Hi. Yesterday I interspersed work with parachute visits to right-wing media, where everyone was very happy that finally, finally, Americans would be given correct information about nutrition and how to live healthier lives.
Because everyone from your doctor to the FDA to Michelle Obama has been lying to you for all these years. What you need is to be gobbling steroids and 10,000 other dodgy supplements, and deep-frying your Thanksgiving turkey in beef tallow.
Which, p.s., costs $200 for enough to deep-fry a turkey. What the hell, Thanksgiving comes but once a year.
P.S. Tallow isn’t good for you.
I have mentioned before my bestie, and her brilliant son (and now daughter-in-law), both medical researchers. Her son has a grant application pending with the National Institutes of Health that will fund his work for the next few years. This news doesn’t bode well for him:
At the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier biomedical research agency, an estimated 1,200 employees — including promising young investigators slated for larger roles — have been dismissed.
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two prestigious training programs were gutted: one that embeds recent public health graduates in local health departments and another to cultivate the next generation of Ph.D. laboratory scientists. But the agency’s Epidemic Intelligence Service — the “disease detectives” who track outbreaks around the world — has apparently been spared, perhaps because of an uproar among alumni after a majority of its members were told on Friday that they would be let go.
President Trump’s plan to shrink the size of the federal work force dealt blows to thousands of civil servants in the past few days. But the cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services — coming on the heels of the coronavirus pandemic, the worst public health crisis in a century — have been especially jarring. Experts say the firings threaten to leave the country exposed to further shortages of health workers, putting Americans at risk if another crisis erupts.
Both my friend’s son and his wife are the kind of BigBrains who can go anywhere, and maybe they will, soon enough. Remember when the U.S. benefited from brain drain from other countries? Now it’ll go the other way, unless your research is about What Big Pharma Doesn’t Want You to Know About Beef Tallow.
Meanwhile, here’s Michigan’s freshman senator, to whom I just wrote yet another letter:
Four hundred twenty-four comments. I didn’t read them all. But all the ones I read spoke for me, i.e. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT.
I had to go on Twitter for something Tuesday morning, and saw a post with the video of people evacuating the crashed plane in Toronto on Monday. Most of the comments expressed indignation that the flight attendant was telling people to put their phones away while they were being hustled out the emergency door. Unreal, how stupid we’ve become.
Finally, I am ashamed — ashamed — to be an American, reading this:
When President Trump took office in January, his plan for sweeping deportations faced a major challenge: what to do with migrants from countries like Afghanistan, Iran and China where the United States cannot easily send deportees, because the other nations will not accept migrants or for other reasons.
Last week, the new administration found a solution: Export them to a country willing to take them in.
On Wednesday, U.S. officials began flying hundreds of people, including people from Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries, to Panama, which is under intense pressure to appease Mr. Trump, who has threatened to take over the Panama Canal.
… Lawyers in Panama say it is illegal to detain people without a court order for more than 24 hours. Yet roughly 350 migrants deported by the United States on three military planes have been locked in a soaring, glass-paneled hotel, the Decapolis Hotel Panama in Panama City, for nearly a week, while officials ready a camp near the jungle.
Armed guards prevent any of the deportees from leaving the hotel. Several of them are children.
…In one window visible from a sidewalk below the hotel, a woman clawed at a latchless glass pane in an attempt to escape. When she noticed journalists below, she held up a piece of paper that read “Afghan.”
She made hand motions that indicated an airplane, then her head falling off. The message seemed to be clear: A flight home meant death.
Sorry for the longer-than-usual cut/paste, but that’s a gift article and no one else appears to be covering this. Children. CHILDREN, being relocated to a jungle migrant camp. Honestly, I want to puke. But mostly I want to beg forgiveness. If you voted for this, you’re a terrible person. That’s all there is to it.
Sherri said on February 18, 2025 at 2:51 pm
So we’re to have another joint interview with Musk and Trump. Are they afraid to let Trump out alone?
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DavidC said on February 18, 2025 at 3:46 pm
I keep seeing “Who’s more trustworthy to hand the country’s checkbook to than someone who doesn’t need more money”. Yeah, sure give it to someone who needs for nothing, but is a crazy, drug addled asshole who wants everything for himself.
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Mark P said on February 18, 2025 at 4:22 pm
When’s the last time a filthy rich oligarch turned down the opportunity to grab more loot?
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Sherri said on February 18, 2025 at 4:43 pm
If he doesn’t need more money, then why doesn’t he cut his $20 billion in federal grants rather than cut money going to poor people?
Nope; he’s cutting because he wants more money for him, less for you.
