All the King's Miscreants 🤡 🤮 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️

Where to Begin?  Trump began the holiday weekend with one of those nasty social media posts that we’ve sadly grown accustomed to, wishing a “Happy Thanksgiving to all, including to the Radical Left Lunatics who have worked so hard to destroy our Country, but who have miserably failed." Things went downhill from there as he announced a series of appointments, some comically awful, others just awful. Among the comically awful, he announced that Ivanka’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner, another sex crimes criminal, was his pick to serve as Ambassador to France. Charles Kushner, who Trump pardoned at the end of his first administration, was prosecuted and convicted by then US Attorney for New Jersey Chris Christien for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering after hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, arranging to record a sexual encounter between the two, and sending the tape to his sister. So basically, the kind of guy we all want representing us abroad.  Trump then moved on to the FBI, announcing his plans to replace Chris Wray, the FBI Director that he previously appointed who theoretically has three years remaining on his ten-year term, with the truly awful Kash Patel.  Patel is so ill suited for the position, that when Trump floated appointing him as Deputy FBI Director towards the end of his first administration, former Attorney General William Barr, told then Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Patel would only get the job over his dead body. Barr went on to write that Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency” and that “the very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.”  Patel is a known conspiracist, a pusher of lies about the 2020 election and a Steven Bannon crony who has promised to jail journalists.  In a very early chapter of the Trump saga worked for former Congressman Devon Nunes who now runs Trump’s Truth Social company.  He’s on record saying that the FBI should be gutted as punishment for its participation in investigations of Trump and his cronies.  He’s all in on retribution and investigating the investigators.  In a near normal universe Patel wouldn’t be nominated for a position that requires Senate confirmation, but normal left the station a long time ago and given how many of Trump’s nominees are frighteningly awful, it’s inevitable that most of them, possibly even Patel, will make it through the confirmation process because even if four Republicans join all the Democratic Senators in voting against some of them, there’s no way that those Senators will all be willing to expend the personal capital needed to vote against all of the miscreants and sexual deviants nominated and with Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr, and Pete Hegseth heading up the list of deplorables, there are so many. Worth noting that in 2018 during one of his divorces, Pete Hegseth’s mother sent him an email in which she called him despicable and abusive for his awful treatment of so many women which of course makes him a perfect candidate to run Trump’s Department of Defense.  On a more comical but still absurd level, while promoting some of her beauty products, Cheryl Hines AKA Mrs. RFK Jr shared a video of her naked husband showering this weekend as one does when one’s husband has been nominated to be in a president’s cabinet.  Last night Trump announced his plans to make other daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law Massad Boulos, his Senior Advisor on Arab and Middle Eastern Affairs. Boulos helped Trump gain votes in the Arab communities in swing state Michigan so the appointment should surprise no one except those who thought that Trump was all in on Israel.  And anyway, why should Ivanka be the only daughter whose in-laws benefit from nepotism.  Late yesterday, President Biden, and yes, despite all of Trump’s actions and threats, he is still president, pardoned his son Hunter.  Given all of Trump’s threats of retribution that pardon was totally expected and count me as one who is relieved that Biden didn’t stick by his promise not to pardon his son.  Naturally, Trump expressed outrage and now is likely to follow through on his campaign promise to pardon the January 6 “tourists,” you know those nice guys who called for the heads of Pelosi and Pence while beating the shxt out of a bunch of Capitol Police. 

