Posted on by Jo Gent

No Kings, None, Nada

We finally got to a No Kings rally today, one of the under-the-radar versions, in Glen Burnie, MD. There were I would say about 500 people there which was a great turnout for GB! It was fun. Our female host is more of a regular protest goer so we didn’t even have to make a sign, we took hers, since she had to work today.

We hadn’t been to a protest since Trump I, during which we participated in the Women’s March and the March for Science. In retrospect, those weren’t too fraught. Most of us thought Trump’s election was an anomaly from which the nation would right itself, and the Trump I team included a lot of reality-based (I’m talking World One reality, not reality-show reality, which is actually not related to reality, for those of you who remember reality) persons who were stopping much of the foolishness.

Obviously, we are no longer in that situation. World One is gone, at least from these shores. So say those of us on the ex-pat track.

What I did learn from today is that a group of people protesting together is no more likely to share core beliefs than any other group of theoretically like-minded people, including mothers of infants and coal miners. Some examples:

  • There were lots of thumbs-up horn-honkers, but also a few deploying the American Eagle in our direction with vigor. The group split between, We love everyone, including chanting Love Heals; scorn, pity, or sadness for the Lost Ones; and Those folks are pro-violence or They should be locked up.
  • Chants of USA! occationally broke out, a chant I personally feel is too ambiguous. People mean a lot of things when they chant USA, some of which will be racist or sexist or pro-war, given that this was not a gathering of historians.
  • This was a very white crowd overall. I agree with that in this way: People of color cannot safely protest in public spaces while masked ICE goons are enabled to ship them to foreign prisons sans due process with the blessing of the Supremely Kangarooish Court. So it’s up to us white folks to take our chances with arrest to perhaps avert all of us living in the world of The Handmaid’s Tale. But I’m sure not everyone saw it the way I do.
  • I imagine the crowd was all over the place on the religious spectrum, just as Christians these days range from turn-the-other cheek New Testament-based classics to burn-the-heretics, where heretic is your neighbor who thinks her middle schooler should be able to read Harry Potter.
  • Some of the protesters were talking about Our Party and Their Party. That did not resonate with me at all. Democrats got us into this situation very specifically, including last year when their candidate could not stop pandering to billionaires, refused to engage with social media in the MAGAverse, and would not even acknowledge that the US might not want to be funding/arming a foreign theocracy committing genocide. If the choice is Dems or Trump, well, again I am moving.

Now for some fun signs! Notice it was a beautiful day in GB. If you look closely, some of you may find someone you recognize in one of the pictures.

And finally, the Raging Grannies sang some spoof songs specific to our times. This is a Glen Burnie branch of a nationwide organization so you can probably hear them online, though I haven’t tried that yet. Happy No Kings Day to you all!

Posted on by Jo Gent · 2 Comments

My Struggles with RFK

I hate to get sick, which means I’m a big fan of vaccinations: I estimate I’ve gotten 21 since I moved here nine years ago, but I bet I undercounted. In order to protect people who actually can’t get vaccinations, we need a pretty high level of compliance. For those two reasons, I’m distressed that RFK is insinuating that vaccinations aren’t important, and not encouraging them. One of our goals for moving to Spain is to get out of here before flu season hits.

On the other hand…

…I do agree with other things RFK talks about. Those of us who have observed the crash in public health in the United States over the last 60 years find is a little hard to be very impressed by the usual experts. One of my friends told me she was so comfortable with the research over the past 20 years. The past 20 years! The US medical establishment has pretty much been getting an F-minus on public health over the past 20 years.

So the biggest problem with the establishment position RFK = wrong, mainstream doctors = right, is that it’s observably untrue. Instead of bolstering their influence on the public, this pronouncement just reminds everyone of the other untruths we have been told, such as that either party cares about working class jobs, or would take any action that discomfits major donors.

This came to my attention today because of an article about Vani Hari, aka the Food Babe, in the New York Times. Vani has a family and personal background as a prominent Democrat, but she’s working for RFK now because, like so many of us, she was able to turn her health around by changing her diet, and not in the way the doctors recommend, yet she never got establishment Democrats to support that message any more than Republicans would. Specifically, she worked closely with the Obamas in the 2012 presidential campaign, then Barack reneged on a promise to support GMO labeling and Michelle touted Subway as an example of a healthy food source.

