It’s been one of those days — long boring meeting that ate up most of my morning, and then off to the dentist. I have a cavity. I’m getting it fixed in November. My patience is a little thin today.
So this news has me shaking mad.
On September 3, Bhattacharya’s NIH signed an “interagency agreement” with Hegseth’s Department of War, transferring Congressionally-mandated NIH patient research funding into Trump’s failing war machine.
That guy doesn’t get enough attention, or hatred: he’s a rotten anti-vax grifter who coasted into a cushy position as head of the NIH on RFK jr’s coattails. He’s despicable in every way possible, and is recognized as an incompetent stooge for the Trump administration. And now, after cheerfully starving American scientists of research funds, this guy is stealing more from the budget to fund the pointless, failed war on Iran.
The U.S. Department of Defense already has a pretty healthy budget compared to the National Institutes of Health. For fiscal year 2027, the Trump administration has requested a $1.5 trillion budget for the DoD—about 36 times the budget that it’s requested for the NIH. Yet, in the first week of August, the Pentagon and the NIH quietly established an agreement that would allow even more funds—potentially billions of dollars worth—to go from the NIH to the Pentagon.
Why would the director of the NIH voluntarily cut his own budget to feed a doomed war in Iran? Because he’s a hack, a tool who only holds his position as long as he is obedient.
I have a long list of people I want to see queued up for the guillotine once Trump is out of power. Trump is first, obviously. RFK jr is second. But Jay Bhattacharya is third in line, and I will be cheering as I dip an handkerchief in his blood for a souvenir. Those three bear the most responsibility for the destruction of American science, although they also have many helpers.
No mercy.
I currently have no NIH funding, nor will I have any in the near or distant future, so I can freely say how I feel about the leadership of the NIH.
We can start pushing back by unilaterally renaming Mar-a-lago “Epaminondas” after an ancient Greek politician who was both gay, and a successful military leader (he was the first to defeat the Spartans).
And the biggest New York sewage treatment plant should be named ‘Big Donald’. Because of the smell.
The federal prison Fort Leavenworth will of course be Fort Trump.
.
Mamdani has released documents shoving New York under a certain Trumpist mayor deliberately concealed just how toxic and/ or carcinogenic the pollution released at Ground Zero was.
The total number of such post-9/11 deaths are at 9400, three times the number of the victims who died immediately.
One of of them was evolutionary researcher Stephen Jay Gould , he had recovered from his cancer but went to Ground Zero daily to distribute sandwiches to the first responders. He soon got a new bout of cancer and died.
But Pete Hegseth needs that money so he can
fondle soldiers’ ballsmake sure American soldiers have the testosterone they need to fight wars. /sWe need more conscientious objectors in the bullshit Iran War, the sort of thing war cheerleader Jerry Coyne himself pulled off during Vietnam. Wonder if he would call objecting to this war for Israel’s best interests antisemitism. Why not?
With money diverted from NIH maybe we will get bombing of and perhaps boots on the ground on Kharg Island, something to goon over for boomers who are insufferable armchair generals with blogs. At least they escaped Vietnam because either self-interest or “principles”.
That $1.5 trillion dollar budget is all but impossible.
We don’t have the money.
It will just be wasted anyway.
What the Iran war has shown is that the US military is a paper tiger.
We can beat up anyone in the world for a month and then we are out of ammunition and logistics resources.
The US dead in the war have been low because we mostly used stand off weapons to bomb Iran.
The US routinely lies about its losses of advanced weapons in the war but they have been heavy.
And, we are almost out of them and almost out of anti-missile and drone defense weapons as well.
Those weapons are expensive and it will take years to replace them.
The US has lost 25% of its Reaper drones, at 45, shot down by the Iranians. These run around $30 million for one.
As we saw with the aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln, the US can barely keep one aircraft carrier out at sea. We have 11 of them and most of them don’t seem to be doing much of anything except existing on paper.
AFAICT, we can barely afford to build those giant ships but can’t afford to operate all of them.
The bases in the middle east were hit hard by Iran. The US hides the truth as much as possible but they don’t seem to be particularly functional any more.
