Marie: Yes, I know exactly where I was and what I was doing 62 years ago today.
I think this mayor can do some things that are going to be really great.... I'll be cheering for him. -- Donald Trump, on Zohran Mamdani, in an Oval Office press availability, Friday ~~~
~~~ ⭐Two Queens Men Meet in D.C. Tyler Pager & Emma Fitzsimmons of the New York Times: Donald “Trump and Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, put on a remarkable display of bonhomie in the Oval Office on Friday, with Mr. Trump showering praise on the democratic socialist and promising to help him succeed. Just weeks ago, Mr. Trump was warning New York voters that electing Mr. Mamdani would amount to an existential threat to the nation’s largest city.... For his part, Mr. Mamdani, who had vowed on the campaign trail to stand up to the president, called their meeting 'productive' and said that he looked forward to working with Mr. Trump to improve life in New York.... For Mr. Trump, the public rapprochement was an opportunity to align himself with a charismatic young politician who has tapped into many of the same economic concerns that have animated the president’s base.... Since then, Mr. Trump and his allies have sought to frame the G.O.P. as the party addressing high costs.... For Mr. Mamdani, the high-stakes trip to the White House, which has bedeviled multiple foreign leaders, could be hugely consequential for the nation’s largest city, as could his relationship with the president in the coming months.... At multiple points during the meeting, Mr. Trump jumped in to defend Mr. Mamdani from pointed questions from reporters.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Nick Reisman & Joe Anuta of Politico: “... Mamdani appeared — at least for the time being — to neutralize [Trump's] threats during the closed-door tête-à-tête by sticking to a strategy of staying laser-focused on issues of affordability, according to a top aide who sat in on the talk. After they emerged from the private meeting, Trump even told reporters that Mamdani had played up their unlikely political similarities: Mamdani 'said a lot of my voters actually voted for him,' said the evidently pleased president.... “We had some interesting conversation, and some of his ideas really are the same ideas I have,” Trump said. “The new word is affordability.'... [Trump] was practically smitten by the Queens state assemblymember, who was a virtual unknown a year ago.... Trump ... appeared to go beyond simply agreeing with the mayor on broad issues. He was practically smitten by the Queens state assemblymember, who was a virtual unknown a year ago.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Ryan Schwach of the Queens Daily Eagle: "The first man from Queens to be elected president and the first Queens resident to be elected mayor of New York City met for the first time in the Oval Office on Friday." ~~~
~~~ You can watch the full presser here. (It begins with Trump telling some lies. Because Trump.) (Also linked yesterday.) Here's a transcript of the press availability, via the New York Times. ~~~
~~~ Marie: The press availability, which partly took place during Nicolle Wallace's MS-NOW show, was met with amazement & peels of laughter by Wallace & her panel. The panel included Mollie Jong Fast, Al Sharpton & John Heilemann. They felt Mamdani owned Trump: Mamdani didn't give an inch, and Trump was profusely complimentary of him. ~~~
~~~ MEANWHILE. Rob Wolfe of the Washington Monthly: “Meanwhile, [Trump's] administration is throwing out a raft of explanations for rising prices in hopes that one might work. In a live interview on Thursday at the neoclassical Andrew Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., with Breitbart News, Vice President J.D. Vance cycled between denial, justification, bargaining, and blame.... I ... counted eight different answers from Vance.... First, it’s the congressional Democrats’ fault. The government shutdown, an act of 'economic terrorism,' slowed the momentum we would see now. Two: 'We get it, and we hear you.' But, three, 'the Biden administration put us in such a very, very tough spot.'... (Explanation four.... avian flu...) 'And,' he added — point five — 'the thing that I’d ask for the American people is a little bit of patience.'... Four years of importing foreign workers under Biden (six) that followed a 40-year policy of offshoring American jobs (seven). And finally (eight), hope is around the corner.... There is even a ninth [explanation]: There is no problem.”
