Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

First lady Melania Trump wears the heart of her husband’s administration on her sleeve.

On a surprise trip to the Texas border to visit immigrant kids, the first lady wore what appeared to be a $39 Zara green jacket with lettering on the back that read “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” In confirming the news, her spokeswoman said, “It’s a jacket. There was no hidden message. After today’s important visit to Texas, I hope the media isn’t going to choose to focus on her wardrobe.”

Too late. Let’s focus on her wardrobe.

With Jacketgate, the first lady is Category 5 trolling us. Trump is a former model and no stranger to being in the public eye. She and her team know full well the power of clothes to convey a message — particularly when it’s the first lady wearing them. Michelle Obama conveyed relatability by wearing an affordable brand such as J. Crew. What did Trump convey with her clothing choice on Thursday — besides relatability to the 55 percent of Republicans who supported Trump’s policy of separating families?

For one of the most visible women in the world, with perhaps nearly unlimited access to clothing, to choose a jacket with such a message speaks of either complete tone-deafness or cruel, calculated apathy in the face of suffering children. Trump’s jacket is a reinforcement of what we knew about the Trump administration’s attitudes toward people of color: They don’t give a damn, and they’ve never tried to hide it.

They don’t care about sending Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to lie about the fact that it was President Trump’s decision to implement the child separation policy in the first place. Trump doesn’t care about lying that “illegal immigrants” want to “infest our country.” He doesn’t care about scores of American citizens dying in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria, or about Flint still not having clean water.

And in her own basic yet unintentional way, Melania Trump is telling another story with her Zara jacket: She’s the walking embodiment of the exploitation of children in the name of big business. The Spanish-owned brand has been accused of using child labor in South America. The company was forced to apologize and pay fines after immigrant workers in Brazil claimed they were forced to work 12-hour shifts every day, for between $156 and $290 a month.

It’s fitting that Trump would wear a jacket from a brand that has apologized for mistreating immigrant workers. Here at home, there was outrage over the separate but related issue of the United States losing track of unaccompanied children from Central America, some of whom have ended up in the hands of traffickers once reaching the United States.

Maybe we should be grateful that Melania Trump didn’t take a cue from the commander in chief and throw Starbursts or paper towels at the children. But next time Texas has a crisis on its hands, she should just stay home. Compassion for the suffering doesn’t seem to suit her or her husband.

MANHATTAN (CN) – Zara’s past scandals for clothing designs perceived as having Nazi imagery and racist slogans reflect a deeper corporate culture of bias, the company’s former lawyer claims in a $40 million lawsuit.

Ian Jack Miller, who represented Zara for seven years as in-house counsel, accuses Zara USA and two of its executives of religious and sexual discrimination firsthand in an alarming 30-page complaint filed Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Zara’s predominantly Spanish, straight and Christian executives – including an ex-CEO – mocked real estate developers as “los judios” (“the Jews”), exchanged racist emails of President Barack Obama wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, bragged about their sexual prowess, and subjected staff to sexist and homophobic messages, Miller claims.

The lawsuit begins with a retelling of Zara’s past scandals involving what some customers described as Nazi and racist imagery.

“Zara cultivates a worldly and cosmopolitan image, but the company is notorious for selling products featuring racist and anti-Semitic images and messages, including handbags depicting swastikas, children’s pajamas resembling concentration camp uniforms (a product that, after an international outcry, the company said would be ‘exterminated’), necklaces containing figurines in black face, and a T-shirt proclaiming that ‘White Is the New Black,'” the complaint states. [Parentheses in original.]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WOMP MY GORILLA
https://claytoonz.com/2018/06/22/womp-my-gorilla/

Is there a race to the bottom among Trump, members of his administration, his family, and supporters? It sure seems that way.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions was giddy a few weeks ago when he announced the child-separation and traumatization policy of the Trump administration. Last week, he quoted Bible verses, that were also used in the 1800s to justify slavery, in justifying the Trump policy. Yesterday, he said separating children from their parents was never the intention of the policy, even though he previously described it as the cornerstone of the agenda.

Trump adviser Stephen Miller crafted the policy because he believes its red meat for the base, plus he’s a white supremacist fanboy. Director of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said the policy wasn’t created by Trump, it didn’t exist, and that Trump couldn’t fix it, and then stood behind him as he signed an order ending it, and she got to keep the pen. Miller and Nielsen both thought it’d be a great idea to visit Mexican restaurants during this humanitarian crises, which is either sheer stupidity or adding insult to injury. We hate your people but give us fajitas.

