Brutta Figura 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱  

Not Good:  The wannabee Pope continued his mainstream media press tour this weekend with an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.  No, the price of a gallon of gas is not $1.98. No, it’s not normal or at all acceptable, to plan to hold a massive military parade with 6600 soldiers, 150 vehicles and 50 helicopters in Washington DC, the city that his MAGA cronies in Congress still haven’t funded, to celebrate the birthday of the Army but really to celebrate his 79th.  No, it’s not okay for the price of toys, strollers, cars and just about everything to go up.  No, it’s not okay to say that the reason Federal Reserve Powell Chair Powell hasn’t lowered interest rates is because of his dislike of all things Trump.  No, it’s not okay to take credit for the “good” parts of the economy while blaming Biden for the “bad” parts, though it was kind of funny to hear him say that out loud. No, recessions are not good things. No, it’s not okay to say that upholding Constitutionally mandated “due process” is a voluntary thing. Nor was it okay for him to post and for the official White House account to repost an AI generated picture of him dressed in Pope attire, something that NY’s Catholic Conference called neither clever nor funny and NY’s generally Trump friendly Cardinal Dolan, who previously said that Trump “takes his Christian faith seriously,” called brutta figura as in bigly not good but which the fawning self-described “baby Catholic” Veep Vance excused as just  funny. Doubling down on stupid, late yesterday Trump posted that he plans to reopen Alcatraz, because for “too long America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering” and he needs a place to stuff all those dregs, and an out of date island prison that ceased being used as one in 1963 due to its high costs of operation as well as its large refurbishment needs and that now serves as a tourist site is inefficient and absurd.  That doesn’t even take into consideration that his Alcatraz plans likely don’t include refurbishment but do include the incarceration of some on his enemies list like the law firms who refuse to pay his extortion demands and the judges like US District Court Judge Beryl Howell who struck down his executive order targeting Perkins Coie as a violation of the Constitution’s protections of free speech and due process while also castigating him for “weaponizing the justice system” and “setting personal vendettas.”  And lastly because he loves tariffs, late yesterday he announced plans to impose a 100% tariff on films produced outside of the US, ignoring that the film industry had a $15.3 billion trade surplus in 2023 and generated a positive balance of trade with every major foreign market. It’s not clear where the film idea came from, maybe from one of his industry advisors: Mel Gibson, Jon Voight or Sylvester Stallone?

A Hole in Every Brain: With all that Trump says and does dominating the press cycle it would be easy to miss the damage that RFK Jr continues to do to health care. That damage goes well beyond the dismembering of Health and Human Services including the NIH and the CDC.  Last week the wormhole heroin guy announced that the administration will require all new vaccines be tested against placebos before their approval.  RFK’s spokesman characterized that as a "radical departure from past practices."  To be clear, during their development drugs and vaccines have long gone through safety and efficacy testing that compares their performance to placebos.  The likely difference here is that RFK’s team plans to subject “tweaks” of existing vaccines to the placebo requirement. That could make it virtually impossible for annual flu and COVID shots to be available in time to combat seasonal needs.  Though statistics are getting harder to find given RFK’s elimination of many of the CDC reports that are generally their source, approximately 30,000 people including more than 200 children died of the flu during the 2023-2024 flu season, 470,000 were hospitalized.  Just under 50,000 Americans died from COVID during 2023, with another 25,000 deaths associated with COVID contributing factors.  Should COVID and Flu vaccines, adapted each year to reflect circulating strains, be required to undergo placebo testing as a condition of approval, the shots will become more expensive to produce and, of more concern, won’t be available in time to provide protection.  We’ll all suffer but those who are immune suppressed including cancer patients, children, and the elderly will suffer the most. Rising morbidity and mortality while Republicans in Congress cut health care funding, what could go wrong? Anyone who’s been paying attention to the insane things that RFK has long been saying about vaccines knew this was inevitable.  Afterall he’s so delusional that he attributes the deaths associated with the 1918 flu pandemic where 675,000 Americans and anywhere from 50 to 100 million died worldwide to vaccine research and that’s just the tip of his vaccine derangement. No surprise that instead of aggressively pushing measles vaccines, he now plans to allocate more funds to measles treatments because, apparently, he’s not all that interested in prevention.  

Fog:  It’s been a few days since Mike Waltz was fired as National Security Advisor and with time more details about the reasons for his dismissal have been leaked.  While his screw ball Signal phone call contributed to his firing and “promotion” to UN Ambassador, if the leaks are true, that was just a small part of the reason for his removal which goes far to explaining why Defense Secretary Hegseth still has his job. It turns out that Waltz’s old style Republican views were out of synch with Trump and his MAGA advisors’ American first and only positions.  In particular, they didn’t like his pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia stance. Moreover, according to the leaks, Waltz had been having side discussions with Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu that included the US signing off on Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear installations.  True or just a smear campaign, that would contradict Trump, who for all his anti-Iran bluster appears to be trying to negotiate an Obama era deal with Iran. Netanyahu denies those conversations took place, but a last-minute press conference with Bibi and Trump where Iran was supposed to be discussed was cancelled during Bibi’s recent April visit so who knows?  On Friday after early reports that real estate guy/negotiator Steve Witkoff would replace Waltz, reports shifted to Trump instead promoting either WH Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has been busy violating the Constitution with his anti-immigrant activities, or Seb Gorka, the conspiracist who is currently serving as some combination of deputy assistant and senior director for counterterrorism.  However, at least for now Trump seems okay with Secretary of State Little Marco, who has so morphed into a MAGA man that Trump named him along with Veep Vance as his possible successor, holding on to the National Security Advisor position.  As to peace in the Middle East, not much good happening on the Israel, Houthi, Gaza front right now.  Yesterday, the Houthis who get their missiles from Iran managed to land one near Israel’s Ben Gurion (Tel Aviv) airport.  Israel appears to be planning a reprisal while also ramping up its activities in Gaza.  It’s not clear where the real estate guy’s real estate guy is but peace in the Middle East and in Ukraine does not appear to be around the corner.

#BringThemAllHomeNow