A Feature Not a Bug 🤡 🤮 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🤮

Cabinet Sex Crimes:   Yesterday, all five Republican members of the House Ethics Committee voted against releasing the ethics report concerning former Congressman/Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz’s sex trafficking and drug escapades.  It remains possible that they will vote to release the report when they meet again in early December and/or that it will be shared with the Senate before Gaetz’s confirmation hearing, assuming Trump’s recess appointment scheme fails. Despite the Ethics Committee’s failure, or more likely because of it, parts of the documentary evidence related to Gaetz’s sexcapades have begun leaking out, including a “follow the money” flow chart that shows the payments made by Gaetz to two women who testified under oath that he had paid them for sex.  That flow chart hit the presses around the same time that JD Vance who we thankfully haven’t seen much of lately was ushering Gaetz in and out of meetings with the Republican Senators whose votes Gaetz will need to be confirmed.  While alleged sex trafficker Gaetz was roaming the halls of the Senate, Mediaite published the full police report concerning the attack that “alleged” rapist/Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth paid to conceal.  To say the least, the details are not pretty.  The Trump team apparently isn’t all that pleased with Hegseth. They can deal with rape accusations, but apparently, they’re upset that Hegseth didn’t come clean about his before his appointment was announced.  As the WSJ noted, “there’s a lesson about picking unvetted cabinet secretaries on a whim,” as if Trump ever really learns lessons. On the subject of sex problems, it turns out that Linda McMahon, who headed the Small Business Administration the last time Trump was president, may have one of her own. McMahon who Trump just announced as his selection to head the Department of Education has no real education experience but since Education is one of the departments that Trump plans to eliminate who needs experience?  Keeping with the sex crime theme, McMahon is currently being sued by five former “ring boys” who claim that they were groomed and sexually assaulted by an announcer who worked for her and her husband Vince’s WWE company.  Though that announcer was fired, he was rehired once he promised to “steer clear of the kids,” a strategy that works so very well with pedophiles, right?  Worth noting, husband Vince is the subject of a federal investigation concerning millions of dollars of payments he made to settle sexual misconduct and assault claims. To date there have been no suggestions that Mehmet Oz, better known as Dr. Oz, has been involved in any sex scandals, however he is an advocate and marketer of faux herbal cures, some for diseases like ovarian cancer, and has pushed sham diet pills and ineffective COVID treatments.  Apparently, that, together with his TV skills and multiple Emmy awards, makes him the perfect choice to run the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services which would put him in “control over a more than $1 trillion budget and influence over drug price negotiations, medication coverage decisions, the Affordable Care Act and more.” Kind of cool, but only in the most terrifying of ways, that he and RFK Jr will be making health choices for all of us if Trump gets his way.  With all the attention directed at Gaetz and Hegseth, the RFK problem has been mostly moved off the front pages for the moment though some on the right like Mike Pence are upset about his appointment, not because of his cockamamie opinions on vaccines but because he’s got a history of supporting abortion rights. Nepo RFK is another one with some lurking sex accusations, not his many consensual encounters, but one that involved a then 23-year-old nanny who he allegedly groped and harassed multiple times while she was caring for his children.  Lastly, for today, there’s Matt Whitaker.  Whitaker served for a short time as acting Attorney General after Jeff Sessions but before Bill Barr during Trump’s first presidency. He has no relevant international experience but has made a name for himself marketing toilet bowls for well-endowed men which apparently makes him the perfect choice to serve as the US Ambassador to NATO. One more important thing, well important if you are a hypocritical right wing faux religious bible thumper who wants the Ten Commandments posted in in every classroom, yesterday Speaker Johnson announced that members of Congress will only be allowed to use the bathroom that corresponds with their birth sex.  That’s to prevent Sarah McBride, the newly elected Congresswoman from Delaware who is transgender from using the Ladies Room.  Apparently, the same members of Congress who can deal with the rapists and sex traffickers among them are freaked out about a transgender woman using a closed stall or fixing her hair in a bathroom.  Have they ever flown, used a bathroom at a friend’s house, or eaten in a restaurant with only one facility.  Apparently not.  We’re not talking grade school, we are talking about people who hold themselves out to be adults, a few of whom may be wearing Hanky Panky thongs under their Brooks Brothers suits, but that’s another subject.  Sad.  

Not Going Back Polio Edition: Count me among those who find MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski’s trip to Mar a Lago to kiss Trump’s ring beyond disturbing.  That said, when I was channel surfing this morning, I tripped upon a segment where Steve Rattner who usually reports on the economy was detailing in some of his easy-to-understand charts the number of lives that have been saved by childhood vaccines.  We need more of that, all over, not just on MSNBC whose viewership, never all that high, has been tanking of late, likely one of the reasons that Comcast is spinning off most of its cable stations.  One of the diseases that Rattner highlighted is his charts is polio. Polio is caused by the poliomyelitis virus, the last really major outbreak of polio in the US took place in 1952, the first vaccine became available in 1955.  As a result of the polio vaccine, we rarely see cases of polio in the US or in most of the world though it’s still out there, is endemic in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan and was a case was diagnosed in New York State earlier this year and a few more were detected in Gaza where, as a result of the war, vaccination rates dropped from 99% into the high 80s.  Polio is extremely contagious, asymptomatic in most people but life altering and even deadly in others as depending on the strain 1 in 200 to 1 in 2000 ended up with some form of paralysis or dead. That paralysis sometimes impacts the lungs, leaving its victims on respirators. Back before the vaccine became available some, mostly young people, ended up relying on iron lungs to live with many others needing leg braces or wheelchairs.  Most of us over a certain age, remember pictures of faces poking out from those iron lung machines and/or knew people who had polio.  FDR wore leg braces and mostly relied on a wheelchair after he contracted polio at the age of 39.  Republican Senator Mitch McConnell still suffers balance issues caused by the polio he contracted at the age of two and has been known to fall down in public, something that usually isn’t broadcasted. Something to think about the next time RFK Jr talks about how vaccines should be eliminated or revisited and also a reason that the usually awful McConnell is a vaccine advocate.   

#BringThemAllHomeNow