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I’m reading these religion-based and politically based articles saying Americans need to have more children. WTF? “In an effort to get Americans to have more children,   the Trump administration   has proposed ideas such as a   $5,000   “baby bonus”   or a $1,000   tax-deferred investment account   for children born between 2025 and 2029. It’s as if we’re suddenly in a game of Monopoly: Have a baby, pass go and collect cash! “Their concern is that   declining birth rates   may lead to a smaller workforce amid an aging population, potentially straining economic stability and the social safety net.   But having children can be a swift way into debt. According to the Brookings Institution, a financial think tank, the average middle-income family with two children —   median income $80,610 ―   spends $310,605   on each child by the time they reach 17.” A $5000 bounty against $311,000 net expenses? Seriously? What sort of idiot...

It’s bad enough that Republicans believe poor Americans should be allowed to die without health care. But if you ever need a hospital, whether or not you have insurance, this could kill you, too. “ That’s because each node of the system is interdependent. If the   190 rural hospitals estimated   in a recent Center for American Progress report as collateral damage of the Republican cuts close, all of their patients must find treatment at the remaining health care providers. Many of these new-arrival patients are likely to be uninsured (many thrown off Medicaid or Obamacare by Republicans), crushing hospital finances and potentially adding more closures on top. “This means overcrowded hospitals and overburdened staff, in addition to the serious hardships for patients traveling long distances for care. “The Republican Senate budget accelerates the rural hospital collapse that is under way, like jet fuel on a fire,” said Alex Lawson of Social Security Works, who works directly on ...

  Here’s the headline in the Boston Globe: “ Medicare and Social Security go-broke dates pushed up due to rising health care costs, new SSA law”   Read further and you find this: “ The go-broke date — or the date at which the programs will no longer have enough funds to pay full benefits — was pushed up to 2033 for Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund, according to the new report from the programs’ trustees. Last year’s report put the go-broke date at 2036.   “Meanwhile, Social Security’s trust funds — which cover old age and disability recipients — will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034, instead of last year’s estimate of 2035. After that point, Social Security would only be able to pay 81% of benefits.”   *snip* “ Once the fund’s reserves become depleted, Medicare would be able to cover only 89% of costs for patients’ hospital visits, hospice care and nursing home stays or home health care that follow hospital visits.” So “broke” doesn’t really m...

In its latest attack on Iran, Israel has resorted to bombing and assassination to convince Iran to capitulate on its nuclear program*. What’s the track record of success for bombing and assassination campaigns? Bombing “ Unless an enemy army takes Tehran, as the US military took Baghdad in 2003, this four-branch government cannot be gotten rid of by a foreign power. Bombing the capital won’t do the trick.”   *snip*   “The US bombed Vietnam for a decade and still lost the war, despite having 500,000 troops on the ground. The US bombed Afghanistan for twenty years and still lost the war despite at some points having 100,000 troops on the ground. Air power alone would have produced even less impressive results.   “So even if President Donald J. Trump takes the unwise step of joining Israel in its bombing campaign, it is difficult to see what military victories that might bring.   “Iran is a Shiite country with a strong devotion to martyrs, and martyring Shiites will not...

I’m a frequent user of what passes for AI on Google. I used to just Google key words, but now I’ll Google questions. Google AI answers those questions. Usually, they’re simple questions like “When did ___ happen?” or “How old is ___?” For anything esoteric that I care about, I can follow up with my own search. So far, I’ve only caught Google AI in one mistake. But thanks to internet pollution caused by ChatGPT, that could change: “The rapid rise of ChatGPT — and the cavalcade of competitors' generative models that followed suit — has polluted the internet with so much useless slop that it's already kneecapping the development of future AI models. “As the AI-generated data clouds the human creations that these models are so heavily dependent on amalgamating, it becomes inevitable that a greater share of what these so-called intelligences learn from and imitate is itself an ersatz AI creation.  “Repeat this process enough, and AI development begins to resemble a maximalist game o...

