Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Be a shame if anything happened to it:

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has threatened a children’s hospital with “consequences” after a doctor posted a viral TikTok telling patients they’re not legally obligated to tell a hospital their citizenship status.

On November 1, a new executive order went into effect requiring Texas hospitals that accept Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Plan to ask patients if they’re US citizens. The question now appears on intake forms at hospitals across the state, the San Antonio Express-News reports.

Dr. Tony Pastor, a cardiologist at Texas Children’s Hospital and assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine, went on to post a TikTok on November 11 telling patients they’re not obligated to answer the question. The video went viral, garnering more than one million views.

As a result, the Republican governor said on Wednesday the hospital’s state funding could be at risk.

“Hey Texas Children’s Hospital & Baylor College of Medicine this doctor is putting your Medicaid & Medicare funding at risk,” Abbott wrote on X, sharing a link to an Express-News article that reports on Pastor’s video.

“ou [sic] better think twice & have crystal clear records,” he added. “There will be consequences for failing to follow the law in the Order.”

Pastor told his followers in the viral TikTok, which appears to be deleted as of Thursday, that “people do not actually have to answer the question. So my proposal to everyone who’s seeing this is, just know that you do not have to answer this question,” Pastor said.

The cardiologist posted another TikTok earlier this week expanding on his argument.“This new law that’s asking hospitals for immigration status is under the guise of trying to get data on how much money we’re spending on undocumented patients,” he said. Pastor also said he’s “going to keep advocating for our patients because that’s why we went to medical school, and not to be ICE deportation people,” according to local outlet KFOXTV.

The hospital quickly capitulated releasing a statement saying that they will comply with the order. But the doctor is right. Patients are not obligated to answer the question to receive care.

Basically, the state has devised a bogus rationale to require hospitals to gather the names of undocumented people seeking care for the purpose of deportation. They know it, the hospital knows it and the patients know it. The patients are not obligated to give that information but either they will avoid seeking necessary medical and will die or they’ll reluctantly give the information if they have no choice. Just as has happened with abortion in Texas, doctors are put in a position of violating their oath or risking their own freedom or the hospital’s funding.

That this whole thing played out on social media with rhetoric that seems like it was lifted from a script about the mafia makes the whole thing even more surreal. Republican leaders are now routinely threatening citizens, institutions and businesses right out in the open and everyone is running for cover.

Homan: Do not harbor and conceal an illegal alien.. because it is a crime. Don't impede us because it's a crime. Don’t obstruct because it's a crime…

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2024-11-30T02:18:15.298Z

Homan: People are going to be held accountable.. What did the united nation have to do with the open border crisis? Who in the Biden administration opened the doors on this humanitarian crisis? What NGOs were involved..

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2024-11-30T02:27:33.375Z

Hoookay…

I’m just going to leave this here:

Gingrich: They played YMCA and danced to it in terms of Trump and instead of saying young man they were singing Trump man. Now this is the kind of cultural change that you see maybe twice in a century

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2024-11-30T02:35:41.963Z

Gingrich: I think the only way you can begin to understand this is to take trump totally outside of normal American politics and recognize that he's a mythic figure. He’s like some of the people who come out of the viking sagas

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2024-11-30T02:33:51.998Z

It’s going to be a long four years.

Everybody’s rushing to kiss the ring:

Corporate America is unleashing an unorthodox campaign to influence Donald Trump’s agenda in the weeks leading up to his second inauguration, a period that is emerging as a key stretch for shaping the next administration.

To break into the unusual circle of influence that surrounds Trump, chief executives are discussing whether to try to secure an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. They are buying the Trump family’s cryptocurrency token and emailing tips about spending cuts to Vivek Ramaswamy. Some lobbyists are instructing companies to scrub their websites and corporate policies of language that favors Democrats and instead tout GOP-friendly issues such as job creation.

The moves are part of an effort by corporate interests to more strongly align with the Republican Party after drifting away from it in recent years. 

[…]

Despite the populist influx among his base, Trump still cares deeply about markets and businesses, and he remains more accessible than most high-profile politicians. The most recognizable chief executives don’t require a go-between to reach the president-elect: Leave a message with one of his assistants and Trump will call back people whose names he recognizes directly, multiple corporate advisers said.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday, Trump adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News. (A Meta adviser confirmed the meeting.) And Coinbase Global CEO Brian Armstrong and a team from Ripple Labs have each spoken with Trump in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter. 

