These Tanks Are Storing Tens of Thousands of Frozen Embryos

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2024 //
28
Nitrogen tanks held tens of thousands of frozen embryos and eggs at a fertility lab in New York. CAROLYN VAN HOUTEN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Do you think that the judges on the Alabama Supreme Court ever saw a storage room in an IVF Clinic that was holding tens of thousands of “extrauterine” children in containers?

The New Republic provided context for the Alabama ruling that frozen embryos are children.

For the first time, a frozen embryo has been recognized by the law as a person with rights. This decision by the Alabama Supreme Court last week is a huge victory for anti-abortion groups, who have long sought to pass fetal personhood laws. This time, by declaring not just a fetus but a fertilized egg in a lab the equivalent of an “unborn child,” the courts have done them one better. If this keeps up, anti-abortion groups may succeed at outlawing both abortion and in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

This case was about whether couples whose embryos have been inadvertently destroyed in a lab can sue for wrongful death. The embryos in question are eggs that have been fertilized outside the uterus and cryopreserved by a fertility clinic for later implantation. The couples’ attorneys cast embryos cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen as “embryonic children” and “human lives.” They seem to have found a receptive audience on the Alabama Supreme Court, with the decision referring multiple times to what the majority called “extrauterine children.”

This case was the culmination of explicit anti-abortion campaigning. The judges based their ruling in part on a recent amendment to the state constitution, enshrining the “rights of unborn children” in law. When voters considered this amendment in a 2018 ballot initiative, the political director of the anti-abortion group Alliance for a Pro-Life Alabama told the Associated Press that the amendment would “position Alabama in the future for public policy decisions on abortion if Roe. v. Wade was overturned.” Indeed, the Christian-right legal advocacy organization that brought the case overturning Roe, Alliance Defending Freedom, celebrated the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision in the IVF case, the group’s senior counsel adding they hoped “that this ruling encourages voters, lawmakers, and courts to recognize that life is a human right, no matter the circumstances.”

The article goes on to explain that the next frontier for the anti-abortion movement is embryo adoption.

Categories Alabama, Health, Science

Steve Ruis: Alabama’s Nutty Supreme Court Invents a New Religious Theory

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2024 //
61

Blogger Steve Ruis pulls apart the theological ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court, holding that frozen embryos are children. The Court invoked religious language to assert that destroying a frozen embryo is murder, and anyone who does that can be sued as if they terminated the life of a child. Frozen embryos are in a freezer, not a womb, but the Justices endow them with the status of a living child.

In Vitro Fertilization clinics across Alabama—and elsewhere—are panicked. Couples use IVF when they can’t conceive; typically, they freeze more than they need because, for whatever reason, some of those embryos fail. One couple I know froze 10 embryos; they now have two beautiful, healthy children. But if the Alabama ruling were commonly endorsed, the other eight frozen embryos could never be destroyed. Long after the parents are dead, long after their grandchildren are dead, the embryos would be preserved. Forever.

Ruis writes:

Just when I thought the SCOTUS was the greatest threat to democracy we faced in our court system, the Supreme Court of the State of Alabama stepped up by deciding that frozen embryos are “extrauterine children.”

According to their Chief Justice, Tom Parker:
“The Alabama constitution’s ‘sanctity of unborn life’ provision, he wrote, ‘encompasses the following: (1) God made every person in His image; (2) each person therefore has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate; and (3) human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.’”

Apparently the Alabama Supreme Court has not heard of the separation of church and state. And I am surprised that they weren’t singing Monty Python’s song “Every Sperm is Sacred” while issuing their ruling.

This immediately put the brakes on all of the In Vitro Fertilization therapies currently under way. If you are unfamiliar with IVF it is a process where infertile couples can have fertilized embryos implanted in the woman’s uterus. The embryos are frozen awaiting this process and are willingly donated by fertile women.

So, here’s the bind the fertility clinics are in. They cannot go ahead with the IVF treatments because the “success rate is low, that is many embryos do not implant in the uterine wall and are flushed out during a waste cycle. This would be considered a wrongful death under the law and the desperate parents and doctors could all go to jail. So, all of these clinics are to put their frozen embryos on ice, as it were.

But, here is the problem. Those embryos under Alabama law cannot be implanted, so they have to stay frozen . . .in perpetuity. But what happens down there in hurricane country of the electric power is knocked out for a number of days. Without electricity, all of those embryos would thaw and “die.” Would that be considered a mass murder on the part of the clinic or an “act of God,” under their laws.

I know the solution. All of the Bible thumpers need to step up and adopt one of these “extrauterine children,” providing them with an uninterruptable supply of electricity and to take responsibility if they die. Then we will know they are truly “pro life.”

Remaining frozen forever, never to run and play in the park . . . so much for the sanctity of life.

Categories Education Reform

Neuroscientist: We Are Thinking about Memory Loss the Wrong Way

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2024 //
38

Two elderly men are running for President this year. One is 81, the other is 77. Both of them make verbal mistakes, confusing one name for another or mixing up dates. Most of us, regardless of our age, have done the same. We usually call our mistakes “gaffes.”

Being President of the United States is not a television game show; what matters most is not instantaneous recall, but the ability to choose seasoned staff and to make wise decisions. For a President, judgment is what matters most.

Recently, a neuroscientist wrote about memory and aging in the New York Times and tried to clarify the issues. Charan Ranganath is a professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California.

Dr. Ranganath wrote:

Special Counsel Robert K. Hur’s report, in which he declined to prosecute President Biden for his handling of classified documents, also included a much-debated assessment of Mr. Biden’s cognitive abilities.

