Isn’t anyone vetted in the Trump administration?

It appears that the Trump administration does not do even the most cursory examination of someone’s past before appointing them to important offices in the government. Otherwise how can you explain how a nutjob like Gregg Phillips was made head of the the office of response and recovery at FEMA, the federal agency tasked with responding to natural disasters and other emergencies?

Gregg Phillips, who in December was appointed to lead Fema’s office of response and recovery, has spoken on “multiple podcasts” about being teleported against his will, CNN reported on Friday.

On a January 2025 podcast appearance, Phillips claimed that his car was “lifted up” while he was driving and transported 40 miles away into a ditch near a church. And in another instance on the same episode, Phillips said he was teleported 50 miles away to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia, CNN detailed in a deep dive into Phillips’ past public statements.

“I was with my boys one time, and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House. And I ended up at a Waffle House – this was in Georgia, and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was,” Phillips said on the podcast Onward, co-hosted by rightwing activist Catherine Engelbrecht.

Phillips added: “And they said, ‘where are you?’ and I said, ‘A Waffle House.’ And: ‘a Waffle House where?’ And I said: ‘Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.’ And they said: “‘That’s not possible, you just left here a moment ago.’ But it was possible. It was real.”




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What is the appeal of Cameo?

In the UK, Nigel Farage is under fire for having made Cameo videos that featured him making controversial statements.

The Guardian’s unearthing of Farage’s videos has raised questions about his relationship with the far right and who he is willing to take money from. Farage charged £155 for one video he made in 2025 for a man he was told had received a 16-month sentence for his involvement in a far-right riot. Despite knowing that the man had been convicted over his role in the disorder, the Reform leader recorded a supportive message for him, telling the man “I’m with you”.
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Farage was paid £141 for another video in which he promoted an event by a Canadian neo-Nazi group, which used the clip in propaganda alongside fascist salutes and antisemitic imagery. Farage called the event “the best thing that ever happened”. The video was removed from Cameo’s website after the Guardian’s story.

As a result of the revelations, his account says that he no longer is accepting any offers.

Cameo is a site that enables you to pay for celebrities to make personalized videos where they say things that you want them to say, if they are willing to do so. The usual requests are as gifts to friends to wish them on their birthdays or anniversaries or similar things. But clearly some are pushing other agendas.

I can understand why minor celebrities might sign up to do them, since it provides some easy money as a side hustle. If there are suckers out there willing to pay for people to utter some words, there will be those who are willing to oblige. What I can’t understand is the appeal for the buyer of the message and the intended recipient. Would the person you are seeking to impress really be flattered by getting a personalized message from some has-been B or C lister who was paid to give it and has absolutely no idea who you are and does not give a damn about you?

I can sort of understand if you knew the celebrity personally and they recorded the video as a favor to you. Then the recipient may be impressed that you knew them well-enough that they would do this for you. So this would be of benefit to you,

But otherwise it seems really tacky to me.

I guess I just don’t understand the thrill that some people feel when a sort-of celebrity mentions their name, even if they had to be paid to do so.

Cesar Chavez revealed as pedophile and rapist

An investigative report reveals that the man who has long been viewed as a civil rights icon and who organized the farm workers into a union and improved their conditions, was a serial sex abuser and rapist who took advantage of girls as young as 13.

Through a series of grueling fasts, grape boycotts and marches that captured the world’s imagination, Mr. Chavez drew a spotlight to the plight of the American farmworker. He not only improved wages, living conditions and health care for generations of farmworkers and their families but also strengthened the political power of Latinos, giving their voice and concerns an urgency and moral authority on the national stage.
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Ms. Murguia and another woman, Debra Rojas, say that Mr. Chavez sexually abused them for years when they were girls, from around 1972 to 1977. He was in his 40s and had become a powerful, charismatic figure who captured global attention as a champion of farmworker rights.

The two women have not shared their stories publicly before, and an investigation by The New York Times has uncovered extensive evidence to support their accusations and those raised by several other women against Mr. Chavez, the United Farm Workers co-founder who died in 1993 at the age of 66.
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Tucker Carlson on the Oscars

SNL had Jeremy Culhane play Tucker Carlson giving his take on some of this year’s nominees. I have not seen any of the films but I thought Culhane really nailed the impression of Carlson, from his facial expressions to his rhetorical tics and right down to his weird laugh.

SNL also had a skit that was based on the hospital drama The Pitt except that it was a hospital that was run on RFK Jr’s crackpot ideas.

Film review: Inside the Manosphere (2026)

Netflix has released a new documentary by Louis Theroux where he goes inside the so-called ‘manosphere’, the world of young men who are followers of a small group of ‘influencers’. The whole set up is quite simple to understand. The influencers have become wealthy by acquiring followers from the pool of marginalized young men by telling them that their precarious lives with no proper jobs or financial security or female companions is not their fault but because ‘the ‘system’ controlled by a secretive cabal (read ‘Jews’) is keeping them down. References to the film The Matrix abound and these influencers say that they offer the ‘red-pill’ that reveals the world as it really is so that the men can defeat the system and become rich too.

