Kermit

Hegseth and Health

May 04

POST 1174

DUI Hegseth

Norm Ornstein hit the bulls eye with this:

Trump kakistocracy—government by the least competent

About which Joyce Vance goes on to say that the Trump kakistocracy

. . . continues to harm everyday Americans and put our allies at risk. On that front, the dishonor prize again goes to Pete Hegseth, with reports revealing he shared sensitive national security information in yet another Signal chat on his personal phone—forwarding information about attacks in Yemen last month to his wife, [his] lawyer and [his] brother [none of whom has a security clearance], among others who should not have been privy to such sensitive details.

Sheila Markin comments that he did that

. . . using a chat app that he had installed in his computer to get around the rule that cell phones were not allowed inside the [Defense Department] office.

Our DUI hire Sec/Def is far worse than the obvious international embarrassment that he is. He’s a threat to our immediate safety and to our long term security. We all would be far better off without this fool, but Trump doesn’t have the cojones to hire competent people or fire incompetent ones.

What About Your Health?

STAT is the excellent health and healthcare publication of The Boston Globe. Last week they posted a report of how Trump and his administration are systematically dismantling medicine and science, which will be felt acutely by We The People in the years to come. You better hope that the next pandemic skips you and that your young ones don’t get exposed to measles, polio, smallpox and the rest, because you probably won’t be able to get them vaccinated or cured.

Even if a new administration replaces Trump’s on January 20, 2029 and that it works at “warp speed” and isn’t hobbled by legacy Trumpian dystopian bureaucracy and ineptitude, it will take generations to repair the damage Trump is causing and to restore our healthcare systems. Read Day by day, how Trump is roiling science and health and pray you never need a cure or even get a diagnosis that isn’t routine, because research efforts nationwide are being cancelled. And thank your lucky stars if you never experience any form of dementia as you age, because ways to prevent and treat such decline won’t be getting developed.*

Pro-Life? Really?

I’ve written (here, here and here) about the murderous hypocrisy of self-labeled “pro-life” claimers, but let me do a short review.

You can’t be both pro-life and also refuse to fund rural hospitals, where so many newborns die

You can’t be both pro-life and cheer the elimination of food assistance for millions of children

You can’t be both pro-life and applaud cutting USAID assistance to millions of starving people

You can’t be both pro-life and pro-death penalty

You can’t be both pro-life and applaud the ending of medical research grants

You can’t be both pro-life and support the DOGE hobbling of Social Security into an impenetrable maze that leaves seniors financially shipwrecked

You can’t be both pro-life and applaud the rendition of hundreds to extermination prisons without so much as a whiff of evidence of any wrongdoing

You can’t be both pro-life and claim that everyone should be carrying a gun to stop bad guys

You can’t be both pro-life and in favor of cutting assistance to all the poor grannies

You can’t be both pro-life and support the ending of regulating polluters

You can’t be both pro-life and terminatethe NOAA severe weather warning system

As you can see, pro-life is actually only pro-fetus. After birth, the pro-lifers set those kids adrift and don’t give a damn about them throughout the rest of their lives. If you support these anti-human actions and still claim to be pro-life, get over yourself and get a grip on reality.

Speaking Some More of Health

We at the societal and cultural level are not too good at looking forward beyond the immediate horizon. That, however, doesn’t mean that the somewhat more distant future won’t arrive. The future just beyond that immediate horizon carries grave danger for us, our children and our grandchildren. Other than stupid, unnecessary, self-destructive wars, our deteriorating climate is the most dangerous thing facing us, regardless of whether we choose to see that danger.

Watch Al Gore’s presentation to the San Francisco Climate Week gathering or read the text of his speech here. Gore doesn’t couch our current reality in terms of myopia, but that is exactly what the current administration is peddling. The muscular calls for more and more fossil fuel extraction and burning, the disbanding of FEMA, the refusal to see the ongoing disasters as the ever-escalating result of global warming that they are keep us from seeing what we are doing to our future generations.

Seeing clearly does not require perfect vision. It only requires paying attention. – Steve Schmidt

The Price of Idiocy

Photo credit: The Onion

There is no evidence to recommend discontinuing fluoridating drinking water. There is goo gobs of evidence showing that fluoride not only protects against tooth decay, but also can prevent various bacterial infections and even death. In the face of that incontrovertible evidence, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wants us to stop fluoridating our water. Brain worm, maybe?