Vani became famous in part by forcing industrial food purveyors to remove toxic ingredients using public pressure, and she’s had some big wins, including getting Kraft to remove that nasty yellow dye from macaroni and cheese. All the other first world countries already required Kraft to use paprika for coloration before Vani took them on, and now our kids get that advantage too.

Now that she has changed political sides, the left is going after Vani in a big way. One person quoted in the NYT article said: The desire to oversimplify and demonize what seems scary dovetails really well with a right-wing worldview. But Vani is not oversimplifying or demonizing, she’s sharing solutions that work. The chemicals in ultraprocessed foods combined with their base of highly industrialized, i.e. nutrient-free, farm products are demonstrably deleterious to public health.

The NYT also had this to say about Vani’s change of teams: [I]t has bewildered many on the progressive left who felt they owned what food historians call the good-food movement. So people who have come up with a group of things they think we should eat that has resulted in epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and dozens of autoimmune diseases, think because they branded that advice the “good-food movement” we should embrace it?

Results are more convincing that marketeering.

NYT also mentions that Trump supporters who once dismissed dietary interventions as part of the “nanny state” school of government are championing organic produce and trying to rid schools of ultraprocessed foods. That’s great news, right? In the context of the article, it sounds like the authors think it’s a negative.

I let a lot of the nonsense NYT and The Guardian write about nutrition rest unchallenged, but today I took the bait, and here I am, defending worm brain and his piece of the Trump destruction juggernaut. What a world.

Posted on by Jo Gent · 1 Comment

Be As Courageous As You Can

If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny. Timothy Snyder

This may seem rich coming from me, the person who’s trying to move to Spain before flu season starts. I never said I was brave, and I wouldn’t criticize anyone else for not being brave. Well, not any other sub-billionaire individual. Columbia University, on the other hand, has earned my heartiest disdain.

As you probably know by now, when threatened with removal of an amount of money corresponding to 1/40 of its $16 billion endowment, Columbia threw its students, innocent civilians in Gaza, and its integrity under the bus.

In response to threats from the administration, Columbia has said it will allow campus police to arrest students who protest. Since the protesters are opposed to the resumption of the not-quite-completed genocide in Gaza, the clear implication is that Columbia doesn’t think the murder of Gazan children is a suitable cause for the constitutionally-protected right to protest, and certainly not as imperative as continuing the university’s full funding.

One of the scientists working at the University spoke up to agree with the decision, saying the University simply couldn’t continue to operate without money. $15,600,000,000 is a looooooooong way from being without money. I would not be surprised if Columbia were a much richer target than the watchdog- and inspector-laden, process- and law-following federal government for finding examples of that elusive triplet of tricksters, Wastrel, Fraudster, and Abussy.

It isn’t even as if Columbia will now get its money restored and return to copacetic cluelessness. The administration has made it clear that Columbia has been Very Naughty, and while this capitulation is a step in the right direction, there are still many Improvements to be made.

For some reason, Columbia is considered a leader, so expect the rest of the Ivy League to also adopt the slogan, Capitulate Early and Often! The poorer universities probably won’t be too far behind.

If I had had any doubts about deciding to leave the country, they have been obliterated by the incredible level of bending of the knee by every person and entity who one would have thought had the resources to Resist, Dismiss, or even Lead by Example. Most of our leaders in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, are either colluding or accommodating, especially the older, more powerful ones. So many corporations, gigantic worldwide corporations, are throwing years of policies that have worked for them and their customers out the window at the merest hint of the carrot-top’s displeasure.

Then there are the tech billionaires who have gone from Bros to Babies, a shortish but evil slide, in a historical hot second: Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai, Musk, Cook, and Chew. I usually try to keep the crudity level at simmer or below in these blogs, but every time I see a picture of one of these jerks I mentally replace it with a more accurate picture of him on his knees licking the President-Elect’s ass.

Shoutout to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet for bucking the trend!

So, my fellow Americans, no leaders are going to help us, just as none is helping green card holder and Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil. And although we can protest our own asses off, the juggernaut has been launched. I’m going to try to dodge it before it explodes my house.

