There’s online speculation that the Senate is warning to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., despite his reputation as an opponent of vaccines. RFK thinks he knows more than scientists and physicians, but he is a crank and a crackpot with no medical or scientific training.
He is well established in the world of phony cures for COVID.
If this kook is confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, many people will die.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think Turmp is planning to gain total control of the media to keep the news of those deaths from the living so they won’t know. Word of mouth will spread what’s happening, but Trump will lie and say that’s a hoax.
That’s what Putin does. Trump worships Putin like MAGA worships Trump.
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Thanks for keeping the real flag flying on here, Lloyd.
There’s so much bizarre, profoundly disturbing news to comment on these days. I sometimes write a response then just delete it. What more can be added that isn’t already being said and often written so well, too.
This is an odd and tragic interregnum we’re enduring, isn’t it? Floating along, faster and faster headed to a precipice….an abyss, really. Things getting darker….is it the twilight of the United States we once knew?
And, what will future historians call this very troubling period between November 5 and January 20?
Corporate honchos trudging down to Mar-a-lago to kiss Don’s ring. Democrats beating themselves up silly. (Self-flagellation 21st century style.) Drone hysteria and glorification of a stone cold killer. (I was driving through Narrowsburg, NY yesterday and there was a small homemade sign tacked by the old Erie Railroad bridge: “Free Luigi”.
It’s a calm, cold Sunday morning….with so much trouble, so close ahead….
I’m reminded of canoeing here on the Upper Delaware River… the eddies can be quite calm just above whitewater rapids. But there is a sound, even a smell of the roiling water just ahead. The river picks up speed along with adrenaline….there’s a chill in one’s stomach, no matter how many times you might have paddled a particularly difficult stretch.
I suppose there are lessons that can be learned from dumping over in a canoe in whitewater… how to save one self….and if possible to save others. Lessons that might apply to the dangerous era we’re entering now.
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John, I think that exactly what you wrote, the “Interregnum” is an appropriate name, at least for now.
I suspect that nearly half the voters are experiencing Post-Traumatic (Election) Stress Disorder because, after being given a choice between freedom and democracy or fascism and dictatorship, most voters chose the latter. Apparently, losing one’s country is much like the death of a loved one, so many of us have been envisioning the loss of the nation as we know it, and our freedoms and rights along with it, so we are going through the stages of grief, starting with shock & denial: https://www.healthline.com/health/stages-of-grief#7-stages Other than that, I don’t know what to call this horrible period either.
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Your way of putting it, “Apparently, losing one’s country is much like the death of a loved one..”
Indeed. Sad and true.
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As for the nearly 90 million voting age eligible people who did not cast a ballot at all this year, in such a consequential election, I’m torn between calling them apathetic, pathetic and irresponsible. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-15/how-many-people-didnt-vote-in-the-2024-election
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Diane’s blog is zooming along so this post falls further and further back in time. Such is the internet.
The population of the planet has more than doubled in my lifetime. Meanwhile, the ability of people to publish facts, opinion and just plain rubbish and evil has blown apart the norms of human communication stretching far back beyond recorded history.
Which is to say, I’m being VERY choosy about what I read and hang onto, ha, ha. * (Please see footnote below)
My time on the earth is short by definition and there are so many subcultures to fall into that would chew up what years I might have remaining…
But as I try to frame my response to November 5, this is a post I’ll bookmark and try to save. (I have a collection of links, articles, and sometimes drafts of my own writing and thoughts that I’ve put into a file. What to call that collection? “The Resistance” maybe but that sounds too much like something from a World War II movie and I’d have to ape a French accent. Non to that!)
Anywho… thanks for your response, ECE. You’re absolutely correct about the millions of potential voters who didn’t bother showing up November 5.
They’ve become what they hate. Or, rather, what they don’t care about.
*FOOTNOTE of a certainly non-academic variety: I used the word “choosy” in writing above and immediately an advertising slogan from years gone by popped into my old noggin.
See if you get it….
“Choosy mothers choose___________”
I used to play a game with my economics students to demonstrate how much corporate America has invaded all our brains. I called it “Name the Logo”. I’d put a corporate logo up on the classroom screen and see how quickly students could identify the business. No words. It was amazing. I started doing chopped up pieces of logos…and they would still get them.
Originally, I made my own version. Now this sort of thing is online. Isn’t that so 2024.
The answer: “Choosy mothers choose….JIF!”
And, so do I, for my mousetraps.
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“If this kook is confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, many people will die.”
Yes, that should really be underscored, as well as the possibility of adults and their children developing lifelong severe disabilities, like in the example I provided previously. As with the multi-handicapped deaf-blind students I taught, who were condemned to living a very sad, restricted life, after a rubella epidemic in our area when their mothers, who had not gotten the vaccine for MMR (Measles, Mumps & Rubella) caught German measles while pregnant with them. It wasn’t hard to empathize with those moms and understand the guilt they felt over that. Such could be the case if people don’t get vaccinated today as well and there’s an outbreak…
And it’s not a challenge to imagine how adults and children will suffer when the research and vaccines that will be needed for newly emerging diseases or new strains are simply non-existent, because science has been devalued and forsaken, due to politics, and what people get in exchange are a whole lot of lies, hocus pocus, bodily damage and death.
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If one person – a president or a crazy person appointed by the president (or any influencer) can affect the course research – especially medical research – we’ve got bigger problems that we are imagining. And, if that one person or an entire party does not take the responsibility to shut down the anti-science crowd and media who perpetuates we all better re-examine 1930s Germany and the moments after Chernobyl react blew – propaganda and hiding facts and science beyond comprehension.
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