Tag Archives: crank magnetism

July 20, 2026 · 5:12 am

I do not think making America healthy again is a Republican priority

I predicted last month that the Toddler administration and sociopathic crackpot RFK Jr. would start hacking away at anti-smoking rules if Big Tobacco paid them enough. I hate being right. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 14-year ad campaign, called Tips From Former Smokers, was highly memorable and, research shows, highly effective in motivating people to quit. Last year, though, as tobacco companies gave millions to political organizations related to the Trump administration, the campaign went dark.”

“The warning on the government website was stark. Some products and remedies claiming to treat or cure autism are being marketed deceptively and can be harmful. Among them: chelating agents, hyperbaric oxygen therapies, chlorine dioxide and raw camel milk.” That page has gone dark too.

On the other hand, Kennedy has announced he’s willing to devote his department’s resources to investigating Muslim groups for non-existent crimes.

To counter the US withdrawing from the World Health Organization, some states are joining. Right-wingers are unhappy.

“For NIH, it proposes a $5 billion cut to research program funding (~11% cut). It also proposes elimination of 1 institutes and 2 centers: National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health Fogarty International Center. The combined fiscal year 2026 budget for these ICs is approximately $1.2 billion so that leaves a $3.8 billion cut for the rest of NIH.” — Jeremy Berg on the Toddler’s proposed budget for 2027. This was a couple of months back so things may have changed, but as Berg says, the spending priorities show what Republicans think is important. Kennedy, for example, wanted to spend $5 billion of NIH funding, looking for the non-existent vaccine-autism link.

” Federal research funds are not an entitlement, they are not a subsidy: they are subject to exceptionally competitive award processes and intense federal government oversight. Universities do things private companies with research capacities cannot: train research talent, conduct basic research with uncertain payoffs, and distribute knowledge as a public good. And the rewards have been enormous. Everything from the internet to pharmaceutical and health care innovations evolved from such investments. We are richer and healthier for the investment.” — Don Moynihan on why both the Toddler’s war on university research partnerships is bad and people saying colleges should cut themselves free from such deals is also wrong.

Here’s a look at how government dictating scientific truth can go very wrong.

Despite which, the usual The Market Will Save Us suspects insist we should abolish the NIH and rely on the free market. Best quote from the thread, referring to the right wing fondness for herd immunity: “Ah yes, herd immunity, where the non-immune part of the herd just dies.”

Speaking of the free market, an epidemiologist responds to claims that vaccines are a cash cow for clinics and doctors: “Once you factor in staff time, storage and refrigeration, insurance paperwork, and the need to purchase vaccines upfront (often months before reimbursement), most pediatric practices break even. In many practices, low reimbursement for Medicaid and uninsured vaccine administration means the practice loses money on each vaccine administered.”

“Whiskey Pete” Hegseth rescinded the flu vaccine requirement for new recruits. One recruit has died of influenza. Wow, who could have anticipated that … except countless military commanders from the pre-vaccine era.

Despite Kennedy’s lies, studies have consistently found no autism-Tylenol connection. I doubt he knows crap about cellphones’ effect on our brains either. And he can’t do 20 pull-ups.

“I want to say, I’m creeped out by the memo saying that Olmstead “held only that a state cannot institutionalize such patients” — they’re talking about people with disabilities — “without justification,” and then adds, “What counts as adequate justification remains an open question.” Given Kennedy’s war on the disabled and the neurodivergent, I’m creeped out too.

Not a fan of Mehmet Oz serving as the Toddler’s hatchetman on the ACA either.

“An Idaho mother was charged with the murders of her 18-month-old twins more than a year after suggesting their deaths were the result of vaccinations.”

“I don’t think that the Democrats should relax sensible, science-based positions on vaccines and other health care, but I’m unclear on how much more confrontational and assertive Democrats could get on this issue.” — from a post about how to respond to the “woo” faction in our own coalition.

“A big problem for trust in government is that high-quality governance is usually invisible. When the various agencies designed to protect the American people from all manner of threats are working perfectly, most potential disasters are detected and prevented before they happen. A lot of highly trained government workers do diligent and difficult work for little pay and less recognition, heading off crisis after crisis, and the ignorant swing-voting layman assumes that all his tax dollars are being squandered.” — from a Prospect story on the cyclosporiasis AKA explosive diarrhea outbreak. Though in this case it seems the cluelessness was the ignorant Republicans now running things.

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June 25, 2026 · 5:02 am

The depressing state of American public health when it’s run by idiots and liars

“A major flu outbreak has sickened nearly 160 troops at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas less than two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. troops would no longer be required to be vaccinated for the flu, defense officials said.” And since that report, the flu has spread. Who could have predicted that? Well, anyone competent, which lets out the Toddler and Hegseth.

“At HHS, disability education would fall under the oversight of an agency head, Kennedy, who has spent decades spreading disinformation about autism and villainizing autistic people.”

“PEPFAR has provided over $8 billion to South Africa since its founding under President George W. Bush. South Africa has about 8 million people living with HIV, the most in the world.” The Toddler is killing the program. On top of which “states and health organizations are waiting for $211 million in grants to grow their 988 suicide hotline capacities, $75 million to build out global disease outbreak response, $3 million to build treatment centers for opioid addiction and $95 million for programs that “improve the overall performance of the public health system.” Thank the Toddler Administration’s new grant-review system.

“Measles running rampant, public health destroyed, a trillion dollars ripped from Medicaid, inadequate physician payment, stupid immigration rules,” — why many American doctors want the AMA to stand up to Republicans.