AND MEANWHILE. Meredith Hill of Politico: “The House voted 285-98 to approve a resolution condemning the 'horrors of socialism' Friday morning, just hours before ... Donald Trump is set to meet with New York’s incoming democratic socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani. Eighty-six Democrats joined with Republicans to approve the measure. Two others voted present. No Republican voted to oppose it.” MB: I'd like to remind those nitwits that the “horrors of socialism” include universal healthcare and living wages for workers. If you'd like to know how your representative voted, here's the roll call. My rep forced me to send her a nasty note -- and right after I'd sent her a nice note about her advocacy for the military obeying only lawful orders.
“Peace in Our Time.” David Sanger of the New York Times: “Many of the 28 points in the proposed Russia-Ukraine peace plan offered by the White House read like they had been drafted in the Kremlin. They reflect almost all Mr. Putin’s maximalist demands: Ukraine would have to cede to Russia all of the lands that Moscow has declared for itself in Donetsk and Luhansk. The United States would recognize that as Russian territory. No NATO forces could be based inside Ukraine that might prevent the Russians from regrouping and taking the whole country. The Ukrainian military would be limited to 600,000 troops, a 25 percent cut from current levels, and it would be barred from possessing long-range weapons that could reach into Russia.... All sanctions on Russia would be lifted, and the country would be 'reintegrated into the global economy.'...
“To add to the pressure, Mr. Trump set a short deadline, Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in the United States, for Ukraine to decide whether to give up not only part of its territory, but also its ability to defend itself with a fully staffed military and an arsenal of long-range weapons. It is unclear what would happen if President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine were to refuse to surrender both his territory and Ukraine’s freedom to defend itself and form alliances with other nations, especially in Europe.” MB: I maintain that of all the horrible, outrageous, things Trump has done this year, this demand of Ukraine is the most horrible and outrageous. It looks a lot like Chamberlain's Munich Agreement, & is likely to have a similar outcome. There is a difference in motivation, however: Chamberlain tried and failed to contain Hitler's aggression; Trump's plan is to help Putin gobble up more of Europe. ~~~
~~~ Dave Lawler of Axios: "President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Ukrainian people on Friday and said ... [Donald] Trump's 28-point peace plan will force Ukraine to choose between 'losing our dignity' or risking the loss of U.S. support.... Given his claim that accepting the current deal would force Ukraine to accept 'life without freedom, without dignity, without justice,' it doesn't sound as though his answer can possibly be yes. However, he said he would work with the U.S. to find solutions: 'I will provide arguments, I will persuade, propose alternatives. Zelensky made clear he will be leaning heavily on European support as he comes under intense pressure from the US." ~~~
~~~ Tim Ross, et al., of Politico: “Donald Trump has hurled a wrench into one of the most sensitive negotiations currently under way in Europe, potentially derailing efforts to help fund Ukraine to stay in the fight against Russia. For months European Union officials have been trying — and failing — to work out a way to use around €140 billion of immobilized Russian state assets held largely in Belgium to support Kyiv’s war effort.... The United States’ new 28-point blueprint for a ceasefire includes a rival idea for using those same assets for American-led reconstruction efforts once a truce has been agreed. The U.S. would take '50 percent' of the profit from this activity, the document said.... A former French official ... said [Steve Witkoff's] idea 'is, of course, scandalous.'... A diplomat added the notion of America seeking to profit from assets held in Europe sounded like classic Trump.” ~~~
~~~ Siobhán O'Grady, et al., of the Washington Post: “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is facing a stunning challenge to his presidency as major corruption allegations rock the wartime leader’s innermost circle just as Washington ramps up pressure for him to agree to an unfavorable peace deal. The corruption scandal has fueled rage that the country’s ruling elite may have lined their own pockets as they sent troops to die in the name of democracy and Western values.... Zelensky is left with few options to regain that trust, lawmakers and analysts say, unless he overhauls the system that allowed such corruption to persist unchecked and restores power to a parliament his administration has sidelined.... Calls are growing for Zelensky, who has not been accused of personal participation in the scheme, to ... overhaul his entire current government, which critics say was built in part by those influenced by or directly involved in corruption.”
