Someone sent me what was a pretty funny article from what I think might have been the satirical site, “The Onion.”  Whoever wrote it nailed spot-on the anti-immigrant angst tearing at the Trump administration, and showing it in as absurd a way as possible
 
The piece was about how out-of-control lost that inner-circle is now that the Supreme Court has overturned Trump’s Executive Order banning birthright citizenship.  They took the mania to its most illogical (albeit hilarious) extreme – the setup is that a panicked Fox reporter follows up on a comment made by Trump’s anti-Immigration poster boy spokesperson Stephen Miller by clarifying with excitement, “Are we banning pregnant women from America?” he asks hopefully. “Are we banning foreign pregnant women?"
 
And what the story has Miller responding is, "Well, what I'm saying is that you have to now think very carefully on who you let into the country, even on a temporary basis, because of the possibility, as you said, for birth tourism, right? ... People that come here just to have babies on American soil, and that baby gets to be a citizen for life."
 
As I said, that might have been from “The Onion.”  But it wasn’t.  That’s a verbatim transcript of Stephen Miller interviewed yesterday by Fox host Jesse Watters.
 
So, yes, Stephen Miller is actually saying that the Trump administration has to “think very carefully” about banning pregnant women from vacationing in the U.S. 
 
In fairness, I’m not quite sure that amid his tortured hate twisting his judgement into unrecognizable forms Mr. Miller fully understands the meaning of the word, “think.”  Or “very carefully."  Or even, it seems, “babies.”
 
Still, though, he’s nonetheless absolutely serious.  After all, he’s Stephen Miller, the Trump administration’s resident Openly-Racist Xenophobe.  So, when he adds, "There’s a lot of things we have to take a hard look at,” one only hopes that for his personal safety, Stephen Miller doesn’t look so hard that he risks straining anything.  Like his brain, soul or common sense.  Although, being as shriveled as they all are at this point, there isn’t all that much left to strain.
 
What I love to imagine, though, is the meeting that Stephen Miller called of his crackerjack Rapid Response Anti-Immigrant Hate Team that worked hard to find a catchphrase that would win the argument and danced around giddily when they came up with “birth tourism.”

Fun Fact:  The U.S. Constitution does not mention “tourism” as a reason that disqualifies a baby born on U.S. soil from becoming a citizen.
 
How full of all-consuming bile toward immigrants does a person have to be to think as Stephen Miller does when he says that having birthright citizenship is such a risk to America (which, by the way, we’ve had for 250 years) that “it means that if a person comes here nine months pregnant…” as if the U.S. is overrun by so many women nine months pregnant that those babies risks undermining the 342 million Americans living here.  Never mind that, a) it’s actually legal and in the Constitution, and b) if the parents are just tourists, then they will have to leave (presumably with their baby!) when their visa is up.

Never mind, too, that the Mayo Clinic says that one should “Also, be aware that some airlines may not allow pregnant people on international flights” late in their pregnancies at all.  And that long international flights increase the risk to the mother of deep vein thrombosis.  And...
 
Sorry, I got sidetracked with reality.  I apologize.

This is so much simpler:
 
Mainly, this is just deep mania by Trump’s top advisor on the subject, voicing Trump’s own long-held position.  And I can only imagine clips of this video being shown during the Mid-Term Election campaigns.  I’m sure it will go over really well with the womenfolk.  And that's even though it doesn’t directly concern them, being here in the U.S. already and citizens, because what it does show is a demeaning and dismissive perspective by the Trump hierarchy towards women – and in the most easy to grasp way.
 
“Are we banning pregnant women from America?”  Are we?!  Well, hey, watch this space!  “There’s a lot of things we have to take a hard look at.”
 
Yeah, there’s a real winning issue -- during high consumer prices, a rise in inflation, cuts to health care, soaring gas prices, an unnecessary and hated war, all the while pushing your signature “SAVE Act” that would disenfranchise tens of millions of women from voting (!)...for a guy who has a 34% approval.
 
Not to mention just about any level of approval. 
 
Banning pregnant women.
 
Even just thinking about it -- let alone saying it out loud, and risking having to explain how this jimdandy plan will work.  And why??? -- is a political disaster in the waiting.  And when you do say out loud that you have to “seriously” consider no letting pregnant women in the country, and that you have to take “a hard look” at it, you risk infuriating not only rational women and men, but also (when nothing comes of your "hard look") your base then getting upset when you don’t get anywhere with it.
 
So, sure, go ahead, make banning pregnant women your issue. Make it even just a part of your backpack you want to run up the hill with in your platform.
 
Today’s MAGOP – Keeping government out of your lives, one idiotic hypocrisy at a time.

I was going to take a breather today and not write about Trump’s “Memorandum of Understanding” surrender document.  But a news story came up that leaped out to grab my attention.
 
I was watching the news, and they had a montage of MAGOPs in the Senate either avoiding answering questions about the disastrous document, or giving scathing comments.  MAGOPs!!  There was Lindsey Graham, the First Acolyte, actually walking in silence past a questioning reporter asking him about his cult leader.  There was Susan Collins, running for re-election, standing in an elevator, and doing all she could to talk slowly enough for the doors to (please, oh, pleeeease) close on her so she could avoid answering a question and having to she explain that, no, “I haven’t had a chance...to read” the...1-1/2 page docum….  There was Trump sycophant Ted Cruz saying scathingly that “giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea.” There was deep-far right Tom Cotton shredding the idea of giving billions to Iran, adding in deeply-bitter sarcasm that “we know that this terrorist revolutionary regime is not going to spend that money on daycare or on hospitals. They're going to use it to rebuild their drone stockpiles, their missiles, to fund Hamas and fund Hezbollah."  There was Ohio senator Jon Husted, running for re-election, refusing to answer a question on the memorandum. There was…
 
Wait, hold on.  Let’s rewind and go back a minute.  While news stories all day were rightly pointing out how notable it was that Senate MAGOPs were either blasting Trump’s surrender or avoiding comment completely, something leaped out to me that seems to have slipped through the cracks.
 
Okay, do we have it cued up?  Deep-far right Tom Cotton shredding the idea of giving billions to Iran.  Play the tape --
 
“We know that this terrorist revolutionary regime is not going to spend that money on day care or on hospitals. They're going to use it to rebuild their drone stockpiles, their missiles, to fund Hamas and fund Hezbollah."
 
There it is.  A regime that we know is so terrorist and revolutionary that they’re going to use the billions we given them in order to fund such terrorist organizations as the evil Hamas and Hezbollah, rather than spend it on such humanitarian needs as day care and hospitals.
 
Exactly like Cotton’s own MAGOP is doing!  Not spending money on day care.  And cutting funding to hospitals.
 
This isn’t hyperbolically twisting words.  This is MAGOP policy.  On the record.  Verbatim.  From their party’s leader.  And we have it on tape.  Go to Trump –
 
“It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.”
 
And on of the core features of the MAGOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (and name they’ve been trying to run away from ever since it passed, and the public grasped what was in it) was cutting funding from rural hospitals.
 
From the National Health Organization – “Rural hospitals are expected to see a 21% decline in Medicaid reimbursement due to provisions in OBBBA [One Big Beautiful Bill Act]. With almost half of rural hospitals having negative operating margins, we are concerned about rural hospital closures or elimination of key service.”
 
And this – this!!! – not spending money on daycare and hospitals -- is what far-right senator Tom Cottom (MAGOP-AR) used an example to special show how cruel and dangerous the “terrorists” of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are!!  People who Trump sycophant Ted Cruz called “theocratic lunatics.”
 
I don’t know if MAGOPs in Congress listen to their own words, or don’t care what their words are since they’ll change them to fit the moment, or don’t understand their words since they only care about posturing, or sometimes feel do caught and scared and lost that they’ll just spit out anything to fill the dead air space.  Or maybe it’s something else.  Or a combination of the above.  Or maybe it’s just that Trump’s dementia has become accepted within the MAGOP as the norm, and so speaking the same unconnected, unfocused, “Does he know what he’s saying???” rambling way as him is now the party’s standard.

Or maybe, like Trump, sometimes MAGOPs don't realize they just project themselves.  Slamming others while really only explaining who they are, out loud.
 
I only know that for perhaps the first time, I actually agree with at least part of what Tom Cotton said.  Supported by Ted Cruz.  And backed up by all the silent, enabling, scared members of the MAGOP in Congress --
 
People who won’t fund and will even cut funding for daycare and rural hospitals are “theocratic lunatics who, like “terrorist revolutionary regimes,” don’t care about the humanitarian needs of those they serve.

You know what would be cool?  If the media picked up on this, too.  It's not a hard one to grasp.

Yesterday was a Daily Double in Trump Health World. 

First, there was Robert Kennedy Jr., the man who is almost single-handedly destroying the U.S. healthcare system, posting, for some unknown reasons, ​a bizarre video of himself in a backyard patio capturing two snakes -- who kept wriggling until they bit him.  I'm not sure which showed worse judgement:  him picking  up the two snakes or thinking it was a great idea for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to post such a ludicrous video.

And then later, Trump posted on social media an enthusiastic note that he’d just had a “Perfect” medical exam.
 
My reply online was pretty simple.  That this was improbable.
 
And it was improbable to a layman just based on what anyone can look at and see.  Let alone read.  Even if you start and end with the reality that Trump will be 80 years old in just a couple of weeks, that’s enough to know his health isn’t “Perfect”.  Indeed, I suspect it’s near-impossible that anyone who is 80 had “Perfect” health.
 
Then add that we’ve seen disturbing bruising on his hands, and seen swollen ankles, and see that he is significantly overweight (if not "morbidly obese") and seen him falling asleep regularly during public events.  Not to mention hearing him getting names and dates and facts mixed up and going off on tangents in his speeches.  And then add all the articles from expert psychologists that he has dementia and malignant narcissism, both medical terms.
 
None of this is “Perfect”.  Or comes within touching distance of "Perfect."  And that’s just the basics, without knowing much of anything.  That's only a few steps beyond the level of a six-year-old child seeing Trump, pointing and saying, "Look at that man, mamma, he looks like he..."  [Fill in the blank.]  Imagine being a doctor who actually understands medicine and health care and what to look for.

Normally, of course, a person's health is really none of our business.  But when someone is president of the United States and commander-in-chief during a war, that's another matter entirely.  It's critical for people to know.
 
That’s why I like to hear what professionals say who do understand all that.  Which brings us to Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman, who is a former White House physician, and was a guest on CNN yesterday.
 
After the medical visit Trump had, the physicians publicly list the results of the exam, including medication being taken and tests given.  To the general public, all that means nothing, just a lot of words.  To doctors, it means everything.
 
"One of the things that has concerned me about the White House physician, both the current one and under the previous president, is that sometimes they list some medications that the president is taking, but not all of them," Kuhlman said. "Another one is that sometimes they don't give tests to the president, perhaps because they don't want the results to be known."
 
From the what was provided to the public, though, Dr. Kuhlman notes very politely, “the information, if we say it nicely, is incomplete.”
 
We on the outside wouldn’t have a clue what was missing.  But to a physician, it’s blaring.
 
"What they should address to an 80-year-old are the big three. Advanced age is the number one risk factor for cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative disease. So for an 80-year-old, it is not acceptable to say, 'Here's a blood pressure; here's an EKG.' They should be assessing his cardiac function."
 
Dr. Kuhlman goes further and explains in detail how such an exam should be conducted and described to the public for an 80-year-old who is head of the country.
 
"They should do objective testing like a treadmill, like a stress test," he said. "Cardiac imaging of the heart, the coronary arteries, the calcium score ultrasound of the valves, and not just say 'normal,' but they should say, 'Here's the ejection fraction, here's the function of the four valves. And they are not even listing the different tests that he's had."
 
And that’s the point.  Dr. Kuhlman isn’t saying that such tests weren’t done.  They might have been, but there’s no way of knowing since none of it is listed.  And not being listed is concerning because, as he suggests, they don’t want to know and therefore didn’t do the tests they’d have to report – or they did the tests and are hiding the results.
 
Which is hardly the “Perfect” way to handle a medical exam of anyone.  But especially the chief executive and commander-in-chief during a war.

In regards to the importance of the public knowing about the public's health, we saw how critical it was to people when President Biden was running for re-election.  And he wasn't diagnosed with any significant health issues, but dealing with normal issues of age.

CNN pollster Harry Enten noted polling done in 2023 that showed 64 percent of people believed that Trump was in "good enough" health to be president. A current poll however shows only 44 percent still think the same thing.  And again, it's not from any medical tests they're aware of, but just using their eyes.

"That's a tremendous drop," Enten said. "The American people are seeing what they're seeing on their screens. They're passing judgment on this."

Enten goes on to make an interesting point, addressing that unlike President Biden, Trump isn't running for re-election.  But there is a Mid-Term on our doorstep. 

"I think a lot of voters are saying, 'Hey, do we want to continue to give Republicans power who will help, of course, to empower the president of the United States?'" Enten said. "And Trump's numbers on his physical health on starting to look an awful bit like Joe Biden's were going into the 2024 election, and that is not a comparison you want."

Especially when your approval is just 34%.  With soaring gas prices and grocery prices.  And a war you started that almost no one wants.  And you're surrounded by unqualified incompetents who know they are only there to say "Yes" to whatever you want and enable you.

And a party in Congress that seems okay with it all.

If you didn't see the Monday hosting of "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, his Main Story was on the hantavirus.  But it's from a completely different perspective than almost all over coverage -- looking at how the media is handling the story.  And his report is absolutely wonderful and hilarious. 

The core point Stewart makes all the medical experts on TV explaining why the hantavirus, while very deadly, is nothing like COVID in how it's transmitted, so the public shouldn't be concerned...as opposed to news coverage ignoring the experts they themselves have on and instead are ratcheting up concern.

If you didn't see Last Week Tonight with John Oliver last night, his Main Story was on "gas station drugs."  These are drugs or supposedly "dietary supplements" that are sold primarily at gas stations or online that have little to no FDA approval, but many of which are addictive or can cause any other number of problems.  The story is fascinating, detailed and excellent -- and idiotic enough to be a minefield of humor.