I guess it’s all “if you can’t beat ’em join ’em” now, a distincly different vibe than 2016. Elon seemsto have given Trump some cachet he didn’t have before.

Watching this display of The Emperor Has No Clothes is going to be very disheartening.

Grievances about imaginary enemies

Thanksgiving is over (even if leftovers may not be). It’s time to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get to resisting what’s coming. Spocko has gotten after that message with both ears.

False narratives that sold half the country on Trumpism were not born yesterday. It took time, billions of oligarch money, and repetition, repetition, repetition. Propaganda succeeded, among other things, in convincing people that illegal immigration (a misdemeanor, first offense) was a “crisis” best dealt with by a career criminal with 34 felony convictions, dozens of other grand jury indictments (including for inciting an insurrection and theft of state secrets), and a civil penalty for sexual assault. Courts liquidated Donald Trump’s charitable foundation as a fraud, dismantled his “university” as a fraud as well, and banned him from doing business in the state of New York.

How the hell could Americans hire that guy as chief executive of the United States of America? A second time?

The answer, says Andrea Pitzer of the new Next Comes What podcast, is simple: propaganda works. Pitzer, author of “One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps,” studied the rise of concentration camps as a means of controlling large groups of “undesirables” with a small number of guards. The invention of barbed wire and automatic weapons helped the practice along. Take note. Trump 2.0 plans to erect them on the southern border.

I just finished Episode 3. Looping back to Episode 1: How We Survive This Mess. Good holiday weekend listening. Gear up.

(h/t JS)

Give thanks

Olivia Troye is now a regular guest on cable news networks not in the grip of the MAGA cult. Her experiences as Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Mike Pence during the Tump administration left her both changed and politcally homeless. Troye’s Thanksgiving message reminded me of another story of political transformation I once witnessed.

View on Threads

Troye writes:

I’m especially grateful for the incredible gift of finding a new tribe. Taking a stand has often left me in political no-man’s land, but in that space, I’ve discovered something profound—a community of people like you. Your support, courage, and shared belief in doing what’s right have reminded me that I’m not alone. Together, we are building something stronger than partisanship: a tribe rooted in shared values, integrity, and hope for the future. Thank you for being my tribe.

Gratitude is a powerful force, but its true strength lies in its ability to inspire us to be better—for ourselves, one another, and the country we love.

That’s something we can all be thankful for.

Before MAGA came the T-party. Many on the right erupted into into paroxysms of rage at the election in 2008 of the country’s first Black president. Before Trumpism and red hats, the T-party cosplayed as revolutionary war soldiers. They pretended their loud protests had to do with tax policy and not white freakout at having to share power with people designated untouchables by European settlers 400 years ago.

The party’s reactionary turn unnerved a couple of local activists who, like Troye, began moving away from the county Republican Party. A few years later, the former chapter chair of Republican Women decided to run for county commission as an independent. It was a district in which Democrats failed to field a candidate. We offered to help.

At the end of her first monthly meeting with us, she stood, and through tears expressed gratitude for our help and her welcome. And great relief.

“Y’all are actually doing something!” she said with some surprise. (We had not spent our meeting badmouthing Republicans.) We had our own goals, plans for action, and a positive agenda. Like Troye, she and her husband had found a new tribe. That break took guts. Today they are friends.

Half the country just chose to align themselves with the tribe my friends left a decade ago. The sadness in that is profound. But there is hope too. Not everyone on the right is there for Trumpism. Some are there out of political muscle memory. Welcome them when they turn.

Last Wednesday I wrote about Democrats fear of fighting back. I linked to a video from my friend Cliff Schecter. We’ve been talking about what fighting back looks like. I’m going to share some examples here next week with specifics. Today Cliff shares an example, Gavin Newsom.

Yes we were all horrified by Trump’s win. But at some point we get back up and fight. Newsom’s response has been chef’s kiss. No Trump congratulations. You accept the results, but rip him to cameras, point out it was a puny win, he’s no king and still an asshole. You call a special legislative session to bolster legal defenses and garner media coverage of your message!