“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

As an expert on memory, I can assure you that everyone forgets. In fact, most of the details of our lives — the people we meet, the things we do and the places we go — will inevitably be reduced to memories that capture only a small fraction of those experiences.

It is normal to be more forgetful as you get older. Broadly speaking, memory functions begin to decline in our 30s and continue to fade into old age. However, age in and of itself doesn’t indicate the presence of memory deficits that would affect an individual’s ability to perform in a demanding leadership role. And an apparent memory lapse may or may not be consequential depending on the reasons it occurred.

There is forgetting and there is Forgetting. If you’re over the age of 40, you’ve most likely experienced the frustration of trying to grasp hold of that slippery word hovering on the tip of your tongue. Colloquially, this might be described as ‘forgetting,’ but most memory scientists would call this “retrieval failure,” meaning that the memory is there, but we just can’t pull it up when we need it. On the other hand, Forgetting (with a capital F) is when a memory is seemingly lost or gone altogether. Inattentively conflating the names of the leaders of two countries would fall in the first category, whereas being unable to remember that you had ever met the president of Egypt would fall into the latter.

Over the course of typical aging, we see changes in the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, a brain area that plays a starring role in many of our day-to-day memory successes and failures. These changes mean that, as we get older, we tend to be more distractible and often struggle to pull up the word or name we’re looking for. Remembering events takes longer and it requires more effort, and we can’t catch errors as quickly as we used to. This translates to a lot more forgetting, and a little more Forgetting.

Many of the special counsel’s observations about Mr. Biden’s memory seem to fall in the category of forgetting, meaning that they are more indicative of a problem with finding the right information from memory than actual Forgetting. Calling up the date that an event occurred, like the last year of Mr. Biden’s vice presidency or the year of his son’s death, is a complex measure of memory. Remembering that an event took place is different than being able to put a date on when it happened, the latter of which is more challenging with increased age. The president very likely has many memories of both periods of his life, even though he could not immediately pull up the date in the stressful (and more immediately pressing) context of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Other “memory” issues highlighted in the media are not so much cases of forgetting as they are of difficulties in the articulation of facts and knowledge. For instance, in July 2023, Mr. Biden mistakenly stated in a speech that “we have over 100 people dead,” when he should have said, “over one million.” He has struggled with a stutter since childhood, and research suggests that managing a stutter demands prefrontal resources that would normally enable people to find the right word or at least quickly correct errors after the fact.

Americans are understandably concerned about the advanced age of the two top contenders in the coming presidential election (Mr. Biden is 81 and Donald Trump is 77), although some of these concerns are rooted in cultural stereotypes and fears around aging. The fact is that there is a huge degree of variability in cognitive aging. Age is, on average, associated with decreased memory, but studies that follow up the same person over several years have shown that, although some older adults show precipitous declines over time, other “super-agers” remain as sharp as ever.

Mr. Biden is the same age as Harrison Ford, Paul McCartney and Martin Scorsese. He’s also a bit younger than Jane Fonda (86) and a lot younger than Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett (93). All these individuals are considered to be at the top of their professions, and yet I would not be surprised if they are more forgetful and absent-minded than when they were younger. In other words, an individual’s age does not say anything definitive about their cognitive status or where it will head in the near future.

I can’t speak to the cognitive status of any of the presidential candidates, but I can say that, rather than focusing on candidates’ ages per se, we should consider whether they have the capabilities to do the job. Public perception of a person’s cognitive state is often determined by superficial factors, such as physical presence, confidence, and verbal fluency, but these aren’t necessarily relevant to one’s capacity to make consequential decisions about the fate of this country. Memory is surely relevant, but other characteristics, such as knowledge of the relevant facts and emotion regulation — both of which are relatively preserved and might even improve with age — are likely to be of equal or greater importance.

Ultimately, we are due for a national conversation about what we should expect in terms of the cognitive and emotional health of our leaders.

And that should be informed by science, not politics

Categories Biden, Elections, Science, Trump

Will Your Child’s Private Data Be Sold by the College Board?

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2024 //
11

In at least 20 states, the College Board collects and sells student data, despite state law forbidding it.

New York was one of those states, but activist parents led a years-long campaign to block the practice.

Recently, State Attorney General Letitia James won a judgment against the College Board for $750,000, and it agreed to stop monetizing student data in New York.

What happens in your state? Does your state protect the privacy of student data? Does it enforce the law?

Read Leonie Haimson’s account of how parents in New York pushed back and finally won. She includes a list of other states that protect student privacy.

She writes:

For decades, the College Board has been selling student names, addresses, test scores, and whatever other personal information that students have provided them,  when they sign up for a College Board account and the Student Search program. According to the AG press release, in 2019 alone, the College Board improperly shared the information of more than 237,000 New York students.  Since New York’s student privacy law, Education §2-d, calls for a fine of up to $10 per student, the penalty for selling student data during that one year alone could have equaled more than $2 million.

And yet for years, on their website and elsewhere, the College Board has also  falsely claimed they weren’t selling student data.  Instead they called  it “licensing” data, a distinction without a difference.  For years, they also claimed that they never sold student scores, though that was false as well, as they do sell student scores within a range.

The College Board urges millions of students to sign up for their Student Search program, with all sorts of unfounded and deceptive claims, including that it will help them get into better schools or receive scholarships.  The reality is that their personal data is sold to over 1,000 colleges, programs and other companies – the names of which they refuse to disclose — who use it for marketing purposes and may even resell it to even less reputable businesses.

Is your state one of them? Is the law enforced?