Ellen Nakashima, et al., of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump and his top White House aides pushed for lethal strikes on Western Hemisphere drug traffickers almost as soon as they took office in January, and in the past 10 months have repeatedly steamrolled or sidestepped government lawyers who questioned whether the provocative policy was legal.... Early on..., the administration proposed having the CIA use its unique covert authorities to conduct the lethal strikes on drug traffickers that Trump and Stephen Miller, his powerful homeland security adviser, wanted.... Lawyers at the spy agency and elsewhere in the government were skeptical.... Amid pushback on CIA action from lawyers in the late spring, the administration forged ahead with an alternative plan that was already under discussion: to use the U.S. military. And it came up with a legal justification that national security law experts inside and out of government have said does not stand up to facts: that the country was in a 'non-international' armed conflict with 'designated terrorist organizations.'” Read on. The link is a gift link.
Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times: “... the Thucydides trap refer[s] to the violent clash that comes when a rising power challenges the ruling hegemon. In Thucydides’ time, it was Athens that successfully challenged the pre-eminence of Sparta. But it is a pattern that has played out repeatedly through history, with the ambition and aggression of the challenger almost always ending in bloodshed.... [Donald] Trump’s second term has upended this assumption. With its litany of chaos, the administration has pursued all on its own a root-and-branch destruction of the global order America made — threatening invasions, deploying punitive tariffs indiscriminately and all but abandoning longstanding alliances. China, by contrast, has responded mostly with a steely insistence on the status quo. In a startling reversal.... At the world’s summit, America is overthrowing America.... As its primacy fades, the United States now faces a choice: meet rising nations as respected partners in building a new, more equitable multipolar world or seek the costly, brittle power that comes from domination. Trump has chosen the latter; China, it seems, seeks the former.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: There's an interesting thesis embedded in Polgreen's column: that "China’s stated territorial concerns ... do not extend beyond its long-held claim to Taiwan and relatively small border areas." Given China's various aggressive moves within the region -- which Polgreen addresses -- I remain skeptical. But it's -- for me -- new information, and I'll keep it in mind.
Release the Tape! Robert Jimison of the New York Times: “Representative Eugene Vindman, Democrat of Virginia, called on Friday for the declassification of what he described as a 'highly disturbing' 2019 phone call between ... [Donald] Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia after the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. At a news conference on Capitol Hill with Mr. Khashoggi’s widow, Mr. Vindman said that the transcript, which he reviewed as part of his duties serving on the National Security Council during Mr. Trump's first term, 'would shock people if they knew what was said.' He said it was one of two disturbing phone call transcripts he had read during his time in the first Trump administration, the other being the 2019 call with Ukraine’s president that became the basis of a whistle-blower complaint by his twin brother, Alexander Vindman, that led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. Mr. Vindman did not divulge what was said in the call between Mr. Trump and Prince Mohammed, who U.S. intelligence concluded approved the killing. But in a letter to Mr. Trump on Thursday, he and dozens of other House Democrats demanded its release. That push is exceedingly unlikely to succeed....” (Also linked yesterday.)
⭐Annie Karni of the New York Times: “Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right Georgia Republican, said on Friday night that she would resign from Congress in January, an announcement that came days after ... [Donald] Trump branded her a 'traitor' for breaking with him and helping to force a vote to compel the Justice Department to release its files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Ms. Greene, who was elected in 2020 and positioned herself as a die-hard Trump supporter until a series of recent ruptures with the president on a variety of issues, made the abrupt announcement in a video and statement she posted online, filmed from her home in Georgia, her Christmas tree on display behind her. 'Loyalty should be a two-way street, and we should be able to vote our conscience and represent our district’s interest,' Ms. Greene wrote in a long post. She said that if she had been cast aside by 'MAGA Inc,' it was indicative that 'many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well.' In a phone interview on Friday night with an ABC News reporter, Mr. Trump called Ms. Greene’s plans 'great news for the country.'” (Also linked yesterday.) The AP's story is here. Politico's report is here.
