That Answers That Question

 

I had wondered in the previous post about the following:

Also, and this is important: the way Kennedy speaks about eliminating exposure to a "cause" of autism makes me very concerned about what he thinks about autistic people, that the people expressing aspects of the autism spectrum are broken or less-than.

Well as to that, say no more:

Visiting the FDA on Friday, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had several “off -the-cuff” remarks which stunned many staffers present, according to a POLITICO report.

            ****

The most insulting comment, however, came when he used an ableist slur when discussing mental health.

“Because of my family’s commitment to these issues, I spent 200 hours ... with the r------d when I was in high school,” Kennedy said at one point. “So I was seeing people with intellectual disabilities all the time. I never saw anybody with autism.”

Okay, scratch that, because maybe I do have a bit more to say about that.

RFK, Jr. Promises What Science Can't

 

RFK Jr: "By September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we will be able to eliminate those exposures." pic.twitter.com/gSDVvsD9CH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 10, 2025

You might have to read the title of the blog post more than once--it isn't complimenting Kennedy on what he claims will happen in a matter of months, but rather, if he gets an "answer' in that time, it won't be about the science. Mostly because everything he's saying is wrong.

We don't have an autism epidemic; we have a diagnosis epidemic. We don't lack for research. There are multiple genes and epigenetic factors involved. You can't "eliminate" all potential exposures related to something that has multiple causes. 

Also, and this is important: the way Kennedy speaks about eliminating exposure to a "cause" of autism makes me very concerned about what he thinks about autistic people, that the people expressing aspects of the autism spectrum are broken or less-then. 

Dr. Oz Didn't Stumble When He Said This

 

Holy shit: Oz says his abortion position: should be between "a woman, her doctor, and local political leaders" #PASenDebate pic.twitter.com/UDiJvDYHYo

— Pat Dennis (@patdennis) October 26, 2022

I personally do not think my uterus is any place for a city council meeting, thanks! This wasn't a case of being inarticulate, this candidate is not in any way impaired, but he said this. Out loud where we all could hear.

Local political leaders, Dr. Oz says, belong in your personal business. Playing chicken with the reaper, with your mental or physical health on the line, with your future fertility and economic security on the line, your ability to take care of the children you may already have on the line, having a debate about something as personal to you as your own body and its future. Grandstanding for political points over your well-being. Appealing to local church leaders for future political support over your well-being. Appealing to right-wing donors, or even basic misogyny, over your well-being.

Transparency and the Malcontents

 

Pennsylvania Lt. Governor and Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman sat down with @DashaBurns in an exclusive interview using closed captioning.

Fetterman discussed his recovery after suffering a stroke in the primaries and his race against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz. pic.twitter.com/0fee1cKXgY

— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) October 11, 2022

U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman gave an interview where he was forthcoming about his recovery and the limitations that he still has post-stroke, and it seems to me that a certain number of people who were previously looking for more transparency about his condition were probably actually looking for some window to indicate that he was not capable of serving in this capacity.

I may add more to this, but to be perfectly blunt--it's ableism. We have people serving in the US Senate right now who are recovering from strokes, and have had, and have had people serving in the Congress and even the presidency with other disabilities without this election. Needing some assistance to perform isn't a sign of incapacity, and I do not think the same questions would arise if a candidate was using a cane or a hearing aid. But it is still the same ableism, and some of the "takes" I am seeing on social media are, to stay blunt, in very bad faith.

That said, I can see from this and other interviews that Fetterman remains sharp and insightful, thoughtful and genuine. I can also say that I am unaware of an assistive device for someone who is profoundly ethics-impaired, as in, say, a snake-oil-dealing puppy killer.

Is the Fact That He isn't Well Going to be A Factor?

 

The image here is from a Trump email to his list, and it is batshit. I could just start with the notion that Trump's slogan seems to have gone from "Make America Great Again" (because it wasn't great enough for him as it was) but "Save America"--implying America is not just not as great as it could be, but imperiled. The email goes on to insinuate that the "Radical Left" (whomst are these people?) are now agreeing to certain things that they aren't necessarily stipulating to, or that don't matter, or that are, in fact, batshit--the Radical Left is probably (definitely) not admitting that CRT is a "disaster" and Trump's southern border policy was "unprecedentedly successful" in any plausible way. This is a thing that might exist in Trump's head, and might be shat out in digital form without amendment via cynical hacks in Trump's orbit, but fuck--that's eye-watering stuff.

