Showing posts with label Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Show all posts

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Is Senator Elizabeth Warren auditioning to replace Gilda Radner's Emily Litella on SNL?

To paraphrase Will Rogers, when Elizabeth Warren left Oklahoma for Massachusetts, she raised the IQ of both states.

Senator Warren's unhinged rants at Robert F. Kennedy's Senate confirmation hearing should embarrass all Americans, especially Bay State voters who elected Warren to the U.S. Senate. 

In tones that were almost hysterical, Warren insinuated that Mr. Kennedy would use his cabinet appointment to enrich himself and that his public service over the years was motivated by veniality.  To his credit, Kennedy never lost his aplomb and accused Warren of trying to make him out as a shill.

Warren's shrill and gratuitously combative interrogatories at both Kennedy's confirmation hearing and Pete Hegseth's hearing were appalling and unbecoming of a U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate. 

Indeed, Warren's demeanor reminded me of Gilda Radner's Saturday Night Live character, Emily Litella, the addled and perpetually outraged busybody who raved on about topics she knew nothing about. 

"What's all this talk about youth in Asia?" Emily would ask during one of NSL's weekly paradodies of a national news program. "What's all this I hear about violins on television?"

These hilarious skits would end with the deadpan news anchor (usually played by Chevy Chase) explaining that the issue she was complaining about was violence on television, not violins; and euthanasia, not youth in Asia.

Radner's response, after being corrected, was always a congenial "Never mind."

Everyone agrees that healthcare in America is too expensive and that Americans on the whole are not as healthy as the citizens of other western countries. Moreover, actuarial statistics show that some U.S. demograhic groups are experiencing shorter life expectancies. 

RFK Jr., President Trump's pick to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has innovative ideas about how to solve these problems. Why were  Senate Democrats, with Senator Warren in the lead, so rude and dismissive? 

I would like to think Warren will eventually come to her senses about Mr. Kennedy and apologize for bullying him.  Unfortnately, unlike Emily Litella, I don't think Senator Warren will ever say "Never mind." 

Instead she will continue shaking her fists and pointing her fingers at Americans who strive to be good public servants until the people of Massachusetts have the good sense to vote her out of office.




Sunday, December 15, 2024

Americans aren't healthy: Let's give RFK Jr. a chance as HHS Secretary

 My great-grandfather, Jonah Fossey, emigrated from England with his family in the 1880s. He landed in Halifax and died at the age of 96 in Nickerson, Kansas.

Jonah's son, William James Fossey, moved to Oklahoma Territory as a young man. He established a grocery store in Buffalo, Oklahoma, and a cattle-hauling business and died at 92.

James Fossey, my father, grew up in northern Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl years. He joined the Army Air Corps before Pearl Harbor, was captured by the Japanese, and survived the Bataan Death March. Dad died in a VA hospital in 1999 at the age of 81.

I'm 76 years old, have two stents in my arteries, and suffered a debilitating stroke in 2022. A cyst covers the entire right lobe of my thyroid gland, so the ol' thyroid's got to go. I will be fortunate to live as long as my father and have no chance of living into my 90s as my grandfather and great-grandfather did.

Americans aren't living as long as they did just a few years ago; my family is just one example. The U.S. spends more on healthcare than any other developed country, yet we don't live as long as the Europeans.

Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. RFK Jr. is fiercely critical of our nation's healthcare system and food industry. Trump haters claim Kennedy is "unhinged." Froma Harrop, a reliable shill for progressive Democrats, recently published an op-ed calling him a weirdo, an idiot, and a fruitcake.

I say let's give RFK Jr. a chance. We are not a healthy nation. One in three American adults is prediabetic, and 40 percent are obese. We gotta do better; we gotta live better.

Speaking of fruitcakes. I ate a lot of fruitcakes as a kid during my family's bleak Christmas celebrations. Is that why a cyst is taking over my thyroid gland?

RFK Jr. Photo credit: Politico.