“Republicans are calling on federal authorities to impose stringent regulations on the abortion drug mifepristone, citing the dangers posed by the drug’s largely unregulated use to Americans’ drinking water. A coalition of 15 red state attorneys general is urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to add mifepristone to the agency’s Contaminant Candidate List, which would likely trigger safety studies and potentially stricter regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act.” This is a bullshit excuse for regulating mifepristone — especially coming from the party that’s otherwise buddy-buddy with all polluters.

“there have been times where I’ve dropped these and, and caused panic because, you know, need to find the drug, because you’ve just dropped a thousand dollars that might be now behind a couch or, you know, down a drain or something like that.” — a look at how one cancer-drug manufacturer staved off generic versions so they could keep selling a 28 cent pill for $1,000.

“U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pursuing federal government access to most Americans’ medical records, in a quest to research a link between vaccines and autism — a connection the medical establishment studied for decades and flatly rejects.” Like we should trust anyone in this administration with our personal info.

“FDA leaders under President Trump are moving to abandon a decades-old policy of asking outside experts to review drug applications, a move critics say would shield the agency’s decisions from public scrutiny.”

“We believe that 35% roughly of the people that are using the Affordable Care Act are not legit because they have never filed a claim.” — RFK’s fellow crackpot Mehmet Oz.

“The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine and gene therapy official resigned on Tuesday after a public campaign against him led by the right-wing influencer Laura Loomer” — another person who should have zero influence on public policy.

The Administration has good goals on paper about fighting addiction but accomplishing them “will be difficult in the face of the administration’s mass layoffs of federal employees, cancellation of research and community grants, attacks on organizations and practices that serve people who use drugs, and cuts to Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for low-income people that is the largest payer for addiction and mental health care nationwide.

I suppose it’s no surprise the administration is also gutting HIV research.

“Officials at the Food and Drug Administration have blocked publication of several studies supporting the safety of widely used vaccines against Covid-19 and shingles” I imagine they’d like to do the same to studies that say the shingles vax can reduce the risk of dementia.

Covid vaccine has heart-health benefits too. However RFK Jr. is focused on the real threat to our health — the crimes of Dr. Fauci! Which are non-existent. And in this case some of his evidence is coming from crackpot ex-head of intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who it now appears says whatever her cult leader tells her to. No, not the Toddler, a literal cult leader.

“The Trump administration is proposing to scrap a dozen quality measures for Medicare Advantage plans and not move forward with a Biden administration plan to reward insurers that improve the health of low-income and disabled enrollees” — I’m sure that will work as well as all the other anti-regulatory moves from Republicans over the decades.

RFK Jr. has announced a new podcast “to name the names of the forces that obstruct the paths to public health,” I imagine he won’t be admitting the Toddler and himself are prominent among such forces. Just look at what would happen if Kennedy gets his wish to eliminate vaccines. And CBS news head Bari Weiss is willing to help.

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June 4, 2026 · 5:09 am

It’s a sick sad world, and Republicans make it sicker

As Paul Krugman explained recently, our healthcare system is a mess. Many countries have functioning government-run healthcare in various forms so there’s no risk of becoming paupers when coping with a medical crisis. Multiple efforts to improve things over the years have run aground on the medical world’s opposition, Republicans distaste for helping the poor and a racist distaste for doing anything that helps POC. Currently Republicans are doing their best to make it worse by whittling away at Obamacare.

And then there’s RFK Jr., the anti-vax crackpot currently running federal health policy. Some examples:

“The CDC was told to take down a webpage that explained how people who have multiple sexual partners can reduce their risk of contracting mpox. Asked why, an HHS spokesperson said it “was not medically accurate” and didn’t “align with Administration priorities.” Given Kennedy’s history of bullshit, I don’t believe that for a minute.

“Key officials responsible for leading US research on infectious disease threats have been barred from speaking directly with the World Health Organization — effectively shutting some of them out of the global discussions on virus outbreaks, according to documents and multiple sources who spoke to CNN.”

Kennedy has extended legal protection for research on hantavirus vaccines but “only for use in passengers possibly exposed to the Andes virus on the cruise ship M/V Hondius and in people who have had close contact with those who were on board.” Brian Christine, one of the leading administration officials dealing with the outbreak “was an Alabama-based urologist who specialized in penile implants. He has limited experience in public health and is known for his far-right views and conspiracy theories. He stated that the Covid pandemic led to a broader government conspiracy over control of people, compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany, and downplayed the significance of vaccines in stopping the pandemic.”

“Mr. Kennedy is spearheading an intense push, across health agencies under his purview, for government scientists and federal data contractors to examine his long-held theory that vaccines are helping to fuel an epidemic of chronic disease“

Message to Kennedy: “Offering someone Jell-O is not medical malpractice.”

“It’s now apparently received dogma in MAGAland, in the face of literally all scientific evidence, that the Covid vaccine “didn’t work,” and also killed lots of healthy young people. Again both these beliefs are utterly irrational, and in addition they treat basically the only positive accomplishment of the first Trump administration as a total disaster.”

Let’s not forget the Toddler in Chief; “Every person around is gonna have autism. That’s what’s happening. What is this thing that’s happening?” he went on. “It’s spiked so much. Anything having to do with medical, I always bring in autism.” Yeah, it’s gibberish but I’m sure it adds fuel to the fire for his worshippers. As will his claim babies get a big glass of 88 vaccines.

