Only fools and horse medicine

 Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.  We can try to correct it, we can choose to repeat it.  Ignoring it or putting a ribbon in its hair and calling it American Exceptionalism does not work.

Nearly half a century after the end of the notorious Tuskegee syphilis "study" Americans are still being subjected to medical experiments.  At the Washington County Detention Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas, inmates are being prescribed Ivermectin, the horse-dewormer drug that the FDA has repeatedly warned against.  Services at the jail are provided by an HMO called Karas Correctional Health, whose website touts its "compassionate professionals."  The sheriff says he knows all about it and everything is fine, as no one has died.  (No idea how many prisoners are excreting strands of intestinal lining.)

Last night Thomas Massie (R-KY) tweeted and deleted the familiar it's-just-like-the-Holocaust trope but he wasn't thinking of Mengele at Auschwitz, much less Tuskegee.  He knows that...well, see for yourself.

Horrifying.  And yet I have to carry a photo ID card to vote.  Millions do.  Any thoughts, Tom?  No longer a free country?  Hello?

A suicide bomber possibly from the local Islamic State affiliate has killed twelve US Marines and numerous civilians at Hamid Karzai International Airport (I had to write that once) in Kabul.  Prepare for a highly selective history lesson with many references to Benghazi, where four Americans died in 2012.  Remind them that four Americans also died in a Niger ambush in 2017; that their commander in chief had no response for nearly two weeks; and that his subsequent call to one man's widow was less than comforting.  When that doesn't work delve into the distant past -- 1983, the golden age of Reagan, when 241 Americans died in Beirut as a result of a suicide bombing.  Then give up.

The bad news from South Dakota is that covid cases have increased 450 percent thanks to the Sturgis superspreader rally.  The worse news is that Jason Ravnsborg will not resign or do any time for last year's hit-and-run homicide.  And thanks to Ken Paxton of Texas he's still not the worst attorney general in the country.  The worst?  Well, Noem is still governor and still doing everything she can think of to make sure people get covid.  Maybe a Sturgis rally every month?

They tried poison.  They tried beatings.  Now Russian authorities are subjecting Alexei Navalny to the worst torture yet:  Eight hours of official state TV every day,  the equivalent of four Tucker Carlson shows or thirty minutes with Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Stay strong, Alexei.

You know why Afghanistan is a shitshow?  (Who said "Because we didn't need to be there in the first place"?)  Because Biden didn't take advice from master diplomat Henry Kissinger.  Fortunately The Economist pried pearls of wisdom out of the old oyster and shared them with us.  He still thinks we can "overcome terrorism," in Asia if not in Michigan.  Although Ty Garbin just got six years for plotting to kidnap Governor Whitmer, far more than any Capitol coup participant so far.

John Pierce represents a number of coup participants as well as Kenosha gunman/patriot Kyle Rittenhouse.  Ten days ago he proclaimed, "The entire 82nd Airborne couldn't make me get an experimental governmental vaccine stuck in my arm."  An associate now describes him as "on a ventilator, non-responsive."  Tell the 82nd to stand down.  It's too late.