Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

Wesley Clark, the former commander of NATO's forces, on Monday questioned whether Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blackmailed President Trump into his decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria.

"There doesn’t seem to be any strategic rationale for the decision. And if there’s no strategic rationale for the decision then you have to ask, why was the decision made?" the retired U.S. Army general and former NATO commander said on CNN's "New Day."

"People around the world are asking this and some of our friends and our allies in the Middle East are asking, did Erdoğan blackmail the president? Was there a payoff or something? Why would a guy make a decision like this? Because all the recommendations were against it," he added.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

STOCKING STUFFER
https://claytoonz.com/2018/12/25/stocking-stuffer/

Since taking office, Trump has boasted about the performance of the stock market, ignoring it was a trend that began under President Obama. Now that it’s crashing, the only thing Trump has to figure out is how to blame Obama.

Is it Trump’s fault that the market keeps going down? Maybe not entirely, but he’s not helping. Some of the blame does land squarely on his shoulders.

He’s enacted a trade war, increased tariffs (which are taxes), increased the deficit, and shut down the government over a petty issue for the sake of his ego. Wall Street is also uneasy by chaos within Trump’s staff as the market slid further with the resignation of the last adult in the administration. Trump’s tweets demonstrating his confusion, inability to understand simple and complex matters, and tirades doesn’t help calm jittery nerves on Wall Street. Yesterday, he tweeted that the Fed didn’t have “a feel for the Market, they don’t understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders.” Maybe Wall Street freaked out over his use of capitalization.

Wall Street probably saw the video of Trump stating that he’d proudly shut down the government and wouldn’t blame Democrats, so I’m sure they understand this is a Trump shutdown. Stocks fell even further after Trump’s tweets.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin sent a tweet that was supposed to calm Wall Street, but had more of an effect of everybody walk out of the theater calmly and don’t worry about the bomb that will explode any second now.

Mnuchin said he had contacted the chief executives of six major banks to ensure that their operations were running smoothly, and that they had “ample liquidity available for lending.”

Analysts and economists have not cited a lack of cash for lending as a significant reason for the downturn, but after Mnuchin’s tweet, now they’re kinda freaking out about it. It’s like waking up your kids at 4:00 am to assure them the bank isn’t about to repossess the house, now go back to sleep. Mnuchin just made the stocks fall even faster.

Despite Trump’s best efforts, the economy is still in good shape. The nation’s faith in the economy isn’t based on Trump’s job performance. What would probably help the stock market the most would be if Trump and his cabinet of idiots would stop talking. Go to the movies or something. Just ignore the stock market and the economy. The least Trump does, the better.

Trump has complained about bias against him from Congress, the media, celebrities, and even complained about laws that allow Saturday Night Live to make fun of him. But the thing is, if everybody hates you maybe it’s not just them. Maybe you truly are an asshole. Maybe you do suck at your job. Maybe you are a horrible person. When you tweet out on Christmas eve that you’re all alone and write “poor me,” don’t expect a ton of sympathy. Especially from anyone who has a 401K, or had one before last week.

Kurt Cobain wrote in Territorial Pissings, “Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.” There are plenty of people after Trump, but the laughter he’s hearing at his expense isn’t just his imagination either.

What Donald Trump hasn’t realized yet is the reason so much is going wrong is because he’s a lousy president.

Oh, and Merry Christmas.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

It is difficult, at the moment, to fully assess the damage Trump is wreaking. We have never had a president like him, so history is a poor guide. For his racism, we can perhaps look back to Woodrow Wilson; his general unfitness to hold the nation’s highest office recalls the hapless Andrew Johnson. Maybe Andrew Jackson was as impetuous, maybe Richard M. Nixon as venal.

The past week has seen Trump manifest all those characteristics and more.

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As multiple investigations close in, including the one led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump will surely lash out. I believe things will get worse before they get better.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

EL PASO, Texas — An 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died in government custody early Tuesday, U.S. immigration authorities, marking the second death of an immigrant child in detention this month.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a news release that the boy died shortly after midnight Tuesday.