As far as taking care of American health, Kennedy is fine with teens using tanning beds but furious they use anti-depressants, to the point he may ban them. As someone who knows people who can barely function due to depression, this is monstrously cruel. But then Kennedy’s also shown himself viciously bigoted against the mentally ill. As his entire party. Here’s another example.

“The Trump administration has announced a plan to kill Biden-era drinking water limits on four Pfas “forever chemicals”, and to delay the implementation of standards for two other compounds.” That Kennedy is all-in on this is revealing — while I think of him as a health crackpot true believer, he has no problem not pushing for an end to environmental poisons (one of his supposed beliefs) when it’s politically inconvenient.

The United Kingdom has imposed a phased tobacco ban: if you’re too young to buy tobacco products now, you can never legally buy them. In the US, by contrast, a vaping lobbyist met with the Toddler and now the FDA is greenlighting fruit-flavored vapes, which are seen as more appealing to underage smokers. I’m sure they’ll hack away at more anti-smoking regulations if they get the chance as long as the bribery money keeps flowing. Kennedy’s chief spokesperson resigned over the issue: “he warned that authorizing flavored e-cigarettes would draw more children into vaping and increase their risk for a number of health issues, from addiction to cancer.”

They’re making America sicker — and ironically it’s right-wing Republican voters who suffer the most.

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May 19, 2026 · 12:15 pm

“Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.”

The title comes from Stephen Vincent Benet’s mid-1930s poem “Litany for Dictatorships,” a grim assessment that humanity was not living up to its potential:

“We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.”

Living in the oh-so-red-state Florida Panhandle and through the Reagan Years, I’ve never been under the delusion that the light was guaranteed to increase. Letters to the local paper back in the 1980s made it quite obvious lots of people stewed with resentment that women had life choices other than “stay at home mom.” They hated that Christianity — their brand, of course — wasn’t allowed to dictate the law of the land.People weren’t as open about being antisemites or racists but I saw some of that too. Homophobia reared its head later, as did Islamophobia.

Despite all that, it’s horrifying how quickly how many people embrace old hatreds now that the Republican Party leaders are saying its okay. Case in point, a lawsuit from multiple Republican AGs fighting against the Biden administration classifying gender dysphoria as a disability ended when the Toddler undid the rule. Some of the AGs turned it into a different suit, demanding the federal government drop a requirement that states have to provide disabled individuals with services in the community whenever possible, rather than institutionalizing them.

The AGs are staying silent about the reasons for this suit, probably because “I want to lock those stinking freaks away” isn’t a popular position. I’m sure if pressed they’ll eventually spout some bullshit about states’ rights, federal overreach, blahblahblah. They’re lying; nobody pushes a lawsuit like this unless they want disabled people locked away.

Republicans are also pushing to eliminate a federal program that pays family members to care for a loved one at home. Here they offer an argument there’s too much fraud, but rather than investigate (or offer examples) they simply want the program gone. Which could lead to more disabled being institutionalized.

I know people who are only alive because they’re on antidepressants but RFK Jr. opposes them too. And wants to ban them. He’s not unique in this: when Obama said people with mental illness should seek treatment and not be stigmatized, right-winger Neil Munro said, yes they should be stigmatized — people who seek therapy instead of just working through it are weak! Which fits with RFK Jr.’s conviction that a healthy, pure body won’t get sick or the ideas of other Toddler officials that covid would only cull the weaker members of our society, herd immunity would save the rest.

It’s not just about making bigotry against the disabled fashionable again. The religious right has grumbled for years that “freedom of religion” means freedom of their religion and they’re still at it: disbarred Toddler lawyer Jenna Ellis says “We have a civil government that protects the right of Christians to be able to live and work” and does not protect anyone else. Which is wrong, and also evil: nobody making this argument is advocating “even though we could shut down Islam in America, we’ll tolerate them” (some good discussion of all this on Baptist News). They want Muslims gone. This is particularly about Muslims right now but trust me, the Jews and the “wrong” Christians will get it eventually if the Religious Right’s dream of a Christian state becomes a reality. As witness one New Hampshire Republican wants to teach Holocaust denial in schools.

And, of course, there’s racism. The Biden administration wanted to help poor blacks in Alabama who desperately needed new septic systems. The Toddler killed the project. Red states are jumping on gerrymandering black Americans out of political power now that the Supreme Court has given them the A-OK. And when black state legislators in Tennessee objected, the Republicans retaliated. How dare they speak up to the master race? And Republicans continue calling for an end to the Fourteenth Amendment — which as Kevin Leman says at the link means they’re either ignorant or white supremacist. As others have observed, stripping black Americans of legal rights isn’t about the rationale, it’s about stripping them of legal rights. And then there’s the racist alleged murderer who’s getting thousands in donations since allegedly gunning down a black man in a hate crime. Or that the one type of refugee Republicans believe in bringing to this country — even spending money on it — is white South Africans.

And there’s homophobia and transphobia (e.g., here and here) too, and some Republicans declaring that no matter how bad the Toddler is, they still support him as the alternative to Biden daring to declare Transgender Visibility Day. As Rick Pidcock says, “nobody dies from Transgender Visibility Day.”

Benet ends his poem with the lines “our fathers and ourselves sewed dragon’s teeth/our children know and suffer the armed men.” The dragon’s teeth in this case being the rights blacks, women, gays and the disabled won for themselves in the last century, which then spawned the opposition of pissed-off, resentful people who can’t stand to share “their” country. That works both ways, though. Just as hatred didn’t die with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the ADA and Obergefell, the push for equality and the knowledge that it’s possible won’t die either. We can be dragon’s teeth. We can give birth to a better America. Women, blacks and gays fought for their rights when they had none, when the law actively denied them rights. It will be a very long struggle and many people will suffer unjustly and die before it ends but we can eventually bend the arc of the universe back towards justice.