Categories Accountability, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Ethics, For-Profit, Justice, New York, Parent Groups, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Heather Cox Richardson: The Putin Wing of the GOP

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2024 //
29

Heather Cox Richardson writes about the ascendancy of “the Putin wing of the Republican Party.” It’s headed, of course, by Donald Trump, who remains deferential to Putin. He continued to compare himself to Navalny, who was murdered by Putin, since he thinks of his trials as akin to Navalny’s experience.

Aid to Ukraine is stalled in the House of Representatives, where Marjorie Taylor Greene leads the opposition.

Richardson writes:

Both global and national affairs appeared to shift over the holiday weekend. Events of the past week or so highlighted the global stakes of not stopping the aggression of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. In turn, those global stakes highlighted that Trump’s MAGA Republicans are strengthening Putin’s hand. 

Since October, MAGA Republicans have managed to delay a national security supplemental bill that would provide additional aid to Ukraine. Although a bipartisan majority of Congress supports the measure, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recessed the House on Thursday without taking it up, just days after former president Trump attacked the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and suggested he would urge Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to U.S. allies if they didn’t meet a guideline of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on their own military forces. 

On Friday, February 16, Russian authorities murdered opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison, where he was being held on trumped-up charges, and on Saturday, Russian forces advanced into the front-line city of Avdiivka. 

The Munich Security Conference, the world’s largest gathering on international security policy, met this year in the midst of these events, from Friday, February 16, to Sunday, February 18. At Saturday’s lunch, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark made a surprise announcement. Denmark, she said, will donate all its artillery to Ukraine. She suggested other countries, too, could do more than they already have.

According to Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer of Foreign Policy, Frederiksen’s announcement “left attendees grappling with some existential questions: Are they prepared not just to help Ukraine but also to defend Europe from a possible Russian attack on a NATO country? Are democracies capable of standing up against the threat of territory-grabbing dictatorships like Russian President Vladimir Putin’s?”

Sweden today announced it will donate about $682 million in equipment and cash to Ukraine, its 15th aid package to Ukraine since the 2022 Russian invasion. The European Union today announced it is committing 83 million euros, or about $89 million, in humanitarian aid for those in Ukraine and Moldova affected by the war. Three weeks ago it approved $54 billion in military aid.

There is increasing pressure, as well, to transfer Russia’s frozen assets to Ukraine. On Saturday, February 17, the U.S. Justice Department, which is in charge of a task force called “KleptoCapture,” transferred $500,000 in forfeited Russian funds to Estonia for fixing Ukraine’s electrical transmission and distribution systems. Biden promised more sanctions against Russia on Friday and has again called for House Republicans to pass the national security supplemental bill. 

Indeed, the real elephant in the room is the fact that MAGA Republicans in the House are refusing to commit more U.S. aid. The Institute for the Study of War, a nonprofit research organization, assessed on Sunday that “delays in Western security assistance to Ukraine are likely helping Russia launch…offensive operations along several sectors of the frontline in order to place pressure on Ukrainian forces along multiple axes.” 

MAGA Republicans are refusing that aid although it is popular both in Congress and among Americans at large. A Pew study released Friday, before news of Navalny’s murder broke, showed that 74% of Americans believe the war in Ukraine is important to U.S. interests; 59% say it’s important to them personally. 

House speaker Johnson condemned Putin as “a vicious dictator” over the weekend and said he was “likely directly responsible” for Navalny’s death. But on Monday he posted to Twitter a photograph of him standing alongside Trump, apparently at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club, flashing a smile and a thumbs-up sign. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has vowed to try to throw Johnson out of the speaker’s chair if he even brings Ukraine funding to the floor. Trump himself referred to Navalny’s murder on Sunday simply by calling it a “sudden death” before launching into an attack on the United States.

On Sunday, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) came out and said it: the Republican Party has a “Putin wing.” She said: “The issue of this election cycle is making sure the Putin wing of the Republican Party does not take over the West Wing of the White House.” Conservative pundit Bill Kristol agreed, in italics: “The likely nominee of one of our two major political parties is pro–Vladimir Putin.This is an astonishing fact. It is an appalling fact. It has to be a central fact of the 2024 campaign.”

Russian authorities have cracked down on those expressing sorrow for the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and are refusing to hand over his body to his mother and lawyer, who flew to the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle to reclaim it, saying they need to keep the body for “chemical analysis.”

Meanwhile, a Russian who defected to Ukraine last year has been killed in Spain, and Russian authorities have arrested for “treason” a dual Russia-U.S. citizen who lives in Los Angeles as she traveled in Russia after having participated in pro-Ukraine rallies.

Putin is facing an election next month, and he may have intended the murder of Navalny to frighten other opponents and intimidate Russian voters. But it is possible it had the opposite effect. 

Yesterday, Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, stepped into his place, saying: “Putin didn’t only kill Alexei Navalny as a person. He wanted to kill our hope, our freedom, our future. But the most important thing we can do for Alexei and for ourselves is to go on fighting. I will continue Alexei Navalny’s work. Continue to fight for our country. I call on you to stand alongside me. To share not only the grief and unending pain that has enveloped us and won’t let go. I also ask you to share the fury and hate for those who dared to kill our future. I speak to you in the words of Alexei, in which I believe truly: There is no shame in doing little. There is shame in doing nothing. In allowing them to scare you…. By killing Alexei, Putin has killed half of me. Half of my heart and my soul. But I have another half and it tells me that I don’t have the right to give in.”

Today she urged the European Union not to recognize the results of Russia’s March election, saying that “a president who assassinated his main political opponent cannot be legitimate by definition.”  

