Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea’s second missile test on Thursday signals it is serious about developing new, short-range weapons that could be used early and effectively in any war with South Korea and the United States, analysts studying images of the latest launches say.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea’s second missile test on Thursday signals it is serious about developing new, short-range weapons that could be used early and effectively in any war with South Korea and the United States, analysts studying images of the latest launches say.

SEOUL—The short-range missiles tested by North Korea can strike much of South Korea and may be able to carry a nuclear warhead, military experts said, providing Pyongyang with extra firepower as diplomatic frictions grow with Washington.

Pyongyang test-fired a pair of short-range missiles Thursday that soared to a height of 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) before landing in the sea off the country’s east coast. Leader Kim Jong Un directed the test and lauded the weapons’ “long-range strike” capabilities, according to North Korean state media, which provided little other detail.

The Thursday launch came just five days after Pyongyang fired multiple projectiles, including a short-range missile.

The missile tests suggest Pyongyang has a new type of powerful, evasive weapon, according to military experts. They said, based on the projectiles’ flight paths and launch vehicle’s appearance, the short-range missiles bear an uncanny resemblance to Russian Iskander missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads.

The new missiles can travel far enough to hit U.S. military bases in South Korea hosting missile-defense systems designed to fend off incoming North Korean ballistic missiles, according to Cheon Seong-whun, a former South Korean National Security Council official.

“I don’t think South Korea or the U.S. forces here have the requisite missile-defense system to protect the country from North Korean Iskander missiles,” said Mr. Cheon, noting other U.S. military bases in the region were too far away to be at risk.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

SEOUL—The short-range missiles tested by North Korea can strike much of South Korea and may be able to carry a nuclear warhead, military experts said, providing Pyongyang with extra firepower as diplomatic frictions grow with Washington.

Pyongyang test-fired a pair of short-range missiles Thursday that soared to a height of 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) before landing in the sea off the country’s east coast. Leader Kim Jong Un directed the test and lauded the weapons’ “long-range strike” capabilities, according to North Korean state media, which provided little other detail.

The Thursday launch came just five days after Pyongyang fired multiple projectiles, including a short-range missile.

The missile tests suggest Pyongyang has a new type of powerful, evasive weapon, according to military experts. They said, based on the projectiles’ flight paths and launch vehicle’s appearance, the short-range missiles bear an uncanny resemblance to Russian Iskander missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads.

The new missiles can travel far enough to hit U.S. military bases in South Korea hosting missile-defense systems designed to fend off incoming North Korean ballistic missiles, according to Cheon Seong-whun, a former South Korean National Security Council official.

“I don’t think South Korea or the U.S. forces here have the requisite missile-defense system to protect the country from North Korean Iskander missiles,” said Mr. Cheon, noting other U.S. military bases in the region were too far away to be at risk.

 

[Senorman]

Trump and associated sycophants: “China is paying HUGE tariffs to the US Treasury.” Fucking idiots who can’t see through the bullshit lie. Those hit the hardest will be poor people (Trump’s base) who spend a significant portion of their discretionary income on Chinese imports.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

THE BIGGEST SHOESER
The Biggest Shoeser

Negotiating with China for a better trade agreement is a good thing. In fact, Democrats may be more supportive of the trade war than free-market Republicans. What’s not good is engaging in a trade war as there’s rarely a winner. What’s even worse is that these negotiations are being led by Donald Trump.

While Donald Trump promotes himself as a great negotiator, those of us who are not cultist sycophants know he’s not. China also knows he’s not a great negotiator. China knows that Donald Trump doesn’t know that American consumers pay for the tariffs he’s increased. China knows that 90% of the stuff you own was made in China. Despite those MAGA hats being made in China…and everything else with Trump’s name on it, Donald Trump doesn’t seem to know this. If you shop at Wal-Mart, you’re paying these tariffs, even if you voted for Donald Trump. The price for your “Juicy” sweatpants just got a lot juicier.

Before the government shutdown, Democrats put an offer on the table for Trump’s border wall. He wanted more so he shut the government down. It was his way of negotiating. When the pressure got too much for him, he caved and walked away with…wait for it…nothing. A great negotiator or even a mediocre hobbyist negotiator never walks away with less than he was originally offered, less enough, NOTHING.

When you play poker, you bluff. A bluff is a lie. Poker is a game where lying is allowed. Now, if you bluff on every hand, people stop believing you and you start losing. It may not work that way with a cult, but it works that way in business. Trump used to purchase stocks of a company, make a lot of noise about purchasing more and taking over the company, then after the stock would increase because of his noise, he’d quietly sell. He was lying. Just like in poker, people stopped believing him and the strategy stopped working. That was Donald Trump being a “great businessman.”