So is this Vanity Fair piece. He's delusional. He thinks he really won. He doesn't understand that the American electorate comprises more than just his cultic groupies. It includes rational people who didn't want him to keep letting our citizens die of covid and who wanted a person sane enough to even go to funerals and not be weird. He slags Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr, and Mike Pence, oblivious to the tremendous political debts he owes them and how, if they so wanted, they could just end him, and that if they didn't go along with all his petty bullshit, it was for the manifest reason that OH MY FUCKING GOD TRUMP IS CRAZY AND INEPT AND OMG OMG I HATE THESE GUYS BUT NOT GOING OUT OF THEIR WAY TO MAKE HIM A NAPOLEON IS NOT A DING ON THEM!

This person lost the popular vote twice and has been twice impeached, and is under grave criminal liability and has financial concerns out the wazoo. At what stage does the GOP admit that fuck, he was a bad idea and they can do better? (DISCLAIMER: I have no grading of what a GOP "better" is supposed to look like, but not floridly delusional and openly fascist would be a great start for me, even if it's a reach for the current-day Republican party as currently constituted--which is very much a "them" problem, not a "me" problem, thanks!)

Because he's nuts. This isn't me being ableist, this is me having no other language to strongly state that the relationship he has with reality and the relationship the GOP has with Trump's bad grip on reality is extremely unhealthy in every possible way. He isn't just delusional--he's a carrier. 

The let-down is slow in the coming but necessary. The only way to look at what "TFG" (The former guy) says now is clinically. He's a weirdo supported by other weirdos. He's really not worth dividing the country over, so much as a horrible example of how rich "eccentrics" are coddled to the point of spoilage. He, his company, and his family, are all kind of bent (tell me Don Jr, looks okay to you all, or that his "Puta Pan" syndrome girlfriend, long past where her stripper gyrations, bandage dresses and telling dick tales manifestations are anything but disturbing isn't a warning sign about Trump family values). 

So anyway, um, Trump in exile (if not prison) is the best Trump, and Trump thinking about 2024 is a fucked up Trump that reveals really shitty things about GOP values, because they are still regularly inflating his head with the wrong kind of hot air. 

If we're talking about anything but why Trump is a liar (or that beautiful concept, "disinformation" spreader as he admits in the VF piece) and why the GOP supports his unreality, we are definitely not nailing it. His brain is bad (his physicist-adjacent genes aside). That really does need to be a factor. 

Soup of the Day

Today, Trump most strenuously denied that he had had a series of mini-strokes, and got a doctor to back him up on that, and I am personally not the one to claim otherwise, because for one thing, I can't retrace the scoop that Michael Schmidt choose to put in a book about the president's abrupt trip to Walter Reed from last year, and for another, I choose to grant the occupant of the White House some measure of privacy regarding what might actually just be a minor health kerfuffle that is merely embarrassing.

I mean, like, let's say he got himself caught in his zipper? Or had a perfectly normal bagel-cutting mishap? Is that actually necessarily for everyone's public consumption?

Steve Scalise Stole A Disabled Man's Voice

.@SteveScalise tried to steal @AdyBarkan’s health care with more than 60 votes to repeal or undermine Americans’ health care.

Now, he’s trying to steal Ady’s words by lying.

Congressman Scalise must take his doctored video down and apologize immediately. https://t.co/sWlufPsazf

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) August 30, 2020

One of the sickest things about this is that Ady Barkan is a very capable speaker on the behalf of people who like himself, really need access to healthcare, so the idea that some political figure would take advantage of the reality that ALS stole Ady's voice and left him with an electrically assisted vocalization to use that substitution to put words in his mouth is appalling. It is not weakness to need an electric voice. It is weakness to need to lie about others to create a false narrative. It isn't enough that Scalise takes down his poorly-orchestrated lie (as if a dedicated activist could not or would not refute this lie on his own behalf, or that many others would not recognize that this was an utter lie). Scalise needs to retire himself. He should altogether resign, because he prefers to do harm than correct it, and doesn't understand the issues at hand.

The harm done to Ady Barkan by putting words in his mouth is something you might think Scalise would give some reasonable consideration to.

And you would be entirely overestimating him. He is not that guy.

Get a Load of this Guy

These Tweets are all because Meryl Streep mentioned some nameless person who mocked a disabled reporter. Which he actually did. And he did it because the reporter did not back up Trump's lie about watching Muslims celebrating 9/11.  This is who Trump is.


And this is who we could have had.

Sometimes People Need To Sound off On Trump

I totally understand why.

Donald Trump and the Classy Divide

There is a moment where, if you are at all a careful person, when you understand that "class" is often used as a substitute for "dignity". Or "honor". Donald Trump constitutes, if "class" is determined as a measure of wealth, by far one of America's classiest people. He is the representative of the 1%. If not the .01%. In the above picture, for those who can't view images, he is signing the upper chest area of a middle-aged woman because why not? And someone behind her is brandishing a copy of Trump's latest book Crippled America. (We do not generally refer to disabled persons as "crippled" anymore, so his use for that description of this country is pretty much repellent to thinking folks, as well.)