In the U.S., there has not been any apparent move from House Republicans to come back into session to approve the national security package. Indeed, Trump appears to be strengthening his hand over the mechanics of the Republican Party, with the state parties he salted with loyalists lining up behind him, supporters in Congress killing legislation at his demand, and lawmakers who are interested in actually making laws exiting Congress out of fear or frustration. 

But the apparent support of MAGA Republicans for Putin is unlikely to play well in the U.S. Today, Republican candidate for president Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, tricked the Fox News Channel into covering live what she said was a major speech, likely leading producers to think she was withdrawing. Rather than doing so, she came out swinging with an attack on Trump. 

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded her comments, spoken with the backdrop of the past week in everyone’s mind. Americans “deserve a real choice,” she said, “not a Soviet-style election where there’s only one candidate and he gets 99 percent of the vote.”

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, International, Republicans, Trump

Jonathan V. Last: How Biden Can Defuse the Age Issue: Embrace It!

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2024 //
17

Jonathan V. Last writes for The Bulwark, a site created by Republican Never Trumpers. I find there sone of the most interesting writing about the political issues of our day.

Last offers sound advice to President Biden about defusing the age issue: Make a virtue of your age. Don’t pretend to be 40. Speak up for the wisdom and experience of your years.

Age is not what separates Biden from Trump. Biden will protect our institutions from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Trump has already made deals with them.

Last writes:

My headline probably oversells it: Biden can’t defuse the political problems his age creates for him. But he can mitigate them…

But first I want to lay out the strategy Biden’s team should be using. It has three components:

  1. Hang a lantern on his age.
  2. Make it relatable.
  3. Put it in context.

Contra the conventional wisdom, I think Biden’s hasty press conference last Thursday was a good idea that was executed fairly well. It’s important that Biden takes ownership of “elderly.”

In fact, I’d have him go further. He ought to mention it every time he speaks in public. He ought to joke about it. He should have a handful of stock lines ready at all times: People talk about life before the internet? I remember what it was like before we had electricity!

The cornier the better.

Biden should set the expectation that he’s going to have senior moments in every appearance. Hell—he should flub things on purpose sometimes and then wink at the audience and razz them if they don’t catch it.

If we’ve learned anything from the Trump years, it’s that one problem is a tragedy, but a thousand problems are just white noise. So don’t be defensive about the age and don’t complain about the media fixating on it.¹ Lean all the way in. Make it a part of the candidate’s identity.

Next: Make it relatable.

Nick Grossman mentioned this today and it ought to be said constantly: We all get mixed up. I call my kids by the wrong names probably a dozen times a day. When I go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for one of them and have to give their birthdate, I always get the month and day right. But the year? I have to stop and think about that every damn time.

Sitting here typing I could not even tell you without looking it up what year we started The Bulwark. I think it was 2018, but it could have been 2019.

Our brains are set up to have amazing recall and processing speed that generally peaks in our 20s and declines every year after. It is not an accident that Einstein did his most important work at age 26.

Finally, there’s the context: We don’t choose our leaders based on recall and processing speed. 

What does it mean to grow old? It means that you’re not as quick on your feet as you used to be. Old people, in general, don’t want to get dragged into real-time debates with 45-year-olds. The synapses don’t fire as quickly; the gift of gab wanes. You very rarely look at an old guy and think, “That dude is slick.”

But slick isn’t what we want in our leaders. We want wisdom.

There is a reason that we have a minimum age for voting in this country and not a maximum age—it’s because we don’t trust young people, with all of their rapid recall memory and synaptic lightning, to be wise enough to vote.

By the same token, we don’t have a maximum voting age, because we recognize that the losses elderly people experience in the ability to rapidly process are over-balanced by the accumulated wisdom of years and experience.

Especially in a president, we value wisdom over speed.

And Joe Biden has demonstrated the power of wisdom throughout his term. It allowed him to reach deals with Republicans in Congress. It led him to focus like a laser on the economy and get America back on its feet. 

It was wisdom that let Biden understand the stakes in Ukraine and wisdom that helped him navigate the maintenance of our alliance against Vladimir Putin. It is wisdom that allows Biden to see the incalculable benefits America receives from leading the global order.

Just as it was wisdom that made Biden cooperate with the special counsel and respect the rule of law.

President Biden is the wisest guy to sit in the Oval Office since Reagan and that’s not in spite of his age—it’s because of it. 

Meanwhile, the problem with Donald Trump is NOT that he, too, is old. The problem with Trump is NOT that he sometimes forgets what day it is, or who he’s running against.

The problem with Trump is that he’s a madman who wants dangerous things.

He is on Putin’s side. He sees NATO as a threat to American prosperity. He thinks laws must not apply to him. He believes that democracy is only useful to the extent that it provides him advantage. He thinks that dictatorship would be preferable—so long as he gets to be the tyrant. 

If I were Biden’s speechwriter, I might put it like this:

Am I elderly? You betcha. Don’t move like I used to. And I have the occasional senior moment. I’ll probably have one during this speech, just so folks from the New York Times have something to write about.

But I know what the hell I’m doing.

Let me tell you about getting older. You aren’t as fast on your feet. You have to think a moment before you remember stuff.

But also: As you get older, you’re able to see what really matters. You’re able to let go of your ego and focus on what’s important. That’s why I was able to work with the Republicans in Congress even while they said nasty things about me in public: Because I didn’t care what they said—I’m too old for that. What I did care about was passing gun reform laws that both parties knew we needed.

I cared about lowering the costs of medicine for seniors and capping the price of insulin. I cared about infrastructure—getting roads and bridges fixed and new semi-conductor factories built so that young people could get good jobs and provide for their families.