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April 30, 2026 · 5:15 am

I am appalled, but not surprised to see people claiming tobacco is good for you

We live in an age when SecWar “Whisky Pete” Hegseth can end mandatory flu vaccinations for our troops and claim it’s about freedom. After all, it’s not like strong, virile American warriors can ever be sidelined by sickness … oh. Wait. So it’s not surprising the tobacco industry, which screeched about freedom for decades as a defense against regulation, is pushing tobacco as a mind-hack. And influencers aligned with RFK are claiming nicotine is healthy; Jillian Michaels, for example, says “Nicotine, unto itself, is not toxic. It’s beneficial,”

I don’t know if these people are crackpots, trying to gain attention by swimming against what we know about tobacco or taking some kickbacks (and it could be all of them) but this is grade-a bullshit. Nicotine is extremely toxic, and it’s incredibly addictive (details at the link). Unfortunately I suspect lots of people primed to believe medical knowledge is garbage will swallow this snake oil, particularly as there are many products that allow them to indulge without smoking. The UK, by contrast, has just passed a bill that says nobody under 17 now can ever smoke cigarettes legally. In the US, by contrast, we have a former tobacco lobbyist getting a senior-level gig at the CDC.

The rejection of medical knowledge reflects the MAGA movement’s general hatred of science for telling them what they don’t want to hear: “GOP political orthodoxy includes positions that are at odds with the scientific consensus on multiple issues, ranging from the validity of the theory of evolution, to the reality of climate change, to the efficacy and safety of vaccines. In each case the scientific consensus is solidly grounded in evidence. But even before the rise of MAGA the U.S. right was increasingly hostile to evidence-based policymaking — especially, of course, where the evidence is unfavorable to fossil fuel interests or quack medicine, both financial mainstays of right-wing politics.”

Plus there’s the desperate desire to grab clicks by offering more bullshit than the competition: “In an interview posted Tuesday with podcaster Benny Johnson, former Rep. Matt Gaetz insisted there’s a secret program that is actively working to breed alien-human hybrids designed to help officials communicate with people on other worlds.” Then again, perhaps I’m being unfair — Gaetz may well be stupid enough to believe what he’s saying.

And of course there’s the general paranoia about non-existent health risks, like claiming local governments should ban farms-to-solar-power projects because of dangerous radiation. In contrast, of course, to the environmentally friendly oil and gas industries … whom I’d lay pay are promoting this kind of balderdash.

Now other links:

RFK Jr. once claimed that every black drug is put on drugs such as Adderall, therefore they need to be taken from their families. Confronted with this claim by Rep. Terri Sewell, he lied.

Anti-vax Moms in California are suing the state for a religious exemption to school vaccine requirements.

Contrary to Kennedy no, fluoridating water does not destroy our brains. But his administration is doing its best to let disease destroy us.

“Most states allow parents of adult children with disabilities, family members of children with disabilities, and family members of the elderly to be paid for providing attendant care.” Kennedy, child of wealth, thinks this should be an unpaid labor of love. Fits with his general bias against disability

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s health agency has altered the guiding document for an influential vaccine panel by enhancing its role in considering safety risks and expanding qualifications for membership to include knowledge of “recovery from serious vaccine injuries.”

The head of the Veterans Affairs Department has repeatedly said that the agency needs to hire more doctors, nurses and other providers “taking care of people on the front line,” even as President Trump seeks to shrink the federal government. But the V.A. has eliminated thousands of medical positions that were left vacant after a wave of resignations and retirements last year, according to a New York Times analysis of internal agency records that have not previously been reported.”

The CDC has found that “the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half,” Under Kennedy, they’re not going to publish the report. Oh, and “Pfizer has ended its large Phase III Trial of an updated COVID19 vaccine. They were not able to enroll enough people to meet their goal. A major problem is the FDA’s wholly unreasonable demand that people with chronic conditions, who benefit most from the vaccine, not be allowed to participate.”

“The legal battle between the administration and the research community started last February, when the National Institutes of Health abruptly announced it would cap payments for research overhead at 15%. Three lawsuits opposing the caps were immediately filed by state attorneys general and organizations representing private and public universities, hospitals, and academic medical centers. ” In a rare victory for medical/science sanity, the administration has given up the fight. On the other hand, “A lawyer for the Trump administration told a judge on Wednesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has such broad authority over vaccine policy that he could even ​scrap recommendations for measles shots in favor of people deliberately exposing themselves to the virus.”

And on another hand, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has temporarily paused testing for rabies and pox viruses, the family of viruses that includes smallpox and mpox, according to an update to the agency’s website on Monday.” It no longer has enough staff with expertise.

Conversion therapy is traumatic and harmful. Banning seems within standard state oversight of medical practice. But because it hurts gays and the right wing likes to hurt gays, SCOTUS has decided bans violate free speech. Unlike restrictions on what doctors can say about abortion …

The Toddler has boasted about cutting drug prices by 1,000 percent. RFK Jr. lies that the Toddler isn’t wrong, he just calculates a special way. As noted at the link, the Toddler is still wrong.