Hemidactylus, thing is, according to https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trumps-approval-slump-and-candidate-quality-drive-2026-senate-races/ showing 4 in 10 approve of his conduct.
Also, if serving personnel conscientiously object, they are shooting their jobs and careers.
Quite the ask, no?
↓
September 8, 2026
→ President Trump’s job approval rating has fallen to just under 40%, driven by voter frustration over high prices and an unresolved conflict with Iran, giving Democrats a favorable midterm climate.
The Iran could hardly do more damage than this person.
Not even a sniff of mercy.
I remember now why I despised Jay Bhattacharya.
He is nothing, a nobody. His main claim to fame is to be a medical quack.
This was at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was wrong advice at the time and it is still wrong.
It’s been 6+ years since the Covid-19 virus pandemic started and how is that herd immunity working these days?
The whole idea of herd immunity for a virus like Covid-19 was never going to work. We don’t have herd immunity now, even with good vaccines.
The virus mutates too fast and evades the latest vaccines in a matter of months.
We lost a lot of people in the pandemic, 1.4 million in the USA.
It would have been a whole lot worse without the development of the vaccines. The vaccines saved around 3.2 million American lives.
Removing individuals won’t be enough, but they do need to be removed from power or outnumbered to build institutional courage and enact policy to prevent relapse.
Theodora Sutcliffe (Journalist): “I’m not a believer in the Great Man Theory of History, but there’s a certain credibility to the Fucking Idiot Theory of History.”
@OP:
Oh lord, him. After following Respectful Insolence and Science-based Medicine for years, I am sadly all too familiar with Bhattacharya, a.k.a. “Podcast Jay” because his talents lay entirely in bragging about what he would do given the chance; and now that he has the chance he has… mostly kept podcasting, demonstrated that he can’t even run meetings properly, and has absolutely no clue about what is actually done at the NIH nor any interest in learning.
@gijoel:
Reminding me of a bit I saw over at Lawyers, Guns, & Money earlier today:
If/when this administration leaves office the next one up will need 12 years to set America on a path that benefits the average person. The first 6 years will be spent undoing all that has been wrought by this disaster administration. They will need to tear down all the monuments Trump has built to himself. This would include redecorating the gilded WH, razing the big, beautiful ballroom, the arch and probably the Kennedy Center. During this first phase they will also need to address the economy, restore all the programs for science, medicine, education and the safety nets. They will have to rebuild the relationships with all the countries Trump has alienated. The last 6 years they will need to fine tune what they already accomplished while enacting laws to prevent a fascist/autocracy/kleptocracy from taking over the country (again). They could spend all their time investigating and prosecuting all the criminals in the current administration. Yeah, I don’t see any of that happening as the right is really good at stoking fear, anger and hate. Seems there are plenty of Americans who feed off that BS. And I didn’t even get into the gullibility of the American public, you know, getting Mexico to pay for Building a wall.
“I have a long list of people I want to see queued up for the guillotine once Trump is out of power.”
I suspect there will be a long queue to grease the wheels on the tumbril and Hobby Lobby will fast run out of wool and knitting needles.
Smithsonian chief to retire as Trump fights to reshape the institution
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/smithsonian-chief-retire-trump-fights-160000319.html
Doesn’t seem to have an end.
stuffin, it’s worse than that.
Precedents have been shattered, it is now obvious a new administration can repudiate every extant agreement,
A bit like wasting your inheritance.
The cred is gone, though it was always the case that it could occur, because until Trump previous admins generally honoured treaties and deals.
The USA can no longer be trusted, basically. Obviously.
Bretton Woods system, the dollar, etc. All are affected.
You know the concept of after the first lie, you are a liar?
<clickety-click>
or even
Friedrich Nietzsche, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm
A lesson that not enough people learned the first time Trump was in office.
^ Oh they learned it alright — it’s exactly what they want.
Guillotines may have been “cutting edge” technology in 1793 (SWIDT?), but they are horribly old-fashioned and difficult to obtain in this day and age.
BUT, wood-chippers are easy to get at your local home&garden store, likely on pre-Fall sale! MAGA have earned themselves the “wood-chipper, feet first” outcome.
re Snarki@18: I like the way you think!!