Remarkable Economy?   Before the election, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal said that the winner of the 2024 election would be inheriting a remarkable economy.  Naturally, Trump, aided by his oligarch buddy Elon Musk and his DOGE buddy Vivek Ramaswamy, is doing what he can to damage that economy.  It’s not just Trump’s tariff plans, which despite Wall Street’s best hopes, he keeps promising to impose, it’s also the plans to deport many of the migrants who fuel the country’s economic engine because a lot of the farming, factory, and construction jobs they fill aren’t all that desirable to many citizens especially in our current high employment environment.  To state the obvious, commercial real estate brokers squeezed out of their jobs due to declining commercial real estate values aren’t going to start picking lettuce, packaging Oscar Meyer hot dogs, or dangling from skyscrapers. Some of Trump’s plans involve the elimination of the temporary worker visas that farmers rely on to obtain the workers to pick the fruit and vegetables that we buy in our local supermarkets.  Last time he was president the retaliatory tariffs imposed by angry trading partners, so financially damaged farmers, including those in red states and districts, that the Trump administration compensated them for their lost income at the expense of taxpayers who paid for that largesse.  Those payments contributed to the rising debt that Republicans mostly complain about during Democratic administrations but that tend to rise by more when they’re in charge.  Get ready for more financial mismanagement because though we are almost done with this election, there will be another one in two years and a whole lot of Republican legislators will demand that their voters be kept happy.  As to the 2024 election, it’s not quite over yet.  The current House count is 220 Republicans to 214 Democrats with one race leaning Democrat but not yet called.  Though Republicans will have the majority, it will be slimmer than ever as the count will likely be 217 to 215 until the seat that Matt Gaetz vacated and the seats to be vacated by New York’s Elise Stefanik and Florida’s Michael Waltz are filled through special elections.  Passing anything in the House will be almost impossible without Democratic buy in and won’t be that much easier once those three seats are filled.

Fog:  While most eyes remain focused on Israel, Gaza, and the Lebanon ceasefire Assad’s Syria is going through some things.  Rebels have taken over Aleppo. It turns out that Vlad Putin, an ally of Syrian leader Assad, has been using up a lot of resources in Ukraine and hasn’t been as helpful as usual. That doesn’t mean that he and Syria’s other friends in Iran won’t redouble their efforts on behalf of Assad, they will with more fighting and violence to follow.  Has anyone checked in on Tulsi Gabbard, another of Assad’s friends, for her views?  They matter because if she’s confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, she’ll be the one whispering in Trump’s ears.        

#BringThemAllHomeNow

      

 

The Usual Suspects 🤡 🤮 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🤮 🦃 🦃

Happy Turkeys: Biden pardoned 🦃 🦃 Peach and Blossom and, in all likelihood, is working up a long list of humans to pardon before he steps down in January because Trump seems hell bent on seeking the retribution he promised against a flock of people including just about anyone who worked on the federal cases against him, media outlets who dissed him, and probably son Hunter too.  Those legal cases were the ones that we naively thought would result in Trump being held accountable for his January 6 coup and all those purloined documents but that have now been dropped albeit without prejudice by Special Counsel Jack Smith because Trump, warts and all, is now our king.  Smith is planning to step down shortly, hopefully not before issuing a report detailing all of what he learned about Trump’s crimes.  Keeping with another one of his promises, Trump who is acting as if he’s already president, announced that he intends to impose a 25% tariff on goods from major trading partners Mexico and Canada on day one of his administration “to stem the flow of fentanyl.”  He also announced plans to raise tariffs on China but didn’t specify an amount.  It’s unlikely that his tariffs will do much about fentanyl, but they will raise the price of many products including lots of grocery items if they are actually imposed.  So far market reaction to Trump’s tariff announcement has been muted mostly because investors are counting on his promise being no more than a negotiating tactic.  Maybe they’re right, but if they’re wrong, expect market indices to go south and inflation to start heading north in January.  As to those inflation fears Treasury Secretary nominee Bessent says nothing to worry about because “tariffs can’t be inflationary because if the price of one thing goes up, then they (i.e. not rich people ) have less money to spend ….. so there is no inflation." Apparently, billionaires consider dishwashers and refrigerators discretionary items that don’t need to be replaced when broken because doesn’t everyone have maids and multiple sub- zeroes? If your appliances are on their last legs, now would be a good time to replace them because those items will get way more expensive if Trump’s tariffs go through.     

