Making a UIE: Uniformity, Inequity, and Exclusion

 

I've been producing a annotated news roundup on single-payer/public health, now called "Do Not Resuscitate," for nearly a decade. I recently migrated it to Substack [timfrasca]. Here's the latest edition. I'm taking out the hyperlinks due to space, but you can find them there.  Sign up for free if you're interested. <https://substack.com/home/post/p-175715615>. 

*

Shutdown: The Federal Government’s nap looks likely to continue as Democrats insist we preserve Obamacare’s massive subsidies to for-profit conglomerates rather than accede to the GOP plan to throw millions of Americans into uninsured purgatory. Heads, we destroy everything; tails, we pay off the insurance companies. And that’s the good news.

*

Peter Sullivan, “ACA premiums to rise 114% without subsidy renewal,” Axios, Oct 1, 2025 

Premiums will more than double for millions of Obamacare policy purchasers if Congress ends the extra subsidies: from an average of $888 to $1,904 per year. As those are averages, some people will get slammed much more severely.

*

Natalie Foster, “GOP to Gen Z: Pay double for health insurance or go without,” New York Times, Oct 5, 2025 

Imagine a single 28-year-old making a salary of $40K. This coming year, she’ll see her annual silver plan premium close to double, from about $1,500 to nearly $3,000 a year.

*

Mario Aguilar, “Home hospital programs in ‘terror’ as they grind to halt ahead of government shutdown,” STAT, Sep 30, 2025 

“Hospital at home initiatives across the country have already shut down” in anticipation of the Trump cuts. These Covid-emergency era innovations were created to ease the pressure on overburdened ERs; they’re grinding to a halt. Dr Oz at CMS ordered all Medicare-funded hospital-at-home programs immediately to discharge their patients and return them to hospitals.

*

Melissa Goldin, “Democrats did not shut down the government to give health care to ‘illegal immigrants,’” Associated Press, Oct 3, 2025

The soundbite Republicans are universally using over the shutdown is that Democrats are determined to shower free stuff on those awful immigrants. False but probably effective—immigrant-hatred is a winning strategy, at least for now. To repeat: Immigrants in the U.S. illegally are not eligible for any federal health care programs, including the commercial subsidies. Hospitals do have to treat everyone in emergencies, and sometimes they get compensatory payments for that. Or we could turn away people bleeding to death from gunshot wounds and let them die on the street outside the ER.

*

Emily Birnbaum, “Insurers spend big to save Obamacare subsidies at center of shutdown fight,” Bloomberg, Oct 1, 2025 

This account of the lobbying blitz around the subsidies highlights the eagerness of the for-profit insurance agency to pull its lucrative Obamacare chestnuts out of the fire. “Health insurers, long concerned a spike in insurance premiums triggered by the subsidies’ expiration will drive away millions of customers, are seizing the moment.” The ad campaign is co-sponsored by insurers and professional associations like the AMA, American Lung Association, and other health care advocates. This is where healthcare professionals have come to with the legacy of Obamacare: shilling for the profiteers because the alternative is mass exclusion from healthcare. Hard-line GOP ideologues, on the other hand, want the punishment to continue and, ironically—or perversely—argue that the shutdown is “Doing Insurers’ Bidding.” They’re not wrong.

*

“The shutdown will make Trump’s theory of government—ICE but no healthcare—visible,” Empty Wheel, Oct 1, 2025

This unsigned column makes the point that the Supreme Court has consistently given Trump the green light to withhold legally authorized money, taking the Article One power away from Congress and handing it to Trump’s anti-government enforcers. Therefore, while the shutdown may give Trump a PR excuse to fire more workers, “The larger point is that the government is already shut down and has been for several months. Activities deemed ‘essential’ by the president—stalking immigrants, lobbing missiles at Iran, etc.—have gone on, but activities purported to conflict with the president’s policies have been stopped. The shutdown can certainly be used rhetorically to justify more firings, but they’re just the same firings with a different rationale.” Excellent clarification.

*

Morgan Lee, “New Mexico legislators rush to shore up safety net programs after federal cuts,” Associated Press, Oct 1, 2025

States have to figure out whether to let their residents take the hit from Trump or do something. New Mexico has a high Medicaid participation rate and a budget surplus, which it is using to shore up that program and others. Because one quarter of the state’s residents use food stamps, “New Mexico legislators are considering a quick infusion of state spending on food assistance through SNAP and to food banks.” It will also cover cuts to the public broadcasting system to keep tribal ratio stations alive.

*

Jess Mador, “Changes coming to Georgia’s work requirement Medicaid ‘Pathways’ program,” WABE [Atlanta], Sep 29, 2025

Medicaid will require beneficiaries to prove they have the right to see doctors by documenting their noble worthiness as gainfully employed persons, imitating the Georgia “Pathways to Care” program, which has been a complete debacle and should be replicated in 49 other states. Georgia theoretically offers Medicaid to a married couple with one kid if they earn no more than $2000 a month. But no sitting around at home enjoying all that wealth. You have to be working, going to school, or now caring for a toddler. The latter exception is new as the Georgia GOP tries to expand its program beyond the 7,000 people who have entered it after a year of huge administrative expense and bureaucratic chaos. The state will also allow people to prove they work only once a year instead of every month in the original plan. The average time sink to post all the documentation is at least 5 hours according to one beneficiary, which makes sense given that 2/3 of Georgia’s Medicaid spending goes to admin costs. (Medicare spends 2%.) This is the giant mess that Trump is forcing on everyone, and it’s not a failure: it fulfills its true goal—throwing people off Medicaid.

