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KARMA IS A REPUBLICAN BITCH

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on March 24, 2020 at 12:05 am

Americans are living through extraordinary times. For many Republicans, who have fought to convince Americans that Coronavirus was simply a Democratic hoax, are now fighting for their lives.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is the first United Sates Senator to test positive for the virus. But other Republicans have also been forced to self-quarantine.

Among these:

Senators Mitt Romney and Mike Lee (R-UT) announced on March 22 that they would self-quarantine because of their association with Paul.
On March 15, Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ) said that he would work from home “until otherwise told by doctors” after learning that “a member of our DC team” had tested positive.
Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) put out a statement on March 8 saying that he had been notified that during his attendance of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in March, he was in contact with someone who had tested positive for Coronavirus. He said that he would “remain at my home in Arizona until the conclusion of the 14-day period following my interaction with this individual.”
On March 17, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that he had completed a period of self-quarantine.
On March 17, the office of Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) announced that he had decided to self-quarantine after meeting with a Colorado constituent who later tested positive for Coronavirus.
Representative Ann Wagner (R-MO) said in a statement on March 18 that she would self-quarantine after meeting with a member of Congress who had tested positive for Coronavirus.

On March 12, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) said that he would self-quarantine after possibly mingling with a member of a Brazilian delegation at Mar-a-Lago who tested positive for Coronavirus.
On March 15, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced that he tested negative for Coronavirus.
Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) said on March 18 that he was going into self-quarantine after he held an “extended meeting” with Representative Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) who has tested positive for Coronavirus.
On Mach 19, Representative Tom Cole (R-OK) announced that he would self-quarantine upon learning that Diaz-Balart had tested positive for Coronavirus.
Representative Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) announced on March 10 that his Coronavirus test results came back negative.
On March 9, Representative Doug Collins (R-GA) said that he would self-quarantine after CPAC organizers found of photo of him and the conference attendee who tested positive.
Representative Drew Ferguson (R-GA) said on March 18 on Twitter that he was going into self-quarantine after being in contact with a member of Congress who has tested positive for Coronavirus.

This is not to imply that only Republican members of Congress have gotten Coronavirus.

Democrats have, too—and will self-quarantine:

Representative Julia Brownley (CA)
Representative Don Beyer (VA)
Representative John Yarmuth (KY)
Representative Ben Ray Luján (NM)
Representative Gwen Moore (WI)
Representative Jason Crow (CO)
Representative Matt Cartwright (PA)
Representative Stephanie Murphy (FL)
Democratic Rep. Kathleen Rice (NY)
Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi (NY)
Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham (SC)
Democratic Rep. David Price (NC)
Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids (KS)
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim (NJ)
Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (TX)

The difference between the two political parties: While Democrats overwhelmingly accept Coronavirus as a deadly reality, a far smaller portion of Republicans do.

A Pew Research Center study released on March 18 found that 59% of Democrats called the virus a major threat to Americans’ health. But only 33% of Republicans agreed.

This despite the fact that medical experts and epidemiologists have warned that the virus could affect many millions of Americans, regardless of political party or state.

Twelve percent of Democrats believe President Donald Trump is doing a good job handling the crisis and 23% believe Vice President Mike Pence is doing a somewhat or very good job. But 82% of Republicans said Trump was doing a somewhat or very good job, and 78% said the same for Pence.

Donald Trump

No doubt much of this divide stems from Trump’s initial refusal to take the disease seriously. On February 28, at a campaign rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, Trump claimed: “Now the Democrats are politicizing the Coronavirus….This is their new hoax.”

Throughout his Presidency, Trump has used “hoax” to attack his opponents, such as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Trump’s collaboration with Russian Intelligence agents during the 2016 Presidential campaign.

And Republicans have utterly tied themselves to him since the 2018 mid-term elections, where many moderate Republicans lost their seats.

According to Toluse Olorunnipa, White House reporter for The Washington Post: “They have realized that if they’re going to keep their seats, if they’re going to be able to have any future in the party, they have to be completely tied to President Trump and really wait for his call in terms of what exactly they’re going to do.”

Another reason why Republicans—voters and politicians—refuse to take the Coronavirus outbreak seriously lies in their changed attitude toward higher education.

An August 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 59% of Republicans say higher education has a negative effect on the country. Only 18% of Democrats agreed with that.

During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump infamously said: “I love the poorly educated!”

