She stalled over MAHA woo-woo, anti-vaccine views, and lacking medical background.
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Trump’s MAHA pick for surgeon general flounders amid GOP doubts
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And the kind of BS she's gone on to peddle is somehow better? Puh-lease.
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Well, it’s certainly an expensive place to study medicine, leaves most graduates heavily in debt. Dr Means has done OK as a non-practicing doctor. Here, and I quote:
Dr. Casey Means has a significant net worth, largely attributed to her role as co-founder of the health technology company Levels, which was valued at $300 million as of 2024, and her work as a wellness influencer and author. Additionally, she has earned substantial income from partnerships with various health and wellness companies.
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I can't do anything but trust someone with a name like that...
Let's all keep our pants on here.
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the thing is you need the degree for people to believe your positions, even if you disagree with everything you learn in school.
I know a pharmacist who truly didn't believe that blood was mostly made of water. That the urine that comes out of your body was largely originated from the blood that was filtered. I kept on thinking how did you survive school with these beliefs?
I know a mechanical engineer who went to medical school afterward at the push by his wife, not believing in medicine, and then graduating and pushing holistic naturopathic medicine instead. But he knew that people wouldn't listen to him unless he had the degree.
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Tangled webs, practice of deceit, yada yada.
The time-tested remedy for this problem involved external application of warm pitch, followed with a blanket of feathers.
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Thumbs-up on this characterization. Their bullshit quackery is getting people killed.
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It's not about the health care system.
It's about insurance and liabilities.
The health care system has what's known as integrated health care. A GP, as your family doctor, coordinates your health care, sending you to whatever specialists could best deal with your issue, who then report back to the GP what they did. But because a GP doesn't make as much money as a specialist, the people who go into medicine for the money, and not the actual helping of people, are the problem. That's not an incentive perpetuated by the health care system. It's one perpetuated by the insurance companies, who decide what to pay specialists and GP's. GP's get shit. Specialists get a lot more.
There's also a crisis in the health care field WRT staffing. A huge share of it LEFT during the pandemic - changing jobs to other areas and moving out of direct in-patient care. A huge number of those were never replaced. Its expected in the next ten years to have only 62% of the staff available to full the needs of inpatients alone. That's also a factor of insurance, since almost all health care in the US is for-profit-based, as is the insurance. This results in lower wages, longer hours, harder work and faster burnout and a glut of specialists with a dearth of GP's.
That's not "the health care field's" fault. It's because people in health care, and everywhere else, follow the money, and the money doesn't incentivize promoting basic health care.
This moronic child hasn't practiced medicine in an integrated health care environment, and either self-treats or relies on youth and luck for her health care, so she has no fucking clue what it's really about. But like so many Dunning-Kruger sufferers, she believes she's smarter than everyone else and so makes up shit that people will buy into. What's truly fun to watch is how her Dunning-Kruger backs her into a corner, revealing just how fucking incompetent she really is.
I spent 20 years in the health care field in hospitals, providing direct patient care and support. I have friends and family who were in it, too. ALL OF THEM have left the jobs they liked - direct patient care - because they weren't paid enough to live on. And THAT is on the insurance companies, since they unilaterally decide who to pay and how much.
It's best when explaining someone else's views to better understand what they're saying in the first place in the context they use. She's an influencer. Her purpose isn't to help anyone. It's to find a way to be popular and cash in on that. The systemic issues with health care are entirely financial, with the best pay going to niche specialties and expensive equipment instead of to the people who make the system fucking work.
And that's ALL on the insurance companies and a for-profit mentality for those health care providers who seek profits in the first place.
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Meanwhile in Canada - the federal minister for health has already decided that the USA can no longer be trusted as a reliable source of health information ...
Health minister says Canada can’t rely on U.S. health institutions anymore
Health minister says Canada can’t rely on U.S. health institutions anymore
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He's up for re-election this fall and selling his soul (voting) for Bobby wasn't enough to keep Orange from finding Julia Letlow, U.S. Rep. for Louisiana’s 5th congressional district to primary him. Cassidy - Another Orange-grudge casualty.
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These are the folks who are obsessed with DEI = "Didn't Earn It", because you should always pick people based on having the best qualifications....