*

Shannon Firth, “Study on Medicaid work requirements finds no gains in insurance, employment,” MedPage Today, Oct 1, 2025

Just to confirm, this study from Georgetown University demonstrates the utterly predictable: that Georgia's Medicaid work requirements did nothing to increase employment while enrolling a few thousand people. Meanwhile, North Carolina enrolled 650K (without documenting your job) during a similar period. The study’s author called the national rollout “shockingly bad health policy,” which is correct and a “spectacular failure,” which is not because it clearly succeeded in letting poor people get sick and die.

*

Mark V. Pauly, “Instead of work requirements, Medicaid should turn to employer incentives,” STAT, Oct 1, 2025 

This business professor proposes that instead of harassing Medicaid beneficiaries over their work record, why not help small businesses to provide medical coverage? “The only way for work requirements to shrink the Medicaid rolls by inducing people to work is to get them to take jobs that come with insurance benefits.” Therefore, he says, let’s provide more subsidies to firms that offer health benefits. This is well intentioned but more expensive tinkering around the edges of a failing system. Universalizing Medicare and breaking up the healthcare conglomerates would be cheaper and simpler.

*

Jeni Hebert-Beirne, “My equity research is being censored. I knew this day was coming,” MedPage Today, Oct 1, 2025

Moving over to another of Trump’s triumphs, the destruction of DEI, which we recall stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The Trump goal is Uniformity, Inequity, and Exclusion or, “let’s make a UIE”), and it’s working as designed. This researcher’s grant was accused of “immoral discrimination” against the privileged majority and canceled. He was working with a community team in Chicago where average life expectancy for black people is 11 fewer years than for whites, and food insecurity is 40% versus 13%. And that, in Trumpland, is how things should be. The author points out one little-known counterintuitive fact: that rich societies with huge inequalities are unhealthier overall, meaning that the wealthiest also do poorly.

*

Lisa Schencker, “Black babies die suddenly, unexpectedly at 14 times the rate of white babies in Cook County,” Chicago Tribune, Oct 1, 2025 

Another successful Trump goal—killing off nonwhite infants at a comfortably high rate. Infant deaths are mostly preventable with proper pre- and post-natal care, programs Trump is also putting on the chopping block.

*

Katia Riddle, “What Mississippi's infant mortality crisis says about the risks of Medicaid cuts,” NPR, Oct 2, 2025

Another example from Mississippi: infant deaths are the highest in a decade and worsening, leading to the declaration of a statewide public health emergency. Medicaid cuts will make it worse. “More than half the counties in Mississippi are considered maternity care deserts where prenatal care is difficult or impossible to find.” Destroying the rural health safety net will make that worse.

*

Paula Andalo, “Health centers face risks as government funding lapses,” KFF Health News/CBS News, Oct 3, 2025

More proud moments for the GOP budget-slashers: 1,500 federally funded health centers, which run on sliding scales to accommodate 34 million users, face “significant financial challenges.” One network manager in California calls it the “worst time ever” for his 28 clinics and their 40% Hispanic population. Several states are trying to top up the clinics’ income with state funds, but California’s governor Newsom promptly cut their budgets in anticipation of the coming Medicaid disaster. No doubt that will make him an attractive “centrist” presidential candidate in two more years.

*

Brandy Zadrozny, “Mark Blaxill helped build the anti-vaccine movement. RFK Jr. just hired him at CDC,” MSNBC, Sep 26, 2025

On the quackocracy front, RFK Jr isn’t slowing down a bit. He appointed another mountebank to a top role at the CDC, one Mark Blaxill, who thinks all vaccines injure children and once edited the anti-vaccine website, Age of Autism. Kennedy likes to cite one of Blaxill’s papers but doesn’t mention that “Autism Tsunami” was later withdrawn by the journal due to statistical misrepresentation, “unrepresentative data, unjustified assumptions, and undisclosed conflicts of interest.”

*

Céline Gounder, “Inside the high-stakes battle over vaccine injury compensation, autism and public trust,” CBS News, Sep 30, 2025

Here’s a Kennedy idea that could lead to untold disaster: adding autism to the list of conditions covered by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which was created to accommodate people’s nervousness about vaccines. Its entire reason to exist is to NOT demand clear proof of direct causation but to give claimants the benefit of the doubt if there is some plausible connection between a vaccine and an adverse event. It’s like no-fault car insurance—everyone gets taken care of without lengthy court battles. Kennedy wants to add autism as a probable outcome, which will bankrupt the program and drive vaccines manufacturers to exit the business entirely. If he gets away with this, we could end up with no vaccines at all.

*

Aurora Horstkamp, Miriam Rabkin & Benedicte Callan, “Whopper of the Week: RFK Jr. is dead wrong babies won’t get hepatitis B,” Defend Public Health, Oct 8, 2025

WoW is a fun ongoing series that everyone should sign up for produced by Defend Public Health. [Disclosure: I’m a member.] Babies can and do get hepatitis B, or they used to before widespread vaccination. The virus “easily passes from mother to child during childbirth” but also can circulate in a household or a daycare center through casual contact. Of the estimated 1 million Americans with chronic Hep B, and only half of them know it. “Removing the recommendation for universal vaccination of newborns and instead screening for hepatitis B infection in the mother will miss 12–16% of pregnant women who do not receive prenatal screening.” Of course, we could improve prenatal care and drive that number down, but that would cost money needed for tax cuts. How long will it take to work our way back up to the 20K annual infant Hep B infections per year that we used to enjoy?