Now they have a champion in their contempt for education generally and science in particular.

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HOW HEALTHY ARE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES?

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on November 19, 2019 at 12:10 am

The United States Constitution mandates that candidates for the Presidency be at least 35. But it does not mandate an age-limit for such candidates.

In light of so many oldsters now clogging the highways and airways for this honor, it’s clearly time to establish one.

Consider the ages of the major candidates for 2020:

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg – 77
Vermont United States Senator Bernie Sanders – 78
Former Vice President Joe Biden – 76
Massachusetts United States Senator Elizabeth Warren – 70
President Donald Trump – 73

Of course, there have been past Presidential candidates who appeared better-suited for the rocker than the Oval Office:

Former California Governor Ronald Reagan was 69 when he was elected in 1980 and 73 when he was re-elected in 1984.
Kansas United States Senator Bob Dole was 73 when he unsuccessfully opposed Bill Clinton in 1996.
Arizona United States Senator John McCain was 72 when he ran in 2008 and lost to Barack Obama.
Former First Lady, United States Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was 68 when she ran in 2016 and lost to Donald Trump—who was 70.

And with advancing age come advancing health dangers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “About three-fourths of all deaths are among persons ages 65 and older. The majority of deaths are caused by chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.”

Running for any political office is one of the most stressful exercises anyone can undertake. In races for the House of Representatives, candidates are constantly on the move, shuttling from one event to the next.

Races for the Senate demand shuttling from city-to-city, eating large amounts of junk food, getting little sleep, giving hurried speeches before driving or flying off to the next meeting with potential constituents, having to readjust their approach to each new group of voters. (For example: Farmers have totally different concerns than doctors.)

And races for the White House demand even greater endurance. Candidates aren’t competing for voters within a single city or state, but within the entire country. There are 50 states comprising the United States of America. They are all different—and many of them have conflicting interests. California, for example, opposes offshore oil drilling—while Louisiana champions an increase in this.

And it can prove politically suicidal to write off appearing in states where the vote is “locked up.” Hillary Clinton refused to campaign in such “Rustbelt” states as Michigan and Pennsylvania because she “knew” they were hers for the taking. Voters there resented her refusing to visit them—and they got even by voting for Trump.

Even young candidates suffer the ravages that come from nonstop campaigning. New York United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy was 42 when he campaigned for President in 1968. His campaign lasted only 85 days before it was cut short by his assassination. Yet he was taking massive doses of vitamin B and medications for his voice damaged from non-stop speech making.

Robert F. Kennedy

Some older Presidential candidates find themselves overwhelmed by the stress of nonstop campaigning.

In October, Bernie Sanders, 78, was hospitalized with—according to his campaign—“chest discomfort,” It turned out to be a heart attack.
In September 2016, Hillary Clinton, then 68, was privately diagnosed with pneumonia. The campaign concealed the diagnosis until she was caught on camera fainting from dehydration.

Bernie Sanders

Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D

Nor can Presidential candidates be relied on to tell the truth about the state of their health.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was stricken with polio in 1921 at the age of 39. He couldn’t stand or walk without support and was otherwise seated in a wheelchair. During his 12 years as President, he never used a wheelchair in public. Although suffering from hardening of the arteries and clearly a dying man, he kept this secret during his last Presidential campaign in 1944.

Franklin D. Roosevelt meeting with Winston Churchill

In 1960, Massachusetts United States Senator John F. Kennedy denied that he had Addison’s Disease, an insufficiency of the adrenal glands. In fact, he did suffer from this—and his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, had even stashed doses of cortisone in safe deposit boxes around the country in case he suffered a mishap.
Donald Trump’s doctor claimed: “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” This despite his refusal to exercise and his indulging in fatty and cholesterol-heavy foods.

Is there a way that Americans can be certain that the President they elect is truly physically fit for office?

Admittedly, no proposed remedy is foolproof. Still, there is a clear need to stop taking candidates at their own self-serving word.

Candidates for the office of the Presidency should be required to submit to a full physical examination conducted by an independent panel of board-certified physicians—and the results immediately made public. Any candidate who refuses to take part should be officially barred from running.

Candidates for the United States Secret Service—which protects the President—are required to under rigorous physical and mental examinations before they are allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.

Those who compete for control of the nation’s nuclear launch codes should be required to do the same.

