Mr. Trump Triumphs Over the Press Conference

As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew.
                 --Abraham Lincoln

An hour spent on the treadmill this morning watching the Trump press conference. It struck me there are two sides: Mr. Trump, who's objective is to convince those who voted for him they were correct, and did not make a mistake, and on the other side  press, most of whom intend to prove the opposite.


Mr. Trump won this round.


The questions began with a straightforward question from Mara Liasson, who asked, "Did you fire Michael Flynn?"  Trump answered that this whole thing with his national  security advisor is fake news.
And he was, basically, in his own terms, correct. He did not define the term "fake news" but in context what he meant in this instance is that there really is no story here. Nobody except the press and the chattering class has any real interest who Mr. Trump's national security advisor is, or whether he was fired, or why or who replaces him.


Ms. Liasson had a kernel of an idea: I will ask him a yes or no type question and try to get a single straight answer out of him. But, of course, he's too smart for that.  He said, basically, the whole issue is ridiculous, so he makes a soap opera out of it, how the press done him (Trump and Flynn) wrong.  The problem is, she chose a "story" which nobody beyond the Beltway cares about. And virtually every question--save the question from Lisa Dejardins of the News Hour about what he intends to do about resurrecting his Muslim ban--was a question about something not germane.

What we want to know about is jobs and will there be another terrorist attack and by whom and when and where? And what is the new Trumpcare going to be?  And what is the Republican Congress going to do to Medicare and Social Security? 


He'll say, "Oh, you'll love it." And then you can say: Specifically, what are we going to like?  You are a deal maker. Do we not get to see the details of the deal?


The press corps asked questions about whether the Trump campaign was in cahoots with the Russians during his campaign.  Must have been half a dozen reporters asking the same question about that. Truth is, this is all fake news. Fake news in the sense it's trivial news, of no real concern to me or any of the coal miners who voted for Trump. It's fake in the sense that it is presented as news when nobody cares about the story, so it is, by definition, dog bites man. No story. The Russians did not vote in our elections. If they wanted Trump to win, that's their business.  But they had no power to launch any disinformation which might have affected the outcome, certainly not compared with the disinformation launched by James Comey of the FBI.


I don't care, no steel worker or assembly line worker at Carrier cares about the firing of Mr. Flynn or  whether Mr. Trump talked to Mr. Putin daily during the campaign, or whether he coordinated activities with Mr. Putin. The press is trying to delegitimize Mr. Trump's election by somehow implying if it weren't for some nefarious Russian connection, Trump would not have won.
Get over it, press.


Of course, Mr. Trump would love to revisit the election, his most fun time ever. He still wants to go on campaign stops speaking to adoring crowds. And he still wants to show how he overcame adversity and unfair play by talking about how Ms. Clinton got the questions before the debates. 
That is his own "fake news."
Nobody cares about the debates. Ms. Clinton demolished Mr. Trump in the debates but the voters who mattered had already made up their minds. Besides, she beat him on substance and on details--he won the emotional side. She says she was fighting for racial equality and equal pay when he was making deals on his daddy's dime and he responds she has been "nasty" to him, and she is not nice and she is unfair to demolish him so completely.
Ever notice how often he reacts with "that is so unfair?" Or "You are not nice. You are dishonest. Or you are a loser."


Mr. Trump says he does not want to go back to the bad old days when we were alienated from the Russians. He'd rather negotiate deals with the Russians. What deals he has in mind is not clear. Giving Russia Ukraine, the Baltic nations and Syria?


Mr. Trump responded to most questions as he always has, and in the past 18 months, the press continues to get pummeled by him. He begins by commenting on his emotional reaction to the reporter and  to the question. Is the reporter someone he likes? Is the question a nice question or an insult? Does the reporter work for the Failing New York Times or the Dishonest CNN? Has the reporter hurt him or treated him badly?  Is the person he is being asked about a nice person, a good man, a fantastic woman, a good person?  And, what was the question? Lost in all that.


A reporter wearing a yarmulke and a beard and a white shirt and black pants promised to ask a nice and simple question and then embarked on a long winded statement about a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since Mr. Trump's election, which connects to the argument that by embracing anti Muslim rhetoric, Mr. Trump gave license to all the hate groups across the country, to white supremacists and nativists.