*

Lucy Hutner, Parvaneh Nouri & Yokarla Veras, “Self-blame and panic has set in among our pregnant patients,” MedPage Today, Oct 2, 2025

Donald Trump’s medical expertise has led to a wave of “guilt, self-blame, and panic” among parents now freaking out over the dangers of medications used during pregnancy. These psychiatrists say the new message is landing “with searing clarity”: if anything goes wrong, it’s Mom’s fault. You took Tylenol, and the baby’s a mess.

*

Stephanie Soucheray, “Poll shows Americans view COVID-19 vaccines as unsafe for pregnant women,” CIDRAP, Oct 1, 2025

A new poll shows that fewer than half think it’s safe for pregnant women to be vaccinated against Covid.

*

Leana S. Wen, “The real problem with Tylenol (it’s not autism),” Washington Post, Sep 30, 2025 

Nuance does not make for good soundbites, so cautioning people about acetaminophen use will be harder than ever after the Trump-RFK Jr medical PR spectacle. Tylenol probably shouldn’t be an over-the-counter medication and should certainly have more consistent warnings about how easy it is to overdose on it. Acetaminophen present in 600 medicines, meaning one can easily mix them and poison oneself either accidentally or intentionally. We should check labels for abbreviations such as “APAP,” “Acetam,” or the alternate name paracetamol.

*

Mikhail Zinshteyn, “Trump administration restores research grants to UCLA following federal judge’s order,” CalMatters/Associated Press, Sep 30, 2025

On the destruction of biomedical research, the Trump Administration lost a round in federal court after a judge restored almost all of UCLA’s NIH grants. So far, Trump’s officials have obeyed the order, but the fight over phony anti-Semitism in the UC system continues. Let’s see if the judge who issued the ruling still gets called out by the White House or if her house blows up. “Rita Lin has restored hundreds of other research grants from multiple agencies across the UC system.”

*

Meg Tirrell, “RFK Jr.’s HHS killed a research grant to investigate vaccine safety, then asked the researcher to publicly present results,” CNN, Oct 4, 2025 

Tragicomedy at HHS: “About 90 seconds into his presentation on Covid-19 vaccine safety at a closely watched meeting of advisers to the CDC last month, Dr. Bruce Carleton made a startling revelation: The government grant supporting his research had been abruptly terminated.” That’s right, he was researching Covid vaccine safety, but the algorithm or some junior DOGEbag saw the word Covid, said, That’s all over, and canceled his grant. After the researcher’s announcement, the HHS immediately said it wasn’t true, which it was.

*

Amudalat Ajasa & Rachel Roubein, “How the agriculture lobby rushed to defend pesticides from MAHA,” Washington Post, Oct 6, 2025 

What about Kennedy’s public stance at a crusader against environmental toxins? It doesn’t hold up. “Alarmed by the first MAHA commission report, the agriculture industry mobilized to shape the next installment.” And didn’t that pay off! Pesticides and herbicides got the kid gloves treatment in the next MAHA report. Specifically, there were no more questions about glyphosate and atrazine, despise their known carcinogenic attributes. Moms Across America denounced the “glaring example of chemical company influence,” but in the battle between corporate America and the Moms, I’m betting on Kyle Kunkler, former director of government affairs for the American Soybean Association, now deputy assistant administrator for pesticides in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. That’s right, the guy who used to lobby Washington to protect pesticides is now in charge of regulating them.

*

Walt Bogdanich, Carson Kessler & Jeremy Singer-Vine, “How private equity oversees the ethics of drug research,” New York Times, Oct 4, 2025 

After shocking abuses in medical research came to light, such as the notorious Tuskegee syphilis study in which black men were left untreated so that they could be studied as they got sick and died, researchers now have to monitored by ethics committees, which are called IRBs, Independent Review Boards. How independent are they? Not so much, according to this account about how private equity has absorbed the for-profit IRB business. Novo Nordisk, for example, makers of one of the fat shots, “didn’t have to venture far to hire an ethics panel for its liver-disease trial. It chose WCG Clinical, a review board partly owned by its own corporate parent.” How convenient! The same outfit is eager to prove a drug works gets ethics approval from an affiliated IRB. “Private-equity investors are transforming this obscure but vital corner of American health care. Today, more than half of all U.S. drug trials are reviewed by for-profit panels, blurring the line between the reviewer and the reviewed.” And we wonder why crackpots have convinced millions of people to distrust everything. This cozy relationship raises the question of what may have been shoved under the rug in the testing of the wildly popular fat shots. No doubt we’ll find out in a few years. Worth reading in full.

*

See the full archive at www.nypan.org/single-payer-news

The Zohran phenomenon (from the inside)

That boastful headline is required because of the flood of commentary about Zohran Mamdani’s stunning upset victory as the Democrats’ nominee for New York City mayor. Everyone has an opinion; the only reason you might want to know mine is that I worked on the campaign. I also saw ZM in action as state assemblyman years ago and paid attention to his initiatives. I can’t claim that I spotted him as a unique talent, but I liked what I saw.