Posted on by Jo Gent · 3 Comments

Why We Might Move

My husband and I are in the process of considering a permanent move to Spain. It is complicated and somewhat expensive, and we have not committed to doing it, but we are seriously investigating our options. We’ve already worked with an immigration lawyer to determine that there is a visa for which we would qualify and received quotes for medical insurance. We have a couple of tax consultations scheduled.

We like the lives we led here during the last nine years, but we don’t think there is a possibility of those lives continuing. Some people are startled that we would consider this, perhaps because they think United States is the best country. We realize it is somewhat craven to abandon our country, but we’re not sure it still exists.

No one can predict the future, but we have some ideas about what may happen. I decided to list them in a blog post because I get the Why? question a lot, and I would like to be able to answer it thoroughly. Here are some of our expectations based on our observations of the current situation, not in any particular order.

  • If the government takes $2 trillion-or-so out of the US economy, it will collapse, leading to a depression here or even worldwide.
  • Now that the US is not tracking disease factors either at home or abroad, and both vaccine development and vaccine usage are at historic lows, the next contagious epidemic disease will be much worse than the last one. Local outbreaks have already begun.
  • Mass firing of working scientist as well as elimination of grant programs has already virtually stopped medical research by the government, so we may lose ground quickly in medical science.
  • Reversal of environmental protections will lead to disruptive extractive industry activities and reduced air and water quality.
  • Reversal of gun control laws will increase–is it even possible?–our level of everyday, anywhere gun violence.
  • Gutting of agencies that maintain safety in areas like food supply and air traffic will result in more foodborne diseases and airplane crashes.
  • Gutting of agencies involved in emergency response will increase loss of life and property for future hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and wildfires.
  • Gutting of agencies that gather data on natural phenomena such as weather will reduce our ability to predict extreme events as well as the efficacy of our weather-based industries such as agriculture.
  • Deporting all of our “illegal” immigrants, which seems to include many non-criminals with paperwork in progress, will drastically reduce both the amount of crops we can get from farm to table and the amount of construction we can complete anywhere, exacerbating the food and housing problems we already have.
  • The states that removed women’s reproductive rights already have increased numbers of babies with birth defects as well as increased infant and maternal death rates. This will expand throughout the country should these laws become federal.
  • As far as we can tell, rule of law has been replaced by fealty as the basis of our justice and legislative systems, meaning that even routine services such as passport issuance could be decided based on envelopes of cash or how deeply one’s head is bowed.
  • With unqualified, unvetted personnel leading our security services and even our military, we will lose access to global security intel, making us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
  • The rise of the white male patriarchy systematically dismantling equal rights for people of all religions, ethnicities, and genders threatens most of the population–all women, for example–and is disturbing to us specifically.
  • The elevation of the concept of transferring the country’s wealth from poor and middle-class people to extremely wealthy people is virtually codified already, and seems to be accepted by most. We believe this will degrade the lives of ordinary Americans.
  • We find some of our country’s current policies morally wrong, including abandoning Ukraine, abandoning NATO, eliminating all of our health- and nutrition-based charitable efforts worldwide (USAID), aligning with Russia, seizing assets of other sovereign countries, and trying to force the European Union to be as mean-spirited and anti-citizen as our leadership is.

Any parent reading this will realize that the worst aspect of moving would be being even farther from our adult children, although being far from our friends will be a very close second. I have been trying to encourage the kids to move to another country for several years now, because at their ages they have many more options than we do.

So far they do not agree with me, and perhaps you do not either. Maybe you understand it a little better now, or maybe you just think we’re crazy. Maybe we will move, and maybe it won’t work out. Life was always a bit like a roulette wheel, but it seems to be spinning faster now.

Posted on by Jo Gent

Is My Job Bad for My Health?

Recent news, by which I mean an item recently reported as news although it actually is not news because we’ve known it for a long time, indicated that authorities in the United States now believe that no amount of alcohol is good for our health. The New York Times, always quick to jump on trends whether it can add useful information or not, posted an article in which someone interviewed a fellow whose career involves wine and asked him how it felt to have a career that’s bad for your health.

News flash, by which I mean something you know already because it’s, well, obvious: Since the start of the industrial age most humans have had careers that are bad for our health.