Amy Wang & Meagan Flynn of the Washington Post: “Several Democratic lawmakers sought police action Friday over social media posts by ... Donald Trump, in which he said they should be arrested and potentially punished by death for encouraging the U.S. military to disobey illegal orders. At least two lawmakers, Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colorado) and Chris Deluzio (D-Pennsylvania), have requested that U.S. Capitol Police investigate 'intimidating, threatening, and concerning' posts made by Trump on his Truth Social platform, according to a copy of a letter sent from Crow’s office to police Thursday and obtained by The Washington Post. Axios first reported the request.... Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pennsylvania) also said Friday that her office had filed a complaint about a threat from the president with Capitol Police.”
Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: “Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an interview that he personally instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to abandon its longstanding position that vaccines do not cause autism — a move that underscores his determination to challenge scientific consensus and bend the health department to his will. In an interview on Thursday explaining why the C.D.C. website now says the claim that vaccines do not cause autism is not 'evidence-based.' Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that large-scale epidemiological studies of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine had found no link to autism, and that studies of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal had also shown no link.... Nine months [after his Senate confirmation hearings], some of the most consequential promises that [Sen. Bill] Cassidy said he had secured from Mr. Kennedy appear to have been breached or broken altogether.” Update: The link is now a gift link, courtesy of Scott Lemieux. The Guardian has a story here.~~~
~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "It goes to show you never can tell. You vote to put the country’s most prominent anti-vaccine activist, who has chosen specifically for his anti-vaccine activism, in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services and it turns out that his claims that he would not take actions against vaccination when he was trying to secure the nomination may not have been entirely honest[.]... Every person who gets sick and/or dies because of Kennedy’s war on vaccines hangs 100% on Bill Cassidy. The fact that he knew better just makes it worse.
Chemicals Are Forever, Environmental Poison Agency Says Approvingly. Amudalat Ajasa of the Washington Post: “The Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with approvals for pesticides containing 'forever chemicals' as an active ingredient, dismissing concerns about health and environmental impacts raised by some scientists and activists. This month, the agency approved two new pesticides that meet the internationally recognized definition for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or fluorinated substances, and has announced plans for four additional approvals. The authorized pesticides, cyclobutrifluram and isocycloseram, which was approved Thursday, will be used on vegetables such as romaine lettuce, broccoli and potatoes.”
Andrew Duehren of the New York Times: “A federal judge placed on hold a Trump administration effort to use typically confidential tax information to deport migrants, writing on Friday that the Internal Revenue Service had illegally disseminated the tax data of some migrants this summer.... Federal law tightly controls the use of taxpayer information, and several top I.R.S. officials quit this spring over concerns that giving tax records to ICE on a large scale could be illegal. Still..., in June, ICE asked the I.R.S. for information on roughly 1.3 million people, and in August, the I.R.S. turned over the last known addresses of roughly 47,000 people, according to court documents. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, nominated by former President Bill Clinton, said on Friday that ... federal law only allows for the I.R.S. to share tax information with other government officials who are directly involved in an ongoing investigation. The I.R.S. sent the thousands of addresses to a single ICE official, who Judge Kollar-Kotelly said could not have been personally conducting so many investigations.” Politico's report is here.
Of Course. Alito Reverses Lower Court Ruling Against Texas Gerrymander. Abbie VanSickle of the New York Times: “The Supreme Court on Friday evening temporarily allowed Texas to use its newly redrawn, Republican-friendly congressional voting map for the 2026 midterm elections. The decision blocked, for now, a lower-court ruling that had said Texas could not use the map. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who is assigned to handle emergency applications from that region of the country, issued the administrative stay, a temporary ruling meant to give the full court time to consider the issue. The Texas attorney general earlier in the evening had filed an emergency application with the justices, asking them to allow the state to use the new map. Justice Alito requested that the civil rights groups that had challenged the map respond to the attorney general’s request by Monday at 5 p.m., signaling the court would likely consider the issue speedily.” (Also linked yesterday.) Politico's report is here.