The 🤡 🤡 🤡:  A whole swath of characters from Trump Hell One, supplemented by some who he acquired during his days in the wilderness, are back and doing their thing.  Various outlets report that lawyer/advisor Boris Epshteyn who among other actions pushed the now failed Matt Gaetz nomination, has been soliciting large payments from those seeking help obtaining Trump cabinet appointments.  We know that because someone in Trump’s orbit leaked that an internal investigation into Epshteyn’s actions had been conducted and that the report recommended that he be banished.  Epshteyn hasn’t been banished either because the purpose of the investigation was to make him behave or maybe because he’s now giving Trump a share of his ill-gotten gains? Kash Patel, one of the more nefarious, extreme MAGA anti-deep state members of the Trump squad, is hoping to get a senior position at the CIA or FBI where Director Wray who was appointed by Trump during Hell One expects to be fired. Though he’d like to snag one of the director spots he’s so unconfirmable that even Trump knows it can’t be done, so he’ll likely end up with something almost as damaging like a second in command/chief of staff role. Steve Bannon’s buddy Sebastian Gorka, a disreputable character who former Chief of Staff John Kelly forced out of the last Trump administration, is Trump’s pick for counter-terrorism advisor.  His selection is so questionable that a candidate to serve as National Security Advisor pulled himself out of the running because he didn’t want to be anywhere near Gorka. Ric Grennell who previously served as Trump’s Ambassador to Germany and temporary Director of National Intelligence is very bummed that he hasn’t been tapped to be Secretary of State.  He has rejected a few “lesser” positions but that hasn’t stopped him from weighing in on President Biden. He wants “feeble” Joe Biden to step down now so that Trump can jump past everyone in the line of succession, including VP Kamala Harris, to immediately become president. In case there is any doubt that we’re going to be in big trouble when the next pandemic hits, yesterday Trump announced that his pick to head the NIH is Stanford doctor Jay Bhattacharya, a masking opponent who advocated herd immunity rather than vaccines for COVID. He’ll fit in well with RFK Jr who’s surrounding himself with people from the anti-vaccine Children’s Health Defense group and who is all in on raw milk, which in addition to being a potential source of E coli bacteria is also turning out to being a vector for bird flu which is starting to spread to humans and has one former FDA Head, Dr David Kessler, fearing that it’s the next pandemic. By the way, Dr. Oz who also hasn’t met a quack cure that he doesn’t like, assuming that he make money from it, has been shilling for a scuzzy Medicare Advantage plan, a bit of a problem since he’ll soon be in charge of Medicare and Medicaid services.  Trump also keeps appointing more and more of those responsible for the Project 25 plan that he pretended to disavow during his campaign including former and soon to be current OMB head Russ Vought. As to confirmations, though it didn’t work for child trafficker Gaetz, JD Vance has been telling vulnerable Senators up for reelection in 2026 that if they don’t vote yes for Trump’s nominees 💰 💰 man Musk will fund their primary opponents.   On a somewhat humorous note, remember Trump’s “human printer” Natalie Harp?  She was by his side during his NY trial, providing him with mood lifting flattering articles. Apparently, she’s on her way to the Oval Office where she’ll continue to have unfettered access to Trump, maybe all those notes she’s been sending him like the ones where she’s written “you’re all that matters to me” and  “I want to bring you joy” are really working or maybe it’s something else even more icky. Ickiness aside, Harp facilitates Trump’s worst instincts by bringing him conspiracy ridden articles and reposting inappropriate sexist and racist memes and even communications from world leaders like Ukraine’s Zelenskyy that are meant to be private.      

Abortion Morass:  We keep on learning more, on a delayed basis, about the deaths in states with abortion bans.  The most recent story concerns an eleven-week pregnant Texas woman who instead of receiving a D & C during a spontaneous miscarriage was provided a drug that didn’t help and then allowed to bleed out.  She died because doctors feared that providing her with the necessary procedure would have landed them in jail. Texas’ solution is to stop reporting on deaths that took place during the first two years of the state’s ban.  That’s similar to the strategy now being implemented in Georgia, where officials, upset that their dire statistics have “leaked” out have fired the statistics team because leaks are so much worse than actual deaths?  

Fog:  The conflict between Lebanon and Israel or really between Iran’s Hezbollah backed surrogates and Israel, is over, at least for now.  A ceasefire went into effect early this morning. Unfortunately, the war in Gaza between Israel and Iran’s other surrogates, Hamas, continues.  The hostages, to the extent any remain alive, are still hostages and Gazan civilians remain in the crosshairs.