For example, any job that involves doing the following for multiple hours per day:

  • Sitting;
  • Focusing your eyes at a distance of less than 30 inches;
  • Staring at a backlit screen;
  • Being indoors in a home or office that contains any building materials, furniture, equipment, or decorative items that could not have existed 200 years ago;
  • Repetitive motion of your hands and wrists;
  • Standing in the same place;
  • Repetitive bending or stooping;
  • Lung, nose, or skin exposure to toxic substances; and perhaps even
  • Consuming alcohol or ultraprocessed food.

There are occupations that might be hazardous but don’t have to be if you’re careful, well-trained and use recommended procedures and gear, such as working with firearms or munitions, criminals or the mentally ill, heavy equipment, pathogens, or wild animals. Risk-takers such as trapeze artists, skydivers, giant wave surfers, free climbers, and stunt pilots can mitigate their risks, though occasionally some participants will be injured or killed. The thrill, they say, is worth it.

Decades ago I read that forest ranger was the job with the longest health span. That makes sense; the person is outdoors, getting a lot of exercise, looking into the far distance, and surrounded by nature, which is calming to humans, as long as it doesn’t include a predator bearing down on us. Primary and secondary school teachers also seem to be quite healthy, enjoying active retirement for decades, possibly because their work involves movement, occasional outdoor excursions, and a variety of focal lengths. It isn’t really correct to consider children a health threat.

Preindustrial-style family farming is not in my view a healthy employment choice, at least not the kind that involves growing plants in artificial rows created by destroying natural environments. If nothing else, it disrupts your circadian rhythm for most of the year, especially if you are one of the 40% of humans who are not morning people.

I’m retired though, so every day I can choose whether to prioritize my health or not. Often I do not; To be human is to make bad choices. Then there are those aging considerations, the real possibility of doing a head plant after you trip over a chair or burning down the house after leaving the gas burner on. So even if you survived your unhealthy job, as I did, more obstacles await.

I hope this post is not a source of stress to anyone! If we strive to be kind and caring to everyone every day, no matter what we did the day before, we have a good chance to live with no worries and no regrets.

Posted on by Jo Gent

RFK might be OK

I’m almost as depressed by the dialogue around this election as I am about the results. I really feel the blue angst-fest is missing the obvious. Case in point was an interview on Politico about RFK becoming secretary of HHS. The guest had a lot of credentials from Georgetown university, including a program he devised that is supported by WHO. In other words, he was another elite of the sort who have been running the country since the 1990s.

While he briefly acknowledged that eating fewer processed foods could be healthy, the guest, as well as the journalist interviewing him, were making the point that having RFK in charge of health would be a really bad idea, ie, piling on with collapse-of-the-country predictions, and by-the-way simply can’t imagine what Trump voters were thinking.

Castigating voters is not getting us anywhere. Millions of people are not stupid or crazy, they’re voting their own interest based on their own narrative. While some of these are clearly concerned with America becoming a “minority majority” nation, a lot of them have noticed that decades of political control by graduates of elite universities has led to declining living conditions here.

The healthcare expert on Politico, for example, did not even mention–and was not asked about–the fact that health in the United States had cratered during this century. We are one of the most unhealthy populations in the world, rife with chronic diseases and mental illnesses, often starting in childhood, for which we are offered expensive, corporation-enriching patented pharmaceuticals that allay some symptoms while introducing others, rather than treatments that might effect a cure.

Someone, as in at least one Democrat of prominence, should *apologize* for selling us all out. Because that is what has happened here. Instead, they are daily asking for more money! The beneficiaries of the inaccurately-named meritocracy have taken their subsidized Ivy League credentials right to the bank. Most are wallowing in the ill-gotten gains of a financial industry optimized to extract value from everywhere and stuff it into the pockets of those seeking a baby yacht for their momma yacht.

Re-focusing on healthcare, others have gotten very wealthy trying to “cure” cancer with bank-account emptying, damaging procedures–because how would we make money if we prevent cancer?–or re-purposing their research to serving big pharma in the race for patentable pharmaceuticals people can pay for for the rest of our lives, instead of saving for retirement .

if RFK says that raw milk is good for us, or that highly processed foods are not good for us, why can’t we test and find out whether this is true?

