgeship. At confirmation hearings, Mangi endured repeated, ignorant, and abusive interrogations from Republican senators. LawDork explains:

Mangi would have been the nation’s first Muslim American federal appeals court judge, and the attacks against him never stopped. After Republicans questioned him at his confirmation hearing largely with anti-Muslim guilt-by-association attacks, the opposition later expanded to include baseless claims of terrorism and anti-law enforcement connections. ...

Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer cut a deal with the Republican senators to give up on confirming Mangi and other appellate nominees in order to advance lower federal court Biden appointees. This may have been a necessary deal -- it's hard for outsiders to know. I'm not surprised by betrayal of Mangi by Joe Manchin; he's a preening popinjay masquerading for decades as a man of the people.

But it is hard to learn that two Democratic Senators who I worked in Nevada to elect dissented from Mangi's nomination. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen choosing to torpedo Mangi is really bad. 

What follows is my speculation; it is neither kind nor generous. 

Presumably Rosen was running scared in last fall's re-election bid; her status as a visibly Jewish leader in national politics presumably made it seem simple to sign on with the reactionary strain in Jewish politics in a state with few Jews, but some loud and well-funded right wing Jewish advocates. It looked an easy cave to the MAGAs. (As it turned out, she delegitimated her opponent early on and won easily.) Cortez Masto is gunning to rise in the Dem Senate leadership; sticking with and covering for her sister Nevada Senator made for a cheap date. So Mangi becomes a scalp claimed by Republican Islamophobes. The two Senators' choices sicken me.

Mangi has written a heartfelt public letter denouncing the process he, and by extension his faith, were put through. 

In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, spoke at the inauguration of a mosque in Washington, D.C. He said: “And I should like to assure you, my Islamic friends, that under the American Constitution, under American tradition, and in American hearts, this Center, this place of worship, is just as welcome as could be a similar edifice of any other religion. Indeed, America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church and worship according to your own conscience. This concept is indeed a part of America, and without that concept we would be something else than what we are.”... 

It was that vision of America that led me, 25 years ago, to make it my home. ... 

When my nomination then came before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I was prepared to answer any questions about my qualifications, philosophy, or legal issues. I received none.

Instead, I was asked questions about Israel, whether I supported Hamas, and whether I celebrated the anniversary of 9-11. Even more revealing, however, was the tone. The underlying premise appeared to be that because I am Muslim, surely I support terrorism and celebrate 9-11. When I made clear that all these claims are false — that I condemn the Hamas attacks and all forms of terrorism, and indeed that it was my city that was attacked on 9-11 — the next Republican Senators up just repeated their performative outrage. There were children in the audience. ...

... advertisements were run deeming me an antisemite, a radical, and a terrorist sympathizer. Horrifying images were published with the Hamas flag substituted for my eyes or interspersing my face with footage of the twin towers on fire. And all of this, even while major Jewish organizations across the country condemned these attacks, ranging from the National Council of Jewish Women to the Anti-Defamation League, and over a dozen more. One of the largest Jewish groups put it this way: “Adeel Mangi, was questioned aggressively on thin pretext about his views on Israel, terrorism, and antisemitism, turning these serious issues into a tool of partisan attack. … American Jewish Committee (AJC) has joined several U.S. Supreme Court briefs led by Mangi and find him to be an able jurist, a person of integrity, champion of pluralism, and adversary of discrimination against any group.”

...What can explain all of this? One commentator recounted my professional accomplishments and then observed: “But he also successfully fought efforts by two New Jersey communities to prevent the construction of mosques. He has served on the board of directors of the Muslim Bar Association and Muslims for Progressive Values. Clearly, he’s both an accomplished attorney and a proud representative of his religion. That’s what his Republican critics can’t tolerate. They will never accept someone who is so prominently associated with Islam.” 

Mangi is even less sparing of Rosen and Cortez Masto then I am. (And that's not very.)

Two allied Senators from a state far from the Third Circuit announced their opposition ostensibly based on the attacks claiming I am against law enforcement. I will not assume the worst possible motivation for their embrace of this attack. But to me that leaves two possibilities: that these Senators lack the wisdom to discern the truth, which exposes a catastrophic lack of judgment; or they used my nomination to court conservative voters in an election year, which exposes a catastrophic lack of principle. One reportedly made the decision based on fear of an attack ad—and apparently not for the first time.