You go to D.C., meet with Democratic reps and President Biden–not Trump. You know it’ll piss him off and he doesn’t deserve the photo op. The coup de gras? Newsom’s using a Trump threat to justify harming Apartheid Man-Baby’s business, which should help kick the inevitable Musk vs. Trump clash into gear. Watch the video for that one and all the rest, as we learn to fight the tyrants.

And be sure after you watch to SUBSCRIBE to Cliff’s Edge, which is quickly becoming a leading resistance outlet on Youtube we’ll need over the next four years!

I know I did this last week but all this footage came over the Xitter yesterday (pretty much the only feeds I follow there anymore…) and I enjoyed them so much I’m doing it again:

Choto is the pumpkin to our Thanksgiving pie!

Happy Thanksgiving! pic.twitter.com/9RHSmU2YVy

— Milwaukee County Zoo (@MilwaukeeCoZoo) November 28, 2024

Happy Thanksgiving from Sundew the skunk! 🍂 pic.twitter.com/d2A5K7Ylpz

— Northwest Trek Wildlife Park (@NorthwestTrek) November 28, 2024

Stuffed with gratitude, pumpkins, and plenty of ele-fun this Thanksgiving!#dallaszoo #happythanksiving #gobigorgourdhome pic.twitter.com/D2a4Ol1N2r

— Dallas Zoo (@DallasZoo) November 28, 2024

Baby elephant and her new toy pic.twitter.com/uUxIxD0vMG

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) November 27, 2024

🦃 Feast mode activated featuring Brandy the porcupine.

🎥: Wildlife Connections Keeper Bailey pic.twitter.com/qf0U9jjODw

— Houston Zoo (@houstonzoo) November 28, 2024

Enjoy the rest of your long weekend folks!

I have my issues with Sen. John Fetterman these days. He’s certainly marching to his own drummer. But he’s right about one thing: Democrats need to chill out about their “rebrand” or whatever the hell they are obsessing over today. It’s premature, tiresome, probably unnecessary (at least to the extent they seem to think it is, Trump didn’t win a landslide and his coattails were pathetic. Dems turned more House seats than they did!)

Anyway, the NY Times inteviewed him and he has a lot to say, only ;some of which I agree with. He does go on and on about how to appeal to the “bros” which reminds me of earlier laments about how to appeal to “soccer moms” and Nascar Dads.” It’s always somebody that Democrats are allegedly condescending to and looking down on. This time, it seems to me that the “problem” as these guys see it is too much woman stuff. Abortion was a loser and all those women at the convention and a woman nominee as just too much. No more women! It appears to me that Fetterman more or less agrees with that which doesn’t surprise me.

This is the specific part I’m referencing above:

Senator John Fetterman wasn’t in Washington for the first Trump administration. But he has a few ideas about how Democrats should handle the second.

He wants his party to accept its losses. He wants his party to chill out a little. And he wants his party to please stop with all the hot takes about what went wrong in November, since Democrats have four long years to figure it out.

[…]

How do you think the Democratic Party needs to change right now?

I don’t give advice except on fashion. Again, I want to thank your publication for putting me on the best-dressed list, so you understand why I am a fashion plate.

Do Democrats need to do an analysis of what went wrong? And, if so, who should do it?

We’re not even at Thanksgiving, and Democrats just can’t stop losing our minds every fifteen minutes. We really need to pace ourselves, or, you know, for FFS, just grab a grip. Realize that this is how elections go. At least for the next two years, they’re going to have the opportunity to write the narrative and to drive the narrative.

Trump is assembling a cabinet of people many Democrats find deeply objectionable. How do you think Democrats should respond?

I’m just saying, buckle up and pack a lunch, because it’s going to be four years of this. And if you have a choice to freak out, you know, on the hour, then that’s your right. But I will not. I’m not that dude, and I’m not that Democrat. I’m going to pick my fights. If you freak out on everything, you lose any kind of relevance.

Do you think Democrats have done too much freaking out when it comes to Trump?

It’s symbiotic. One feeds off the other. The Democrats can’t resist a freakout, and that must be the wind under the wings for Trump.

It sounds like you want Democrats to be quiet and let Republicans have their own fight.