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The bar has been set so low that any of us posting here, would probably make for a better candidate. I don't know whether to laugh, or cry.
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GOP senators have a reputation for objecting and then going along with Dear Leader anyway.
Why expect any change from them?
Why expect any change from them?
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As a non billionaire that puts her in the poor people section of the cabinet.
And instead of calling her an influencer she should be called what she actually is, a grifter.
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LMAO!! This is getting better by the minute. It baffles me every time i read about things like this, that the american people just abide these nonsense...
This kinda says it all: "writing about taking magic mushrooms, consulting a “spiritual medium,” and participating in “full moon ceremonies."
If one takes magic mushrooms, the chance of having a "full moon ceremony" is there indeed.
But this should not concern the surgeon general.
This kinda says it all: "writing about taking magic mushrooms, consulting a “spiritual medium,” and participating in “full moon ceremonies."
If one takes magic mushrooms, the chance of having a "full moon ceremony" is there indeed.
But this should not concern the surgeon general.
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If everyone just ate right and exercised and didn’t drink or smoke and had a positive attitude then all disease would just magically disappear.
Funnily enough, all the testimonies for this malarkey are all living and are more than happy to tell you why they haven’t gotten sick. Unfortunately, you can’t interview the dead people who had positive attitudes, worked out, ate right, didn’t drink and still died of brain cancer so you’re only getting half the story.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand the benefits of living healthy but disease can happen to anyone, no matter your lifestyle and these hucksters are exactly the same as the religious phonies telling you that Jesus can prevent you from getting sick or dying, all you have to do is send them some money.
And this was annoying me way before they started taking over the health agencies in our government.
I feel that all of this is going to come to a really nasty end.
Funnily enough, all the testimonies for this malarkey are all living and are more than happy to tell you why they haven’t gotten sick. Unfortunately, you can’t interview the dead people who had positive attitudes, worked out, ate right, didn’t drink and still died of brain cancer so you’re only getting half the story.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand the benefits of living healthy but disease can happen to anyone, no matter your lifestyle and these hucksters are exactly the same as the religious phonies telling you that Jesus can prevent you from getting sick or dying, all you have to do is send them some money.
And this was annoying me way before they started taking over the health agencies in our government.
I feel that all of this is going to come to a really nasty end.
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I just noticed that I can feel an even stronger disgust reading about sociological parasites compared to Dr. Mole's usual reporting about the biological variant...
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"I am the surgeon general of the heterosexuals and the homosexuals, of the young and the old, of the moral or the immoral, the married and the unmarried. I don't have the luxury of deciding which side I want to be on. So I can tell you how to keep yourself alive no matter what you are. That's my job."
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chateauarusi
Ars Praetorian
I'm currently suffering from a mild early-spring cold. There's a wastebasket under my desk half full of snotty kleenex.
That wad of damp tissue would make a better candidate than the grifter in the nominee's chair.
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The main qualification is being White and loyal to the Sun-King though.
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Shrooms... "full moon ceremonies" (I assume that's just a euphemism for nocturnal outdoor sex)... sounds just what the doctor ordered 
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Oh, it means literally everything to them. In other words: anything else means nothing including the aforementioned sense of decency and responsibility.
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Hey, people would pay absurd amounts of money for that in detox resorts! I can't see it being any worse than those frappuccino enemas influencers are already having there, despite having made even the inquisition pee its pants.
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Well, in South Africa, we had a Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who believed that potato, garlic, & beetroot could cure HIV/AIDS, and our esteemed president at the time, Thabo Mbeki, eagerly endorsed her truly spectacular stupidity.
At AIDS conferences around the world, the entire audience would get up and walk out if she was a guest speaker. Our beloved country had the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world (and still does very well on that score) and our leaders were rightfully scorned.
At AIDS conferences around the world, the entire audience would get up and walk out if she was a guest speaker. Our beloved country had the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world (and still does very well on that score) and our leaders were rightfully scorned.
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MilanKraft
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
100%.
