"Meanwhile, during the car-T treatment, a method developed over many decades with millions of dollars of government funding, my cousin, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr...."

"... was in the process of being nominated and confirmed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.... My mother wrote a letter to the Senate, to try and stop his confirmation; my brother had been speaking out against his lies for months. I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government. Suddenly, the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky.... As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers... I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research... slashed billions in funding.... Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials were cancelled.... I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission...."

Writes Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, in "A Battle with My Blood/When I was diagnosed with leukemia, my first thought was that this couldn’t be happening to me, to my family," published in The New Yorker today, the anniversary of the assassination of her grandfather, President Kennedy.

Schlossberg, who has 2 very young children, tells us she has a terminal diagnosis. This is terribly sad.

Meanwhile, in other RFK Jr. news:

"His basement, his garage, and his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available..."

"... and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks. It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.... Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.... Bobby continues to grandstand off my father’s assassination, and that of his own father...."

Wrote Caroline Kennedy, about RFK Jr., quoted in "Caroline Kennedy Urges Senators to Reject Her Cousin’s Nomination/In a harsh letter to lawmakers considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for health secretary, Ms. Kennedy called her cousin unfit for the job and a 'predator' who led family members to addiction" (NYT).

Why did Hillary say she's going to put Bill Clinton "in charge of revitalizing the economy, because, you know, he knows how to do it"?

It's puzzling, isn't it? It raises more questions than it answers, and yet she must think it was worthwhile to say.

1. There was a time when Hillary Clinton presented herself as the continuation of Obama, to generate some early onset nostalgia for the last 8 years. Now — at the risk of seeming to reject Obama (and the economic success he represents) — she's leveraging herself on another man, Bill Clinton. It's something she does, point to that man she's associated with. We like him, don't we? He's likeable more than enough.

“Hillary Clinton’s statement that if elected president she’d put Bill Clinton ‘in charge of revitalizing the economy … because, you know, he knows how to do it’ suggests she’s no longer touting the successes of the Obama economy, or even linking herself to it,” said Robert B. Reich, a secretary of labor during the Clinton administration who endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary.

2. Why should Bill Clinton be "in charge of revitalizing the economy"? The economy is our biggest concern, and "in charge" puts him in the central role. What is the argument that he's the man for that job? He knows how to do it. That seems to be based on nothing but hope that we remember a good economy during the Clinton years, but not everyone remembers those years, and those of us who do may not have any idea what Bill Clinton did that worked, and what worked back then might not be what would work now.

[T]outing the economic prosperity he oversaw... could open Mrs. Clinton up to further attacks by Mr. Trump... who has campaigned as an economic populist [and has] hit Mrs. Clinton over her husband’s trade policies, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Mr. Clinton signed into law in 1993 and which many voters believe hurt American workers.

4. She's offering to be the woman President and she's pointing at her husband. Her whole career has been leveraged on Bill Clinton. Forefronting him now exposes her present neediness as well as her past dependence. It's not a good look for her.

5. Bill Clinton appears to be an old, frail man. Let him grow old gracefully. He's term-limited out of the presidency, and he would be the first First Gentleman. Let him have the dignified, supportive role as we've seen in First Ladies (other than that time Hillary Clinton took over health care reform and things worked out so badly).

Here's a close-up on the photograph at the link. It's oddly confusing which hand is Bill's:



The vigorous pointing hand seems to go with his face, but that's the hand of the young lady right behind him who looks like she's thinking Hey, I'm touching Bill Clinton's hand. Bill's is that startlingly long and emaciated hand to which all the other hands reach.

ADDED: Meade read this post out loud and burst into song: "Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you...."

And, by the way, do you remember the good times of the Bill Clinton Administration? Good times never seemed so good. I'd be inclined to believe they never would. 

Now, we're reminiscing about President Kennedy. (That song was about Caroline Kennedy, you know.)

"U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy has tweeted her concern at the 'inhumaneness' of a Wakayama Prefecture village’s traditional dolphin hunt."

The tradition: "Every year the fishermen of Taiji corral hundreds of dolphins in a secluded bay, select a few dozen for sale to aquariums and marine parks and then stab the rest to death for meat."

How "traditional" can something about aquariums and marine parks be?



