Tag: Trump
When Truth is a slower process than spin (ODT)
via Now We Know of Two More Impeachable Offenses by Trump and Barr | The Smirking Chimp
Who is leading who by the nose? (ODT)
So, what is the average American citizen to do confronted by an avalanche of Congressional action benefitting Israel while the United States is going through its most trying time since the Great Depression? Israeli lobbying groups like AIPAC, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) have large budgets, hundreds of staff and full and immediate access to Congressional offices. They even write the legislation that is then rubber stamped by the House and Senate, and although they are clearly agents of Israel, they are never required to register as such under Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
There is no defense treaty with Israel and the Jewish state is no ally, much less a “greatest ally.” It is, in fact, a major strategic liability, involving Americans in regional wars that need not be fought and demonstrating to all the world the risible reality of a military and economic superpower that is being led to perdition during a time of crisis by a ruthless and irresponsible client state.
Trump pisses off his allies too(ODT)
There is apparently no limit to what the United States and Israel can get away with without any consequences. The United States has been waging devastating economic warfare against Iran and Venezuela while also blaming China for a global health crisis that it is unwilling to help address due to its withdrawal from the World Health Organization. Israel meanwhile is planning on illegally annexing significant parts of the Palestinian West Bank in July, with a green light from the Trump Administration, and no one in Europe or elsewhere is even interested in initiating serious sanctions that might lead to the postponing of that decision. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has even stated flatly that the remaining Palestinians who would be annexed will not become Israeli citizens – they will instead be “subjects” of the Jewish state with no guaranteed rights or privileges.
When you push people beyond their capacity to understand their victimisation you can hardly expect them, during demonstrations, to behave rationally.
The greatest showman, or the greatest threat? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
No matter what Donald Trump does, or says Fox News is right there to support him, get angry for him, apologize for him, reinterpret his meaning for him, and lie for him.
via Fox News Goes Berserk Over Twitter Flagging Trump’s Violent Tweet | Crooks and Liars
Trump is pitting the two halves of the network’s business model against each other. If its executives respond by making the network even more supportive, they are risking flight from advertisers and cable providers concerned with being too closely associated with the president. If they don’t, they are risking outlets like OAN, which has little interest in pretending to be a real news outlet, peeling off their viewers.
via President Trump: Fox News is a propaganda outlet | Media Matters for America
Australia’s Defence Connect (20 May 2020) called for even greater loyalty to the US Global Alliance from Australia in this time of crisis over the spread of COVID-19:
“It is Australia’s indispensable relationship, the core of our national security and the key enabler, that has allowed Australia to freely engage and prosper within the post-Second World War order. However, in an era of mounting great power competition and disruption, the US-Australia relationship will become ever more important, explains retired Army officer Jason Thomas.”
Australia is being hurt commercially by its growing antagonism towards China, our best and most profitable trading partner. What is going on behind the scenes in the corridors of power in Canberra in the halls of the Defence and Foreign Affairs Departments to justify this wanton folly to protect US interests across the Indo-Pacific Basin?
Surely, the Trump Administration with the support of the Department of State and the Pentagon can fight their own battles with China. So, what is the real payoff for Australia in these difficult times? And if the war games in the South China Sea go astray, are Australians instantly at war with China through the chain of command in these joint patrols?
The Lancet
Peer-reviewed journal
Description
The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is among the world’s oldest and best-known general medical journals, although it has been at the center of recent controversies. Wikipedia
Impact factor: 59.102 (2018)
History: 1823–present
ISSN: 0140-6736 (print); 1474-547X (web)
First issue date: 1823
via Dump Trump Says Respected Medical Journal The Lancet – Stephen Lendman
Esteemed medical journal The Lancet on Friday took an unusual step towards calling on American voters to remove President Donald Trump from office in November, condemning the Trump administration’s “incoherent” response to the coronavirus pandemic and expressing shock at the CDC’s inability to cope with the public health crisis.
The journal’s frustration with Trump centered on the president’s downplaying of the pandemic and his refusal to coordinate a robust national effort of social distancing, lockdown orders, and a testing regime to stem the Covid-19 outbreak.
President Donald Trump’s incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is not only exacerbating the death and destruction caused by the virus in the US. It is also crippling the global response to the crisis, and the costs could be even deadlier.
No other nation has endured as much death from Covid-19 nor nearly as a high a death rate as has the United States.
With 4.25% of the world population, America has the tragic distinction of accounting for about 30% of pandemic deaths so far.