And let me tell you what else age has done for me: It made me realize that I’m the president of all Americans. Not just the people who voted for me. Because I’m old, I understand that it’s my duty to make sure that even the people who run around saying that I’m part of a crime family—God love ‘em—are able to get good jobs, and have broadband internet, and have more and better police keeping their communities safe.

So am I old? You bet. I’m 87. No, wait, 78. I forget. Whatever—I’m old. Older than you. And that’s why America is prospering, everyone who wants a job has one, crime is coming down, more people have health insurance, and the Russians and the Chinese understand that there’s a united West, led by America, opposing them and holding them to account.

Thank you, Jonathan V. Last!

Categories Biden, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, History, Trump

Umair Haque: Ageism, Biden and Trump

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2024 //
40

The Hur report led to an onslaught of news stories about whether Biden was too old. The day after the Hur report came out, Trump invited Russia to attack any NATO nation that had not paid its bills in full.

So which is scarier: Biden’s age or Trump’s acting like Putin’s puppet?

Umair Haque, a British economist, sees these issues in perspective.

“An elderly man with a poor memory.” That’s what the report by Special Counsel Robert Her said about Joe Biden. It’s been endless fodder, instantaneously, for everything from the absurd to the predictable to the asinine. Cue op-eds in the New York Times breathlessly demanding Joe Biden step down. Presto, articles about invoking the 25th Amdenment to force Biden out of office, on grounds of mental incompetence.

Let’s take a deep breath, and understand what’s really going on here, which is sad, pathetic, and ugly. 

There are many, many reasons not to like Joe Biden. Especially right now. Just 15% of young people approve of his handling of what’s happening in Gaza. Minorities are shaking their heads and walking away, baffled, while the Democrats suddenly tack hard to the right, shattering their fragile progressive-center coalition. Don’t like him? Fair enough, I’m not here to persuade you to.

But. We need to be clear about our grounds. There’s a difference between a substantive grounds for breaking a coalition, fair enough. And a flimsy one, that only plays into the hands of the hard right. 

There’s a big difference between age and ageism, in this case.

America’s a brutal, indifferent society. And one of the ways in which it’s so is that it’s profoundly ageist. You don’t notice this, entirely, until you live elsewhere. And then suddenly you realize that in America, elderly people are effectively disappeared. You barely see them in everyday life, if at all, whereas in most of the rest of the world, from Asia to Europe, there they are, going about their business, because, after all, they exist too.

When I was really young, growing up between continents, this struck me so intensely that I’d follow old people around in America when I saw them—curious, perplexed. Where did they go? Why didn’t I see them nearly as often as everywhere else?

Ageism is a norm, and it’s one that’s to be expected from a hypercapitalist society. As your “utility” and “productivity” diminish—or, worse, are thought to diminish—so too your place in society disappears. You no longer have the right to exist, socially, morally, culturally. And in America, we can see this norm in operation everywhere. In the corporate world, 40 is now considered “old.” Looking for a job after 50 is considered to be a dicey affair, that’ll provoke looks of pity, crossed with scorn. You leave your age off your CV after you cross your 30s, nervously hoping that recruiters and “human resource” managers won’t piece the puzzle together. You pretend to be young.

Young and perfect. And this norm has accelerated, sped up, turbo-charged, in recent years. Who do we pretend to be on social media? Not old and wise. YouTube face is a sardonic expression of youthful naïveté. Wow, Mom, I’m amazed! I’m gawping in awe! On Instagram, beauty standards for women have crossed the point of caricaturing youth, and become grotesque, provoking a backlash even amongst the young. 

Who does America lionize? Americans are told to revere figures like boy geniuses—Zuck. Middle-aged billionaires—the creepy guy who bought Twitter. And so on. Ageism and patriarchy go hand in hand. Go gray, and your career’s in peril, whether artist, singer, tycoon. If you’re a woman, the price is exponentially higher. Stay young at all costs is the message, and it’s received loud and clear, in the form of plastic surgery, fillers, enhancements, endless workouts, the appearance of youth—not just superficially, but in its deeper values of energy, enthusiasm, and positivity—everywhere, all the time.

Ageism is bad for us. It’s bad for all of us. There is absolutely no link—none whatsoever—between youth and, in this case, good political leadership. Take a hard look at Europe’s rising far right. It’s led by relatively young people, for politics—in their 40s, often. Shall we say that just because someone is younger, it makes for a better leader, then? Surely only a fool would conclude that.

Ageism is a form of bias, in this sense. But what form of bias, in particular, in this context?

The reason that the far right is rising is because people are seeking safety, security, and strength, in an age of chaos, ruin, and fracture. So they’re turning to strongmen, as the turn of phrase goes. Strongmen. Strong-men. Strong…men. 

What image does that conjure up in your head? Muscles. Manes of hair, maybe. Virility. A bellowing tone of voice, perhaps. It doesn’t matter—we all know what the cliche of male power is. It’s exemplified, of course, by one Donald Trump. Just a few years younger than Biden—and yet his image management, as crude as it is, works wonders, to a media as feckless and gullible as America’s. He shouts and roars and jeers and taunts and whines. He dyes his hair and combs it over his bald spot. He wears oversized suits to hide the decades of ill-health. 

Miraculously, or whatever the opposite of miraculous is…all this crude manipulation of an image works.

Works…in his favor. Because there’s an ageist, patriarchal bias. And so by portraying this incredibly crude image of male power, Trump becomes the strongman. Even though he’s also an elderly man, in far poorer health, most likely than Biden, and if mental acuity is really the test here, well, whose finger would you prefer to hold the nuclear trigger? Are you kidding? Comparing the mental acuity of a figure like Joe Biden—as problematic as he is—to someone like Trump, who just said out loud that Russia should happily attack NATO countries…is beyond absurd. Past ridiculous. It’s grotesque and obscene. Trump’s out there giving Putin license to start World War III…and Biden’s the one with mental issues?