Donald Trump lost a billion dollars over a decade. He was continuously bailed out by his daddy. For eight of those ten years, he didn’t pay taxes. The guy lost a billion dollars, took money from his dad, bankrupted casinos, but since he didn’t pay taxes for most of those years, that was him being a “great businessman.”

While losing a billion dollars, Trump published a ghost-written book he’s probably never read called “The Art of the Deal.” Many years later, he hosted The Apprentice, a reality TV show. The man has spent decades cultivating an image of a billionaire genius. He even created a fake university to teach people to be billionaire geniuses just like him, which of course was a scam.

Despite playing Hawkeye on M.A.S.H., Alan Alda is not a great surgeon or a surgeon period. You do not want Alan Alda cutting you open. You don’t want Donald Trump cutting you open either, but sycophants gave him the knife. He played a great businessman on TV, but just like Alan Alda isn’t a surgeon, Trump is not a great businessman.

You can’t believe everything you see on TV. But, you see Trump playing a dumbass, racist, sexist, bully, and narcissist on TV on a daily basis. That, you can believe.

In Monopoly of life, Donald Trump is the shoe, but his sycophants think he’s the race car. They’re just ignoring the smell.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

He then in another series of tweets outlined his strategy for forcing China to ameliorate this perceived wrong.

“Talks with China continue in a very congenial manner — there is absolutely no need to rush — as Tariffs are NOW being paid to the United States by China of 25% on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods & products. These massive payments go directly to the Treasury of the U.S.” he wrote.

No, they don’t. As we’ve https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/01/it-remains-unclear-if-trump-fully-understands-how-federal-debt-works/?utm_term=.2954472af46b (noted before), there are some customs duties that are paid directly to the government when products are imported. In 2017, the government earned about $35 billion that way. But tariffs on imports are often added to the price of the imported product, meaning that the tariffs are being paid by the people who buy the product — in this case, American consumers.

One study estimated that higher tariffs on products from China could cost American households $767 a year. The tariffs also hurt American businesses by making them either charge more or absorb more of the cost of imported products, both of which threaten profitability.

“The process has begun to place additional Tariffs at 25% on the remaining 325 Billion Dollars,” Trump continued. “The U.S. only sells China approximately 100 Billion Dollars of goods & products, a very big imbalance.”

Here his numbers are about right: $250 billion of imports for which tariffs apply, plus $325 billion for which they don’t now is about $575 billion — a bit more than the $540 billion imported in 2018 but not terribly so.

But then things get goofy again.

“With the over 100 Billion Dollars in Tariffs that we take in”, he wrote, “we will buy agricultural products from our Great Farmers, in larger amounts than China ever did, and ship it to poor & starving countries in the form of humanitarian assistance. ... Our Farmers will do better, faster, and starving nations can now be helped. ... If we bought 15 Billion Dollars of Agriculture from our Farmers, far more than China buys now, we would have more than 85 Billion Dollars left over for new Infrastructure, Healthcare, or anything else.”

A 25 percent tariff on $575 billion would yield about $144 billion, for what it’s worth. But again: This is not money being paid by China. Some of the tariff fees will be paid by the Chinese manufacturers in an effort to keep costs down, sure. Some will be paid by businesses. But much will be paid by consumers. It’s that $767 tax — a $62.5 billion tax increase nationally.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Have you ever won a tournament you never competed in? Have you ever stolen the ball from a child to gain a competitive advantage?

If the answer to either or both of those questions is no, then you’re not cheating at the highest level. Which is to say, you’re not cheating like President Donald Trump.

In a new book, Commander in Cheat, sportswriter Rick Reilly explores Trump’s complicated relationship with the game of golf, and shows the near-heroic efforts he makes to lie about his scores, sabotage his opponents, and generally defraud the sport.

Trump’s cheating at golf might seem trivial compared to his political shenanigans, but there’s another way to think about it: Golf is a game built on self-governance, Reilly says, and in that way, it’s like a “Rorschach test for your morality.” And some of the stories about Trump are truly absurd. “In a weird way,” Reilly told me, they “say as much about Trump as almost anything else we know about him, because it cuts to the core of his character.”

A lightly edited transcript of my conversation with Reilly follows. ...

Sean Illing

Give me the most outrageous cheating story in the book.

Rick Reilly

Here’s one: While Trump was meeting with Kim [Jong Un] in Singapore, a club championship was held at Trump International, a course Trump built near Mar-a-Lago in Florida for his rich people friends to join. So anyway, a month later, Trump’s there at his golf course, with the Secret Service and the SWAT team guys and all that stuff. And he sees Ted Virtue, one of the financiers behind the movie Green Book.

