Doctors Don’t Know Everything

According to an Associated Press story, “doctors” say Pope Francis died of a cerebral stroke that put him in a coma and led to heart failure and I put “doctors” in quotes because they don’t know everything. For example: I’m on the 15^th of 20 Aubrey & Maturin Adventure Novels about naval warfare during the Napoleonic Wars and Stephen Maturin is a doctor who discovers chewing coca leaves really brightens up his day, but unfortunately the ship’s rats eat his bag of coca leaves and as you might imagine, rat hijinks ensue.

The rats become stock brokers, start using gel and combing their hair straight back, wearing pastel shirts and suspenders and Ray-Bans 24/7 because the sun’s just too goddamn bright even when it’s nighttime and then invent electric dance music and everything’s awesome for about 20 minutes, but then the coke wears off and you have a bunch of rats going through cocaine withdrawal on the high seas and as those of us who tried cocaine in the 1970s can tell you, the high in those high seas isn’t nearly long enough.

OK, so as I was saying doctors don’t know everything and I prefer my explanation for the Death of Pope Francis immediately after meeting with J.D. Vance.

I can well imagine looking into those demonic eyes had the same effect on Pope Francis that dealing with Linda Blair had on Max von Sydow and if you don’t get that reference you really need to watch The Exorcist again.

BTW: If you ever meet me and think, “that dude’s fucked up” (and you will) be aware that my mother taught me everything in The Exorcist was 100% real so while I no longer believe that, I still have those superstitious bats lurking in my belfry.

So they have an earthquake in San Diego and the elephants in the San Diego Zoo don’t know what’s up and here’s a video of what those elephants did by instinct:

Just in case you didn’t watch the video:

The adult elephants surrounded their young to protect them, which I believe puts zoo elephants higher on the evolutionary scale than political elephants because when the young students at Harvard got threatened by a Trump Administration Earthquake there weren’t a lot of Republican politicians putting themselves between those students and harm.

Clearly, Trump and Company don’t mind destroying young lives and careers to score political points and Republican politicians worried about their own careers won’t try to stop them.

As you might already be aware, the Trumpsters have threatened to cut off federal funds if colleges don’t backtrack on their DEI goals, but Harvard told them to go fuck themselves (a surprisingly profane response for an institution of higher learning) and now the Trumpsters are doubling down and threatening to take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status and block them from enrolling international students and ordered the university to turn over information on foreign student visa holders.

Meanwhile the Trump Administration has been deleting the records and ending the legal status of international students, all of which is pretty interesting for a bunch of people who bitched and moaned incessantly about Liberals and their “cancel culture.”

(BTW: They were right about some of that.)

The Trump Administration also sent Harvard a letter telling them to impose tougher discipline on protestors and to screen international students for those who are “hostile to American values” and three guesses who gets to determine just what American values are.

I wrote an essay about the reasons behind some people’s animosity toward higher education and here’s the link which won’t save you any time, but keeps me from repeating myself which I already do more than I should:

https://leejudge.substack.com/p/the-war-on-education

Have I mentioned I tend to repeat myself?

I Googled “how are congressional Democrats fighting Trump” and the first four stories on offer included three about Democratic voters urging their leaders to get off their asses and do something and the fourth one was about the Democrats who caved in and helped pass a government funding bill back in March now feeling “vindicated.”

And if you’re wondering “vindicated about what?” join the club and keep reading:

One of those 10 Democrats pointed out that Trump’s tariff fiasco gave the stock market the heebie-jeebies and people are now blaming that on him, but if they hadn’t passed the spending bill Trump would have blamed the Democrats for the stock market going batshit, so going along with Republicans and hiding under their desks was a wise choice.

Another Democrat argued that a government shutdown would “cede” power to the president, which implies that going along and keeping the government open allowed them to fight back, which is a much better argument if they ever actually fought back, which we haven’t seen them doing yet.

As critics of mealy-mouth politicians have pointed out since the creation of mealy-mouth politicians (about 20 minutes after the Big Bang) they don’t want to actually do anything—because actually doing things can get you in trouble—they just want to avoid being blamed for anything.

I was reminded of all this when once again non-politicians organized “A Day of Action” and promoted the 50501 movement (50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement) because their elected leaders are too busy avoiding responsibility.

When my grandfather died some religious figure I’d never seen before delivered the eulogy and the eulogy’s contents proved the religious figure had never met my grandfather because he described a wonderful man all his grandkids were unfamiliar with. In real life our grandfather was a grumpy miser that didn’t have anything good to say about anybody, including my grandmother who was a freaking saint.

Midway through the eulogy one of us grandkids asked under his breath who the eulogizer was talking about, which made us all laugh, but we were at a funeral and laughing really hard is not OK at funerals unless you’re a rat who just ate a bag of coca leaves.

Anyway…

As you may have already noticed, people produce a lot of phony bullshit at funerals and that includes presidents.

While Jimmy Carter was still alive, Donald Trump called him the Worst President in History (Trump later said it was actually Joe Biden) but when Carter died, Trump suddenly changed lanes and said we all owed Carter a debt of gratitude.

And when Pope Francis was still alive he and Trump disagreed about a lot of things, like the treatment of migrants and had totally different styles of conduct because Pope Francis wouldn’t wear the Pope’s traditional red shoes or live in a palace (he lived in a Vatican guesthouse) and the only thing keeping Trump from dressing like Pope Donald the First is finding a miter large enough for his swollen head.

BTW: No idea why this factoid is stuck in my brain’s hall closet, but Little Richard once said he admired the pope because “that cat really know how to dress.”

Anyway…

The pope and president’s personal styles and agendas clashed and Francis criticized Trump’s wall and said wanting to build it suggested Trump was “not Christian.”

Trump said the Pope’s comments were “disgraceful” and publicly imagined an ISIS attack on the Vatican which would make the Pope wish and pray for a Trump presidency. (I suspect Trump has a lot of similar fantasies when he’s sitting on the toilet, thinking about some high school cheerleader who spurned him in high school now being tortured by terrorists and her wishing she’d let Donald get to “second base” mostly because he’s too fucking fat to run out a triple.)

Pope Francis and Trump took potshots at each other, but when the pope died Trump posted “Rest in Peace Pope Francis!” and “May God Bless him and all who loved him!” two statements that indicate Donald Trump pays attention to correct punctuation about as often as I do, but then he’s president and I’m not although I’m starting to look like a reasonable alternative.

At the White House Easter Egg Roll Trump was asked if he agreed with the pope’s tolerance toward migrants and answered “Yeah, I do” a statement that indicates Trump is a lying hypocrite or losing his hearing (possibly both) and then because he has absolutely no self-awareness or concern for displaying appropriate behavior around children, showed the kids at the Easter Egg Roll a playing card depicting the assassination attempt on him and I’m not making that up even though it sounds like I am:

If you want to read more about the disagreements between Pope Francis and President Trump, here you go:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/world/europe/trump-pope-francis.html

Today’s Lesson

If you ever meet J.D. Vance, schedule an exorcism immediately afterward, if your kids are threatened ask yourself what Dumbo the Elephant would do and even if the hat fits, don’t wear it.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/