The White House Seal of Approval

 

REPORTER: You just announced a new nominee for US Surgeon General who never finished her residency, and is not a practicing physician. So can you explain why you picked her to be America's top doctor?

TRUMP: Because Bobby thought she was fantastic ... I don't know her pic.twitter.com/ZYjtiPk4sH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 8, 2025

Someone else picked her--I don't know her. You just can't get any more ringing a recommendation than that! 

Yeah, she's problematic and underqualified. But she gets advice from trees and whatnot, so it's gonna be OK! I am not kidding:

Means also went to "weekly group meditations and spiritual lectures at Self Realization Fellowship in order to tune in with Spirit... worked with a spiritual medium who helped me try to connect with my spirit guides for support and guidance... did full moon ceremonies with grounded, powerful women... talked (literally out loud) to the trees, letting them know I was ready for partnership, and asking them if they could help... did plant medicine experiences with trusted guides and wrote extensively about my experience and insights."

Now, now, you might be thinking--isn't that harsh? And of course, who am I to question what one has to do to find love in this mean old world?  But when I see posts like this:

RFK Jr. is Stupid as Hell

 

RFK Jr on measles: "The MMR vaccine contains a lot of aborted fetus debris." pic.twitter.com/wq7S3xssl7

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 1, 2025

No, it does the fuck not.  Not a lot. Not any. 

Literally none.

He could look this shit up, you know. He could ask somebody competent who works with viruses. He could realize there's just some stuff he doesn't know, leave it the hell be, and call it a day. There's a lot of things I don't understand. I can't split the fucking atom, okay? 

But then there's Bobby Big Britches, with a big dumb crazy-eyed straight face:

"Don't take the vaccines! They're full of DEAD BABY!" (PS--it's very QAnon-friendly.)

This is the kind of fear-and horror-invoking nonsense you get from the kind of pud-whittling midwit who truly believes there's a grand conspiracy to make planes shit health-altering chemicals out of their backends because he can't comprehend a simple concept like "Planes high, air cold." 

Honest to God we're in the fucking ENDARKENMENT over here. And what's worse is--I don't know that he's that stupid because there are just rotten-souled propagandists who will say ANYTHING no matter how screwed up for attention and political influence. 

What do we do with the dark folks?  Grab a goddamn torch. 

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.

No, We Most Definitely are NOT

 

Senator-elect Jim Banks on RFK Jr: "This country is ready for a big debate about vaccines." pic.twitter.com/UAxv6pMmvf

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 13, 2024

This country is not ready for a debate on vaccines. Vaccines are not a debate topic. This is like debating whether the earth is round. They aren't political. They aren't something any jackaloon with a big old opinion should have a dopey say-so about. They are being made political by chiclet-heads.

Wait. I take that back. That's needlessly insulting to gum. 

RFK. Jr. is working with a lawyer who petitioned to "revoke approval of the polio vaccine."

The polio vaccine. When I was growing up, if there was a medical Mount Rushmore, Jonas Salk would've been on it. It's safe. It virtually eradicated a genuinely terrifying disease. 

SCOTUS and the Conclusions

 

It's really not hard to draw an obvious and unpleasant conclusion regarding the conservative justices' rulings regarding effectively legalizing bribery and privileging the opinions of courts over subject matter experts in government agencies with respects to regulatory matters, and to keep this blog post terribly brief, let me just sum it up this way:

The Republican-appointed justices have shown us what they are, and all that's left is billionaires haggling over the price. I'm sure putting it this way would offend Sam Alito and his missus, so to also keep this blog post brief, I will refrain from suggesting what else they can run up a flagpole if they don't like it.

I really shudder at conservative justices using their slapdash "textural" approach to the law as a "public service" to overrule agency decisions based on science. What this means for climate change, curbing pollution, food and drug regulation....

RFK Jr. and the Parasites

 

Although "brain worms" has become an amusing internet slang for someone whose cognition is more compost than mentos, I want to take the idea of brain worms very seriously. We just don't know what we might inhale or ingest from a swimming hole, a neti pot, or undercooked fish or pork. The risk to your health is real from a parasitic infection. 

