Wednesday Reads: Social Security, Measles, and Government Shutdown

Posted: March 12, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, just because, Social Security | Tags: government shutdown 2025m, Leland Dudek, measles outbreak, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | 6 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Fool on the Hill, by Dave LeBow

I have a nasty cold, so I don’t know how much I can do today. As always, everything is endlessly crazy. Trump is causing chaos with his on-again, off-again tariffs, but I’m not going to deal with that today. I want to begin with the latest on Social Security. There is quite a bit of news on it today. Next, news on the spreading Measles outbreak and then the possible government shutdown.

Social Security News

ProPublica got ahold of a recording of the acting director of the Social Security Administration: “The President Wanted It and I Did It”: Recording Reveals Head of Social Security’s Thoughts on DOGE and Trump.

Since the arrival of a team from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Social Security is in a far more precarious place than has been widely understood, according to Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration. “I don’t want the system to collapse,” Dudek said in a closed-door meeting last week, according to a recording obtained by ProPublica. He also said that it “would be catastrophic for the people in our country” if DOGE were to make changes at his agency that were as sweeping as those at USAID, the Treasury Department and elsewhere.

Dudek’s comments, delivered to a group of senior staff and Social Security advocates attending both in person and virtually, offer an extraordinary window into the thinking of a top agency official in the volatile early days of the second Trump administration. The Washington Post first reported Dudek’s acknowledgement that DOGE is calling the shots at Social Security and quoted several of his statements. But the full recording reveals that he went much further, citing not only the actions being taken at the agency by the people he repeatedly called “the DOGE kids,” but also extensive input he has received from the White House itself. When a participant in the meeting asked him why he wouldn’t more forcefully call out President Donald Trump’s continued false claims about widespread Social Security fraud as “BS,” Dudek answered, “So we published, for the record, what was actually the numbers there on our website. This is dealing with — have you ever worked with someone who’s manic-depressive?”

Throughout the meeting, Dudek made alarming statements about the perils facing the Social Security system, but he did so in an oddly informal, discursive manner. It left several participants baffled as to the ultimate fate of the nation’s largest and most popular social program, one that serves 73 million Americans. “Are we going to break something?” Dudek asked at one point, referring to what DOGE has been doing with Social Security data. “I don’t know.”

But then he said, in a more reassuring tone: “They’re learning. Let people learn. They’re going to make mistakes.”

Dudek embodies the dramatic whipsawing of life as a public servant under DOGE. For 25 years, he was the ultimate faceless bureaucrat: a midlevel analyst who had bounced between federal agencies, ultimately landing at the Social Security Administration and focusing on information technology, cybersecurity and fraud prevention. He was largely unknown even within the agency. But in February, he suddenly vaulted into the public eye when he was put on leave for surreptitiously sharing information with DOGE. It appeared that he might lose his job, but then he was unexpectedly promoted by the Trump administration to the position of acting commissioner. At the time, he seemed unreservedly committed to the DOGE agenda, writing — then deleting — a bellicose LinkedIn post in which he expressed pride in having “bullied agency executives, shared executive contact information, and circumvented the chain of command to connect DOGE with the people who get stuff done.”

Now, only weeks into his tenure, he was taking a far more ambivalent posture toward not just DOGE but Trump. On multiple occasions during last week’s meeting, according to the recording, Dudek framed the choices that he has been making in recent weeks as “the president’s” agenda. These choices have included planned cuts of at least 7,000 Social Security employees; buyouts and early retirement offered to the entire staff of 57,000, including those who work in field offices and teleservice centers helping elderly and disabled people navigate the program; cuts to disability determination services; the dissolution of a team that had been working to improve the user experience of the ssa.gov website and application process; a reduction of the agency’s footprint across the country from 10 regional offices to four; the terminations of 64 leases, including those for some field office and hearing office space; proposals to outsource Social Security customer service; and more.

“I work for the president. I need to do what the president tells me to do,” Dudek said, according to the recording. “I’ve had to make some tough choices, choices I didn’t agree with, but the president wanted it and I did it,” he added later. (He didn’t name specific actions that Trump did or did not direct.)

Center for American Progress: Cuts to the Social Security Administration Threaten Millions of Americans’ Retirement and Disability Benefits.

In January 2025, 73 million people—more than 1 in 5 Americans—received benefits from the Social Security Administration (SSA). But the agency that gets those benefits into bank accounts to buy groceries and pay bills is now under attack, putting beneficiaries at risk of dangerous disruptions and delays. Recently, the SSA announced that it would cut approximately 7,000 jobs—a 12 percent reduction in the agency’s staffing. At the same time, the SSA is shutting down six of its 10 regional offices, while posts to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) website spark fears of upcoming field office closures around the country.

These assaults on the SSA threaten Americans’ ability to access the benefits they rely on to get by.

The Social Security Administration has been doing more with less for years, providing benefits to a rapidly growing number of beneficiaries despite its shrinking staff. Under congressional restrictions on administrative spending, agency capacity has stretched to the breaking point, with staff levels approaching a 25-year low in fiscal year 2024. Under these conditions, former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley warned that DOGE-led cuts to an already skeletal agency may lead to “system collapse and an interruption of benefits.”

Any delay or interruption in payments would be catastrophic. More than 7 million Americans 65 and older receive at least 90 percent of their income from Social Security.* For many of these seniors, even a few days’ delay in receiving Social Security benefits would pose an immediate threat to their ability to pay rent and buy food. Payments made even later, or missed, would irreparably harm many more: In a January 2025 survey, 42 percent of Americans 65 and older reported “I would not be able to afford the basics, such as food, clothing, or housing [without Social Security retirement benefits].”

Disabled people and their families, likewise, would face dire straits. More than 11 million disabled Americans under the age of 65 rely on benefits administered by the SSA through either Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), or both. Most SSDI recipients can’t work due to their disability, while others work limited hours and can only earn very limited amounts without forfeiting their benefits. For SSI claimants, even when they are able to work, they can only hold a few thousand dollars in gross assets without losing their benefits, subject to limited exceptions, making it essentially impossible to save. As a result, too many SSDI and SSI recipients are one missed or late payment away from not making rent or putting food on the table.

There is much more information at the CAP link.

Nathaniel Weixel at The Hill: Trump, Musk fuel fears of Social Security cuts with ‘fraud’ talk.

President Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk are ratcheting up false rhetoric about Social Security, repeatedly claiming the program wastes hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent payouts that need to be eliminated.

Their position is confounding experts and worrying advocates, who fear the claims are a pretext for massive cuts to the program down the road.

Trump, Musk and the administration’s allies insist they are targeting waste, fraud and abuse and are not going after benefits as a whole.

In an interview Monday with Larry Kudlow, who served as Trump’s chief economic adviser in his first term, Musk suggested Social Security and other entitlement programs are rife with fraud and a prime target for cuts.

“Most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that’s the big one to eliminate,” Musk said on Kudlow’s Fox Business show, adding there’s possibly $500 billion to $700 billion in potential cuts there.

Musk also said they’re trying to put a stop to “stolen” and “fake” Social Security numbers.

What’s their evidence for this fraud and waste?

Economists say the levels of fraud talked about by Trump and Musk just don’t exist.

A report by the Social Security Administration’s inspector general last year found the agency made nearly $72 billion in improper payments from fiscal 2015 through fiscal 2022 — less than 1 percent of benefits paid out during that period.

“I’m a firm believer in the perpetual inefficiency of government. But if I had to pick one place in the federal government that is more efficient than most, Social Security would be one of them,” said Chuck Blahous, a senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a former top economic adviser in the George W. Bush administration.

Representatives from DOGE have reportedly gained access to sensitive taxpayer data collected by the Social Security Administration (SSA).

According to a declaration in a federal lawsuit from Tiffany Flick, the SSA’s former acting chief of staff, DOGE staffers seemed to want the data to search for evidence of alleged benefits fraud.

Flick wrote that she thought the DOGE team’s concerns were “invalid and based on an inaccurate understanding of SSA’s data and programs.”

Musk also claims that “illegal” immigrants are getting Social Security benefits. Of course, that’s impossible, since these people can’t get Social Security numbers.

