Three-Point Shots, Vol. 3, No. 3: March 17, 2025

The Pulitzer committee probably won’t recognize it, but your Humble Correspondent has been at the forefront of reporting today’s top stories. Here’s an update on three stories from three weeks ago.

Welcome to another edition of Three-Point Shots, a part of my Life Its Ownself Substack page. If you enjoy reading it, please 1) hit the Like button, 2) subscribe to the Life Its Ownself, and 3) share it with others in the link below. Comments are welcome and encouraged.

But first, your moment of Zen … Nightfall over Marathon, Texas, Friday, March 13, 2025.

---

Monday, March 17, 2025

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to those who celebrate, and that better be darn near everyone! Blessed with a German last name and what might charitably be called a “Roman” nose, my identity was nevertheless shaped by my mother’s Irish heritage.

---

Just three weeks ago, I published one of my Three-Point Shots, predicting imminent catastrophes in three distinct areas of our public life. I return today to update you. TL;DR: everything has gotten worse.

---

1. Ukraine

Our betrayal of Ukraine worsens. Our president has suggested that he might restore the arms and materiel he cut off – and make no mistake, he is violating the explicit decisions of the Congress here – if Russia will agree to a cease-fire. Vladimir Putin is, so far, laughing in his face. Of course he is – why would Putin want a cease-fire under these terms?

The only good news is that the American people seem to correctly understand Trump’s behavior – and the embarrassing spectacle of the Oval Office Ambush a few weeks ago – as a moment of utter shame for the USA, and for democracy.

Woe unto those of you who think our shoddy treatment of a brave ally is just about Ukraine. This is a betrayal of the world order the United States and its allies created after World War II and the Cold War, at the cost of American lives. Donald Trump and JD Vance are not worthy to lace up the boots of those brave soldiers.

And in betraying them, they betray the very founding ideals of our democracy. For 150 years, this country has been a beacon to liberty and freedom to the whole world. We have been “The New Colossus,” the mighty woman whose name is Mother of Exiles, who has drawn people to our shores from Ukraine and El Salvador and Kenya and Singapore and, more importantly, inspired those people to dream of freedom and self-determination in their own lands.

---

2. The Unitary Executive Runs Amok

The opinion that the president has day-to-day operational control of all agencies in the executive branch – the Federal Reserve, for instance – used to be confined to untenured professors at third-rate law schools. But all is takes is a corrupt and power-hungry executive to bring those ideas into the mainstream, or at least into the corridors of the White House. And so, we have seen an attack on whatever independence executive agencies have. For instance, at the Department of Justice on Friday, the president delivereda whiny and solipsistic speech whose meta-message was clear: I expect you to persecute my enemies and to leave my friends alone.

The Elon Musk-led assault on federal agencies is another manifestation of this. He and his junior college henchmen attack agencies and employees with ignorant zeal, trashing agency missions and appropriations that have been approved by Congress. As the noted legal scholar Joyce Vance says:

The unitary executive theory is really just a way to cloak the morphing of a democratically elected president into a dictator with the appearance of legality. If presidents can do whatever they want, including putting people on a plane and sending them to prisons in a foreign country with no due process whatsoever, then really, who are we? The Supreme Court started Trump down this path with the criminal immunity ruling in his favor. Whether they will pump the brakes now, before it’s entirely too late, remains to be seen.

---

3. Measles

I first reported on the measles outbreak in West Texas three weeks ago. At the time, there were 90 confirmed cases and one death According to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), we now have 259 identified cases. The outbreak, which started in Gaines County on the New Mexico border, has moved as far east as Odessa and west into New Mexico, with 35 cases confirmed by health officials there. There’ve been two deaths, a child in Texas and an adult in New Mexico. And measles is now reported in 13 other states.

Only two of the Texas cases were people who’d been vaccinated, suggesting that vaccinations do in fact lower the risk of catching the highly contagious disease. In fact, Texas DSHS has had the temerity to suggest that “the best way to prevent getting sick is to be immunized with two doses of a vaccine against measles, which is primarily administered as the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. Two doses of the MMR vaccine are highly effective at preventing measles.”

The outbreak first gained a foothold among the Mennonite community in Gaines County, which eschews vaccinations and other forms of traditional health care. But its spread has been worsened by the regional and national drop in vaccination rates, a secondary effect of the internet’s stupidification of America.

To make matters worse, the government is now run, Idiocracy-style, by morons, cretins, swindlers, and poltroons, the likes of which, as our president likes to say, we have never seen. Exhibit A is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who fits at least three of those categories and continues to pour gasoline on the epidemiological fire by recommending preventatives like cod liver oil, Vitamin A, and steroids, all while cautioning that vaccines are an “unproven treatment.”

I warned three weeks ago that, absent an uptick in vaccinations, the outbreak would continue to spread. At what magic number does an “outbreak” become an “epidemic?”