Don’t answer, I know the answer, I’m just playing with you!

It’s really hard to get major funding to figure out whether a lifestyle solution such as a change in diet would improve health, because that doesn’t lead to any big paydays for the funders. The US healthcare system is the rare for-profit healthcare system, and the sicker we are, the richer the top 10% will be.

If blue journalists and Democratic politicians want to have any credibility going forward, after apologizing, they might try to find out why so many people, smart people, rejected them. Both red and blue are hobnobbing with billionaires, and both sides have prominent members who are willing to use their positions to maximize their own wealth and prestige, one of whom I would posit is the president-elect. But the blue siders keep saying, We care about working families, and then using their power in ways that promote income and job inequality.

Three caveats:

  • Shoutout to Biden, who did pass several major bills with long-range improvements for jobs and infrastructure that will mostly take effect in time for Republicans to take credit, but points off for waiting so long to do anything then not selling it.
  • I’m thinking and reading a lot about this, but ultimately I’m guessing about motivations, because, as most of you know, I still think the blue side has more of a chance of actually improving conditions for We the Folk.
  • I drink a therapeutic 8 ounces of raw milk most days.
Posted on by Jo Gent

Brace Yourself

Have you had a chance to rate anything lately? JK! I know you have because I have. Every visit to a retailer, every online purchase, every interaction with customer service results in an email requesting feedback, and often several if I don’t reply. I rarely do. It’s sort of like reading those legal agreements associated with every software upgrade, which is to say, it could take up your entire life if you actually did it.

Just check I Accept! They already have all your data anyway.

However, there are some things I would LOVE to rate yet I can’t. A lot of those are news programs I hear on the radio or watch on TV, which don’t even offer the thumbs up/down you get with streaming shows. NPR is usually the main offender. I have a habit of listening to it from years past, when it didn’t have commercials and employed actual journalists who interviewed principals on air live.

Now of course, NPR has regular commercials by sponsors, celebrity hosts with neither radio nor content skills (eg Ira Flatow or Meghna Chakrabarti), and a stable of young radio announcers who “interview” each other using scripts.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a journalist-journalist interview that was informative or interesting, but I am positive I haven’t heard a scripted one that was. Those kids may have journalism training, but they aren’t actors or writers, and you can practically hear the paper rustling. JK! Of course they are reading from their tablets.

The gang I really want to rate is MSNBC. While NPR is still trying for the neutral voice in a foolishly rigorous way–every climate change feature includes someone from the opposition, probably because these kids do all their research online where Mother Earth and World 2 have roughly equal coverage–MSNBC has always been unapologetically partisan, politically blue and very woke. I think NPR correspondents are overpaid, but I know MSNBC anchors are, since some MSNBC salaries are public. They’re mostly 7-figure amounts, though rumor has it that Rachel Maddow’s is now into 8-figures.

I stopped watching MSNBC during the pandemic, when the bubble enclosing their anchors started choking their brains. Every night they were ranting about people who wouldn’t stay home from work to keep others “safe.” Later we found out that over 90 % of workers were unable to work from home. I was one of those, working in a provider’s office for a while, then for Cal-Fire, then in a grocery store. All essential jobs! During the pandemic and after, there was nary a word of thanks or even acknowledgement to all of us who enabled those bubble babies to work from home.

After the recent presidential debate MSNBC doubled down. Big Biden backers until then, its anchors lined up to throw Biden under the bus. Partly it was the need to let everyone know how many Dem decision makers each had on speed-dial, since like all modern journalists they compete on follower counts and insider access.

However, they weren’t alone. NYT has jumped on board, as has the entire continent of Europe. This must be an extraordinary moment for the MAGA movement, as the Blue press competes to cancel Biden. It’s a classic shoot-yourself-in-the-foot move, since no Red state is going to put a non-primary-winning Dem on the ballot. Continuing with the self-inflicted wound theme, this wasn’t even necessary: Is it really impossible to make the case that a reality TV star glibly spouting a fictional script is a worse choice than a seasoned politician with a record of accomplishment who had a badly-timed cold?

Blue Media could learn something about loyalty from Trump supporters.