"Their existence, and my relationships with each of them, are essential to my understanding of life itself."

That's a very strangely written sentence.... by M. Gessen, in "What Democrats Are Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights" (NYT). 

Context:

I am trans and I am a parent of three children, one of whom I carried. Their existence, and my relationships with each of them, are essential to my understanding of life itself. I also have many friends (none of them trans, as it happens) who never had children. I occasionally envy their freedom. They may occasionally envy me my sprawling family. In neither case is the feeling of regret — if it can even be called that — significant or particularly long-lasting. It is, rather, an awareness that life is a series of choices, all of which are made with incomplete information.

Presumably, Gessen has one relationship with each of the children, but it's possible that Gessen really does means to claim multiple relationships with each one. I suppose the grammar was a minor distraction on the way to proclaiming the superiority of a life lived without regrets. 

Anxiety about trans people and reproduction, and the laws and rules that it produces, cut both ways...

Puzzling commas again. And why choose a cutting metaphor here? Intentional prodding of our anxiety about surgery?

There's a lot more going on in the article, which was originally titled "The Secret Behind America's Moral Panic." What's the secret? And what are "Democrats... Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights"? This is the most useful passage:

"Mr. Trump would not be the first newly elected or re-elected president to assume his victory gave him more political latitude than it really did."

"Bill Clinton tried to turn his 5.6-point win in 1992 into a mandate to completely overhaul the nation’s health care system, a project that blew up in his face and cost his party both houses of Congress in the next midterm elections. George W. Bush likewise thought his 2.4-point win in 2004 would empower him to revise the Social Security system, only to fail and lose Congress two years later. And President Biden interpreted his 4.5-point win over Mr. Trump in 2020 as a mission to push through some of the most expansive social programs since the Great Society, then saw Republicans take control of the House in 2022 and the White House and Senate two years after that."

Writes Peter Baker, in "The 'Landslide' That Wasn’t: Trump and Allies Pump Up His Narrow Victory/The latest vote count shows that Donald J. Trump won the popular vote by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century. But Mr. Trump claims a 'powerful mandate'" (NYT).

Saying it's a landslide is the same thing as saying it's not a landslide: propaganda.

It's just a word.

Insane not to think about.

Just one of these could level an entire European city within 20 minutes of being launched. Insane to think about. https://t.co/9MkZBxp8DN

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) November 22, 2024

"I make a pretty sharp distinction between his medical ideas, which I think are really unsound and dangerous, and his critique of the food system, which has many elements I completely agree with."

Says Michael Pollan, quoted in "Michael Pollan Is Not Endorsing RFK Jr./A Q&A with the food reform advocate about the common ground he has with RFK Jr. — and why he does not want him to be HHS secretary" (Politico).

Michael Pollan, perhaps the country’s best-known advocate of healthy eating and reforming the food system, caused a stir earlier this week when he posted an article on his X account headlined “They’re Lying About Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” The article, published in the American Conservative, stopped short of endorsing Kennedy for the job of Health and Human Services secretary, but did endorse Kennedy’s critique of the food system and tried to add nuance to his skepticism of vaccines. Pollan posted a link to the story without comment, but the mere fact that he did so was interpreted as the latest sign of how the nomination of RFK Jr. has scrambled some partisan health policy divides.

The American Conservative article is by Spencer Neale, whose name does not appear in the Politico piece.

Pollan sounds nervous. He ends the interview with: "Are you going to publish this soon? Because I really want to stop this. I don’t want to get a phone call from RFK Jr. I want him to read this and not call."

Imagine being afraid of a call from Kennedy. What kind of people are leaning on Pollan?

Pollan originally liked Neale's article — unsurprising, because Neale mentions him with great favor:

Sunrise — 6:54, 6:55.

Gaetz withdraws.

WaPo reports.

Former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) announced in a social media post Thursday that he was withdrawing his bid to be attorney general for President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration, saying his confirmation was “unfairly becoming a distraction.” “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle,” Gaetz said after meeting with senators on Wednesday. Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, is meeting with senators on Capitol Hill on Thursday after police records revealed new details about a sexual assault allegation against him. Vice President-elect JD Vance is accompanying Hegseth.

"The DOGE Plan to Reform Government" — by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Read it in The Wall Street Journal. Excerpts:

We are entrepreneurs, not politicians.... We'll cut costs.... We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden's tenure.

"Most of the country shifted right in the 2024 presidential election...."

"Trump won the suburbs.... Rural areas went even more for Trump.... Harris also underperformed in urban areas...."

NPR reports.