I mean aquariums large enough for dolphins (presuming that there is such a thing).

Also... should an ambassador tweet? And if the ambassador tweets about dolphins, what should we say if she uses social media to express concern about something the Japanese are doing do birds? I think tweet : bird :: click : dolphin, so — being a fan of parallelism, I'd like to see it said that she's clicking her concern about birds.

On Chatter. 

ADDED: What's wrong with eating dolphin meat?

10 rules for writing about the 50th anniversary of the day John F. Kennedy was shot.

It's coming up next Friday, and I'd like to help with that op-ed or blog post you might have in the works.

1. Don't repeat the cliché that everyone who was around at the time remembers where he was and what he was doing when he heard the news.

2. Don't tell us — especially don't tell us as if it were not a big cliché — what you happened to have been doing and how you've always remembered that. After 50 years, can you not finally see that it doesn't matter?

3. Don't even attempt to say that the assassination had a profound effect on people. There is no new way to say that. We know!

4. Don't make up alternate histories of what would have happened if Kennedy had not been killed. Everything would have been different; we would all have been different. If you're American and under 50, you can assume that you would never have been born.

5.  Don't recount the conspiracy theories. Here's Wikipedia's article on the subject. If you're into that sort of thing, enjoy it some day in your spare time, but don't lard your 50th anniversary writings with that. It's tawdry and undignified, and we've heard it all a thousand times. And by "all," I don't really mean all. What's the one about the Federal Reserve? I just mean, if that's what you've found to talk about, just shut up.

6. Don't connect the story of JFK to Obama. I know it seems as though everything is about Obama, but resist. It's cheap and inappropriate.

7. Don't tell us about other Kennedys. Don't drag in the recent news that Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg's son Jack appears to have reached adulthood in nonugly form and has grown a large head of hair and is therefore presumptive presidential material. That's annoying and off-topic.

8. Don't commemorate murder. A man managed to kill the President. He's already gotten far too much press. He doesn't deserve our endless attention. I'm sick of "celebrating" a death day. We don't make anything of Lincoln's death day. We celebrate his birthday, like Washington's, because he was such a great President. We don't celebrate JFK's birthday — I don't even know what it is — because he was not great enough. We celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday, not the day he was assassinated. Why? Because of his greatness, and because we don't want to direct our attention toward his murder. So why do we focus on Kennedy's death day? It must be because he was not great enough, and because of points #1, #2, and #3, above. It's about ourselves. A man died and we morbidly relive it annually, for some reason that must make little sense to those under 50.

9. Do write to end the annual ritual of death commemoration. Nail down the coffin lid and give the dead President some peace. Inspire us to move on to modest acknowledgements of the date at 10 or 25 year intervals up until 2063, when we — those of us who survive — can go big for the centennial.

10. Do make it — if not original — short.

The Jackie Tapes: LBJ was behind the JFK assassination.

She spoke with historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. shortly after the assassination on tape recordings that Caroline Kennedy has decided to release early, supposedly "in exchange for ABC dropping its £10 million drama series about the family."

Also on the tapes: Jackie's belief that JFK was "having an affair with a 19-year-old White House intern," that she had affairs with movie star William Holden and Fiat founder Gianni Agnelli, and that "weeks before Mr Kennedy’s assassination, the couple had turned a corner in their relationship and were planning to have more children."

"Disappointment for Katie Holmes over axed Jackie Kennedy series."

1. First, of all: "axed." Should we be saying "axed"? There hasn't be a high-profile ax murder in a while, and now if there is one, The Daily Mail will have to answer for it.

2. Katie Holmes looks a little like Jackie in that get-up, but something's missing — something in the legs and arms proportionality. And that expression! Why is Katie always so sad?!

3. "JFK's niece Maria Shriver, and his daughter, Caroline Kennedy, are reported to have lobbied hard for the History Channel to pull the plug on the series." Katie and Tom less powerful than Maria and Caroline? Noooo!

4. A History Channel spokesperson said: "While the film is produced and acted with the highest quality, after viewing the final product in its totality we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not fit for the History brand... We recognise historical fiction is an important medium for storytelling and commend all the hard work and passion that has gone into the making of the series, but ultimately deem this as the right programming decision for our network." Find the lies in that statement. Why'd they approve of the production in the first place if that sort of thing isn't "right" for them?