Today, Trump made a speech to Republican Jewish people that should have been a bissel alarming, because he kind of used all the stereotypes. Because he thinks Jewish people are all about money and the negotiating and the haggle and the deal.  That was pretty transparent.

But why wouldn't he stereotype in the laziest way? After all, he has insulted Asians, women, black people, disabled people, immigrants but especially Mexican immigrants.

He is so good at declaring various people "losers". I begin to wonder how he ever finds any of us to be winners. But in the meanwhile--he is an actual lowbrow? I mean,  money can't pave his actual cognitive lacks with gold, platinum, or even borrowed merit. Who signs the upper tit? Where is this good optics?

Where Does Trump Go from Here?

Donald Trump's campaign would like to deny that the candidate was mocking the disability of a reporter whose recollection of certain disputed events differs from the candidate's own recollection. The campaign would prefer that one believe that the candidate does not know what the journalist in question looks like.

Oh, really? Because the exact words out of Trump's mouth before he scrunched up his right arm were:

“Now the poor guy, you ought to see the guy,” he said as he gestured, drawing condemnation from the Times and disability advocates.

Right. You ought to see the guy, like Trump knows what he looks like, and in case you don't...?

Tacky. But this is an interesting thing--why did Trump single out this reporter's disability? To discredit him. Why use this to discredit him? Because in Trump's mind, any weakness is to be exploited. Naturally. Of course the disabled guy's reporting is faulty. In the Trump regime, don't actually expect that weakness will be suffered or cozened. Actually, expect that if you have weakness, you are suspected of trying to weaken the entire corpus Americanus. There won't really even be a place for charity towards the ill.

What the hell does that sound like? See, when I hear "Make America Great"--in part I hear, "Make Americans Pure". And that purity might not entail someone you know.

Trump doesn't need "sensitivity training". He isn't being chided for being less than politically correct. He knows who the hell that reporter is, and he mocked him like a child who knows no better might mock someone before being advised that he lives in a world with a lot of other people of varying strengths all of whom have value. But he is not a child. And he shouldn't have to be taught like one.

Are they Listening to Him, Now?

I know, coming just a couple days after dragging Carson for his comments on what he would do if faced with a gunman, it might seem like I'm enjoying one of my OCD phases--but the story told on, by, and about Ben Carson about what really (maybe) happened when he was confronted with a gunman is pretty fascinating. In the legend, when a stickup artist put a gun in Carson's ribs, he directed the felon's attention to the person behind the register. Har har har. Not exactly the tale of derring-do of an attempt at physical force to compel a potential shooter to comply, but still a thing one would have to have a certain presence of mind to say. The Daily Beast article is skeptical. I'm skeptical. One might point out that deflecting the assailant's attention from his (valuable) self to the (perceived-less-valuable) fast food cashier's self is sheer classism.

That kind of thinking, that there is a quality of some citizens being lesser-than, is pretty much a trend. He states that some "lifestyles are more valuable than others". Lifestyles, schmifestyles, I come from a country that made the point that all men are created equal (except for the slavery business, and that "men" at the time sort of excluded women). One exceptionally curious bit of reasoning along those lines comes from his assertion that "gay marriage" (we call it marriage equality around here) is like child seats for conjoined twins.

Wow. There is a kind of ableism about that, isn't there? People who grasp the idea that marriage is a state that human beings enjoy and means the same thing for straight or gay couples see marriage as an individual right that confers certain securities to the persons involved in that state of matrimony. It's the same thing because the same needs exist. But take what he's saying--marriage, like car seats, is an accommodation. We can accommodate "normal" people, but if you "don't fit" our definition of "normal", you don't deserve any accommodation because of your differences. A car seat is intended for the purposes of safety for an infant. What this grotesque analogy is saying is that no accommodation should be made to protect the life of infants who are conjoined by arranging some kind of safety mechanism because the accommodation itself is commodified. I realize one of his major achievements was separating conjoined twins, but there are cases where this is not possible, or where some other congenital issue might make accommodating physical differences such that standard measures don't really apply--but the children would still need to be safe if their life is valued right?  Aren't they still people, even if they are different? I'm past objecting to the dismissal of LGBT people's basic enjoyment of equal rights, but the assumption that we shouldn't or wouldn't take extraordinary measures for the "different" among us.

Disablism--it's really about any of us, isn't it?

My father is disabled. He's the smartest, handsomest, strongest man I have ever actually known, my first great role model (aside from Mom) and he has rheumatoid arthritis, which is warping his joints and has been making his life a pain in the ass and everything else for several years now. He doesn't look disabled. He looks like a tall, muscular, distinguished man who would otherwise meet any convention of "This is privileged guy".