Trump valorizes loyalty over competence. For Trump, flattery is evidence of loyalty: “ Trump’s FAA Nominee Lied About Having a ‘Commercial’ Pilot License “Bryan Bedford, CEO of Republic Airlines, falsely claimed to be licensed to fly commercial aircraft on the company's website for more than a decade.”   Color me unsurprised.   https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trumps-faa-nominee-lied-commercial-pilot-license-1235365087/  

Though it feels weird to say it, RFK Jr and I agree on something: curtailing direct-to-consumer marketing of pharmaceuticals. “ The Trump administration is discussing policies that would make it harder and more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to patients, in a move that could disrupt more than $10 billion in annual ad spending.   Although the US is the only place, besides New Zealand, where pharma companies can directly advertise, banning pharma ads outright could make the administration vulnerable to lawsuits, so it’s instead focusing on cutting down on the practice by adding legal and financial hurdles, according to people familiar with the plans who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.   “The two policies the administration has focused in on would be to require greater disclosures of side effects of a drug within each ad — likely making broadcast ads much longer and prohibitively expensive — or removing the industry’s ability to d...

As a businessman, Trump left behind a long list of bankruptcies, failed businesses and legal penalties in his wake. Making a “deal” with Trump is risky, at best. Trump has personalized American trade policy. It’s no long what’s good for America, it’s who Trump does or doesn’t “like.”| “ Trump also seemed to put a greater priority on addressing his grievances with other nations’ trade policies than on collaboration with G7 allies. The U.S. president has imposed 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum as well as 25% tariffs on autos. Trump is also charging a 10% tax on imports from most countries, though he could raise rates on July 9, after the 90-day negotiating period set by him would expire.   “He announced with Starmer that they had signed a trade framework Monday that was previously announced in May, with Trump saying that British trade was “very well protected’ because “I like them, that’s why. That’s their ultimate protection.”   That’s not a president, that’s a dictator. And ...

We already know that Trump has called soldiers who died in service “suckers” and “chumps.” “ Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.    “The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.   “Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law.   “Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.” Unsurprisingly, Donald “Cadet Bone Spurs” is poli...

Duncan Black enters the wayback machine. These were the headlines in November 2024. Trump wasn’t even in office yet. Politico: The Resistance Is Not Coming to Save You. It’s Tuning Out. The first Trump administration sparked waves of public activism and aggressive media coverage. This time, not so much.   Axios: The Resistance goes quiet   [NYT]: ‘Get Somebody Else to Do It’: Trump Resistance Encounters Fatigue   WaPo Why the resistance went quiet after Trump’s victory   This certainly makes amusing reading after >3.5 million showed up for the 14 June protests, dwarfing the Trump Soviet parade. Looks like media groupthink. https://www.eschatonblog.com/2025/06/who-sent-memo.html

When I was growing up in the South in the ‘60s, “states’ rights” was the bleat of the segregationists.   “ As the Senate debates the Trump administration's "One Big Beautiful Bill," a hypocrisy at the heart of the debate is getting little attention. If the bill stays similar to what passed the House, the federal government will coerce states into restricting access to Medicaid, on which over 72 million people rely for health insurance. “Though hypocrisy is hardly a new feature of American politics, this is a notable departure from frequent conservative arguments that many facets of public policy ought to be left to the states, which can respond to more local preferences and needs. This regulatory philosophy has driven arguments across a range of policies including abortion leading up to the fall of  Roe v. Wade , Medicaid expansion, marijuana decriminalization, and the rights of same-sex couples prior to  Obergefell v. Hodges . Now, conservatives seem set to abandon ...

During his great purge, Stalin not only killed most of the loyal Bolsheviks that brought him to power, he killed many of the generals. This left the USSR vulnerable to Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR that Hitler   prophesied   in Mein Kampf. Like Stalin, Trump is bent on dismantling US national defense. Not just the CIA, FBI, NSA and DOD, but defense from infectious disease: “ The Trump administration's cancellation of $766 million in contracts to develop mRNA vaccines against potential pandemic flu viruses is the latest blow to national defense, former health security officials said. They warned that the U.S. could be at the mercy of other countries in the next pandemic.   "The administration's actions are gutting our deterrence from biological threats," said Beth Cameron, PhD, a senior adviser to the Brown University Pandemic Center and a former director at the White House National Security Council. "Canceling this investment is a signal...