And it is the only advanced nation where the death rate is still climbing. Three thousand deaths per day are anticipated by 1 June.
via Under Trump, American Exceptionalism Means Poverty, Misery and Death | The Smirking Chimp
HE’S YOUR PRESIDENT AMERICA (ODT)
“We have developed a testing capacity unmatched and unrivaled anywhere in the world,” he said. While the United States has in fact done the highest raw number of coronavirus tests of any country, its per capita testing rate is still behind several other countries’:
via Trump Claims the US Has “Prevailed” on Testing, Then Storms Out of the Rose Garden – Mother Jones
US Military is in Colombia. The US is sanctioning Venezuela. The US wants Exxon to control the oil as they do in Iraq and Syria. Why Green Solar and Wind energy is essential (ODT)
The horrific truth is that the uncoordinated, slipshod economic reopening spurred on by Trump and his minions is likely to double our per capita deaths before Election Day. At that point we will lead the world both in deaths per capita and in the total number of Covid-19 deaths. He finally will have made America number one again.
We have to face up to the chilling truth: To win reelection Trump is willfully allowing the virus to kill more and more of us, especially our most vulnerable—the old, the infirm, the poor, and the essential low-wage workers.
It’s on us if we let him get away with it.
via President Donald Trump Culls the Herd | The Smirking Chimp
When the cart starts pulling the ss in another direction you know the ass was heading to the knackery. (ODT)
via Fox News starts to turn its attention away from the coronavirus pandemic | Media Matters for America
Host Jamilah King asked Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David Corn to analyze the ways in which Trump has, or hasn’t, taken responsibility for the United States’ pandemic, uncovering an all-too familiar pattern. “He is trying to blame foreign power for what it did wrong so that we don’t look at what he did wrong,” Corn says.
via “You Can’t Bullshit a Virus.” What Trump Doesn’t Get About His 2020 Election Strategy – Mother Jones
“Bad battleground state polling is why the president lashed out at as campaign manager. He won’t like this from an ABC/Ipsos poll: only 42 percent of Americans now approve of the president’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. 57 percent disapprove. That’s a 14-point spike in disapproval over the last six weeks.”
via CNN host pours cold water on Trump’s re-election hopes with devastating new poll numbers – Raw Story
So Trump insisted with OPEC+ (including Vladimir Putin’s Russia) that they do their effing job and put prices back up to forestall a collapse of the US petroleum industry.
When oil prices began falling in March, Trump was pleased, and said that cheaper gasoline would be good for the consumer. But once the oil state senators began phoning him angrily, Trump all of a sudden became very support of OPEC, and, indeed, insisted that they swing into action to support higher prices.
So Trump sided with US Big Oil against the consumers. What a surprise.
But it was all for naught. Even after the OPEC deal, oil prices are soft, and there isn’t an early prospect of oil prices rising much.
My thought for the day
The Office of the American President was once viewed by its people as an office of prestige and importance. Trump has reduced it to one of ridicule and contempt.
via A very unstable genius – » The Australian Independent Media Network
There’s China the doers and the along came the dumber than (ODT)
“Then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?” Trump asked Bryan from Homeland Security.
He then asked Deborah Birx, the physician co-ordinating the White House’s coronavirus taskforce: “I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way you can apply light and heat to cure. You know? If you could. And maybe you can, maybe you can’t.”
Birx said she had not seen any evidence that heat or UV rays could be used as a treatment for the virus.
Health experts immediately warned that sunlight was not a “miracle cure” for COVID-19 and that people should not try to treat it by tanning – especially given the risks of developing skin cancer.
On Friday, China announced it donated a further $US30 million ($47 million) to the World Health Organisation following Donald Trump’s decision to halt funding, amid concerns the UN agency is too “China-centric”.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the extra funds would help the WHO contain the virus and support developing countries in improving their public health systems.
“At this critical moment, support for WHO helps to strengthen multilateralism and the UN,” Shuang said.
via Coronavirus: Trump reveals Homeland study claiming COVID-19 struggles to survive in sunlight, heat
Murdoch Media the voice of Trump have shut up promoting Chloroquine
After aggressively promoting an anti-malaria drug as a “miracle” in the fight against COVID-19—a push that flew in the face of repeated warnings from experts—President Donald Trump and Fox News personalities suddenly appear to be cooling on hydroxychloroquine just as a new study reports the drug could lead to a higher death rate.
via Trump and Fox News Are Suddenly Silent on Their “Miracle” Drug Hydroxychloroquine – Mother Jones
Should — the gods and statistics forbid — Trump win reelection this November, we’ll have a real-life example of a system that is locally unstable, but globally horribly stable for the next four years. In his case, of course, we’re talking about how a “very stable genius” will be able to spin the chaos he creates into an ever more authoritarian regime.
olddogthoughts 
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