One more on Social Security from CNBC: Senators to Trump Social Security nominee: ‘You will be responsible’ if benefits are interrupted.

Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon are warning Frank Bisignano, the nominee to lead the Social Security Administration, that he will be responsible if staff cuts interfere with the agency’s ability to process and disburse benefit checks.

President Donald Trump has nominated Bisignano, chief executive of payments and financial technology company Fiserv, to serve as commissioner of the agency, which is responsible for sending monthly benefit payments to more than 72 million Americans.

“As President Trump’s nominee for SSA Commissioner, you will be responsible if the Trump Administration’s attacks on the program result in failures or delays in getting Americans their Social Security checks — in other words, a backdoor cut to benefits,” Warren and Wyden wrote in a March 11 letter to Bisignano, shared exclusively with CNBC.

Bisignano’s Senate confirmation hearing is expected to take place later this month, according to a source familiar with the situation.

In the interim, the agency is under the leadership of acting commissioner Lee Dudek, who according to reports publicly stated before his appointment that he had been put on administrative leave after helping representatives of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Dudek replaced former acting commissioner Michelle King, who stepped down following reported disagreements with DOGE over access to sensitive data.

The Measles Outbreak

Measles is spreading around the country, and RFK Jr. isn’t dealing with what’s happening.

The Washington Post: Texas measles outbreak grows, while New York and California report new cases.

Los Angeles County in California, Suffolk County in New York and Howard County in Maryland detected their first confirmed cases of measles this year, while Oklahoma reported two possible cases, local health authorities said this week.

The spread of the highly infectious disease comes as an outbreak of more than 200 cases has continued to grow in Texas, and as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned health-care workers and potential travelers to “be vigilant” ahead of spring and summer travel.

Health officials in Los Angeles County — the most populous county in the United States — reported a case Tuesday in a resident who may have been exposed onboard a China Airlines flight that landed at Los Angeles International Airport on March 5.

The New York state health department announced on Tuesday its first known case of measles outside New York City this year. The patient, who under 5 years old, lives in Suffolk County on Long Island.

In Howard County, just west of Baltimore, health authorities on Sunday reported a confirmed case in a resident who recently traveled abroad and was at Washington Dulles International Airport on March 5.

Two individuals in Oklahoma reported symptoms consistent with measles and had potential exposure to outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico, the Oklahoma Health Department said Tuesday. It praised the individuals for “immediately excluding themselves from public settings.” [….]

In Canada, at least 146 confirmed cases have been detected this year up to March 6, along with 22 probable cases.

CBS News: Philadelphia officials warn of possible exposure to highly infectious measles.

Health officials in Philadelphia are warning residents of potential exposures to the highly infectious measles virus at multiple health facilities in the city over the past week.

The person exposed to the virus was present at the following locations in the city at these times, according to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health:

The South Philadelphia Health and Literacy Center, 1700 South Broad Street. The building includes the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Pediatric Primary Care unit in South Philadelphia, the health department’s Health Center No. 2 and the South Philadelphia library, but no one in the library is at risk.

The person was in the building on Friday, March 7, between 10:45 a.m. and 2:40 p.m. The next day on March 8, the person was there between 9:05 a.m. and 1:20 p.m.

The CHOP Emergency room at 3401 Civic Center Boulevard on Monday, March 10 between 7:55 a.m. and 10:15 a.m.

The person was exposed to measles while traveling abroad and officials do not believe it is connected to a recent case that occurred in Montgomery County.

ABC Los Angeles: .Measles case confirmed in LA County resident who visited many local businesses, traveled through LAX.

A case of measles has been confirmed in a Los Angeles County resident who recently traveled through the Los Angeles International airport, the county’s Department of Public Health announced in a statement Tuesday.

It is the first confirmed case of measles in a LA County resident in 2025, according to the department.

Passengers assigned to specific seats that may have been exposed on China Airlines flight CAL8/ CI8 that arrived in Los Angeles on March 5 will be notified by local departments of health in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control.

Additionally, individuals who were at the following locations on the specified dates and times may be at risk of developing measles due to exposure to this individual:

— Wednesday, March 5 between 7 p.m. to 10:40 p.m.: Tom Bradley International Terminal (Terminal B) at the Los Angeles International (LAX) Airport

— Friday, March 7, between 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.: Cloud 9 Nail Salon, 5142 N. Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91601

— Monday, March 10 between 8:15 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.: Superior Grocery Store, 10683 Valley Blvd., El Monte, CA 91731

So what is the head of Health and Human Services doing?

The Daily Beast: RFK Jr.: It Would Be Better if ‘Everybody Got Measles.’

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared to suggest getting measles is the best defense against the disease, as a Texas outbreak spreads across the U.S.

More than 220 people in the state have been diagnosed with the infectious virus, and California, New York, and Maryland have also reported cases of late. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is sweating over the outbreak, warning health-care workers and travelers to “be vigilant.”

While RFK Jr. recently shifted his stance to concede that vaccinations are actually pretty useful, he has still stopped short of urging skeptics to go and get it. And in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired Tuesday night, he appeared to still favor natural immunity through exposure to the virus.

“It used to be, when I were a kid, that everybody got measles. And the measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection,” he said, then taking a swipe at the vaccine. “The vaccine doesn’t do that. The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but for many people it wanes.”

In Texas, uptake of the vaccine is lower than in other states, partly fueled by COVID skepticism. The measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine offers 93 percent protection against measles if the recipient has one dose, and 97 percent after two doses, according to the CDC.

HuffPost via Yahoo News: RFK Jr. Makes More Alarming Comments About Measles Amid U.S. Outbreaks.

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity broadcast Tuesday, Kennedy said “natural immunity” after getting a measles infection is more effective at providing lasting protection against the disease. However, Kennedy left out that the dangers of catching the disease outweigh the advantage of immunity, according to doctors….

Despite Kennedy’s claims, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the majority of people who have had the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) vaccines will be protected for life. The CDC also has guidance for people it recommends should be revaccinated.

Prior to the introduction of the vaccine in 1963, about 500,000 cases and 500 measles deaths were reported annually, while the real number of cases was suspected to be much higher, the agency said. Since then, incidence of the disease has fallen by over 95%, it said.

Kennedy added that he would make sure that “anybody who wants a vaccine can get one,” noting that he is against forcing people to take it.

“I’m a freedom of choice person,” Kennedy said. “We should have transparency. We should have informed choice. And — but if people don’t want it, the government shouldn’t force them to do it. There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year. It causes all the illnesses that measles itself cause.”

The CDC has stressed the measles vaccine is safe and effective. Its website lists extensive information about the vaccine, including potential side effects and warnings for people who shouldn’t get vaccinated.

Government Shutdown

Yesterday, the House passed their continuing resolution with devastating cuts to Medicaid. Now, Democrats in the Senate have to decide whether to filibuster and possibly shut down the government.

David Dayen at The American Prospect: Senate Democrats’ Choice: Block the Republican Spending Bill or Dissolve Congress.

Democrats were actually quite pleased with the clown show that was Congress in the last two years. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had no ability to pass anything without Democratic votes, as he was simply not in control of the far-right elements of his caucus. Democrats welcomed the perception that they were government’s rescuers, the adults in the room, who would save Johnson’s bacon and functionally control the House.

This is no longer true. Donald Trump’s looming presence has whipped Republicans in line, and Johnson has recognized an important truth: So-called “moderate” Republicans will swallow anything, so he only has to negotiate with the far right, and if he can satisfy them, he’ll win any vote. Such was the case with a partisan seven-month “continuing resolution” that passed the House on Tuesday 217-213, with only one defection by libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who doesn’t really believe in government funding at all. (One Democrat voted for it, Maine Blue Dog Jared Golden.)

It is somewhat remarkable that dozens of House Republicans who have vowed never to pass stopgap bills to fund the government in their political careers caved on this one. But that’s why I put “continuing resolution” in quotes. In reality, this is a hastily arranged partisan Republican budget that achieves much of their anti-government, anti-immigrant, pro-military agenda while paving the way for Trump to nullify whatever spending he deems unworthy. It doesn’t just tilt spending in a far-right direction, it actually abdicates congressional responsibility as the branch of government that makes federal spending decisions.

