Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

On the day of his inauguration, Trump lied about the weather. The next day, he lied about the size of his inauguration crowd. He has become no less brazen in the 11 months since. The president who won’t change isn’t so much untruthful as anti-truthful, his words so frequently and flagrantly wrong that they amount to a comprehensive rejection of the very idea of accuracy.

The Star has counted 978 false claims since his inauguration, an average of three per day, about everything from media outlets to legislation to the head of the Boy Scouts calling him to pay him a compliment. (Didn’t happen. He just made it up.) As Trump careens from policy to policy and outrage to outrage, lying has been the most consistent feature of his presidency.

“We’ve had presidents that have lied or misled the country, but we’ve never had a serial liar before. And that’s what we’re dealing with here,” said Douglas Brinkley, the prominent Rice University presidential historian. “We haven’t seen anything like this. It’s a storybook, ‘emperor has no clothes’ kind of thing. Or it’s like dictators in countries where they just make up all sorts of crazy things and people are supposed to nod in agreement.”

That tens of millions of Americans are indeed nodding in agreement, of their own free will, has created a profound angst among Democrats and others who worry about a spiral into truthlessness. Some of them despairingly tell journalists not to waste their time fact-checking the lies, since facts have obviously become irrelevant.

A hard look at the facts suggests that view is too pessimistic.

This is no good-news story. Trump’s year of lying shamelessly has deceived tens of millions, fomented hate, left the world unable to accept even the most trivial words of its most powerful person, and forced Americans, like the residents of totalitarian states, to expend precious energy grounding themselves in the reality their leader is deliberately trying to get them to forget.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Congress's tax scorekeeper said Friday that the tax-cut package President Trump signed earlier in the day won't fully pay for itself through economic growth.

After accounting for macroeconomic effects, the bill would reduce federal revenue by $1.07 trillion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT).

While that's less than the $1.46 trillion price tag the JCT put on the bill before accounting for economic growth, the committee says the bill still isn't close to being deficit-neutral.

The JCT's report was released hours after Trump signed the tax package into law at the White House. The president said that the tax cuts will be "fantastic for the economy."

 

[Michael Scally MD]

In Your Face ... Wake The Fuck Up ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

“We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements—transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting—profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

Carl Sagan. Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

TRUMP’S MOLL
https://claytoonz.com/2017/12/23/trumps-moll/

Donald Trump and his sycophants boast they’ve restored respect to the United States. It’s like their claim they’re rebuilding the military and the FBI. They’re all lies. The military isn’t in shambles and they’re actually trying to destroy the credibility of the FBI.

Our nation lost a lot of respect from the rest of the world during the George W. Bush administration. Starting a war on false pretenses, destabilizing it, killing tens of thousands of people, and creating a haven for terrorists will do that. Also, when you attempt to demean an ally who disagrees with you by renaming french fries “freedom fries,” and your president can’t enunciate “nuclear,” respect goes out the window.

Respect toward the United States was rebuilt during the Obama era. Speaking coherently helps.

Respect for our nation is again falling into a gutter. The world looks toward Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau to be champions of freedom and democracy, not Donald Trump.

People don’t respect you when they play to your vanities. They don’t respect you when it works. They don’t respect patronizing Nazis and pedophiles, verbally attacking women and minorities, and they don’t respect when you call the first line of freedom, a free press, enemies of your nation.

You are not respected when you deny there was an attack on your democracy by a hostile nation, despite your own intelligence agencies verifying it. Failing to protect your country, which you’ve sworn to do, is not respected.

You are not respected by expressing admiration for thugs, bullies, and autocrats who lead China, Russia, Turkey, and the Philippines.

You are not respected by pulling out of the Paris climate treaty, something that only one other nation in the world refuses to join.

When you proclaim Jerusalem, which the world recognizes as occupied territory, as Israel’s capital, you lose respect. When every single nation in the world disagrees with you, you lose respect. When your action gets your nation thrown out of the peace talks, you lose respect.

When your vice president is an ass-kissing weasel, you lose respect. When your entire party follows suit with the ass kissing, you lose respect.

When nearly half the nation selects a narcissistic, juvenile, sexist, racist, anti-Semitic ignoramus as its leader, the nation loses respect.

When you threaten to start world war 3, you lose respect. When you refer to your enemy, who has nuclear weapons, as “little rocket man,” you lose respect. When you lose a war of insults with Kim Jong Un, you lose respect and people start to believe you are a “dotard.”

