Easy Sunday: Southern Oregon is not a news desert

There is curated news in Southern Oregon.

It isn't the "good old days" of strong local newspapers, but it isn't zero, either. 

Curated news means that someone with credibility on the line reviewed the information put their personal and institutional credibility on the line.

Local residents need to work harder and spend some money, but local news is available. For a century the Medford Mail Tribune, with a couple dozen news reporters and editors, gave a comprehensive report on local events. The Trib shriveled in size, then got nasty, then suddenly disappeared.

Good news: New news sources have sprung up in the vacuum.

Some legacy news sources remain: KOBI-TV has a local news operation broadcasting on channel 5. Their news is integrated with their website and Facebook page. It is ad-sponsored, i.e. free to the consumer. It has the inherent benefit and problem of TV news: Stories need a visual element. If necessary, and there isn't a burning car or a ski slope to catch the viewer's attention, the visual will be a person standing outside the door of a public meeting, explaining what just happened, but a long news clip is a few seconds, not a few minutes. TV news works better for highlights and headlines, not details. TV news is not a newspaper.

https://kobi5.com/category/news/local-news/

For details, one needs the written word. The pleasant surprise for me is the Grants Pass Daily Courier. I subscribe. There are five editions a week, available as a delivered newspaper and on line. The physical newspaper, which I get, costs $360/a year. I consider it worth it. I like holding a paper. The paper covers both Jackson and Josephine County news, plus wire service and cooperative agreements for state and national news. It is the real deal.

Old timers in Southern Oregon may remember the Daily Courier as a deeply biased, conservative, small-town Fox-Tea Party- Murdoch-style paper. It changed. The Daily Courier is reasonable. Balanced. Informative. The digital edition is $159/year, following some promotional offers to get one back in the habit of reading a daily local newspaper.

Rogue Valley Times

The Rogue Valley Times arose when the Mail Tribune folded. It started out strong when it was owned by an Oregon publishing group, but a year ago that group, including the RV Times, got sold to the Carpenter Media Group, an investment company. It is the familiar story of newspapers owned by investment companies: They promptly hollowed out the newsroom. The RV Times' news coverage is hit and miss, but a news consumer must pick up news from where one can, in bits and pieces. Once the various promotional deals run out, the cost of a subscription is about $208/year. 

Ashland.news

Ashland.news is a community-supported nonprofit newspaper, published online. It focuses on news in Ashland and Talent, Oregon. It has reporters, editors, and columnists. Access is free, and the news is updated as events happen. Readers who want news delivered can subscribe to its newsletter: https://ashland.news/newsletter/  Ashland.news began four years ago and is thriving. Readers make voluntary contributions to pay for the service. It is the public broadcasting model: The information is free, and if you want it to continue you are urged to donate. 

I don't claim that being well informed on local news is easy or cheap. It isn't. Patching news sources together, with paid subscriptions to the Courier and RV Times, and voluntary donations to Ashland.news and the local public radio station, Jefferson Public Radio, which also has a local news department adds up For Oregon news including state government news, I also subscribe to and recommend Oregonlive.com -- the old Oregonian newspaper. A digital subscription starts at $139 for the first year -- but then jumps up in price. Be aware.

It is a new world for journalism. Ads don't pay the bills. We do. If we want news, we pay for it. The alternative is to be misinformed by social media rumor, public relations hackery, and clickbait.

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Donald Trump's inner chimpanzee

"In many ways we are just apes, dressed up in clothes."

         Hogan Sherrow

Trump dominates women. Some he bosses around; some he insults; some he ogles; some he gropes and has sex with. He is open about his male chauvinism. It is part of his brand: a tycoon in business, the alpha male deal-maker, a Lothario.

I asked Hogan Sherrow, an evolutionary anthropologist, why he thought Trump was the way he is, and then a more perplexing question: Why do American women tolerate Trump's behavior? He is so rude and demeaning to women. And yet a majority of White women voted for Trump; a larger majority of married women voted for Trump; and an even greater majority of Christian-identified women voted for Trump. Why aren't women repulsed by Trump? Do they see something they like in his behavior?

Sherrow graduated from Rogue River High School in Southern Oregon. He earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Yale. He studied primates, especially chimpanzees. He told me that male chimps beat up female chimps. They also mate with the ones they beat, and the females stick around in the group and receive future beatings. Sherrow said his observations about primate behavior help him understand politics in America. He does a variety of consulting work on behalf of climate politics and election campaigns. 

