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Whatever we’re paying him, it’s too much

The NYT published an article reporting that RFK Jr has abandoned most of his responsibilities: “Mr. Kennedy has shown little interest in managing the details of work in his department, according to multiple colleagues,” Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote in the article. “Instead, they say, he is single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful.“ Not exactly news. Kennedy’s rebuttal? “All one needs to refute your argument is to glance at my publicly available calendar and to review my unprecedented list of accomplishments on a wide range of issues, all of which I drove,” Kennedy wrote.” LOL! His “accomplishments” are (a) the firings and resignations of health research experts at the CDC, FDA and NIH and (b) sowing distrust in scientific expertise while replacing sound science with magical thinking. Whatever they’re paying him, it’s way too much. Unless the job...
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Cancer teleology

It astonishes me what passes for reasoning among “conservatives.” “Steve Gruber, host of the conservative network's morning program   Day Break , made the announcement Wednesday alongside his guest and wife, Ivey Ramos Gruber, who agreed sunglasses might also be unnecessary. The segment fits neatly into the MAHA movement's growing anti-sunscreen wing — and straight into a public health nightmare.   “Steve Gruber played a clip of   Valerie Anne Smith , an Ohio-based social media influencer who bills herself as a medical and health authority on X, where she has more than 246,000 followers. Smith has no listed medical credentials. “ "The sun that is giving life to all of us on this earth, this plane of existence, is not here to cause cancer," Smith said in the clip.” Tanning beds are not here to cause cancer, but they do. HPV is not here to cause cancer, but it does. Tobacco isn’t here to cause cancer, but it does. Asbestos isn’t here to cause cancer, but it does.  Chro...
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Stupidity vs Evil

  “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.   “Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.   “For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one.”   ~  Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Your mother was right

How many of us heard some variation of this from their mom:   "If your friends jumped off a cliff (or bridge), would you do it too?" If RFK Jr told you to treat measles with vitamin A, would you jump off that cliff? “ A team from Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts analyzed Google search trends data for the search terms   “vitamin A” measles  and   “cod liver” measles   in the US from January 1 to June 1, 2025 ( cod liver oil   and supplements are a popular source of vitamin A).    “They found that search interest for both terms started ticking upwards on February 26, peaking on March 22 and March 5, respectively.   “This coincided with multiple media statements, starting on February 19, promoting vitamin A as a measles treatment,” the authors point out, clarifying that they focused on statements from government figures like Kennedy.” Vitamin A won’t prevent measles and isn’t an effective treatment for the viral disease. Vaccination i...
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Jesus, the brand

You may have seen where the Defense Department recently cut 180 religions from its list of recognized religions. Among those cut from the list of “Christian religions were the Mormons. After Sen. Mike Lee, a Mormon from Utah, complained to Trump, the list was revised. Not to include Mormons as Christian, but to remove the “Christian” designation entirely. What’s going on? It turns out that sect to which Whisky Pete belongs considers Mormons to be apostates. Yep, the Church with “Jesus Christ” right there in its name isn’t Christian according to Hegseth’s mentor. And Hegseth decided he could just disappear a religion that is practiced by millions. When Trump vetoed that, Hegseth made sure Mormons were not designated “Christian.” I don’t really know much about the Mormon faith, but this isn’t really about faith, it’s about branding. It’s like if Colgate said that Crest isn’t a real toothpaste.  People killed each other for centuries over their styles of worshipping Jesus. The foundin...
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The nothingburger

I somehow missed this, but a couple months ago the Trump Administration abandoned its effort to cut indirect cost reimbursements for federal grants to colleges and universities. Just before I retired, the indirect cost rate at Saint Louis University was 51.5%, so this cut would have been devastating to research at SLU.   When I asked my chairman, who is a Republican and who assured me in 2016 that Trump would “be good for America” what he thought about the cuts, he called them “a nothingburger.” Turns out he was right. “ In January, a   federal court of appeals   ruled that the NIH policy to cap indirect cost reimbursement rates at 15% is unlawful. The Trump administration had until April 6 to appeal the ruling—and did not. It also did not appeal a similar ruling against Department of Energy cost rate caps.” Apparently, the administration is working to find another way to cook the nothingburger. <a href=" https://www.nacubo.org/News/2026/4/Court-Fight-Over-NIH-Indirect...
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Why do Republicans consider American families to be a battlespace?

“ In April, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, signed a resolution designating June as   “Nuclear Family Month”   and claiming that a family with “one husband, one wife and any biological, adopted or fostered children” is “God’s design.”   *snip*   “This resolution denigrates not just same-sex families but unmarried straight couples with children; married straight couples without children; single-parent families; grandparents raising their grandchildren; adults raising younger siblings; and any of the countless other configurations that don’t hew to outdated images of what a family looks like.” They’ve turned marriage into battlespace. They’ve turned public schools into battlespace. Could it be that they need culture wars to distract from the ballooning Trump deficits, ballooning inflation, ballooning gas prices, ballooning grocery prices, 100 days of war in Iran, closing rural hospitals?   https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/07/opinion/same-sex-marriage...
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