Yet several Senate Democrats are thinking about passing it anyway.

Without the luxury of Republicans falling apart, Democrats in the Senate need to decide whether to prevent a dangerous and harmful budget that shrinks the power of Congress in the government. Since operating on principle goes against their “adults in the room” mindset, they are wavering on what to do. But it should be an open-and-shut case.

A normal continuing resolution funds the government at the same level as the previous budget. This bill does not. It cuts non-defense discretionary spending by $13 billion below last year’s level, while increasing military spending by $6 billion. It zeroes out funding for programs that fund homeless shelters and prevent child abuse. It cuts health care funding for clinics and hospitals, emergency preparedness for communities, clean water projects, and tribal assistance. Meanwhile, it adds money for mass deportations, just as Immigration and Customs Enforcement has illegally detained a green card holder for his political beliefs.

Read the rest at the link above.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo: Here Are the Arguments for Why Senate Ds Should Vote Yes and Why They’re Wrong.

Over the last week a few TPM Readers have written in with contrary arguments about how to deal with the “continuing resolution” that just passed the House and will soon be voted on in the Senate. These weren’t critical or acrimonious letters but frank constructive counters, which I appreciate. I wanted to discuss them because they line up pretty closely with the arguments that seem to have strong advocates in the Senate Democratic caucus.

Let me summarize them briefly.

Democrats are in a tough messaging environment and they’ll get blamed for the shutdown. Trump might even get to blame a recession on them.

The White House will get to control the pace of the shutdown. In other words, the executive gets flexibility in just how things get shut down, things that will get more or less helpful press attention. Thus he’ll be able to engineer lots of bad press cycles for the Democrats.

Quite simply, Trump’s presidency and the economy are imploding. Why rush in to make ourselves the story when every day is a bad day for Trump?

It’s too soon. The public isn’t engaged enough yet. By the fall the economy will likely be in recession and it will be a debate on Medicare, Medicaid, etc. — that’s the time to have the fight.

Trump and Musk probably want a shutdown. After a shutdown goes on for 30 days, the law opens up new legal avenues for layoffs. A shutdown is actually what they want and they will use it to accelerate the process, get people used to it. In other words, risking a shutdown is a trap because nothing would make them happier.

I’ve thought a lot about each of these arguments. On their own a number of them are compelling and point to very real risks. Indeed, last week I briefly started questioning my own position because Democrats had done nothing to lay any groundwork for why they were choosing this confrontation. And that makes a fight much, much harder.

But I think each of these arguments is mistaken. Indeed, as a whole it’s a bit like sitting in the mess hall in Treblinka planning an escape when someone says, “But if we try to escape they’ll kill us all!”

First, I think Republicans are going to get wrecked in the midterms. I think that’s highly likely whatever happens. As a narrowly electoral calculus I think there’s a decent argument Democrats should just let everything happen, let Trump and Musk go wild. In this sense, James Carville’s argument that Democrats should just do nothing is right, by a narrowly electoral calculus. But there’s more than just an electoral calculus. Trump and Musk are methodically dismantling the republic day by day. Absent some major change in the trajectory of events the government Democrats might half-inherit in a midterm sweep would be all but unrecognizable, a smoldering heap of faits accompli. Democrats need to take some real risks to at least slow the process of destruction and reshape the trajectory.

Read the rest at TPM.

Michael Cohen at Truth and Consequences: Shut It Down! Senate Democrats are in a difficult spot with a government shutdown looming, but their course of action is clear.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through September 30 and avert a government shutdown on Friday. Now, the bill moves to the Senate, where, if Democrats want to stop Donald Trump’s assault on the federal government, they must filibuster it.

I get that the politics of this are complicated, but this isn’t even a close call.

First, Republicans didn’t even bother negotiating with Democrats on this bill. As a result, there are no provisions requiring Trump to actually spend the money Congress is appropriating. This is important because Trump and Elon Musk have run roughshod over congressional prerogatives for the past two months, slashing government spending that Congress has already appropriated.

Republicans are, in effect, daring Democrats to block it and risk taking the blame for a government shutdown (that’s how Speaker Mike Johnson got all but one of his fractured caucus to vote for the bill). On the merits, the bill is bad but not egregiously awful. It keeps spending levels essentially flat while increasing defense spending by $6 billion. However, it would force the District of Columbia to cut its budget by more than $1 billion, which would be devastating. In addition, it includes a provision that strips the House of the ability to stop Trump’s recent declarations of national emergencies on immigration and the border, which has allowed him to place sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

But the real problem with the House-passed CR is that if Democrats allow it to become law, they will be handing Trump and Musk a blank check and the congressional authority to wreak further havoc on the federal government.

Handing Trump more money — with no provision for how he spends it — is an explicit surrender to his and Musk’s lawlessness. Unlike regular spending bills, continuing resolutions do not explicitly tell the executive branch how it should allocate the money appropriated. So, if Senate Democrats allow this bill to pass, they would give Trump even greater discretion in how he spends money authorized by Congress — and more congressional leeway for taking a wrecking ball to the federal government.

In an interview with the New Republic’s Greg Sargent, former New Jersey congressman Tom Malinowski captures the dynamic at play here.

This is a bizarre situation in which the president of the United States and this billionaire are already shutting down the government. So if I’m a Democrat in Congress, why do I vote for a continuing resolution to fund programs that are not continuing? It really is just a blank check. It’s like giving Trump and Musk a trillion dollars and saying, Spend it as you like.

Democrats cannot be complicit in Trump and Musk’s evisceration of the federal government. Even if Senate Republicans try to eliminate the filibuster to thwart Democrats’ shutdown tactics, even if Trump ignores Congress and (unconstitutionally) keeps the government open, and even if an extended shutdown boomerangs politically against Democrats, Democrats still need to hold the line.

Click the link to read the rest.

That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?

Wednesday Reads: The Latest Trump Horrors

Posted: January 29, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, just because, Regime of Chaos, U.S. Politics | Tags: Congressional Democrats, government employees, Impoundment Control Act, Medicaid, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump freeze on government payments, Trump horrors | 9 Comments

Chaos, by Michael Lang

Good Afternoon!!

In less than 2 weeks, Trump has thrown the entire U.S. government into chaos. It’s difficult not to feel defeated and despairing. The latest outrages: the so-called “president” is working to get rid of long-term, non-partisan government employees and he has illegally usurped the power of the purse, which the Constitution assigns to Congress only.

It’s particularly frustrating that Congressional Democrats have so far not risen to the occasion. I can only hope that after the latest horrors, they will finally wake up and fight back. They don’t have control of either the House or Senate, but they could be speaking out publicly and working together on messaging. Some individuals, such as Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are doing that, but the Democrats need a coordinated strategy.

Today, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is appearing at a confirmation hearing. Read updates at The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Guardian. From The Guardian (no paywall):

Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate finance committee, criticized Robert F Kennedy Jr for having “spent years pushing conflicting stories about vaccines”.

As he began his questioning, Wyden quoted some of Kennedy’s podcast interviews in which he claimed that “no vaccine is safe and effective” and that he regretted vaccinating his own children. But in his opening statement, Kennedy denied being anti-vaccine.

“Mr Kennedy, all of these things cannot be true,” Wyden said. “So, are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine, or did you lie on all of those podcasts? We have all of this on tape.”

Kennedy replied that his previous comment about vaccines’ safety had been truncated and had since been corrected, telling Wyden, “You know about this, Senator Wyden, so bringing this up right now is dishonest.”

Wyden retorted that Kennedy has “a history of trying to take vaccines away from people,” citing his signature on a 2021 petition calling for the Food and Drug Administration to block access to coronavirus vaccines. Kennedy suggested that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had mishandled the recommendation process for those vaccines.

More from Wyden:

Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate finance committee, also pressed Robert F Kennedy Jr on his role in a deadly measles outbreak that struck Samoa in 2019.

The measles outbreak in Samoa – which claimed the lives of 83 people, most of them young children – came just months after Kennedy visited the island nation.