At this point, with all the priors we know about, it borders on suspect journalistic practice for any legit outlet to describe especially Collins' but also Murkowski's "concerns" on any given issue. (Talking on the whole — obviously Beth is going with Ars' standard practice, the same way an AP journalist would go with their standard practice in describing or quoting these politicians.) I say suspect because it's almost as if the outlets are not aware this is a game Collins and Murkowski are playing.... they have zero intention of going against Trump, but they know if they voice "concerns" the media will report it and this adds to their veneer of "moderation" and "traditional republican", which many of their voters still want. Basically their re-election tight-rope is: rubber-stamp everything Trump does, but pretend ahead of time like you won't, and then afterward give some excuse why you decided it was OK. In the end though, they're just stooges like the rest.
Ars should try to lead in this area and simply not report Collins' and Murkowski's "concerns" — or add side-commentary that "their concerns have rarely resulted in no votes in the past" — until such time as they actually vote "no" on someone or something Trump wants. At least with the MAGA assholes we know what we're getting and why. With these two it's almost worse, because they're pretending to be rational actors when in fact they're not. Talking no and voting yes is arguably more insidious than "own the libs, we're voting yes down the line no matter what Trump says or does!"
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They are doing what they think keeps their job (if they're not true believers already).
The job is all that matters. The power, the office, the staff, the parties. The actual job functions? Nah.
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Maybe they should ask Hugh Laurie aka House MD to do the job. Because he’s got more brains than the whole bunch of them between them and he would at least try to do a good job, listen to people who know how to do it, and try not to kill anyone.
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We used to talk of the art and science of medicine with the "sacred patient-doctor" at the heart of the relationship. In case you haven't noticed, except occasionally in the mind of a very few patients and doctors, there is no patient-doctor relationship. Instead there is a revenue generating business that does medicine.
And now we have bozos like Means and Kennedy, actively undermining science all for personal gain.
And now we have bozos like Means and Kennedy, actively undermining science all for personal gain.
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Tell her to go to a graveyard, and she’ll be smarter than most of the corpses six foot under.
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Tom Nichols has referrer to this by saying that their greatest fear is "being banished from the Emerald City." He was being semi-sympathetic, people like Nichols or myself have a path through government that's at least somewhat meritocratic*.
Legislators' government careers, and their ability to have any influence at all, is entirely dependent on a semi-random popularity contest that even experts who are paid millions will tell you they barely understand and cannot entirely predict.
I can almost understand why people prefer conspiracy theories. The reality that government is a social construct with rules that seem ridiculous taken out of context can be scary.
*Meaning the best for the job, among those lucky enough to be born into the right families, able to afford the right education, etc
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Gwyneth Paltrow for Surgeon General? A jade egg in every... never mind.
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This is the kind of Beth Mole's article that really scares me - parasites? strange viruses? dormant diseases?
Well, nature is out to kill you, but it's when we do everything to help it that I get worried.
At least there seem to be someone not toeing the party line...we'll see.
Well, nature is out to kill you, but it's when we do everything to help it that I get worried.
At least there seem to be someone not toeing the party line...we'll see.
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The only way anyone secures a position in the present administration is by being the most unqualified idiot imaginable. Exhibit A from yesterday, Markwayne Mullin confirmed as the next secretary of Homeland Security. Talk about failing one's way to the top.
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Being from Louisiana I'm extremely disappointed in the senator's horrible choice with RFK Jr's appointment...and I have told him as much. The pinky promise was of course never going to stand. We need to get some laws on the books that require, at a minimum a degree relevant to the role, before being able to be appointed into these positions.
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This is the highly sophisticated tactic that has happened a thousand times since Trump rolled back into office.
"[insert R senator here] has concerns, may vote against xyz."
Immediately followed by:
[insert R senator here] either votes for xyz, or if the vote doesn't matter, "votes on principle" against it so they can say they did that.
And the dumbasses in Maine, Alaska, and elsewhere (not to mention the Democratic Party) haven't cottoned onto this, despite it being obvious as a brick to the head.
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Which is, of course, facile nonsense that’s convincing mostly to people who know fuck-all about shit.
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I mean, she certainly seems qualified...
...well, as qualified as anyone else in this administration.
...well, as qualified as anyone else in this administration.
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