And I won't reduce this blog post to scoffing at RDK, Jr,. (Rodent Dildo Kennedy, Jr.) to making fun of what might have occurred in his brain, what with the brain worms, the mercury poisoning, or the lasting effects of heroin abuse. And whether any of that contributed to his behavior regarding the suicide of his former wife. After all, it was his excuse for why he couldn't figure out how to pay his ex-wife's alimony, because his brain worms prevented him from stable work and all. And it could have very probably been through his own, miserable, small, licentious and shitty actions that his ex-wife lost her sanity and life from his pure selfish bullshit. That part might not have been due to brain worms but being an actual piece of shit as a human. 

But we are supposed to believe he can be president? Shouldn't he take a cognitive test, like Donald Trump has done, to let us know if he can tell what hands represent on a clock or which animal is a giraffe? Because admitting that cognitive effects can result from a brain worm infection and taking it seriously definitely means--taking that seriously. 

And if RDK Jr has a cognitive problem that prevents him from understanding that he is in fact, a rodent dildo, we can, of course, feel a bit bad about that. We can acknowledge the evidence is very clear to people with eyes in their head, and no worms whatsoever. Maybe the worm ate the exact part of his brain that would have let him understand that he is a spoiler that would help undermine democracy.

It also alienates him from most of his family. That has to be excruciating. (Still his quixotic run persists.)  Maybe that's why he spouts Russian propaganda and undermines acknowledged science. 

I can be moved to terrible pity. But I fear the result of people who continue to take him seriously. This revelation would be a glorious opportunity for him to recognize why he does not, in fact, need to run for president. He should spend more time with whatever family he has that can still stand him. 

Happy St. Pats to Everyone but RFK Jr.

 

Sometimes an entire family is needed to properly slap a cabbage-headed man into something like reality, but also, it hardly works when he's long been away with the fairies. Some people have noted that despite the talk of anti-vax RFK. Jr. selecting anti-vax sports figure Aaron Rodgers as his running mate, he's liable to declare some wealthy idiot named Nicole Shanahan who has enough money to maybe get him on some ballots as his running mate. 

I guess I don't know for sure she's an idiot. I guess it depends on whether she agrees to be the Kennedy idiot's running mate. For all I know, the idiot he runs with is Jesse Ventura, although, despite his lad working for RT, I never thought Ventura was quite that kind of idiot, except possibly in the "fire doesn't melt steel bars" kind of way. 

Anyway cheers to St. Pat, who got the snakes out of Ireland. I truly would love it if there was a saint who would ger the sheer idiots out of politics. But I am proud to support Joe Biden because of his anti-malarkism. 

It's a brilliant start. 

The Freedom Mommies are Being Weird Again

 

So, one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, Bridget Ziegler and her husband, who happens to be the chair of the Florida GOP, were in a relationship with a third party, a woman who claims she had been sexually assaulted by the husband, Christian Ziegler. If there was a book about this, no one in Florida would be allowed to read it. 

I don't find it hard to believe a GOP official is capable of sexual assault: my word! I'm not the one who will pretend for a minute Republicans are actually moral exemplars--actually, they are kind of fucked up. Just a little bit ago, it was revealed that a spokesperson for the Freedom Mommies in Philadelphia (my home!)  was a registered offender. 

Look, the sexual morality thing is just a grift. Take poolside threesome aficionado Jerry Falwell Jr. as an example. "We're saving kids from being sexually tempted and confused--like we are! So ban books!' 

It's just anti-intellectualism with a spicy homophobic and sex-negative twist, It's not new, and it's dumb. But just so I can sort it out in my mind--is it not queer for the same-sex business to be happening so long 2/3rds of the people are openly Christian and straight-married? Is it less than two mommies queer? Is it more than two daddy penguins raising a baby penguin queer? 

Or is it Anne Frank wants to compare breasts with another adolescent female queer? Because teenagers are curious, but banning Anne Frank's diary has farther reaching concerns. Anti-Semitic ones. Because despite their vehement protestations, The Freedom Mommies are associated with Proud Boys. Though they want to sink that connection. But they stay "Klanned Karenhood" in my mind and so many others.

