A most bizarre leak: the Mercola tapes. 💥 Trump admin to require seniors to visit Social Security in person after closing local offices.
Donald Trump & Elon Musk are shutting down our campgrounds while they vacation anywhere.
Anti-vax influencer targets veterinarians and Catholics.
This is a most bizarre leak.
McGill University Office for Science and Society - Exclusive Videos Show Dr. Joe Mercola’s Dangerous Ideas Whipped up by Alleged Medium Influential anti-vaxxer and supplement salesman Joe Mercola wants veterinarians killed as he blows CO₂ gas up his rear. Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. | 18 Mar 2025 This apparent takeover of one of the most successful wellness companies could simply be seen as a gullible guru being taken advantage of. However, the Mercola Tapes reveal the potential for real danger. On February 8, 2024, Mercola tells Johnson that he needs a partner to help him “destroy the veterinary industry.” His spiritual guides apparently shared with him the plan he needs to enact: “We make this a campaign. I don’t know what the campaign is, but whatever it is. We employ tens of millions, maybe even more than that, maybe 70, 80 million people, and they are full-on on board to protect our pets from the damage that’s been inflicted upon by this industry. They will march with weapons on these creatures.” Johnson as Bahlon not only agrees, but he directs Mercola to also pay attention to “the industrial side,” presumably meaning the livestock industry. This call for mass violence is accompanied by repeated anti-Catholic discourse in multiple videos. Mercola has been led to believe that the Catholic Church is “the heart of the Global Cabal;” that it has one of the best brainwashing techniques on Earth; and that Catholic employees have no place at his company, as confirmed by a legal filing by Mercola’s sister in which firings are described as “the Catholic Purge” at Mercola’s company.
It reminds me of back in the day when the news came out about Nancy Reagan's astrologer. Half the people I heard talk about it reacted with sort of holy shit she's been counseled by some weirdo woo woo what power has this person had?! And the other half of people just thought it was harmless horoscope reading but by a rich person with her own astrologer. But in this case there's tapes and we can see the derangement. It seems wildly hilariously weird, but the potential for massacres shouldn't be waved away because it definitely can happen here under the current regime, and it's disturbing that so many right-wing anti-vax influencers and others parrot out similar sinister schemes historically familiar and which target specifically medical professions and some Catholics. And this toxic propaganda has really ramped up since the start of the pandemic to hysterical levels and has never died down, no matter how much various people in power, including Democrats, have catered to the covid contrarians in hopes to satiate them. This can’t be satiated it needs to be overcome.
🗞️ In the news
Government Executive - SSA cancels telework with just a weekend’s notice Union officials said the sudden and indefinite suspension of most bargaining unit employees’ telework agreements amounts to a de facto termination, despite acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek’s promise to honor labor contracts. March 20, 2025 The Social Security Administration last week gave the majority of its frontline workforce roughly three days’ notice that it was suspending their telework agreements en masse, in what union officials say may amount to a violation of their contract, just hours after its acting leader vowed to honor it. At around 5 p.m. EDT on March 13, Social Security management emailed bargaining unit employees across the agency informing them that their telework agreement would be suspended effective Monday.
Snubbed Vaccine Committee Members Lament FDA's Flu Shot Actions — The future of the committee is unclear by Cheryl Clark, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today March 18, 2025 "It is hard to miss the irony of being told that all VRBPAC has to do is to rubber stamp a recommendation from an organization that the Trump administration has such contempt for that it just pulled out of it," Schooley said. "Should Americans trust a decision from an organization that the administration portrays as being run by China?"
Trump and Elon Musk to require senior citizens visit Social Security offices in person.
It's insult to injury because they're planning on closing regional offices all over the place, including in my region. So this could mean that seniors, including frail and high-risk elderly, will have to find a way to travel to an in-person office, some perhaps 100 miles away or more. People have not been required to do this before.