5. Sorry about the "Schwarzenegger" tag. I don't feel like making a separate tag for Maria Shriver.

Giving the finger from a car in the Kennedy funeral procession.

It "appears to be 21 year old Rose Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and Edwin Schlossberg and granddaughter of former president John Fitzgerald Kennedy."



Obviously, someone in the crowd must have said something to her. What do you think it could have been? Is there anything that could have been said that, in your opinion, would justify her response? Your guesses will be more amusing if they're pro-Teddy.

Maybe she's just giving death the finger. You know, there's laughing at death. I'm thinking of giving death the finger.

The Vatican rejects Caroline Kennedy.

Obama picks Catholics as ambassador, but these are Catholics who support abortion, and the Vatican says no.

Caroline's real reason.

How can royalty have such a mundane failing?

Meanwhile, Ted didn't like being portrayed as semi-dead.

Caroline Kennedy withdraws??

She could have had the job if she'd wanted it, but Teddy's health has turned her against it? That doesn't seem believable.

UPDATE: ?????

6 reasons why nobody's making catty comments about the way Caroline Kennedy looks.

Just after midnight, I noted the question, asked here, with this photo:



This morning, I awoke with a list of answers:

1. Because we respect her sadness — her beautiful family, all gone.

2. Because we are awed by the grandeur expressed in the lack of need to doll herself up. Have you ever heard the expression "WASP makeup"? I read it, perhaps in Vogue, in the 1970s. Do you know what WASP makeup is? Lipstick. It is we lesser women who see a need for more than a swipe of dull pink lipstick.

3. Because her wrinkled skin means a life lived, and we don't know exactly how this enigma lived. Did she loll about in the sun? Did she chain-smoke? Did she take drugs? Did she anguish?

4. Because if that's what 51 looks like, then don't we look young? We have an interest in perceiving her as the norm.

5. Because she's so thin. Thinness immunizes you from all sorts of criticisms about wrinkly skin and absence of glamour.

6. Glamour? There is no greater glamour than to be Caroline Kennedy. You can't layer glamour on top of glamour.

Why aren't we talking about how Caroline Kennedy looks?

Noticing the absence of the usual catty talk.

What with all the time spent this year by women and journalists and everyone else obsessing over Sarah Palin's looks and lipsticks and wardrobe, it's hard to believe the absolute dearth of women journalists obsessing over Caroline Kennedy's physical appearance, makeup choices, and hairstyles. Why are her highlights not front-page news?...

.... Caroline was routinely compared to her famously svelte mother, and as a result her self-esteem plummeted. In a fit of pique that bordered on the bizarre, she shaved off one eyebrow. "My face," she offered by way of explanation, "is too symmetrical."

Bordered?

UPDATE: I have 6 answers to the question why we aren't talking about how Caroline Kennedy looks.

The Senate has the power to exclude Roland Burris, say lawprofs Akhil Reed Amar and Josh Chafetz.

They look at Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution — which makes each house of Congress "the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of its own members" — and find a power to judge the Blagojevich appointment:

At the founding, Senators were elected by state legislatures. If the Senate believed that legislators in a given state had been bribed into voting for a particular candidate, the Senate could refuse to seat him.

Because of the word "returns" in Section 5, what is true of elected Senators is equally true of appointed Senators. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a "Return" in the time of the framers involved a report of an appointment made by a sheriff or other official. If the Senate may refuse to seat a person picked in a corrupt election, it likewise may refuse to seat a person picked in a corrupt appointment process.

Amar and Chafetz need to deal with Powell v. McCormack, in which the Supreme Court said that the House did not have the power under Article I, Section 5 to refuse to seat Adam Clayton Powell. That case focuses on judging "qualifications," and the Court said that only relates to the qualifications specified in the Constitution — age, citizenship, and residency. Beyond those 3 qualifications, the people had the power to choose the representative they wanted. But Powell was clearly the people's choice, so what do you do with Powell when the governor appoints the new member? For an accurate analogy for the Burris appointment, imagine if the problem with Powell hadn't been that the members of Congress thought he was corrupt, but that they thought there had been a fraud in the election.