Guest Post by Hogan Sherrow

Donald Trump's inner chimp

When Donald Trump spat “Quiet, piggy” at Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey for simply doing her job, he insulted not only her but every female journalist who has stood up to power and asked tough questions. While one of Trump’s allies tried to downplay the remark (“No one is perfect…”) and the White House claimed that attacking reporters is somehow “respectful,” most Americans found his behavior disturbing. As one reporter put it, “There is simply no excuse for it. The President…should be able to stomach a question he doesn’t like without flying off the handle. He’s not six years old.”

It's true, Donald Trump is not six years old, but he is a developmentally stunted bully, and his outbursts resemble primitive behaviors we share with our primate relatives. When he hurled his insult at Lucey, he displayed what could be called his “inner chimp.” Chimpanzees and bonobo, our closest living relative, shared a common ancestor with humans only six to 10 million years ago, a blink in evolutionary time. As a result, we share many behaviors with them.

Chimpanzees live in multi-male, multi-female, territorial communities. Males remain in their birth groups for life, and groups of males bond together to actively patrol and defend territories against other communities. Male chimpanzees also form dominance relationships with each other and an alpha male typically sits at the top. Every adult male chimpanzee is dominant to every female, and males regularly harass and attack females, often without provocation, to reinforce their dominance.

I once observed 12 male chimpanzees travel more than a mile through the forest when they came upon a female and her offspring feeding in a tree. After a dramatic display—hair bristling, bodies exaggerated—they charged up the tree and beat, kicked, and bit the female until she fell to the ground, screaming with her young. When the attack ended, she sat bleeding while the males calmly wandered off to groom each other.

This behavior is disturbingly familiar. The same dynamic that drives male chimpanzees to target females, asserting dominance over those they see as lower-ranking, parallels Trump’s pattern of disproportionately targeting female reporters. For both, females become convenient outlets for aggression and frustration. In Trump’s case, dehumanizing and belittling women of all ages has been a lifelong pattern.

Chimpanzee males are not inherently bad, or evil; they are acting out deeply ingrained evolutionary strategies. Female chimpanzees overwhelmingly prefer large, aggressive males as mates because these males defend territories effectively, increasing safety for mothers and offspring. Those same males then sire sons likely to grow into large, aggressive adults preferred by future females. This creates a feedback loop reinforcing male aggression and dominance as a successful reproductive strategy.

But chimpanzee behavior is only part of the story. Our other closest relatives, bonobos, live in multi-male, multi-female, territorial communities, like chimpanzees. Males remain in their birth groups for life, like chimpanzees. But bonobo social behavior dynamics differ dramatically from chimpanzees. Male bonobos do not form the strong bonds seen in chimpanzees. Instead, it is bonobo females who develop strong bonds with one another and with their sons. Female alliances hold significant social power; males do not dominate females universally, and overly aggressive males are socially controlled and sometimes injured by united groups of females.

These contrasting primate societies illustrate that behavior is not destiny. Chimpanzees show how aggression can be rewarded and perpetuated across generations. Bonobos show how cooperation, social bonds, and female solidarity can inhibit aggression and reshape group dynamics. In both species, female choice and collective action have the power to reinforce or transform social patterns.

The lesson for us is clear: harmful behavior persists when it is rewarded. Trump has spent his life benefiting from bullying and misogyny, facing few meaningful consequences for attacking women or other groups. If we want to break that cycle, we must refuse to tolerate or normalize such conduct. Like the bonobo females who stand together against aggression, we must stand together and deny bullies the social rewards they seek.

When Trump lashes out, he is not displaying strength or “manliness.” He is falling back on primitive tactics that thrive only when they are rewarded by the larger group. Undoing that pattern requires collective resolve—and a commitment to rejecting behaviors that demean, intimidate, or devalue anyone.

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Confront reality: Illegal immigration creates problems

You've gotta be cruel to be kind in the right measure
Cruel to be kind, it's a very good sign
Cruel to be kind means that I love you, 

          Nick Lowe, "Cruel to be Kind," 1979

Democrats are going to keep losing elections until they get immigration policy right.

Some Democratic leader needs to step up and admit that the emperor has no clothes. The Democrat will catch hell. Good. That is what turns a candidate into a leader. He or she defends the positions and sells it.

I watched Donald Trump up close during the summer of 2015. At first people scoffed. Pundits had a frame for understanding Trump. He was a showman, a gadfly, a tabloid playboy whose real mission was keeping his brand visible. He wasn't really running for president, ha-ha, don't be silly.