All I’m saying is, the freakout and all the anxiety and all that should have been before Nov. 5.

Does clutching the pearls so hard — does that change anything? Did it work? Did it change the election? Was it productive? And, like, I can’t believe the outrage. That has to be candy for Trump.

You said Democrats needed to pick their battles. What’s one you’d choose?

I’m not going to pick one before Thanksgiving.

One analysis of the election that we’ve heard from your colleague Senator Bernie Sanders is that Democrats failed to recognize how bad people were feeling about the economy, about the country generally, and failed to name a villain. Do you agree with that analysis?

I do not.

Why?

I think there was a lot of other issues. I would even describe them as cultural. Walk around in Scranton, tell me what an oligarch is. I think it’s like, “Whose argument is the closest match to the kinds of things that are important to me?” And I think some of them are rooted in gender and worldviews, and even backlash of things like cancel culture.

I witness people, now there’s specific kinds of clothing. They call it Blue Collar Patriots. I’m willing to bet you know who they’re voting for.

And why is that? I don’t think it’s because we haven’t talked enough about oligarchs, and how it’s rigged.

What do you think Democrats need to do to bring about the kind of cultural shift you’re talking about?

For a party that’s had way too many bad takes, we should take our time.

This I agree with. I wish everyone would just take a beat and let the data come in and think a little bit. There’s just way too much of everyone (including me) fitting what needs to be done to their priors. We need to let things settle. Focus on immediate problems we may be able to affect, which isn’t much.

We all need to relax for a bit. It’s going to be a long four years.

I legit think the cynical promotion of this this is one of the most brazen acts of public evil I’ve ever seen because there is *no tradeoff* in any way that counts, there’s no complicated externality, it’s just fucking letting people, mainly children die for the hell of it.

— William B. Fuckley (@opinionhaver.bsky.social) 2024-11-28T06:18:05.414Z

For comparison:

Here's 2019-2020 for comparison

— Hunter (@statisticurban.bsky.social) 2024-11-28T06:08:49.907Z

This is all based on disinformation spread by right wing conspiracy theorists and idiot woo-woo lefties. It’s the most grotesque example of the political horseshoe ever.

Yes, Big Pharma has a lot to answer for. The price of drugs is a crime. We really should do something about it. But to exploit a genuine concern for political gain by pushing vconspiracy theories that kill children is almost too much to bear.

This story is a reminder of where we’re going with this:

In November 2019, when an epidemic of measles was killing children and babies in Samoa, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who in recent days became Donald Trump’s pick to lead the department of Health and Human Services — sent the prime minister of Samoa a four-page letter. In it, he suggested the measles vaccine itself may have caused the outbreak.

He claimed that the vaccine might have “failed to produce antibodies” in vaccinated mothers sufficient to provide infants with immunity, that it perhaps provoked “the evolution of more virulent measles strains” and that children who received the vaccine may have inadvertently spread the virus to other children. “Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any assistance,” he added, writing in his role as the chairman of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group.

At the time of his letter, 16 people, many of them younger than 2, were already reported dead. Measles, which is among the most contagious diseases, can sometimes lead to brain swelling, pneumonia and death. For months, families grieved over heartbreaking little coffins, until a door-to-door vaccination campaign brought the calamity to a close. The final number of fatalities topped 80.

RFK was completely wrong. Most of the dead were under 4 years old.

I’m including a gift link to that entire article, written by a journalist who covered the story in real time. He and others had been strongly pushing disinformation about vaccines for some time in the area. The results were catastrophic.

Unfortunately, as those maps above show, it’s already happening here even without Kennedy and his anti-vaxx wrecking crew being in the government. It’s horrifying that even one child should die over these lies. But it will very likely be many more than that.

In another life when I worked at big companies full of huge egos (the entertainment business) I often observed that people who are famously successful at one thing believe they are geniuses who are experts at everything. When they start meddling in things they really don’t understand they almost always screw it up.

Let’s just say there are very few Leonardo DaVincis around these days but many very rich (mostly) men who think they see him looking back at them in the mirror every morning.

Here are two of them:

Elon Musk joins the Trump family at Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving. pic.twitter.com/EZ9uH3IHhm

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 29, 2024