Now I know the true meaning of the saying: “cocaine is G-d’s way of telling you you have too much money.” Naturally, Donald has enough money so that he need not ever be concerned about a) ever running out of cocaine or b) ever having his dealer snitch on him. I never used enough of the stuff to recognize the visible signs of cocaine use when I see them: sniffling, acute elevation of mood, hyperactivity, and irritability, all subsiding within an hour or so and followed by acute depression and fatigue, with a distinct desire to repeat the dose. The fact that he sniffled repeatedly (with a frequency that decreased during the debate) during the first debate was attributed by one famous ex-cocaine user (a famous movie star known to most as Princess Leia) to his use of cocaine, and we have no obvious reason to think otherwise.
As to debates, I was impressed by the number of times Donald interrupted Hillary, as well as the body language he displayed when he was not interrupting her. He wandered about the stage, clutched his chair and swayed, stood behind her menacingly, or sniffled repeatedly (ninety times by one count.)
Donald’s chances of winning the presidential election have deteriorated from 17 to 13%, according to the New York Times assessment of polls and their effect on the Electoral College. These chances are not due to the latest debate, but related to polls conducted by CBS and the Wall Street Journal before the debate.
The New York Times assesses Hillary’s chances of winning the presidential election at 83%. The reason: the 2005 “hot mike” recording of Donald’s lewd and misogynistic comments about groping and “moving” on women who could not resist his advances because of his wealth. Republican Congressmen and women as well as governors are abandoning his candidacy in larger and larger numbers; here is a quote from a NYT story about the fallout from release of the recording:
But it was not until a pair of conservative women, Representatives Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Martha Roby of Alabama, implored Mr. Trump to withdraw that previously hesitant Republicans stepped forward to reject Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire was the first Republican senator facing a competitive re-election to say she would no longer back Mr. Trump, announcing in a statement that she would write in Mr. Pence for president instead.
Note that it is conservative Republican women who are leading the defections from Donald’s camp. The situation in American politics has changed drastically since the days in 1999 that Republicans could impeach a Democratic president for his very private sexual behavior, and the president could easily survive the assault. In less than twenty years, women have turned the corner and are reaching for their rightful place as the 51% majority of the people. No longer is it possible for men to treat women with this kind of domination, to use an anodyne word for sexual harassment and debasement, and expect to be elected to political office.
It does not matter now that this recording was made eleven years ago. A man can NEVER live down this kind of talk, no matter how long he lives. Women have finally dug in their heels and said no, loudly and repeatedly.
According to sources with inside knowledge, there are recordings of Donald saying worse things: if you’re a masochist, you can read about it on complex.com.
Another smash headline: a closed-loop system combining a continuous blood sugar monitoring device with an insulin-delivery device was approved by the FDA, and known as a “bionic pancreas”: the Medtronics MiniMed 670G hybrid system.
Conrad at Ocean Beach in San Francisco
The New York Times was able to publish a piece on Donald’s taxes Saturday night because an anonymous whistleblower within the Trump Tower sent three critical pages from his 1995 tax returns to a Times investigative reporter. This piece showed that Donald declared a “net operating loss” of nearly a billion dollars for 1995, enabling him to avoid federal income taxes on up to 50 million dollars a year for up to eighteen years. Chris Christie called this a “genius move” that would actually help his campaign, but the 99.9% of Americans who can’t use this perfectly legal loophole might choose to differ.
Chris Christie also said that Donald would have to be “a fool” not to use this loophole, and that his stockholders would be able to sue him if he did not use it. This may be true, but the difference between “genius” and “fool” is wide, and most people fit right in there. The losses apparently were the result of Donald’s mismanagement of three casinos into bankruptcy, and ended in a total of six, not four, bankruptcies as previously reported.
Donald’s running his casinos into bankruptcy may seem like “mismanagement” and certainly resulted in the loss of value of his stock from the mid-thirty dollar range to pennies, but it also allowed him to live a life of luxury and to survive two divorces and adultery. Nobody who lives like this has the integrity to be president, regardless of his temperament.
Watch This, Then Panic
I’m not going to cite any articles here because it’s all over the Web– Donald takes his donations, many from small lower middle class people, and uses them to reimburse himself for his jet travel, to pay rent on his owned properties, to pay security (even though the Secret Service provides all he needs), and so on and so forth. If he could charge for serving Trump steaks to everyone who goes to his rallies, he would do it.
Donald himself admitted that he stood to make a profit from running for president, and I think this is his primary motivating factor. He knows that he has less than even chances of winning, but who cares if you win when you’ve made money by paying yourself the donations given you by gullible lower middle class frustrated voters? He first loaned his campaign some $50 million to start; all that he can claim to have paid back by donations rolling in. Then he went to charging for use of his own properties, his own jets, and so on.
If you want to get started on this truly major scandal, read the Huffington Post and the Washington Post, as they have extensive reporting on this subject– which has led Trump to refuse press credentials, especially to the Wash Post. The New York Times is getting in on the act, and they will probably be frozen out by Trump’s staff soon.
That’s the bottom line: Donald is running for president primarily to make money. If he wins, who knows what he’ll do. I just know it won’t be pretty. Fortunately for Democrats, they hold leads in the states that are critical to winning in the Electoral College– which makes Donald’s chances of winning less than even although the two candidates are supposedly neck and neck in national polls.