I’ll leave with this snarky assessment from Shakezula following Kennedy’s demand Starbucks prove coffee with sugar in it (not as much as he claims) is safe: “Junior is not a details person. Or a knowledge person. Or a let experts figure this out while I stay in my lane person. He’s a my opinions are always right person and those people are shit at creating policy because everything has to be filtered through their ego. Even when the basis for the opinion is perfectly fine: There’s too much sugar in the average American’s diet, the journey through his brain makes it shitty … He is also an extremely privileged person of the most out-of-touch variety, who recently told people they should eat liver or cheaper cuts of steak if they can’t afford the type of massive steak that is pictured first on his newly released, visually chaotic, dietary guide.

The correct answer was to reel off other protein sources, including foods that aren’t animal based. But that would require details and considering other people’s points of view. He doesn’t want to do that. He wants to ride his food is medicine hobby horse, which involves telling people that if they eat the way he tells them to they won’t get sick. It does not involve helping people purchase the food he says they need to eat. I can’t find any sign he objected to Republican cuts to SNAP benefits. But it’s the ultimate version of the patient as consumer of health care model.”

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March 3, 2026 · 12:12 pm

Kennedy will get more people killed than Hegseth … maybe

Having an inept, unqualified schlub like Hegseth in charge of our armed forces is bad; particularly when the administration is all in on waging war. his commitment to weeding out anyone who isn’t an outwardly straight white Christian man from any position of authority is bad already. But still, Robert F. Kennedy Junior is worse, as the premier medical journal The Lancet points out in a blistering editorial.

Kennedy talks a lot about environmental poisons but “under Kennedy’s leadership, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) shuttered programmes studying the health effects of air pollution, HHS withheld a report linking alcohol consumption to cancer, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdrew warnings of potential harm from consuming products (such as raw milk and chlorine dioxide) falsely marketed as treatments for autism.” As noted in an earlier post, for all his professed concern about chronic disease his department has cut grants for dealing with diabetes. For all his concerns about environmental poisons he’s not concerned that the Necrotic Toddler wants to repeal a Biden-era rule about replacing lead pipes in water systems.

Some of this is undoubtedly a response to business interests lobbying for themselves, others Kennedy’s personal crackpottery. Some may be a mix: I’m sure whoever makes bank on raw milk is glad to have his support but Kennedy seems sincerely convinced pasteurization is the devil.

He’s a shrewd enough politician that he knows he has to serve the Toddler’s whims; sure the Toddler hasn’t ended inflation but hey, Kennedy says just eat cheaper meat. As the Senate seems terrified of defying the Toddler, that means Kennedy with his anti vax bullshit will preside as our health collapses. The Lancet again: “And crises are looming: in November, 2025, the first human infection (and death) from the H5N5 strain of avian flu was recorded in Washington state; pertussis, which killed 13 people in the USA in 2025, continues to spread across the country; and the measles outbreak that began in January of last year now threatens the elimination status of the USA and Mexico.”

I’m sure Kennedy and his supporters will hold up criticism from a pillar of the medical establishment as proof he’s being attacked like Gallileo. It’s important not to forget that Gallileo was an outlier. There have been lots of people with theories challenging established science; for every Galileo there’s a dozen people who were just wrong. People who had reasonable but erroneous theories, people who believed in the Hollow Earth, Nazi researchers who believed the hammer of Thor was a distorted memory of an Aryan super-weapon. Lots of others have been in medicine. Science and medicine are often wrong but that doesn’t make the lone genius/theorist/crackpot right. In this case, he’s completely wrong. But unlike most crackpots he’s got the power to turn his theories into action.

The Lancet’s right. What lies ahead will not be pretty.

Neither, of course, is the Iraq war. The mainstream media devoted quite a bit of space in 2016 to explaining why the Necrotic Toddler would be a dove compared to Clinton. Now look at us. And while a number of Republicans are talking about freedom for Iran, we don’t have a plan for that. We don’t have a plan at all. And we’re wasting billions and using up military resources, for a war with no clear endgame or rationale.

Why are we attacking Iran? It’s not because they’re a malevolent authoritarian state; the Toddler loves Putin, jokes about Saudi Arabia having a journalist murdered, screams with outrage because Brazil and South Korea have put would-be dictators under arrest. The probable factors are that we’ve never forgiven Iran for owning us by seizing our embassy in ’80; Netanhayu has been pushing for us to attack them for years; Saudi Arabia and Iran are hostile to each other. And possibly the Toddler’s seething resentment that Obama gets more respect. Obama negotiated a no-nukes deal with Iran, which the Toddler tore up; one theory is that he expected Iran to come begging for a new deal, instead of which they decided there was no point. Now his fee-fees are hurt, again. For a deeper analysis, turn to Heather Cox Richardson.

As Lawyers, Guns and Money says, this is why the Toddler is so terribly damaging to America (and the world) even when he fails. He can’t admit he was wrong. He can’t reconsider his strategy. Instead, he doubles down: if he’s thwarted, his immediate response is to try something bigger, worse, and stupider. So things get worse. He’s ultimately responsible for picking Hegseth and Kennedy, and the Senate Republicans are 100 percent responsible for approving them. Do not be fooled when some of them pretend either man’s conduct was unexpected. And many of them, like Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, are still in the cult. Anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer thinks this is only step one, and the Toddler should follow it up by locking up American Muslims for being, you know, Muslim (like most current Republicans, she hates us for our freedoms).

As for Iran, I’m seeing the inevitable shrieking online by Repubs demanding unity, supporting the troops, trusting the president, anyone who doesn’t is a terrorist sympathizer — exactly the same bilge we saw in the Gulf War. Either they’ve learned nothing or they think we haven’t.

