Monthly Archives: October 2025

Donald Trump, medical news, military news, national security

Why surround yourself with morons?

It’s a fair question, so I am going to ask it: Why does Donald J. Trump insist on surrounding himself with imbeciles and then put them in charge of vital organizations designed to protect our health and everyone from foreign and domestic enemies?

Two examples stand out. You know who they are, but I’ll spell it out anyway: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth.

RFK Jr., scion of one of the nation’s great political families — and namesake of my first political hero! — continues to astound me with his lack of knowledge of vaccines, of the value in investing in scientific research and his insistence that vaccinations do as much harm as good.

RFK Jr. needs to be shown the door. Rapidly. Without hesitation. Before more people die on his watch as secretary of health and human services. It won’t happen because RFK Jr. embodies the one thing that Trump demands: total loyalty to the notions that fly out of his mouth.

What about Hegseth, the former “Fox and Friends Sunday” co-host whom Trump plucked to become defense secretary? Spoiler alert: I categorically refuse to call him “war secretary” and head of the “war department,” per his and Trump’s name-change effort.

Hegseth summoned every flag officer in uniform to the nation’s capital, where they gathered in a room to listen to Hegseth and Trump talk to them about the need to eliminate “fat generals and admirals,” how women should have to meet the same physical training standards as men and how Trump’s deployment of troops to our nation’s cities should serve as practice for when they go into actual combat.

What is unintentionally hilarious is how Hegseth’s applause lines were greeted with stone-cold silence by the command staff … many of whom have served multiple combat deployments. These men and women are seasoned, highly skilled and effective warriors who need no lecture from a tinhorn soldier such as Hegseth about physical fitness.

And yet … Hegseth continues to disgrace our military — the most lethal and skilled organization of its kind in human history — simply by serving in a capacity for which he has earned zero qualification.

God help us!

medical news

Is Trump in decline?

The headline on top of this blog post demands an immediate answer … I have no clue as to whether Donald J. Trump is suffering any loss of mental acuity.

My reluctance to declare Trump to be off his rocker is more complicated than it seems. Consider the four years when Joe Biden was president of the United States. Critics asserted without a hint of ambiguity that they were certain the 46th president’s butter had slipped off its noodle. Did they have access to medical exams? Had they seen any test results? Were they fluent in body language that often gives away symptoms of mental decline?

No, no and no. Yet they persisted. I resisted the urge to join them. Why? For starters, I am a Joe Biden supporter. Second, I had no access to medical records. Third, I was not qualified to make any assertions about a high-profile politician’s mental fitness.

I am going to apply all those standards to Biden’s immediate successor.

Let me be clear on key point: I am likely to comment on the huge verbal gaffes that appear to be happening with stunning frequency. I cannot in good conscience, though, declare that Donald Trump needs a one-way ticket to the Funny Farm. Still, he does make me scratch my head when he said he ended a war between Azerbaijan and Albania.

Fair is fair. In fairness to the White House incumbent, I’ll let others talk among themselves about whether he belongs in the loony bin. I won’t join them.

national news

Hold congressional pay, too!

My rage against Congress is building, and we’re only in the second day of the government shutdown.

Congress inability to find a funding solution that keeps government operating fully has forced thousands of public servants to work out without. I’m talking about air traffic controllers and and airport security personnel. Here’s the punchline: Congress is continuing to receive its six-figure salary in full.

That is outrateous! I hereby call on Congress to do the impossible, which is to withhold the pay it gives to its members, make them suffer the same indignity they are forcing on public service employees.

The 27the Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does withhold congressional pay raises from taking effect until the next congressional election. That’s a start toward holding members of Congress accountable for the decisions they make. Or fail to make.

The idea that our congressional representatives are drawing their full salary while forcing others to go without theirs makes my blood boil … and therefore, I wish a plague on both sides of the political chasm.

national news

Look for common denominator

When we complain about policy disagreements and dysfunction in government, I am fond of reminding the complainers of a simple fact.

Look for the common denominator, I am bound to say. All the issues that erupt have something in common. It’s more or less like the dysfunction I have witnessed in my immediate family. I can point to an individual who is at the center of the dysfunction as the cause of it all.

So it is with government. What is the common denominator in the troubles that have befallen the federal government, which at this moment has shut down many offices that provide service to those of us who pay for it?

It’s the Republican Party, its leadership and in this moment the MAGA wing that just can’t find a way to negotiate with those dreaded Democrats. They are the common thread that runs through all of this. They were present when the government shut down during Donald Trump’s first term in office. Indeed, they were in power when Newt Gingrich was the GOP speaker of the House.

Government shutdowns don’t serve anyone any good. They simply deny essential services to millions of Americans whose tax money pays for the government to work for them. Right now, it ain’t working for anyone!

Democrats want to keep health care available for millions of Americans. Republicans don’t. Hmm. What’s wrong with this picture?

I am not going to predict an end to this latest shutting down of the government. I just want us all to understand who is responsible for its occurence in the first place.

Then we need to respond accordingly when the time comes to vote on whether to keep these dipshits in power.

media news

What can go wrong?

I’ve got a lot of friends in the media business, who are reporting the news fairly, impartially and without favor … but they also take time to vent their frustrations to me, a former colleague who now writes a blog to vent my own frustration.

So said one of them today. He wrote in a message to me: “It just annoys me that this man (Donald Trump) has his hands on levers that really affect me — health care, agriculture, justice, freedom of speech. And he’s just so aggressively stupid and so mind-blowingly unqualified. And I guess what annoys the most is the feeling (wrongly) that I’m the only one who sees it.”

He’s not the only one. I want to tell him so, right now.

Earlier, I had vented to my friend. I wrote: “Pete Hegseth is another example of an empty suit tasked with making decisions that have no relation to whatever skill he brings to the office he occupies. An absolute disgrace.

“RFK Jr is sentencing children and poor folks to death by rescinding drugs that would make them well; we have an ed secretary who confuses AI with A1; we have an AG who indicts a former FBI boss because Trump wants her to, and who has absolutely no legal grounds on which to indict him.”

My comment to my friend was aimed primarily at the numbskulls with whom Trump has surrounded himself. Why bring this up? Because the federal government is on the verge of shutting down.

Hmm. How can it be? Republicans occupy the White House. They have a slim majority in the U.S. House. They have a little larger majority in the U.S. Senate. Why can’t they, or won’t they, avoid a government shutdown?

My friend asked what I presume to be a rhetorical question, which was why are Republicans willing to shut ‘er down? I responded:

I have the answer. It’s because the MAGA disphits who control the GOP have no interest in or ability to govern. They want to make headlines. They are addicted to the sounds of their own voices and don’t give a pile of shit about the services they swore to provide to those they represent.

They are led by the MAGA dipshit in chief, Donald John Trump. So, we stand at the precipice of yet another GOP-inspired government shutdown. We will deny millions of Americans the services for which they pay. Thousands of Americans will lose their jobs.

You and I will be left to fume and vent our rage at the politicians who don’t know how — or care to learn how — to govern.