Quoting Kennedy’s book that raised doubts about the potential lethality of measles, Wyden said, “The reality is measles are in fact deadly and highly contagious – something that you should’ve learned after your lies contributed to the deaths of 83 people, most of them children, in a measles outbreak in Samoa. So my question here is: Mr Kennedy, is measles deadly, yes or no?”

Kennedy replied that the death rate from measles has historically been quite low, and he again denied any role in the Samoa outbreak.

“I went there nothing to do with vaccines. I went there to introduce a medical and thematic system that would digitalize records in Samoa,” Kennedy said. “I never taught or gave any public statement about vaccines. You cannot find a single Samoan who will say, ‘I didn’t get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy.’”

He concluded, “I went in June of 2019. The measles outbreak started in August. So, clearly I had nothing to do with the measles.”

That final comment seemed curious given that reports have pointed to the timeline of Kennedy’s visit as potentially incriminating, considering the outbreak followed just a couple of months later.

Medieval Chaos, by Mario Ortiz Martinez

From Senator Michael Bennet:

Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado, said that he agreed with Robert F Kennedy Jr on some of his criticism of the US healthcare system, but he painted Kennedy as woefully unqualified to lead the department of health and human services.

“What is so disturbing to me is that out of 330 million Americans, we’re being asked to put somebody in this job who has spent 50 years of his life not honoring the tradition that he talked about at the beginning of this conversation, but peddling in half-truths, peddling in false statements, peddling in theories that create doubt about whether or not things we know are safe are unsafe,” Bennet said.

Bennet then launched into a series of damning, rapid-fire questions about Kennedy’s past comments on a range of healthcare topics, including the coronavirus pandemic and AIDS.

“Did you say that Covid-19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon that targets Black and white people, but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people?” Bennet said.

Kennedy replied, “I didn’t say it was deliberately targeted. I just quoted an NIH-funded and NIH-published study.”

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: September 28, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, just because, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: abortion rights, Cats of the Louvre, Derrick Anderson, fake family, Google, immigration policy, Japanese Manga, Olivia Nuzzi, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Taiyo Matsumoto | 6 Comments

Cats of the Louvre, a graphic novel by Taiyo Matsumoto

Happy Caturday!!

There are just 37 days remaining until election day, November 5. While Trump continues to display his growing cognitive issues as well as his ignorance of public policy, Kamala Harris has been making substantive appearances in which she intelligently spells out what she will do as president. Earlier in the week she spoke about her economic plans. Yesterday she visited the border in Arizona and gave a speech outlining her proposed immigration policies and attacking Trump’s failures.

CNN: Harris goes to the border to take Trump to task for blocking bill to fix migration issues: ‘He prefers to run on a problem.’

Vice President Kamala Harris went on the offensive against former President Donald Trump on immigration Friday during her visit to the southern border in Arizona as she tries to turn a political vulnerability on its head.

Immigration has featured prominently in the 2024 presidential election, with polls showing voters placing more trust in Trump to handle the issue than Harris.

Democrats, grappling with years of border crises, have tried to gain ground by pointing to the bipartisan border measure that congressional Republicans blocked earlier this year after Trump came out against it. Harris on Friday lambasted Trump for his role in stymying that bill.

“It was the strongest border security bill we have seen in decades. It was endorsed by the Border Patrol union. And it should be in effect today, producing results in real time, right now, for our country,” she said at a rally in Douglas, a town on the US-Mexico border.

“But Donald Trump tanked it. He picked up the phone and called some friends in Congress and said, ‘Stop the bill,’” she said. “He prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem. And the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games and their personal political future.”

She said she would ask Congress to pass the measure if she is elected, and would sign it into law. She also laid out a series of proposals that she said were “not just about some rhetoric at a rally,” but would help stem the flow of migrants into the United States.

A bit more:

“Solutions are at hand if we focus on fixing a problem and not running on a problem,” Harris said.

She said she’d work with Congress to create a pathway to citizenship for “hardworking immigrants who have been here for years, for years, and deserve to have a system that works,” as well as “Dreamers” – undocumented immigrants brought into the United States as children, who are allowed to live and work in the US under an Obama-era program but generally cannot become citizens under current law.

“They are American in every way. But still, they do not have an earned pathway to citizenship. And this problem has gone unsolved at this point now for decades,” Harris said. “The same goes for farmworkers who ensure that we have food on our tables and sustain our agricultural industry – and they too have been in legal limbo for years because politicians have refused to come together and fix our broken immigration system.”

Earlier this year, Biden announced an executive action severely limiting the ability of migrants to seek asylum at the US southern border if they crossed unlawfully – a departure from decadeslong protocol. Immigrant advocates have likened the executive action to Trump-era policies.

The measure can be turned on and off and lifted when there’s a daily average of fewer than 1,500 encounters between ports of entry, among other criteria. It remains in place.

Homeland Security officials have credited the action for driving down border crossings to the lowest point since 2020.

The Washington Post: Harris, in visit to border, proposes new restrictions on immigration.

DOUGLAS, Ariz. — Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign on Friday proposed new border restrictions that would go further than the emergency rules the Biden administration deployed in June, making the announcement during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border Friday in an effort to confront one of her biggest political vulnerabilities.

By Taiyo Matsumoto

Harris’s proposed executive action would build on President Joe Biden’s current policy of essentially closing the U.S. asylum system unless illegal border crossings stay below 1,500 daily crossings for a week. Harris would lower that threshold and extend the period it must be met, advisers said, although exact figures were not immediately available.

The action might have a limited practical impact, at least in the short term, but the proposal appeared designed to send a message that Harris is taking a more assertive immigration posture than the administration in which she serves and that she is not ceding the issue to Donald Trump, who consistently scores higher marks among voters on border security and immigration.

In what her campaign had billed as a major speech in this community, which sits on the border, Harris also emphasized her support for an enforcement-heavy border security bill crafted by a bipartisan group of senators earlier this year. She decried Trump’s central role in derailing it, noting that he had urged Republicans in Congress to oppose the legislation.

“Donald Trump tanked it,” she said, standing amid six different signs that said in capital letters, “Border Security and Stability.”

“Because, you see, he prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” she added. “And the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games and their personal political future.”

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: August 24, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: Democratic National Convention 2024, Greg Palast, Kurt Andersen, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tim Walz | 6 Comments

Happy Caturday!!

pierre-auguste-renoir-sleeping-girl-with-a-cat-1880_u-l-f801wv0

Piere Auguste Renoir, Sleeping girl with a cat, 1880

There’s not a lot happening in the news today, so I’m just going to give you some odds and ends, some some serious some humorous, some creepy or crazy.

First up, a few follow-ups to the exciting and successful Democratic National Convention.

Al Weaver at The Hill: Democratic convention energy, Harris hot streak making Republicans nervous.

The energy emerging from the Democratic National Convention and Vice President Harris’s hot streak is making Republicans increasingly nervous.

Thursday marked the culmination of what was unthinkable just a month ago: A coronation for a new party leader who Democrats are ardently behind.

Former President Trump and Republicans, meanwhile, are grappling with the whiplash of going from the predictions of a landslide just a few short weeks ago to surveys showing Harris has shaken up races up and down the ballot and closed the gap with Trump.

“In some of the swing states … people are becoming increasingly concerned that the momentum is moving in the wrong direction,” said one Senate Republican, adding that the nervousness among Republicans is “real” at this stage.

Just a month ago, Republicans were riding higher than at any point of the campaign after President Biden’s disastrous performance in a debate sent Democrats into a tailspin. Trump accepted the GOP nomination in Milwaukee, where lawmakers and delegates were bullish that the former president would not only return to the White House, but do so in a convincing manner — and polling backed them up.

Now that thinking is firmly out the door.

Democrats’ four-day gathering in Chicago prompted comparisons to the energy around former President Obama’s landmark 2008 presidential bid. It could also hand Harris another slight polling bump as the calendar turns to September after she closed out the convention with a fiery speech heavy on biography and history that also took the fight to Trump.

“They are beginning to realize this is a wrestling match. There’s not going to be any knockout punch and they’ve got to get the best grip they can find, and it’s all state specific,” the Senate Republican continued.