So think of it this way: do you want to vote for president for a con man? He is using charitable donations to his Trump Foundation to finance his legal battles over his privately owned properties, on which he can charge rent. For instance, he used Foundation money to finance a legal battle over a flag pole that Florida local officials said was too tall, at 80 feet. The officials said he had to donate money to charity to pay for this malfeasance, so he used Foundation money to send to charity…
What’s more, he is using small donations from people who can’t afford to make any political donations for his private gain. What a con artist!
Recovery: Another Personal Note
This note(s) will come in several parts.
First, I was happy to receive several get-well notices from people who have signed up to be “Facebook friends” of mine. I use this phrase in quotes because I have had some arguments with my wife about the existence (or not) of numerous “friends” that I “communicate with” on my computer. She claims (when she is angry at me) that I spend all my time talking to these ephemeral friends on my computer. It does me no good to explain that I am spending most of my time reading the news on the New York Times or chasing down tidbits of information on Wikipedia and scientific articles (to mention two of numerous sources that I consult). But it is true that several people, perhaps 29 according to my facebook home page, call me “friends” on Facebook, and these people appear to wish me well. This is many more people than I have communicated with on a regular basis since I was in school.
In fact, I have spent most of my time in self-isolation, reading and studying, over the last few years since my retirement in 2008. That’s just the way I like it. I’ve never had much interest in spending time with other people unless they are truly unusual.
The phenomenon of Facebook has enhanced my opinion of most people’s motives. It seems that most people, say 99% of them, honestly wish others well, and when given the opportunity without being first derided, denigrated, or bullied, will express those wishes openly.
The negative comments that we see, which seem to fill comment departments, are the result of people having been negatively stimulated, especially if they feel belittled or bullied, and represent attempts to exact revenge or express displeasure.
Unfortunately, people tend to express negative sentiments much more loudly than positive ones. Most often, comments are made by people who have been negatively stimulated. Why? Because people feel that positive statements are expensive and to be expressed more tentatively than negative statements. When we are negatively stimulated, we feel considerable energy which we feel needs to be expressed to defend ourselves and establish boundaries. When we are positively stimulated, we usually feel relieved or relaxed and have less energy, or at least feel more comfortable.
This is why comment sections of online newspapers and forums tend to fill up with flame wars: negative comments hurt and stimulate negative responses, whereas positive comments, which are soothing, stimulate relaxation rather than a felt need to respond.
Thus, to maintain a tolerable level of negativity in a comment department, it is necessary to moderate out all extreme negative comments by removing everything which is an ad hominem argument. This moderation is extremely stressful to the moderator.
OK, that’s enough for today. In closing, I would like to thank all those who have expressed their good wishes and assure everyone who reads this that I am improving on a daily basis, resting enough, and gaining strength as well.
My next appointment with a doctor is with the neurosurgeon Dr. Ames or his designated assistant on September 29, nominally at 11:45 AM; I will be staying at the Great Highway Motor Inn in San Francisco on September 28-9. I would like to apologize to all neurosurgeons and their assistants for my blog post entitled “Neurosurgeons are stupid.” I am embarrassed that I have again stooped to another low in using the word “stupid”, which we all know is a negative and uninformative term.
Another Personal Note, Part Two
…these films were needed to (to be continued)… confirm that the rods were correctly placed and the rest of the surgery was successful.
At the rehab hospital, I spent three exhausting hours every day doing exercises, walking with a walker up and down the hall, learning to put on my socks with a curious little device, and learning to put on my shoes with a “grabber” and a long shoe horn. In addition, I learned with wipe my anus after defecating, which is incredibly difficult and usually involves a device known as a “bottom buddy.”
After I had spent two weeks at the rehab hospital, my doctor broke three fingers in her left hand by having them in the way of a window at the hospital that closed too quickly. I was very surprised when she arrived to check me out wearing a long arm cast with the tips of her third, fourth, and fifth fingers protruding– each digit transfixed with a wire internal-external fixation device.
It was purely a coincidence that they planned to discharge me that day, since they had been telling me for three days that I would be sent home that day. Accidents happen.
Now I am at home, eating soup, sandwiches, and salads, and walking further every day. Sadly, I have not been re-struck by the Muse that I had been obsessed with in the past. I know that I have been active at some time in the past, because the dashboard tells me I have posted 1,044 times over the last few years. I’m afraid that that frequency will not be matched in the near future.
Another Personal Note
I am making (I believe) my first post in about a month, which is unusual for me (as my 6 regular readers will know, I usually post almost every day.) I was admitted to Univ of Cal at San Fran on August 9 at 6 AM and had the first surgery at around 7 or 8. The first surgery was relatively innocuous, and I passed the rest of the day in a fog. On August 10, I had the second surgery, which was on the back and involved the insertion of two titanium rods that extend from about S1 to about T10 and are now screwed into each vertebra all the way up. I woke up in severe pain and the doctors had some difficulty controlling the pain. Probably I didn’t scream loud enough.
After a week total at UCSF, I was transferred to a rehab hospital called St. Francis Memorial, which is right downtown. I wasn’t transferred until I was able to stand up while grasping supports, which was necessary in order to take X-rays of the spine, films known as a “scoliosis series”; these films were needed to (to be continued)
Conrad Theodore Seitz 