Demonstrators outside McCormick's Scranton office say no one answers constituents' calls WVIA | By Kat Bolus | WVIA News Published March 17, 2025 at 9:49 PM EDT Jill Carlson from Bloomsburg held a microphone and asked the chicken — as if it were McCormick — why the Social Security office in the town is closed. "No work is going on down there. The flag is still flying at half mast. It's in tatters. There's no sign it's ever going to reopen. What's happening?” she said. Carlson said a sign on the door says there’s no date for it to reopen and to call for help. “It was just announced that they're cutting the staff that answers the phones. So how are people supposed to talk to anyone?” she said. More than 10% of the agency’s workforce was laid off, the Associated Press reported. Dozens of offices throughout the U.S. were closed as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Social Security Administration’s website says there is no in-person service at the Bloomsburg office. (emphasis added)
My letter to reps:
I'm outraged about Elon Musk and the Trump administration deciding to require seniors and others to visit Social Security offices in-person. Especially when you have regional offices in my area slated for closure which will have wide ramifications, and require people to travel hours to visit an office – this may not even be possible. And replacing government workers with chatbots for customer service is completely unacceptable. Chatbots in customer service should be outlawed entirely. All of this is harmful to elderly and disabled people here in our area - your neighbors, and I almost can't believe my representatives in government are going to let this happen.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
And chatbots should not and cannot replace government workers. Let's face it, most of us have encountered this, and it stinks. And now they're talking about replacing fired Social Security workers with privatized contract AI chatbot boondoggles. Unacceptable.
Lying AI should not be doing the people's business or science. Lives are at stake and the U.S. government and scientific scholars are buying into tech hype boondoggles. Is it corruption, incompetence, or sabotage? Chloe Humbert Mar 22, 2024 The people making the decision to use this faulty technology don’t even know about the “hallucinations” and are not even considering that chatbots are NOT reliable. It’s like they’ve all been conned by the chatbot ability to generate false content that seems persuasive.
Kevin Hassett has been wrong a lot and who knows what's going to happen because of the economic disruption and corruption going on.
Talking about economic uncertainty due to the continued tariff related fruit basket upset, Kevin Hasset told CNBC that things will clear up after April 2nd. This is the same Kevin Hasset who has been repeatedly and outrageously wrong. In 1999 he predicted that stocks were undervalued just before the dot-com bubble burst. In 2013 he accused Obama of trying to deliberately sabotage the economy. And in April 2020 Hassett was clamoring for "reopening" and predicted covid deaths would peak by mid April 2020 and that everything would be back to normal by May 2020. In May 2020, when things were most certainly not back to normal, Kevin Hasset still insisted what he said "our human capital stock is ready to get back to work" and pretty much disgusted everyone with his callous dehumanization of American workers. And last I heard he was in charge of managing bird flu.
Who would really listen to this guy for anything at this point? The only thing that's certain is that so many job losses in the federal government and because of loss of federal funding or uncertainty around federal funding, just can't be good for the stability of the economy, and that's before you get to the tariffs, the bird flu, and the regulatory chaos and loss of regulatory oversight that will likely lead to massive financial and market misbehaviors. And one doesn't need to be an economist to know that there's been evidence that Trump and Elon Musk actually want things to crash and burn.
My letter to reps:
I don't trust the Trump administration economic officials like Kevin Hasset who has been repeatedly wrong in his predictions over the years. It seems pretty obvious to me that tariffs, along with all these job losses because of federal workforce firings, and with the people I'm hearing about losing jobs or unable to find jobs because of uncertain funding in scientific research, and the regulatory uncertainty or absence - that this has to have a negative effect on the economy. The uncertainty and pretty much chaos alone is likely to cause problems. What are you planning to do to mitigate the problems that seem likely to come from all this?
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
FAFO is NOT a strategy, it's hopium.
There is no tipping point where everybody realizes they should do the right thing by others.Some people won't even do right by their own children, that's the reality. People who know better need to speak up and demand public safety and vaccination programs, that's the only way forward. Don't take vaccines for granted.
These parents of the 6 year old who died of measles in Texas didn't vaccinate their children, and they gave an interview with Children's Health Defense wrongly promoting that measles isn't so bad, even after their daughter died from it. They knowingly put their daughter in danger and she died, and they're doubling down on the death of their own daughter.
NBC NEWS - How the anti-vaccine movement weaponized a 6-year-old's measles death Anti-vaccine influencers see the child’s death as proof — not of the danger of measles, but of their own debunked theories. March 20, 2025, 5:00 AM EDT / Updated March 20, 2025, 10:14 AM EDT By Brandy Zadrozny The couple, who are Mennonites, believe their daughter’s death was the will of God. When Children’s Health Defense’s director of programming, Polly Tommey, asked specifically about parents who heard their story and might be “rushing out, panicking,” to get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, the parents rebuked the intervention that offered the best chance of preventing their daughter’s death. “Don’t do the shots,” the girl’s mother said. Measles, she added, is “not as bad as they’re making it out to be.”