#BringThemAllHomeNow

Happy 🦃 to All

 
Cyberbullying 🤡 🤮 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🤮

Apprentice Casting:  With a flurry of pre-weekend appointments, Trump selected his cabinet nominees including Scott Bessent, his much-awaited Treasury pick. Bessent was always in the running but fell out of favor for a bit after he loudly butted heads with transition co-chair Howard Lutnick who ended up with the consolation prize of Commerce. Earlier this year Bessent who, ironically given how much the MAGA community demonizes George Soros, used to work at his investment fund, advocated using tariffs only as a negotiating tool but now he’s talking about applying them more broadly but at lower levels than those trumpeted by the Orange guy. Get used to inflation and rising debt because he, like Trump is also all in on extending Trump’s first term tax cuts and though the party line is that those cuts will be paid for by tariffs and budget slashing, tariffs don’t pay for themselves but do raise consumer prices and, despite the Musk/Ramaswamy Doge slash the budget plan, the budget is mostly made up of hard to cut entitlements and defense spending.  Slashing won’t be easy because even MAGA voters will get upset when they lose or see cuts in their Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and ACA benefits, neither will they be happy when their parks are closed and their federal highways become full of potholes. As to the other cabinet announcements, as expected, most of them are Trump loyalists with little relevant experience for their new positions.  We know that some of them have either committed or overlooked sex crimes, that at least one of them is a Putin/Assad apologist and that another is poised to throw us back to disease ridden pre-vaccine times, but since none of them have been vetted by the FBI, we don’t know about everything lurking in their closets, yet. Naturally, the Republicans party line is that they’re all great, with the exception of Trump’s labor pick Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer the Oregon Congresswoman who recently lost her reelection bid.  She has a number of MAGAs including the NY Post which called her a “toxic anti-conservative RINO” up in arms because of her pro-union positions. So much fun to watch these guys fight each other. Not only has Trump and his transition team failed to have the FBI do routine background checks, but they’ve also failed to sign required transition documents so at least so far, they’re being barred from gaining access to the departments that they’ll be running, assuming they’re confirmed, and it does appear that there will be confirmation hearings in January. That also means that Trump hasn’t gained access to government transition funds, but that’s an intentional decision on his part because it also means that he doesn’t have to disclose the names of all those generous “civic-minded” supporters who are funding his transition activities, the crowd who is paying to have friends put into high places and we know he’s all about doing favors for people with big checking accounts. By now we know that one of those who has bought his way in is Elon Musk who spent his weekend cyberbullying government employees by name on X (Twitter).  By the way, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz whose seat won’t be filled until a very fitting April Fools’ Day special election is now available on Cameo in case you are looking for a holiday present for that hard to please friend.  He’s also teasing a run for the Florida Governor spot that DeSantis will term out of at the end of 2026.

 

Don’t Give Up:  Gaetz is out, but his replacement Pam Bondi is hardly someone to look forward to as she is likely to implement some of Trump’s wish list, a list that prosecuting opponents, releasing violent January 6 “tourists,” and firing anyone who worked on any of the Trump prosecutions.  While we are likely stuck with Bondi, none of us should give up on protesting against the confirmation of accused rapist Pete Hegseth, Bashar Assad apologist Tulsi Gabbard, and RFK Jr.  Those allegations against Hegseth are both believable and concerning as is his disdain for women in the military.  Gabbard who has spent the last few years repeating Putin talking points appeared with and has expressed support for Syria’s Assad despite his chemical attacks on his own people.  Then there’s RFK, though he keeps trying to obfuscate his anti-vaccine stance, hiding behind his promise to get America eating healthy again, don’t be fooled.  He’s already begun staffing his team with anti-vaxx activists.  If confirmed RFK will oversee the NIH, the CDC, the FDA and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  He has indicated that he wants to “reexamine safety data for approved vaccines” and we all know or should know what he really means by that.  Ask the Samoan parents whose kids died from measles after he told them not to get vaccinated.  He’s all in on taking fluoride out of the water, which is good for dentists who want to fill more cavities not so good for those who don’t want them in the first place.  He also wants to halt infectious-disease research at the NIH and fire 600 of its employees while reversing the FDA’s “suppression” of discredited COVID cures such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. The New Yorker reports that he wants to prosecute medical journals if they don’t “start publishing real science,” his response to Lancet publishing a study showing that vaccines have saved more than 150 million lives over the past half century. Then there’s raw milk, he wants us to have more opportunities to drink it because what’s a little E. coli and more exposure to bird flu among friends?  By now we should all realize that one of the consequences of climate change is more pandemics and one way to deal with those is research and vaccine development and while it would be nice to think that eating fewer bowls of Fruit Loops would help combat the next COVID like killer, that’s not the way it works.  Ironically, the agricultural industry and the anti-abortion crowd might oppose RFK’s confirmation too though the anti-abortion crowd might be mollified if he promises to “reexamine” the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, and you’d be naïve to think that he won’t make that promise.           

