Liberal-As-Shit Fake Republican Bill Cassidy Votes in Favor of RFKJr. in Committee
Plus: The Case for RFKJr. and MAHA

He had threatened to vote against RFKJr., supposedly to "protect Trump" from backlash against RFKJr.'s vax hesitancy.

Cassidy views Trump as an idiot and a weakling in need of his guidance. Just as he views all of us

But he's up for re-election, and Vance explained that simple fact to him.

U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. @SenBillCassidy

I've had very intense conversations with Bobby and the White House over the weekend and even this morning. I want to thank VP JD specifically for his honest counsel. With the serious commitments I've received from the administration and the opportunity to make progress on the issues we agree on like healthy foods and a pro-American agenda, I will vote yes.

The Polymarket betting site now says that -- given Tulsi getting support from Susan Collins, etc. -- that RFKJr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel are now 97% likely to be confirmed.

In case you don't know, when Kennedy talks about "chronic disease," he's contrasting chronic disease -- long-term, slow-moving health conditions -- with acute diseases like an infection or flu or something conventionally treatable. Simple obesity is a major "chronic disease," which causes a lot of serious conditions, like hypertension, heart disease, diabetes of course, and even cancer and Alzheimer's.

You might or might not object to calling obesity a "disease." Fine. Call it a "persistent adverse health syndrome" if you want to fight over semantics.

The medical community is focused on curing acute diseases, and is often very good at doing so. But it focuses very, very little on chronic diseases, and the theory goes that if we could "cure" chronic diseases, or at least ameliorate them, we'd avoid a lot of acute diseases.

Obviously, for example, type 2 diabetes is now rampant when it used to be rare. No one can seriously question that reducing the obesity rate will reduce the diabetes rate.

It's critical for the government to fund studies into preventing or curing chronic diseases. Big Pharma's answer to them is always something they can sell, like Ozempic. I don't call that a conspiracy or anything -- it's just that Big Pharma sells pills, so all of their research goes into making pills that they can sell.

That's not evil or anything. Just self-interest.

But it winds up being the case that there are no funders for any studies that don't involve, down the line, a pill that can be sold to the public. For example, there are very few large, long-term studies into dietary interventions like intermittent fasting or keto. Why? Because you can't sell intermittent fasting or keto in a pill. There is no product at the end of the development pipeline. The treatment is free, only the research costs money.

So people have to beg, borrow, or steal money for studies into these non-renumerative interventions, and what winds up happening is that people dismiss their findings, because they only ran a study with 40 people and they were only tracked for three months, not for (say) five years.

You've proven nothing, they say. You need to run a study with 1,000 people tracked for five years before we'll concede you've made your case, but here's the catch, we won't give you the money for that study. Eat it, losers.

Here, take another pill.

It's cases like this where the government must fund the basic science, because literally no one else is doing it.

RFKJr. will direct the HHS into focusing on these areas of research. Big Pharma will continue spending tens of millions on making new, exciting pills. They don't need any help doing that.

But for the boring stuff you can't make money on, HHS will do the studies.

The Vigilant Fox @VigilantFox

RFK Jr. Shocks Dem Senator Into Silence With the Brutal Truth About U.S. Health

"President Trump has asked me to end the chronic disease epidemic and make America healthy again... and that is what I'm doing.

"And if we don't solve that problem, Senator, all of the other disputes we have about who's paying--whether it's insurance companies, whether it's providers, whether it's HMOs, whether it's patients or families--all of those are just moving deck chairs around on the Titanic.

"Our ship is sinking. Our 60% increase in Medicaid over the past four years is the biggest budget line now, and it's growing faster than any other. No other nation in the world has what we have here.

"No other nation has a chronic disease burden like we do. We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world. During COVID, we had 16% of the COVID deaths in a country where we only have 4.2% of the world's population. We had a higher death count than any country in the world.

"And when the CDC was asked why, they said it's because Americans are the sickest people on earth. The average American who died from COVID had 3.8 chronic diseases. This is an existential threat--economically, to our military, to our health, and to our sense of well-being.

