Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WHO’S YOUR DEITY?
https://claytoonz.com/2019/03/09/whos-your-deity/

Donald Trump’s fifth communications director has quit. Bill Shine was an executive at Fox News, from where Trump does most of his hiring. Trump believed Shine would be able to make all media coverage of him to be more like what he gets from Fox. Failing to get the Tucker Hannity Ingraham treatment for Trump on CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post and The New York Times, Trump soured on Shine.

Shine was a natural fit for Trump, having been accused of helping Roger Ailes, the late CEO of Fox News, cover up the sexual harassments that forced his ouster. Helping the self-professed pussy-grabber-in-chief should have been a natural fit. But forming communications for a man who talks out of his ass is harder than it looks. Perhaps behavior like signing bibles while touring a tornado disaster area is why Trump has gone through five communications directors.

With all the tact of throwing paper towels at disaster victims, Trump was putting his John Hancock on sycophants’ copies of the Holy Bible, while not knowing who John Hancock is. Trump didn’t write the Bible any more than he wrote the Art of the Deal, so why were people asking him to sign them?

The type of person who would ask Trump to sign a bible is probably the same who believes he was anointed by God. While Trump has five children from three wives and has had multiple affairs, his sycophants believe family-man No Drama Obama is the anti-Christ. While I’m not religious, I recognize just how tacky and egotistical it is to go around signing bibles, even for someone who’s not sure how to spell his own name.

One of the Ten Commandments is “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” For those in the Trump cult, they’ve violated that commandment. But still, in competition with a man who builds towers to honor himself, they’ll never worship Trump more than Trump.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Republicans hate deficits. Or at least that’s what they claim.

Republicans in Congress spent the entire Obama administration inveighing against budget deficits, warning incessantly that we were going to have a Greek-style fiscal crisis any day now. Donald Trump, on the other hand, focused his ire mainly on trade deficits, insistingthat “our jobs and wealth are being given to other countries that have taken advantage of us.”

But over two years of unified G.O.P. control of government, a funny thing happened: Both deficits surged. The budget deficit has hit a level unprecedented except during wars and in the immediate aftermath of major economic crises; the trade deficit in goods has set a record.

What’s the significance of this tide of red ink?

Let’s be clear: Neither the budget deficit nor the trade deficit poses a clear and present danger to the U.S. economy. Advanced countries that borrow in their own currencies can and often do run up large debts without drastic consequences — which is why the debt panic of a few years ago was always nonsense.

Yet Trump’s twin deficits tell us a lot about both the tweeter in chief and his party — namely, that they’re both dishonest and ignorant.

 

[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]

Fallows: In the two-plus years since the election, as events have unfolded under Trump, is Putin happy with the results? Or has he gotten more than he bargained for?

Burns: The chaos in foreign policy—which has only accelerated in terms of the predictability of America’s role in the world—is from the Russian perspective a double-edged thing.

To some degree, chaos serves Putin’s interest. International uncertainty, and a situation where our allies are hedging and our rivals like China are taking advantage, and where the international institutions we’ve built in our own enlightened self-interest are beginning to teeter—those all serve Russia’s and Putin’s interests. They provide more space for him.

I don’t know whether Putin ever expected that a Trump victory would produce a neat path toward the end of sanctions. Because Putin is the ultimate cynic, he knows that there is a huge gap between Trump and his own administration [on Russia policy], let alone with Congress. But [if he can’t get sanctions removed] second best for him is a chaotic American political system. Polarization here undermines the American example for the rest of the world.

Again, he still has a relatively weak hand to play. He’s burdened by demographic challenges, by the fact that he’s invested in a one-dimensional economy which is based on what comes out of the ground rather than what comes out of people’s heads. I think one of the deepest historical criticisms of Putin will be that when he was surfing $120-a-barrel oil—this is when I was ambassador in Moscow, a decade ago—he could have started to diversify the economy. He didn’t do that. He quite consciously didn’t do it, because that would have come at the expense of what mattered more to him, which was political order. Even on issues like the invasion of eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, which was seen tactically as an example of his agility, these will cost him in the long term. You swallow up two and a half million Crimeans, but the other 42 million Ukrainians are never again going to accept a deferential role to Russia. I think that will be a pretty profound historical critique of the Putin years.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]