Disease Edition:  Earlier I address the “R” in the MMR vaccine.  Today, I’ll address one of the M’s, measles, a highly contagious viral disease that spreads through the air when an infected person breathes, coughs, or sneezes.  It can cause severe illness, complications, and even death though death is rare for those of us with access to health care and with healthy immune systems.  Symptoms include rash, very high fever, runny nose, and red eyes but can also include complications such as diarrhea, ear infections, and pneumonia, less frequently seizures, blindness, and brain inflammation.  When not vaccinated or otherwise immune, nine out of ten people exposed to measles get measles and are sick for more than a week.  That’s a lot of sick children, complications, and lost days of school and work for caregivers and even if complication rates are low, that’s also a lot of hospitalizations from pneumonia and worse.  Some of those complications can result in death because even in developed countries like the US some of the infected die. Measles can cause serious complications for pregnant women including pneumonia, miscarriage, stillbirth, low birth weight babies, premature birth, and less frequently subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a rare but fatal neurodegenerative complication. The currently used measles vaccine which can be given alone but is usually combined with the vaccine for rubella and mumps has been around since 1968 and is safe and effective.  And again, healthy eating and the avoidance of Fruit Loops is neither a way to avoid measles nor a cure.  Some of those advocating mass deportations of undocumented migrants have been blaming increased rates of childhood diseases like measles on the migrants being unvaccinated, kind of ironic given that many of them support RFK’s nomination and he wants all of our children to be unvaccinated but then again even if logic died a long time ago, we should work really hard to protect our kids and our immune compromised friends.     

#BringThemAllHomeNow

Pre Weekend Funnies  🤡 🤮 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🤮

Gone Gaetz:  Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz will not be the next Attorney General.  He withdrew from consideration yesterday after CNN told him they were about to reveal that his sexcapade with the seventeen-year-old wasn’t a one-off experience and after he received a call from Trump telling him that it was time for him to throw in the towel which isn’t to say that Trump won’t appoint him to another position, just not one that requires confirmation.  Trump’s decision was because he’d been told that at least five Republican Senators including former Republican leader Mitch McConnell, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Maine’s Susan Collins, Oklahoma’s Markwayne Mullin and Utah’s incoming newbie Senator John Curtis, were likely to vote against the Gaetz confirmation.  Murkowski and Collins’ no votes were expected.  The question had been who else would be willing to cross Trump.  McConnell may have reached the no more fxcks stage of his career, if so, things could get interesting going forward. Before becoming Senator, Oklahoma’s Mullin served with Gaetz in the House and had heard him brag and about his drug fueled sexcapades, so he had every reason to believe the accusations against Gaetz were true.  Like McConnell, Utah’s Curtis is another one to watch, maybe he’ll be more like his predecessor, retiring Senator Mitt Romney rather than Utah’s other Senator Mike Lee who is one of Trump’s most avid supporters, only time will tell.  Shortly after dumping Gaetz, Trump announced that his nominee for Attorney General is now Pam Bondi who served as Florida’s Attorney General from 2011 to 2019.  She’s currently a partner at the lobbying firm that was run by Trump’s incoming Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.  She’s was an early proponent of the election lie who has long been one of Trump’s most avid supporters, she served as a senior advisor to the team that defended him during his first impeachment and, when she was serving as Florida Attorney General, she nixed the state’s Trump University fraud case, a decision that “coincidentally” occurred after Trump contributed $25,000 to her AG campaign. Expectations are that she’ll be easily confirmed because all that makes her a normal Trump appointee.     