Now, the Powell case was about whether Powell could use the courts to override the decision to exclude him. The argument on the other side was that the House had the final call about the scope of the power to judge the qualifications of their own members. In that view, which the Court rejected, a vote to exclude already embodied the constitutional interpretation that they had the power. Our current discussion of the question of the scope of the power to exclude Burris will affect how the Senators think about the scope of their power, and articles like Amar and Chafetz's should embolden the Senators, and they may vote to exclude him. If that happens, Burris may sue in federal court, and then the court will have to decide whether the Senators' assessment of their own power is the final answer about the meaning of the Constitution.

But doubts about the scope of the Senate's power to look into the circumstances of the appointment may give the Senators pause. The vote to exclude Burris may fail — because of these constitutional doubts and for other reasons. If that happens, Burris will be seated and there will be no occasion for a court to discuss the scope of the exclusion power.

To be sure, there are plenty of other reasons to seat Burris. For one thing, if we rely on the theory that the Senators have the power to exclude him because the appointment process was corrupt, they will need to go through some sort of factfinding process. Blagojevich faces his criminal trial, but he is the duly elected governor of Illinois, with the power to appoint the Senator. What sort of parallel process in the Senate will be needed to make the exclusion legitimate?

In this context, the Senate itself is a judge, in the words of the Constitution, and can decide facts for itself. It need not follow the rules of criminal courts. That means it need not find Blagojevich guilty beyond reasonable doubt, as a court would if his liberty were in jeopardy. It is enough for the Senate to reject Blagojevich's appointee if a majority of senators are firmly convinced that Blagojevich is corrupt and that any nomination he might make is inherently tainted by such corruption.

If the Senators exclude Burris because they simply feel quite certain the appointment is tainted and not because they've gone through some impressive and fair factfinding, when — if — Burris goes to court to override their decision, Burris's argument about the scope of the power to exclude will look much more appealing. The Senate will need to argue that the court should defer, but the court will think less of this notion of deference if the process to be deferred to is not very impressive. Amar and Chafetz recognize this reality of litigation:

To make sure its ruling sticks, the Senate should follow its own procedures with due deliberation. Burris' case can be referred to a committee for careful review. He need not be seated while this committee does its work, and it will be very hard for Burris to persuade any federal judge to interfere in the meantime, especially if Senate Democrats and Republicans unite. With any luck, Blagojevich will be out of office soon enough and a new appointments process (or a special election) can begin that would supersede the attempted Burris appointment.

The delay itself is effective, but it does mire the Senate in an investigation of the Democratic governor. The argument will be made that the effort to exclude is more of a power grab than the governor's attempt to fulfill what is, after all, a duty of his office. Should the Senate Democrats want that? What a nasty preoccupation for Congress at what should be the fresh beginning of a new administration!

Amar and Chafetz make a good argument about the power to exclude but in doing so, they expose the political disaster it would be to vote to exclude.

ADDED: Lawprof Sandy Levinson puts it well:

I don't see how one can mount a good-faith argument against seating Burris unless one is willing to open each and every gubernatorial appointment to some kind of "good-government" scrutiny....

Should the motives of Gov. Patterson [sic] be subjected to relentless scrutiny if he bows to pressure to name Caroline Kennedy as a tribute to a dying senator and, in addition, to get access to the Bloomberg and Kennedy donor list that presumably comes with that appointment?

Should Governor Paterson choose a caretaker Senator?

There's a new election for the Hillary Clinton Senate seat in 2010 (and then again in 2012), so why not let that field of candidates develop in a naturally competitive fashion by putting someone there now who will perform the function in a dignified, statesmanlike way?

Some are suggesting Bill Clinton or Mario Cuomo, but — even if one of them would do it – there's an obvious problem: Shouldn't a woman replace Hillary? There are some senior, statesmanlike women in New York, and I don't mean Caroline Kennedy.

The caretaker option was exercised last month by Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, who picked a former aide to Vice President-elect Joe Biden to succeed him in the Senate until a new senator is elected in 2010. By then, Biden's son, state Attorney General Beau Biden, will have returned from a tour in Iraq with the National Guard — just in time to run for his father's seat.