He concludes:

Our country faces an incoming tsunami of bigotry, hatred, and discrimination. It targets Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Black people, the LGBTQ+ community, and many others. And it always pretends to be something other than what it is. These forces are fueled not only by their proponents, but equally by the collaboration and silence of the spineless. They can be defeated only by those who lead voters with courage, not those who sacrifice principles for votes. But courage can be found outside of politics. 

American Muslims are part of this nation’s fabric and will not cower. This campaign was intended to make it intolerable for Muslims proud of their identity to serve this nation. It will fail. Our Constitution forbids religious tests for any Office of the United States and American Muslims will cherish that fundamental American value, even if others apply it only selectively. And let me be clear: I will always be immensely proud of my faith as well as my pro bono legal work to challenge both denials of freedom of worship and the alleged killing of an incarcerated Black man. I have battled for justice, even if it meant there would be none for me.

... To return to President Eisenhower’s words, Americans must now look at the story of this nomination, and ask themselves: is this who we are now? For my children, I hope America one day lives up to President Eisenhower’s promise, even if not today. For my part, I entered this nomination process as a proud American and a proud Muslim. I exit it the same way, unbowed.

This is the spirit the country will need in the difficult times ahead.

Media consumption diet 2024

Long time Senior Legal Columnist for the LA Times' Op-Ed section Harry Litman quit in disgust when the newspaper's owner, healthcare entrepreneur billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, vetoed an endorsement of Kamala Harris. Litman now has some cogent thoughts on ABC's $15 million capitulation to Donald Trump on the matter of whether the incoming president is a rapist. 

I talked to several high-powered defamation defense lawyers about this point. They all affirmed that under the longstanding practice in the NY Times v. Sullivan era, it would have been near inconceivable for ABC to settle but for the prospect of Trump’s return to power. A prominent news organization would sooner have switched to all-cartoon programming than agree to a settlement on such favorable terms. 

This is clearly where we are going in Trump 2.0 -- so-called "mainstream media" can be expected to bend the knee to the Donald. Sometimes this will be glaringly obvious. More often we'll be treated to omissions and sane-washing. The President-elect is a misogynist, a con man, a sociopath, an emotional toddler, and utterly unserious in Ms Harris's memorable formulation. But the big guns aren't going to say any of that; it might hurt their owner's bottom line.

So what's a consumer of news to do? I consume neither TikTok nor TV; I'm a unicorn. I read and I listen and sometimes I debate. That seems enough.

Actually, I had already adjusted my consumption before we came into the second Trump era. Yes, I've quit the Washington Post and the LA Times (or will have when my subs runs out.)

I still pay for the New York Times. It's frequently infuriating and will almost certainly get much worse, but it currently is reputed to employ somewhere around 7 percent of all working journalists in the country. Some great stuff slips through the commercial sieve. 

For balance, I read the US edition of The Guardian from Britain. This is particularly important for anything outside the USofA. They don't always get us Yanks -- but then we don't always get them.

When something has happened and trusted sources seem weak, I start with AP News.

I subscribe to the San Francisco Chronicle which is mighty thin, but has had moments under the current editorial regime.

ProPublica does real reporting on under-covered news unearthed by real reporters.

Sources I trust to be what they say they are -- not that I'm always in agreement -- include Talking Points Memo, The Bulwark, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the New Yorker, Mother Jones ...

And then there are the substacks. Just as blogs once did, these appeal to the actual way I consume news -- by prioritizing known authors. I read the NY Times by byline; why shouldn't I get the benefit of individual thoughts from individual people I find interesting, provocative, or informative? So I do, voluminously.

Like most people on the liberal side of things, I've quit Xitter. Yes, I'm on BlueSky (@janinsanfran.bsky.social) Kind of fun. Not sure it will stay that way or continue useful.

• • •

Looking over this collection, it seems kind of boring. And there are days when it is.

For all the breadth of sources here, I'm determined not to follow every twist and feint thrown out by our fascist-in-chief. 

As of now I know I'll be following as many developments as I can stomach from the war on immigrants and also the attempt to shove the gender-genie (trans, LGBQ+, and other noncomforming folks) back under wraps. And then there will be the times I go chasing off after new news ...