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BRING ON THE ROACHES–INSECT AND HUMAN: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on June 22, 2018 at 12:05 am

To capture the true intensity of the “homeless” problem in San Francisco, you must confront its realities at the street level. Imagine:

You’re elderly, and walking with a cane—and must often try to negotiate your way around big tents that take up most of a sidewalk.
You’re riding in a wheelchair along a sidewalk until you come to a large mattress lying directly in your path, with a potentially psychotic “homeless” man lying upon it.
You find a street teeming with rats—eating the food scraps left by “homeless” people.
You board a local bus and are forced to sit near a man stinking of feces and/or urine. Naturally, the driver doesn’t put him off—giving you the choice of surviving the stench or getting off to catch another bus.
You walk into an underground Municipal Railway bus station—and find it littered with derelicts passed out or shooting up heroin in plain sight. Naturally, they don’t worry about picking up their used hypodermic needles. They leave those out for others to step on or pick up at their own risk.

You’re standing at a bus stop or eating in a restaurant—when a large, filthy, possibly disease-carrying man or woman demands a “handout” from you.
You can’t use the elevator at the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station because “homeless” derelicts have ruined its mechanism with urine and feces.

In 2010, San Francisco voters passed the “No Sit/No Lie” ordinance, which “makes it unlawful, with certain exceptions, to sit or lie on a public sidewalk, or on an object placed on a public sidewalk, between 7AM and 11PM.”

But walk down almost any street in the downtown part of the city and you’ll find sidewalks crowded with stinking, disease-ridden, lice/bedbug-infested, drug-addicted, alcohol-soaked, often psychotic men and women whom city officials politely refer to as “the homeless.”

Among the trappings that go with this population:

Tents
Mattresses
Piles of belongings
Stolen shopping cards
Trash
Half-eaten food
Empty cans/bottles of alcohol
Feces
Hypodermic needles

What you’ll almost never see: Police actually enforcing the “No Sit/No Lie” ordinance.

So much for the will of the voters.

San Francisco officials have effectively washed their hands of the problem. If local residents must put up with repeated violations of the most basic sanitation laws, that’s their tough luck.

What matters to the Mayor and Board of Supervisors is this: The “rights” of those whose filth and behavior pose an immediate threat to public health and safety take precedence over those of tax-paying, law-abiding San Franciscans.

San Francisco residents can be fined $25 to $1,000 for feeding pigeons—but not for feeding street bums.

During the Mayorship of Willie Brown (1996 – 2004), Hizzonor proposed what he thought was a brilliant way for residents to “contribute” to “street people.”

Those who were somehow certified as “homeless” would be issued special electronic “cash cards.” When someone wanted to make a “donation,” s/he would swipe a credit card against the one owned by the street bum, for whatever amount s/he wanted to donate.

But before the program started, someone at City Hall realized a blunt truth: Residents—especially women—weren’t likely to whip out their credit cards in front of a ranting, foul-smelling, probably disease-ridden street bum.

It’s long past time for San Francisco—and other cities—to stop catering to the druggies, alcoholics, mental cases and bums who prey on the guilt or fear of law-abiding, tax-paying citizens.

The same laws that protect citizens against patients with highly communicable diseases like typhoid and cholera should be vigorously applied to those whose filthy habits threaten similar public contagion.

Among such reforms:

The city should launch a “Please Do Not Feed the Bums” publicity campaign—as it has against feeding pigeons. And it should be backed up with stiff fines for those caught doing so.
Those living on the street should be given a choice: Go to a local shelter or face arrest and the immediate confiscation of their possessions.
Bus drivers should have the right to refuse passengers who stink of urine/feces, as they present a potential health-hazard to others.
The owners of restaurants should likewise be allowed to refuse service on the same basis.
Those applying for welfare benefits should be required to provide proof of residence. Too many people come to San Francisco because, upon arrival, they can immediately apply for such benefits.
The city should set up a special unit to deal entirely with removing “street people” and their possessions from city sidewalks. This could be a division of the Sanitation Department, since its personnel are used to removing filth and debris of all types.

San Francisco officials need to:

Forcefully tell alcoholics and drug addicts: “Your anti-social behavior is not welcome here. Take your self-destructive lifestyles elsewhere. We won’t subsidize them.”
Take the mentally unstable off the street and place them in institutions where their needs can be met.
Tell those who are just plain bums: Don’t expect us to support you.