Cabinetry: Attention now turns to Defense Secretary nominee, accused rapist Pete Hegseth.  It’s highly likely that the allegation that Hegseth raped his accuser is true, however, it’s also possible that having just rejected Gaetz, Senate Republicans will give him a pass, in order to avoid incurring the wrath of Trump. For his part, Hegseth is sticking by his “consensual sex” claim and his supporters, including some in the Senate like the always complicit Lindsey Graham, are asserting that if there had been a crime, local police wouldn’t have dropped the case and anyway it’s just rape and the victim was of age so who cares?  For the record, police didn’t drop the case, they recommended that it be handed to local prosecutors for their review, but before that happened Hegseth paid off and entered into a non-disclosure agreement with his accuser.  Turning to Trump’s other nominees, RFK Jr’s nomination is still out there.  Despite all his flaws, and there are many, as well as the tape of him previously equating Trump with Hitler, something that he blames on believing biased media reports, he may benefit from all the attention currently being placed elsewhere, that would be a shame, but this is a shameless crowd.  The same is true of Tulsi Gabbard, suspected by many of being Putin’s tool, no one should forget how ill-suited she is to serve as Director of National Intelligence.  As to some of Trump’s other picks, earlier this week when Trump announced that transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick was his pick for Commerce Secretary he disappointed both Lutnick who really wants to be Treasury Secretary and his other co-chair, Linda McMahon who had hoped to be selected for the Commerce spot but who instead got “stuck” with Education, a great place for someone being sued for looking away while an employee sexually abused kids and also a department that Trump ran on eliminating.  As to that coveted Treasury Secretary role, Trump still hasn’t announced his pick because finding a credible candidate who is both a tariff supporter and acceptable to the “markets” ain’t easy. Contenders continue to include Kevin Warsh, a former investment banker and former Federal Reserve governor who Trump has often consulted for economic advice and Marc Rowan, the billionaire co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management who has the support of son-in-law Jared Kusher who won’t be joining the administration but will still advise on the Middle East because of course.  Tennessee’s current Senator Bill Hagerty and hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, an early favorite who lost points for knocking heads with Lutnick, also remain in the mix.

State of Play:  Republicans have won 219 seats including three safe seats that will remain vacant until filled by special elections.  Democrats have won 213 seats.  Three House races have not been called yet.  Last night Pennsylvania’s incumbent Democrat Bob Casey conceded to Republican Dave McCormick, as a result the Senate split is officially 53 Republicans to 47 Democrats.   

Fog:  Everything is awful.  No peace in the Middle East and scarier than usual missiles are flying back and forth between Ukraine and Russia.

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

 

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            

 

A Pox on Both Your Houses 🤡 🤮 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🤮

Ethics Are So Yesterday: The House Ethics Committee is scheduled to meet tomorrow.  The make-up of the ten-member committee is evenly split with five Republicans and five Democrats. As of yesterday, all the members of the committee and likely lots of their staff members have seen a copy of Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz ethics report.  According to a lawyer representing two of the young women who testified under oath in response to subpoenas, Gaetz was observed having sex with a minor something that’s counts as statutory rape in Florida.  He also “allegedly” paid women for sex.  Speaker Mike Johnson, who holds himself out as holier than thou said that it would be inappropriate to release the Gaetz ethics report but apparently there’s more than one precedent for similar reports being released even after the subject of those reports steps out of Congress. Trump has been calling around pressing members of the Senate to commit to voting for Gaetz’s confirmation in January, assuming he can’t put the kibosh on those hearings ever taking place.  No doubt Trump is threatening to ruin the lives of vulnerable Senators, it’s worked before and as outgoing Senator Mitt Romney noted, hiring protection for one’s family is very expensive and most Senators don’t have the financial resources that he has. More dirt has come out about Trump’s Department of Defense nominee the multiply cheating, thrice married Fox guy Pete Hegseth.  Apparently, the woman who he “allegedly” raped was working for a conservative group and was responsible for making sure that Hegseth turned up when and where he was scheduled to turn up. He was harassing two women in a bar; to defuse the situation she walked him back to his room, after that her memories grew murky, likely because she was drugged.  After realizing that she’d been raped,  she went to the emergency room where her bruises were noted, and a sperm sample turned up positive. He paid her off, she signed a non-disclosure agreement.  In the before times when candidates like Zoe Baird who President Clinton nominated to serve as his Attorney General were disqualified for mundane things like failing to pay social security taxes for a nanny and a driver, he’d have been kicked to the curb but now rape accusations are just one of those okay things, because, well we all know why.  Last night Trump announced the nomination of another Fox guy/former Wisconsin Republican Congressman Sean Duffy to serve as Transportation Secretary.  As far as we know, Duffy isn’t guilty of any sex crimes but it’s not like the Trump transition team, which has outsourced the minimal amount of vetting they’re doing to an outside source, as in not the FBI, is looking all that hard for any.      