This is how ageism warps us. Our judgments. Biases make us stupid. In this case, rather than seeing Trump for who he is, he’s able to portray the image of a strongman, using, like I said, the incredibly crude tools of hair dye, oversize suits, jeering-whining-shouting, and belligerence plus aggression. That’s what male “strength” is, or at least the caricature of it, to a patriarchal system, and in that system, too, age is a burden and a liability, so even the king must appear to always be virile, manly, and not just “powerful”, but more precisely, all-powerful.

Ageism makes us stupid in that way. We’re unable to see Trump as the pathetic moral weakling that he is, at least enough of us, dazzled by this dollar store Hitler he’s portraying. Trump’s two decade older than Hitler, though, if you see my point, which is that the manipulation works, because the bias is there to fool us into believing a lie.

Age and ageism. What is it that makes us so…mean…to old people? In a sense, the answer’s obvious. We hate them. For reminding us that this terrible malady is coming for us, too. And there’s not a thing we can do about it. We must all endure this curse together. We must all endure this curse alone. We will age. Our bodies will wear out. Our minds will slow. The ache in us will grow. We will burn out like candles. No part of us is permanent. Every single day, we live in denial of this fact, bought with stuff, purchased with status, given to us by our children. And yet the inescapable truth remains. Time turns us all to dust. Hooded fate watches us, holding his scythe, preparing for the threshing.

We hate old people for reminding us. Not just of our mortality. But of what’s even deeper than that. Our powerlessness over it. The ways in which we will become weak, and the despair and loneliness of it. The certainty of it, and the finality of it. We hate them with a bitter, cruel vengefulness, and their existence itself warns us what awaits us, which is why we disappear them.

But there are gifts, too, that come with age, and only with age. Wisdom. Grace. Truth. As we age, so, if we live well, our capacities to love, to hold, to see, to know—all these ripen, and suddenly unfurl, exploding into the fullness of what human possibility really is. Is a man or woman weak because they can barely walk anymore—or are they incredibly strong, because they can teach us how to love and what to cherish and what matters in every moment? Is a person weak, because they can’t recall what they had for breakfast yesterday morning—or are they wise, because they can trace the patterns of history, and reveal the meaning of grace?

Every human heart is broken. Only as we age do we really understand this fully, well, truly, and appreciate the beauty in it. We take the time to contemplate all our regrets. The failed relationships, the broken marriages, the lost loved ones. The ways in which our lives didn’t work out. Through this process, and only through this process, do we understand the universality of human suffering. The inescapability of it. The follies of the lesser sins of egotism, narcissism, selfishness. The destructive power of the greater ones, of vanity, greed, and hatred. And through our broken hearts shines the light of creation itself, in this way, embracing all, in the spirit of love and truth and goodness.

Age doesn’t equal maturity. Trump is old, but he’s a man-child, who never matured. Biden? He remains the problematic figure that perhaps he was destined to be. Count that against him if you must. But what’s certain is that a lapse in memory here or there is no mark against maturity. The human heart, like the mind, comes to be full, as it ages. Full of so much. Regret, remorse, mistakes, misjudgments, could-have-beens. Maturity transforms that lead into gold. Through this pain the ego surrenders itself to the universal, and in that precise instant, love is born. The highest kind. Not just that of the mother for the newborn. But that of the first mother and father, for all the children who ever were.

Categories Biden, Elections, Ethics, Trump

Houston Chronicle Endorses Joe Biden for President

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2024 //
11

This may be the earliest Presidential endorsement ever by a major newspaper. The Houston Chronicle endorsed Joe Biden. Come to think of it, why should any newspaper hesiatate when the choice is between Biden, a lifelong centrist and accomplished President, and the unhinged Trump, who is facing multiple criminal indictments and attempted a coup when he lost in 2020?

The editorial says:

Now that the Kansas City Chiefs have triumphed over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII — and without the help of Taylor Swift and the CIA, as far as we know— this nation can turn its attention to another winning team. We have in mind the Biden administration. Under the leadership of the oldest and arguably the most experienced president in American history, the team in the White House for the past three years has performed remarkably well, despite the rancor and divisiveness that have afflicted this nation for nearly a decade.

The accomplishments of an administration dedicated to governing, one that believes in the power of government to make life better for the American people, is a key reason we heartily endorse the reelection of President Joe Biden. The other reason, equally important, is to fend off the chaos, corruption and danger to the nation that would accompany the return of Donald Trump to the White House.  

The president has his shortcomings, to be sure, but what his administration has managed to get done during the past three years is a potent reminder to his fellow Democrats, to independents and to those Republicans who have somehow resisted Trump’s cultish appeal that the nation has a viable alternative. Here is a sampling:

If it’s really “the economy, stupid,” that determines success in presidential elections, then Biden can probably rest easy at neutral. No, Bidenomics alone didn’t save us but neither did they damn us. One of the clear advantages of a president as experienced as Biden is wisdom: in this case, the wisdom to get the heck out of the Fed’s way as it masterfully applied the breaks to what could have been runaway inflation.  

The economy has recovered from the perils of the pandemic and is now healthier than that of any other advanced nation. With unemployment approaching a 50-year low, companies large and small need workers. (Notice the “help wanted” signs in shop windows, the “We’re Hiring” signs outside huge warehouses and distribution centers just off I-10 east of Brookshire.)