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February 17, 2026 · 12:15 pm

Republicans, the anti-science party

“We should be living in a golden age of scientific solutions to once-unsolvable problems. And, arguably, we are,” Adam Lee writes on OnlySky. However “Against a global backdrop of accelerating progress, some nations are nurturing science and technology and are poised to prosper. Others are rejecting it, and as a consequence, they’re falling further and further behind. One of the nations in the latter category is the United States.”

Case in point, rescinding the EPA rule that greenhouse gas is a deadly threat (which it is): “In scrapping the policy this week, the EPA will seek to erase limits on emissions from cars, power plants and other industries that release the vast majority of the nation’s planet-warming pollution.” Unsurprisingly they’re lying about the impact of relevant regulations. As Paul Krugman says, anti-environmentalism and anti-vax have a lot of overlap.

So let’s talk vaccines, the medical technology that ended the Covid lockdowns yet is now Public Enemy Number One. As Krugman says, in both green energy and vaccines, the Toddler Administration is not only refusing to support them, it’s actively working against other people supporting them. Case in point: “Ms. Manookian is a leader of the Medical Freedom Act Coalition, a new umbrella group of at least 15 nonprofit organizations advocating an end to state laws that codify what they call medical mandates, which largely pertain to vaccines. So far, bills have been introduced in at least nine states that would eliminate all or nearly all school requirements” I’m sure he’s cool with the fact 883 of South Carolina’s measles cases are unvaccinated.

Moderna has an experimental flu vaccine. Flu kills hundreds of people every year in this country (it’s also a horrible medical experience. Got it twice). The FDA isn’t interested. “Moderna noted that the agency did not identify any specific safety or efficacy issues with the vaccine, but instead objected to the study design, despite previously approving it.”

“I’m not scared of a germ, after all I used to snort cocaine off toilet seats.” — RFK Jr. Who’s authorizing a vaccine trial that “would withhold an established, safe, and potentially lifesaving vaccine against hepatitis B from some newborns in Guinea-Bissau, Africa.”

It’s not just vaccines under siege, though: “Unlike home birth – birth at home with a midwife in attendance – freebirth means giving birth without any medical support. FBS promotes a version widely seen as extreme, even among freebirth advocates: it is anti-ultrasound, which it falsely claims harms babies, downplays serious medical conditions and promotes wild pregnancy, meaning pregnancy without any prenatal care.” The article makes it clear this is way more radical than the regular “free birth” movement that arose in response to frustration with the way ob/gyn medicine currently works. And that the Free Birth Society reels in plenty of bucks, and teeters on the thin edge of ethics, as the phrase goes (carefully positioning themselves so that they’re not legally giving medical advice, even if it sounds like it). Oh, and the FBS leaders also reject gravity and germ theory.

Then we have Sen. Ron Johnson, happily endorsing a crackplot claim you can cure autism with bleach. Or the current secretary of health who thinks the keto diet can treat schizophrenia.

How to lie with statistics.

“Health officials in New Mexico are warning against consuming raw dairy products after a newborn baby in the state died from a listeria infection that they say was likely contracted when the baby’s mother drank raw milk during pregnancy.”

RFK Jr.’s FDA claims the covid vaccine has killed 10 children. Unsurprisingly they did not provide details or evidence.

During a recent Con-Tinual panel, Seanan MacGuire, who writes epidemiological thrillers as Mira Grant, said if she’d pitched a novel a decade ago portraying so many people rejecting covid vaccines, they’d have laughed her out of the publisher’s office. I suspect it only gets worse from here.

Cover by Irwin Hassen, all rights to image remain with current holders.

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February 2, 2026 · 5:13 am

Starting the week with bad ideas (anti-vax and AI)

CBS news top-kick Bari Weiss is all in on the RFK Jr. Kill Medical Science Campaign, hiring Dr. Mark Hyman who claims “that cod liver oil can treat autism and that conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia can be reversed with the kind of nutritional supplements he also sells on his online store.”

Kennedy continues staffing key committees with reliably wrong anti-vaxxers. The Felon of the United States is down with this.

Fla. Governor Ron DeSantis has been all in on anti-vax since he saw which way the wind was blowing. His wife (and possible gubernatorial candidate) Casey DeSantis is outraged some parents are judged for being anti-vax. What a surprise.

Apparently it’s not enough to promote anti-vax ideas — Texas AG and senatorial candidate Ken Paxton is investigating “whether pediatricians, insurers, and vaccine makers engaged in deceptive behavior by allegedly failing to disclose financial incentives tied to vaccinating children.” Spoiler: there are no incentives and there’d be more profits in treating sick kids. Shakezula on this: “No one knows the details of civil investigative demands Paxton claims his office sent, or who received them. It is possible that no letters have or will be sent. That way Paxton can shout about the conspiracy of silence around the bribes pediatricians are taking. If he is lucky more parents will refuse to have their children immunized or stop taking their children to the doctor at all. Some children might die and Paxton will be able to get an erection.”

Vaccine makers are already looking at vaccine trials as not worth the effort any more. Others are grumbling but seem reluctant to fight Kennedy on this. But hey, according to our glorious leaders, losing our Measles Eliminated Status is no big deal.

Infuriatingly, anti-vax propaganda is also killing pets.

There’s lots of studies showing covid vaccines saved lives. It’s one of the Toddler’s few good accomplishments, certainly his only great one. But his cultists want him anti-vax so he’s now asking where the proof of success is?

Sen. Bill Cassidy supported Kennedy, even though as a doctor Cassidy should have known he’s full of shit. If it was a careful political move to win the Felon’s support — oops. I know whoever the Felon supports will be awful, but it’s nice to see a sell-out like Cassidy get shivved.