The House GOP Found Their Johnson

 

You know, usually I like to make link-heavy blog posts that substantiate all the facts I drop in one of my screeds, but I will leave the research on this one to my readers because I had limited connectivity to the internet this week and have a whole carton of huevos to fry. But here's the funny thing to me: 

Look at the happy-ass motherfuckers in the picture above.  They think they just got their shit together and ended a long national nightmare. They just picked the most problematic of dudes to unify themselves around. He doesn't look like a whole lot, but whoo, this dude right here. 

This is a Christian nationalist of the kind it's been my whole life's business to want to take down. He's anti-science: a young earth creationist who doesn't believe in climate change. That right there is an air raid siren for me: he does not care about facts and doesn't care whether facts are even useful to the betterment of life for other people. He talks in terms of "belief" because empirical knowledge is inconvenient to his worldview. He is a 2020 election denier: that right there--he cares about power, and GOD DAMN the facts. 

He says he finds his proofs in Scripture: people write books all the time, but if you "believe in" God--who do you think put facts in the world? It feels very much to me like people who deny empirical knowledge are the ones really denying a revelation that can be understood and made accessible, and instead support a kind of false-witness bearing of twisting Scripture to one's own ends. 

Hillary Clinton and the Uncomfortable Truth

 

“So many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump,” @HillaryClinton tells me. “There needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members” in the GOP, she adds in our EXCLUSIVE conversation. pic.twitter.com/ImpYIBuQ5j

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) October 6, 2023

The right-wing is a bit up in arms with Hillary Clinton's statement that Trump's people are in a cult and need to be deprogrammed. Now, for the record, to me this is as benign a statement as calling some portion of the Trump supporters "deplorable"--he literally attracts militia folks and Klan members. If you aren't down with calling out would-be Timothy McVeigh's and the goddamn Klan as "deplorable"--I'm not sure what your standards are, but they sure as hell aren't mine. (Looking at Steve Scalise and Josh Hawley in their whole damn faces.) You either understand civil terrorism is kind of fucked up or GTFO. I'll say John Brown and Weather Underground weren't exactly doing it right--your turn? 

Anyway, Hillary Clinton is by far not the only one to notice that Trump mega-MAGA fan behavior is cultish. They signify via their unique clothing. They silo their sources of information. They believe what their cult leader says to the exclusion of what they might even see with their own eyes. Their religion, their associations, their concept of acceptable speech: all file in line with TrumpThink. 

When comedians and journalists alike do "man on the street" type interviews with MAGA, they sound like people from the Manchurian Candidate talking about Raymond Shaw.: 

“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

The Weak Dictator DeSantis

 

I keep thinking I want to write something about Desantis (because he is uniquely awful as a 2024 GOP candidate and as a governor) but it just always feels like there is more Trump news. It's hard for even a dedicated, intentional troll to maintain headlines of any kind when your primary opponent is a) a former president and b) keeps getting indicted and stuff. So, in the midst of avoiding writing yet another damn TrumpWorld post, I thought I'd just catch up with Ron. 

Trump likes to tout that he's rising in the 2024 polls, but it's more the case that DeSantis, his nearest competitor, has fallen and possibly can't get up. The Florida governor's campaign "reset" just saw his campaign manager replaced with his state COS. He fired about a third of his campaign staff, but some campaign aides got jobs working for his state office.  

Some of his aides must have really shown quite the work ethic. His campaign does feel like it's chock-full of hustlers. 

"A Malignant Clownshow"

 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries made the exact correct assessment of today's assault on truth by calling it "a malignant clown show". Exactly--a notorious crank was invited to speak by Republicans to pretend that censorship was a problem, and my word. This man is a bristling waste of time and attention. The House GOP decided to give a virulent (literally!) dope a platform to just lie on, rather vividly demonstrating why not all people deserve a platform. If RFK, Jr. was not a scion of a famous Democratic political dynasty, he'd be more obviously understood to be a crank, but OH MAN! he really still is, by Democrats.