Inflation is trending downward, somehow, despite all dire prophecies of economists, without the bitter medicine of a recession or a period of high unemployment. Food prices are still high, and hard-working Americans are still wincing at grocery store receipts, but gas prices have fallen, as the U.S. produces more oil than any country in history, including Saudi Arabia. In an ongoing effort to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the administration is investing $7 billion in an ambitious solar-power projectand is promoting other alternative energy projects, as well.

The stock market is percolating along and hitting record highs.

“Infrastructure week” became a punch line during the inept Trump administration, but the Biden administration in its first year managed to pass a bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that’s expected to add an estimated 1.5 million jobs per year for the next 10 years. This administration’s “infrastructure week” is investing in clean water and high-speed internet. It’s repairing roads and bridges, upgrading air- and seaports, modernizing our power infrastructure, investing in public transit and pahssenger rail and cleaning up Superfund and brownfield sites.

A little heralded initiative related to infrastructure involves “strategic sector” investments in employment-distressed counties around the nation. In 2021, according to a study conducted by Brookings Metro (a think tank) and MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, these 1,071 counties have received about $82 billion in private-sector investment from industries the Biden administration has targeted. Industries that will locate in these areas include manufacturers of semiconductors (in this country instead of China) and equipment to generate solar and wind power.

One of the distressed areas to benefit is Wilbarger County, Texas, along the Red River northwest of Wichita Falls. A $4 billion private-sector venture is constructing a mega-scale green hydrogen plant that’s expected to create 115 permanent jobs and more than 1,300 construction jobs in a county where population has declined almost every decade since 1940. It’s worth noting that Wilbarger County in 2020 cast 21 percent of its votes for Biden, nearly 78 percent for Trump.  

Steadily growing reliance on the Affordable Care Act during this administration has made coverage more affordable and more accessible for millions of Americans. More than 21 million Americans are now enrolled, up from 12 million shortly before the pandemic.

The Biden White House also has given Medicare the power to directly negotiate with Big Pharma, thereby lowering drug prices and placing a $35-per-month cap on the cost of insulin for Medicare beneficiaries. 

After decades of “thoughts and prayers” and little else in response to mass killings, the Biden White House managed to shepherd a bipartisan Safer Communities Act through a balky Congress. With the support of 15 Republican senators and 14 Republican House members, the act represents at least a modest effort to address gun safety in this country.

The Biden administration has managed to organize and lead an allied response to a brutish dictator’s invasion of a neighboring democracy. As Ukraine desperately tries to hold off Russia’s invasion, Biden, in the words of former Republican Party operative Stuart Stevens, is “standing on the side of freedom versus tyranny in the largest land war in Europe since WWII.” 

Under the leadership of a president with decades of experience in the Middle East, the administration is seeking a path to peace and stability in the post-October 7 conflagration involving Gaza, Iran and Israel and the desperate Palestinian people. The administration also is trying to tamp down the potential danger of a region-wide war. It’s hard to imagine Biden’s predecessor having either the patience or the prowess to play a significant role in resolving a devilishly complex crisis.

Another attribute of the Biden administration is its normality. Stevens, the former GOP operative, put it this way in a recent article in The New Republic: “One of the greatest gifts of a democratic civil society is the freedom not to think about government, to wake up and not worry about the mood of a leader. Joe Biden has made governing boring and predictable, both fundamental rights of the people in a healthy democracy.” 

We are well aware that the Biden administration has not been successful on every front. The calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan was the most obvious failure. The administration’s inability to quell chaos at the border is another, although blame primarily belongs to caviling and cynical MAGA Republicans in the House. In servility to Trump, they torpedoed a bipartisan border-security plan painstakingly crafted in the Senate. Biden can’t solve the crisis by executive order; he needs Congress to act.   

We are well aware of Biden’s age, 81, (and Trump’s, 77), as well as memory lapses that have prompted near-panic among many of the president’s fellow Democrats. Those of us who remember the energetic, garrulous, occasionally even eloquent Joe Biden of years past can see the difference a few years have made, even if he was always prone to gaffes. Accounts other than the report of Special Counsel Robert Hur suggest, however, that Biden remains focused, engaged and in command on the vital issues that occupy a president. Experience counts.   

We are reassured in large part because Biden has restored the tradition of a capable team running the White House, a tradition trampled by Trump’s deeply flawed scheme to run a one-man show. Like Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt, Biden’s deft management of his team has made him, arguably, the most productive president since LBJ in the early months of his administration. 

He has, as they say, forgotten more than his presumed Republican rival will ever know. That’s not saying much, and at the same time, it says it all.

Categories Biden, Democracy, Elections, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Manafort, Trump, and Ukraine

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2024 //
47

Heather Cox Richardson displays the value of learning history in order to understand the world today. In this post, she reviews the facts about the Trump campaign’s connection to Ukraine in 2016. The one important point she overlooked is the change in the Republican platform of 2016, made at the request of the Trump campaign. The 2012 Republican platform stated the Party’s support for Ukraine. That section was deleted in 2016.

She wrote:

Although few Americans paid much attention at the time, the events of February 18, 2014, in Ukraine would turn out to be a linchpin in how the United States ended up where it is a decade later. 


On that day ten years ago, after months of what started as peaceful protests, Ukrainians occupied government buildings and marched on parliament to remove Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovych from office. After the escalating violence resulted in many civilian casualties, Yanukovych fled to Russia, and the Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, returned power to Ukraine’s constitution.


The ouster of Yanukovych meant that American political consultant Paul Manafort was out of a job. 