Only then will San Francisco rightly reclaim its former glory as “the city by the Bay.”

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BRING ON THE ROACHES–INSECT AND HUMAN: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on June 21, 2018 at 1:45 am

Imagine that, late one night, you wake up and decide to go to the kitchen for a drink of water. You turn on the light—and suddenly find a virtual army of cockroaches hurriedly scurrying across the floor.

In the morning, you call an exterminator, and a “pest control specialist” soon knocks at your door.

“What you need to do,” he says, “is to put out big packets of sugar for the roaches.”

“Wait a minute—don’t roaches love sugar? How is this going to make them go away?”

“It won’t.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“The point is that roaches are God’s creatures, and they need to eat, too.”

A typical cockroach scene

“But they’ve taken over my kitchen. They’re filthy, they leave droppings everywhere and they contaminate the food I’m supposed to eat.”

“You must learn to have compassion for all of God’s creatures, and learn to get along with them.”

“So if I hire you, you’re not going to get rid of them for me?”

“No.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Help you to accept that they have a right to be a part of your community.”

If a pest control company actually operated like that, how long would they be in business?

Not long.

Yet, in San Francisco, successive mayors and members of the Board of Supervisors operate in exactly that manner toward succeeding waves of human pestilence. And they remain in office for years.

Huge areas of the city are covered in feces, urine, trash and needles. Hospitals overflow with patients that have fallen ill due to the contamination.

NBC News surveyed 153 blocks of the city—an area more than 20 miles. That area includes popular tourist spots like Union Square and the cable car turnaround. It’s bordered by Van Ness Avenue, Market Street, Post Street and Grant Avenue. And it’s also home to City Hall, schools, playgrounds, and a police station.

A typical San Francisco scene

Most of the trash found consisted of heaps of garbage, food, and discarded junk—including 100 drug needles and more than 300 piles of feces throughout downtown. If you step on one of these needles, you can get HIV, Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B or a variety of other viral diseases.

But you don’t have to actually get stuck by a needle to become a victim. Once fecal matter dries, it can become airborne and release deadly viruses, such as the rotavirus.

“If you happen to inhale that, it can also go into your intestine,” says Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. The results can prove fatal, especially in children.

As the news unit filmed a typical day’s activity in San Francisco, a group of preschool students, enjoying a field trip, walked to City Hall.

Responding to a reporter’s question, Adelita Orellana said: “We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash.

“Sometimes they ask what is it, and that’s a conversation that’s a little difficult to have with a two-year old, but we just let them know that those things are full of germs, that they are dangerous, and they should never be touched.”

San Francisco’s political elite see this blight as well as everyone else. They can’t avoid seeing it, since the city covers 47 square miles.

San Francisco City Hall

Cabe6403 at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons

One of those who sees the disgrace up-front is Supervisor Hillary Ronen: “Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable We’re losing tourists. We’re losing conventions in San Francisco.”

Yet what does she propose as the solution? “We need more temporary beds for street homelessness.”

This is on a par with a “pest control expert” recommending: “We need more sugar to clear up our roach problem.”

Thanks to its mild climate and social programs that dole out cash payments to virtually anyone with no residency requirement, San Francisco is often considered the “homeless capital” of the United States.

According to a 2016 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, there are about 13,000 “homeless” people in San Francisco. Of these, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 refuse shelter.

In 2016, San Francisco spent $275 million on homelessness—up from $241 million in 2015. Public Works cleanup crews picked up more than 679 tons of trash from homeless tent camps—and collected more than 100,000 used syringes from the camps.

In 2016, San Francisco residents made 22,608 complaints about encampments—a five-fold increase from 2015.

City officials euphemistically call this population “the homeless.” That’s because they don’t want to use words that accurately describe those who comprise the overwhelming majority of this population:

Druggies
Drunks
Mentals
Bums.

Or, as even many police, social workers and paramedics who wrestle with this population privately refer to them: DDMBs.

Yet the mere citing of statistics—how many “homeless,” how much money is spent on how many people, how much filth they produce—doesn’t capture the true intensity of the problem.

To do that, you must confront its realities at the street level. Which is what we’ll do in Part Two of this series.

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CELEBRITIES AND TRAGEDY–GENUINE AND SELF-INFLICTED

In Entertainment, History, Medical, Social commentary on May 10, 2018 at 12:18 am

Whtney Houston drowned in her bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 11, 2012.

