Kevin Drum

I just got back from a visit to City of Hope, and it turns out I have no choices to make after all. My prostate cancer makes me ineligible for clinical trials, so my best option is an FDA-approved bispecific treatment called Talvey, or talquetamab:

TALVEY™ is a bispecific T-cell engaging antibody that binds to the CD3 receptor on the surface of T cells and G protein-coupled receptor class C group 5 member D (GPRC5D) expressed on the surface of multiple myeloma cells, non-malignant plasma cells and healthy tissue such as epithelial cells in keratinized tissues of the skin and tongue.¹

There you have it. Unlike my previous CAR-T treatment, which targeted the BCMA antigen on the surface of cancerous cells, talquetamab targets GPRC5D. So it's a whole new thing for my body.

I now have three separate opinions that talquetamab is probably my best choice at the moment, so that's what I'll do. Sadly, the CoH doctor indicated that it requires dexamethasone to work properly, so I'll be back on the Evil Dex. This should all start up in a few weeks.

¹The mention of "tongue" here is a veiled reference to the fact that it kills tongue cells and is therefore also likely to kill my sense of taste to some extent. Hooray.

Donald Trump is hellbent on punting abortion 100% to the states so that he himself doesn't have to take a stand on it. On Monday he extended this even further in an interview with Caitlin Huey-Burns of CBS News:

As president, would you enforce the Comstock Act, which could prohibit the sale of, or the distribution of medication abortion by mail?

No, we will be discussing specifics of it, but generally speaking, no, I wouldn't.

You would not enforce the Comstock Act?

I would not do that.

Needless to say, the anti-abortion base of the Republican Party isn't happy about this. But their protests are mostly pro forma. For the most part, they seem to accept Trump's wink-and-a-nudge implication that he's just saying this stuff to get elected and will shift back to their side as soon as he's back in the White House.

But will he?¹

¹Hopefully we'll never find out, of course.

Blecch:

My M-protein level has now increased from zero to 0.51 in just three months. When the CAR-T decided to stop working, my multiple myeloma didn't just saunter back, it roared back.

Tomorrow I see a doctor about possibly participating in a clinical trial. Afterwards, I'll have to decide whether to take a chance on that or to try a couple of drugs that are fully approved but haven't yet been part of my regimen. I'm leaning toward the latter, but I haven't yet gotten advice on this from anyone, so I may change my mind. In any case, it looks like I'll need to make a decision fairly quickly.

I don't subscribe to or read any of the morning political newsletters because I've never felt the need to be told what's important and what isn't. I'll make up my own mind, thank you very much.

But this afternoon I happened to get referred to Politico's "West Wing Playbook," where I came across the following jaw-dropping item:

OUR DEEPEST APOLOGIES TO LYNN SWEET… In yesterday’s edition of West Wing Playbook, we wrote that LYNN SWEET of the Chicago Sun-Times and other reporters cut the long security line at the United Center. But Sweet reached out to say that we got it wrong. After waiting in line for 30 or 40 minutes with a Sun-Times intern, Sweet told us that she spotted someone she wanted to talk to and jumped ahead, but she ultimately went back to her place in line.

Seriously? They wrote an item yesterday about a reporter cutting the security line at the DNC? Are we all still in middle school?

God knows I'm OK with a break from endlessly earnest stories. Have some fun! But passing notes about how Lynn got backsies in the playground line—that's not even middle school. It's second grade. What the hell is wrong with these people?

From longtime Biden aide Anita Dunn on how The Godfather can teach youngsters about the uses of power:

Some very invaluable lessons in it that I just thought people should carry forward and the most surprising — and very upsetting — thing was how many people on this staff had never seen the movie.

It's very upsetting that so many aspiring young Machiavellis have never seen The Godfather! Hell yes.

I believe this area of the Mojave Desert is zoned for single-family homes, but it looks like a pair of enterprising critters have decided to build a duplex anyway. They probably did this before SB9 got struck down.

Gaza is back in the political news thanks to protests at the DNC, which mostly seem to have fizzled out. I guess Killer Kamala doesn't have quite the same ring as Genocide Joe.

But I remain puzzled not by opposition to the Gaza War per se, but by the seemingly relentless, intransigent opposition to Israel having responded to October 7 at all. Where does this unquestioning sympathy for Israel's enemies come from?

For more than 70 years Arabs (and Iran) have been relentlessly dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Over the decades this has taken the form of conventional wars, guerilla wars, blockades, terrorist attacks, organic uprisings, suicide bombers, and rockets from neighboring territories. When Arab nations effectively gave up, the PLO took over the killing. When the PLO gave up, Hamas and Hezbollah took over. No matter what Israel did or didn't do, someone remained fanatically devoted to killing Jews.

If you're one of the lunatics who thinks Israel is an illegal colonial settler on Palestinian land and it's therefore righteous to seek its destruction, go block a freeway or set up a bunch of tents or do something else stupid and pointless.

On the other hand, if you're someone who thinks the West Bank settlements are wrong and Israel has a lot to answer for—well, I agree. If you think Benjamin Netanyahu is an odious piece of shit, preach it. If you think Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, abused Palestinian prisoners, cavalierly bombed civilians, killed aid workers, and turned the entire region into a wasteland, you'll get no argument. If, in general, you think Israel could have done a whole lot of things better and more humanely over the years, you're right.

And yet, all that stuff didn't pop up out of nowhere. It happened because no matter how many wars they won or how many peace settlements they agreed to, their enemies single-mindedly kept trying to annihilate them. So what do you expect them to do? Is there a less brutal course that would ever get Israel's enemies to stop?

Maybe there is. But what? What precisely is it that Palestinian protesters want?

I've been waiting for this:

ZOMG! They are lying liars telling lies!

Oh ffs. Walz usually talks about the "fertility treatments" he and his wife got in order to have children, but occasionally refers to it by the common term IVF. In fact, as the New York Times reports, the Walzes actually used IUI, a different kind of treatment that's often casually referred to under the IVF umbrella but isn't technically IVF.

So now you know. This is a bit like saying you got pulled over by a police officer when it was really a sheriff's deputy. But of course the nitwits on the right have to insist that it's a big fat lie and Walz has been exposed as trying to fool everyone. Jesus.

I've heard rumors that people are well and truly beaten down by the cost of groceries and just want inflation to Finally. Go. Away. Is this true?

Well I come bearing good news: Food inflation has been gone for a year and a half. Here's what a $100 basket of the four major food groups costs compared to 18 months ago:

A $100 basket of meat costs $100.57 today. A $100 basket of dairy items costs $98.16.

Grocery store inflation is gone. And it's been gone for 18 months. Is everyone happy now?

Donald Trump says that our supply chains are "still crashed." That's just normal Trump idiocy, of course, but it got me curious: how are our supply chains doing these days? So I checked in on our old friend from the New York Fed, the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index. Here it is through July:

It's right at zero, just as normal as can be.