The “Dumb Prosecutor” Defense. Alan Feuer of the New York Times: “Lawyers for James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, asked a federal judge on Friday evening to throw out the charges he was facing because the inexperienced prosecutor picked by ... [Donald] Trump to bring the case failed to secure the approval of the full grand jury that purportedly returned the indictment against him. The request to dismiss the case was contained in a motion filed in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., two days after the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, acknowledged at a tense court hearing that she had never shown a second — and final — version of the indictment of Mr. Comey to the entire grand jury for a vote. It also came after a magistrate judge involved in Mr. Comey’s case this week issued a blistering ruling detailing 'a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps' and potential prosecutorial misconduct that undermined 'the integrity of the grand jury proceeding.'.... Three separate judges involved in hearing the charges against Mr. Comey have all expressed doubts about how she presented evidence to the grand jurors.” The ABC News story is here. ~~~
~~~ Salvador Rizzo of the Washington Post: “The Justice Department is going on the offensive to discredit the federal judge overseeing the case against former FBI director James B. Comey.... In court Wednesday, [Judge Michael] Nachmanoff asked an attorney for Comey about ... language which had been quoted repeatedly in legal briefs prior to the hearing. 'So your view is that [interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey] Halligan is a stalking horse or a puppet, for want of a better word, doing the president’s bidding?'... In a statement to the New York Post after the hearing, Halligan complained that Nachmanoff had attacked her. A Justice Department spokesman later posted her statement on X.... Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin posted on X that Nachmanoff had 'launched an outrageous and unprofessional personal attack yesterday in open court against US Attorney Lindsey Halligan.'” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Uh, the judge asked a question; he didn't call Halligan a puppet. And Comey's attorney didn't, either. He replied to Nachmanoff's query, “Well, I don’t want to use language about Ms. Halligan that suggests anything other than she did what she was told to do.... She didn’t have prosecutorial experience, but she took on the job to come to the U.S. attorney’s office and carry out the president’s directive.”
Annals of “Journalism,” Ctd. When a “Journalist” (Allegedly!) Has Sex with the Subjects of Her Stories. Ginia Bellafante of the New York Times: “The editor Mark Guiducci has made two big moves since taking the helm of Vanity Fair in June. He decided to put only male actors on the cover of the magazine’s annual Hollywood issue, and he hired the scandal-plagued journalist Olivia Nuzzi as its West Coast editor. Now, after the publication of an essay that raised new questions about Ms. Nuzzi’s adherence to journalistic ethics, the magazine is looking into the allegations against her, according to a Vanity Fair spokeswoman. Ms. Nuzzi, 32, lost a previous high-profile job — as the Washington correspondent at New York magazine — when her bosses learned in September 2024 that she had engaged in a close personal relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom she had profiled for the publication the year before. The concern at Vanity Fair came about in the wake of a Substack essay written by Ms. Nuzzi’s former fiancé, the political journalist Ryan Lizza.” An Independent story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: In fairness to Guiducci, who seems like a silly jerk, Vanity Fair has never been a serious publication with high journalistic standards. It's a glamorous, glossy, gossipy magazine that publishes "scoops" by one-source wonders; IOW, a good fit for Nuzzi.
~~~~~~~~~~
Texas. Alan Blinder of the New York Times: “A Texas A&M University appeals panel has unanimously ruled that the school was 'not justified' when it fired a lecturer who had been accused of teaching a course that recognized more than two genders. The decision does not guarantee that the lecturer, Melissa McCoul, will be reinstated. But the ruling puts pressure on the university’s administration as it decides a matter that put Texas A&M at the center of the nation’s rancorous debate about what can be taught in classrooms. Dr. McCoul was teaching an English department course, 'Literature for Children,' in College Station when a student filmed a depiction of a 'gender unicorn,' which is used to explain the differences between gender expression and gender identity. A student in the class challenged the lesson, saying, 'I’m not entirely sure this is legal to be teaching because, according to our president, there’s only two genders.' After the student spoke a bit more, Dr. McCoul replied, 'You are under a misconception that what I’m saying is illegal.'” ~~~
~~~ Marie: I'm all for firing Dr. McCoul, who should not be teaching a course in a university English department. The appropriate response to the student's complaint was, "You are under a misconception that 'there's only two genders' is a proper English sentence. The grammatically correct formulation is 'there are only two genders.' Subject and verb must agree. Class dismissed."