He is famously an anti-vaxxer of the first order, brainlessly railing against the vaccines that prevent illness and suffering and save lives.

From Magical Thinking About a Miracle Mineral, by Zeynep Tufekci,

. . . measles [is] one of the world’s most contagious – and vaccine-preventable – diseases

It has been a favorite target for Kennedy, who instead recommends quack cures, like

. . . “aerosolized budesonide,” an asthma drug that actual medical experts say is not relevant to measles, and clarithromysin, an antibiotic that experts don’t mention for this purpose.

Okay, Kennedy really does have a brain worm and a lifetime of being a special boy only because his daddy really was special. More significant are the people who give his uneducated recommendations serious consideration. Unvaccinated kids have died from measles recently and

there are now more than 700 known measles cases in at least 8 states.

Which is why you continue to thank your mom for dragging you into your pediatrician’s office when you were a kid to get the MMR vaccine. Also, the polio vaccine, the smallpox vaccine and more. Too bad the moms of those kids who died recently from measles and those on a path to die didn’t protect their kids.

The beauty of idiocy caused by listening to ignorant, celebrity know nothings is the relief from the hard work of having to think clearly and critically. But, of course, nothing is free. Sometimes the price for idiocy is the life of your kid.

Kermit, Big Bird and Miss Piggy

Trump has signed an executive order defunding PBS and NPR. They are the most recent targets of his reprehensible retributions, the unlawful tantrums of a tyrant toddler. Here’s a pic sent in by pal Jim Nathan to give you an idea of where things stand. You might want to respond to one of those email appeals from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, rather than reflexively pressing the Delete button. Or click here.

__________________________________________

* Recall that in 2020 Trump The SuperSpreader contracted Covid-19. He was rushed to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, sitting close to Secret Service guys in The Beast so as to be sure to infect them. At Walter Reed he was treated with remdesivir, dexamethasone and more, all breakthrough treatments developed with the aid of medical grants from the federal government. Now that Trump no longer has Covid he’s cancelling funding for medical research because, hey, he himself doesn’t need new miracle drugs.

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The Fine Print:

Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

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Clueless In DC

Apr 13

POST 1168

Tariffs

Click for credits

Start with what we know.

Tariffs are a tax on goods imported to this country. They are paid by the importers. That money goes to the U.S. government. The importers raise prices to their customers, like retailers, to cover their extra costs. Those retailers then raise the selling price of the imported goods to cover their increased cost. When we consumers buy the imported goods we do so at significantly inflated prices.

Turning that explanation around, we consumers pay a higher price to the retailer, who passes that along to the importer who pays it to the government. The only thing needed to complete the explanation is what government does with that extra money that came from you and me.

What we know is that Trump intends to extend his massive tax cut program for rich people that began in his first administration. He may tack on even more tax reductions, almost exclusively to the benefit of very rich people and corporations. The money they no longer will pay to fund the government has to come from somewhere and we are that somewhere.

In other words, it is yet another massive transfer of wealth – in the trillions of dollars – from us to rich people. Trump is crashing our government and fleecing you and me.

From Michael de Adder:

3-D Chess

As we watch the most clueless man ever to occupy the Oval Office — and that’s really saying something — his supporters still insist that, when it comes to tariffs, Donald J. Trump is playing 3-D chess. The phrase “playing three-dimensional chess” implies a level of strategic genius so advanced that the rest of us, mere mortals stuck on the regular chessboard, just can’t grasp it. But Trump doesn’t even seem to know that a tariff is a tax — something most people learn in ninth-grade social studies. It’s a fee on goods entering the country, paid by the citizen, not the government. How can someone be playing upper-level trade strategy when they don’t even know what a tariff is?

From Lawrence O’Donnell, April 9, 2025, referring to the Trump administration’s boundless idiocies, cruelties and cluelessness:

It’s the bonfires of the stupidities.