Caroline Kennedy is in the Beau Biden category. I know he's delayed by his trip to Iraq, but aside from that, he wouldn't be properly respected if he didn't run for office. Let Caroline prove her stuff in a real competition for office. Perhaps she won't even try, if she's put that test. Deciding whether to run in a real competition is itself a test, and perhaps Princess Caroline would decline. I think the people of New York deserve to see if she would subject her royal self to the ordeal and, if she did, how she'd do debating scrappy politicians who haven't lived their lives swathed in adoration, wealth, and deference.

You know.

You know.

"We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling."

Wrote Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë in a letter published today by the New York Times on the subject of the impending possible appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the U.S. Senate.

Except it wasn't Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë.

We French have been consistently admiring of the American Constitution, but it seems that recently both Republicans and Democrats are drifting away from a truly democratic model. The Kennedy era is long gone, and I guess that New York has plenty of more qualified candidates to fill the shoes of Hillary Clinton. Can we speak of American decline?

Now, why did the Times fall for this? The correction says they didn't follow their own procedures, but why didn't they follow their own procedures? Were they just a little too delighted that he was saying what they hoped to hear? American decline. The French think America is in decline...

Hey, remember that time Sarah Palin thought she was talking on the phone with Nicolas Sarkozy? The NYT presented that mistake as "one of the last straws" that convinced McCain advisors that Palin didn't have what it takes:

Ms. Palin appeared to believe that she was talking to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, even though the prankster had a flamboyant French accent and spoke to her in a more personal way than would be protocol in such a call. At one point, he told Ms. Palin that she would make a good president some day. “Maybe in eight years,” she replied.

Fake French -- it's so obvious. Except when it isn't.

"She hails her own cabs!"

"This is what passes for a common touch these days?"

The dynastic struggle.

Ooh, this is just so frustrating for Andrew Cuomo.

From 1990 to 2003, Cuomo the Younger was married, Montague-and-Capulet style, to Robert F. Kennedy's daughter Kerry-and was close friends with Caroline's brother John Jr., from 1988 to his 1999 death. The marriage ended in a bitter divorce after Cuomo reportedly discovered his wife had an affair with a polo player....

"Incestuous, intermarrying with one another to take over the crown and consolidate power," is how one Nassau pol described the Kennedy-Cuomo relationship....

I didn't follow the divorce hijinx, but if it's true that Kerry cheated on Andy, then it's only fair that Andy should be Senator.

Who's the superior dynastic offspring?
	Andy
	Caroline
pollcode.com free polls

"In a carefully controlled strategy reminiscent of the vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin, aides to Caroline Kennedy interrupted her..."

"... and whisked her away when she was asked what her qualifications are to be a United States senator."

How to strike at the heart of a Democrat: Invoke Palin. Nice move, NYT.

Caroline was making an appearance in Syracuse -- had she ever been there before? -- and she spoke for a mere 30 seconds to say:

"As some of you may have heard, I told Governor Paterson I’d be honored to be considered for the position of United States senator. There’s a lot of good people in this community that the governor is considering. He’s laid out a process and I’m proud to be part of that process."

I'm waiting to hear what Governor Paterson will do, and I'm proud to be waiting to hear what it will be. By the way, why isn't it "and I'm humbled to be part of that process"? People are always saying they're proud of things and humbled by things. Bizarrely, there doesn't seem to be any difference these days.

Anyway, so the NYT has 2 reporters on the story. Did they both go to Syracuse to hear Caroline speak 30 seconds of nothing?

When one reporter asked what she would tell New Yorkers who question whether she has the qualifications for the job, Ms. Kennedy, 51, started to respond. But then an aide stopped her from saying more, and led her to the waiting vehicle.

“Hopefully I can come back and answer all those questions,” she called out as she got into the S.U.V.

It was the first stop in an orchestrated tour of upstate New York. Ms. Kennedy has plans to visit with officials in Rochester and, possibly, Buffalo, a first stab at getting skeptical upstate voters used to the idea of being represented in Washington by yet another down-stater.

The area has already expressed wariness of her, with some officials and newspapers questioning her abilities.

"The area" -- I love that. Here's a map in case you need help visualizing "the area" Caroline needs to win over as she ventures off Manhattan Island:



"Upstate New York" is everything north of the NYC metropolitan area.