This sort of viewpoint discrimination is a sign of weakness. Only a feeble nation would interrogate travelers this way. “ An Australian man who was detained upon arrival at Los Angeles airport and deported back to Melbourne says United States border officials told him it was due to his writing on pro-Palestine protests by university students.   “Alistair Kitchen said he left Melbourne on Thursday bound for New York and was detained for 12 hours and interrogated by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials during the stopover in Los Angeles.   “The 33-year-old said he was “clearly targeted for politically motivated reasons” and said officials spent more than 30 minutes questioning him about his views on Israel and Palestine including his “thoughts on Hamas”.   “Kitchen said officials asked him for his “thoughts about the conflict in a very broad sense”, including about student protesters, what Israel “should have done differently” and “how I would resolve the confli...

The way we show respect for our troops is not by standing up for the pledge or putting out little flags in cemeteries on Memorial Day. It’s by never putting them in harm’s way unless they are defending against an existential threat to America and by never putting them into positions that they haven’t been trained for. You can tell that Donald “Cadet Bone Spurs” Trump has no respect for the military.   “A resource counselor for the GI Rights Hotline says they’ve been receiving more calls than usual.   “We've been getting around 200 calls a month in normal times. I had 50 calls on Sunday,” Steve Woolford told Lolita Lopez at NBC Los Angeles, elaborating that most of the calls are from service members, their family and others following Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to LA.   “These calls to a hotline for GI Rights, which we linked to here previously, come amid confusion about the deployment to Los Angeles, including a federal appeals court ruling late Thursday that...

Trump thinks the DoJ is his personal law firm. And he thinks the military is his personal militia. So like all the rest of his contractors, he's shafting them: "The 4,000 California National Guard soldiers who President Donald Trump surged into Los Angeles remain unpaid due to delays in issuing official activation orders, leaving compensation and benefits in limbo. "According to more than a dozen Guardsmen across four units who spoke to Military.com, none has received formal activation orders, the critical paperwork that not only authorizes their duty status, but also unlocks pay, Tricare health benefits and eligibility for Department of Veterans Affairs services. Without those orders, troops remain in a legal and administrative limbo." https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/06/11/guard-soldiers-deployed-trumps-la-crackdown-arent-getting-paid-yet.html  

There was a time when Republican stood foursquare in favor of local and state government over the federal government. No more. "Noem Says National Guard Occupation Is Meant To ‘Liberate’ LA from its mayor and governor" Wonder if the citizens of LA and CA knew they were in need of "liberation" and whether they think hijacking their own state guard by the Trump Bolsheviks in Washington was an improvement over what their city and state police were providing. I doubt Noem or Trump did a poll. Look, this is about dominance, not about public safety.   https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/noem-says-national-guard-occupation-is-meant-to-liberate-la-from-its-mayor-and-governor

Nobody wants to get cancer. And there is no sure path to avoiding cancer. There are a number of gene alleles that predispose to cancer risk. If you inherit one of these alleles, your risk of cancer is higher than average. That doesn’t mean you can’t do anything. Knowing you’re at higher risk means you should undergo more frequent testing (breast imaging, colonoscopy, prostate exams, etc). Early detection improves survival. There are a number of other “lifestyle” risk factors for cancer: smoking, alcohol, sun exposure, obesity and aging. Of course, if your goal is a long life, you’ll have to confront an increased risk of cancer as you age. Again, surveillance is an important way to increase survival. Diet is probably the most modifiable cancer risk factor.  “ The most recent research uses different indices to assess dietary patterns without specifying the amount of animal-based foods that participants consumed. A   2023 meta-analysis   included assessment of 22 prospective...

  The stench of tear gas and hypocrisy in LA Since I don't watch TV, I might have missed it. Anybody here see Elon and the DOGE bois protesting the government inefficiency of National Guard and Marines being sent to LA as a Trump photo op? Isn’t this sort of wasteful spending what DOGE was created to eliminate? Anybody here see any anti-ICE protestors waving that "Don't Tread On Me" flag? Protestors in desert camo who are open-carrying* against governmental tyranny? Isn't the Trump Administration military occupation of LA what the NRA patriots were referring to when they talked about "2nd Amendment solutions" and "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots?" Anybody here see Kristi Noem in the crowd protesting Trump’s direct attack on states’ rights? “ As South Dakota governor in February 2024,   Kristi Noem   threatened then-President   Joe Biden   when Democrats said he should federalize the National Guard in Texas to disrupt tha...