healthcare – Deep Left Field

Throughout the 2024 election season, Donald Trump and his Republican allies repeatedly promised they would protect and secure both Medicare and Social Security and not make a single cut to either program.

That, however, was then, and now that the GOP has won control of both the White House and Congress, it’s clear that they have every intention of taking a meat cleaver to social programs so they can give another round of tax cuts to rich douchebags like Elon Musk.

How do we know that Republicans are going to cut the two programs? All you have to do is listen to what Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) said at a press conference today.

CNN correspondent Manu Raju asked Johnson what the GOP had planned for the two entitlement programs.

“Look, the president has made very clear, Social Security and Medicare have to be preserved,” Johnson replied. “And we are not, no one is coming in with the intention of cutting benefits in any way or anything.”

Johnson quickly added, “But we have to look at all spending and look at it very deliberately while maintaining those commitments. The Republican Party is not going to cut benefits, okay? We’ve made that very clear over and over and over.”

“We do know, however, at the same time, there are many, many areas of fraud, waste and abuse.”

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Republican doublespeak, here’s what Johnson actually meant: We promised not to cut Medicare, but we lie about everything and we lied about that, too. Cuts are coming. You can count on it.

So don’t be the least bit surprised when the first GOP budget after Trump’s inauguration features cuts to food stamps, programs for seniors, and enormous tax cuts for the richest Americans, including greedy South African douchebags like Elon Musk, who personally bankrolled Trump’s victory to the tune of at least a quarter of a billion dollars.

Bend over, America! Republicans are about to screw all of us while saying it’s for our own good.

Donald Trump says he thinks it’s time for the nation to have a “big discussion” about eliminating childhood vaccines that protect American youth from diseases such as measles, mumps, and polio.

Polio, it should be noted, killed or paralyzed over 500,000 people a year in the United States before a vaccine was formulated in 1953 by American virologist Jonas Salk.

However, Nicholas Liu of Salon notes that Trump sounds ready to adopt the radical policies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his controversial nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

Asked if he would approve of any decision by Kennedy to end vaccination programs — insofar as he has that power, which is largely delegated to the states — Trump cited autism as a reason why he might. “We’re going to have a big discussion,” he said. “The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible. If you look at things that are happening, there’s something causing it.”

His administration would get rid of some vaccinations if “I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial,” Trump added.

Both Kennedy and Trump have repeatedly suggested that a link exists between childhood vaccinations and autism even though one has never been proven.

Kennedy has made this same fatal mistake before.

In Samoa, Kennedy spread misinformation about vaccines, resulting in a steep decline in vaccination rates.

After measles vaccination rates plummeted, 57,000 Samoans contracted the disease and 83 died. Most of the fatalities were children.

Former Trump FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently warned that if Kennedy follows through on his promise to end vaccine mandates, “it will cost lives in this country.”

Then again, maybe that’s the darker plan of both Kennedy and Trump: To let hundreds of thousands of American children die so the state won’t have to pay to feed and educate them. That money can then be given to Trump’s billionaire buddies (i.e. Elon Musk) via tax cuts that benefit only the top 1%.

It’s hard to believe anyone can be as utterly stupid as Trump and RFK Jr. Both of them belong on a one-way boat cruise to a deserted island. That would go a long way to making America great again.