Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The rumor appeared shortly after the new coronavirus struck China and spread almost as quickly: that the outbreak now afflicting people around the world had been manufactured by the Chinese government.

The conspiracy theory lacks evidence and has been dismissed by scientists. But it has gained an audience with the help of well-connected critics of the Chinese government such as Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist. And on Sunday, it got its biggest public boost yet.

Speaking on Fox News, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, raised the possibility that the virus had originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak.

“We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there,” the senator said, “but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

SMACKDOWN FOR MAGATS
Smackdown For MAGAts

Spoiler alert: Professional wrestling is fake. Another spoiler alert: So is Donald Trump and his entire administration.

When I was a kid, my friends and I actually had debates over whether professional wrestling was real. Even if you were on the side of it being real, you still knew it was fake. Today, it seems professional wrestling fans are totally in on it, but they still enjoy the “sport. OK, like NASCAR, it’s not a sport which totally makes sense that Donald Trump made an appearance at one of their events yesterday.

But Trump fans are less sophisticated than wrestling fans. They don’t know Donald Trump is fake. They think they guy is an actual billionaire. They think he’s donating his entire presidential salary without getting anything in return (Psst, emoluments, fuckers). They think he’s a great negotiator. They think he’s smart. They think he knows stuff. They don’t think he’s an idiot, or a racist, or a sexist, or a narcissistic shitstain in our nation’s history. Most of all, they actually believe Donald Trump cares and can relate to them.

A few months ago, my ex-girlfriend asked me if I knew wrestling was big right now. I did not know that but it totally makes sense. I mean, if Donald Trump can fool enough people to steal a presidential election, then there’s gotta be a lot of people watching wrestling.

And, it’s appropriate to compare Donald Trump to wrestling because he has a relationship with wrestling, which was probably more real to him than his reality show. Donald Trump worked a program with the World Wrestling Entertainment company. It was a program where two billionaires, Trump and the owner of the company, Vincent McMahon, battled each other at Wrestlemania (the Super Bowl of wrestling) vicariously through wrestlers. The loser got his head shaved. No, it doesn’t make sense to me either. Of course, Donald Trump didn’t actually wrestle but he did jump on McMahon at one point to throw some fake punches. At the end of the show, he got to shave McMahon’s head and then…a bald wrestler gave Donald Trump what is called a “stunner.” I could watch that video clip all day.

Trump’s wrestling connection goes further. Reportedly, McMahon or the WWE (not sure which) paid Trump $4 million for his Wrestlemania gig. But, they didn’t “pay” him. They donated the money to the Trump Foundation. You know, that organization the state of New York recently shut down because of Trump’s corruption with it? But, with Trump taking the money as a donation to his charity, that means he didn’t have to pay taxes on it. Later, Trump used money from that charity to buy portraits of himself and sports memorabilia, pay off legal fees for his shitty bedbug-ridden gold resorts, and make political bribes to one of the lawyers who eventually defended his impeachment before the United States Senate. He also used the charity to make donations to veteran groups in coordination with presidential campaign events, which is illegal. Man, I could make this shit up, but I’m not.

After Donald Trump was elected (fake) to the presidency, he made Linda McMahon, Vince’s wife and CEO of the rasslin’ company, the head of the Small Business Administration. On April 12, 2019, she stepped down. On the 15th of April (in case you’re a Republican, that’s three days later), she was appointed as Chairman of America First Action, a pro-Trump Super PAC, where she plans to raise and spend $300 million in battleground states to reelect Trump. If there’s a reason not to watch wrestling, it’s that right there. Linda herself is a former Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. Thankfully, she lost.

It makes sense that Linda McMahon would chair a Trump Super PAC since she’s already headed one unethical enterprise. She was CEO of WWE and no, it’s not unethical because it’s a fake sport. It’s unethical in that their “wrestlers” are not employees. They’re contractors so the company doesn’t have to pay Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, or provide insurance. After one wrestler with a history of multiple concussions murdered his wife and child before committing suicide, a government survey found that 40% of “wrestlers” were found to be drug users, mostly steroids. WWE has fought states from regulating it as a sport and it has a long legacy of ignoring concussions, like the kind that makes a guy go batshit crazy and murder his wife and child before committing suicide. Donald Trump recently said head injuries to military members weren’t a concern. The mortality rate for wrestlers is 6.4 times higher than it is for men in the general population and higher than other “sports.” The number of wrestlers to die before the age of 65 is insane. Men should not be dying from heart attacks in their 30s. Seriously, Google this shit.

