“We’re dealing with a person who’s psychologically and categorically different from any previous president,” says the Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio. “He may be the most successful con man in history atop the most powerful nation in history. He has prevailed in a way no other spinner of tales has prevailed.
“He’s shaping the behavior of much of the world, getting inside people’s heads. He’s like Cambridge Analytica. He knows how to determine what people are interested in and like and dislike and respond to. Then he acts in a way that changes the course of things.
“And expecting him to be different or less crazy only makes us the crazy ones. His behavior gets more outrageous, out of control and florid as the pressure on him persists. And it’s only going to get worse.”
“The guy who said he could be as presidential as any president except for Abraham Lincoln is instead about as presidential as Yosemite Sam,” says his biographer Tim O’Brien.
This quote comes from a NYT column by Maureen Dowd, who is lambasting the Democratic Party for not putting forward some really exciting new presidential prospects. She starts her column by floating the possibility that Donald J. Trump could be eligible for the Nobel Prize for achieving Kim Jong-un’s denuclearization of Korea. Then she compares him to Yosemite Sam. She then claims that Democratic over-reaction to Trump’s rule could give him a chance at a second term as president. These wild shifts of reaction to “the most successful con man in history” are characteristic of the feelings of those who have been insulted and bullied by the most powerful man on the planet who is also the most successful con man in history.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
“Giving out Ambien or Provigil sleep aids ‘like candy’ as alleged is still dangerous and irresponsible because these drugs have notorious side effects,” said Art Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine. “You really don’t want to be cavalier about it. These drugs are prescription for a reason — not the same as an over-the-counter drug.”
quoted from a Microsoft news feed and CNN about the bungled nomination of Dr. Ronny Jackson, the president’s personal physician and head of the White House medical unit; extremely loose prescribing practices with, in particular, Ambien (a hypnotic or sleeping pill) and Provigil (a stimulant with effects somewhat similar to amphetamine and Ritalin); also, the dispensing of so-called “Z packs” of an antibiotic (azithromycin) for upper respiratory infections (a popular placebo for cold and sore throat) on request without an examination, much less a physician’s signature. Worst of all were allegations that pills were missing and pill counts were impossible due to poor documentation– a sure sign of drug pilfering and possibly, someone on the staff having a problem with addiction.
It is clear that Ronny (!) is out of his league when it comes to administering a clinic full of entitled, ambitious politicians, much less the Department of Veteran’s Affairs.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and RonnyK)
“[the ]uplifting words of Winston Churchill to the British nation in June 1940, under the shadow of the Nazi conquest of France: ‘In casting up this dread balance sheet and contemplating our dangers with a disillusioned eye,’ Churchill declared, ‘I see great reason for intense vigilance and exertion, but none whatever for panic or despair.’ ”
thanks to this article in the New York Times.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
Donald J. Trump may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which — according to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice — makes it a crime for a United States company to act with willful blindness toward the corrupt activities of a foreign business partner. His many development projects, most of which failed, in which he partnered with known criminals and sold apartments to organized crime figures, many of them Russian, make him vulnerable to charges that he wilfully ignored open money laundering by his associates.
(thanks to a New York Times article discussing this very subject.)
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
Alabama
Democrat 22 hours ago
I will never forget that night as long as I live. I hoped and expected that Mrs. Clinton would win and that we would have our first women in the White House at the helm of government.
I had donated my hard-earned money to her campaign, $100. at a time. That is a lot for me since I am 73-years old, still working part time and dependent upon SS to make ends meet.
I had read everything there was in the public domain about Trump and KNEW that he was not fit to hold any public office, much less that of president.
I took comfort in the fact that Mrs. Clinton would win on the basis of her superior experience and qualifications along, not to mention her superb intelligence and demeanor as a leader of the free world.
I thought we had nothing to fear and that Trump would walk away with another reality show and many more fans than he had before the campaign. I never dreamed he would win the election.
When he won I was in a state of physical and mental SHOCK. No other way to describe it. I remain sick over it. And the more we learn about the campaign the more I realize that they were never going to let Mrs. Clinton be president. I have posted that exact same statement several times in my comments on this web site and others. It was a coup similar to any other government take over. They were going to win at all costs, no matter what it took.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and johnhain)
“Ten states with lowest probability of premature death: Minnesota, California, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Hawaii
Ten states with highest probability of premature death: West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arkansas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina.”
from an online article in Doximity.com which quotes “the most extensive study ever conducted” comparing death rates state-by-state, coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. Prime causes of premature death include alcohol and drug use, tobacco use, diabetes, and suicide (Utah appears to have the highest rate of suicide, despite very low rates of alcohol- and drug-associated premature death. West Virginia had premature death rates from drug use that matched Utah’s rates from suicide.)
