Gary Vrooman

Computer Software Consultant

[Gianl1974 @Gianl1974]

BREAKING: LOL! Australia World Cup fans go viral with a chant of "Aussie boys are on a bender, Donald Trump is a sex offender" and MAGA world is FURIOUS!

This is just too funny...

Clips are spreading like wildfire across social media showing hundreds of Australia fans in several locations gleefully belting out the chant.

Australia will face off against the United States tomorrow in Seattle after triumphing over Turkiye this past weekend. Ahead of that showdown, the Aussies are waging a particularly funny brand of psychological warfare.

Predictably, supporters of the President are screeching their outrage all over X, with some calling for the Australian fans to be banned from the United States for the match. As usual, these Republicans believe in free speech until they hear speech that they don't like.

But the problem for MAGA is that Trump IS a sex offender. He's an adjudicated rapist and a self-admitted sexual predator. He's also an alleged pedophile and judging just by the Epstein files that we have seen, he preyed on little girls for years.

This is what the entire world now thinks of the American President.

The Oval Office used to inspire respect and awe, now it's the butt of every joke.

Please like and share if you have NO PROBLEM with this chant!

[Laura Rozen @lrozen]

Trump says he took Iran deal to prevent economic calamity: “If we didn't do this deal, we could have dropped more bombs for another three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, two years…You would never have the Hormuz Strait open…Your market would have, instead of going up…would go down at levels that nobody ever saw before, maybe except for 1929…

I did not want to see economic catastrophe

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

I'm a cardiologist. Your dentist may be protecting your heart — and most doctors still aren't connecting these dots.
The American Heart Association just updated its scientific statement on periodontal disease and cardiovascular risk for the first time in 13 years. Their conclusion: the association between gum disease and heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation is stronger than previously recognized.
42% of American adults over 30 have periodontitis right now. Most have no idea it's affecting anything beyond their mouth.
Let me explain what's actually happening inside your body when your gums bleed.
Your mouth contains over 700 species of bacteria. When gums become infected and inflamed — the chronic condition we call periodontitis — the tissue barrier between your mouth and your bloodstream breaks down. Bacteria pour through. Not occasionally. Continuously. Every time you chew, every time you brush inflamed gums, bacteria enter systemic circulation.
One organism in particular should concern you: Porphyromonas gingivalis. I've written about it before in the context of Alzheimer's disease — it crosses the blood-brain barrier and has been found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients at autopsy. But it doesn't stop at the brain.
P. gingivalis has been found inside atherosclerotic plaques — the exact lesions I treat in the cath lab. It has been recovered from the arterial walls of heart attack and stroke patients. It is not a bystander. It is an active participant in the disease that kills more people than any other cause on earth.
Here's the cascade.
Bacteria from infected gums enter the bloodstream and trigger chronic systemic inflammation — elevated hsCRP, elevated IL-6, activated immune cells circulating throughout your vascular system. This inflammation damages the endothelium — the delicate inner lining of your arteries — promoting plaque formation, increasing oxidative stress, and shifting your blood toward a pro-clotting state.
The same inflammatory highway I've been writing about for months — connecting the gut to the brain to the heart — runs directly through your mouth. Your gums are the gateway. And for 42% of American adults, that gateway is wide open.
The AHA's updated statement highlights findings that should stop you:
The association between periodontitis and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is independent of shared risk factors like smoking, diabetes, and obesity in multiple studies. This isn't just "people with bad habits have both problems." The gum disease itself appears to contribute independently.
Brushing frequency alone shows a striking relationship with cardiac risk. Data from the NHANES registry found that brushing three or more times per day was associated with a 10-year ASCVD risk of 7.35% — compared to 13.7% for brushing once daily or less. Nearly half the cardiovascular risk — associated with how often you brush your teeth.
Treating periodontitis improves systemic inflammatory markers — hsCRP, the same marker I tell every patient to test — and improves intermediate cardiovascular measures including blood pressure and HDL cholesterol.
The more severe the gum disease, the stronger the observed cardiovascular risk.
I want to connect this to the bigger picture I've been building on this platform — because the convergence is now impossible to ignore.
P. gingivalis in the brain — linked to Alzheimer's through gingipain-mediated destruction of tau proteins and preferential attack on ApoE4 carriers.
P. gingivalis in atherosclerotic plaques — linked to heart attack and stroke through chronic inflammation, endothelial damage, and plaque destabilization.
Gut dysbiosis sending misfolded proteins up the vagus nerve — linked to Parkinson's through the same inflammatory pathways.
Insulin resistance starving both the heart and the brain simultaneously.
Chronic inflammation as the common thread — measured by hsCRP, driven by metabolic dysfunction, oral infection, gut permeability, and visceral fat.
Your mouth, your gut, your heart, and your brain are not separate systems treated by separate doctors in separate buildings. They share the same inflammatory highway. And the American Heart Association just confirmed that the mouth is one of the most important on-ramps.
What you can do — starting today:
Floss daily. Not optional. Not cosmetic. This disrupts the anaerobic biofilm where P. gingivalis thrives. If you do nothing else from this post, do this.
Brush at least twice daily — three times if you can. The cardiovascular data on brushing frequency alone is striking.
See your dentist every 3-6 months. Do not skip cleanings. Do not ignore bleeding gums — bleeding means the barrier is broken and bacteria are entering your blood.
Consider tongue scraping — it reduces bacterial load in the oral cavity.
If you have periodontitis, treat it aggressively. This is not a dental issue. It is a cardiovascular risk factor.
Get your hsCRP tested. If it's elevated, your mouth is one of the first places to investigate — along with gut health, metabolic function, and visceral fat.
The most fascinating thing about this entire body of science is what it implies:
One of the highest-ROI cardiovascular interventions available to any human being — free, available tonight, requiring no prescription and no doctor's visit — is flossing your teeth.
It's not glamorous. It will never go viral the way a new drug does. But the American Heart Association just dedicated an entire scientific statement to telling you that your gums and your arteries are connected — and that treating one may protect the other.
Your mouth is the gateway to your heart. Treat it that way.

