Spectator Life

The buzzword in politics, in the wake of the socialist takeover of New York City, is “affordability.” That was certainly on Donald Trump’s mind today during an Oval Office announcement for cheaper GLP-1s, or, as Trump called them, “fat drugs.” Trump took brief potshots at Gavin Newsom and the Obama Presidential Library, and, of course, continued to urge pregnant women not to take Tylenol.  Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, when Trump called him out, said he was “not yet” on GLP-1s. “Good,” Trump said, adding “CMS administrator Mehmet Oz, he doesn’t take it” – obviously, since we can all agree Dr. Oz looks great. Trump did, however, roll call the quite large White House head of communications Steven Cheung. “He’s taking it,” Trump said.

Yesterday the House Oversight Committee released an extraordinary 91-page document called “The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion and Deception in The White House.” Based on interviews with a dozen Biden aides, the committee concluded, essentially, that Biden was a puppet President incapable of self-functioning. Biden’s advisers took “steps” to make him appear marginally Presidential.

President Donald Trump’s new partnership with Pfizer to sell drugs directly to consumers is being cast as a major win for patients. He’s right about the problem: healthcare and prescription drugs cost too much. Families are struggling, and patients often face heartbreaking choices between groceries, rent and the medicines they need. But the proposed solution isn’t tackling the root of the issue. It risks exacerbating federal government failures that created this problem.For starters, Pfizer is claiming that this new campaign is about lowering consumer costs. But it’s really about creating a cozy relationship with the government that nobody else can.

Weed is the most dangerous drug in America. The main reason for this is the fact that most people don’t think it is. In fact, they typically think just the opposite. They believe not only that pot is safe, but also that it has true medicinal qualities. Little do they know that those benefits are barely worth the paper you wrap your joint in. Marijuana is most commonly touted as a balm for anxiety. But it may actually increase anxiety to the point of psychosis – especially for those with underlying psychiatric conditions. Combine it with a diet of daily intake of violent video games and social media – as did Joshua Jahn, the man who shot three victims at a Dallas ICE facility – and you’ve got all the makings of an unstable American.

For much of my life, fitness wasn’t optional. I was held to very specific standards and tested to confirm that I was adhering to those standards. I was a hockey player. In college, and briefly, in the minor pros. Most seasons began the same way: a searing battery of strength and conditioning tests – on-ice sprints, off-ice endurance runs, bench press, squats, pull-ups, all to termination. Scores aggregated and ranked, from first to last. Personal value was assigned to the scores. Coaches took notice. I trained accordingly and drew a portion of my self-worth from being fit. That mindset would serve me well after school, when I joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee. I was medically discharged before commissioning, but while I was in, fitness wasn’t optional.

“DON’T TAKE TYLENOL,” the President advised pregnant women, forcefully, in the Oval Office yesterday afternoon, because his Administration now says that acetaminophen causes childhood autism. Trump said it at least a dozen times. Also, he said, don’t give Tylenol to your children after they get a shot. Speaking of shots, President Trump said, kids shouldn’t get their Hepatitis B vaccine until they’re 12, because Hepatitis B is a sexually transmitted disease. In addition, he recommends breaking up the MMR vaccine into three separate shots, because that’s a lot of liquid. “It’s a fragile little child and it looks like they’re pumping it into a horse,” he said. It was a typically eccentric Trump event. The main three speakers were Trump, RFK Jr., and Dr. Oz.

Once upon a time, there was a hugely successful children’s author named Robert Munsch. His books (more than 70!) sold in many, many copies; he became famous, and people gave him top awards like the Juno and the Order of Canada. They even named schools after him. More gloriously yet, he became the most stolen author in the Toronto Public Library. He was in high demand as a storyteller, and children from everywhere used to write him letters. And he would write back, often with personalized stories (which they loved) featuring them and their classmates. Like all of us, he had his sorrows. He and his wife lost two children, which led him to write one of his best-known works, Love You Forever. Eventually they became adoptive parents of three.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and recently-fired CDC director Susan Monarez exchanged “testy” words about vaccines in a Senate hearing today. That should come as little surprise. Paul has long been a vaccine skeptic, if not an outright opponent. The day started with Monarez telling Congress that RFK Jr. tried to get the White House to fire her because she refused to “rubber-stamp” approve a schedule of HHS vaccinations. “He just wanted blanket approval,” Monarez said. “If I could not commit to blanket approval to each of the recommendations I would need to resign.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s quest to prove himself President Donald Trump’s most destructive Cabinet member continues apace.  On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services abruptly announced that “Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” She had been nominated to the key post in March, and actually served in it for less than a month. Shortly after that, Monarez’s lawyers issued a fiery statement asserting that she had neither been fired, nor resigned, and was being targeted by Kennedy for refusing to “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives,” and help him weaponize “public health for political gain.

A terrifying thing appeared on my Twitter feed this morning. Secretary of Health and Human Services and bear-fighter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he’s “teamed up” with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the “Pete & Bobby Challenge.” This, unfortunately, is a fitness challenge. Even more unfortunately, it involves doing 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups. Most unfortunately of all, they want us to do it all in five minutes or less. You might take heart that in the gym-based, sweat-soaked motivational video that accompanies the Tweet, RFK Jr. takes a whole five minutes and 25 seconds to complete this challenge. However, keep in mind that he’s in his seventies, and does the entire challenge in jeans.

It’s the stuff of nightmares. You wake up on a cold metal table, fully conscious but unable to move or communicate as masked figures prep you for some unknown procedure – it turns out to be your last. This isn’t the plot of a Criminal Minds episode, but quite possibly a far too common reality in an American medical system that seeks to harvest organs from donors who are very much alive. It’s the latest example of modern progressive institutions committing harm in the name of help. A recent New York Times investigation revealed the disturbing lengths procurement agencies go to retrieve organs. Historically, organ donation occurred only from patients declared brain-dead, an “irreversible state.

The institutions just won’t quit. Even after the Supreme Court made it abundantly clear that race-based admissions violate the Constitution, many of America’s top medical schools are digging in their heels – and, apparently, digging graves for meritocracy. A new report by Do No Harm, a group of physicians and health policy experts, reveals that public medical schools continue to admit students with dramatically different qualifications based largely on race. In other words, the diversity-industrial complex is alive and well – just operating in the shadows. The numbers don’t lie. According to the report, black students admitted to these schools had average MCAT scores significantly lower than their white and Asian counterparts.

Fifteen years ago, when Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), Vice President Biden, at that time a man with full verbal faculties, indecorously stated to President Obama, “this is a big fuckin’ deal.” So it was, or so it seemed. Today however, Obamacare has become yet another reckless source of federal spending, significantly contributing to the inefficiencies and corporatist structure of American healthcare.Obamacare’s reinforcement of the healthcare status quo should lead us to think more deeply about what we want healthcare to be like in America. Should we not strive for the alignment of healthcare with the fundamental principles of democratic capitalism, ensuring that freedom and accountability for patients – i.e.

As President Donald Trump trots the globe shopping for a new Air Force One and takes long-distance phone calls in a quest to end the “bloodbath” in Ukraine, a clear and present – and costly, in more ways than one – danger persists on his own country’s soil. A new, first-of-its-kind study from Avalere Health has found the annual average cost of each opioid use disorder (OUD) case in the US “is approximately $695,000 across all stakeholders analyzed.” Per the report’s executive summary:  The costs to the federal government, state/local government, private businesses, and society are driven by lost productivity for employers ($438 billion), employees ($248 billion), and households ($73 billion).