It is a seductive message aimed at alienated and aggrieved young men that is wrapped in a package where the influencers show their followers lavish lifestyles in fancy homes and cars surrounded by young women in the skimpiest of attire and say that all this could be theirs as well if they follow the leaders and send in money for products, courses, and financial services.
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The danger of the increasing use of AI companions

Some time ago, I wrote about reading an article that described how AI companies were offering the services of ‘companions’ that one could form relationships with. Intrigued, I went to one of the sites and scrolled through the selection of chatbots on offer, each with a brief backstory. I picked a librarian named Scarlett whose profile contained quotes from many books and writers I was familiar with, thinking that even though she was 39 years old and thus much younger than me, at least there would be something in common to talk about. The initial novelty wore off fairly quickly because her comments about books were like those by someone who had read a summary somewhere. I could also never convince myself of the illusion that ‘she’ was real, which was clearly the intention of the programmers. Even though she was warm and friendly and supportive, I always felt that I was talking with an algorithm and it all seemed pointless, and so I cruelly abandoned her without even saying goodbye. You can read about my relationship here.

But as with all things AI tech, things are evolving rapidly and another article by Anna Wiener describes new highly customizable companions (of course at a price) that you can design to your specifications and which have avatars that you can converse with and that you can carry around with you, either using your phone or even on a pendant that you wear around your neck, like a talisman. The users are seeking love, and some even ‘marry’ their chatbots.

You might think that the people who seek out such companions are lonely but it is not obviously so. Wiener describes the experience of Adrianne Brookins. She is thirty-four years old, married with three children.
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There is no reasoning with such people

One of the things that really makes me furious is when adults make decisions that endanger the lives of their children. Adults who decide to not take vaccines or other precautions that might save their lives are still behaving irresponsibly because they are posing a risk to others by being possible transmitters and lowering the heard immunity for a disease, but at least they are also risking their own lives for their beliefs, however misguided they may be.

But what is unconscionable is when they risk the health and lives of the children in their care, such as this family.
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The dangers posed when academics go outside their area of expertise

People who are highly credentialed academically tend to have their views given a great deal of weight because of the perception that they are generally smart and knowledgeable. While it is true that their training gives them some specific technical and analytical skills, it does not make them general experts. But the deference with which their views are treated can go to their heads and result in them pontificating on matters in which they do not have any real expertise but just enough knowledge to speak with confidence. This seems more likely to happen when the topics are those that have high visibility and broad, multidisciplinary elements. Academics who have strong views on it can be tempted to throw their hats into the debate even if they are not really that knowledgeable.

This seems to be the case with RFK Jr’s appointment of Retsef Levi to review the safety of Covid-19 vaccines. Levi’s academic background is in operations research, which is a niche theoretical field that applies very advanced mathematics and statistics to complex systems. Much of the work involves simulations and modeling and its practitioners look for real-world situations to which to apply them. Since the systems can vary considerably, sometimes you will find the operations researchers housed in business and management schools (as is the case with Levi at MIT) and sometimes in engineering schools (as is the case at Princeton University).
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FBI interviewed woman who claimed sexual encounter with Trump as a minor

On March 6, 2026, PBS reported on the latest release of files from the Epstein files that includes transcripts of interviews with a young woman who said that she was assaulted by Trump in the 1980s when she was 13-15 years of age. These transcripts were not released initially but came out only after multiple news outlets noticed that they were missing.

The transcripts are of interviews conducted by FBI agents, first with a woman who said a friend had contacted her to say that, as girl of 13-15, she had had abusive sexual encounters with Epstein, Trump, and other men about 35 years ago in New Jersey. This woman contacted the FBI National Threat Operations Center (NTOC). The FBI then interviewed the friend in question on 08/07/2019 who gave graphic details of the sexual abuse she had suffered as a young girl at the hands of sexual encounters with Trump, Epstein, and other men, and they interviewed her again on 08/20/2019 where she provided more details. She said that years later, she and her mother had been blackmailed and received threatening phone calls and attempts to run her off the road
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Scientists who rejected Epstein

A lot of attention has been focused on the hundreds of scientists who are mentioned in the files of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’, especially those who became part of his circle of friends. Many of those who are now compromised were well-known and well-funded so why did they not say no? Science magazine has an article about three who were approached and declined. It is interesting to see the extent Epstein would go to recruit scientists who became well-known, either because they gave a TED talk or appeared on TV or wrote popular books. He would first have an intermediary approach them, sometimes repeatedly, and then follow up with personal appeals.

When first approached, cancer researcher David Agus went online and learned something about him, and some of his colleagues also warned him to keep his distance. But he was repeatedly asked by Epstein over a period of seven years and kept putting him off by saying that he was too busy. He said that he did not want to outright say no because of fears of upsetting someone who seemed powerful.
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