Not Going Back, Pox Edition:  Starting with the good news, the World Health Organization declared Variola more commonly known as smallpox eradicated in 1980, US residents stopped being inoculated for the disease in 1972.  Varicella Zoster more commonly known as chickenpox has not been eradicated but in the US, there’s been an effective vaccine for it since 1995.  Before the vaccine, just about everyone contracted chickenpox.  For most the symptoms included a fever with a rash and blisters, however some ended up with pneumonia or another serious infection which is why before the introduction of the vaccine in the US 10,500 to 13,000 of the infected ended up in the hospital during outbreaks and 100 to 150, mostly children, died.  Also, babies born to women who contract chickenpox during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy can be born with Congenital Varicella Syndrome, which includes brain, eye, muscle, limb, and bone defects and blindness and intellectual disabilities.  Though for most the symptoms of chickenpox typically go away in under a week, the Varicella Zoster virus is sneaky, it hangs around in the body forever, reappearing as shingles in one of three adults who had chickenpox, even in those whose initial cases of chickenpox were so mild that they didn’t know they were infected.  Shingles attacks, and they can feel like brutal, sometimes endless attacks, generally occur after the age of 50 but can happen earlier to those with suppressed immune systems, a group that includes those taking medication for autoimmune diseases. You can’t catch shingles from someone with shingles but anyone who hasn’t had chickenpox or the vaccine, including young not yet vaccinated children, can catch chickenpox from a shingles sufferer with blisters.  The first shingles vaccine was released in the US in 2006, in 2016, Shingrix a more effective vaccine became available replacing the earlier one. Then there’s monkeypox, now known as Mpox, it’s caused by the Orthopox virus, a member of the Variola family.  It first appeared in humans sometime in the 1970s. There was an outbreak in 2022, and it appears to be out and about again. To date Mpox is not as widespread or contagious as the other pox viruses.  There’s an effective vaccine for it but the current Mpox strain appears to have developed one of those gain of function mutations that may be making the available vaccine less effective, just another reason that vaccine research and development, another one of those things that RFK Jr opposes, because he’d rather we all be able to drink raw milk, is very important.                   

#BringThemAllHomeNow             

 

 
Rubella Umbrella 🤡 🤮 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🤮

Cabinet of Curiosities:  Trump continued to announce his cabinet picks this weekend.  They’re mostly awful, some predictably so, like Chris Wright the energy/fracking executive, climate change skeptic that he picked to serve as the head of the Department of Energy.  When Trump said “drill baby drill” he meant it, environment be damned.  Also, remember how Trump tried to distance himself from Project 25?  Well forget about that, yesterday he picked Brendan Carr to be the Chairman of the FCC.  Carr who has vowed to take on the “censorship cartel,” by which he means Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft, basically anyone who ever made any efforts to combat vaccine misinformation or campaign lies or anything else that conflicts with right wing thinking.  That’s part of the “aggressive agenda” that Carr laid out in the text of Project 25. In addition to being a big donor to Trump’s campaign, he’s a big supporter of Elon Musk who this weekend retweeted a promise to create an “extinction level event,” that tweet refers to the destruction of several government departments including Education, the EPA, and Agriculture.  Some reporters predict that Trump will tire of Musk soon, but Elon paid well over $100 million to be co-president so he may not be so easy to banish and anyway, Trump is probably still picking his pockets.  Trump hasn’t picked his Treasury Secretary yet, reports are that though he doesn’t want to roil the markets by picking a totally complicit loon, he wants someone who will support his cockamamie tariff plans.  Transition co-chair Howard Lutnick may still be in the running, he’s apparently been rubbing Trump the wrong way and since he’s not as rich as Musk, that’s a problem for him.  We’ll find out if it’s possible to balance sane policies with extreme tariffs soon enough because the markets which initially rallied after the election, in part because Trump’s win meant that there wouldn’t be a violent transition, are waking up to the realization that there’s danger ahead.  Some of that danger appears to be spilling over to the military. Trump’s team is making lists of those to blame for the messy Afghanistan withdrawal which he actually initiated by cozying up to the Taliban.  His plans might even involve recalling retired generals and other officers so that they can be court martialed alongside some still in the service.  That fear factor is one way of making sure those that remain comply with his orders no matter how illegal they maybe.       

