Would RFK Jr. be Welcome at Cid's Natural Food Market? Make America Healthy Again

My father built a cabin in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico not far from the historic town of Taos. My family has vacationed there for more than 60 years, and over that time I've seen the sleepy town of Taos transformed into an upscale vacation destination and skiing community.

It was inevitable then that Cid's Food Market, a natural food store, would open in Taos, where affluent, health-conscious shoppers can buy organically grown vegetables, grass-fed meat, and other food that isn't ultra processed or laced with preservatives.

Cid's groceries are expensive, but I shop there occasionally beause it's conveniently located on the road to my family's cabin. I dropped in a few days ago and bought a bag of groceries costing me $132.

Among my purchases was a green chilie and bacon quiche, expensive but very good. I also bought a loaf of rustic bread--all natural ingredients and no preservatives. Also very tasty.

I observed my fellow shoppers--a few aging hippies from the days of Easy Rider but mostly affluent people with ample disposable income and a desire to eat healthy food. I wondered: what are the politics of people who shop at Cid's?

I suspect everyone in the store are Democrats--people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024. If I were to walk into Cid's in a MAGA hat or a Trump campaign button, I might spark a heated confrontation.

How do these folks feel about HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign? Do they appreciate Kennedy's efforts to improve our nation's food supply and eliminate ultra-proccessed corn syrup in so many packaged foods? Do they approve of his work to lower our obesity rates and diabetes diagnoses?

I hope I am wrong, but I suspect the nation's healthy food community lump Secretary Kennedy's MAHA campaign with Trumpian politics, Indeed, as some Democratic Senators maintain, they may have written Kennedy off as a wingnut and and anti-vaccine zealot.

If so, that is unfortunate. In this time of heated partisan rhetoric and hyperbolic speech, I believe Americans need to become more discerning in shaping their political philosophies. Whatever progressives may think about Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, they should celebrate the appointment of RFK Jr. as the nation's Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

Finally, a guy has shown up in Washington who is alarmed by the fact that Americans are the unhealthiest people in the developed world. Kennedy wants to make us healthy again, and we should show him our support. And we should rebuke the Senate Democrats--Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Maggie Hassan, Ben Ray Lujan, etc.-- who are trying to discredit and destroy him.

Froma Harrop, Queen of Snark, Calls RFK Jr a Crackpot

 Having lost the presidential election, the Democrats have retreated into sneers, profanity, and snarkiness. Jasmine Crockett is the profanity princess, Stephen Colbert is the King of sneers, and Froma Harrop is the Queen of snark.

In a recent column, Harrop set her sights on Robert F. Kennedy. Jr., President Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services. Froma labeled Kennedy a "crackpot" and an intellectual "subdelta."

Harrop said Trump put Kennedy in charge of "a world-renowned medical powerhouse" for two reasons. First, RFK Jr. "was well-suited to tear down another revered American institution." Why would Trump want to do that? Froma didn't say. "Ask a shrink," was her snarky response.

Second, Harrop claimed that Trump had found Secretary Kennedy "entertaining." She then jumped from this vacuous observation to attacking the entire Kennedy family, which, she charged, had wrongly claimed the status of royalty.

The Kennedys can be justly criticized on a number of fronts. Nevertheless, Harrop and the Democrats had nothing bad to say about them when virtually the entire Kennedy clan travelled to Washington to torpedo Bobby Junior's presidential campaign by endorsing Biden for a second presidential term.

Biden. Now there's a real intellectual subdelta!

Nowhere in Harrop's snark attack did she criticize any substantive decision that Secretary Kennedy has made. How could she?

RFK Jr. is attacking America's obesity crisis, calling out Big Pharma, focusing on the alarming rise in autism and diabetes, and pushing the processed food industry to remove harmful additives from the nation's food supply. Does that sound like a crackpot to you? Me neither.

Froma Harrop, like Stephen Colbert, Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, and dozens of other denizens of the legacy media, has become irrelevant. Americans aren't listening to her anymore. She should keep quiet until she has something intelligent to say.

Froma Harrop, Queen of Snark

To the Barricades! NY Times's David Brooks Calls for a "Civic Uprising" Against the Trump Administration

 David Brooks recently published an op-ed essay in the New York Times calling for a "civic uprising" against the Trump administration. A terrifying vision flashed through my mind of blood in the streets.

A civic uprising! In my mind's eye, I saw an enraged Times columnist Maureen Dowd shaving President Trump's head as the Parisians did to Nazi collaborators at the end of World II. I also saw Frank Bruni and Paul Krugman filling empty Perrier bottles with gasoline to make Molotov cocktails to throw at Teslas.

The more I contemplated Brooks's call to arms, the more frightened I became. In the Hamptons, I envisioned the Beautiful People mocking RFK Jr at an inquisition and forcing him to eat Spam sandwiches made with Wonder Bread. I saw Hedge Fund managers dragging Tulsi Gabbard by her hair through the streets of Martha's Vineyard and making her answer for the despicable crime of trying to get foreign rapists out of the country. 

However, after reading Brooks's essay a second time, my panic subsided. I realized the shock troops for his "civic uprising" were not so fearsome. Brooks called for "Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits, and the scientific community" to form "one coordinated mass movement" to stop Trump. That doesn't sound too scary.

After carefully rereading Brooks's manifesto, I also discerned that Brooks's "civic uprising" was not a call for guerrilla warfare. No, he was just pleading for more litigation. "Pile on the lawsuits," he urged.

I understood then that David Brooks's game plan for destroying Donald Trump was nothing more than the same, tired tactics the coastal elites have used unsuccessfully since the beginning of Trump's first administration. Litigation, hysterical references to Fascism, and mass rallies led by the grouchy old cranks in the Democratic party--that's David Brooks's big idea.

It never occurred to him to try to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box by presenting Americans with sound ideas for improving their lives. That's because the op ed writers at the Times, the nation's pampered university leaders, and the Democratic Party hacks don't have any ideas. That's why they bray about "the end of democracy," spew profanity, and call  for a "civic uprising."

The New York Times editorial board is leading a" civic uprising" against Donald Trump.
Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Frank Bruni, and David Brooks are pictured from left to right.

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.

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.