Rupert Murdoch’s probably looking at Elon and thinking, why didn’t I think of that?
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Sherri said on February 18, 2025 at 6:45 pm
I just realized that I don’t have my drivers license, and I think I accidentally threw it away. When I pick up my prescription for Ambien, I have to show a photo id. The pharmacist returned my DL to me in the bag along with my prescription, and I think I threw my DL away with the bag.
The DOL site has been down for maintenance over the holiday weekend, and is up now, but still not working fully, because it fails every time I try to pay for my replacement license. Fortunately I’m an old white lady, so it’s not like cops hassle me. I have a passport card I can use for photo id until I get this sorted.
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Julie Robinson said on February 18, 2025 at 6:56 pm
No fun, Sherri, but I’m glad it was only your license. I also had to replace my credit cards after somehow dropping my wallet in Ireland, also my health insurance card. The credit card problem is all the linked payments that had to be updated with the new cards. I got to feel like an idiot over and over.
Speaking of idiots, apparently the JFK Presidential Library has been shut down, and the stockpile of Covid tests may be destroyed. Aieeee.
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BigHank53 said on February 18, 2025 at 7:22 pm
Say, has Pilot Joe been by to gloat recently, or did Musk & Trump’s immediate boning of the FAA show him that the difference between an Afghan immigrant, a black single mom in Section 8 housing, and a hard-working middle class white man is pretty much nothing to the White House?
What I don’t think a lot of people have accepted is that Trump hasn’t forgiven America for not re-electing him in 2020, and he’s going to make everyone pay for that.
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Sherri said on February 18, 2025 at 8:04 pm
A very popular trailhead near here was closed over the weekend because of the firings in the USFS. I explained to my trainer that this wasn’t really budget cuts, as that implied a process that hadn’t happened; this was just Elon Musk slashing and burning and firing all the probationary employees in the federal government. “But don’t we have checks and balances?”
Well, on paper we do.
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David C said on February 18, 2025 at 8:07 pm
A week or so ago, Nancy said she dumped PJ into the junk folder.
I had to contact Medicare to straighten out something on Mary’s insurance. I selected being called back and they said 25-30 minutes. They called back in 20 and cleared everything up right away. So it doesn’t look like Apartheid Clyde has his hooks too deeply into Social Security yet. I wanted to tell the rep I was pulling for all the Federal workers. He was everything you would hope for in a position like that. But I was afraid to do anything that could jeopardize his job.
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nancy said on February 18, 2025 at 8:53 pm
I consider Joe in timeout. I grew tired of his unproductive contributions, and the last straw was when he called one of our best commenters crazy. Then he private-messaged me that someone was talking about “making an IED,” when it was clear the person was not serious. I’m just tired of all of this, and he got on my last nerve. When some time passes, we’ll see. But I’m not there yet. It’s on me.
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basset said on February 18, 2025 at 9:38 pm
Back to more fun with appliances, then… our microwave gave out so we went looking, first big box we tried had a nice one for $250 but the delivery, installation, set up and haul away was $300 and the delivery date was around the middle of March. Ended up getting one at Costco, never got to actually see it though so I guess we’ll try it when it gets here.
Good friend of mine used to manage one of those little Sears home stores, don’t know if they even have em any more, but free delivery was a constant issue for him. He’d show a customer how his stuff plus a delivery charge was still less than the competitors’ price, customers wanted free delivery whether the bottom line was higher or not.
Gonna snow any minute here in Nashville, looking for as much as four inches overnight… nothing to get excited about up north but the brine trucks have been rolling for awhile and schools are closing all over the place.
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Sherri said on February 18, 2025 at 11:18 pm
It seems all the federal firings won’t hit the jobs report until the March report, which comes out in April, because the February report is only through Feb 12 (why, who knows). The bulk of the firings happened over the weekend, or are still coming (Half of HUD? 40% at FHA? Guess people won’t be needing mortgages anyway when the economy crashes.)
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Dexter Friend said on February 19, 2025 at 12:04 am
When I heard that Trump-Musk said (ABC )
…”Millions of dead people aren’t getting Social Security checks, despite claims….
The Trump administration is falsely claiming that tens of millions of dead people over 100 years old are receiving improper Social Security payments.”
I flipped out and challenged the motherfuckers to post ONE damn name. I used crude language on my FB post and left it up for hours.
My medicine re-up that took 61 minutes on hold? I called back, and was told all the younger call center people had been axed.
