INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/Support INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: Protesters showing up to wave Israeli flags outside the building does not mean that the "tension was spilling out of the synagogue." It's like when anti semitic protesters showed up on Broadway outside the fence of Columbia University, and their behavior was incorporated into the brief against the Columbia campus protesters, the people who are on the outside are on the outside for a reason, and if they were representative of the situation inside, they would probably be inside. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/Support INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: President Donald Trump announced that the United States had murdered six more people on the high seas yesterday, in its fifth unprovoked attack on unarmed boats in the Caribbean, "asserting," as the New York Times puts it, "without evidence that they had been transporting drugs." Along with the social media post announcing the killing, the Times writes, "the President also posted a 33 second aerial surveillance video showing a small boat floating and then being struck by a missile and exploding. Unlike some previous announcements, the President did not identify the nationality of the people who were killed, or name a specific drug cartel or criminal gang with which they were supposedly associated." The Times goes on to once again run through the ways in which these killings are entirely illegal and unjustified under every legal analysis, and how the Trump administration has produced no substantive arguments otherwise, and how Congress has not identifiably authorized any such use of military force. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/Support INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: There's not much point in quibbling about a prize that already went to Henry Kissinger, but US-backed regime change and peace don't usually end up on the same side of the ledger. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/Support INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: The Times’s designated campus scold Anemona Hartocollis has a new headline to scandalize the readers. “Harvard Finds Skipping Class Part of Culture. Harvard University is one of the most difficult schools to gain admission to” she writes, “with the school turning away some 97% of applicants every year. But, once they get in, many of its students skip class and fail to do the reading. According to the classroom social compact committee, a group of seven faculty members that produced a report on Harvard's classroom culture that has been fueling debate since it was released in January.” January. It was released in January. It is now October. Here are some stories that are not on page A1 today, while the Times was staking out A1 for news of a 10 month old report on campus culture at Harvard. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/Support INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: This just all seems like extremely strange framing for a CONGRESSIONAL MEMO in 2025. Are the House and Senate really blasé about the shutdown exactly or or have they just ceded all their power to a president who can't be made to care? There isn't really much point in working late into the night or even performing the role of working late into the night, when the only person who has any control over the process is sundowning. After the jump, which arrives accompanied by a sly little postage stamp photo of the Capitol dome with an out of focus, DON'T WALK sign in the foreground. The story delivers a revealingly garbled analogy. "Former representative Patrick McHenry, The Times writes, The North Carolina Republican who helped steer the house away from a shutdown in 2023 predicted that the gridlock would continue until lawmakers felt more consequences from their voters for doing nothing. He compared it to a professional wrestling match, where both sides need to force the opposition to submit. 'It's not goodwill that brings policymakers together,' Mr. McHenry said 'it's pain. There's no urgency until the political pain increases.'" Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/Support INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: There we have one of the basic problems with writing about the Trump administration and what its officials said, in that pretty much every part of that paraphrase is false. The review was not in response to Donald Trump's executive order against diversity, equity and inclusion. It was quite obviously in response to the government shutdown. Likewise, the specific transportation department rule that Duffy was citing was hastily issued to create a pretextual mechanism for taking away the funds. Duffy announced that the funding had been put under review, and that that review was unfortunately on hold because the lawyers who would do it were unavailable under the shutdown, in a single integrated action. The story also does not mention that the particular contracting requirements the Duffy claims may violate the rule that he just issued are congressionally mandated and longstanding contracting rules. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/Support INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST