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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A veteran reflects on Trump on Veterans’ Day

 "Just do it."

        Nike

"Git 'er done."

Larry the Cable Guy 

"If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly."

    William Shakespeare, MacNeth, Act 1, Scene 7

College classmate Tony Farrell had a long career marketing for major retailers. He handled the short-lived Trump Steak account. He was in ROTC during college and then entered the U.S. Navy between college and business school.

He wrote me yesterday, Veterans Day, about the commander in chief's orders directing navy officers to kill civilians in international waters. It is quick and dirty. Some Americans are OK with that; they are impatient and want results. 

The order is illegal. Fifty years ago, Tony reflects, he was in a position to receive orders from superior officers. 

Farrell, getting his lieutenant boards 

Farrell, on a golf trip to Ireland

Guest Post by Tony Farrell

I wasn’t prepared to know our president is a killer.

Since January 6, I see Trump as a treasonous criminal. Too much is hateful: Racism and misogyny; corruption and self-dealing; persistent lying and dangerous ignorance; cruelty and incompetence; mindless assaults on universities and science; abandonment of due process; unconstitutional punitive tariffs; DOJ cronies sicced on personal enemies; deadly destruction of USAID.

The list is not complete: It excludes nonjudicial execution of noncombatants in international waters, the Navy his instrument.

I served as a Navy officer for four years after Harvard. (I was the last student head of Navy ROTC before it was tossed off campus.) My father graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy in 1944; my father-in-law the same year from Annapolis. Both endured combat in the Pacific Theater in WWII, and served as Navy officers for 14 and 25 years, respectively. Because of their experience and my own, I gained a deep appreciation for America’s military; distinctly honorable and uniquely apolitical.

When I first read about alleged drug-runners being blown apart, I thought of those Navy folks (just like me) ordered to do the killing. The most senior military people could not possibly justify their actions because, by oath, they cannot follow illegal orders. And at that moment we learned the head of the U.S. Southern Command, four-star Admiral Alvin Holsey, resigned. He has not gone public; it seems certain he refused the orders.

At a press conference, Trump swatted away demands for legal justification. Trump sniffed, “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, okay? We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead, okay?” 

I stopped there cold,
Like a man raking piles of leaves in his yard
Who has turned up a severed hand.
          (W.D. Snodgrass, Memento, 1) 

What does one do when your president is a murderer? A murderous gangster, lawless and indifferent.

Should my mayor tell compliant Oakland cops to execute drug dealers on International Boulevard because, you know, they’re bad people, okay?

I had dinner recently with an old friend: Ivy grad; fancy law degree; huge Trump fan. Hadn’t seen him since January 6 (didn’t think we could steer around the issues), but he reached out.

My friend feels and appreciates the impatience that Trump displays—about crime, immigration, homelessness, runaway woke-ness. With Trump, no one crosses our borders. NATO stepped up after decades of shirking. Sure, Trump pardoned a thousand Capitol storm-troopers, but Carter pardoned a hundred thousand draft dodgers! (Perhaps a more consequential act.) Trump stopped the Gaza war. (My friend ignores many things.)

We found some agreement: The Manhattan District Attorney's 32 felony convictions for one Stormy Daniels’ payoff? Have to agree, utter bullshit. And when Vance does his “mini-Trump” act, we also agree that Trump has obvious inimitable charisma.

But I still feel cold. I wasn’t prepared to know our president is a killer.

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Democrats caved. It's OK.

     “Largely, when you talk about SNAP, you’re talking about largely Democrats.”

          President Donald Trump  

Two things are both true:

    -- Democrats caved.

    -- It was the right outcome. Relax.

First, let's acknowledge reality: The American people elected Donald Trump president, and his loyal allies control the House, Senate, and probably the Supreme Court. Republicans are in charge of the government. Let's also acknowledge that Trump uses presidential power cruelly, to instill fear and dread, which enhances his power.

Trump took political hostages. He abruptly cancelled infrastructure projects in blue states, doing it with such open partisanship that it drew grumbling from Republican senators. But his big weapon was stopping the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). 

Trump's brand was established by saying "You're fired!" to contestants on his show. Audiences liked it. It showed he was decisive and confident. He is still saying, "You're fired!" in a variety of ways.

SNAP beneficiaries are a vulnerable target, and well-chosen by Trump to exploit the different orientations of Democrats and the MAGA-dominated GOP. Sixty-seven percent of SNAP families have children. Seventy-nine percent of SNAP families have either a child or an elderly or disabled person. The image and idea of SNAP beneficiaries is asymmetrical between the political parties. The Republican-Fox News notion of SNAP users is President Reagan's Black "welfare queen" with multiple benefit streams, an urban drug addict, or a lazy and unmotivated 400-pound man playing video games instead of working. Trump is exercising tough love. Democrats see it differently, as Trump intentionally hurting the weakest and most vulnerable. Democrats paid a moral and political price for holding out. Children would suffer.

A few Democrats broke ranks to feed the children and reopen the government. Those are good reasons. 

This idea is out there in the liberal media. I disagree.

The outcome is ideal for Democrats. It appears that Trump will succeed in slashing the subsidies for health insurance bought through the ACA exchanges. People are starting to experience the price shock. Affordability is a top-of-mind issue, especially after Zohran Mamdani won election in New York City on that theme. This morning I watched Trump on Laura Ingraham's Fox show, asserting that prices were down, affordability under his presidency is great and getting better, and that Democrats and the media are in cahoots saying that prices are high, when they are not. This is going to be a hard sell for Trump.

A reader of this blog, age 60, with a Moda health insurance gold plan (necessary because she has a chronic asthma problem) told me her cost will jump from $1,150 to $1,700 a month in January.  Another reader, a family with a husband, wife, and 20-year-old child, just received a quote for insurance next year, rising from $2,400 to $3,100 a month. 

I learned from my 30-year career as a financial advisor that people experience loss at five times the intensity that they experience gains. Americans will experience the loss of the insurance benefit as unjust and morally wrong. Families arrange budgets around set points, and Trump will have taken away something that was theirs.

The controversy over the Democratic "cave" is not all bad. It helps Democrats get the message out about what happened, and it solidifies the idea that the high prices are the doing of Republicans. Low-information voters might get the polarity and partisanship straight: Democrats tried and failed to stop Republicans from taking away the health insurance exchange benefit that had previously been theirs.  

As people drop their health insurance, more people will delay or avoid treatment. People will die. Rural hospitals will close. This will disproportionately affect red states and red congressional districts. I live in one. 

There is a message inside that realization of what just happened. It is that Republicans made expensive insurance even more expensive to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. Trump and Republicans cannot be trusted with power. 

POST PUBLICATION UPDATE: 

A Trump-supporting reader sent a comment. It reflects a widespread Republican attitude toward SNAP beneficiaries. This attitude gives Trump political room to cut SNAP without triggering serious pushback from his base: 

How many illegal aliens get SNAP? How many young, able-bodied adults get SNAP. I see lots of illegals with SNAP cards, and I see a lot of fat young adults with SNAP cards and shopping carts full of soda pop. The system is being abused. Aside from SNAP, how many children get fed at school? Hunger is not a problem. If it is, then you have a problem with ACCESS.

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Give Trump rope

Democrats should be smart and strategic.  Let Trump fail.

On October 2, I quoted a Portland liberal who was tired of working to support programs that disproportionately helped people in red areas. After all, she said, they oppose the very programs that help them. The headline quotation for that post was:

"They voted for this. Let them suffer the consequences of their vote."

The U.S. government is in shutdown mode because Democrats are holding out on funding the U.S. budget until Republicans restore the subsidies that make affordable health insurance bought through the Affordable Care Act exchanges. The working poor -- especially ones in red states and congressional districts -- are the primary beneficiaries of those subsidies. Subsidies keep the insurance risk pool financially viable. A 50 to 100 percent increase of the premium will cause people to drop insurance bought through the exchanges. Then most of the people who would pay the cost of insurance would be people already sick. It wouldn't be insurance, with uncertain risks; it would be insurance companies paying the bills of people who know they are sick. Insurance companies would immediately drop out of the program, ending the exchange program.

Republicans are attempting to brand the shutdown as "the Democratic shutdown." They succeed among people who get their news from Fox and conservative social media. When the issue is an abstract, future problem, then Republicans can characterize this as their valiant attempt to keep the bad guys -- "illegals" and lazy trust-fund liberal layabouts --  from getting benefits, but not good people like you, the patriotic MAGA voters.

The way for Democrats to move the political needle is to get out of Trump's way. Tens of thousands of people in every congressional district will discover that the Big Beautiful Bill just gave them a health insurance bill larger than their mortgage, and that it funded a tax cut for billionaires. Republicans want to do unpopular things. Let them. It won't last long.

My prior two posts have been about the morality of cruelty. I recognize that the hike in health insurance costs will have a cruel effect on household finances. But the cruelty creates its own solution. The trickle-up effect will send signals through the political system. Auto loan delinquencies will rise. Banks will report distress. The stock market will absorb news of defaults and foreclosures. Hospitals will close. Populist anger will erupt and people will know whom to blame.

Democrats say they are fighting for "democracy." This is democracy. People will experience the consequences of their votes. The people who go bankrupt and the people who die will not have suffered in vain. They are messengers. 

In the fall of 1932 and winter of 1933, after Franklin Roosevelt was elected but before he was inaugurated, President Herbert Hoover urged FDR to make a joint announcement calling for a bank holiday to address the growing problem of failing banks. FDR refused. Hoover was president. Let him made the decision, get the credit or blame for the outcome. FDR didn't want to muddle the story of who was responsible for what.

The result was that things deteriorated until the inauguration. People saw Hoover's failure, and FDR had the public's support for what became the New Deal. 

Democrats need to let Trump be Trump. Let Americans experience the cruelty and venality and corruption they voted for. Trump being Trump establishes the foundation for reform, for a new approach to health care, to income distribution, to immigration, and to the other vexing problems that have created populist demand for change from both the right and the left. Trump represents right populism. Trump's policy failures set the groundwork for left populism.

A democracy will not address populist frustrations with press conferences and white papers. Populism requires hands-on, first-person messages. People need to experience the pain and see whom to blame. 

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Easy Sunday: The Good Samaritan story

     The Good Samaritan story is a parable from the Bible (Luke 10:29–37) about a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho who is attacked by robbers, beaten, and left for dead. A priest and a Levite pass by without helping, but a Samaritan stops to help the man, binding his wounds, taking him to an inn, and paying for his continued care. The story teaches that one should show compassion and mercy to everyone, regardless of their background, because everyone is a "neighbor." Indeed, everyone embodies Jesus himself.

One school of thought is that we aren't supposed to murder people. That is a prohibition of an immoral act.

But we don't have affirmative responsibility to help someone else -- especially a stranger -- who is having deathly trouble.

Melania Trump's controversial jacket: "I really don't care. Do U?"

I posed the question in my post yesterday: What would Jesus do about the hungry and sick people who are dying now, after Trump abruptly ended U.S. food and medicine aid? Food and medicine would stop those deaths.

The Bible's account of Jesus answers the question. A follower of Jesus "does likewise" with the Samaritan. Jesus says that genuine followers of him help the poor, hungry, and sick. Fake followers do not. This is one way to tell the difference between the two.

John Coster studied Theology and Society at Regent College while continuing his career managing multimillion-dollar real estate development and construction projects in the tech sector. John is Christian. He has observed the way the public face of the Christian church in America has been hijacked by Christian Nationalism. He makes a distinction between Christian spirituality and "Christendom." 

John Coster and family, receiving his M.A. in Theology

John wanted to add an idea to his guest post, noting that compassion to strangers is not solely a New Testament idea. The Old Testament God may be noted for fire, brimstone, and mass death striking down entire peoples, but that there are examples of compassion there, too.

     -- Leviticus 19:33-34 emphasizes loving the stranger as oneself, because the Israelites were also strangers in Egypt.

     -- Deuteronomy 10:18-19 states that God loves and provides for the stranger, and commands the Israelites to do the same.

     -- Exodus 22:21 explicitly prohibits mistreating or oppressing a stranger, referencing the time in Egypt.

Guest Post by John Coster 

As a frequent commenter here, few will be surprised that I weigh in when you invoke a Christian theme (although I am a Three Dog Night fan too :)

I appreciate the title of today’s post, but in our post-Christian and pluralistic society, I’m not sure that Jesus’ core teachings resonate much -- even with people who claim to be Christian. Christian Nationalists (many of whom deny the label) are in reality, party to “Christendom” which is nothing more than the outward structures and laws that are supposedly designed to support Christian principles- but in themselves are empty of the life-transformation that Jesus promises to his followers. Think Constantine. Tragically much of historical Christendom has been antithetical to Jesus' teachings and I believe we are living in such a time again.

Jesus warned in Matthew 7:21-23, that those who claim to be his followers but don’t actually obey his commands, are in fact, ‘evildoers” who will be cast from his presence. It should cause MAGA-Christians pause.

These days you don’t need to be a Bible a scholar to figure out its main themes. So what are Jesus’ commands? Among the top instructions are caring for the marginalized and foreigner. This does not bode well for Christians who think they are “doing the Lord’s work” by supporting MAGA and these evil policies.

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