~~~~~~~~~~
Brazil. Maria Dias of the Washington Post: “Former president Jair Bolsonaro was taken into preventive custody on Saturday, days before he was set to begin his 27-year prison sentence for attempting a military coup to stay in power after his 2022 election loss, a plot that included a plan to assassinate President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the man who defeated him. The 70-year-old former army officer has been under house arrest since August for violating a ban on using social media, and he was detained early on Saturday, after Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that a planned vigil outside his house could 'cause serious harm to public order,' potentially preventing Bolsonaro’s arrest once his appeals are exhausted, or even enabling 'the former president’s escape.'...”
27 comments:
The Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded from 1939-1943. If it had been awarded in 1939, it would have gone to Neville Chamberlain.
Don't believe it?
Just ask the Pretender who thinks peace in our time has a different spelling....and means big pieces of other countries like Ukraine .
November 22, 1963, I was sitting in my 4th grade class. Two nuns came in and whispered something to our teacher. They went out in the hall then came back in a moment later and said we could all go home. Normally that would have been great news, it being Friday afternoon. We still had an hour of school time left, but this was weird. All the nuns were acting strange. A few were crying. No one told us what was going on. When I got home (we lived right across the street from the school), I could hear my mother crying. My parents were both first generation Irish Catholics so this was a big deal. I don’t really remember my reaction to the news Kennedy was shot. It all seemed so surreal. That was a long weekend. My grandmother lives right below us in the same house. I was with her watching television on Sunday and saw Oswald being shot, live on TV. The funeral, the cortège, the riderless horse, it was as if the whole world stopped. It was the end of a lot of things and the start of others, my sense is that the period we now call the 60’s started that weekend. Things would get worse from then on. Some things got better, Civil Rights, the women’s movement, voting rights, etc., all the things Trump and the traitors and the Supine Court are now attacking. A lot came from that Friday afternoon.
I was in a hospital bed which took up most of our home's small dining room. It was my senior year of high school. I spent roughly three months of that year in bed, both in the hospital and at home recovering from a pulverized lower femur. Lotsa memories...deeply imprinted.
My father must have called home from his hardware store and told us. My mother turned on the tv and I was glued to it over the next two days....Oswald...Ruby...all of it.
Those years now seem all of a piece. The end of high school. Off to college in the Bay Area. The world widening every day. Catholicism mostly abandoned. Campus protests. More assassinations my senior year. Two draft physicals at the boarded up Oakland induction center. Marriage and a child...If a blur can be vivid in memory, those years are.
Yes, Akhilleus, I lived the sixties, and have like we all do in our own way brought my past with me into my present.
Marie, the A&M student was speaking Aggie Texish, in which "there's only two" is correct, as would be "there ain't but two." So he's awrite.
Ken,
Pulverized femur? Geez…
In the 8th grade I climbed up on an icy roof with two of my band mates (yes, we played 60s songs) to bomb cars with snowballs, slid off and broke my arm, but nothing pulverized. Those tango lessons must have been murder.
So the Supines say Texas can use their Fatty instructed bulls hit gerrymandered map. Wow. What a surprise. They’re also getting ready to kill what’s left of the Voting Rights Act (I guess those traitors on the court REALLY hated the 60’s), so it’ll be a two-fer: help the dictator who says Democrats need to die maintain control, and hand their fellow ideologues control of Congress for the next couple of generations.
Nice to see that Sameul Alito is getting in personally on fucking over the voters of Texas, particularly all the minority voters. Can we call these racistly gerrymanders Alito Districts now? Who needs democracy and voters choosing their own representation. The constitution is outdated anyway. The elite$ know what is best, plus they have the best $peeches, so they should really get the final say in who goes to DC.
I would caution media types not to make too much fun of Fatty’s weird affection for Mamdani. Himmler Miller will tell him people are laughing at him and he might decide to nuke New York City.
Bill Scher
"Trump’s Policy Failures Are Even Worse Than We Realize
News investigations into Trump-era national security and criminal justice decisions haven’t penetrated the national consciousness because of the president’s ability to distract. They should.
by Bill Scher
Most Americans are coming to see that Trump is both depraved and incompetent; there’s a reason why his job approval is sinking. But because we rate our politicians on superficial measures, our collective understanding of how Trump is failing at policymaking and bureaucratic administration is limited, just like our appreciation for the meaningful and difficult work of his predecessors."