I watched it change in New Hampshire. He said things that were  political and outrageous -- and then he stuck with his outrageous statements. And the public applauded. He said that immigrants were dangerous people. He insulted and dismissed Roseanne Barr and Megyn Kelly. He said the political establishment of both parties wasn't protecting American jobs. He repositioned himself into a truth-teller and legitimate candidate. Republican primary voters were not voting to continue a vanity campaign. They were electing their leader.

The criticism he got was essential. He stuck with his position. He sold it. Trump was a leader, not a follower stuck in groupthink.

A Democrat cannot try to finesse the immigration issue by keeping every Democratic voter happy. It is not enough to criticize ICE people for being rough or for wearing masks or for being careless in rounding up people. That criticism does not confront or solve the immigration problem for the Democratic brand. Voters think Democrats are so squeamish about immigration enforcement that they are unwilling to say "no" to anyone. That badly damages the Democratic brand.

Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun

Mass immigration at the southern border was a problem, not just for Fox News, but for real. Democrats began waking up when those masses moved to blue cities in the north. Trump was dishonest to say that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets, but there was indeed a crush of people when 20,000 Haitian immigrants moved to Springfield, Ohio, a town of 60,000, under the Temporary Protected Status. One did not need to be racist to think this was an abrupt and visible strain on local resources.

 

A Democrat who can lead the party to victory in 2028 will openly change Democratic policy from one that indulges illegal immigration -- because enforcement comes across as so disruptive and cruel -- to one that openly and proudly enforces immigration law. Enforce carefully, yes, but enforce for real.

Having immigration be controlled and bureaucratic is the price of allowing robust immigration. Tough love enforcement protects immigration. It is the alternative to racist right-wing populism. Tough love enforcement also protects public support for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, SNAP, public education, school lunch programs, universal access to emergency medicine, housing programs, and law enforcement. Democrats fought for generations to put these in place. 

A tough-love Democrats should expect condemnation from activists in the party. Welcome it, even though it will hurt. It is how people learn that a new voice has emerged. Primary election activists and donors will be looking at the well-stocked buffet of candidates, seeking the one that most precisely fits their taste. Very possibly no Democrat will dare make the break with that group. That group is subject to groupthink. They are the ones who fund primary campaigns. It will look like the easy-money straight shot to the nomination. 

It isn't the way to win a general election.

Democrats will become a popular party when a Democratic aspirant for president says that the way to have immigration that serves Americans is for it to be as tough and regulated as are auto registrations. Cars without stickers on license plates are stopped, ticketed, and subject to being seized and towed. That isn't racism or xenophobia; it is order. Democrats need to show they are OK with order.

A candidate that can lead will have the confidence and rhetorical skills to argue that he or she is the greatest friend of immigrants and a compassionate safety net. 

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The rich get richer

Social critics aren't wrong: The system is rigged.

The system is rigged in favor of White people, males, healthy people, physically attractive people, Boomers, and the wealthy.

Especially wealthy people: Money makes money faster than work makes money.

Bruce Van Zee is a retired physician who, like me, lives in Medford, Oregon. I was about to write a blog post on income inequality. Our economic and tax systems treat capital better than they treat work and earned income. Capital compounds, so the rich get richer.  I read Bruce's post this week in his Subtack blog. He said about what I was going to say. Like mine, his blog is free. Check it out and subscribe.

Guest Post by Bruce Van Zee

                America has an aristocracy.

         The evolution of a two-class society

I was raised in a small town in the 50-60’s. My father was a minister and my mother a homemaker. We were not at all wealthy, I remember my mother reusing aluminum foil, cooking from scratch. We never went out to restaurants. Clothes were hand-me-downs from brother to brother. But I never felt ostracized or embarrassed by lack of wealth nor did I ever feel deprived. We went to the same public school as all the other kids in town, and the schools were good. Our home was modest (owned by the church) and, at least to my young eyes, all the neighborhoods looked more or less alike. The middle class was most of us, though we were aware of smaller numbers of the rich and, conversely, poor.

This was a time when the top marginal income tax rates were approaching 90%, it is now 37%. And how the landscape has changed! I have written previously (here) of the remarkable wealth inequity that has occurred since the 1980’s (Reagan revolution). Over the last two decades, the average annual stock market return has been 9.8%. 62% of Americans own stock, but considerably less of them have sufficient investment holdings to avoid working. The percentage owning stock is highest among adults in households earning $100,000 or more (87%), college graduates (84%) and married adults (77%). By contrast, the rate is 49% among unmarried adults, 42% among those with a high school education or less, and 28% among those in households earning less than $50,000. Stock ownership also varies significantly by race/ethnicity, with 70% of White adults owning stock, compared with 53% of Black adults and 38% of Hispanic adults (here).

