Stop me if you’ve heard this one: An adjudicated rapist/multiply-convicted felon and a war criminal under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court walk onto a red carpet in Alaska...
Dang. I can’t remember the punchline but I don’t think I was laughing.
In his base camp with war criminal, free-world pariah Vladimir Putin, Donald “Day one war-ender” Trump humiliated himself and our country. Having forced US troops literally to kneel and roll out the red carpet for Putin, welcoming him like storied royalty rather than the murderer he is -- “his excellency Vladimir Putin,” as designated in left-behind plans for a luncheon that never happened, post-thud – Trump showered gifts and all but begged the KGB-trained liar for praise. Which he got, probably scripted in Moscow.
Like all world leaders, Putin knows he can hustle Trump by feeding his unquenchable need for adulation. Played him like a three-ruble balalaika.
After predictably made-for-MAGA tough talk, Trump predictably caved. No ground given (literal or figurative) by Putin.
Sealing the no-deal, Russia’s dictator told America’s that if it weren’t for vote-by-mail he would have won in 2020, after which Trump announced he wants to ban it. And Putin “confirmed” Trump’s perseverating confabulation that if he, Trump, had been president at the time, he, Putin, wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. If Putin feared Trump then, why hasn’t he yielded to him now, when he is president? Does he, as rumored, have “something” on Trump?
Totally believable.
If I’d become a nuclear physicist instead of a physician, I’d have solved cold fusion.
Ensorcelled by Putin’s weaponized fluffery, Trump surrendered his demand for a ceasefire and defended Putin’s claims to the Ukrainian territory he stole by kidnapping children and by bombing hospitals, shopping centers, and homes. In response, because, unlike Trump, they understand history and world affairs, European leaders reasserted their support of Ukraine. Humiliated, Trump slunk to Sean “Safe-haven” Hannity to serve up Putin’s talking points, assuring the Fox host and his credulous listeners that the meeting was a “10 out of 10.” The self-congratulatory gaslighting he produced online afterward was emetic. And Kim-ian.
As expected of anyone Trump hires, NATO ambassador Matthew Whitaker, integrity-free because if he had any he’d not have been appointed, suggested that Russia could keep the parts of Ukraine it “earned on the battlefield.” Earned! Then he puffed that “only Trump” could end the war, because he’s a “peacemaker.” He must have forgotten January 6.
Monday, Ukraine’s President Zelensky arrived at the White House, along with seven European leaders who, because they don’t trust Trump, rushed there to protect Ukraine’s interests. Meekled by men and women of resolve, he ended up pledging to support them. We’ll see. Tuesday, he backslid. Living eternally in opposite world, MAGAs thought the leaders’ presence signaled respect for Trump. Maybe because, knowing the drill, they performatively thanked him.
Trump’s failure to art a deal is so unambiguous that, for now, we’ll leave it there. Instead, here’s something that, because I’m a physician, troubles me greatly: Through RFK, Jr., his hand-picked, Republican-senator-approved science-illiterate crank, Trump is making it harder for doctors to do their jobs.
Busy doctors don’t have time to read every new research paper. To stay current, they rely on reputable sources for their findings and their summaries of the work of others. On an online Q&A forum in which I participate, I’m often asked how to trust online medical information. Till now, along with places like Mayo and Fred Hutch, I’ve advised searching CDC and NIH websites, which many doctors also do.
Now, not only can laypeople no longer rely on them, neither can doctors. Bobby J stripped those institutions of their most important researchers and fired members of oversight and advisory committees, replacing them with science-deficient hacks who’ll fill third-rate journals with crap research showing predetermined results. Because of ArfKay’s brainwormed delusions, your docs will fly a bit blinder.
It’s worse. Trump is the first president actively trying to lose the war on cancer. Well, sure, he has more important issues than caring what Babbling Bobby does. Growing the billions he’s made from his bitcoin scam since Inauguration 2.0., for example. If he cared more about Americans he swore to protect than about personal enrichment, he’d have stopped Junior from drastically defunding cancer research. Also mRNA vaccine research, which has encouraging potential for treating many, if not all kinds of cancer. It’s idiotic and deadly and MAGAs voted for it twice. But they’re too busy loving ICE brutality to care.
I know people who voted for Trump to stop the “woke mind virus,” which threatens an epidemic of thoughtfulness. There’s another virus, though, whose deadliness isn’t imaginary, infecting the White House and Congress: Trumpism. In the next election, America needs decontamination by massive, enlightened voter turnout.