Bottom line: states suffering the worst are also poor and most significantly, lack adequate medical care facilities and providers, especially psychiatric providers. The lack of good jobs appears to contribute most significantly to premature death from preventable causes so these deaths could be laid to the ravages of capitalism without pity. That Southern states should suffer the most has some obscure relationship to the late effects of slavery and Reconstruction– but the relics of the Confederacy are evident everywhere in these states.
(photo of a 150 year old gravestone at the cemetery near the Kings River in Sanger CA by Conrad Seitz)
Reeves Sanday has spent decades in the field with some of the world’s least sexually aggressive societies, such as the Minangkabau of West Sumatra. Her work convinces her that if we want to reduce sexual violence, we must emulate matriarchies. “A matriarchal society isn’t the inverse of patriarchy, it’s egalitarian,” she says. “Where women and men cooperate in aspects of everyday life you do not have sexual abuse.” Similarly, the WHO report concludes that gender inequality is at the heart of sexual violence against women. “Sexual harassment is always about power,” says Cynthia Enloe, who studies gender and war at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. “The only way to eliminate it is to tackle inequality.” In her book The Big Push she argues that we continue to modernise patriarchal ideas rather than overthrowing them.
This quote comes from an online article in New Scientist dated 18 April 2018. The article points out that there are high levels of sexual violence in societies where women are treated as property and men are caught up in competition for dominance over one another (think machismo)– and there are low levels of male parenting and high levels of violence in general.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and FlashBuddy)
A week after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Tenney told a radio host in Albany that “so many of these people that commit the mass murders end up being Democrats, but the media doesn’t talk about that.”
From a realistic point of view, most mass murderers have gone beyond politics in their delusional quests and don’t give a damn whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. Claudia Tenney’s comments reveal that she is far gone into the Fox News promulgated delusion that “Democrats” somehow represent disorder and violence, committed especially against white people with something to lose, while “Republicans” represent order and protection against the brown hordes. That’s not how it works. “Democrats” at the moment, represent progressivism; “Republicans” right now represent greed and fraudulent wealth inequalities, and especially Donald J. Trump personally. At the moment. Once upon a time, in 1860, “Republican” meant “abolition”– the end of slavery. In 1860, the Republicans were the good guys and the Democrats represented the Southern slaveholders in their attempt to keep slavery legal and control the United States government. An odd inversion in the 1950s and 1960s turned Democrats from populist (think Franklin Delano Roosevelt) segregationists into pro-civil rights and African-American progressivists. There are still conservative, “corrupt” Democrats, but what counts right now is that the Republicans have sold their party out. But neither party was the party of mass-murderer psychos. At least not yet.
“I’m doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller,” Giuliani said in an interview.
By this Giulani means he thinks he can shut Mueller down… we’d like to see just how he proposes to do that.
(Sleazy guy with nasty grin thanks to pixabay.com)
“In a report by the House Committee on Government Reform, which looked into the F.B.I.’s use of secret informants, the only reference to Mr. Mueller was a favorable one. He offered, as F.B.I. director, to work with the committee to reform the agency’s informant practices.” (quoted via the Microsoft newsfeed, which credits NANCY GERTNER of – The New York Times – on Thursday, April 19, 2018)
In other words, all the negative “right wing opinion” on Fox News is so much falsehoods and Mueller had no involvement in the disastrous FBI decisions to back serial killers Whitey Bulger and his pals. All this happened in the 1980’s. The right wing propaganda machine is pushing this theme of past corruption, which is true especially in the Bulger case, and trying to make Mueller responsible, which is absurd when he was promoted as being completely neutral and a good administrator who was well liked by his staff. The whole right wing theme is an embarrassment to the older FBI establishment because they know well that there have been past misdeeds. Mr. Mueller is the most obsessively neutral FBI special agent who ever lived, and he is being slut-shamed by the most corrupt administration in living memory. It would be to laugh if it were not so serious. The very constitutionality of the Federal Government is at issue.
(Lego Slug by aitoff thanks to pixabay.com– I just love this slug and I want to make it famous…)