It's Republicans who really want to hear the man talk about why vaccines are exactly like the Holocaust. They don't see why that is a problem for them. 

Now, RFK JR. seems to recognize that the things he has said are problematic, because when confronted with them, he pretends he never said such things. He denies making anti-Semitic statements. He's the whole hell on video more than once being anti-Semitic at this point. He denies being anti-vax despite um, all the evidence of his being anti-vax. 

Rep. Stacey Plasket explained that the GOP have a motive in allowing disinformation to spread. Rep. Gerry Connolly called RFK basically a pro-GOP op to his face. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz threw his own words back in his face, and man, he did not like that.

He even went on FOX News to cry about how his words, by being quoted to him verbatim, were twisted to make him the asshole. As if he never heard himself before. 

All his testimony demonstrated was that he resonated more with Republicans than Democrats, and the things he said kind of demonstrated the problem isn't censorship--it's platforming. Do you platform any old weirdo for whatever reason? Does it matter that they are a part of a political dynasty or whatever?

No. Obviously no. The House GOP were trying to troll Democrats by putting this whole ass fool on, and I do not think it worked for them at all. He demonstrated why fools are only good for fooling, but can't be taken seriously. 

I am unsurprised that the GOP did not understand that going in. 

Kennedy, Caviezel, and the Conspiracy Theories

 

I was prepared to just dedicate a little space to the "surprise" movie of the summer, a little action picture (I guess it's action?) starring Jim Caviezel (whose work on "Person of Interest" was quite all right) and which is just a bit controversial. You know, in the way that the movie is at least thematically related to Qanon, and Jim Caviezel is a big old Q-Krazy. As in, when he promotes the movie, he adds a dollop of adenochrome discussion which is a descendant of the gnarly old anti-Semitic blood libel, which itself can be traced back to "the Jews killed Jesus".

So of course it's being promoted to Christian groups and conservatives with a "pay it forward' scheme that seems to be plumping its box office totals, in rather the way mass book-buys aid conservatives on the best-seller lists. 

Now, as for me, I don't like to criticize art I haven't sampled and don't mean to yuck anyone's yum over wanting to see the movie--which may very well be worth it at the price! I'm just naturally skeptical over something that might very well be soft-peddling hard bullshit that misrepresents human trafficking and how to combat it. It also strikes me as really odd that just as focus has come upon the real-life group formed by Tim Ballard who inspired the movie--he's checking out for a while. That may or may not be anything sketchy. 

But I'd hate to see anyone fall unawares into any of the Qanon-related "rabbit-holes".  Or decide to freelance to combat human trafficking because they think they are "helping".

(I do have to say that this "raising awareness" of human trafficking with a look of earnestness reminds me a bit of the "Kony 2012" viral video from nearly a dozen years ago. I recall one of the makers of that video was briefly checked into a health clinic or something in the surrounding attention. And some very cringe music videos surfaced.) 

Fuck "Debates", Joe Rogan, And RFK, Jr.

 

Why is my dismal aspect showing Jordan Peterson and RFK JR.? Why, it's because I think this child-brained silver-spoon dipshit was groomed to be the most appalling kind of gadfly buzzing around Democratic politics--a red-pilled basic Alex Jones level bitch. He believes something in the water is making people trans and gay. 

He isn't just an Andrew Wakefield level busted ass bitch, but a Peter Duesberg busted ass bitch.  What this dumbass supports has already been well and truly debunked and disproved in real life. 

He popped off about the Covid vaccine (which has saved many lives, and thanks, science!) and once pronounced that the Covid-19 vaccine would kill all of us who took it somehow. I've been jabbed four times. You tell me how I am still here.  5G towers are mind control, Fauci and Bill Gates made Covid-19 for some kind of underpants gnomes kind of profit, blah blah blah.

Climate Sunday: We Need To Stop Electing Stupid People

 

From the staggering intellect that brought us "Jewish Space Lasers", we now have the super-genius observation that climate change is a hoax because the planet is spinning. No climate change scientist in the history of ever knew about that, Marge. Thanks for your Nobel Prize-level contribution to the fucking dialog. We'll be sending you a participation trophy tout suite for that fucking revelation that no one ever knew before. The Earth spins and revolves around the sun. 

