MAGA's awful abortion plan. Tim Walz memes. Why Donald can't pronounce Kamala. Childfree Jews. Harris' parents. Olympics $$. Yitz's new book. New Israeli shanda: cabinet ministers who'd starve Gaza.
Newsletter #156
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
If Trump wins, get ready for Project 2025’s Big Brother abortion policy which will:
Require “liberal states” to report complete statistical data about abortion to the CDC
Require the CDC to track “abortion across various demographic indicators to assess whether certain populations are targeted by abortion providers”
Withdraw Medicaid funds for states that require abortion insurance
Audit states for Hyde amendment compliance
Reverse Biden administration’s support for women’s travel to get abortion health care
Declare that abortion is not health care
Deny Planned Parenthood Medicaid funding
Reverse FDA approval of the abortion pill and prohibit sending it by mail.
Prohibit stem cell research and stop testing COVID-19 vaccines on aborted cell lines
No longer require hospital emergency facilities to treat women suffering miscarriages
OLYMPICS
*I know it’s not about the money but here’s how much Olympian medalists are paid for their victories. (Spoiler: It depends.)
POLITICS
*”Why is Tim Walz, a 60-year-old dad from Minnesota, so internet savvy?” The Pod Save America gabsters drill down on the meme phenom of the V.P nominee and how he’s conquered the online world. Esquire examines, “The Meme-ification of Tim Walz: The Internet’s dad du jour is proof of America’s longing for a cheerful, competent, moral–and fun–kind of manliness.”
*Watch a bunch of adorable kids spontaneously hug Gov. Walz after he signs the free breakfast and lunch bill for MN schools.
*John McWorter explains “What Trump Means When He Mispronounces Kamala.”
* Kamala Harris has been black for nearly 60 years (above with her father). Just as Toady Trump used birther claims to “other” Obama, the Orange Menace doubled down on Harris’ suspect identity, first to drive a wedge between her and other Black Americans by suggesting her race claim is opportunistic — “…she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black”— then by underscoring her nonwhiteness with his loopy closer, “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
*The answer is, like many Americans with multiple ethnic, national, racial, or religious antecedents, she is more than one thing. NPR ran a piece about Kamala’s late mom, Shyamala Gopalan (above), “the woman who inspired Harris to break barriers.” People mag published a brief backgrounder on both parents.
* Donald J. Harris, 85, Kamala’s father, is an eminent economist and Stanford Professor Emeritus. Born in Jamaica (heads up, race doubters), his paternal grandmother was an enslaved black woman named Christiana Brown, herself a descendant of (i.e. product of forced sexual relations by) plantation owner, Hamilton Brown, a white man from Ireland.
* The motto on the Great Seal of the United States — E pluribus unum — is Latin for “Out of many, one.” Hard to find a more succinct distillation of America’s multitudinous population and its aspirational ethos of being one nation, indivisible. While DJT keeps trying to split us into warring factions, Harris, for instance in her speech to UAW members, emphasizes what all working people have in common.
* Red flag: The following Trump ravings go beyond his usual egomaniacal babble; they telegraph his antidemocratic intentions: “In four years you won’t have to vote again,” he told Christian Conservatives. “… the country will be fixed… You won’t have to vote anymore.” To another group of supporters, the autocrat-in-waiting prattled, “We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes…you don’t have to vote….don’t worry about voting.” WTF does he mean? Rachel Maddow explains.
*DJT may be exhibiting signs of frontotemporal dementia, says Dr. Jack Brown, an expert in body language. In 25 short sequential X posts, Brown builds his case from a sampling of clips of the GOP candidate’s bizarre behavior.