"And it is a priority for President Trump. And that's why he asked me to run the agency. And if I'm privileged to be confirmed, that's exactly what I'll do."

Conservatives who object to RFKJr. need to explain: Who else could Trump nominate who would promote MAHA?

Name a single Republican that conservatives approve of with this passion for the subject.

You can't. There aren't any. Republicans have long, long been corporatists. They don't like people coming in to tell the corporations that buy them off that maybe Red Dye No. 3 actually causes cancer and, given that there are plenty of alternatives (and given that there's no need for a "food" to be artificially, intensely red), you should stop certifying Red Dye No. 3 as "generally regarded as safe" (GRAS) for including in food.

Note that Biden's FDA did finally recognize Red Dye No. 3 as a problem just before Trump took office.

The Vigilant Fox @VigilantFox

REPORT: The FDA has finally decided to BAN Red Dye No. 3, based on serious concerns about cancer.

This stuff is often in your candy, frozen foods, gummy vitamins, and dairy products like strawberry milk.

It was once deemed a "conspiracy theory" to think that the dyes in our food could have detrimental effects on our health.

But like other "conspiracy theories" that turned true, the truth could not be ignored forever.

"This ban was LONG overdue," remarked epidemiologist @NicHulscher
.

"Unfortunately, the other synthetic food dyes that have also been linked to serious deleterious health effects still remain on the market. A few months ago, I summarized the harm linked to synthetic food dyes -- outdated FDA standards expose Americans to toxic food dyes linked to cancer, neurobehavioral issues, and other health risks, demanding urgent regulatory action."

He added, "While the FDA has finally made a decision that will benefit public health, they are still allowing the dangerous COVID-19 genetic injections to be administered to all individuals aged 6 months and older despite far exceeding criteria for a Class I recall. The immediate removal of unsafe and ineffective gene therapy injections should be the first priority before any other product bans."

Anyone opposed to RFKJr. is de facto opposed to MAHA, because there are no alternatives. I guess Thomas Massie talks about stuff like this a little, but we are down to a 2-seat majority in the House so no, we can't take him out of Congress and put him in charge of the HHS.

Not to mention that RFKJr. is a major magnet for disaffected Democrats and by giving him this post -- which we usually don't care about all that much; Republicans never care much about the HHS -- we take a major step towards cementing the new political realignment.

When I heard that RFKJr. might endorse Trump, I didn't believe it. Surely Kamala Harris would give this dog a bone and secure his endorsement.

But they didn't. They spurned him. They're so vax-crazy they couldn't offer RFKJr. some kind of symbolic posting to secure his support.

When talk of an endorsement intensified, I was worried: RFKJr. will demand some kind of major leftwing concessions, and Trump would agree.

But RFKJr. didn't demand major leftwing concessions. He wanted to promote MAHA, which I was actually in favor of and wanted Republicans to start taking seriously anyway.

Then I thought there's still no way this will go through, because his running mate -- a left-liberal California tech industry woman who I think might be Asian or something -- will go along with it. She'll go into Ultimate Karen mode and blow up any deal.

But actually, she's like... #Based?!!?

Even after they said they'd endorse, I expected that endorsement to be half-hearted, crabbed, and full of caveats.

Instead, they were both very supportive of Trump and MAGA. RFKJr. and Shananan have been more supportive of Trump and MAGA than 50%+ of all "Republican" Senators. If we can tolerate them, we can't tolerate these two?

And our shitbag liberal Republicans bring about zero voters into the coalition, while these two bring millions.

This is such a good deal for us. We get a lot and we give up very little. Like I said, HHS in Republican Administrations is usually led by some empty gray nobody. A president just puts whatever Congressman who just lost a seat into the job just to keep him from being unemployed.

RFKJr. and Shanana are demanding almost nothing for their support. In exchange, we get a policy position we should have adopted anyway because it's right, and also get maybe 5% of disaffected Democrats to join us.

And people are turning their noses up at this deal?

posted by Ace at 01:15 PM

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