Wow. The tides go in and the tides go out. How does that fucking work? 

Now you know, and I know, this is "speaking jive."  She doesn't know how climate change works or even care. She just wants to fill up the empty space in her and her followers' heads with words that sort of make climate change not seem real. In the meanwhile, she doesn't realize that climate change is happening all around her and threating national security and food security and so much else. 

Now, it might feel like I'm picking on Rep. Greene, and I totally am! She is a dumbass who does not know what she does not know, and also says disgraceful and disgusting things because she really doesn't care what is or is not true. But she isn't alone in being a climate dumbass who never should have been elected to office because she doesn't know her ass from an adding machine. These dipshits are everywhere. 

If we want to save the planet, we need to stop electing stupid people. By we, I mean the people who elect the stupids. And I also get that stupid people are probably elected by people way more ignorant than they ought to be. And I am sick of the way we act like this choice is anything to be proud about, and yes, ignorance is a choice. (Yeah, I'm bagging on the astroturf freedom-mommies again because once again, no one called them on being a bunch of self-satisfied and dark money funded weirdo busybodies who are executing the freedom to parent other folks' children.)  Anyone who wants to deny alternative POV's and restrict the capacity for critical thinking is no one's friend. 

Voters--educate yourselves against the babble-ons. People like MTG should be figuratively pilloried for this level of shameless nonsense-peddling. And also too, should not be allowed to stay in office--should be recognized before getting into office and be just all the hell stopped ideally--but wow. When they are this dumb, how do they stay? 

While We Wait for Trump's Arrest, The IPCC Report is Dire

 

I never wanted to spend my senior years on a dying planet, but that's what it looks like to me. The supposed leadership of the most industrialized countries are doing the very least to curb global warming, and have even decided, it seems, to promote the short-term benefits of fossil fuel usage for their electoral cycle (yes, I'm criticizing Biden over the Willow project). 

We're looking at the results of climate change in the eye all the time--take the weird winter of California's discontent: that isn't some freak global cooling, but a predictable weirding of the weather because patterns are disrupted. But we are still stuck with the effects of warming in the usually cooler places. We can see the devastation of our ecosystems in the deaths of fish due to heat waves in Australia. The southern hemisphere has been through it this past season. 

Climate change isn't predicting the future, but describing our present, now. And we are still jaded and in denial. Lives will be lost if action is not taken, but a look around social media indicates that loads of people still believe climate science is some kind of hoax. A conspiracy theory. 

I'm just a D-list blogger--I don't expect what I say to gain any traction and actually, my climate-related posts aren't even the ones that do any numbers. But what I do know is, changing people's POV via messaging and "flooding the zone" can be done--because the denialists have been doing it all this time. Solutions exist and funding them (like actually just fully comping changeover to solar energy or heat pumps) are within the reach of government actions. (Programs totally exist and are inadequate for many homeowners.) 

We can do more, and more aggressively. The political will has to be there, and the idea that the fossil fuel industry and the denialist-propagandist complex (like Fox News, who are known liars) needs to be called out for being the problem that they are. 

I think we still have the opportunity to make a better future. But that opportunity can't be pissed away--it must be vigorously and intelligently seized. 

The Denialism Vortex

 

Just to refrain from linking to any of the stupid Twitter comments that got me to thinking about the denialism problem, I'm just going to link to Josh Marshall on the latest dumb thing the MAGA folks are doing: denying that the Ukraine war...is real.  Like somehow, Ukraine has snowed us all into thinking there's a war, and Russia is even playing along with this, and all of Europe and the US, etc. are somehow just pretending there's a war?

As if Wag the Dog were a documentary? It just doesn't seem plausible to me that this is being posited by anyone in good faith, but I don't think denialism is about that--although some people will buy it. It's about the debate. Exhausting, proof-pulling, stupid debate.