In contrast, W2 income growth is considerably less than investment income growth, probably less than 1% inflation-adjusted annual growth.

The inevitable result has been a relative lowering of the standard of living for the majority of workers, particularly those whose incomes do not allow investment in the stock market. The graph below shows that the bottom 50% of the population own just 0.4% of the nation’s wealth. The top 1% own as much as the lower 90% of the population. It is unconscionable to allow this to continue. The Buffet rule would be a good start to reverse this trend and help ameliorate our debt problem, “No one of wealth should pay a lower tax rate on their income than a middle-class family.” But of course, many do because of our tax system. 

Given Trump’s OBBB which further harms the economics of the very demographic groups that voted for him, one begins to see the Great Con Job that the GOP has pulled off. And then there is the SNAP and Health Care hits to the economically disadvantaged, especially the working poor.

The emerging aristocracy is not one of intellectual or cultural achievement. It is one of wealth, much of it generated in the digital tech boom. And it has been amplified by a decrease in the marginal tax rates of higher income groups and lowering of capital gain taxes. It goes without saying, that the vast array of tax avoidance rules and regulations are available only to those with wealth and business, investment income. Perhaps that’s why Donald Trump pays little or no taxes and even Warren Buffet admits his secretary pays a higher rate than he does. But of course, another thing wealth can buy is lobbying and monied influence over our law makers, which the underprivileged cannot afford. And SCOTUS made it even easier and more covert with Citizens United for monied interests to craft tax laws to their liking.

I don’t know about you, but I get an uncomfortable feeling of societal instability when I imagine this trend continuing. You get the sense that there is too much money chasing even more returns. I guess that’s the definition of a bubble. Somehow, I don’t think society will collapse if a few financial managers, bank exec’s, or hedge fund billionaires went away or, better yet, got taxed at a higher rate. But if our essential workers – teachers, electricians, construction worker, janitors, policemen, fire fighters, waiters, etc—disappeared, went on strike, or started a rebellion, society would collapse. So, why do we treat them so poorly? We are discounting the value of work and production for the lure of easy money. Somehow, we’ve got our values wrong.

In my career as a physician and now in retirement, I experienced both the world of W2 income and now investment income. It is so much easier to be relaxing at home or on vacation doing what you want while your money works for you than the sweat equity grind of daily work. So why not tax work at a lower rate and investment income at a higher rate? We’ve got it turned around. Thanks again to the monied class that has the wherewithal to write the rules.

This two-class society also has insidious ramifications for a major issue in our country today – affordability. Because the wealthy have excess investment monies, they are buying up resources (homes, businesses, whatever) and making those resources scarcer and more expensive for the masses. Young people today are putting off marriage and family because they cannot afford to buy a home. A recent source suggested that most young couples will not achieve home ownership until their 40’s.

Maybe the economy and taxing strategies will swing back in the direction of the 1950’s and 60’s, but I’m skeptical because of the hold monied interests have on the levers of power. And we haven’t even talked about how greed and lack of fiscal responsibility are allowing the National debt to skyrocket. Time for another cup of coffee, or maybe something stronger.

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"Quiet. Quiet, Piggy."

Of course it was rude. 

He is fighting. He is positioning himself. 

He shifted the argument battlefield to one that favors him.

Trump changed the subject from incriminating association with Jeffrey Epstein to whether he was being crude and sexist. 

Here is the exchange on Air Force One:

Reporter: What did Jeffrey Epstein mean in his emails when he said you knew about the girls?

Trump: I know nothing about that. They would have announced that a long time ago. It's really what did he mean when he spent all that time with Bill Clinton, with the president of Harvard, you know, that is Summers, Larry Summers, whatever his name is. And all the other people he spent time with. Jeffrey Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years. But he also saw strength because I was president. So he dictated a couple of memos to himself, give me a break. You've got to find out what did he know with respect to Bill Clinton, to the respect to the head of Harvard, with respect to all of those people that he knew, including JPMorgan, Chase.

Reporter: Sir, if there's nothing incriminating in the files, sir, why are you all acting---

Trump: Quiet. Quiet, piggy.

We see Trump using the classic mechanisms for escaping guilt. Denial. Distance. Blame others. Object to the inquiry. Any police interrogator would recognize these. 

Trump adds one. He attacks the person doing the questions. Trump is authentic in his frankness. Trump exercised masculine power. He put a female reporter in her place with an insult. His narcissism is so profound that he feels entitled to be unfiltered. It is part of his appeal to voters. He says what he thinks even when -- especially when -- it is cruel and crude. 

Trump is an old-school male chauvinist, and he doesn't mind revealing it. Women are primarily acted upon, not actors. Trump openly evaluates women on their sex appeal. Women have their uses and Trump employs them; they can be agents, assistants, bureaucrats, and functionaries. They are also decoration and flatterers. 

"Quiet, piggy" caught the attention of Democrats. Trump reveals something about American culture: We are amid a backlash to the feminism of the late 1960s and 1970s. A great many American voters either like Trump's retro style of masculinity, or at least tolerate it. Some consider it the natural order of biology and culture that women want protection and resources from men, an idea contradicted by "women's lib." Trump is the alpha male: big, rich, powerful, judgmental, and cruel. If this were solely a conceit of men, it wouldn't have worked to elect Trump. Democrats trying to make sense of this era need to keep reminding themselves that a majority of White women voted for Trump in all three elections.

That I find Trump's behavior disgusting does not mean that he is out of touch with the public. Many people are not disgusted by him, and they are shaping current political reality. Trump isn't "politically correct." He doesn't pull punches. That is part of Trump's appeal: Amid all the checks and balances and constraints and veto-spots in our political process, Trump isn't hobbled by rules of courtesy or respect for norms. A lot of people were seeking that in a leader. His crude directness means he is willing to cut through constraints and may be able to get things done.

After-publlcation addition: A comment from a Trump-supporter gives readers an example of why Trump can make comments like "Quiet, piggy:"

The media is slanted and biased, and they lie profusely, and they are hostile to conservatives, so if Trump has to play a little hard-ball and insult a reporter, then I see no problem with that. Turnabout is fair-play. The media plays dirty, and they get what they deserve, which is NO respect.

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Shame and Shamelessness

Larry Summers withdraws.

Donald Trump accuses.

Summers feels shame. Trump is shameless.

Larry Summers gave a statement to the Harvard student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson:

I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.

Summers said he was withdrawing from public life by resigning from his various professional and philanthropic associations in order to "to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me."

Larry Summers is an economist. He is a professor at Harvard, teaching graduate students and two large undergraduate courses. He was former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration and the former director of the National Economic Council in the Obama administration. He was president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006.

University presidents raise money for their institutions from people who have money and are willing to donate it. Jeffrey Epstein did not attend Harvard, but he liked affiliation with Harvard. It is not a surprise that Larry Summers knew and spent time with Jeffrey Epstein. It was his job.

Epstein donated $9.1 million to Harvard between 1998 and 2008 to support a variety of research and faculty activities, a period that overlaps with Summer's tenure as university president. Harvard accepted no gifts from Epstein following his conviction in 2008.

Harvard has attempted to disassociate from Epstein. In 2019 Harvard President Lawrence Bacow condemned Epstein’s crimes as “utterly abhorrent . . . repulsive and reprehensible,” and expressed "profound" regret about Harvard's past association with him. In 2020 Bacow issued an official report to the Harvard community reviewing the university's relationship with Epstein. The report noted that nearly all of Epstein's donations had been spent, primarily on a Program on Evolutionary Dynamics associated with the Psychology Department.  About $201,000 of his donations had not been spent as of 2020; Harvard donated that money to two organizations assisting trafficked young women. 

 

President Trump is using Larry Summers and Harvard as the "whatabout" distraction from his own association with Epstein. It is possible that there is evidence that Summers behaved criminally. Summers is in exactly the same position as Trump, except that Trump's association was far longer and had much closer involvement with young women. Trump also had a massage/spa. People have suspicions and questions. People wonder what each of them did and what evidence there is.

Trump sicced his Justice Department on Summers. There is craft in this. The optics are good for Trump. Trump is taking on symbols of elite privilege. Even better for Trump, the investigation into Summers can be the excuse for not opening up the Epstein files. It is perfect positioning for a Republican voter who gets news from Fox. Trump appears to want release of the Epstein files, but because Democrat Larry Summers is under investigation using material in those files, then the files that might reveal Trump's criminality cannot be released to the public. Clever.

Harvard and Trump are each playing the roles they are known to play. Harvard is associated with what may be a moral lapse, to which Harvard responds with conscientious remorse. Liberal guilt reflects Harvard's Puritan origins. It is the "woke" response, alert to error and privilege, and quick to look inward. 