The boy showed “signs of potential illness” Monday and was taken with his father to a hospital in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the agency said. There, he was diagnosed with a cold and a fever, was given prescriptions for amoxicillin and Ibuprofen and released Monday afternoon.

The boy was returned to the hospital Monday evening with nausea and vomiting and died there just hours later, CBP said.

The agency said the cause of the boy’s death has not been determined and that it has notified the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general and the Guatemalan government.

A CBP spokesman declined to elaborate Tuesday, but said more details would be released shortly.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

EL PASO, Texas — An 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died in government custody early Tuesday, U.S. immigration authorities, marking the second death of an immigrant child in detention this month.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a news release that the boy died shortly after midnight Tuesday.

The boy showed “signs of potential illness” Monday and was taken with his father to a hospital in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the agency said. There, he was diagnosed with a cold and a fever, was given prescriptions for amoxicillin and Ibuprofen and released Monday afternoon.

The boy was returned to the hospital Monday evening with nausea and vomiting and died there just hours later, CBP said.

The agency said the cause of the boy’s death has not been determined and that it has notified the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general and the Guatemalan government.

A CBP spokesman declined to elaborate Tuesday, but said more details would be released shortly.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

When, exactly, does an unemployed coal miner in Lackawanna already wary of immigrants and the “mainstream media” become convinced that his interests are best served by voting for Trump over Clinton? Will a Pizza-gate ad purchased in rubles or an “Obama Created ISIS” meme cooked up in St. Petersburg be his tipping point, or just more proof that his original prejudices were correct all along?

At what point does a millennial democratic socialist in Detroit decide to skip voting altogether to put the finishing touches on her long-awaited Jacobin essay about the Zionist hegemony encoded in Seinfeld? Is it before or after spending 20 minutes reading Sputnik’s slippery summary of Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs executives? I doubt even Nate Silver would be able to tell you.

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But herein lies the dilemma of our well-meaning civil society and government programs to combat disinformation. Neither Congress nor the State Department can tabulate American stupidity as if it were the census.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

“STORM CLOUDS LOOM.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi accused President Donald Trump of using "scare tactics" to build support for his proposed U.S.-Mexican border wall, which she joked had been reduced from a giant, cement structure "to, I think, a beaded curtain."

 

[Michael Scally MD]

There’s a saying, now associated with the investor Warren Buffett, that if you’re playing poker for 30 minutes and you don’t know who is the fool at the table, the fool is you. Since President Trump once owned casinos, you’d think that he might have caught on by now. Then again, those casinos went bankrupt, an outcome that Mr. Trump blamed on anyone not named Donald Trump.

Now that he’s president, the table stakes are much higher. Except that Americans are the ones who are losing. With the stock market in bear territory since September, and the S.&P. 500 off about 12 percent this year, the president continues to insist in tweets, and in conversations with his economic advisers and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, that everything would be great — if it was not for that meddlesome Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. “The only problem our economy has is the Fed,” Mr. Trump ranted on Monday. “They don’t have a feel for the Market.”

The Federal Reserve Board has had the temerity to do exactly what it had signaled for months it would do, steadily raise interest rates to prevent the economy from overheating. The Fed is legally mandated to maximize employment and contain inflation, not to prop up the stock market on presidential orders. Mr. Powell also signaled that the Fed would pause in this rate-raising mode if the economy began to slow. Wall Street was not surprised in the least by this pronouncement.

What surprised Wall Street — what terrifies Wall Street — was Mr. Trump’s inquiry as to whether he had the power to fire Mr. Powell, whom he appointed in February. That injection of uncertainty was then magnified when Mr. Mnuchin announced from his Mexican vacation spot that he had chatted with six big bank C.E.O.s in an attempt to assure investors that there was adequate liquidity in the financial system. Anyone who experienced the Great Recession might recall that merely raising the idea that there might not be adequate liquidity immediately injects doubt into investors’ minds about adequate liquidity, whatever assurances you attach afterward. The Dow promptly had its worst Christmas Eve trading day ever, disgorging 653 points, or 2.9 percent.