And another thing about this farcical gerrymandering in Texas (and soon to be a slew of other red states). It’s not okay to gerrymander based on race, but gerrymandering based on political control is okay? I would suggest that, in most southern states, if you did a Venn diagram of both kinds of gerrymanders, you’d get a perfect circle. What’s the difference? It’s being done to stick it to minorities either way.
Mamdani had his picture taken with a portrait of FDR? Man, I’d have thought that picture would have been tossed out months ago. I mean, isn't the Orange Monster a waaaay better prez than that Roosevelt guy who was a traitor to his class?
ProPublica - Buzzwords
"The Indian Health Service Is Flagging Vaccine-Related Speech. Doctors Say They’re Being Censored.
Officials have deemed terms like “immunizations” and “vaccines” risky “buzzwords” that require approval to be used in social media posts, pamphlets and presentations."
MAHA is undercutting health at every freaking opportunity. The insanity of all they are doing is breathtaking. And as with Dr Cassidy every damn Republican just shrugs their shoulders and says "whatcha gonna do? oh well" as people die and get sicker and suffer for no reason whatsoever. So many good people doing hard grueling work for generations to help and protect people has been undermined and destroy because a bunch of narcissistic knownothings were deliberately put in charge of the entire nations healthcare system. The sabotage of the Trump administration is hard to wrap your head around even as we see it every day.
Who thinks, if they hand Putin territory in Ukraine that he hasn’t been able to conquer on his own that he’ll stop there? If the Trump “Peace plan” (*cough-cough*) goes into effect, and Vlad the Impaler is handed the Donbas region, the next day, he’ll be rolling tanks into Kyiv. Then maybe other European nations. That pee-pee tape was a great investment for Putin.
MAHA and Trumpcare
ProPublica
"“Ticking Time Bomb”: A Pregnant Mother Kept Getting Sicker. She Died After She Couldn’t Get an Abortion in Texas.
ProPublica has found multiple cases of women with underlying health conditions who died when they couldn’t access abortions. Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old mother, was told by doctors there was no emergency before preeclampsia killed her.
Just after Christmas, on his birthday, JJ [her 14 year old son] found his mom draped over her bed, lifeless. An autopsy would later confirm what she had feared: Preeclampsia killed her at 20 weeks pregnant."
Akhilleus,
In the case of the Texas gerrymander the Trump DOJ literally spelled out that they need to dilute the minority voters. Texas said they wouldn't do another political gerrymander. But just a few days after sending an explicit call for using race to rewrite the districts Abbott called the legislature back in session. The racism was so evident and explicit that Republican judges in Texas couldn't NIT see it. That's how blatant that the incompetent FH DOJ was here. Though Alito thinks that the racist Alito Districts should be used until all appeals are exhausted a election or two from now.
International Incident and keeping up the sexist Republican brand.
"Top House Republicans banned Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) from traveling internationally for three months after an alcohol-related episode during a foreign congressional delegation.
During an August trip to Mexico, Crenshaw was having drinks with a group of Mexican officials. One Mexican official cracked a crude joke that made a woman present uncomfortable. Crenshaw toasted the remarks."
Akhilleus,
Was too lazy to check the spelling of a word I hadn't used in years. "Condyle," the rounded protuberance where the femur inserts into the knee. Spiral fractured, not pulverized. Football homecoming game in Oct. 1963. End of my athletic career, such as it was. Leaned little from it. Still watch football games with some pleasure.
Check that. Learned a little. Neither of our two boys played football.
As I said, lotsa memories.
So my romaine lettuce is going to be bombarded with PFAS
and I don't think that's something that can be washed off.
Does anyone know how long I'll have to boil my lettuce now?
Always Looking Out For Number One
" AOC on MTG retiring:
"She's carefully timing her departure just 1-2 days after her pension kicks in and after making millions of dollars insider trading stocks for weapons manufacturers and others while in office.""