When you send your ambassador to the United Nations to threaten and intimidate its members on how they vote in a meaningless, non-binding measure, you lose respect. When you threaten your allies, tell them you’re “taking names,” and will withhold financial assistance in the future if they don’t do what you want, you lose respect. When you attempt the aforementioned ignoring the reality that there are upcoming votes that do serve your interest, you lose respect because they think you’re an idiot.

And your ambassador, who was formerly respected, has lost all respect.

And that’s the way it is, see…

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[OldmanRob]

I would not be able to trust you as a doctor. Watching your level of maturity and addiction to this subject says an awful lot about you.

I'd be worried about you being in a Twitter war while your suppose to be treating me.

Don't you get sick of this?

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The United Nations monitor on poverty and human rights has issued a devastating report on the condition of America, accusing Donald Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress of attempting to turn the country into the “world champion of extreme inequality”.

Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has completed a two-week official tour of the US by releasing an excoriating attack on the direction of the nation. Not only does he warn that the tax bill currently being rushed through Congress will hugely increase already large disparities between rich and poor, he accuses Trump and his party of consciously distorting the shape of American society in a “bid to become the most unequal society in the world”.

“American exceptionalism was a constant theme in my conversations,” he writes. “But instead of realizing its founders’ admirable commitments, today’s United States has proved itself to be exceptional in far more problematic ways that are shockingly at odds with its immense wealth and its founding commitment to human rights. As a result, contrasts between private wealth and public squalor abound.”

In his most stark message, Alston warns that the Republicans’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/01/gop-eyes-post-tax-cut-changes-to-welfare-medicare-and-social-security/?utm_term=.b2e701246c56 (declared intent) to slash crucial welfare programs next year in order to pay for some of the $1.5tn tax cuts could cost American lives. “The consequences for an already overstretched and inadequate system of social protection are likely to be fatal for many programs, and possibly also for those who rely upon them,” he writes.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The United Nations monitor on poverty and human rights has issued a devastating report on the condition of America, accusing Donald Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress of attempting to turn the country into the “world champion of extreme inequality”.

Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has completed a two-week official tour of the US by releasing an excoriating attack on the direction of the nation. Not only does he warn that the tax bill currently being rushed through Congress will hugely increase already large disparities between rich and poor, he accuses Trump and his party of consciously distorting the shape of American society in a “bid to become the most unequal society in the world”.

“American exceptionalism was a constant theme in my conversations,” he writes. “But instead of realizing its founders’ admirable commitments, today’s United States has proved itself to be exceptional in far more problematic ways that are shockingly at odds with its immense wealth and its founding commitment to human rights. As a result, contrasts between private wealth and public squalor abound.”

In his most stark message, Alston warns that the Republicans’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/01/gop-eyes-post-tax-cut-changes-to-welfare-medicare-and-social-security/?utm_term=.b2e701246c56 (declared intent) to slash crucial welfare programs next year in order to pay for some of the $1.5tn tax cuts could cost American lives. “The consequences for an already overstretched and inadequate system of social protection are likely to be fatal for many programs, and possibly also for those who rely upon them,” he writes.

This is a battle over how we define freedom and how we govern our nation.

We must:
-Frame the debate around morality and values, not policy
-Emphasize the role of the Public, and the Public Good
-Understand the operative metaphors and use them
-Learn from past victories/defeats

To quote President Franklin D. Roosevelt: "This is more than a political campaign. This is a call to arms."

The Trump era reminds us that we must never take the blessings of democracy for granted. The preservation of freedom and justice has always required the active engagement of citizens.

Abraham Lincoln called this “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Every generation of Americans is called to defend it. Organizing and mobilizing voters is crucial. Yet this is largely a war of what Republican strategists call "weaponized information."

Republicans are not fighting abstract policy battles; they’re fighting for an ideology. The vision they seek to impose upon the American people is dark, cruel, and terribly unpopular. But we can’t just be against what Republicans want. We must seize the opportunity to define the progressive, Democratic plan for America’s future. Persistence in a positive vision beats negative resistance.

After all, they aren’t just fighting one-off policy battles. They are stacking the courts, gerrymandering the Congressional districts, making it harder for people to vote, and making it easier for wealthy interests to game our political system for their own greedy benefit.

Republicans are playing on a systemic level. We must rise to the challenge and advance a strong, positive, moral plan of action that preempts and undermines Republican ideas and connects with people on the deepest level – the moral level.

- George Lakoff

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]