[💙Brittney💙 @AZ_Brittney]

OMG! I’m laughing so hard! 😂

This is a much watch if you are anti-Trump!

[Senator Jeff Merkley @SenJeffMerkley]

Wait, is this for real? Trump spent $60 million of our taxpayer funds to host a UFC fight and then is selling UFC coin to line his family’s pockets. The Trump corruption swamp is a mile deep. https://t.co/jUtLu4cTaz

[Bri Gillis @Bgilly13]

Dems have been looking for their message for years, and @AnnieAndrewsMD just did it (in under two minutes). Take note 📝

[Michael T. Lester @MichaelTLester]

Trump is once again talking about Kharg Island and saying we can take it "at a time of our choosing."

He's not wrong. We can get troops on that island.

But he's not telling you what happens next.

Kharg Island is 16 miles off the Iranian coast. Iran has every square foot of it registered for artillery and rocket fire. They've spent the last three months laying anti-personnel mines on the beaches, pre-deploying shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, and moving IRGC troops into hardened positions. They know we might be coming.

Every one of our ships in our assault force is 47 seconds from an Iranian anti-ship cruise missile. Every Marine on that island is within rocket artillery range of a coastline that runs 1,500 miles. We can't suppress that effectively even if we used all of our forces

I flew CH-53E helicopters in Desert Storm, and I know what it means to put troops in a fixed position on a small island with no room to maneuver and no friendly territory within reach. The military term for that is a kill box. The political term is leverage. The human term is a body bag.

The analysts are being careful in how they are framing it. Ryan Brobst and Cameron McMillan of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is about as hawkish as think tanks get, wrote in March that a seizure and occupation "is more likely to expand and extend the war than it is to deliver any sort of decisive victory." Former CENTCOM commander Joseph Votel said troops on the island would be "very vulnerable" and would require massive logistical backup. Malcolm Davis of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute put it more plainly: "I think the Iranians can probably sit back and attack Americans on Kharg Island, and casualties will mount up."

That's the politically correct version.

Here's what they're not saying out loud: Iran has FPV drones. The same camera-equipped drones being used by the millions in Ukraine. If our troops land on that island, Iranian drone footage of American casualties will be on every screen in the world within hours. Trump will own every frame of it.

Iraq bombed Kharg Island for four straight years during the Iran-Iraq War. From 1982 to 1986, but they never put a single soldier on it. They couldn't. The Iranians rebuilt and kept exporting oil. That's the historical record on what "taking Kharg" actually means.

And here's the part that makes even less sense: seizing the island doesn't open the Strait of Hormuz. Kharg is 300 miles from the strait. The Iranians mine the strait from their southern coastline. You'd have to suppress 1,500 miles of Iranian coast to fix that problem. Kharg is just a political symbol, not a solution.

We can bomb it into rubble. We've already struck over 90 targets there. Trump can destroy every oil facility on that island from the air, permanently. That's a real option with real consequences for Iran's economy and real consequences for global oil markets.

But putting Americans on the ground 16 miles from the Iranian coast, surrounded by water, within range of everything Iran has left?

That's not a strategic or tactical military operation. That's just a sacrifice of American lives.

Are you OK with that?