Not Trump. Trump reflects a warrior ethic. He does not feel guilt or shame. HIs goal is triumph, not forgiveness. It is a moment in an endless war. Trump fights by deflecting a threat toward a rival center of power and prestige. If Harvard wants to project guilt, all the better for Trump. The public will not understand the details, but it will understand who appears to act ashamed and who appears to be proud.

I don't blame Summers for courting a donor to the university. If Summers committed crimes, I hope he is prosecuted. I have every belief that this Justice Department will look diligently for anything it can pin on Summers. I have every belief that the Justice Department will hide or ignore anything that implicates Trump. That world reflect the warrior ethic inside the Justice Department. Their goal isn't justice; it is victory for their team.

Harvard would be better off if Summers acted like a warrior here. It would be better if Summers angrily asserted that he did nothing whatsoever wrong, period, and that Donald Trump is a sociopath, an autocrat, a disgusting pedophile, and that he is furious that a pervert like Trump accuses others of committing the very crime he himself did. 

That would be a warrior culture response. 

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Switcheroo. Release the files!

Trump:

     ". . .  House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it's time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics . . . "

The GOP herd was about to stampede without him. He jumped in front to lead it where it wanted to go. 

Reporting from multiple sources says that in the event of a roll-call vote, some 50 to 100 Republicans would have joined Democrats in voting to release the files.

The Epstein files cover-up looked weird even to Republicans. My congressman, Cliff Bentz, a standard-issue Republican in a bright-red district, felt it necessary to tell me and other Rotary Club members that he opposed releasing the Epstein files so that Republicans could later do an even better job of releasing files.

The argument wasn't remotely plausible in light of Trump's condemning release of the files, calling the issue a hoax, and House Speaker Johnson so clearly following Trump's instruction to block release. The important takeaway from witnessing Bentz's speech is recognition that he felt it necessary to make a preposterous argument in public.

He has no electoral fear from Democrats. His only real electoral risk is in a Republican primary, from an even-more-MAGA candidate attacking him from the even-more-populist right. As an establishment stick-to-the-herd Republican, Bentz is one of Speaker Johnson's team members not signing a discharge petition to force a vote. This creates an opening for a candidate representing the populist conspiracy-oriented wing of the GOP, the segment that Trump aroused by telling them that Democrats were guilty of pedophilia and he would expose them. This segment did not suspect Trump as a prime predator until the Department of Justice's sudden announcement that the files were empty. Really? Why wasn't Trump exposing Democrats?  The conspiracy-oriented MAGA people had already committed themselves to moral disapproval of sex with teenagers, and now Trump acts guilty. They wanted transparency.

Bentz was offering a cover story to protect his right flank. Bentz's story: He is blocking release of the files because he wants the files released. He has it both ways. Elegant.

I received off-line criticism from Republican readers yesterday, complaining that yesterday's post described in unnecessary detail the behavior in the now-released emails. The criticism was useful because a common theme ran through it: denial. They weren't arguing that Trump isn't guilty. They are minimizing and discounting the evidence. Who knows what is true? The emails are just talk. It is all just rumor. It is speculation. It might be a hoax. It might be AI. Trump made a decision about believability. When people saw a mystery, they filled the void with answers and those answers raised new questions. Mystery was real.

"I see nothing. I hear nothing."

Evidence might not be real, and it might not register. Full disclosure is less dangerous than mystery. The mass of files is convenient for Trump. There will be convenient distractions that mention GOP enemies. Those will circulate as fast as did news of Bill Clinton's cigar some 27 years ago. There will be contradictions and errors. There is no evidence that cannot be discounted and ignored. Just don't believe it. "Who knows?" is a safe refuge amid unwelcome evidence. No one can make you believe what you don't want to believe.

Upton Sinclair observed: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” 

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Easy Sunday: Democrats imagine a frantic MAGA

Democrats are having fun, imagining that MAGA is going crazy over the Epstein revelations.

A short YouTube video is circulating. 

FYI: "Bubba" is a reference to an email to Jeffrey Epstein from his brother, suggesting that there is video evidence of Donald Trump performing oral sex on Bill Clinton. Jeffrey Epstein's brother has made a public statement to clarify. He says that the Bubba is not Bill Clinton, but he declined to say who Bubba is.

Democrats love this controversy. Yes, let's consider the question of exactly who the videotape might show Trump performing oral sex on, and whether Putin has a copy.

In the video, actress Caitlin Reilly depicts an imagined MAGA supporter frantic as Trump's various cover stories collapse.

https://youtube.com/shorts/897Fkimbu1w?si=4SKmw8zC9lNE1EJm

Democrats can enjoy the moment and watch Trump sink deeper into a tar pit of cover stories. But recognize four things:

     -- Republican voters in the Fox News silo know nothing about Epstein except that this is a Democratic hoax involving Bill Clinton and other Democrats.

     -- White House spokespeople say that the Epstein files absolve Trump. Trump did nothing whatsoever wrong. Period.

     -- Trump defenders and mitigators say the women were teenagers, not children. It isn't pedophilia.

     -- Republican voters do not care what Donald Trump did with young women that drifted through his life. They knew he was a very successful sexual adventurer/predator. They are OK with that. They are only against pedophilia if they think that a Democrat did it.

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Short and sweet this Saturday

Yale researchers created a new drug to stop aggressive skin cancer.

Health research and drug breakthoughs are political now.

Click here 

Cancer researchers at Yale developed a vaccine that attacks a form of aggressive skin cancer. It targets a protein essential to the tumor. It adds a signal that boosts the body's immune resopnse.

I didn't understand what the researchers did. I just skimmed past the explanation:

The mRNA vaccine directed the immune response to target viral large T antigen, a protein, and co-encoded interleukin-7 (IL-7), a molecule essential for the proliferation of immune cells, to enhance T cell responses, which led to increased immunity and a more durable anti-tumor response in Merkel cell carcinomas (MCC), often caused by a virus. The vaccine demonstrated potent effects in both animal models and patient samples and improved effectiveness when IL-7 was added.

The article's footnote made the point that breakthroughs of this kind happen because institutions bring together the smartest and best-trained people in the world with funding from the richest country in the world. Together they do something very, very good: stop cancer.

It is the most obvious thing in the world to me: Funding the right people to cure cancer is the job of a country with a constitution that begins saying it seeks to promote the general welfare. 

President Trump is cutting this kind of funding at Yale and other research universities to make the point that his government opposes elite institutions that stand as alternative sources of credibility to Trump.  There is craft involved in attacking institutions at a point of greatest strength. After all, who could oppose cancer research? Isn't that the strongest case for the value of elite institutions? The strategy is the same as the Swift Boat attack on candidate John Kerry, winner of medals for bravery and three Purple Hearts. If one undermines an opponent's presumed strength, one undermines their legitimacy in all arenas. If the government can question cancer research then surely Yale's departments of literature and philosophy are worthless.

Trump is sending a message of domination. He is showing that he and his MAGA majority can push universities around. Cancer breakthroughs will not be discovered by people posting "just try this simple trick" on X and TikTok. They will be discovered by elite researchers in elite institutions doing meticulous work. And taxpayers will help pay for it.

Here is the footnote to the article:

The research reported in this news article was supported by National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute grant K08CA245112, the Yale SPORE in Skin Cancer NCI grants P50CA121974, the NCI grant R37CA279822 and Yale University. 

Trump's political games can hasten the death of someone you love.

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Epstein: Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip

A "modified limited hangout" didn't work during Watergate.

Trump is using it with his Jeffrey Epstein mess.

I think it will work for Trump.

House Oversight Committee releases documents

Those of us who followed the news in 1973 and 1974 know the phrase "limited hangout." Sometimes there is a "modified limited hangout."

Often the first strategy in a scandal is for the target to deny everything. But as new facts get put into the public record it can be impossible to stick to denial. The situation then requires a cover story to account for the inconvenient known facts.  Revealing the truth is the "hangout."  

The first hangout wasn't the whole story in the Watergate matter. The whole truth was that Nixon was part of the coverup. The Nixon people attempted a limited hangout. But as yet more information leaked out it became a modified limited hangout. For a year or two in the mid-1970s, everybody in America knew the phrase "modified limited hangout." The phrase drew chuckles.

True? Half-true? Daily drips needed to be verified

We are watching the evolution of a new limited hangout in the matter of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. The question isn't what Trump knew and when he knew it -- the Nixon question. The question is whether Trump performed transgressive sexual acts with very young girls, and whether Epstein made videotapes to document it. Trump and MAGA allies have been stewing about pedophile rings for a decade, looking for it in all the wrong places. It turns out that Trump has some explaining to do. He is stonewalling (another term from the Watergate era.)  Stonewalling means not coming clean.

Wednesday the House Oversight Committee released emails between Ghislaine Maxwell (Gmax1) and Jeffrey Epstein (jeevaction) reporting that Trump had, indeed, spent private "hours" with a woman described as "Victim." That contradicts Trump's denials and claims of ignorance. 