Greg Sargent at The New Republic: Kamala’s Harsh Takedown of Trump Points the Way to a Post-MAGA America.

Kamala Harris just showed us the promise of a post-MAGA future. Now it’s up to the voters to decide to take us there.

In her rousing convention speech on Thursday, Harris offered many olive branches to right-leaning independents and Republican voters. She vowed toughness on immigration and crime. She promised to transcend the nation’s divisions. She vowed to govern for all Americans and transcend faction or party. She made numerous appeals to voters with decidedly right-leaning values.

But, in mulling what Harris means by all this, it’s crucial to appreciate what she did not do. Harris offered all this outreach to voters outside the core Democratic coalition without making serious concessions to the ideological preoccupations we associate with MAGA-style right-wing populism. There was no real accommodation with what might be called The World According to MAGA.

Instead, Harris treated Trumpism and the MAGA movement as forces that must be decisively repudiated—and unequivocally left behind.

How could Harris appeal extensively to voters on the other side—which by definition includes tens of millions of people who voted for Donald Trump—while insisting on a firm national renunciation of many MAGA voters’ apparent aspirations and beliefs? This tension, I think, helps explain why her appeals came across as so richly complex.

Harris extensively reassured swing voters on many fronts. For those struggling economically, she offered populist, broadly appealing policies to curb health care and housing costs. To those preoccupied with crime and the border, Harris recounted her history as a tough prosecutor and vowed stringent border security. Harris delivered extensive paeans to middle-class struggles and values like family, community, homeownership, and faith. As William Kristol notes, she even strongly endorsed American exceptionalism.

Yet Harris was also absolutely unsparing in her takedown of Trump. And it’s important to appreciate this criticism for what it really was. In numerous ways, Harris portrayed the broad MAGA worldview as something in need of comprehensive repudiation.

It’s a long piece. You’ll need to head over to TNR to read the rest of Sargent’s argument.

Black and White Cat II, by Muriel Mougeolle

Could the tide be turning on Republicans’ efforts to control what children read and think?

Juan Perez Jr. and Andrew Atterbury at Politico: Are Republicans losing the culture wars?

Republicans are confronting a decisive moment in the battle over public education: proving they can still win a culture war.

School board candidates backed by Moms for Liberty, a conservative vanguard whose members popularized restrictions on classroom library books, are losing elections in Florida and some swing states. Republican leaders who rallied against critical race theory and LGBTQ+ issues recently faced recalls in red pockets of California.

And in the presidential race, Democrats are playing offense. This week’s party convention in Chicago featured liberals attacking conservative candidates as “weird” and denouncing so-called book bans.

Former President Donald Trump is expected to lean into school politics next week at a Moms for Liberty summit, making the case that culture war issues still resonate with core supporters. Republicans show no signs of changing their strategy. But the party faces new challenges from a Democratic agenda — embodied by vice presidential nominee Tim Walz — that is redirecting the divisive education issues promoted by conservatives during the pandemic into a vehicle for highlighting free school lunches and affordable child care.

“We’re in the middle of a cultural revolution in America, and one of the biggest battlegrounds is the schools,” Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice said in an interview. “We didn’t start this fire, but we’re going to put it out.”

Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said there is “a lot of mutual consensus” between the Republican nominee’s beliefs on education “and what Moms for Liberty stands for.”

But several Democratic National Committee speakers found ways to leverage social issues, including Walz, a former teacher who used them to pivot to a law he signed as Minnesota governor providing free school meals to all students.

“We made sure that every kid in our state gets breakfast and lunch every day,” Walz said Wednesday at the DNC. “So while other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours.”

Read the rest at Politico.

Here’s the latest on Trump’s reaction to the changed political landscape.

The Guardian: Is Trump OK? Unhinged reaction to rise of Harris worries supporters.

Even some of Donald Trump’s supporters are now asking the question that was the undoing of Joe Biden: is the former president fit for office?

But while Biden’s run for re-election was largely sunk by a single disastrous televised debate before a national audience, Trump is ramping up doubts with each chaotic, disjointed speech as he campaigns around the country.

While rambling discourse and outrageously disprovable claims, interspersed with spite and vitriol, may seem nothing new to many of Trump’s supporters and critics alike, the former president appears to have been driven to new depths by suddenly finding himself running against Kamala Harris a month ago.

Trump has only grown more infuriated as his poll lead over Biden evaporated, with Harris opening up a clear, if narrow, lead. The vice-president’s tactic of mocking Trump more than arguing with him appears to have incensed him further.

Since Harris assumed the mantle of the presumptive Democratic candidate, Trump has claimed to be better-looking than the vice-president, questioned whether she is really Black and attacked her laugh as that of “a lunatic”.

The former president has also characterised Harris as both a communist and a fascist, and described Harris as “dumb” but then told CBS he didn’t mean it as an insult because it was “just a fact”.

“I don’t think she’s a very bright person. I do feel that. I mean, I think that’s right. I think I am a very bright person, and a lot of people say that,” he said.

This is a long article, so here’s a bit more:

Trump seems particularly obsessed with the size of the crowds at Harris’s rallies, drawing derision for falsely claiming she used artificial intelligence to fake the turnout.

When he’s not worried about size, Trump is vexed by Harris’s looks. After the vice-president appeared on the cover of Time magazine, Trump compared her appearance to Sophia Loren and his wife, Melania, before drawing a comparison with his own features.

By Pierre Bonnard

“I’m a better-looking person than Kamala,” he declared to an audience of thousands who were more amused than convinced….

At a rally in Pennsylvania a week ago, Trump went as far as rambling on about rambling.

“I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy, you know, really smart. I don’t ramble. But the other day, anytime I hit too hard, they say he was rambling, rambling,” he told the crowd.

Even some of Trump’s most loyal fans were disturbed by that performance. Joan Long travelled from New York with her husband, Billy, to see the former president speak.

“I honestly can’t say I know why he starts talking about how to pronounce names. What does that have to do with the election?” she said. “And I wish he would stop talking about Kamala’s looks.”

There’s quite a bit more in this vein at the Guardian link. This is the kind of insanity from Trump that the NYT and WaPo ignore or try to normalize.

The supposedly big news yesterday was that Bobby Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump at a rally in Arizona.

John Hendrickson at The Atlantic: Why RFK Jr. Endorsed Trump.

In the spring of 2023, not long after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched his chaotic presidential campaign, I asked him a straightforward question. What do you see as more harmful to America: another term of Joe Biden, or Donald Trump returning to power? “I can’t answer that,” Kennedy replied.

This morning, Kennedy finally stopped being cagey. He announced that he was suspending his campaign and throwing his support to Trump. During a rambling, nearly hour-long speech at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Phoenix, Kennedy shared that the two had been talking for more than a month, and that he had visited the former president at Mar-a-Lago. “In a series of long, intense discussions, I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues,” Kennedy said. He correctly noted that his announcement would cause “difficulty” for his family members. “Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and family hold most dear,” five Kennedys said in a statement this afternoon. “It is a sad ending to a sad story.”

Kennedy’s evolution from member of a Democratic dynasty to a soldier in the anti-democratic MAGA movement will no doubt confuse casual observers. Trump once called Kennedy the “dumbest member” of his famous family, and Kennedy once suggested that Trump was a sociopath. The main reason for Kennedy’s conversion may be pure desperation. This summer, Kennedy made overtures to both major-party candidates; only Trump reciprocated. But the Trump-Kennedy pairing makes a certain kind of sense. To be sure, Kennedy doesn’t share Trump’s anti-immigrant sentiment, nor does he lean on white-identity politics or nationalism. Instead, it’s Kennedy’s conspiratorial, anti-establishment, burn-it-down ethos that makes him fit into the MAGA universe….

As Kennedy lashed out against the Democratic Party this afternoon, he sounded like a jilted lover searching for answers. He noted that he had attended his first Democratic National Convention at the age of 6, in 1960. And he attempted to draw a contrast between the party of his father and uncle, and today’s “shadowy DNC operatives” who staged “a palace coup” against Joe Biden. The Democratic establishment, he claimed, had weaponized government agencies against him and his campaign. He accused Biden of colluding with media companies to “censor” him and bemoaned his relative lack of cable-news interviews. He also sounded daft. “In an honest system, I believe that I would have won the election,” Kennedy said.

