Is there a doctor in the house? (Hint: No.)

 Here's National Public Radio:

Shall we do a bit of "fact-checking" as the Kidz Today call it? First stop, Wikipedia:

"Means graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine in 2014 but dropped out of her surgical residency four years later and subsequently chose to practice functional medicine, a form of alternative medicine. Her medical license has been inactive since 2024."

Meaning "no, not an actual "medical doctor". Failed the OJT that is a critical piece of becoming a board-certified MD. 

I'm a "certified engineering geologist" because I 1) have a degree (two, actually, baccalaureate and masters) in geology, 2) passed my boards (two, actually, the state RG and CEG examinations), AND 3) worked under a licensed CEG for a period of five years to learn the important practical aspects of my profession.

Part 3 is not "optional"; it's considered an essential part of my licensure just as internship and residency is essential to medical board certification. "Doctor" Means couldn't hack it and fucked off into some sort of woo-woo bullshit at that point, which would be like me doing my CEG training as a sales clerk at Ed's House of Gems.

Wait. "Woo-woo bullshit"?

Here's Wiki on "functional medicine":

"Functional medicine (FM) is a form of alternative medicine that encompasses many unproven and disproven methods and treatments.^[1][2][3] At its essence, it is a rebranding of complementary and alternative medicine,^[4] and as such is pseudoscientific,^[5] and has been described as a form of quackery"

So, yeah; woo-woo bullshit and "not an actual medical doctor".

So what does this not-an-actual-doctor-woo-woo-bullshit-artist "believe"?

Hang on; shit gets deep here. From the first Wiki piece:

"Means and her brother, Calley, co-wrote Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health in 2024.

(T)he book's central claim is that a single mechanism, which the authors call "Bad Energy", described as a common form of mitochondrial dysfunction caused by improper lifestyles...cause(s) disorders as diverse as depression, anxiety, acne, infertility, insomnia, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, as well as "most other conditions"...

The book asserts that the underlying causes of this dysfunction are rooted in unhealthy modern lifestyles: "too much sugar, too much stress, too much sitting, too much pollution, too many pills, too many pesticides, too many screens, too little sleep, and too little micronutrients. These trends-with trillions of dollars behind them-are causing epidemic levels of mitochondrial dysfunction and underpowered, sick, inflamed bodies."

The authors also assert that diseases such schizophrenia and depression are caused by..."leaky gut syndrome", and...claim that "researchers can identify a person with depression or schizophrenia just by analyzing their gut bacteria composition".

Oh, horseshit.

Also; fuck off, NPR. "medical degree from Stanford"? That's some real fucking sanewashing right there, you nimrods. Don't think that's gonna save you from Big Ballz and the DOGE Pounders.

"Bad Energy"? "Leaky Gut Syndrome"?

Why not "Demon Sperm"? Remember that weird Trump shit? Ohhellyeah. He's totally like that, and when you look at it that way his tapping this gimp for Surgeon General makes total sense. She's in the "wellness" grift just like he's on the "wealth" grift. Game recognize game.

This whacko has no more business being Surgeon General than I do claiming to be the fucking Dragon King of Bhutan.

There's a lot of "unhealthy modern lifestyles", yes.

None of them cause cancer. Or Parkinson's. Or acne. Or cure them.

Anymore than this freak can.

 

But she's a skinny sorta-blonde white chick that Trump would totally rage-fuck, so she's right in his ten-ring.

What a completely fucked-up country we live in.

 

Chronicle of a Grift Foretold

We are now less than three weeks away from the inauguration of His Fraudulency 2: Electric Trumpaloo, and the Congressional GOP is already doing what it does best - beavering away undermining whatever "good government"/progressive/antiplutocratic rules they can find.

And I'm perfectly confident predicting that we're going to see much, much more of this in the next four years. In fact, I'm absolutely slam-dunk, pure-D, dog-ass certain of it.

Why, you ask?

Because the thing to remember about the GOP as currently constituted is that it's not a "political party" in the "tradition of American political party" sense but a party in the "faction of the caudillo" or one-party state sort of party.

The GOP doesn't want to "govern" in the sense that a party in power in a republic wants to govern; it wants to RULE, in the way that the United Russia Party of Vladi Putin rules. It wants all the cakes and ale and graft and hippie-punching and Koch-sucking it can shoehorn into a swagbag, and it will get it though Hell bar the way.

The GOP also knows perfectly well that stoogeing for plutocracy and pimping for Christian theocrats and ignorant hillbillies isn't going to appeal to a majority of the citizens of the US, and that to continue to rule it will have to circumvent the norms and conventions and institutions that would otherwise expose it as a bought-and-paid-for tool of the Rich and Well-Born on economics and the Christopathic Nutbags and Racist Trash on social issues.

So whilst this might get walked back a trifle don't kid yourself; the reign of His Fraudulency and his Wingnut Congress will be characterized by just this sort of grifting and chicanery.

We are about to see a federal government riddled with open corruption - not the sly, business-as-usual, K-Street sort of corruption we've seen over most of the modern era but the open, hand-out, greasy sleaze corruption of the Gilded Age or of a Trump Casino - the like of which those of us living have never seen. You'd probably have to go all the way back to the pre-Progressive Era to find the sort of daylight-robbery kind of pay-for-play we're looking at coming at us.

It's not just because it's who they are. It's because this sort of grifting is the ONLY way that the GOP can continue the grift. The plutocrats don't give a shit about Second Amendment Rights - in fact, they'd just as soon disarm the dangerous crank-addled hillbillies. The Christopaths could give a shit about the estate tax, and the gunlickers don't care sweet goddamn about the carried-interest deduction. The GOP coalition is eight rabid rats in a sack, and the moment one rat gets the hint that one of the others is getting over on it the ass-biting will go nuclear.

My real fear is that these morons know so little of history that they will try and push the nation back into the Gilded Age while in their ignorance have no idea how close we came to some form of autocracy in the 1929-1932 period and how dangerous it will be to try and go there today.

The Ryans and McConnells and Trumps are too ignorant to know what a turbulent place the US was in the original Gilded Age, and too stupid to figure out that while the Homestead Strike and the Haymarket Riot were one-sided wins for the government back in the day the profusion of cheap semiautomatic and automatic weapons and simple, easy-to-construct mines ("IEDs") have made suppressing rebellions a mug's game for Western troops.

They may very well get their wish and then discover why the original John D. Rockefellers and Carnegies and their robber-baron ilk didn't push back that hard against the Welfare State back in the day.

They had seen the bodies hanging from the lampposts in St. Petersburg and Rome and knew better than to think that they were safe.

I have no doubt that the upcoming Trump Administration will make Dubya and his band of cronies look like MENSA for competence and the Salvation Army for probity, or that they will do their level best to push the GOP Back-to-the-Gilded-Age agenda as far towards reality as they can, and that both sickens and enrages me.

But what I fear the most is that this administration will tear down a LOT of the institutional and social barriers that have protected us here in El Norte from the sort of caudilloist corruption and nepotism that has been endemic in much of the rest of our hemisphere.

His Fraudulency 2 himself is a walking violation of the Emoluments Clause, and rather than gibbering in fear that he will invoke a constitutional crisis the rest of the wingnut monkeyhouse has been doing a Gingrich; trying to insist that breaking the norms and rules is really the New Norms and Rules and that doing to the federal government what Newt does to Callista on Friday night after a bottle of lambrusco and 100mg of Viagra is Just How It Works.

We Are So, So, So, SO Fucked.