Just to prove these attitudes didn’t come from nothing, we have Republican Michelle Bachmann 13 years ago explaining we could cure Alzheimer’s in a decade except for big government.

Some thoughts on this from BlueSky: “It’s why I’ve become way less tolerant/more of an asshole about woo woo shit lately I think, other than it’s obvious capacity to hurt people if taken seriously that we’re now seeing, there’s definitely some incipient fascism in “the secrets of the soil have revealed themselves to the worthy.’ ‘We don’t need complicated, possibly corrupt systems of formal sense-making, rather than those with right aptitude will simply Know” seems harmless when it’s like, just astrology or something but there’s a lot of violence implicitly contained in that worldview if you take it seriously”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins claims you can have an incredibly healthy diet on just $3/meal.

“The U.S. consumer product safety agency will stop collecting data on injuries from incidents like car accidents and adverse drug effects due to staff cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to an agency email seen by Reuters and a source familiar with the situation.”

“Three sources said they believe total cuts to nonprofit groups, many providing street-level care to people experiencing addiction, homelessness and mental illness, could reach roughly $2 billion.” But hey, they can just $3 meals and get strong!

Anti-vaxxers love talking about Big Pharma but Big Wellness is also a business and a less ethical one. With products that are big on bullshit. There’s also money to be made in wearable medical devices, hence the FDA abandoning oversight.

AI needs lots and lots of power, so the Necrotic Toddler is softening the regulations for building nuclear power plants. As Cheryl Rofer explains, “the DOE has loosened up safety, security, and environmental restrictions so that the new reactor developers can move faster. And maybe break things. Most of the new reactor companies are tied to Silicon Valley, after all.” But hey, it’s unlikely anyone will hold Sam Altman or Marc Andreysson legally liable if there’s a catastrophic island so what do they have to lose?

Plus when these power-hog, polluting data centers get built, it tends to be where residents are poor and black.

A while back, a friend of mine predicted that AI would end up learning by studying other AI — and lo and behold.

Lenovo’s Yang Yuanqing claims AI “will be the trend that you cannot avoid,” even if you don’t want Silicon Valley inserting into everything. Corey Doctorow has some thoughts. Or as Lydia Kiesling puts it, “you know the drill. Don’t talk to Chat. Mourn the dead blogs. Fight like hell for the living.”

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September 24, 2025 · 5:15 am

Science … weird science!

The title should be sung to the tune of the Oingo Boingo song, of course.

What could be weirder than the deranged conviction artificial intelligence is the way, the truth and the light? Never mind the environmental damage, the wrong answers, the countless other problems, Silicon Valley wants it to be the next game-changing technology. And it is, but not in a way that improves things.

“A user on X complained that Grok’s answers were too progressive after it said violence from right-wing Americans tended to be deadlier than violence from left-wing Americans — a conclusion matching findings from various studies and data from the Global Terrorism Database.” So Elon Musk tweaked it to be more conservative.

HHS employees have been ordered to use chatbots in their jobs.

“A book collection steeped in 19th century thought could also be “immensely critical” for the tech industry’s efforts to build AI agents that can plan and reason as well as humans, Leppert said.” At this point AI looks more like the flop tech of the past — jetpacks, nuclear powered vacuum cleaners — than anything approaching human.

“She said librarians report being treated like robots over library reference chat, and patrons getting defensive over the veracity of recommendations they’ve received from an AI-powered chatbot. Essentially, like more people trust their preferred LLM over their human librarian.”

AI is spreading into areas it shouldn’t, like therapists secretly using chatbots to tell them what to say to clients. Seriously, what kind of hack therapist can’t think of what to say when a patient’s dog dies?

“The whole tech industry is once again facing questions over the casual way it sometimes turns unassuming people into lab rats, especially as more tech companies wade into health-related services.” And people don’t know because it turns out the Turing test — if we think a computer is intelligent, we should assume it is — is dead wrong.

Podcasts are (I think) what blogs were 20 years ago. So naturally an AI company plans to flood the zone with tons of AI-hosted podcasts. High point: “We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life,”said CEO Jeanine Wright. Um, no, but I get that her financial model probably depends on bullshit like that.

“I’m working every day on using AI to figure out how to cure cancer or launch fusion energy or understand dark matter. Our Defense Department is trying to figure out how to keep America safe. God bless the First Lady. She of course is wiser than all of us.” — Felon Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Yeah, I’m sure he’s lying but why would he even pretend he’s spending his work day to figure out dark matter?

If you’re wondering about his First Lady tongue-bathing, Melania’s calling on schools to train kids in using AI. I’m sure that will be more profitable for tech companies than learning anything valuable.

“On religious apps, tens of millions of people are confessing to spiritual chatbots their secrets: their petty vanities and deepest worries, gluttonous urges and darkest impulses. Trained on religious texts, the bots are like on-call priests, imams or rabbis, offering comfort and direction at any time. On some platforms, they even purport to channel God.The “faith tech” industry is booming.”

“When asked “How many Ds are in DEEPSEEK?” the DeepSeek-V3 model with 600 billion parameters “returned ‘2’ or ‘3’ in ten independent trials” while Meta AI and Claude 3.7 Sonnet performed similarly, “including answers as large as ‘6’ and ‘7.’” — from an excellent look at how AI hallucinations may be inevitable.

“Many of the students have completely surrendered to letting AI do their homework, badly, I might add. How do you fix this?” — Roxane Gay. One solution discussed in the thread: handwritten assignments.

Ted Chiang (quoted in the same thread): “The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write […]. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning.”