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Some thoughts on the new Epstein Files revelations:

I’ve now read everything that’s come out from the new Haberman and Swan book, and the thing I keep coming back to is the Situation Room. They held multiple meetings in the Situation Room about the Epstein files. That room is for war. It’s for national security emergencies. It is not for figuring out how to spin a scandal you’re telling the country is a hoax.

While the President was deflecting or calling this old news, his own Vice President and Chief of Staff were huddled in the most leak-proof room in America because they knew how bad it really was.

You don’t take a nothingburger to the Situation Room.

And I have to be honest, reading all this brings back a lot of frustration about what happened in the House of Representatives. I sat there and watched Mike Johnson send the House home early to dodge a vote on releasing these files. I watched him refuse to swear in a duly elected colleague for months just to stall the discharge petition. Month after month of excuses, arm twisting, and procedural games, all to keep this information from the public. We only got the files because survivors, families, and a handful of members in both parties simply refused to let it go.

So when people ask me why I talk so much about transparency and accountability, this is why. The truth eventually comes out. It always does.

The only question is whether your leaders helped reveal it or helped bury it.

Everyone who voted to keep these files hidden should have to answer for that.

Finally, notice what’s missing from all of this is any sign that Trump’s DOJ will actually investigate the powerful men named in these files.

Draw your own conclusions about why a Justice Department run by the President’s former defense lawyers might not be eager to pull that thread.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

🚨CAUGHT ON TAPE: Mike Johnson PANICS after a recorded conversation is released exposing the House Republican plan to CUT Medicaid, Medicare, AND social security for millions of Americans.

They denied it. The recording just blew up the entire lie. EVERY American should see this.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

🚨HOLY SHIT: The boos just happened AGAIN and Trump stops clapping as they get even LOUDER by the end of the clip.

This is humiliating.

[Negan @Roger_Negan]

This

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

BREAKING: Ken Paxton’s own lawyer just endorsed James Talarico:

“I defended Ken Paxton for years in the impeachment trial and in state criminal cases. But in my view, I think Ken has lost sight of his core mission, which is to represent the people of Texas. 

And unlike Ken, I believe that you, James, believe in unity over division and that you know how to assemble not only Democrats but Independents and Republicans and we need that right now. 

We need unity, we don't need any more division and that's why I'm supporting you.”

[Samuel Cardillo @CardilloSamuel]

russia is completely absent from the AI and robotics revolution. stanford ranked them 28th out of 36 countries. 80% of their top AI engineers left. their GPU imports collapsed by 84%.

this is the overlooked consequence of the war in ukraine. while everyone focuses on the battlefield, russia's tech base is evaporating. china has completely replaced them on stage as the main competitor to the US in AI.

russia is literally missing an entire revolution. the war didn't just cost them money, it is costing them the future.

[FlexNP @rn_flex]

I'll have A LOT of retatrutide thoughts. But these cardiometabolic improvements are stunning. 40% drop in triglycerides, 20% drop in LDL. 63% drop in hsCRP, 12 point reduction in BP. It's not a stretch to imagine this drug massively reducing death from CVD and CKD all on its own.

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

It would be so unprofessional of everyone to start replying to Trumps and White House’s tweets with this picture. So don’t

[Democratic Coalition @TheDemCoalition]

When we tell future generations about what life was like under Mango Mussolini, one of the many, many stories they just won't believe is that this fascist clown ran around calling his opponent "Sleepy" while constantly falling asleep in public on almost a daily basis.

#ResistTrump

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

5/5
Caveats — because I'm a physician, not a hype man.
Not FDA-approved yet. Filing expected late 2026 with seven additional Phase 3 readouts this year — including cardiovascular outcomes and sleep apnea.
Side effects include expected GI issues — nausea, diarrhea — at somewhat higher rates than earlier GLP-1s. Plus a new one unique to this mechanism: tingling, numbness, or burning sensations in 12-20% at higher doses, linked to the glucagon pathway. Manageable for most. Worth close monitoring as data matures.
Long-term cardiovascular outcome data is still being collected. And compounded versions are already circulating — unknown purity, unknown dosing, real risk. Do not go there without medical supervision.
But the trajectory is historic.
We built medicine around the idea that obesity, heart disease, liver disease, diabetes, and cognitive decline are separate problems requiring separate drugs in separate clinics.
They're not. They share the same metabolic root. And retatrutide may be the first drug designed to pull it out.
90% of cardiovascular events are tied to modifiable metabolic risk. A medicine this powerful applied at scale doesn't just change individual lives. It changes the trajectory of heart disease itself.
This is why I became a doctor — to see the day when we stop managing the damage and start reversing the cause.