We also learned that Epstein wrote his biographer, Michael Wolff, saying that Trump is lying about asking Epstein to resign from Mar-a-Lago country club and when Trump claimed that he knew nothing about Epstein's girls. 

I think Trump's support would continue even if the worst rumored and suspected activity took place and could be documented. Republican voters don't care. They know that he is a playboy with Hugh Hefner tastes and exhaustive sexual experience with young models and entertainers. There is almost no mention of Epstein in conservative media, and when the subject is unavoidable, it is described as a Democratic hoax. Even if videotapes of Trump doing something illegal exist, they won't be shown. And if shown, they won't be believed. Artificial intelligence is the new alibi: you can't believe your eyes anymore.

But the conspiracy segment of Republicans remains, and Democrats can keep plinking away, hoping to embarrass Trump, a man who cannot be embarrassed.  It is fun for Democrats, but it doesn't move the needle on Trump's support. Trump is shameless. Let people guess, wonder, assume the worst. Trump doesn't care. His base doesn't care. They like that he is deporting people and reversing DEI and making liberals angry. 

Trump is not going away.

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Should SNAP benefits be restricted to healthy, unprocessed food?

Surprise, Surprise.

It is possible to have a sensible, informative comment thread in a political blog.

The issue: Should SNAP pay for junk food?

Jane Collins is a college classmate. She did not pursue a career that generated big money. She has first-personexperience with some of the nutrition programs in today's news. She shares her thoughts on a blog headlined "Calm down. Connect online. Rethink everything": https://alicet4.com/

Joe Yetter is a retired army physician. Like Jane, he reads this blog. He was a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in my rural, bright red district.

Comment by Jane Collins: 

Let people make their own decisions.

One food program threatened by the shutdown was WIC, for Women, Infants, and Children. I received those benefits for a while when our kids were small. The program covers healthy options like fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, and cereal. It also provides nutrition information to young mothers, including guidance about learning to cook. It's an excellent program. 

But the problem with limiting the main food program, SNAP, to nutritious food is that poor people would not be allowed to eat like the rest of America. When your kids have to wear second-hand clothes and never get new toys, at least you should be able to treat them to something sweet once in a while. 

Most poor parents work. Many have long commutes. They depend on processed food to save time. Canned and boxed foods are also usually cheaper than fresh, and don't go bad so quickly.

In America, families are ashamed when they can't provide their kids with the things they want. SNAP benefits are not generous. Sometimes the only meat you can afford is hotdogs. Are hotdogs junk food? Who gets to decide? Poverty limits choices in housing, education, and so much else. At least let poor people make their own decisions about feeding their families.  

Response, by Joe Yetter, M.D.

Jane, you've made the same argument to me that lots of other folk I admire and respect have made: that by limiting SNAP to nutritious food, we'd be saying (in your words),"they are not allowed to eat like the rest of America."

I disagree. I think we'd be saying: "We will pay for food that is good for you and your children. We are not going to use taxpayer money to purchase dental cavities and cardiovascular disease. You remain free to buy unhealthful food, but we will not pay for it." I'd like also for both of us to acknowledge that funds are fungible, and if we buy a buck's worth of healthful food for somebody, we may also free up a buck that can buy soda pop and potato chips for them. For me, that's a negative outcome; for those on the other side, it may be a positive. In any event, it does promote their freedom to choose.

Jane Collins' response to Joe:

Don't shame people for being poor.

I didn't buy sugary snacks or soda for my kids when we got food stamps. I also cooked from scratch, since I was a stay-at-home mother at the time, 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. Our meals were boring (turns out my husband is a much better cook) but healthy. We had a big garden for fresh vegetables and herbs, not something available to urban poor people. I canned, dried, and pickled, skills I learned from my husband's grandmother. But we were living in rural Kentucky. I saw what other people bought. My kids didn't miss what they had never had, what other kids would have, I think. 

Thank goodness (and Democrats) there are debit cards instead of stamps now. People would often be poor-shamed at checkout for whatever other people judged they should not buy with "our money" (though poor people do pay state and local taxes), including fresh fruit. Note that rich people also feed their kids crap and nobody seems to be shaming them. Americans are sold terrible foods from birth, on every medium. It isn't only poor people who have bought into this corporate propaganda, or who have never learned to cook. 

I should also note that despite working full-time for most of our adult lives, my husband and I now live on Social Security. We qualify for only $20 a month in food stamps, but we appreciate what we get. Every little bit helps. 

 

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