The Appalling Four:  Trump is an adjudicated rapist who has been accused of more than a dozen sexual assaults so why should anyone be surprised that he’s trying to load his cabinet, with those similarly accused. It’s not just Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz, who according to some of the testimony before the House ethics committee that House Speaker Johnson is trying to squelch, was observed having sex with an underage teen who allegedly was then trafficked to some of his friends, it’s also Pete Hegseth.  Hegseth the inadequately experienced Fox fiend selected by Trump to serve as Secretary of Defense once, or once that we know of, paid off a woman to silence her after she accused him of rape.  He admits they had sex probably because the police have some of his sperm but insists that their encounter was consensual and that he only paid her off over concerns that her accusation that asserts he drugged her before the sexual assault might cost him his job at Fox. The Department of Defense has a sexual assault problem so who better to head it than an accused rapist?  Hegseth, together with Gaetz, RFK Jr, and Gabbard are the worst of the worst assuming sexual assault, vaccine denial and the eerie repetition of Kremlin talking points concern you. As to RFK Jr It’s not just vaccines, his advice to the 18,000 staffers, a group that includes career scientists, researchers, and inspectors responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs and medical products, is that they should pack up their bags and be prepared to leave. He’s not very fond of the FDA’s food and nutrition center either, particularly ironic since this weekend pictures of him dining on fried fast food with Trump were all over social media. According to the Trump whisperers Trump knows that some, if not all of these four will have trouble being confirmed by the Senate but he’s determined to have them which is why he is working really hard to convince House and Senate leadership to go into recess immediately after they are seated in January.  Mitch McConnell who is no longer the Senate’s Republican leader but whose word still matters says that whether Trump likes it or not there will be hearings.  That’s encouraging, but he once teased that he’d vote to convict Trump and then didn’t.  He could have ended the Trump nightmare in 2020 but maybe he has reached his tipping point.  He’s 83 and his term ends in 2026 so this time he’s got nothing to lose by standing up.  Or not.       

Not Going Back Disease Edition:   My plan over the next few weeks is to provide information about the diseases that await us if RFK is seated because even if he fails to eliminate vaccines, his anti-vax rhetoric is already impacting vaccine uptake and putting lots of people at risk. Today’s disease is Rubella, also known German Measles.  The Rubella vaccine was introduced in the US in 1969.  In 1971 it was combined with the vaccine for Measles and Mumps into the MMR shot.  If you are over a certain age, you probably had Rubella and if you contracted it as a child in all likelihood you didn’t suffer much more than a rash and a fever. The bad news is that 20 to 25% of infants born to mothers who contract Rubella during the first trimester of pregnancy, with decreasing frequency for those who contract it later in their pregnancies, develop Congenital Rubella Syndrome which includes, microphthalmia (eye malformations), cataracts, microcephaly (unnaturally small heads), “mental retardation,” deafness, patent ductus arteriosus (heart defects), distinctive bone defects and a few other horrible things.  My source for this is my copy of Control of Communicable Diseases in Man, a mandatory purchase back when I studied Public Health.  A whole bunch of people, including those in your orbit who voted for Trump did not vote for Rubella, and probably don’t even know how dangerous it can be but here we are, Trump has nominated the anti-vax guy to be Health Secretary and to make matters worse reproductive choice is a vanishing option in lots of states and maybe even all states.  Please, please share this with them because they need to know and they need to speak up, loudly before Trump forces nepo Kennedy into his cabinet.

The State of Play: As of this morning Republicans have won 218 seats including the three that will be open as a result of Gaetz’ resignation and his other two cabinet nominations.  Democrats have won 212.  Five seats have not been called yet.  The Senate still stands at Republicans 52, Democrats 47.  Pennsylvania’s incumbent Senate Democrat Bob Casey is now only 17, 430 votes behind Republican challenger, likely winner Dave McCormick, so there will be a mandatory recount and lots of fighting about what constitutes a legal ballot, but the difference is probably insurmountable.   

#BringThemAllHomeNow