How bad is Jeff Sessions, his pick for Attorney General? This bad.
His anti-choice record includes:
- Voted against a resolution in support of Roe v. Wade in 1999
- Voted to defund organizations that perform abortions in 2007
- Co-sponsored a bill prohibiting taking minors across state lines for abortion and then voted to increase funding to enforce the in 2008
- Voted in support of a bill notify parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions in 2006
- Voted no on a plan that would have allocated $100 million in federal funding for family planning services that sought to reduce teen pregnancy through education programs and access to contraceptives in 2005
- Voted to ban partial birth abortions, except for cases in which a woman’s life is in danger in 2003
- Voted to maintain a ban on military base abortions in 2000
- Voted to prohibit federal funding for abortions in 2011
There’s a theme running through all of that. I wonder what it is?
How bad is Tom Price, his pick for Health and Human Services? This bad. He belongs to the AAPS, a fringe society of conservative physicians.
Before the big 9/12 rally in Washington, AAPS cosponsored a protest on Capitol Hill with the Tea Party Patriots that AAPS says attracted 1,000 physicians. The organization’s president, Mark Kellen, appeared with Georgia representatives Tom Price and Phil Gingrey—GOP members of the congressional doctors’ caucus—to slam the bill. The group (which did not return calls for comment for this story) has been around since 1943. Some of its former leaders were John Birchers, and its political philosophy comes straight out of Ayn Rand. Its general counsel is Andrew Schlafly, son of the legendary conservative activist Phyllis. The AAPS statement of principles declares that it is “evil” and “immoral” for physicians to participate in Medicare and Medicaid, and its journal is a repository for quackery. Its website features claims that tobacco taxes harm public health and electronic medical records are a form of “data control” like that employed by the East German secret police. An article on the AAPS website speculated that Barack Obama may have won the presidency by hypnotizing voters, especially cohorts known to be susceptible to “neurolinguistic programming”—that is, according to the writer, young people, educated people, and possibly Jews.
Oh jebus. Andrew Schlafly gets mentioned, too, a notorious anti-evolution kook.
I can guess who’s going to be appointed to lead the NIH, if this trend continues.
I got two possibilities after I thought about it for 10 seconds. It’s either going to be Burzynski or the disgraced founder of Theranos whose name I can’t be assed to remember.
Why would they need someone to lead the NIH? I would expect dismantlement rather than leadership is desired from these folks.
Trump also made a dubious pick for deputy national security advisor. He chose KT McFarland, who, as Rachel Maddow pointed out, once ran against Hillary Clinton for Senator for the state of New York.
During that campaign, McFarland released to the press a resumé that was so inflated and obviously false that it was a source for comedy.
Maddow’s segment starts with the failures of other prospective Clinton opponents. When Maddow moves on to McFarland, an “an Upper East Side society matron with no campaign experience.” McFarland was illegally registered to vote from two different addresses at the same time. She voted from South Hampton and from Manhattan. Her sole qualification for office seems to be that she is rich.
Despite being personally wealthy, McFarland used campaign donations to pay for golf outings with Rudy Giuliani at the exclusive Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. [illegal] Her excuse was “ignorance.”
Her resumé included claims that she was the highest ranking woman in the Pentagon during the Reagan administration. She was not. Two women held higher ranks.
She also claimed to be the first female professional staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She was not. Two women attained the title of professional staff member before she did.
She also claimed that she had written Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” speech. She did not. President Reagan and his national security advisors wrote that speech.
At one point, even the NY state Republican Party asked McFarland to drop out of the race. She did not. She lost the primary for the senate by 22 points.
Her next gig was as a contributor on Fox News. Okay, that and her being rich are what got her the nod from Trump.
That’s the person Trump chose for Deputy National Security Advisor. And Trump can make that appointment without a Senate confirmation. No confirmation needed.
“cohorts known to be susceptible to “neurolinguistic programming”—that is, according to the writer, young people, educated people, and possibly Jews.”