Stock Prediction of the Week

Tesla stock price has been hammered by Trump’s tariffpocolypse, slipping from $428 per share to as low as $222. UBS cut its TSLA price target to $190 and has a sell rating on the shares. In other words, in just 2 months the value of Elon Musk’s Tesla stock has been cut in half. But that isn’t the big story.

If/when the stock drops as predicted by UBS to $190 Musk will have an enormous opportunity to regain ownership of an even greater percentage of the company and do so on the cheap. And when Trump further plotz-potchkies with market forces, the price may drop still further. Plus, as Musk continues to rampage through the government, ruining the lives of workers and abandoning all Americans, he’s sure to become even more reviled, killing sales of his vehicles, with a resultant further drop in stock price. Then he can buy back his company – how is it said? – on the really cheap.

And that’s the basic mechanics of last week’s market manipulation and likely insider trading stimulated by Trump’ post. From CNBC:

At 9:37 a.m. ET [April 9], just minutes after the opening bell, Trump posted on Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” That post ended with the letters “DJT,” which is both the president’s initials and the ticker symbol for Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology, in which he holds a majority stake.

Theoretically, anyone who bought into the market that minute on Trump’s urging netted a big return. Stocks shot up in a historic reversal in afternoon trading after Trump announced a walkback on some tariffs, a stark turn after his April 2 announcement of new import taxes torpedoed the market.

Too bad you didn’t have billions of dollars to gamble like that, courtesy of Trump’s market manipulation.

Dumbass Comment of the Week

(Tip of the hat to David Corn of Mother Jones for the borrowed title.)

So many contestants, so few awards . . .

This week’s winner is King Dumbass himself from his spewing on April 11, insisting that his trade war with much of the world is great – like nothing anybody has ever seen.

“We are doing really well on our TARIFF POLICY. Very exciting for America, and the World!!! It is moving along quickly. DJT.” *

Policy? Seriously?

Righteous Deportations – At Last You’re Safe From Frogs

From Masha Gessen, New York Times, April 6 in America’s Police State Has Arrived:

The Russian scientist was bringing in frog embryos that the Department of Homeland Security says she did not declare properly.

She was arrested and perhaps deported. Gessen went on to say,

. . . we are in territory described by the Russian saying, “Give us a person and [ICE will] find the infraction.”

This was not just another ICE raid by masked, unidentified thugs, aimed at people holding valid visas.

Said Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, just back from playing dress-up for a photo-op of her brandishing an automatic rifle pointed at an ICE agent’s head, “This was the righteous protection of the homeland from an invasion by a stealthy Venezuelan gang of frogs trying to bring this great nation to its knees. Our excellent ICE Swamp Stingers caught ’em in the embryo stage, immediately revoked their work permits and put them on the next C-130 rendition plane bound for El Salvador. They were lucky they weren’t treated like I treated my puppy.” Then she flashed a smile, showing her excellent new teeth and once again thanked her dentists by name.

She went on to say that the frogs have now hatched and have been incarcerated in El Salvador’s maximum security gulag. It was unnecessary to shave their heads, because, she said, “Neither tadpoles nor frogs have hair, but we confirmed that President Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez of El Salvador made sure that every one of those undocumented amphibians was perp-hopped, heads down, into the darkest, dampest corner of the basement of that torture prison.”

Then Noem squinted menacingly, saying, “Now let’s see if some activist, woke, frog hugging judge tries to return them to our homeland. We’ll just ignore him. He can croak, for all we care.”

Meanwhile, reports Gessen,

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has bragged to reporters about revoking the legal status of upward of 300 people [and an unknown number of frogs] and promised there would be more: “We’re looking every day for these lunatics,” said Rubio.

Rubio proudly announced that the visa revocations of students, biomedical scientists, Canadians in Canada, amphibians and other “lunatics” were not announced in advance of incarcerations and that he didn’t know if the frogs were Venezuelan gang frogs. “But it doesn’t matter,” he said, “because they had gang tattoos. and none of them was wearing a MAGA hat.”

When asked for a comment on these deportations without due process, Kermit the frog merely ribbited sadly, saying, “This isn’t the American pond I grew up in.”

_____________________________________________

* Actually, there was more dumbass to Trump’s dumbass quote, but you get the picture.

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

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JaxPolitix

Disambiguation from the political and social musings of Jack Altschuler