So, when Attorney General William Barr publicly scolds Donald Trump for tweeting on cases before DOJ and making his job “impossible,” don’t believe it. He coordinated his criticism with the White House before he delivered it. Barr has done nothing except use the Justice Department to defense Donald Trump, protect his corrupt friends, and go after his political enemies. After calling back U.S. Attorney’s sentence recommendation for Roger Stone, then saying he wants to review the entire case, over 1,100 former Justice Department employees have called on Barr to resign.

Barr should resign though it wouldn’t do any good. Trump would just replace him with another phony. At some point, maybe they will start wearing masks like those little Mexican wrestlers.

There is no Santa Claus, no Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny isn’t real, wrestling is staged, and Donald Trump is a fake president. It’s time you grew up and realized that.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The rumor appeared shortly after the new coronavirus struck China and spread almost as quickly: that the outbreak now afflicting people around the world had been manufactured by the Chinese government.

The conspiracy theory lacks evidence and has been dismissed by scientists. But it has gained an audience with the help of well-connected critics of the Chinese government such as Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist. And on Sunday, it got its biggest public boost yet.

Speaking on Fox News, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, raised the possibility that the virus had originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak.

“We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there,” the senator said, “but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Washington (AFP) - Christopher Blair produces false stories he insists are easily identifiable as satire rather than news. His pages can rack up millions of views, and at least part of that audience believes the material is true.

Blair, 48, runs eight websites and five Facebook pages from his home in the northeastern US state of Maine. He says the claims his articles make are "ridiculous," such as that President Donald Trump's current term could be extended by three years.

But his content is widely shared by people who take it as fact, contributing to the spread of false information online.

Blair -- a self-described "liberal troll" and political activist -- says he knows what to write for his right-wing "target audience" through years of "being embedded in their world."

He does not hold that audience in high regard.

"They live on... fear and hate and misinformation and very specific storylines that everybody knows aren't true except for them," he told AFP.

His content is rife with disclaimers: Satire. Fake news fact-check. Nothing on this page is real.

If someone clicks through to Blair's articles, instead of instantly sharing them based on a headline, the warnings are visible.

But often, it appears that people do not.

Asked why people believe and share the articles, Blair answers: "Confirmation bias."

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Attorney General William Barr Is the Best Reason to Vote for Clinton
October 27, 1992

A federal judge accuses the Justice Department of trying to “shape” a case involving illegal loans to Iraq. The House Judiciary Committee blasts federal attorneys for compromising their reputation for impartiality in the investigation of a computer-software theft. CIA officials charge a deputy attorney general with advocating the suppression of evidence in a sensitive sentencing hearing.

To even the most avid scandalmonger, these may sound like the ravings of a fevered Orwellian imagination. But in fact they are all part of a litany of wrongdoing leveled at George Bush’s Justice Department in the past two months alone. And at the center of the criticism is the chief articulator of Bush’s imperial presidency, the man who wrote the legal rationale for the Gulf War, the Panama invasion, and the officially sanctioned kidnapping of, foreign nationals abroad — Attorney General William P. Barr.

So fast has Barr’s star dimmed in recent months that even conservative pundits like The New York Times’s William Safire have taken to calling him the “Cover-Up General.” But so poorly understood are Barr’s ties to the president himself that the fires now threatening the Justice Department have barely singed the Oval Office.

To some Washington insiders, that comes as a surprise, for Barr is surely the closest thing this administration has to a court philosopher. Through the policy decisions he has authored, first as assistant attorney general and finally as the chief himself, he has fashioned a coherent, radical ideology for a White House that is only ostensibly middle-of-the-road.

While the president, for example, hails a “new world order” based on the rules of law, Barr’s briefs give us broken international covenants. Though conservative purists pretend that the Justice Department remains reactive, the attorney general, bolstered by an activist Supreme Court, sets aggressively conservative social agendas on everything from abortion to immigration — while stalling off inquiries into a myriad of scandals. Indeed, nothing better sums up the political gospel and failings of George Bush’s reign on the eve of this election than the handiwork of his chief lawyer.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

An Exchange on Ernst Jünger

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]