Three key factors forced Kennedy’s withdrawal. The first and most obvious was money. Despite tapping Nicole Shanahan, the wealthy Silicon Valley businesswoman, to be his running mate, Kennedy’s fundraising had recently dried up. Recent FEC filings showed that his campaign had just $3.9 million on hand at the end of July. The second factor was ballot access. Nick Brana, the campaign’s ballot-access director, told me that, as of today, the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket was certified in only 22 states. Kennedy was disqualified from the New York ballot after a recent court case, making the goal of all 50 states a virtual impossibility. The third factor was perhaps the most obvious: His core proposition had become moot once Biden dropped out.

All along, Kennedy’s pitch had relied on the fact that a sizable chunk of voters didn’t want a Biden-Trump rematch. But after Harris took Biden’s place as the nominee, she began to win back some of the disaffected Democrats, independents, and undecideds who had “parked” their support in the Kennedy column. Kennedy’s polling average had fallen to about 5 percent, from a 2024 high of about 10 percent.

Intellectual cat, Olena Kamenetska-Ostapchuk

There’s been some suggestion that Trump may have promised Kennedy a job in Trump’s prospective administration in return for Kenedy’s support. That would be a quid pro quo, and would be illegal. Of course Trump couldn’t care less. Kennedy also tried to strike a bargain with the Harris campaign, but they refused to meet with him. Harris, unlike Trump, obviously knows that would be illegal.

Aaron Pellish and Jim Acosta, CNN: RFK Jr. reached out to Harris campaign about administration role in exchange for endorsement.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign reached out to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign to arrange a meeting about a possible role in her administration if he drops out of the race and endorses her, a Kennedy campaign official and a Democratic official told CNN.

The approach from Kennedy’s team occurred last week, and no meeting between the two candidates materialized, the Kennedy campaign official told CNN.

The effort to meet comes weeks after Kennedy and former President Donald Trump met in person during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where the two discussed a possible role for Kennedy in a potential Trump administration in exchange for an endorsement.

Kennedy campaign staff also attempted to reach out to intermediaries for Ron Klain, former White House chief of staff for President Joe Biden, but those efforts were fruitless, the Kennedy campaign official said.

A couple more RFK Jr. stories:

Kurt Andersen: RFK Jr. Was My Drug Dealer.

Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy—as I’ve referred to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since we met freshman year at Harvard—have always had many features in common as well. Both are entitled playboy sons of northeastern wealth; both (in Michelle Obama’s words) were “afforded the grace of failing forward” as misbehaving, underachieving adolescents admitted to Ivy League colleges thanks to “the affirmative action of generational wealth”; both were reckless lifelong adolescents, both attention-craving philanderers and liars, both jerks. And Kennedy’s hour-long speech today was nearly as meandering and filled with lies as any average hour of Trump.

On the subject of reckless-adolescent entitlement, I’ve got one Bobby Kennedy anecdote to tell. But it’s actually relevant to his endorsement of Donald Trump for president and his apparent expectation of joining a second Trump administration….

By Olga Sevorova

My Bobby Kennedy story involves pharmaceuticals—not the legal, lifesaving kind, such as the vaccines he’s made a career of lying about, but the recreational kind….

As a teenager in Nebraska, I’d smoked cannabis and dropped acid before I got to Harvard in 1972. Sometime during my freshman year, I tried cocaine, enjoyed it, and later decided to procure a gram for myself. A friend told me about a kid in our class who was selling coke.

The dealer was Bobby Kennedy. I’d never met him. I got in touch; he said sure, come over to his room in Hurlbut, his dorm, where I’d never been, a five-minute walk. His roommate, whom I knew, was the future journalist Peter Kaplan—with whom I, like Kennedy, remained friends for the rest of his life. He left as I arrived. I wondered whether he always did that when Bobby had customers.

“Hi. Bobby,” Kennedy introduced himself. Another kid, tall, lanky, and handsome, was in the room. “This is my brother Joe.” That is, Joseph P. Kennedy II, two years older, the future six-term Massachusetts congressman….

He poured out a line for me to sample, and handed me an inch-and-a-half length of plastic drinking straw. I snorted. We chatted for a minute. I paid him, I believe, $40 in cash. It was a lot of money, the equivalent of $300 today. But cocaine bought from a Kennedy accompanied by a Kennedy brother—the moment of glamour seemed worth it.

As soon as he got back to his dorm room, Anderson got a call from RFK:

“Hello?”
“It’s Bobby.”
“Hi.”
“You took my straw!”
I realized that I had indeed, and had thought nothing of it. Because … it was a crummy piece of plastic straw. But Bobby was pissed.
“There are crystals inside it, man, growing. You took it.”
Growing? The residue of powdered cocaine mixed with mucus formed crystals over time? What did I know. It reminded me of some science-fair project.
“So … you want the straw back?”
“Yeah, man.”
I walked it back to his room. He didn’t smile or say thanks. It was the last time I ever bought coke from anyone.

A famous rich boy selling a hard drug that could’ve gotten him—or, more precisely, someone who wasn’t him—a years-long prison sentence. His almost fetishistic obsession with a bit of plastic trash. His greedy little burst of anger cloaked in righteousness. His faith that he was cultivating precious cocaine crystals. In retrospect, it has seemed to me a tiny illustration of the child as the father of the man he became: fantastical pseudoscientific crusader, middle-aged preppy dick who takes selfies with barbecued dogs and plays pranks with roadkill bear cubs he didn’t have time to eat.

Thomas is Sleeping, by Grazyna Smalej

One more crazy RFK, Jr. story:

Greg Palast at his website Greg Palast Investigative Journalism: I was on the phone with RFK Jr.
When he lost his mind.

This is painful. This is horrible and feels a bit like a betrayal. But I have no choice. Bobby Kennedy Jr. was my friend and co-author. We wrote stories together for Rolling Stone.  Bobby introduced my New York Times bestseller and wrote a chapter for Billionaires and Ballot Bandits.  And, with Jesse Jackson, we co-authored the Number 1 selling adult single issue comic book of all time, Steal Back Your Vote.

But then, Bobby lost his mind.

It was truly scary. In 2012, Bobby had arranged a press conference about the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Eleven oil rig workers were incinerated in the blow-out of a British Petroleum drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Palast investigations team discovered that, 17 months before that oil rig blew out in the Gulf, British Petroleum suffered an identical blow-out in the Caspian Sea. The oil company—with the connivance of then-Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice—covered it up.

It was a hell of a story, which I broadcast on prime time in Britain and Europe. I wrote a book about it, Vultures’ Picnic.

Here’s where Bobby comes in—and it gets weird. On the second anniversary of the blow-out, Bobby, a professor of environmental law, arranged for a major press conference to expose this story of BP’s blood-encrusted perfidy.

But then, Bobby cancelled the press conference, saying he heard the story had been told previously. Well, yes it had. You told it.  Bobby, I was on the radio with you for an hour discussing the blow-out and its cover-up.  Bobby had a national radio/TV show, Ring of Fire. He reviewed my book about the story. And strangest of all, Bobby was on my Democracy Now! Report about the blow-out.    That Bobby had forgotten all these things was frightening—as if Leonardo DiCaprio had forgotten he was in a film about the Titanic.

Our investigator Leni Badpenny was listening in and she began making frantic cut-off gestures, to end a call with him. End it now!  “Something’s wrong with him, or he’s just a jerk. I don’t know. But something’s really wrong and you don’t want your reputation destroyed by standing next to him when it goes wrong in public. Promise me we will never work with him, never see him again. I think he’s dangerous. I really do.” [….]

This was not the first incident.   Bobby was a strong guy in his late fifties talking like a 92-year-old in a nursing home trying to remember his first date.

Since then, we’ve found out that Bobby had a worm in his brain—a real, live physical critter that somehow got inside his skull. I’m not sure about the connection because I’m not a brain surgeon and I don’t speak worm.

You can read the rest at the link. It’s not paywalled.

That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?