 Trumps  opponents have tried to say that whenever someone scrawls a Swastika across a synagogue or a "Nigger" across a black Church, that's Mr. Trump's fault. He responded, quite reasonably, that this country has had hate and division long before he became President and if people act badly that's not his fault. 


You can argue about the President's role of "enabling" such sentiment, but that's a losing battle. He will argue he's a nice guy and loves everyone and Blacks and Hispanics and women all voted for him in numbers which gave lie to the argument that they see him as a hater or a threat.


So, members of the press, don't go there. You've lost that argument. Ask him about specifically what law he will sign about the replacement for Obamacare and whether he endorses Couponcare for Medicare and Social Security.


When a patient slides deeply enough into dementia, he typically retains all the standard phrases, empty of content. What did you have for breakfast this morning? Oh, it was a lovely morning. One of those days you're glad to be alive. It was swell.
But did he actually eat breakfast, and if so was it eggs, bacon or cereal? No clue. Because he does not really remember, he confabulates. He gives an answer which indicates his emotional state, but he cannot answer the substance: Eggs? Bacon? Orange juice?


The press, every last one of them, has failed to figure this out about Mr. Trump.
Try asking him specifics:  You said on January 13th you would sign a law repealing Obamacare on January 20th and the law to replace would be signed the same day.  What date do you say today will you sign into law the replacement for Obamacare?


Then, when he shrugs off, well that's up to the light weights--he called Schumer a lightweight and nobody even noticed--among the Democrats allow me to get a bill on my desk, I'll sign it.


So follow up with: Will you sign a law which allows states which want to keep Obamacare to keep it?


Get into substance and detail as much as you can,  because he cannot handle detail and cannot keep it in mind.

Give up on the following stories:  1. Anything about his personnel choices.  2. Anything about the Russians 3. Anything about whether he is anti-Semitic or endorses anti Semitism. 4. Anything which has an emotional content.  
Ask him about those jobs he says GM, Ford and Walmart have said they will provide American workers since he became President.  Present him with the data:  Walmart actually had planned those jobs before he was elected and announced that on September 23, 2016. GM had planned that new plant and released the announcement August 15, 2016. And so on. You don't have to tell the American public he can't take credit for jobs already in the pipeline.


The Muslim travel ban was rolled out just fine--it was the so-called judge who screwed it up.  That's not a winner.
Saying his administration is in "chaos" is a loser. One man's chaos is another man's disruption and chaos was what those voters in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania wanted.


The reporters for CNN, MSNBC, the News Hour, the Washington Post and the Failing New York Times may or may not be bright people, but they are focusing on words which are non specific, like chaos, fear, nervous, rather than the things Mr. Trump cannot play with--specific dates, laws, rules.

P.S.  Chuck Schumer is a light weight. Trump does have one uncanny ability--the ability to look at someone and see his or her most debilitating vulnerability.  Jeb Bush was low energy; Marco Rubio was too small; Elizabeth Warren is Pocahontas, and Hillary, of course was "crooked."  Whether or not it is true, it is the most damaging dig. In Schumer's case, it is true. He is a light weight. And, typical of the Democrats, they have chosen a light weigh to lead them. First Harry Reid, now Schumer. The Democrats eat their young and hoist up their weaklings to rule.

Representative Jim Jordan: Tough Guy from Lima

Saw Jim Jordan of Ohio's 4th Congressional district interviewed by Chris Cuomo this morning as I was running on my treadmill.

Jimmy was a great high school and college wrestler and he wants you to remember that so he only rarely wears a jacket and tie, just the shirtsleeves. Not only does he look more like a jock, but  he can look like the friend of the working man. His many fans are waiting for the moment when he'll stride onto the House floor in his wrestling singlet.

I remembered him from his questioning of Hillary Clinton during the Benghazi hearings, which he considers one of the high points of his Congressional career because he thought he had scored a huge take down of the Secretary, and had her on her back the entire match; at least that's the way Congressman Jordan remembers it.

As I remembered it, Ms. Clinton scored escape after escape, and she reversed him every time she wanted to. The only person she made look sillier was that bimbo Congresswoman from Alabama who asked her if she had spent the night alone after she left the State Department that fateful night and when Secretary Clinton said she had, the Congresswoman inveighed, in her best Perry Mason tone, "You were alone? The whole night?" At which point Ms. Clinton broke into a grin, and without having to say a word, her face conveyed the statement, "Yes, you silly twit. I was alone. Did you think I went home to celebrate the death of four American foreign service officers by hopping into bed with General Petraeus? And if I had, do you think I'd tell you about it?"

Other than that moment, the best moments were her dismantling of Jimmy boy Jordan, who  got more and more befuddled as he stumbled his way through his questions, in his shirt, looking like he really wanted to be in his wrestling singlet from when he won the NCAA title, but the singlet  would have looked a little odd with the tie.

Reading about Jim, it turns out he has sponsored only one bill in his 10 years in Congress--a sweet little thing to make it easier for the citizens and drug lords of Washington, D.C. to buy and carry and use guns in the city.  I imagine all the hoppers and touts in the drug trade on the corners saying, "Now, that guy is a friend of the working man! I got my gun, no hassle at all!"

Congressman Jordan's district has a factory which makes Abrams tanks, which the Army did not want made but he pushed it through to keep his constituents at their jobs making even more money with less pulmonary injury than those coal miners in Senator McConnell's state. Lima, Ohio, have no fear. Your gravy train runs.

You might not want 'em, but we make tanks here in Ohio!

Mr. Jordan hates planned parenthood, loves guns, hates abortions and he's the head of the "Freedom Caucus." Don't you just love Republican naming prowess? I mean, who wouldn't be proud to be a member of the "Freedom Caucus."

Talking about repealing Obamacare, he said the marketplace would take care of health insurance, just the way it had before Obamacare. Oh, yes, I remember that marketplace in New Hampshire where there was only one insurance company in the entire state offering health insurance, but now with Obamacare there are five.  
Talk about a marketplace.  
And Mr. Jordan noted that premiums went up with Obamacare and insurance companies dropped out of the market but he would guarantee in the replacement nobody would be denied for pre-existing conditions, unless they never had bought health insurance, which is only fair. And, oh yes, we'd have health insurance bank accounts for a rainy day, so when you went into the hospital for your $500,000 heart surgery you can drain that account--which might have, say a tenth of that--but it would cover the bill for the housekeeping services during your stay. Or your family could use it to cover your funeral.

The thing about Mr. Jordan which is so depressing is simply how stupid the guy is. Ever notice how enervating it is to be around really stupid people? Especially people who think they are not really stupid, just under appreciated?

That's the trouble with democracy: You can go to Congress and there you have to spend your day with people like Jeff Sessions, Mitch McConnell, Louie Gomhert, Trey Gowdy, Mark Sanford, Lindsey Graham and Jim Jordan. All the Gerrymander progeny. I can only imagine.
I'd rather spend the day in a day care center for delinquent three year olds. At least the kids tend to be cute, and there is some hope for them, that they might actually get smarter and more interesting as they mature. But not so much with these knucklehead Jim Jordan types.

Was a time when you could got to Congress and lock horns with men like John Randolph of Virginia, who might observe that your argument shines and stinks like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, or he observes a state can no more  give up part of its sovereignty than a woman can give up part of her virtue. 
 Now there's a man who you can be pleased to be insulted by. 

Captain Heel Spur Morphs into President Trump

Before he was President Trump, he was the Donald and before that he was a celebrity and before that he was Captain Heel Spur.

He had this wonderful uniform in high school, and as he noted during the campaign, he was almost a soldier, and had more military training than most officers who actually did go to war, so...you know, now he's commander in chief.

He knows more than the generals now, he says. He knows more than the doctors, too. And he knows way more than any Congressman or Senator. Plus, he knows more than those captains of industry who are trying to move their factories across the borders.
And he was never captured.
And he most definitely knows more than those so called judges who any bad high school student knows more than. And he should know, because he was one of those bad high school students.
He's our guy.

Oh, The Fraud: No Legitimate Voters in New Hampshire. They're all Crooks!

President Trump will have you know that the only reason he lost New Hampshire was all those Massachusetts voters who were bused in to vote for Hillary, after they had voted for Hillary in their home state.

He got this idea from Governor Chris Sununu, who pointed to Martha Fuller, a state senator who had three Democratic workers living in her house before the 2008 and 2012 elections who claimed "domicile" in New Hampshire and voted there.

Governor Sununu is just sleazy enough to extrapolate this instance into a general case, questioning the credibility of any electoral results from New Hampshire.

Having said all this, even Mad Dog finds it surprising to learn
1. You can vote in New Hampshire if you have any sort of address, even, presumably, a motel, or a winter rental down at Hampton beach.
2. There is not length of residence requirement, so those election workers would have been legal voting in New Hampshire.
3. To be legally "domiciled" in New Hampshire you have to sleep most of your nights in the state or you have to intend to return there after an absence, as a soldier posted to Afghanistan might.
4. To vote you do not need a picture ID--you need only have your photo taken at the polls and if the Secretary of State challenges your vote, you have to answer for that later.

Of course, Republicans talk about voting fraud as a pretext to prevent voters from voting, because, at least until this past election, it was pretty clear most voters would vote against Republicans if given the chance, so the technique, which was used as long ago as post Civil War has been to throw up enough obstacles to intimidate, humiliate and thwart voters who may not be very literate, who feel intimidated by government officials in general, from voting.

On the other hand, no duration of residence?  Virtually anyone crossing the border and getting a hotel room or crashing a friend's couch can vote in this highly contentious state? 
No evidence such a loosey goosey approach has actually resulted in bus loads of Massachusetts Democrats crossing the border to throw New Hampshire elections to the Democrats, but really.

As a New Hampshire resident, do I want somebody who has spent three days in the state voting for my governor, my state representatives and my President?

Having said all this, do we really believe Mr. Trump that 3 millions voters voted fraudulently for Hillary?  Do we really want to believe a man who offers no evidence for his claims, who claims the lady in the parking lot, who told him vaccines cause mental retardation also told him about the massive voting fraud, finding in Mr. Trump, a receptive audience for the voting fraud charge, which explained what he could not comprehend or accept--that he is actually a minority President, which is to say, a so called President, or put another way, a fake President, a fraud.

Pocahontas and President Heel Spur

Pocahontas was actually quite a remarkable woman, as I understand it.  Of course, how much we can know about any figure of antiquity is always an open question, but whether or not she saved John Smith's life, Peggy Lee  immortalized the real woman with the legend with her smoldering version of the song, "Fever." The story takes on a reality of its own, whatever the actual woman was like.

Donald Trump tried to shame Elizabeth Warren by referring to her as "Pocahontas," alluding to the story that Ms. Warren falsely claimed American Indian blood as a ruse to get into Harvard, when anyone can plainly see, this blue eyed, blonde could not possibly have a single drop of Indian blood in her, because, as we all know, anyone with dark blood cannot possibly have blue eyes or blond hair. 

Mr. Trump apparently has never met Vanessa Williams or any of the many people who are descendants of slave owners and their slaves, who I met every day in Washington, D.C.--people who clearly had significant Africans genes, but who also had blue eyes and blond hair. Those slave owners, and even their nonslave owning descendants (like Strom Thurmond) clearly fathered progeny who were, on occasion, to the eye, not very Black.
"Passing for white" was easy for many Americans who had some African genes. 
"Pinky" was a movie I grew up with; apparently  Mr. Trump missed that one. 
As for Indian blood, I knew many people who were told they had Cherokee blood or some other tribe's blood who did not look like Hollywood Indians.  You can't even do 23 and Me genetic analysis to see if Ms. Warren has Indian ancestry because of the way the statistics have been gathered for that sort of scientific analysis. So, if the lady heard from her family members she had Cherokee blood--nobody can gainsay it with any assurance.

Genes are funny things

At any rate, The Donald tried to humiliate Senator Warren by insisting,  in his ignorance, that dark blood is like a drop of India ink  in a gallon of clear water: it stains and is always apparent to the eye.