Which is why Republicans hate mail-in voting: it eliminates deliberately created long lines in minority districts and makes it easier for workers’ voices to be heard. Democrats, mostly.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Fcking brilliant, thanks. Your wordsmithing can make my head spin, and that's a GOOD thing! I even learned a new word today: 'ensorcell'. Life is good.
ReplyDeleteThanks! Better than the ChatGPT one, I think.
DeleteIt's comforting to know that Sid out classes AI
DeleteI asked ChatGPT if I do and it said no
DeleteAgreed with Oblin. Style can be imitated. Intellect, humor, and a host of other things are alien to computers, no matter how many writings it "consults". If anyone can't pick the real from the unreal, then they don't deserve to read it, the real that is.
ReplyDeleteI despise AI with the heat of a thousand suns, yet many around me haven't a clue what they're injecting into their digital bloodstream. I weep for the dumbing-down of modern humans, living in a digital reality... willfully-ignorant of actual reality and soothed by the narcotic of the Algorithm God. What helps me cope is the realization that I am a fluke of the universe and also made up of the stuff of stars, both at the same time.
ReplyDeleteDid you miss the note that my previous post was written by ChatGPT? It was an experiment, not to be repeated. But interesting.
DeleteRe "the war on cancer"
ReplyDeleteMost people would be much smarter and better informed if they had awareness of what the "war on cancer" movement does NOT raise awareness about.
The official mainstream "war on cancer" has been an unofficial "war" on the unsuspecting public: to keep them misinformed and misguided about the real truth of this "war."
The orthodox cancer establishment has been saying a cure for cancer "is just around the corner" and "we're winning the war on cancer" for decades. It's almost all hype and lies (read Dr. Guy Faguet's 'War on cancer," Dr. Sam Epstein's work, or Clifton Leaf's book, or Dr. Siefried's work on this bogus 'war', etc).
If the public were to scrutinize what the medical industry and its government pawns are telling them about the 'war on cancer' instead of blindly believing what they're saying, they'd find that the cancer industry and the cancer charities have been dismissing, ignoring, and obfuscating the true causes of cancer while mostly putting the blame for cancer on the individual, denying or dismissing the serious harms from orthodox cancer treatments and chemical toxicants, and resorting to deceptive cancer statistics to "educate" (think: mislead) the public that their way of treatment is actually successful --- read this well referenced scholarly article's ("A Mammogram Letter The British Medical Journal Censored") afterword on the war on cancer at https://www.rolf-hefti.com/mammogram.html (scroll down to the afterword that addresses the fraudulent 'war on cancer').
Does anyone really think it's a coincidence that double Nobel laureate Linus Pauling called the 'war on cancer' a fraud? If you look closer you'll come to the same conclusion. But...politics and self-serving interests of the conventional medical cartel, and their allied corporate media, keep the real truth far away from the public at large. Or people's own denial or indifference of the real truth.
I was tempted not to publish this, "Pat," because I get enough paranoid views of doctors suppressing cures or cancer and all else. It's insulting and so obviously false that it calls into question the ability of people who believe it to separate fact from fiction. To do so, of course, begins with wanting to.
DeleteI agree "the war on cancer" is a silly concept at best. I used it here only to point out the dangers of what ArfKay is doing. And it kinda puts the lie to your whole premise, doesn't it? There's legitimate and promising research being done at NIH and other places. And, to anyone paying attention, in the past couple of decades, cancers formerly considered untreatable are now being cured. Not just treated: cured.
But that doesn't comport with your narrative. Nor, like Trump's election lies, will facing facts dissuade "believers" from their happy place.
I'll let your post stand. But don't bother to respond. I won't publish it. It's a fool's errand to get into arguments with people who claim to know truths to which we, the less brilliant, are blind.
Thanks for dropping by, though.
"And, to anyone paying attention, in the past couple of decades, cancers formerly considered untreatable are now being cured. Not just treated: cured."
DeleteChyaaa...I am a complete idiot and did the math on that.
For someone who can write several paragraphs on the subject? They clearly are in Lalaland.
MAGA is fking dangerous. A clear and present danger to America. The reason? The lack of critical thinking and common sense. The lack of good information. Either willfully or otherwise matters not. Uncurious, uneducated, unhinged and sociopathic. The angrier they get? The deeper the belief. Very much like a cancer that's spread throughout the body. In the marrow. Seemingly uncurable to about 40% +/- 5% of America.
It's a modern day crusade. Violence is the only answer. It's the only way to MAGA. Complete control will make everyone happy in their "unity".
All you can do is ignore them just to keep your sanity. But once in a while you got to set the record straight. This was a convenient opportunity.
The sheer mean spiritedness of it is so typical. MAGA can't help themselves. In 20 years they will all be dead of polio or some crap.