Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

Donald's options:
1) Cancel drills, look like a moron
2) Don't cancel drills, look like a moron



SEOUL, May 16 (Yonhap) -- North Korea said Wednesday it is canceling high-level talks with South Korea planned for later in the day due to ongoing military exercises between the South and the United States.

The North's Korean Central News Agency said the Max Thunder drills between the South Korean and U.S. air forces are a rehearsal for invasion of the North and a provocation amid warming inter-Korean ties.

The high-level talks were meant to take place on the southern side of the truce village of Panmunjom to discuss follow-up measures to the two Korean leaders' summit last month. http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2018/05/16/0200000000AEN20180516000500315.html (Yonhap News Agency)

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear accord has brought a bonus for the Kremlin. The U.S. president’s Iran action means that Vladimir Putin could make up with the soaring price of oil – the real backbone of the Russian economy and his hold on power – for what he lost from the sanctions.

True, Putin hasn’t (yet) gotten rid of the sanctions levied by Congress on Russia and reluctantly implemented by Trump. But the Russian president must be reveling in the fact that his U.S. counterpart has caused just the sort of havoc in the United States and splits across the Western alliance that Putin wanted.

Let’s tote it up. Trump has withdrawn the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, effectively empowering China; has been the only nation to pull out of both the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal; and has threatened Washington’s closest allies with a series of debilitating tariffs. And then there’s all the chaos that the investigation into Russian election meddling has managed to produce in the United States, while at the same time allowing Kremlin specialists to hone their chops on tactics that can be applied elsewhere around the world.


But the real, most tangible and most immediate impact is in the numbers – specifically the windfall Russia has reaped as an offset against the sanctions levied against it. The backbone of the national economy is oil and the foundation for Putin’s hold on power is its price. One year ago, the price of Brent crude was fluctuating between $46 and $51 per barrel. By Tuesday it had soared to $78, roughly a 60 percent increase that took place at the same time the United States was tightening its sanctions on the Russian economy.


About $10 of the price increase in crude oil has come in the last two months, when the oil markets began pricing in the premium that would likely accrue after the United States’ withdrawal from the Iran nuclear treaty and the resulting sanctions on doing business with Iran.

With Russia producing nearly 11 million barrels per day of oil, that means an additional $110 million per day or $40 billion a year in additional revenue.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WHITE HOUSE HANGUPS
https://claytoonz.com/2018/05/16/white-house-hangups/

According to an unnamed inside source at the White House, because they love to leak, Donald Trump doesn’t trust anyone who works for him. You have to admit, he has a point.

People who work for Donald Trump must become sycophants and discard all traces of dignity, credibility, and self respect. This is an office where a four-star general’s clout is on par with someone who designs handbags. Why would you want counsel or advice with any of these people? So, Trump turns to people who aren’t yet stupid enough to work for him. Enter Sean Hannity.

According to those White House leakers in a story by Olivia Nuzzi for New York Magazine, Trump and Hannity are regular nighttime chatty Cathys. They do have a lot in common. They’re both very conservative, racist, slumlords, share a fixer/lawyer, and are lying shitweasels. Every night around 11:00 PM, Sean calls and they chat about the “witch hunt,” media gossip, whose show sucks, who’s getting killed in the ratings, and how awesome they both are.

It’s said that Hannity fills the political void left by Steve Bannon and the soulmate void vacate by Melania, who sleeps in a separate bedroom. Trump has come to rely on the knuckleheads at Fox News more than he does on the West Wing staff, his cabinet, or our intelligence services. If Fox serves it, Trump eats it.

Trump workday goes from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM, with plenty of “executive time” squeezed in between. He spends his free time tweeting, chatting on the phone, eating cheeseburgers, and watching Fox News. He used to spread his viewing around to other networks like CNN and MSNBC, but news that doesn’t fawn over him riles him up.

Reince Preibus and Sean Spicer (both gone) weaned him off real news and put him on a steady stream of bullshit from Fox. As one staffer said, “It got to the point that they were just like, ‘We need to get him off these channels and onto Fox & Friends or else we’re going to be chasing down this crazy-train bullshit from MSNBC and CNN all day.'” What they did was create a bigger tinfoil-wearing conspiracy junkie who should be sharing an attic with your crazy uncle.

A former White House official called the trouble caused by Hannity and Fox, “a fucked-up feedback loop that puts Trump in a weird headspace. What ends up happening is Judge Jeanine or Hannity fill him up with a bunch of crazy shit, and everyone on staff has to go and knock down all the fucking fires they started.” How do you knock down a fire? Maybe they should try dunking Trump’s head in water, like in a toilet.

Sean Hannity is not a journalist. He is proud of that. But the thing is, he should be a journalist. Even those on the opinion side of the news business are journalists. Hannity is on a news network. It’s dishonest for him to be involved in the issues and personalities he’s covering. He shouldn’t be sharing a lawyer/fixer with the president and hiding it from his viewers while he’s talking about it. Fox News should be a network that doesn’t allow it. MSNBC suspended Keith Olbermann for donating $2,400 each to three Democratic candidates. Fox News pays Hannity $36 million a year.

Donald Trump and Sean Hannity deserve each other. But we don’t deserve either of them. We can do better. Unfortunately, there’s enough stupid people out there who chose them and put them in positions to complicate all our lives.

It’s time for all of us to hang up on both of them.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

SEOUL — North Korea is rapidly moving the goal posts for next month’s summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump, saying the United States must stop insisting it “unilaterally” abandon its nuclear program and stop talking about a Libya-style solution to the standoff.

The latest warning, delivered by former North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Gye Gwan on Wednesday, fits Pyongyang’s well-established pattern of raising the stakes in negotiations by threatening to walk out if it doesn’t get its way.

This comes just hours after the North Korean regime cast doubt on the planned summit by protesting joint air force drills taking place in South Korea, saying they were ruining the diplomatic mood.

If the Trump administration approaches the summit “with sincerity” for improved relations, “it will receive a deserved response from us,” Kim Gye Gwan, now vice foreign minister, said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday.

“However, if the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-U.S. summit,” he said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name. He also questioned the sequencing of denuclearization first, compensation second.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

I'm Timothy Snyder, author of "Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America," where I explain how post-truth is pre-fascism and how the Russian present could be the American future. Ask Me Anything.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Redfield's early engagement with the AIDS epidemic in the US in the 1980s and 90s was controversial. As an Army major at Walter Reed Medical Institute, he designed policies for controlling the disease within the US military that involved placing infected personnel in quarantine and investigating their pasts to identify and track possible sexual partners. Soldiers were routinely discharged and left to die of AIDS, humiliated and jobless, often abandoned by their families.

In the 1980s Redfield worked closely with W. Shepherd Smith, Jr. and his Christian organization, https://bit.ly/2JIkmJh (Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy, or ASAP.) The group maintained that AIDS was "God's judgment" against homosexuals, spread in an America weakened by single-parent households and loss of family values.