*Before Walz got picked, he was among 200,000 participants on the Zoom call, “White Dudes for Harris,” which included other white guys who were then on Harris’s short list for Veep: Governors Roy Cooper (NC), and JB Pritzker (IL), and Transit Secy. Pete Buttigieg, plus singers Josh Groban and Lance Bass, actors Mark Hamill, and the grandmaster Superdude, Jeff Bridges. One viewer called it “a Rainbow of Beige.” The formidable, if colorless, coalition raised a dazzling $4 Mil in small donations in 3 hours.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
* Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, (above) who once said an entire Palestinian town “should be erased,” added another appalling remark to his racist repertoire: “It may be just and moral to starve 2 million Gaza residents until Israeli hostages are returned, but no one in the world would let us.’” The U.S. and other Western allies strongly condemned his comments. I’m still waiting to similar repudiation from the mouths of P.M Bibi Netanyahu, mainstream American Jewish leaders, Zionist Evangelicals, and others who stand with Israel, right-or-wrong. To them, I ask, Suppose a U.S. cabinet member had said, “it may be just and moral to starve 2 million American Jews until our government gets Bibi to do what the U.S. wants him to do.” What would you have said, felt, done?
*Earlier this month, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called for cutting off humanitarian aid to Gaza, saying it would bring them “to their knees” in two weeks and give Israel “total victory” over Hamas. If these powerful far-right cabinet members are willing to say this sort of thing out loud, imagine what they’re planning behind closed doors. Both men are a shanda (shame/disgrace) to the Jewish State.
* This morning, Ben Gvir further outraged Palestinians and Arab leaders by leading Jewish worshippers to pray on the famously volatile Temple Mount, knowlngly provoking Muslim fears of a Jewish takeover of that holy space and thumbing his nose at the status quo agreement that’s been in place for years. (When PM Ariel Sharon did the same in 2000 it triggered the second Intifada and five years of violent bloodshed.)
*Watch John Oliver’s searing critique of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Then read the opinion piece about the program in The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli English- language newspaper whose editorial posture is generally considered right of center. With that in mind, and given Israel’s deepening left/right chasm, I was surprised by the brevity and low-key tone of the JP staff’s objections or corrections of Oliver’s claims. Hope it’s a sign that a broader swath of the Israeli media is finally finding it impossible to justify the government’s inhumane policies in the Occupied Territories.
JEWS
*In this riveting Tablet roundtable, moderated by Abigail Pogrebin, 11 American Jews reveal why, despite great pressure from their families and the pronatalist dictates of our religious and cultural tradition, they’ve chosen to remain “child-free.” They also speak candidly about how it feels to be parenting themselves in Jewish settings where everyone else is parenting kids. (And why so many child-free folks have dogs.)
BOOKS
*Apropos Abigail’s discussion group, the author of More Than a Womb sheds scholarly light on the subject of childlessness, Jewish women, and their contribution to our people’s safety, spirituality, and survival through the ages. Order here.
*At last, Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg’s “big book” is out! Those of us who’ve known, read, or studied with this brilliant and brave rabbi/thinker/teacher have been waiting for his magnum opus for years. Andrew Silow-Carroll’s probing interview with Yitz will make you want to order The Triumph of Life today, as I just did here.
ANTISEMITISM
*The 2024 Paris Olympics are over, but let’s hope French authorities continue to investigate those responsible for chanting “Heil Hitler” and raising Nazi salutes during the singing of the Israeli national anthem at the Israel-Paraguay soccer match.
MUSIC
*My son, David, his partner Melissa, and I were lucky to be at Tanglewood the night of Aug 8 when the charismatic Gustavo Dudamel conducted the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuala (170 kid musicians from age 10-17) in a terrific program of classical and Latin compositions. Our audience went wild at the end, and the players reciprocated with four encores, including this unbelievably ebullient rendition of Bernstein’s “I want to live in Amer-i-ca.”
ART
*Each artistic composition takes its sculptor more than a week of nonstop, 24/7 work. “No where else in nature does an animal construct anything as perfect, says the BBC narrator of this video. “If this doesn’t get him noticed nothing will.” Ditto for this labor of love by another besotted pufferfish I’d they all deserve gallery representation.
FATHER-INFANT BONDS
*When a new father first sees his baby— and is comfortable enough in his masculinity to show his emotions — this is what happens. Babies also bring out the best in grandpas.
*Watch this young dad’s amazingly simple Zen method of calming his howling newborn. It’s not a one-off or a trick. More examples follow the first.
PURE PLEASURE
*No matter how long his human is gone from the house, BrodieTheDood always gives him a warm welcome and Brodie’s appreciative owner follows suit with a hug.