Here’s the part that is not controversial: Zohran came out of nowhere with 1% name recognition, put together a killer online campaign, assembled and inspired a massive volunteer army, and charmed the pants off the city—or parts of it anyway. He is a natural politician, quick on his feet, doesn’t get rattled, and engaged with all sorts of people in his tireless street outreach, which his team turned into clever and fun videos. He has such a sunny disposition that the Cuomo attack team couldn’t really find a photo of him scowling to run in their TV ads.

To everyone’s surprise (including mine), he didn’t just edge past Cuomo—he blew him out of the water. The whole thing was over an hour after the polls closed.

A lot of talk ensued about how that was just the Democrats’ primary, the full city can vote in November, all the independents are out there unconvinced, Republicans (there are some) will hate him, Cuomo’s still on the ballot. Yada yada. Mayor Adams is still on the ballot, too, and shows no inclination to drop his delusional re-election bid. The millionaires desperately casting around to decide where to put their next gazillion dollars to stop ZM are in a panic because they have only two real choices, both laughably awful.

Four months is a long time in politics, but Zohran is now a phenomenon, racking up union endorsements (including some who started out with Cuomo), pulling in some early Democrat machine figures who can feel the winds shifting, and crushing it with the mainstream media whose gotcha interviewers can’t lay a finger on him. He attracts crowds that cheer him like a rock star.

I think it’s too late—the establishment just got handed its fat ass. I anticipate that it will now shift to figuring out how to destroy Mamdani’s attempt to govern for the 90%.

To that end, a lot of people have fallen into nay-saying about what’s possible. They’re sure Albany will block him, the business class with boycott him, the cops will undermine him, and in short, all his fine plans are impossible. To which, Zohran says, Just what I was told when I started this run last year. As for the impossible, let’s just see.

The Debbie Downers have not grasped what it means to have an army of fired up backers ready to mobilize to support the new mayor’s program. Governor Hochul already has said no to any new taxes on billionaires. Okay, but she’s also facing a credible primary challenge next year. Does she want some of Zohran’s 50,000 volunteers to mobilize against her re-election?

Zohran has called for a rent freeze, and he can do that single-handedly. The mayor appoints the majority of the Rent Guidelines Board, which sets rates for over half a million stabilized apartments.

Child care now costs an average of $20,000 a year in New York City; Zohran wants to provide it for free. We’re talking some seriously motivating concrete benefits that are easy for voters to understand.

Zohran won on people power, which partly explains why the anti-Semitism label failed to stick (aside from it being ridiculous). Nobody dreamed that political figures in our city could fail to toe the Zionist line and survive. He did. In my view, that’s because the youth-led revulsion against the genocide in Gaza, which was crushed at the university level with repression, threats, and lawfare, got channeled into the Zohran campaign.

That’s not to say that people were explicitly motivated by his unwavering stance on Palestine though some undoubtedly were. But Zohran’s refusal to shade his views for mainstream acceptability turned him into a figure of faith and credibility for a generation that views current political leadership with plain contempt.

Some pundits have pointed out that Zohran did well among the college educated while lower-income and black populations liked Cuomo. Bernie started out the same way, then drew in a broader base over time. In my canvassing experience, younger black and Hispanic voters were open to Zohran while their parents and grandparents stuck with the machine. I think the kids will now start to persuade their elders.

And now for a granular look at the wide disparity in results. Here are the percentages broken out by congressional district:

                                  

*District 3 includes non-NYC areas of Long Island; vote reflects only NYC

Cuomo dominated ex-Congressman Jamaal Bowman’s Riverside district (16) in the Bronx, heavily Orthodox Jewish. Latimer was shoehorned in with millions in from AIPAC.

Cuomo also did well in Meeks’ east Brooklyn, heavily African-American district (5), and in Tel Aviv Congressman Ritchie Torres’ Bronx farm (15).

Other than that, Cuomo had no noticeable geographic strengths. They battled to virtual ties in the Asian sections of Queens (6) and Hakeem Jeffries’ mid-Brooklyn stronghold (8).

Party loyalist Adriano Espaillat couldn’t hold his Dominican Upper Manhattan district (13) for Cuomo—one of his allies even campaigned for Zohran in the neighborhood.

The big Hasidic/Orthodox concentrations in Borough Park in Brooklyn turned out as expected, handing Cuomo 90% in some precincts (District 9), but Zohran’s base right next door balanced them. The Williamsburg Hasids’ unanimity for Cuomo was buried by Zohran’s massive turnout in Velasquez’ district (7).

Perhaps the most significant shift in this election, however, is about turnout. Traditionally (and not just in New York City), older voters predominate. As a result, candidates tend to pander to them. This time, the age distribution was exactly reverse—the big turnout came in the 25–35 age bracket, followed by 18 to 24-year-olds. If that sticks, it’s a game-changer.

These results show what a patchwork of ethnicities and political leanings the city is, which makes it tough to roll up a consensus on any policy. For that, we need inspired leadership and a populace ready to hit the streets to neutralize the money power.

Zohran’s canvassing teams were a sight to behold for their sheer numbers and their determination and enthusiasm. I was pleasantly surprised, being a granddad among them, to be asked my opinions about things, given my usual invisibility in crowds. They seemed hungry to learn from experience and to be directed toward useful sources of information.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a principal driver of the volunteer turnout, has attracted 3,500 new members in the course of the Zohran blitz. It’s now a seasoned electoral force after a decade of steady successes (and plenty of failures). It uses the Democrat line in elections to devastating effect, but it’s not enmeshed in the party machinery—the bosses didn’t want us around and chased us off. Maybe they regret it—they should.

One last thought: some commentators wax on about how the Dems should “learn from” Zohran and shift their approach. They presume that the underlying problem is messaging or generational stagnation. It’s not.

The Democrats’ role in our polity is to crush social movements like Zohran’s to protect their base among the professional-managerial class and their own sets of billionaires. They might try to coopt his platform and even adopt a few of his measures. But they absolutely don’t want a mass movement to arise behind any of their own candidates because that would mean loss of control.

That they fear worse than a whole gallery of Trumps. Zohran has declared enemies (R) and treacherous allies (D). All he can really count on is the people, the organized and mobilized people. So far, he has them.

 

War with Iran YES/NO

A debate has broken out in the shadow blogo-video-sphere over whether the U.S. and Israel are/are not headed for a shooting—or, more accurately, bombing—war with Iran.

On the NO side, experts point to the multiple reasons why neither side should want a major blow-up in West Asia.

—Iran has steadfastly avoided war despite repeated provocations. Its economy is in the crapper already,  and the Iranian leadership knows the terrible destruction a full-scale attack could inflict on the country. 

—The U.S. under the new regime is trying to get out of one war and hardly needs another. The economic fallout of a disruption of Middle East oil supplies is scarcely imaginable. 

—Despite hot-headed rhetoric on both sides, diplomatic feelers are being extended, according to consistent reports (including from Steve Witkoff, Trump’s personal envoy). Trump’s bombast is so familiar that people tend to dismiss it as carnival barking. Iran’s head mullah is dismissive but always leaves the door slightly ajar. 

—Russia and China absolutely do not want a blow-up, which would cause them great harm. China would face severe energy shortages without its supplies from the Gulf. Its brokering of the 2023 Saudi-Iranian reconciliation was designed to cool everyone’s jets for the same reason. War is the last thing they want. 

Noteworthy among all these reasonable arguments is the fact that they are, well, reasonable. Since when has reason played a leading role in our world and especially that part of it? Much more dominant are zealotry, sectarian rage, imperial meddling, and plain bloody-mindedness.

Trump already has started his own personal war, the one in Yemen, that he promises will last “a long time.”  The Signalgate kerfluffle around the stupid leaking of real-time war plans to a reporter obscures the more important fact that once again the U.S. has embarked on an undeclared war. 

For decades Iran has been the prize boogeyman and target of the U.S. neocon cabal and their Israeli buddies. Gen. Wesley Clark told a now-notorious story in his memoirs about being shown secret Pentagon war plans to attack seven Muslim states in the region after 9/11: Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan. A quick review of the list shows that at least five of these planned wars have occurred. (Sudan is locked in a civil war, so maybe that counts as well.) Why not go 7 for 7?

Israel’s enemy countries list always featured Iran above all others. Many war-loving officials in both Washington and Jerusalem think this is their big chance.

Religious fervor doesn’t intersect with prudent decision-making. Trump’s considerable base among Christian fanatics think wars in Israel will usher in the Apocalypse, the return of Jesus Christ, and the Rapture. If you see piles of unattended clothes scattered in the streets, it’s time to convert! 

Israel has its own religious nutbags. According to former U.K. diplomat Alistair Crooke, many Israelis believe world Jewry must suffer through severe tribulations before the Messiah touches down. War with Iran fits their eschatological worldview. 

Sober thinking about what might be in a country’s self-interest presumes facts not in evidence—that people aren’t drunk on their belief systems. Overheated rhetoric emanating from the White House could be “good television,” as Trump likes to say. Or, it could be taken seriously with drastic consequences. Some historians think Egyptian President Nasser’s florid rhetoric provided Israel with the needed excuse for the 1967 attack that redrew the region’s boundaries.

Wars often start from accidental triggers, lit matches tossed onto dry kindling. That’s why real diplomats worry about things like military buildups on sensitive borders, cheap verbal belligerence, or reneging on agreed deals. Provocative military preparations and demagogically ratcheting up tensions to play to the domestic audience can unintentionally spark fanatics on either side to take fateful steps that unleash real shit.

We can think that cautious heads will prevail, but there's no guarantee of that. Bluster and public wand-waxing are great fun as long as there are no consequences, but they prepare the ground for nasty surprises. And wars are much easier to start than to stop.

Many experts agree with former Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar that “talk of a US-Iran war is all a load of baloney.” How many deadly wars have been preceded by just such confident dismissals?

 

The Ukraine delusions finally dissipate

While it’s premature to announce the end of hostilities in Ukraine, some important changes are afoot.

Trump has decided to reopen lines of communication with Russia given that it remains a nuclear power. In the bad old Cold War days, our leaders thought staying in touch to avoid ending life on earth was a prudent choice. That went out of style with Biden, but talking is back. Good.

Despite Trump’s usual gloating about his “highly productive” 90-minute phone call with Vladimir Putin—everything always goes great in Trumpland—, the two sides remain miles apart. Today’s preparatory meeting in Saudi Arabia will provide an opportunity shorten the distance. 

While the U.S. readout on the preceding phonecall highlighted Trump’s commitment to finding an end to the conflict in Ukraine, the Russians’ version displayed no particular urgency on that topic and instead drew attention to what it called the root causes of the conflict.

While Russia welcomed the open channel of communication that ended 3 years of silence, its statement emphasized the barriers to healthy interstate relations inherited from the previous US administration with particular attention to the seizure of Russian diplomatic properties by Obama. For them, Ukraine is only one of several key international issues, including developments in Palestine. Ouch.

The Russians also made a point of noting that the call came at the initiative of the American side. This is a standard diplomatic signal to reflect frigidity that says, “You guys—not us—needed to talk. So, wazzup?”

The Russians also added a telling paragraph at the end of their statement: “The U.S. President assured the President of Russia of the American side’s commitment to fulfill all the agreements reached.” English translation: Why should we believe anything you say since you constantly renege on every promise? (Minsk I, Minsk II, the ABM treaty, the INF treaty, and—let’s go back further—the solemn assurances of no NATO expansion offered 3 decades ago).

What can we expect of the talks about Ukraine at this point? Much ink has been spilled over various statements and speeches by U.S. officials that included serious canings of the Europeans. Defense Secretary Hegseth dropped the first bomb at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels, informing them that Ukraine’s eastern provinces are lost for good, that there would be no U.S. peacekeeping troops anywhere near the place, and that they could forget about adding Ukraine to NATO. 

Although Hegseth was contradicted by others, VP Vance then showed up to bat the EU’s top leadership around like a whiffle ball. Although Vance didn’t say much about Ukraine, he pointedly questioned whether defending “democracy” against Russia included overturning an election result (in Romania) because the winner wasn’t the EU’s favorite.

Russia isn’t a threat to Europe, Vance told them MAGA-style. You yourselves are, abortion, immigrants, blah blah. He then had a meeting with the right-wing party standing in Germany’s imminent elections, demonstrating once again that the U.S. will intervene in other people’s elections, but don’t interfere in ours.

Americans can indulge in arrogant sermons in front of their vassal subalterns like France and Germany, but chest-thrusting is not going to work so well in the upcoming chats with the Russkies. After 3 years of war and roughly 100,000 dead soldiers, the Russian diplomats will reflect their country’s mood, which is not a forgiving one. Talk of a ceasefire in place so that Ukraine can rearm and restart the fighting in a few years will go nowhere.

It's not at all clear whether the Trump people have access to accurate information about what has been happening on the ground in the Ukraine given the blockade of any dissident views on the topic in our media landscape and, presumably, within the walls of the state itself. Trump himself parroted some foolishness about casualty numbers, probably fed to him by professional liars at the CIA or even directly from Ukrainian cartoonists. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard will make sure he gets some facts.

EU poohbahs are hopping mad about being left out of the talks, which was pretty clearly a condition of the Russians for having a meeting at all. That’s the meaning of the RF ministry’s statement on the call about “key international issues,” of which Ukraine is merely one. The Russians want to see progress on how to restructure the security environment on their western border, and they want to discuss it with the only player that really matters: the USA. The Europeans are spoilers. 

Europe hitched its wagon to the neocon vision of dealing Russia a strategic defeat, getting Putin ousted, and then carving up the remaining Russian assets in a rerun of the great fun they had in the post-Soviet period when Russian life expectancy plummeted and the West got rich along with the oligarchs.

Alexander Mercouris pointed out on his YouTube channel that he witnessed the glee with which the Europeans and Americans both saw the Ukraine war coming and could hardly wait to launch their inevitable victory over the “gas station parading as a country,” “Nigeria with snow,” etc.

We Americans are experts at selling a narrative, peddling emotionally persuasive versions of reality to sell products. Our politics are advertising battles to get people to feel good about a convincing story line, and we’re damn good at it. However, relying on expert messaging at the expense of facts has deeply corrupted our politics and our leadership.

We do such a good job at propaganda that we eventually convince ourselves that our visions have taken physical form. A future Ph.D. history student should dig into the archives and document how deeply convinced everyone was that the Ukrainians would make short work of the incompetent, backward, unmotivated, etc., Russian armed forces while the all-out assault on Russia’s economy would “turn the ruble into rubble” in Joe Biden’s memorable phrase. 

Reality is a bitch. Even Trump will have to deal with it.

Celebrating Ronald Reagan’s liberation of Auschwitz

It was exactly 80 years ago this week—HAHA, not really. But Reagan told the tale of his presence in the liberated camps so often that he probably convinced himself of it as lifelong mythmakers often do. When you bamboozle people for a living, it must get easier over the years.

But while the Americans were there to indulge their versions of history, the Russians again weren’t invited to the Auschwitz memorial even though Red Army troops liberated the place (not George C. Scott).

But that’s because Russia launched what we must always call its “unprovoked” attack on Ukraine 3 years ago out of unjustified squeamishness over NATO creeping eastward. No one understands why they’re so nervous about NATO even as the new head of EU foreign policy, Kaja Kallas from Lilliput, er Estonia, calls for Russia to be broken up into smaller pieces.

Nor should they worry about Chrysta Freeland close to taking over as PM of Canada. She’s the ex-foreign secretary whose grandfather was a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator. We recall that Canada is the country where the entire parliament stood up to cheer a veteran of a Ukrainian Nazi brigade. 

Of course, we can’t criticize much since our entire Congress roared with approval not at a former fascist but an active-duty one just last year.

Speaking of that guy, Poland offered to suspend fulfillment of the ICJ arrest warrant on Benjamin Netanyahu so that today’s genocidaire extraordinaire could show up to the Auschwitz memorial to mock the dead. Turns out in our upside-down world it’s possible to express horror at a past slaughter while carrying out one of your own.

We don’t pay a lot of attention to how the other side views us. We should. It may come as a surprise to know that the Russians think World War 2 hasn’t yet ended and that they’re now fighting clean-up battles against the Azov brigade and other 40s-nostalgic ideologues in Ukraine. The sight of German tanks heading toward Russia from the plains of Ukraine didn’t help.

Nor did the spectacle of German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock praising her active-duty Nazi soldier-grandpa at the Auschwitz memorial. 

In his usual sensitive way, Trump reinforced the insult by claiming that the USSR “helped us” win the war against the Nazis. Russians mostly think it was the other way around given the 11 million deaths of Red Army soldiers (plus 16 million Soviet civilians).

But the spirit of Ronald Reagan hovers above. Some of Trump’s incoming team remain trapped in Reaganite-Disney version of the battlefield in which just a few more armaments and a couple more forays will set things up for a Korean-style armistice and another 8 decades of hostilities on Russia’s western border. I guess Fantasyland has all the best rides, but those tickets cost a lot. 

Helping Ukraine get a foothold in pre-2014 Russian territory via the Kursk incursion hasn’t worked out so well given the estimated 55,000 Ukrainian dead on that front alone (almost exactly the total U.S. deaths in Vietnam over a decade). The attempt to carry the war to Russian lands is ending in defeat, but Trump’s people think the next attempt will succeed at last. Then we can all go on Space Mountain!

Trump also threatened more sanctions to wreck the Russian economy even though the first 12 rounds didn’t. Maybe he’ll include an import ban on the enriched uranium Russia supplies to U.S. nuclear power plants—that should hurt somebody. The Russians are unlikely to weep over the remaining $3 billion of annual commerce with the U.S. (down from $35 billion in 2021). 

Soviet Marshall Zhukov made a famous wisecrack after leading the Red Army's destruction of the Nazi regime: "We liberated Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us." Given the record of the last 80 years, he wasn't far off. 

Will Russia be worried at the prospect of more U.S./NATO weapons supplies to sustain the Ukrainian army now that it’s lowering the draft age to 18? In any case, those kids will have plenty of training time since the shipments won’t be ready until somebody figures out how to produces it. Since the U.S. industrial base was shipped off to China and other cheap-labor countries since the 1980s, Ukraine will have to hold off Russian advances until someone scrambles it back together.

Yeah, sorry, the war is lost. No wonder Trump & Co. are starting to downplay it and subtly moving the whole business off the front pages. Maybe they'll pretend it never existed.

Years ago, Karl Rove said Republicans would reframe reality, and they did. We have the greatest fighting force in history, we defeated Nazi Germany in 1945, Ukraine will overthrow Putin, and nobody needed that Arctic ice sheet anyway. What’s important is that Americans feel good about themselves and stop apologizing. 

Reagan’s smiling belief in his own weird, private world is still the dominant political-informational mode we live under. You assert a thing, repeat it relentlessly, denounce nay-sayers, and little by little everyone gives in. Trump is the direct descendant of RR as the proud modern practitioner of the Make Shit Up style of governance. It works until it doesn't.

And now, back to Auschwitz to see how Private Reagan dismantled the gas chambers.

Should our presidents be nice?

 

Jimmy Carter was apparently a genuinely nice fellow.

Donald Trump isn’t famous for that. Neither was FDR.

In our media-mediated age, we’re taught to think that our leaders should be guys we’d fancy having a beer with. Or ladies. Hillary was dinged as unable to project empathy even though she liked to swill whiskey with army generals.

John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was said to do well because he wore workingman’s clothes and made voters feel they could “relate.”

For my part, I don’t relate to any of these guys and don't want to. In my old-fashioned way, I want them to do good things even if they’re raging assholes.

But let’s have a look at what nice President Carter did for us.

It’s easy to forget what a disaster Jimmy Carter’s presidency was and not for the reason given at the time--that he was too idealistic and therefore weak and let the Soviets and the Iranians take advantage.

Carter wasn’t weak at all when it came to his policy goals, led (by the nose perhaps) by his eminence gris, the Russia-hating Polish immigrant Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski saw no evolutionary nuances in the Soviet system like the proponents of the Nixon-Kissinger détente did, and he set about dismantling it.

Carter did his bidding by signing off on support for Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan well before the Soviet invasion (with some unfortunate boomerang results).

He also dug in with the Shah of Iran while ignoring reports that the shah’s rule was shaky. He ignored further advice not to admit the shah into the U.S. after his overthrow, leading directly to the hostage crisis that collapsed his presidency.

Carter had a star turn as a peacemaker between Israel and Egypt culminating in the Camp David Accords. That set the stage for further Israeli intransigence and gleeful destruction of the Palestinians.

Carter had nothing to say about the relentless Israeli settler project, which led to the hardening of  Israel's colonizing ambitions since it no longer had to worry about 100 million Egyptians on its borders. In addition, as Michael K. Smith wrote in Counterpunch,

His much-praised Camp David accords were the death warrant for Lebanon as Israel was freed to concentrate undivided attention on a long-planned invasion across its northern border. It was this invasion (June 1982) that convinced Osama bin Laden that only mass murder of Americans could ever change U.S. foreign policy.

Fifty years later, we can see the outcome: Carter got the Nobel while undermining chances of a long-term peace. 

Of course, as an ex-president he did courageously denounce the Israeli state for practicing apartheid. Too bad he hadn't noticed when he could have done something about it. 

Like his “peacemaker” reputation, Carter also is remembered for highlighting “human rights” as a cornerstone of U.S. relations with the world. It’s easy to forget—or not know given our PR approach to history—that the U.S. had sunk into acute disrepute over its decade of atrocities in Vietnam and its shameless promotion of vicious military dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere. 

Carter, a nice fellow with a humanitarian impulse, was a convenient antidote for regaining the lost moral high ground.

As we have since seen, “human rights” was quickly turned into an excuse to continue America’s expeditionary imperialism. Convenient accusations of “human rights” abuse popped up anywhere the U.S. wanted to stage its next invasion.

We heard about Saddam Hussein’s crimes, Khaddafy’s brutality, and al-Assad’s nastiness just as the U.S. needed them demonized. If a foreign enemy had to be undermined or unseated, moralizing over “human rights” was ever-ready as a spearpoint.

Conversely, problems with “human rights” among our allies never quite made it to the front pages or the TV news segments. Even Saddam Hussein’s use of poison gas against his Kurdish population was excused while he fought a war against Iran, only to be resuscitated later when it was time to invade Iraq and restore “human rights.”

Carter chided Duvalier for his dictatorial rule in Haiti while deporting Haitian refugees back there. He winked at the South Korean military dictatorship and defended the CIA’s role in installing Chile’s Pinochet.

Nice Jimmy Carter could also launch the rollback of the New Deal that might have been resisted had some post-Nixon conservative attempted it too early. Under Carter, we had mass deregulation of a slew of industries including airlines, trucking, telecommunications, and railroads, ushering in the neoliberal era.

Carter delivered the goods for Wall Street though not quickly nor thoroughly enough and was shoved aside by the Reagan Revolution, which he arguably initiated.

It's true that Jimmy Carter did great things for world health, like eliminating guinea worm disease. He acted to protect the ozone layer by banning CFCs. Good! No doubt he thought the planet worth saving, and maybe you have to be kinda nice to feel that.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, isn’t likely to go down in history as nice, compassionate, humanitarian, or a fun guy on the next barstool. He’s an arrogant prick, a narcissistic scammer, and as empathetic as a scorpion in your shoe.

Maybe that’s why he could send his real estate buddy Steve Witkoff to Israel and tell Netanyahu that he didn’t give a rat’s ass whether it was the holy Shabat or Hallowe’en. I’m coming for your signature on this deal, said Witkoff, so get your inkstand out.

Would Kamala Harris have done anything like that? No. Is she nicer? Probably.

Who knows if this means the slaughter of Gazans will end or what new horror Trump’s Zionist billionaires has planned for them. For now, however, Trump turns out to be the lesser of two evils on genocide, and that’s true whether he or anyone around him is nice.

It’s time to put “niceness” to sleep as a political category, alongside “sincerity.” As my late friend Gabrielle always used to say, referring to her escape from the Nazis at age 14, “Hitler was sincere. So what?”

Two vigilantes

 

In May 2023, Daniel Perry took down Jordan Neely, an erratic homeless man who was making wild threats on a New York subway car. Perry then killed Neely by strangulation.

Police reacted nonchalantly to the Perry-Neely killing, at first letting Perry go without charges.

In December 2024, Luigi Mangione fired bullets at the back of a prominent accountant, Brian Thompson, who was minding his own business on a midtown Manhattan street.

Police mobilized an intense manhunt for the Thompson killer, with the police commissioner appearing daily flanked by a phalanx of top NYPD officials vowing to track down the threat to the business district’s reputation for safety.

Perry’s defense fund quickly raised $1.5 million from people who cheered his permanent removal of the subway ranter. Tabloid news coverage noted that he was an ex-Marine, more for the heroic aspect than the implication that he knew how to kill people.

Other New Yorkers were uncomfortable with the extreme action. Dealing with unhinged riders on the underground trains is a daily occurrence for anyone who rides them regularly.

While we’re always wary of how things can get out of control, nearly all of the mentally ill passengers are merely exasperating. (There are exceptions.) We give them a wide berth or move to another car.

The hundreds of uniformed NYPD and MTA agents swarming the platforms don’t ever seem willing or authorized to do anything about the assorted monologuists and dazed spirits. One occasionally sees security talking to a lost soul in the station, getting them to stand up from their squats, or nudging people unconscious on the platforms or sound asleep at the system’s terminal stations.

But I have never once seen police climb onto the subway itself and remove someone causing a disturbance, (illegally) flogging chocolates to every rider one by one, or preaching The Word to a captive audience.

I’d support them if they did.

I’d be even gladder if the city ever figured out how to attend to the untold thousands of mentally ill people who have taken up residence in the subway system in the absence of anywhere else to go. We certainly spend enough city cash on policing the place with the very inadequate results we all can see.

Perry was acquitted yesterday just as Mangione was nabbed at a Pennsylvania Macdonald’s. The latter can expect to get a multi-decade sentence for his act and didn’t seem terribly eager to get away with it, given his indifference to the horde of incriminating evidence he was still carrying around.

From early accounts, Mangione was moved to commit homicide by the state of our health payment system, which empowers people like his victim to engage in financial legerdemain that enriches accountants while denying people the healthcare they pay enormous sums to obtain—sometimes resulting in their deaths.

Maybe he’ll express disdain for the judicial system that lets people off while the elites get away with, well, murder.

Assassination is not a good way to address injustice (ask the Mexicans). Then again, when other avenues are cut off, we can’t be surprised to see it occur.