Now some non-AI links:

Stuff we post to the Internet doesn’t last forever.

The Toddler of the United States’ new $1,000 fee for HB-1 visas will undermine our tech industry (plus the option to waive the rules is an invitation to corruption).

A solar storm could wreak havoc on our electrical systems. It’s something we can prepare for, but I have a lot less faith in either government or corporate leaders doing so than I used to.

The Toddler claims one in 10 boys is born with autism, which is a lie, and that they get 80 different vaccines pumped into them in infancy, which is another lie. Surprisingly, RFK claims a definite link (spoiler: another lie!) to women taking Tylenol, and his anti-vax worshippers are furious (though he’s still anti-vax — I don’t know what his beef with Tylenol is). Though Newsmax’s fascist toadies are happily embracing the lie. So is ever-idiotic Senator Ron Johnson. And Politico sanewashes the Felon by explaining he’s really compassionate and wants to “solve the autism problem.”

Oh, RFK Junior’s also lying about the Amish not getting vaccinated and therefore not having autism.

I’ll wrap up with a comment from someone online elsewhere: “RFK Jr. seems to walk through life like it was always 20 minutes after he smoked his first joint in ninth grade.”

Remember, every Senate Republican voted for him, knowing he was a hardcore anti-vaxxer. Including the ones now pretending they’re shocked, shocked that he’s an anti-vaxxer.

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September 4, 2025 · 5:15 am

No, RFK Jr. cannot diagnose people by looking at them

According to our crackpot Secretary of Health, RFK Jr., he can spot sick people by looking at them. That’s how he knows that we’re less healthy than we used to be: “I had eleven brothers and sisters, I had about 70 first cousins, and I never saw anybody with diabetes. I never knew anybody with a food allergy. I never knew anybody with autism. And I know what a healthy child is supposed to look like.”

No, he doesn’t. And know, he can’t tell. And while it’s true diabetes and (I believe) food allergies are more common than they used to be, they aren’t a radical new thing either: I’m four years older than he is and I developed a food allergy in college. I suspect Kennedy’s “never knew” is more that he never cared to ask, and that he cannot in fact spot sick people at a glance.

The idea us non-doctors can diagnose someone by looking at them is quite common (“My kid’s distracted, I know he has ADD, give him Ritalin.”). Unfortunately Kennedy’s in a powerful position over our health establishment and he’s too Dunning-Kruger to realize how ignorant he is.

And he can count on sanewashing from journalists who ignore the anti-vax stuff to focus on how RFK wants people eating healthier — he’s just like Michelle Obama (who was mocked for suggesting kids eat more veggies). While his “MAHA” movement is losing steam, that’s partly because Kennedy’s supporters want more vaccine bans, mRNA bans, etc., than he’s offered so far.

His ongoing attack on our healthcare systems was completely predictable. That makes Sen. Bill Cassidy (head of the Senate health committee, putting him in a position to fight the Kennedy nomination if he chose) declaring his concern over Kennedy’s positions very disingenuous and CYA. You knew what he was when you voted for him. If not, why didn’t you? Sen. Roger Marshall is a doctor so he should know too but he’s all in on covid and other medical lies. But apparently anti-vax has such a hold on the Republicans that even the necrotic toddler is saying maybe the vaccines he had developed were fakes.

Hell, right wing pundit Erick Erickson’s wife is dying, she can’t get the drugs she needs because of the state of the CDC — but he insists the left “built the foundation for Kennedy’s rise.” He’d probably blame them for Ron DeSantis may scrap school vaccination requirements.

While Cassidy dithers, Chuck Schumer — not someone I think of as a fighter — has come out calling for Kennedy lose his cabinet post. Meanwhile Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia blames the CDC for everything that’s happening and implies Biden was to blame for mismanaging the pandemic (Biden was not, of course, president when it broke out). Carter also freaked out about former CDC vaccine chief Demetre Daskalakis, presumably because the latter said, quite truthfully, that “I’ve been worried for months. The firewall between science and ideology is completely broken down. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is bullshitting (is she ever not?) that the covid vaccine is death!

Kennedy claims he can also spot the current health bugaboo, mitochondrial dysfunction. As explained at the link, there’s no clear cause and effect between our mitochondrial cell bodies and our health.

Kennedy talks about the horrors of ultraprocessed foods. Now for some reason he’s also upset with the government making sensible recommendations to eat more beans.

In the best “when you have nothing but a hammer, everything looks like a nail” tradition, Kennedy has decided since he doesn’t like drugs, maybe antidepressants cause school shootings. Like a good Republican, he’s never going to blame guns.

Using AI to vet whether someone’s medical needs are covered by Medicare? Yeah, I’m sure that will go well — but it will certainly cut what Medicare spends.

“Despite the many decades of evidence that the aluminum in vaccines is perfectly safe when used in appropriate doses, he believes it just can’t be true.” As noted at the link, a number of medical groups are telling Kennedy to pound sand.

But Kennedy still has a lot of clout, like only approving fall covid shots for people over 65 and other high-risk individuals.

The CDC had a drowning prevention program — that’s now shutting down. I can’t figure out who even benefits from something like that — Big Drowning? But hey, ivermectin’s going to become way more available.

“If you want to make foodborne disease go away, then don’t look for foodborne disease. And then you can cheerfully eliminate all of your foodborne disease regulations. My concern is that that is the path down which we appear to be heading.”

But if you think RFK is bad, here’s a shocker: a group of atheists claim the real threat to science is wokeness.

It’s a good thing some of the blue-state governors are starting stepping up.

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