The cause of death: Coronary artery disease—and cocaine use. She was 48.

Ever since, reporters and commentators have repeatedly used the word “tragedy” to describe her fate.

But there are tragedies that are brought on by events beyond human control—and tragedies that are self-inflicted.

Consider:

Julie Andrews: Whose four-octave soprano voice has delighted audiences for decades on Broadway (Camelot, My Fair Lady) and movies (Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music).

In 1964, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress (for Mary Poppins).

Her performance in The Sound of Music made it the highest-grossing film of 1965—and won her a second Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.

Julie Andrews, in her best-loved role as “Mary Poppins”

In 1997, she underwent surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center to remove non-cancerous nodules in her throat. The nodules were removed—but so was her ability to sing.

Her husband, Blake Edwards, was widely quoted as saying that Andrews’ voice hds been all but ruined: ”If you heard it, you’d weep.”

Whitney Houston: Blessed with beauty, charm and a golden, intense singing voice that can turn even the almost-unsingable “Star Spangled Banner” into a rousing anthem.

As a beloved, internationally-recognized vocalist, she enjoyed even greater fame and wealth as a movie star (The Bodyguard, Waiting to Exhale).

Whitney Houston

Meanwhile, she took on increasingly deadly habits. She chain-smoked cigarettes. And marijuana—“a lot.” She dove into alcohol, pills, cocaine.

During a 2002 interview with Diane Sawyer, she denied using crack. Not because it’s lethal, or because it would destroy The Voice that she believed was God’s gift to her.

No, it was because “I make too much money to ever smoke crack. Let’s get that straight. OK? We don’t do crack. We don’t do that. Crack is whack.”

Crack cocaine

In 2006, the National Enquirer ran an interview with her sister-in-law, Tina, who charged that Houston spent her days locked in her bedroom “smoking crack, using sex toys to satisfy herself and ignoring personal hygiene.”

Then, in 2009, appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s season premiere, Houston finally admitted that she used drugs with her ex-husband, Bobby Brown, who “laced marijuana with rock cocaine.”

In other words, crack.

So, apparently, crack wasn’t whack.

Over time, the once-magnificent instrument that was your voice started to change noticeably. She could no longer hit high notes, or hold one the way she did in her immortal hit, “I Will Always Love You.”

Her voice now sounded hoarse, raspy.

In 2010, she embarked on a “Nothing But Love World Tour.” It was a disaster. In Brisbane, she paused during singing to take a drink of water.

A critic said her performance in London was marked by a strained voice filled with coughs and wheezes.

Fans felt cheated—especially after paying $165 for a ticket—and reacted with jeers and boos. Some walked out in mid-concert.

On the night before her death, Houston become belligerent and almost duked it out with singer Stacy Francis at the Tru Hollywood nightclub. Her boyfriend, Ray J, had to step in to prevent a fistfight.

Houston was seen leaving the club drunk, with scratches and blood-stains on her legs.

* * * * *

Whose tragedy was genuine—and which was self-inflicted?

The ugly truth is that Whitney Houston’s singing career ended long before her life did.

When people remember her monumental hits like “I Will Always Love You,” they’re recalling a time more than 20 years ago.

Another ugly truth is that each of us is responsible for our own actions.

Attorney and talk-show host Nancy Grace blamed Houston’s doctors for her death. She argued that they had kept writing prescriptions for “America’s songbird” when they knew she was an addict.

But Houston was the one who requested that they write those prescriptions. And she was the one who administered them.

The same chain of events occurred in the Michael Jackson case.

Jackson wanted his drug-of-choice: propofol, a hypnotic sedative used for general anesthesia. And he got it.

He paid his private doctor, Conrad Murray, $150,000—a-month. For a salary that large, Jackson clearly expected to get more than the standard: “Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.”

So he got what he wanted—and it killed him.

Houston, for all her charm, was also used to getting her own way. Once. on an airplane, she tried to light up in the bathroom. When the pilot warned that she could be fined $2,000, she offered to write out a check that moment if she could have her smoke. The pilot refused.

No matter how famous, talented, beautiful and/or wealthy you might be, in the end, you remain a mere mortal. Even if you are allowed to flout the laws of man, you will be held accountable by your own body for bouts of deadly excess.

