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(Above: the good old days for the Trump-Flynn axis.) He continued to make a fool of himself in public this week with crude comments in front of hallowed veterans and ignorant tweets using fraudulent posts, disturbing our closest allies. More and more people are speculating that President Trump is showing signs of dementia or some kind of breakdown. Now his legal problems are at his front door, with the news that Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and is likely to sing about the few people who were above him in that sordid chain of command. Meantime, the Republicans are following their eight-year vilification of Barack Obama by ignoring disturbing behavior by their guy. Trump is their meal ticket to taking money away from most of America (including the deluded folks who voted for him) and, patriots that they are, they are going to ride him as long as he is in office. Remember: I speculated he would be gone within 18 months. I could write a post about North Korea -- or the football Giants humiliating Eli Manning and not living up to Mara family loyalties – or how bright the moon is in very late autumn. But what else is there but the menace in this "administration?" (This is what I wrote earlier in the week:) He debases the nation every time he opens his mouth. On Monday there was a ceremony honoring three surviving members of the Navajo Code Talkers from World War Two. The President of the United States used the occasion to take another jab at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, once again referring to her as "Pocahantas." (He is currently trying to destroy the consumer protection agency she helped create.) His disturbed behavior drags us all down. Even while the leader of the Navajo group was giving a stirring history of the unit -- which saved lives during the Pacific campaign -- he fidgeted on the sideline, his facial tics reminding us that he is always nervous when the talk is not about him. What a contrast between loyal Americans who sacrificed for all of us -- The Greatest Generation -- and a schemer who wants to make this a better world for the Mnuchins and Wilburs and Ivankas -- The Gunnysack Generation.
Thor Larsen
11/28/2017 09:10:33 am
Yes, George, Donald certainly debased the nation again, a daily occurance. Actually, we know how he bahes and will continue to behave the second way as long as he remains president. Now, I blame the Congress for NOT REMOVING HIM FROM THE PRESIDENCY IMMEDIATELY. They have the power but are held back by the billionaires who controlled them, and want their taxes reduced regardless how Donald behaves.
Brian Savin
11/28/2017 10:48:46 pm
Enough, George. The more appropriate and I submit accurate way to annalze this episode is reflecting the President’s complete disgust with Senator Warren’s attempt to identify herself with Native American patriots. She has earned her position of enmity in his mind both by, apparently, lying about her ethnic background and dishonestly criticizing the President at every turn in a way I conclude is deliberately dishonest. The President was honoring heroes. He was disgusted by Senator Warren’s falsely claimed association with heroes. Her Grandfather’s high cheek bones notwithstanding.
bruce
11/29/2017 08:59:07 pm
brian,
bruce
11/29/2017 08:47:03 pm
george,
Brian Savin
11/29/2017 09:05:00 pm
Take a breath, Bruce, don’t make assumptions (you are in error about Warren) and let’s be careful with our allegations and respectful.
bruce
11/29/2017 09:17:30 pm
brian,
Richard Taylor
11/30/2017 11:09:27 am
Just keep running this heading week after week. The headline will always be relevant as we sink deeper and deeper into the muck.
Gene Palumbo
12/1/2017 02:15:30 am
Brian,
Gene Palumbo
12/1/2017 02:06:40 pm
By the way: in case you have any doubt about the validity of Bruce’s point – that the ceremony was a totally inappropriate place for Trump’s remark about Warren – take a look at the video at the beginning of George’s post.
Gene Palumbo
12/2/2017 06:42:57 pm
Brian Savin: 12/8/2017 11:49:28 am
Watching Trump's unfortunate speech on moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, it seemed to me he was experiencing some kind of neurological "event" that was affecting his speech. Either that or he wars dentures and they were slipping. I'm betting that, despite the indignant denial of Sarah Hulkabee Sanders that there could be something wrong with her boss, he was visited the following morning by a doctor from Walter Reed.
bruce
12/8/2017 12:37:45 pm
john,
bruce
12/8/2017 02:48:23 pm
George, Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html |