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Mark P said on February 19, 2025 at 2:13 am
Musk’s claim of tens of millions of people over 100 years old receiving Social Security benefits was absurd on its face. It took me about two minutes of quick Googling to find reputable sources that explained the figures he saw, and it had nothing to do with extremely old people getting SS. It was a database with incomplete death records. This is the kind of incompetence Musk brings to the table. He couldn’t bother to have one of his little goons ask someone who could explain it. And, of course, the MAGAts are only too eager to believe it, so they won’t Google it.
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SusanG said on February 19, 2025 at 9:01 am
Trump’s purpose in gutting the workforce is vengeance. His three primary targets are Justice/FBI, Pentagon and NIH (primarily CDC, but all others are collateral damage). Justice and the Pentagon will be bruised but they’ll regroup. The damage to NIH is by far the most serious and impacts the citizenry of this country and the world.
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Mark P said on February 19, 2025 at 10:12 am
With Trump in the process of realigning the US with Russia instead of the West, it is likely that none of our former allies will share sensitive information with us. I suspect that this level of distrust will continue long after Trump is dead and gone. And that will make the US more vulnerable to terrorist attacks for a long time. Trump started that damage during his first term and continued to cause damage even whirl he was out of office. As much damage as he is doing and will continue to do in other areas, the damage to our intelligence community will probably be the hardest to repair.
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Jeff Borden said on February 19, 2025 at 10:46 am
America First is really America Alone. When you’re shitting on your friendly neighbors while cozying up to a blood-drenched dictator with designs on building a new Russian empire, you can’t expect to be seen as “good guys.”
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Suzanne said on February 19, 2025 at 12:13 pm
If you do nothing else today, read this. It is near perfection!
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/voting-for-the-mayor-who-promised-to-blow-up-the-city-doesnt-mean-i-approve-of-the-mayor-blowing-up-the-city
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alex said on February 19, 2025 at 12:24 pm
My brother, who’s an environmental scientist, is a contract worker under a federal grant through Purdue University. Last Friday his boss and numerous other people at the university got shitcanned while none of his immediate co-workers were affected, at least not yet. They’re all field personnel. I’m not sure which agency employs them — EPA or Interior or Fish & Wildlife.
Anyway, my brother told me that two of his colleagues are “conservatives” and neither one has any clue that Trump and Musk are purging federal jobs because their news sources are telling them other things. The rest of my brother’s colleagues are progressives and are pretty much waiting for the other shoe to drop. Besides, they can’t really function without any leadership.
My brother is ready to retire anyway. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to re-up after his current contract expires, but his situation is illustrative. He and his girlfriend took off this morning for a respite in Florida to wait and see what happens next.
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Peter said on February 19, 2025 at 1:15 pm
On a tangent – The Berghoff in Chicago used to (who knows, maybe they still do) use beef tallow for their French fries, and boy, did they taste great.
I can’t imagine how much you would need for a turkey. Then again, isn’t using beef tallow on a turkey kind of defeating the purpose? It’s a turkey, not a rump roast…
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Brandon said on February 19, 2025 at 1:57 pm
NYU College Republicans president resigns after saying Barron Trump ‘sort of an oddity’
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Scout said on February 19, 2025 at 1:59 pm
Suzanne – That piece WAS near perfection, thank you. Too bad the idiot MAGAts and Pilot Joes (redundant, I realize) will never read it or if they do, get the point.
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David C said on February 19, 2025 at 3:08 pm
Everyone I’ve ever known who deep fried a turkey has used peanut oil. They have a bug up their asses about seed oils. They have a lot of reasons for that. None of them hold any water. But because in the olden days, when we were healthy and nobody died of anything especially not heart disease, McDonald’s fried their fries in beef tallow. So if we get back to those halcyon days nobody will ever die.
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Sherri said on February 19, 2025 at 3:26 pm
The Trump administration’s attempt to ban transgender people in the military came before a judge yesterday, and it did not go well for the DOJ lawyer sent to argue it.
https://bsky.app/profile/mike10010100.bsky.social/post/3lihzyyches2j
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Sherri said on February 19, 2025 at 4:52 pm
So, half the MAGAts want to live forever (the tech bros) and the other half want to bring on the Rapture (the Christian nationalists). Actually, as was pointed out when the Singularity was the particular version of living forever for the tech bros, it was just Rapture for nerds.
BTW, Ray Kurzweil, who wrote The Singularity is Near back in 2005, has a new book out now: The Singularity is Nearer. I am not making this up.
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David C said on February 19, 2025 at 5:10 pm
Peter Thiel seem to be the biggest tech bro live forever person. But he seems so fucking miserable. Why would someone so miserable want to live forever.
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