I see my county got bluer though.

First snow — this morning at 7:07.

"House GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she will chair a new oversight subcommittee in the next Congress that will work with..."

"... the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. House Oversight Chair James Comer 'intends to establish a new Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) for the 119th Congress,' a source familiar told CNN, confirming that Greene will chair the subcommittee.... The creation of the new subcommittee establishes a congressional arm to the broader effort by Trump and his allies to make significant cuts to the federal government. The subpanel will examine the salaries and status of members of the federal civil service and intergovernmental personnel among other oversight measures...."

CNN reports.

A quote from Greene: "Our subcommittee’s work will expose people who need to be FIRED. The bureaucrats who don’t do their job, fail audits like in the Pentagon, and don’t know where BILLIONS of dollars are going, will be getting a pink slip."

Speaking of bureaucrats, I'm seeing complaints about Trump's appointments that are faulting them for not being bureaucratic enough.

"If we're going to dance, let's all dance in the sunlight."

Why doesn't this article even mention RFK Jr.? This is precisely his issue.

I'm reading "We Tire Very Quickly of Being Told That Everything Is on Fire," by Jeneen Interlandi in the NYT:

The obesity crisis has... brought its share of unintended consequences. Alarm bells have almost certainly nudged more people to eat healthier foods. They also helped spur the development of effective anti-obesity medications. But they have not touched off any meaningful effort to repair our food system, which most experts agree is the root cause of expanding waistlines. 

"Obesity did not reach epidemic proportions because of changes in human nature or human willpower," says Tom Frieden, who served as C.D.C. director under the Obama administration and is now president of the public health nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives. "What changed is that our environment became far more conducive to weight gain." 

What crisis vibes have managed to accomplish is to normalize fat-shaming, especially among doctors. Shame is a deeply ineffective way to resolve any health crisis, but it has proved especially counterproductive and cruel when it comes to weight loss.....

Why doesn't this article even mention RFK Jr.? This is precisely his issue. He blames the food industry, and Trump's elevation of him to Secretary of Health and Human Services surely  represents a "meaningful effort to repair our food system." But why look at him when we have an Obama era former C.D.C. director to quote? And, more importantly, why give him any credit for getting something right when we are deeply into the agenda of portraying him as a dangerous crackpot.

Yes, I'm journalism-shaming, and I think it needs to be cruel to be productive.

Sunrise — 6:44.

"Malpractice was committed by that campaign. They saw the ad, they knew it was being bought in heavy quantities. Where were they? What were they thinking?"

Said Ed Rendell, a former governor of Pennsylvania and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who "was so alarmed by the Trump attacks that he called top Harris campaign advisers, pleading for them to respond directly."

Quoted in "Harris Loss Has Democrats Fighting Over How to Talk About Transgender Rights/Kamala Harris left Donald J. Trump’s anti-transgender attack ads largely unanswered. Some Democrats call it political malpractice" (NYT).

Meanwhile, Republicans are not content to stand back and watch the Democrats screw up over the transgender issue. They want attention too: "Johnson pressured by GOP firebrands on trans bathroom access" (Axios)("House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is facing pressure from some of his most outspoken members to restrict transgender Rep-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.) from using women's bathrooms at the Capitol... Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)... even went as far as to threaten to get into a 'physical altercation' with McBride").

"She was only 15 when Warren Beatty lent her Natalie Wood’s bathing suit and took her for cigarettes and a swim."

"She was 16 when she met the 11-years-older, mid-divorce Salvatore Phillip 'Sonny' Bono, who lied to her about being a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, and she moved into his apartment in exchange for cooking and cleaning — not sex, at first."

From "Becoming Cher Didn’t Come Easy/The first volume of her frank autobiography is a testament to resilience, chronicling a grim childhood and the brazen path to stardom, with and without Sonny" (NYT).

"They’ve asked for these, and so I think it’s a good idea."

Said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, in a stunning feat of moral reasoning, quoted in "Biden Administration Approves Ukraine’s Use of Anti-Personnel Mines" (NYT). The U.S. did not merely approve the use of land mines. We are supplying them. 

The Biden administration’s decision came despite widespread condemnation of mines by rights groups that cite their toll on civilians, which can stretch for years or decades after conflicts end as the locations of minefields are left unmarked or forgotten.... Russia has seeded mines throughout vast swaths of Ukraine since 2014 as front lines have swayed over forests, farm fields and villages. It has also set many so-called victim-activated booby traps, such as explosives rigged to detonate when a car door is opened, a category of weapon also prohibited in the mine ban treaty.