Virtue — who wouldn’t speak to me directly, but the story was reported by Golf.com and I confirmed it through two other members of the club — was playing with his kid, who I think is 10 or 11 years old. He [Trump] sees Ted on the 9th hole and decides to drive his cart over there. He tells Ted: Congrats on winning the club championship, but you didn’t really win it because I was out of town.

Ted tries to laugh it off, but Trump is dead serious. Trump says, “We’re going to play these last six holes for the championship.” And Ted’s like, “I’m playing with my son, but thanks anyway.” But Trump says, “No, your son can play too.” So they end up playing.

They get to a hole with a big pond on it. Both Ted and his son hit the ball on the green, and Trump hits his in the water. By the time they get to the hole, Trump is lining up the kid’s ball. Only now it’s his ball and the caddie has switched it. The kid’s like, “Daddy, that’s my ball.”

But Trump’s caddie goes, “No, this is the president’s ball; your ball went in the water.” Ted and his son look at each other confused, not sure if this is really happening. And Trump’s caddie says, “This is the president’s ball. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Trump makes that putt, wins one up, and declares himself the club champion.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Back in December, Washington state Trump supporter Joshua Greene donated a small amount of money to the crowdfunding effort to build a wall along the southern U.S. border. He wasn’t alone. The GoFundMe page to build the wall, to which he’d donated, was a sensation on the right in late 2018 and raised more than $20 million.

Organized by triple-amputee veteran Brian Kolfage, the campaign eventually morphed into a nonprofit called We Build the Wall, which promised to build portions of the wall on private land using the money it raised.

Months later, there’s no evidence that any construction has started, despite claimsfrom Kolfage and his allies that construction would start in April. And now Greene is wondering what ever happened to that wall he was promised his dollars would fund?

“The lack of updates is very concerning,” Greene wrote in an email to Right Richter.

He’s not the only GoFundMe donor curious about what happened to the wall money. Since We Build the Wall blew their April deadline, Twitter replies to Kolfage and the group’s Facebook page have filled up with angry donors. Greene started tweeting his displeasure, too.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Right-wing commentator and “cool kid’s philosopher” Ben Shapiro stormed out of a contentious BBC interview on Thursday after accusing the conservative host of being a “leftist” and bragging about how popular he is.

During the pre-taped interview with BBC interviewer Andrew Neil promoting his new book, The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great, Shapiro quickly became perturbed when Neil—who is known for playing devil’s advocate in interviews—pressed him on recent attempts to roll back abortion rights, asking the editor-in-chief of clickbait rage factory The Daily Wire if those policies would take America back to the “Dark Ages.”

“You purport to be an objective journalist,” Shapiro sniped. “BBC purports to be an objective, down-the-middle network. It obviously is not, it never has been. And you as a journalist are proceeding to call one side of the political aisle ignorant, barbaric, and sending us back to the Dark Ages, why don’t you just say you’re on the left.”

This caused Neil, chairman of conservative magazine The Spectator, to chuckle and tell his guest: “If you only knew how ridiculous that statement is you wouldn’t have said it.”

In a bit of damage control, prior to the chat’s airing, Shapiro tweeted Thursday that he had taped an interview with Neil and “misinterpreted his antagonism as political Leftism,” acknowledging that it was inaccurate.

Shapiro, who is famous for saying “facts don't care about your feelings,” continued to grow frustrated and incensed throughout the 16-minute interview, snarling that Neil was playing “gotcha” by highlighting his old tweets and comments, such as claiming “Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage.”

...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

He pointed to nearby government buildings. In one of them, the authoritarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had, less than a year after Ignatieff’s arrival, devised a plan to evict CEU from Hungary. The university is widely considered the country’s most prestigious graduate school—it’s been a training ground for presidents, diplomats, and even members of Orbán’s own inner circle. But that inner circle had turned against the institution that had nurtured it and now sought to chase the school from the country’s borders. As Ignatieff explained this to me, he shook his head. “This was not supposed to happen here,” he said.

Hungary once had some of the best universities in postcommunist Europe. But Orbán’s government has systematically crushed them. His functionaries have descended on public universities, controlling them tightly. Research funding, once determined by an independent body of academics, is now primarily dispensed by an Orbán loyalist. When I arrived in Budapest, a pro-government website had just called on students to submit the names of professors who espoused “unasked-for left-wing political opinions.” A regime-friendly weekly published an “enemies list” that included the names of dozens of academics, “mercenaries” purportedly working on behalf of a foreign cabal.

Like Pol Pot or Josef Stalin, Orbán dreams of liquidating the intelligentsia, draining the public of education, and molding a more pliant nation. But he is a state-of-the-art autocrat; he understands that he need not resort to the truncheon or the midnight knock at the door. His assault on civil society arrives in the guise of legalisms subverting the institutions that might challenge his authority.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]