Wednesday Reads

Posted: May 8, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Art, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Access Hollywood tape, classified documents case, date rape, Georgia election interference case, Indiana primary, Joe Kahn, Judge Aileen Cannon, Master of the Blue Jeans artist, misogyny, origin of blue jeans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Stormy Daniels, trauma, Trump Hush Money Case | 5 Comments

Good Day!!

A woman sewing blue denim pants, by “Master of the Blue Jeans.”

I’m going to begin today with a story that has nothing to do with politics or current events–just because I think it’s interesting. Did you know that people wore blue jeans way back in the 16th century? I didn’t. An art exhibit will soon open in Paris that will focus on a mysterious artist, known only as “Master of the Blue Jeans.”

Sonja Anderson at Smithsonian Magazine: When Were Blue Jeans Invented? These Paintings Suggest the Fashion Trend Dates Back to the 1600s.

An exhibition centered on the “Master of the Blue Jeans” is opening in Paris this month—and the work on display is not that of Levi Strauss, founder of the eponymous clothing company, but rather a 17th-century Italian painter.

The upcoming show at Galerie Canesso features two paintings by the mysterious artist, who was active in northern Italy in the 1600s and is known only by his “master” moniker. The painter’s oil canvases depict early iterations of the stiff blue fabric beloved today, as worn by Italian peasants. According to a statement, the pieces have proved to be important artifacts in garment history, “pushing back [blue jeans’] provenance by centuries.”

Speaking with Artnet’s Vittoria Benzine, Maurizio Canesso, an art collector and the gallery’s founder, says, “People are still not very familiar with the true history of blue jeans, as they confuse it with the material made by Levi Strauss.”

In truth, Canesso argues, when the American businessman behind Levi’s jeans started selling denim work pants in the late 1800s, he merely added metal rivets and structure to a fabric that already boasted a storied European past.

“Jeans come from Genoa, while denim comes from the French city of Nîmes,” says Canesso. Blue jeans were made with perpendicular stitches in northwest Italy, while denim was woven in chevron patterns in southern France. But the key component of the fabric’s history is its coloration.

“Until the 11th century, no one could wear blue fabric because they didn’t know how to make blue color adhere,” Canesso says. “Only in the year 1000 did this begin to happen using woad leaves, and at a very high cost. The genius of the Genoese was to find the indigo stone in India and make this an industrial and therefore low-cost process.”

The ten denim-themed paintings attributed to the master were previously thought to be the work of several different artists. But in 2004, curator Gerlinde Gruber reattributed the group of artworks to a single unnamed painter then dubbed the Master of the Blue Jeans. By 2010, Canesso had acquired all of the master’s works, and he presented them in an exhibition at his Paris gallery that same year.

“Unfortunately, we have no new theories about who the Master of the Blue Jeans was,” Véronique Damian, an art historian at Galerie Canesso, tells the Observer’s Vanessa Thorpe. Evidence indicates the artist spent the bulk of his career in Italy’s northern region of Lombardy, though he may trained elsewhere.

I’m including some of the artist’s work in this post, just because.

In the more painful world of politics, Trump had a bad day in New York yesterday, and he got some bad news in India; but he got some gifts from judges in Florida and Georgia.

As I’m sure you’re aware, Stormy Daniels testified in Trump’s hush money case yesterday.

The Washington Post: Stormy Daniels testifies, Trump curses in an angry day in court.

Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress at the center of Donald Trump’s hush money trial, testified Tuesday about a disturbing sexual encounter she says she had with him, leading to angry, profane muttering from the former president that alarmed the judge.

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan called Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche to a sidebar during a midday break to say that Trump was “cursing audibly” and possibly intimidating Daniels, who had begun testifying, according to a trial transcript.

Beggar Boy with a Piece of Pie (wearing a denim jacket)

“I understand that your client is upset at this point,” Merchan said to the defense attorney, according to the transcript, “but he is cursing audibly and he is shaking his head visually and that’s contemptuous. It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that.”

Blanche assured the judge he would speak to Trump.

“I am speaking to you here at the bench because I don’t want to embarrass him,” Merchan said. “You need to speak to him. I won’t tolerate that.”

The exchange punctuated a day of rage — sometimes whispered from the defense table, sometimes declared loudly by Daniels from the witness stand.

It was one of several surreal moments on the 13th day of the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president, including descriptions by Daniels of their alleged sexual encounter in 2006 that were so detailed that defense attorneys demanded a mistrial.

While Merchan rejected their request, Daniels at times seemed to be describing nonconsensual sex that could be considered highly prejudicial for the jury, which in turn could give Trump — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — solid grounds to appeal if he is found guilty.

It sounds like the sex actually was nonconsensual though. Daniels’ description of what happened sounds very much like a date rape situation in which she was taken advantage of by a much older and more powerful man. She was 27. He was 60. He was much taller and stronger. She was invited for dinner, but there was no dinner. When she was ready to leave, she went to the bathroom. When she came back, he was on the bed in boxers. She tried to leave, but he blocked the door. This description is from Harry Litman on Twitter:

thought time to go. when opened the bathroom door, Trump had come in and was on the bed, in boxer shirts and a t-shirt. she was startled. felt like room spun in full motion. blood leaves my hands and feet. “ohmygod — what did I miss to get here?” she laughed nervously

The next thing I knew I was on the bed. opposite side of bed. missionary position. objection – sustained

I blacked out. but I was not drugged in any way, no alcohol. didn’t feel threatened physically “There was an imbalance of power for sure. but I was not threatened verbally or physically”

Had sex with him on the bed. Merchan sustaining objections to details. Staring at ceiling didn’t know how I got there. sustained. stricken touch his skin? objection sustained. he wasn’t wearing a condom. concerning to her but didn’t say anything.

sex was brief. remembers getting dressed. sitting on edge of bed, noticed completely dark outside. hard to get shoes on, hands shaking so hard. DJT: “oh it’s great, let’s get together again honey bunch.” I just wanted to leave. DVD she signed was on nightstand.

DJT: “We have to get together again soon” “we were so fantastic together. talked about the show” I just left as fast as I could. Didn’t express any concern about Melania. or mention her. didn’t have dinner. took cab back to hotel.

I felt ashamed I didn’t stop the sex so I didn’t tell many people about it. Remembered some additional details later. Merchan very stern about level of detail — wants to keep it spare.

It’s pretty clear from Daniels’ description that she was traumatized. I doubt if the judge understands that, but maybe some jurors will. Just because she is a porn actress doesn’t mean she can’t be raped. Her description is also reminiscent of E. Jean Carroll’s experience–Trump lifted her up against the wall and grabbed her genitals before she realized what was happening. It’s also reminisce of his own description in the Access Hollywood tape–how he can grab women “by the pussy. If you’re a star they let you do it.”

Amanda Marcotte at Salon: “He was bigger and blocking the way”: Stormy Daniels takes the stand and reminds people who Trump is.

Daniels matters for reasons outside of the courtroom and the specifics of this hush-money trial. Daniels’ story is yet another reminder of what may prove to be Trump’s electoral downfall: His bottomless misogyny.

On the witness stand, Daniels reportedly spoke quickly and was apparently quite nervous. Initially, her story of meeting Trump sounded funny. She painted him as a pathetic older man trying — and failing — to impress the younger woman. When he first asked her to dinner, she replied “no,” but with an expletive. Her publicist eventually talked her into it, hoping Daniels could leverage the connection into a spot on “The Apprentice.” In his hotel room, she described him wearing “silk or satin” pajamas and asked him to put on real clothes. He allegedly used the “don’t even sleep in the same room” line when she asked about his wife, Melania, who had recently had a baby. Daniels described Trump as “pompous” and “arrogant.” She recounted how she jokingly spanked him with a magazine, hoping to tease him into being less of a jerk.

Then the tone of her story changed, as she described how they came to have sex. Trump waited until she was in the bathroom, Daniels said, and then he stripped down to boxer shorts and a T-shirt. “The room spun in slow motion,” she recalled on the witness stand. When she made for the door, “he was bigger and blocking the way,” she said of Trump. She denied it was sexual assault, however, because “I was not threatened either verbally or physically.” [….]

Whether or not Trump’s sexual encounter with Daniels was consensual in the legal sense, she describes it as unwanted.