Think about how from stupid little acorns of bad faith, mighty conspiracist oaks grow--like with Andrew Wakefield's bad science that grew into the anti-vaxx movement that has since spawned actual terrorism threats.  Or people who can't accept any demonstration that the voter fraud that has them so furious never existed. Or think about climate science denialism and how people want to believe it's all a hoax started by people who want you to sit in a freezing room and eat bugs. (No, that's Brexit, dear....) And this "fake Ukraine War" canard seems like an outcropping of Russiagate--the denialism that Putin is a really bad guy who fucks with elections and has imperialist aims.

TWGB: Look Who's Coming to the Doral

 

Stories about the Trump organization being fined $1.6 million for 17 felonies (overhead! practically a turnpike toll!) or Trump and his lawyers being sanctioned nearly a million dollars for a frivolous LOLsuit against Hillary Clinton and a whole cast of characters based on Trump's long-established grievances (as if the body of his one-time Twitter feed had coalesced itself into a legal document) are heart-warming, sure, but they leave me cold. 

It only follows, as the night the day, that some degree of fucking around will get some finding out on the morrow. Do I find Trump's balance of FA to FO satisfactory?

I do not. He still gets around and has got some coming around.

This is why I am watching his re-election campaign such as it is find its footing with interest, because as he typed out on Truth Social, he has something wild planned at the Doral. Funny evocative world--wild. I remember when things were wild at the Willard and proceeded to get wilder at the Capitol. Surely, there's nothing intentional there?

But look who is coming to Doral! It's former General and Trump NSA Michael Flynn and the ReAwaken America circus!  It's a person some consider to be a traitor who has gathered election-deniers, Christian Nationalists, Qanon, and the Apocalyptic viewpoint of a showdown between good and evil, happening right here in the good old US of A. 

Solomon Pena Researched His Options

 

Trump superfan and failed state senate candidate Solomon Pena had a problem--he lost his election, by rather a lot. But he was damn certain it was rigged, because if they can do it to Trump, they could do it to him. So he decided the answer was what some might refer to as a "Second Amendment" solution. 

Around 3 p.m. APD’s SWAT team swarmed a condominium complex near the ABQ BioPark Zoo to execute a search warrant. They made announcements for Pena — who they said may be armed with a firearm — to surrender as drones flew overhead.

Within an hour officers had arrested Pena, who is accused of paying four men to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators, Police Chief Harold Medina announced Monday evening. Investigators also believe Pena was present for at least one of the shootings.

Did he think intimidation would somehow get them to overturn the election for him? Who knows--the people who have signed on to this "rigged elections" nonsense seem to have parted ways with reality to me, like the tribe of election-deniers in my own state who have decided that one day, a recount of the 2020 ballots will prove Trump won. 

But the logic (or lack thereof) pales against the reality that when Pena researched his options, he saw violence as definitely one of them--just as some people did on 1/6. And there's reason to believe that he will not be the last person to decide that this is an option as the paranoid and deluded, even "apocalyptic" mindset prevails among MAGAs. 

Murder Built into the Margin

 

For years, Exxon sowed doubt about climate change. But its scientists were projecting warming with remarkable accuracy. https://t.co/EXegkcp1kp

— NYT Science (@NYTScience) January 14, 2023

I've been aware that Exxon knew about climate change and covered it up for some time (they weren't alone in this--they just fought admitting it harder) but every time I think about the missed opportunity, something tightens in my stomach: 

They could have invested in renewable energy early on and cornered valuable tech markets, putting themselves in a position to not just continue profiting from fossil fuels while the environment suffered, but to capitalize on saving it. Instead, they went on as if they weren't contributing to disasters, extinctions, death. And they lied about it.

It was as if they could not consider the possibility of making money without throwing anyone under the bus. As if the idea of using the foresight they were granted to do the right thing was unthinkable. Knowing, and doing nothing differently, feels like more than depraved indifference. It feels like the allowance of death and devastation were built into the business model. 

I try to be cynical and I'm not getting any younger, but if it doesn't still knock the wind out of me a bit when I consider it.

They absolutely knew climate change was happening, and threw their money into denial, not into trying to ameliorate it. Like knowing one might be selling poisonous candy to babies and just changing one's marketing to make the candy more desireable--shouldn't there be a penalty?