Well observed. Young people and educated people are especially susceptible to an insidious form of neurolinguistic programming known as “learning”. It is of course vital to shield them from it, as even sporadic exposure can seriously undermine their support for conservative ideals.
As Red Green (of Possum Lodge) would say, “Quando omni flunkus moritati”. *
Unfortunately, that ain’t gonna help you, or the rest of us looking on in horror.
* Pseudo-Latin for “When all else fails, play dead”.
Trump does have a system for picking his team.
He is picking the worst our society has produced.
A Flat Earther for NASA.
A faith healer for NIH.
An anti-vaxxer for CDC.
A creationist for NSF.
And so on.
Just imagine the worst candidates for any position. And watch them get it.
Wait until he appoints war mongers to run the military.
No GOP administration these days can be complete without a big honking war somewhere.
The Trump Catastrophe is coming into focus.
It’s not easy to see because he himself has no idea what he will do.
Trump has neither the mental ability nor interest in running the USA.
So his underlings will be doing the actual running.
Watch his appointments and see what they will do.
It’s clear he will just rant and rave and run his own business empire.
A sockpuppet.
There will be thousands of people competing to stick their hands up his backside and…rule the USA. None of them will be nice people.
They will be kooks, conspiracy theorists, fundie xian nuts, and the ultra-rich.
A study by two Princeton University researchers, Martin Gilens & Benjamin Page, tracked 1800 U.S. policy changes between 1981 & 2002, & compared the outcome with the expressed preferences of median-income Americans, the affluent, business interests, & powerful lobbies. They concluded that average citizens “have little or no independent influence” on policy in the U.S., while the rich & their hired mouthpieces routinely get their way. “The majority does not rule”, they wrote.
The super-rich must be falling over themselves to further their ends now.
That is happening now, big time.
A majority of Americans support abortion, 56% to 41%.
A majority of Americans support the Paris climate change agreement, 71%.
A majority of Americans support legalizing Cannabis.
Contraceptive acceptance is 90%.
A majority support the ACA.
And so on.
It’s clear we somehow elected a group that doesn’t represent the views of the majority on many important issues.
Dylann Roof is representing himself in court, which I suspect may be him jockeying for Attorney General.
Tabby, #10
Thanks for the LOL.
What position will George Zimmerman get?
raven@9:
Somehow? Those who are trying to get elected control, via gerrymandering, how the votes get split up.
It is more than that.
Trump did win the Electoral College which is done by state.
He lost the popular vote by 2 million.
He doesn’t represent the majority of our country. But with the Electoral College, that doesn’t matter legally.
I keep thinking, a revolution is in the offing. Trouble is, the wrong folks have the guns.
Office for Civil Rights.
AAPS publishes the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, which has claimed:
that HIV does not cause AIDS;
that the “gay male lifestyle” shortens life expectancy by 20 years.
that there is a link between abortion and the risk of breast cancer.
that there are possible links between autism and vaccinations.
We’re fucked. That’s what I told my teenage relatives at Thanksgiving. They’re in full agreement. Bright kids.
Well for all the “Never Hillary” voters, they should be over the moon. They’ve got exactly what they wanted down to the last detail.
You guys are royally screwed. It’s scary to watch from here.
I was kind of morbidly curious what Thunderfoot’s reaction to Trump’s election would be, so plugged my nose, set my browser to private, and took a look at his youtube for the first time in several years. Ugh. The gist appeared to be that he was thoroughly enjoying progressive people’s distressed reactions to the election, and while he had some concerns about Trump himself, he downplayed those concerns, arguing that the number of voters are small (the relevance of that argument escapes me), and that the US government is too stolid for Trump to have much impact (because Republican control of all three branches somehow counts for nothing).
He noted that he gets voted down a lot whenever he’s critical of Trump (quite the tragedy), but that he prefers the company of the alt-right to the company of those wacky social justice types.
Basically, a government that’s massively anti-science, anti-education, explicitly anti-vax, pro-torture, and creationist isn’t close to as big a deal to him as some people sometimes using the word “misogynist” a bit more than he’d like.
Trump cannot tie his own neck-tie in a way that he does not look like a joke.