That, in the end, is the real legacy of Whitney Houston. And Michael Jackson. And Elvis Presley. And Marilyn Monroe. And a great many other now-dead celebrities.

Sadly, it is a truth that both celebrities and their worshipers must re-learn—over and over.

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IS THERE A MADMAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE?

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on January 5, 2018 at 11:02 am

On March 4, 2017, in a series of unhinged tweets, President Donald J. Trump accused former President Barack Obama of tapping his Trump Tower phones prior to the election:

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

“Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!”

“I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”

“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

President Barack Obama

Trump offered no proof to substantiate his libelous claims.

There are three plausible theories about what prompted Trump’s accusations.

Theory #1: They were prompted by Right-wing media outlets that had been pushing wiretapping claims in recent days.

On March 2, Right-wing radio host Mark Levin claimed that Obama had used “powers of the federal government to surveil members of the Trump campaign.”

Referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his newly disclosed meetings with Russia’s ambassador in 2016, Levin asked: “Today’s reporting on Sessions having a chance meeting with the ambassador–where did that information come from? Look at the timing of it. Was Obama surveilling top Trump campaign officials during the election?”

On March 3, the Fascist media site Breitbart News echoed that charge. Its story was based on Levin’s show and offered no evidence to back up its accusations.

Trump could have first contacted the directors of the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency–the agencies which are authorized to conduct such an operation. He couldhave asked them, “Did you wiretap me?”

They could have quickly and confidentially given him an answer. And if it was “Yes,” they would have been able to provide him with the records to document it.

That would have been the action of a rational President. But Trump chose to act like a child–or, worse, an unbalanced adult.

After reading the Breitbart story, Trump impulsively chose to go on Twitter and make libelous accusations.

Theory #2: Trump, under scrutiny for ties between his campaign and Russia, sought to deflect attention by making an outrageous accusation.

Donald Trump

Former White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest gave his own take on Trump’s motivation. Appearing on the March 5, 2017 edition of ABC’s “This Week”, he said: “We know exactly why President Trump tweeted what he tweeted.

“Because there is one page in the Trump White House crisis management playbook. And that is simply to tweet or say something outrageous to distract from the scandal, and the bigger the scandal, the more outrageous the tweet.”

Earnest served as White House Press Secretary under President Obama from 2014 to 2017.

He added: Obama could not have legally ordered a wiretap: “The President of the United States does not have the authority to unilaterally order the wiretapping of an American citizen.”

Theory #3: Trump is too mentally unbalanced to hold the Presidency–and command of America’s nuclear arsenal.

Trump’s shoot-first-and-never-mind-the-consequences approach to life has been thoroughly documented.

From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, he fired nearly 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions. The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.

Among these targets were:

His Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton
His fellow Republican Presidential candidates
Actress Meryl Streep
News organizations
President Barack Obama
Comedian John Oliver
Obamacare
Singer Neil Young
The state of New Jersey
Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And during his first two weeks as President, Trump attacked 22 people, places and things on his @realDonaldTrump account.

Trump’s vindictiveness, his narcissism, his compulsive aggression, his complaints that his “enemies” in government and the press are trying to destroy him, have caused many to ask: Could the President of the United States be suffering from mental illness?

One who has dared to answer this question is John D. Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist.

John D. Gartner

Gartner graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, received his Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts, and served as a part time assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for 28 years.

During an interview by U.S. News & World Report (published on January 27), Gartner said: “Donald Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president.”

Gartner said that Trump suffers from “malignant narcissism,” whose symptoms include anti-social behavior, sadism, aggressiveness, paranoia and grandiosity.

“We’ve seen enough public behavior by Donald Trump now that we can make this diagnosis indisputably,” says Gartner, who admits he has not personally examined Trump.

In 1965, Fletcher Knebel, the best-selling author of Seven Days in May, raised the then-unthinkable question: “What would happen if the President of the U.S.A. went stark-raving mad?”

He did so in his novel, Night of Camp David.

In 1965, the idea that an American President might become insane was thought so outlandish it could only appear in a novel.

Fifty-three years later, it’s no longer unthinkable. For millions, it’s a terrifying reality.

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IS HE CRIMINAL, CRAZY LIKE A FOX–OR JUST CRAZY?

In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on March 20, 2017 at 12:53 am

On March 4, in a series of unhinged tweets, President Donald J. Trump accused former President Barack Obama of tapping his Trump Tower phones prior to the election: