The mostly absent George Stephanopoulos finally showed up on “This Week with him,” and watched as a battle ensued between Chris Christie and Reince Priebus over whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a functional genius or a terminal asshole. Priebus’s problem is that he thinks everything Trump does is good and right even as Christie smashes all his arguments into dust. If Priebus stopped kissing Trump’s ample ass for just a heartbeat, maybe he could come up with a functional point of view on some subject that makes even minimal sense. Christie challenged him on the functionality of having a man who has made a mission of banning vaccines being appointed to lead our health process, but Priebus seemed unable to understand how that would be a problem. In a recent interrogation by congress, Kennedy fumbled and babbled while trying to explain his opposition to vaccines, and he was even less functional when asked to come up with a viable health plan for the nation.
Why is Kennedy so opposed to vaccines? Hard to tell. There has always been a hardcore opposition to vaccines, most often led by cult-like figures who rave about their dangers … but as a very old survivor of life, who grew up with the miracle of vaccines, I find it impossible to understand the nay-sayers. I can still remember standing in a room with a half a dozen cousins, all of whom had come to visit our cousin, Ray, in his iron lung. I think this was the only time in my life I was truly terrified. Could that be me in that awful machine? I wondered. And I knew the answer was yes, and I would learn that the miracle that saved thousands of kids like Ray from ever facing life in an iron lung was the Salk Vaccine. Who in their right mind could be against that?
Of course, there will be a few who have bad reactions to anything, but you cannot base policy for the treatment of millions on the reactions of a few.
School policy around the country has, for years, been to protect the majority by mandating the use of preventative vaccines for communicable diseases. It’s smart, it’s safe, and it has so far worked for the good of the vast majority.
And yes, I understand the position of those who want the mandate to be removed on children having to have the vaccine before they are allowed into school, but I still feel that it is very short sighted. To endanger a room full of children because one or two might be allergic to the vaccine just doesn’t make any sense—but then neither Kennedy nor Trump make sense about most things.
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The shooting of Charlie Kirk has bought out the worst in everyone, except possibly Utah Governor Spenser Cox. It is ironic that it would be a Left-Wing radical who would commit what will probably be the most notorious assassination of the era, when it has traditionally been the Right that has embraced the gun as its symbol of law enforcement. But wait a minute! This writer has never been a conspiracy theorist. Going back to JFK, I have pretty much accepted that the guy they caught probably did it. But the dramatic resurgence of assassination attempts since the introduction of the Trump administration has, I think, forced everyone to take a new view of how, when, where, and why.
If you want to believe that the pair of attempts to shoot Trump were real, you must wonder why so little was made of them. I mean, the president of the United States has some nut shooting at him and it barely makes page 6 of the NY Post. These were supposed to be attempts to kill the president, for God’s sake, and they were casually shrugged off by by the president, the Department of Justice, and just about everyone else except the poor suckers who took the shot and missed. Do I believe that Trump himself set it up? No way. There isn’t a scintilla of a chance that our criminal in chief would be able to dig up the guts to have someone take a shot at him, even if the plan was to miss.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone else in the conservative movement who wouldn’t mind taking a chance on Trump getting hit by a miss-aimed bullet, just so it would look like the Democrats had the guts to actually take the shot.
Do I really think that there’s a Republican who might try to pull it off? Damn straight I do. More than one. Ted Cruz leads the list because he’s dumb enough not to understand the repercussions of shooting a president of the United States. And while we’re down in Texas, let us take a look at Governor Abbott, who’s dying to show the world he has the guts to take out anyone who gets in his way. Think about it. It’s a win/win situation. If they hit Trump, they get to blame the Democrats and they get to replace him with someone who maybe they can control. If the shooter misses again, they still get to blame the Democrats. Like I said, win/win.
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“Who’s really to blame for the hatred running amok in America?” That question, asked within the framework of Charlie Kirk’s murder, is currently filling the airwaves. The answer, if there is one, is far too all-encompassing to exist. Right now, social media is taking the majority of the blame because it is so easy, considering the shit they publish, to make that claim.
*****
Antifa. A new false flag on which Trump can hang his hat. What is it? How did it attract the bullshit artist extraordinary? It really isn’t a thing, more a concept, or simply a term used by the radical Right, including Trump, to describe a non-existent structure made up of anyone the Right fears or just doesn’t like. There is no organization to Antifa, no centralized makeup. It’s just a word based on anti-fascist, that Trump has latched onto in order to create a new unconstitutional plan.
It seems the administration is declaring that Antifa, which really isn’t anything, is actually a terrorist organization, and, as such, vulnerable to incursions by the likes of The FBI and other members of the legal establishment.
It all has come out of the noise created by the murder of Charlie Kirk but if used as Trump wants it, it could become as functional a tool for Trump as the founding of the National Socialist Party was for Adolph.
By indulging his greatest talent, the bending of the truth, Trump would be able to send any of our various police groups to grab up anyone whom he decides was a member of Antifa, and send them off to one of the new group of prisons the government is building in foreign countries to supplant Guantanamo.
The knock at your door at three AM is the FBI and they have information that links you to Antifa, a terrorist organization. But because there is no real Antifa, you can’t prove that you don’t belong to it. Ever try to prove a negative? You can’t. That’s the power Trump wants. No, it’s not legal under the Constitution, but that matters not to The Donald. It’s just a tool to help him get his crown. The fact that it will destroy our country means nothing to him.