Manafort had worked with Yanukovych since 2004. In that year, the Russian-backed politician appeared to have won the presidency of Ukraine. But Yanukovych was rumored to have ties to organized crime, and the election was full of fraud, including the poisoning of a key rival who wanted to break ties with Russia and align Ukraine with Europe. The U.S. government and other international observers did not recognize the election results, while Russia’s president Vladimir Putin congratulated Yanukovych even before the results were officially announced. 


The government voided the election and called for a do-over.  


To rehabilitate his reputation, Yanukovych turned to Manafort, who was already working for a young Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska worried that Ukraine would break free of Russian influence and was eager to prove useful to Vladimir Putin. At the time, Putin was trying to consolidate power in Russia, where oligarchs were monopolizing formerly publicly held industries and replacing the region’s communist leaders. In 2004, American journalist Paul Klebnikov, the chief editor of Forbes in Russia, was murdered as he tried to call attention to what the oligarchs were doing.  


With Manafort’s help, Yanukovych finally won the presidency in 2010 and began to turn Ukraine toward Russia. In November 2013, Yanukovych suddenly reversed Ukraine’s course toward cooperation with the European Union, refusing to sign a trade agreement and instead taking a $3 billion loan from Russia. Ukrainian students protested the decision, and the anger spread quickly. In 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power and he fled to Russia.  

Manafort, who had borrowed money from Deripaska and still owed him about $17 million, had lost his main source of income. 


Shortly after Yanukovych’s ouster, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and annexed it, prompting the United States and the European Union to impose economic sanctions on Russia itself and also on specific Russian businesses and oligarchs, prohibiting them from doing business in U.S. territories. These sanctions were intended to weaken Russia and froze the assets of key Russian oligarchs. 


By 2016, Manafort’s longtime friend and business partner Roger Stone—they had both worked on Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign—was advising Trump’s floundering presidential campaign, and Manafort was happy to step in to help remake it. He did not take a salary but reached out to Deripaska through one of his Ukrainian business partners, Konstantin Kilimnik, immediately after landing the job, asking him, “How do we use to get whole? Has OVD [Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska] operation seen?” 


Manafort began as an advisor to the Trump campaign in March 2016 and became the chairman in late June.  


Thanks to journalist Jim Rutenberg, who pulled together testimony given both to the Mueller investigation and the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, transcripts from the impeachment hearings, and recent memoirs, we now know that in 2016, Russian operatives presented Manafort a plan “for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded, and -directed ‘separatists’ were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead.” 

In exchange for weakening NATO, undermining the U.S. stance in favor of Ukraine in its attempt to throw off the Russians who had invaded in 2014, and removing U.S. sanctions from Russian entities, Russian operatives were willing to help Trump win the White House. The Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 established that Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner Kilimnik, whom it described as a “Russian intelligence officer,” acted as a liaison between Manafort and Deripaska while Manafort ran Trump’s campaign. 


Now, ten years later, Putin has invaded Ukraine in an effort that when it began looked much like the one his operatives suggested to Manafort in 2016, Trump has said he would “encourage Russia to do whatever they hell they want” to NATO allies that don’t commit 2% of their gross domestic product to their militaries, and Trump MAGA Republicans are refusing to pass a measure to support Ukraine in its effort to throw off Russia’s invasion. 
The day after the violence of February 18, 2014, in Ukraine, then–vice president Joe Biden called Yanukovych to “express grave concern regarding the crisis on the streets” and to urge him “to pull back government forces and to exercise maximum restraint.”  


Ten years later, Russia has been at open war with Ukraine for nearly two years and has just regained control of the key town of Avdiivka because Ukrainian troops lack ammunition. President Joe Biden is warning MAGA Republicans that “[t]he failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten.”


“History is watching,” he said.

Categories Elections, History, Trump

Arkansas: New Member of State Library Board Tries to Defund Libraries that Fight State Censorship Law

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2024 //
2

Debra Hale-Shelton of the Arkansas Times reported on a battle over censorship on the State Library Board. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed two new members to the board. One of them—Jason Rupert— proposed to cut off funding to libraries that were suing the state to block a censorship law. But other members of the State Library Board voted him down, including Governor Sanders’ other pick.

A former state Senator, Rapert is founder and president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers and Holy Ghost Ministries.

Hale-Shelton writes:

Please give the women, especially those who respect the First Amendment, a round of applause.

I refer to the women on the Arkansas State Library Board — even Shari Bales, the one recently appointed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Thanks to them, former state senator Jason Rapert did not get a second on a motion today to defund libraries pushing back against a new state censorship law.

Today was the first meeting of the seven-member State Library Board since Sanders appointed Rapert and Bales. As expected, Rapert talked more than any other board member, tapping his foot on the floor much of the time. His motion was to suspend funds to any library suing the state or Arkansas taxpayers pending the outcome of litigation.

Libraries that would have been immediately affected include the Central Arkansas Library System, the Fayetteville Public Library and the Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library. They are among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the new state law, Act 372, which seeks to impose criminal penalties on librarians or others who make supposedly “harmful” materials available to minors. The challenged portions of the law are on hold pending a bench trial, set to begin Oct. 15 at the earliest.

To keep funding those libraries amounts to writing them a check to help pay for the lawsuit, Rapert said.

Other members of the board pointed out that defunding the libraries would hurt their communities.

Later in the meeting, Rapert wanted to know if Arkansas libraries contain certain books that some have found objectionable, such as “Gender Queer.”Not surprisingly, Rapert chose to focus on books with LGBQT+ themes and not those with extreme violence or steamy heterosexual sex scenes. Arkansas State Library Director Jennifer Chilcoat suggested that he email her details of his request.

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Categories Arkansas, Censorship, Extremism, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy
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