I think a lot about how anybody objectively looking at our world should not see much difference between birds nests and apartment buildings – it's all natural really, and you would think that religious people would see it all as God's work – including vaccines. It's strange how people pick and choose which things are "natural" what's "God's will" or what's "meant to be" so arbitrarily as it pleases them. That poor kid didn't get to choose what she thought about any of that and won't have the chance to contemplate it.
My letter to elected representatives:
I want vaccines. I want research on effective vaccines funded, I want covid vaccines, I want vaccines covered by all insurance, and I want free vaccination available to the uninsured. I want vaccines mandated in congregate and high risk settings like nursing homes, hospitals, schools, and the military.
Feel free to copy or repurpose the contents of my letter for your own letters to reps.
Remember, the anti-vaxxers are constantly writing to your representatives. They are fewer in number, but if you're not speaking up in favour of vaccines, who do you think politicians are going to listen to? The people who are in their ears telling them something, right or wrong. Don't take vaccines for granted.
Donald Trump & Elon Musk are shutting down our campgrounds while they vacation anywhere.
Camping is the only vacationing I do so this is really disappointing. And we know that it will have an impact on the economy of the places affected.
WVIA - Raystown Lake cancels campground reservations amid federal job cuts and hiring freezes WPSU | By Sydney Roach Published March 14, 2025 at 3:58 PM EDT Raystown Lake in Huntingdon County is canceling this year’s campground reservations, citing staff shortages amid recent federal job cuts and hiring freezes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the property, said scheduled recreation and stewardship events also will be reduced and could be canceled. Matt Price, the executive director of the Huntingdon County Visitors Bureau, is worried about the impact on tourism and revenue. “Every visitor to our area is a significant economic impact,” Price said. “So when you compound that by thousands of visitors over the course of a camping season, it's a tremendous economic impact.” Raystown Lake historically brings in $1.2 million in revenue every year, according to the county’s visitors bureau. And, each year it draws more than 1 million visitors.
We're lucky here in Pennsylvania, and in upstate New York, that we have a great many state owned and run parks and forests with camping options. But the closure of national land camping options are going to push those people into already crowded state parks and forests campsites.
And how long before the Musk Trump cultural revolution comes for those too? They're already planning on commandeering public lands for their company towns called "network states" where tycoons can have fiefdoms not subject to nuclear safety or worker protections.
This is a disability justice issue as well. As campgrounds shut down, and the parks still open become more crowded, there will be less places for high risk people to go who need to avoid exposure to crowds. And there will be less access to peace and quiet for the wellbeing of anyone who needs it.
My letter to reps:
The closure of federally controlled campgrounds in our state is going to put extra pressure on the state camping options which are already often crowded nowadays because camping is very popular option for many of us for a variety of reasons. The economic impact of these closures makes it curious that politicians would ever be on board with the Musk Trump cuts that are doing this. I worry that this is a corruption scheme to try to steal, liquidate and privatize public campgrounds, and this would be unfair, outrageous, and unacceptable. You MUST stop the defunding of parks and forests.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Parks, forests, and nature, are economic powerhouses, actually. If all you care about is the economics when it comes to parks and public lands, then you should want them, because setting aside and preserving nature is actually very good for The Economy. Chloe Humbert Mar 13, 2025
The mass firing of federal workers is a privatization boondoggle to rip off taxpayers and put us into company towns. It couldn't be clearer that the whole purpose of firing all these staff is to privatize everything by force, and follow through with their plans to form corporate fiefdoms. Chloe Humbert Mar 09, 2025
Quote:
“And so I would often hear something like the following -- "Yes, yes. I understand that the people in your experiments and some of the people I know do foolish things, but in markets, then -- and then I claim..." They could never quite finish this sentence without literally waving their hands, and the argument is somehow if you choose the wrong career or fail to save for retirement, that the market will somehow push you back toward being rational. There's a reason why no one can make this argument without waving their hands, and that's because the argument is just silly. You know, if you don't save enough for retirement, what happens to you? You're poor when you're old. The market doesn't discipline you. Suppose people have a weakness for gambling. What's going to happen? Will people build casinos, or will they offer programs to help people curb their gambling addiction? Well, people have made a lot more money on casinos than on programs to stop gambling.”
— Richard Thaler on PBS - Hacking Your Mind