“I didn’t say anything at all,” she told the court repeatedly. Claiming that she “blacked out” during the encounter, afterward, Daniels said, “my hands were shaking so hard” and “I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it and that I didn’t say ‘No.'”

Another painting by Master of the Blue Jeans

A person doesn’t have to be threatened in order for sex to be nonconsensual. Back to Marcotte’s piece:

Following Daniels’ testimony on Tuesday, I was struck by how much it has in common with what E. Jean Carroll described in her two recent civil trials, where both juries found that Trump had sexually assaulted her in the 90s. Carroll, too, told of a random encounter with Trump she initially thought to be flirty but not sexual. Like Daniels, Carroll describes teasing Trump, who famously has no sense of humor about himself. In both cases, the women describe Trump becoming aggressive after the light mockery. In Carroll’s case, the judge described what happened after as what “many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.'” Daniels, to be clear, frames her encounter with Trump differently.

Since the release of the “Access Hollywood” video in 2016, in which Trump can be heard bragging about sexual assault, the Beltway media has repeatedly tried to move on from the story of Trump’s legion of issues with women. Indeed, when Carroll’s accusations first came out in 2019, the press barely paid any mind. But the story of his rampant misogyny has never fully gone away. There was the Women’s March that overshadowed his 2017 inauguration. Then the over two dozen women who stepped forward with stories of being subject to the sexual harassment and assault Trump himself described so vividly. Trump, of course, is more responsible than any other person on the planet for the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the stampede of Republican state legislators banning abortion. He promised to stack the Supreme Court with anti-choice justices, and his three appointees provided the votes necessary in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which ended the legal right to abortion. While Trump has tried to make moderate-sounding noises on this issue, he keeps inadvertently revealing his anti-choice radicalism. In a recent Time interview, for instance, he indicated that he’s fine if states “monitor women’s pregnancies so they can know if they’ve gotten an abortion.”

Noah Berlansky at Public Notice: Stormy Daniels details Trump’s sleazy contempt for women.

On the stand, Daniels provided ugly details about how Trump treated her, and about how Trump treats, and views, women. These insights are notable, but they’re not new. In 2016, leaked audio of Trump making grotesque and sexist comments about women to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush almost derailed his presidential campaign. Last year, Trump was held liable for sexual assaulting and then repeatedly defaming advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.

But Daniels’s testimony is a reminder that contempt and mistreatment of women is a core theme of Trump’s life and politics. Both the press and Democratic opponents have struggled to make this issue central to 2024, even though abortion rights and women’s health care are the key issues of the campaign. It’s unclear whether the trial will spark more reporting and discussion of Trump’s treatment of and attitudes about women. But it should….

Daniels’s testimony is intended to establish the background facts of the payment. It also, though, paints Trump as a liar, a bully, and a sexual manipulator. Daniels said while she was in Trump’s hotel room, she went to the bathroom, and when he came out he was in his boxer shorts, a moment Daniels describes as “like a jump scare.” She said, “the room spun in slow motion” and she realized “I’ve put myself in this bad situation.”

Daniels is careful to emphasize that Trump did not physically coerce her. He did, however, according to Daniels, suggest that if she cooperated with him he could help her career through his connections and a possible appearance on the Celebrity Apprentice reality show, where Trump was the star. She eventually agreed to have sex even though Trump did not use a condom — she was adamant about using condoms in her adult film shoots.

By Master of the Blue Jeans.

She testified that during sex she stared at the ceiling and tried to think of something else, and afterwards she had trouble dressing because her hands were shaking. She said, “I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it and that I didn’t say no.”

Daniels kept in touch with Trump for some time because he was still offering her the chance to appear on Celebrity Apprentice, which would have been a huge mainstream boost to her career. She met with Trump once more in Los Angeles, at which point “he kept trying to make sexual advances, putting his hand on my leg, scooting closer.” She rebuffed him, and in a later phone call he admitted he was not going to put her on his television show. At that point she ceased communicating with him.

Again, Daniels has not accused Trump of sexual harassment or violence, and she says their encounter was consensual. Her testimony makes clear, though, that Trump was pressuring her for sex in return for business opportunities — a variation on the ugly tradition of the Hollywood casting couch. We don’t know if Trump ever had any intention of keeping his promises or of helping Daniels. But whether he did or not, his actions as she describes them were sleazy at best, and she found the experience painful and traumatic enough to leave her literally shaking.

The encounter doesn’t sound consensual to me. As I said above, it sounds like date rape.

More Trump legal news, and it’s not good.

Kyle Cheney at Politico: Judge Cannon indefinitely postpones Trump’s classified docs trial.

The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s criminal case in Florida — on charges that he hoarded classified secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate after his presidency — has indefinitely postponed the trial, once scheduled for May 20.

The date had been widely expected to move amid a tangle of pretrial conflicts between special counsel Jack Smith and Trump’s attorneys. Smith had urged Judge Aileen Cannon to reschedule the trial to begin on July 8, but an order from the judge on Tuesday afternoon suggested that she is unlikely to even decide on a new trial date before late July.

Cannon, a Trump appointee who took the bench in late 2020, indicated in the order that, before setting a new trial date, she intends to resolve the backlog of other issues in the case that have piled up on her plate. Smith’s defenders have criticized Cannon for what they see as a plodding pace in resolving pretrial matters, and tensions between the special counsel and the judge have flared in recent months over a series of puzzling rulings that threatened to derail the case.

“[F]inalization of a trial date at this juncture — before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and [classified evidence] issues … would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions,” Cannon wrote in the five-page order.

That reshuffling further clouds the picture for Smith, who is also awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity that could determine whether his other case against Trump — charges in Washington D.C. for attempting to subvert the 2020 election — can move forward this year….

Trump has sought to delay all of his criminal cases until after this year’s election. If he wins, he could shut down the two federal cases brought by Smith, and the state cases in New York and Georgia also might have to be frozen.

And from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Court of Appeals agrees to consider DA removal in Trump election case.

The Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday decided to hear an appeal of a judge’s ruling allowing District Attorney Fani Willis to remain at the helm of Fulton County’s election interference case against former President Donald Trump.

The court’s decision almost certainly means a significant delay of a trial here for Trump and his 14 co-defendants and signals that Willis’ leadership role isn’t guaranteed. It is unclear how long the appeals court will take to decide the issue but they are not known for moving swiftly.

Farmers wearing jeans, 1930s

“There’s no way this case gets to trial this year,” said Atlanta defense attorney Andrew Fleischman, who is closing following the case. “I would expect the appeals court to issue its opinion some time next year.”

On March 29, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued a “certificate of immediate review,” which allowed the defendants to appeal his ruling to the Georgia Court of Appeals before a trial begins.

Under Appeals Court rules, such a pretrial — or interlocutory — appeal is typically assigned to a three-judge screening panel. And all it takes is for one of those judges to decide whether the court accepts the appeal. The court’s order one-page order did not divulge which judge voted to grant the application.

In his order granting the pre-trial review, McAfee said he will continue working on the case, resolving pending motions, while the appeals court takes up the removal issue.

The bad news for Trump is that he is losing a significant percentage of Republican voters in the primaries, which are still going on. Niki Haley is still getting votes. Adam Wren and Madison Fernandez at Politico: Unexpected warning signs for Trump in busy Indiana primary.

In 2016, Indiana put Donald Trump on the doorstep of the GOP presidential nomination. But eight years later, the state he called “Importantville” delivered his campaign some flashing red warning signs as Nikki Haley cleaned up in the suburbs.

By virtue of its late-in-the-nominating-calendar primary, the Hoosier state has always occupied a unique and occasionally powerful perch to make or break candidacies: Sen. Ted Cruz and then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich dropped out immediately after Trump’s victory that year. But the barn-red state also often acts as a pace car for Republicans nationally.

And in a primary that saw a record-breaking $98 million splash across the state, according to AdImpact, Tuesday was no exception.

A zombie Haley candidacy continued to punch above its weight in the Trumpiest of states: The former South Carolina governor is on track to break 20 percent for the first time since she dropped out of the race two months ago.

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