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azspot

songsofprotestpeacerevolution

Song from the Hayward "NO KINGS" Rally (with kazoo solo!) - Bruce W. Nelson

cosmicretreat

saywhat-politics

juicetrump2

The President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief has saved 26m lives globally, but slashing of funds and dismantling of USAID have forced clin

bowlby4

validblogname

one fight at a time

justinspoliticalcorner

This administration is the best thing that ever happened to cyclosporiasis.

Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice:

Donald Trump is the face of hate. He is the face of war. He is the face of a pandemic. And now he is the orange, sagging face of explosive diarrhea. This month, there has been a major outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a relatively rare food-borne illness caused by a microscopic single celled parasite. Cases have been reported in 30 states, with a record shattering 4,300 instances in Michigan alone. The CDC identified shredded iceberg lettuce at Taco Bell as one cause of infection in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. The restaurant took swift action to remove the produce, but there may well be other sources. Initially the FDA said the Taco Bell lettuce came from Taylor Farms; this week though it said the test was a false positive — a mistake that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. Not coincidentally, it has been about a year since Trump’s indefatigably pro-disease HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took cyclosporiasis and a range of other foodborne illnesses off a mandatory reporting list while instituting draconian cuts at the Center for Disease Control. Slashing government capacity makes it harder to identify outbreaks early and harder to end them quickly. Cyclosporiasis is teaching us a painful, embarrassing, and fairly obvious lesson: when you launch an all-out assault on public health, you get explosive diarrhea — and worse than explosive diarrhea.

Spreading misery

Fortunately, cyclosporiasis is very rarely fatal. But it is extremely unpleasant, and can lead to serious complications for the young, the elderly, or those with disabilities. People who are infected experience cramps, nausea, fever, and vomiting. The “signature symptom,” though, according to Stanford’s David Relman, is “copious, watery diarrhea.” This can lead to dehydration, kidney damage, and hospitalization; some patients experience an up to a 10 percent loss in body weight. In the US, cyclosporiasis outbreaks often start because of poor sanitation on farms or in food processing, especially when farmers “refuse to provide adequate toilet or handwashing facilities for their workers,” according to Ryan Cooper at The Prospect. When feces containing disease spores get on vegetables and fruits, people ingest it and become sick. It is very difficult to wash off the parasites; the only surefire way to get rid of them is to cook produce to 158˚F. Symptoms of cyclosporiasis take a week to develop. That makes tracing outbreaks difficult since it requires lengthy interviews with all those affected. Local and state health departments do not always have the resources for such interviews, which is where the federal government is supposed to come in. But unfortunately, Trump and RFK Jr. have spent a year and a half doing everything they can to destroy federal capacity.

[...]

Trump is a disease vector

Explosive diarrhea is a dramatic consequence of Trump’s hatred of public health. It’s not the first consequence, though, nor the worst. Researchers estimate that Trump’s attack on health infrastructure and capacity led to 461,000 excess deaths in the US in his first term before the covid pandemic. His poor public health response during the pandemic cost the US at least 57,800 additional lives according to one comparative analysis with Europe. In his second term, Trump has gone even further to wreck the nation’s capacity to respond to disease — most directly by appointing ignorant and malevolent anti-vax ghoul RFK Jr. to head HHS. The Orwellian “Make America Healthy Again” agenda is dedicated to the precise opposite — and in its goal of making the US sicker, it already has a list of accomplishment to its credit. There is currently a dangerous global measles surge that’s hitting America especially hard because of increased vaccine hesitancy being promoted by Kennedy and the hacks he keeps installing at the CDC.

Kennedy claims he’s doing a good job of containing the measles outbreak, but that’s nonsense. He has spent years of his life attacking measles vaccines; his personal anti-vaccine interventions helped create conditions for a horrific outbreak in Samoa in 2019 in which 83 children died. True to form, in response to our current crisis, he’s dragged his feet in promoting the measles vaccine even after children in the US died. He’s also spread dangerous misinformation to scare people about vaccine safety.

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) has become the Make America Sick Again (MASA) agenda under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the cyclosporiasis outbreak is the latest example.

dreaminginthedeepsouth

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"

Gandhi (via qfk)

[alive on all channels]

mommahoney

The REAL Fraud

If not dead, he's certainly incapacitated.

azspot

robertreich

Trump's Biggest Self-Dealing Scheme Yet https://robertreich.substack.com/p/trumps-biggest-self-dealing-scheme

misfitwashere

Friends,

Starting August 1, Trump Media and Technology Group will launch a new data feed aimed at high-frequency trading firms whose profits are made by making trades a fraction of a second faster than everyone else.

It will provide “licensed, real-time access to posts from the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts.” In other words, the feed will let you know what Trump has said before anyone else knows, meaning it’s well worth the tab that Truth Social will charge to see Trump’s posts before the rest of the public sees them — up to $100,000 per month.

That’s a pittance relative to what could be made, because Trump’s words on Truth Social — about his war in Iran, about his latest tariffs, about the Fed — have caused the stock market to soar or drop. So, if you’re a trader on Wall Street, you’ll make millions if you know what he’s posting a fraction of a second before everyone else knows. Perhaps more to the point, if you’re behind on that news, “you’ll get crushed,” as one hedge-fund executive toldthe Financial Times.

No wonder Trump Media’s interim CEO Kevin McGurn is gloating that the feed will “become a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue for the company, creating lasting value for shareholders.” Trump Media has been unprofitable until now.

Trump, of course, is the company’s largest shareholder.

The scheme is Trump’s most brazen way to illegally profit off his presidency and enrich his Wall Street insider friends.

I say illegally because the Constitution lists “bribery” as a reason to remove a president from office, and the federal ban on bribing public officials also expressly applies to a president. (Whether these provisions can be enforced against a president who’s been given blanket immunity from “official acts” by the Supreme Court is another matter.)

The good news, though, is Americans are catching on to insider trading, and they hate it — so much so that House Republican leaders are now teeing up a vote this week on a bill that would create new guardrails for lawmakers trading stocks.

The “Stop Insider Trading Act” would bar members of Congress and their families from purchasing new shares of stock and require them to file a notice of their plans to sell shares at least seven days ahead of time.

Most Democrats say the measure doesn’t go far enough because it allows members to keep shares of stock they already own, in contrast with a competing bipartisan proposal that bars members from trading individual shares of stock altogether. And one provision Republicans have snuck into the measure —and that must be removed if they want any Democratic votes — deters mail-in voting.

The point is that at the same time Trump is rolling out a new tool to give traders more immediate access to his market-moving posts on Truth Social — if they’ll pay him up to $100,000 a month for it — Congress is limiting how members can profit from inside information they obtain through elected office.

The American public is so disgusted by corruption in Washington that even Republican lawmakers want something to show they’re not in the swamp.

Trump doesn’t give a damn about the public’s mounting revulsion at corruption. He’s not up for reelection. He doesn’t care that his polls are in the cellar. All he wants to do is make even more money, exert more power, and get even with people who have gotten in his way.

But the public wants his swamp drained.

Democrats, take note. Three months from now, ask Americans two related questions: Do they think they’re better off than they were before Trump became president again? Do they approve of the most corrupt White House in American history?

The answer to both will be a resounding no. And the best way for Americans to act on their disgust will be to kick the Republican bums out.