David Frum, in The Atlantic, provides addional details along the lines of the post above ^ by RAS on MTG Marjorie Taylor Greene Came So Close to Getting the Joke
"When Jack Abramoff dominated Washington lobbying in the 1990s and early 2000s, he observed that there were two kinds of people in town: those who “get the joke” and those who don’t.
Those who got the joke understood that all of the city’s talk of ideas and principles was flimflam to conceal self-enrichment at the public’s expense. Those who didn’t—didn’t.
....
But she never did get the joke on the biggest joke in town, the joke that MAGA is about anything more than manipulation, exploitation, corruption, lust, and cruelty. She seems to have sincerely believed the lies that shrewder players merely mouthed. She gained her own millions without appreciating that her allies were scheming for billions. She balked at the self-abasement before every one of Trump’s whims that is indispensable to MAGA survival and success. Her failure on those scores is her one service to the country—because it helps other Americans, the joke’s ultimate victims, to better understand what is happening to them and why."
RAS,
Anyone attempting to attribute MTG's sudden apostasy to some kind of moral or ethical epiphany will likely be sorely disappointed. No stripe changing here, just different shape of stripes. There's something else going on here.
Her entire political career has been marked by carefully choreographed dance moves. The Qanon two step got her noticed by local nutjobs, then sucking up to the MAGA god-king with a bunch of scorched earth hyper-partisan St. Vitus Dance seizures got her backstage passes to the inner circle of lackeys and loyalists. But she's always looking ahead. Likely, seeing that Fatty's poll numbers are cratering and knowing that Lame Duck Land is right around the corner, she decided to remove her suckers from Fatty's flabby ass so she doesn't go down with the ship.
I'm guessing she's prepping for a run for president. After deciding to secede from the Fat Hitler reich, she needed a reason that made her look heroic, not treasonous, so she decided to try the Epstein Files double jig. Timing her departure to make sure she gets her payoff is pure MTG. She's a cancer, but like the worst form of cancer cells, she can adapt, mutate, and move on to infect other areas of the body politic.
For what its worth, I remember aspects of Hurricane Carla (9/61) and fears and nightmares surrounding the Cuba MIssile Crisis (10/62), but have no memories that are distinctly my own from 11/22/63, when I was a 2nd grader in Houston public school.
Someone is smitten
Ron Filipkowski
"Republicans crafted an entire midterm strategy around making Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party and portraying him as the most dangerous political figure in American history. Called him a jihadist. Introduced a resolution in the House condemning socialism. All gone now."
War Plans [The Atlantic gift link]
"The Murky Plan That Ensures a Future War
Who will benefit from the White House’s 28-point proposal for Ukraine?
By Anne Applebaum
The 28-point peace plan that the United States and Russia want to impose on Ukraine and Europe is misnamed. It is not a peace plan. It is a proposal that weakens Ukraine and divides America from Europe, preparing the way for a larger war in the future. In the meantime, it benefits unnamed Russian and American investors, at the expense of everyone else."
political camouflage
"Thirty Minutes in the Lion’s Den: The Interview Trump Thought He Controlled
by Bruce Fanger
There’s a strange thing that happens when you watch the full thirty-minute interview instead of the clipped version the internet tosses around. The edges soften. The masks slip. And you start to see the actual geometry of the interaction — where power sits, where insecurity leaks, where the tone changes, where the truth speaks by accident. The viral clip makes it look like a moment. The full meeting reveals a dynamic.
This wasn’t a showdown. It wasn’t a humiliation. It wasn’t a triumph for either man. It was something far more revealing: a case study in how a bully behaves when he can’t rely on fear, and how a principled politician behaves when he refuses the role of the victim.
What the meeting showed is simpler and more damning:
Trump is only powerful when the room fears him.
Take the fear away, and he becomes oddly gentle, strangely polite, and completely unable to dominate the conversation.
Fear is the oxygen of authoritarianism.
Take it away, and even a strongman starts to sound like a man."
"Fear is the oxygen of authoritarianism". So true.
Hey, I just noticed, I've been typing "authoritarianism" so often it's automatic, like playing a major scale on the piano you've been practicing for six months straight.
Lloyd Doggett remains optimistic on redistricting NPR
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