Trump lied about the policy over and over, claimed it was created by Democrats (it wasn’t), that the law requires families to be separated (it doesn’t do that either), and that he couldn’t fix it on his own without Congress, and then he signed an order fixing it on his own without Congress. To cover up his week of lying and caving, he went to one of his hate rallies, bashed Democrats for “putting illegal aliens before Americans,” and said the next day that Mexico is “doing nothing except taking our money and sending us drugs.” Previously, he ranted about or other neighbor, Canada, buying our shoes, scuffing them up and reselling them or something. It was hard to understand.

His supporters on Fox News can’t be left out. Laura Ingraham compared the detention centers to summer camps. Ann Coulter accused the children of being child actors. Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends said many of the children become MS-13. Tucker Carlson said those speaking against the policy don’t really care about the children.

Even Melania became a contender in the race to the bottom. How is that possible? She doesn’t ever do anything and First Ladies are universally loved unless they’re black. But, Melania went to Texas on Thursday to visit a detention center while wearing a $40 jacket with a message written across the back saying, “I really don’t care. Do you?” People were shocked at the stupid optics of it, and that she wore such an inexpensive jacket. Her spokesperson said there was no message to it, despite there being a literal message on the coat. Trump later tweeted debunking that explanation by saying it was Melania’s way of telling the media she doesn’t care what they say.

Trump calls the media everyday to tell them how little he care.

Many of the people at Trump’s Duluth rally believe the crisis is “fake news,” and that photos of children in cages have been manipulated in photo-shop. Others just say they don’t care about children.

Perhaps the most horrible of the week was Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager and guy who grabs people at campaign rallies only to lie about it later.

During a debate on Fox News, Lewandowski, was debating Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas. The Democrat mentioned a 10-year-old with Downs Syndrome being taken from her mother, and Lewandowski interrupted with “womp womp,” the sad trombone sound effect for a comedic failure. Lewandowski refused to apologize for his trombone mouth, and later said he was mocking Petkanas and the media, not the child. Of course, nobody believes him because he’s Corey Lewandowski, and he himself is a comedic failure of a human being.

A speakers bureau has now dropped Corey for his comment. On that sad note, I believe I can speak for all us when I say, “womp womp!”

 

[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]

Key Points

Question To what extent do socioeconomic measurements explain the county-level association of the 2016 US Republican presidential vote with opioid use?

Findings This cross-sectional analysis of a national sample of Medicare claims data found that chronic use of prescription opioid drugs was correlated with support for the Republican candidate in the 2016 US presidential election. Individual and county-level socioeconomic measures explained much of the association between the presidential vote and opioid use.

Meaning The association of the presidential vote with chronic opioid use underscores the importance of cultural, economic, and environmental factors associated with the opioid epidemic.

Goodwin JS, Kuo Y, Brown D, Juurlink D, Raji M. Association of Chronic Opioid Use With Presidential Voting Patterns in US Counties in 2016. JAMA Network Open. 2018;1(2):e180450. Association of Chronic Opioid Use With US County Presidential Voting Patterns in 2016

Importance The causes of the opioid epidemic are incompletely understood.

Objective To explore the overlap between the geographic distribution of US counties with high opioid use and the vote for the Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential election.

Design, Setting, and Participants A cross-sectional analysis to explore the extent to which individual- and county-level demographic and economic measures explain the association of opioid use with the 2016 presidential vote at the county level, using rate of prescriptions for at least a 90-day supply of opioids in 2015. Medicare Part D enrollees (N = 3 764 361) constituting a 20% national sample were included.

Main Outcomes and Measures Chronic opioid use was measured by county rate of receiving a 90-day or greater supply of opioids prescribed in 2015.

Results Of the 3 764 361 Medicare Part D enrollees in the 20% sample, 679 314 (18.0%) were younger than 65 years, 2 283 007 (60.6%) were female, 3 053 688 (81.1%) were non-Hispanic white, 351 985 (9.3%) were non-Hispanic black, and 198 778 (5.3%) were Hispanic. In a multilevel analysis including county and enrollee, the county of residence explained 9.2% of an enrollee’s odds of receiving prolonged opioids after adjusting for individual enrollee characteristics.

The correlation between a county’s Republican presidential vote and the adjusted rate of Medicare Part D recipients receiving prescriptions for prolonged opioid use was 0.42 (P < .001). In the 693 counties with adjusted rates of opioid prescription significantly higher than the mean county rate, the mean (SE) Republican presidential vote was 59.96% (1.73%), vs 38.67% (1.15%) in the 638 counties with significantly lower rates. Adjusting for county-level socioeconomic measures in linear regression models explained approximately two-thirds of the association of opioid rates and presidential voting rates.

Conclusions and Relevance Support for the Republican candidate in the 2016 election is a marker for physical conditions, economic circumstances, and cultural forces associated with opioid use. The commonly used socioeconomic indicators do not totally capture all of those forces.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]