Make believe soldier: Look at that star on his collar

Trying to think of how Senator Warren should respond, I can only think "Captain Heel Spur," would do nicely.  Or maybe, "General Heel Spur," or "Commander Heel Spur," or "Commander in Chief Heel Spur." 

A President who was a real soldier: He earned those stars

Talk about feigning to be something you are not. Just look at that photo of the boy playing soldier, who claimed, as a Presidential candidate, that he had virtually been a soldier because he went to a military school for high school, and so he had more training in military things than some of the graduates of officer's candidate school who had actually served in Vietnam and Afghanistan. 
You see, Captain Heel Spur was really more of a soldier, despite the fact he was not allowed to wear the uniform of his country, as he so dearly desired, because of his incapacitating heel spurs.
No matter, as he later informed us, he knows more than the generals who did serve. 
Reminds me of a corporal who told the generals he knew more than they did, and since he was Der Furher, people believed him.  Lucky for us.  He made some fatal mistakes playing at general.  

I like it, though, Captain Heel Spur. 

Healthcare Quality: Dr. Cruz and Professor Sanders

Ted Cruz told Bernie Sanders and a national audience he knows what good health means for the United States of America.

He told us good health means doing more MRI exams than the English do.
He told us superior health care in the United States has insured more American women deliver their babies by C-Sections.
And he told us mammograms are unalloyed benefits to all the women who get them.

Doesn't he clear this stuff with anybody?

The plain fact is C-sections benefit the obstetrician more than the mother--he can get that baby out and not be late for dinner, not have to wait up all night with a laboring mother and he gets to charge a lot more. 
The mother, of course, has to heal from a significant incision and may have to have all subsequent babies by C-section. Not such a good deal for her.
Of course, there are other "facts" Mr. Cruz did not mention: Infant mortality and maternal mortality in the United States places us behind almost every industrialized nation, more in with third world nations.  These measures of public health don't fit with the tale Senator Cruz has to sell. 

And MRI's. Oh, there's a scandal, if you really want to know.  MRI's cost around $3000 in the USA, but only $75 in Europe. Same machines, different systems.  So we get to pay way more for the same care, and the outcomes for the patients are no better. 

Mammograms are trickier, but the reason we do more mammograms than they do in Europe is the Europeans are more critical about assessing the value of every test they do, and it's still an undecided case about whether or not we do too many mammograms, on women who are too young or too old or whether we do them too often. But when there's money involved, the one thing you can be sure of is the analysis is not going to be objective. Profits are at risk.

It's hard to imagine Ted Cruz, who apparently fancies himself an expert on health care would not have talked to enough people to be aware of these basic public health issues, which, to paraphrase Mr. Trump, a bad first year medical student knows. But, evidently, he has not talked to the right people, which is to say, people who know what the Hell they are talking about. 

Of course, look at the setting:  A town hall meeting, with all its drama, its testimonials from patients in the audience meant to "give a human face" to the dull issues of whether or not we spend health care dollars wisely in this country.

Why should we face the really difficult, statistics dense issues when we can have such a dramatic moment with television producers running the discussion on screen?

And poor Bernie, who knows only that it's the rich screwing the poor with healthcare. It's all about class warfare, don't you know?  If Bernie had taken even fifteen minutes to be briefed by that bad first year medical student before the debate, he might have sunk Cruz's ship easily enough.

But, no. This is America. Where we don't believe in facts or analysis or wonky technical stuff. We're all about feelings, not thought. 

So, now we have the government we deserve. We are about to get the health care we deserve.

Vaccines and Faith

When I was still in college, I had a summer job at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and the project I worked on in a genetics lab was to track down kids who were born in Baltimore during an outbreak of measles which occurred in the 1960's.  A lot of those kids born to mothers who got exposed to measles were born deaf or with a variety of other congenital defects.  Measles. I had measles as a kid, and I got it again as a doctor in my 30's, a very attenuated illness. Didn't seem like a fearsome disease, but it did a lot of nasty things to a lot of people.

When I was in medical school, we occasionally got a kid who needed a transfusion to save his life, or we had a mother in labor who hemorrhaged who needed a transfusion to save her life but they were  members of the Seventh Day Adventist church and so we had to simply watch some of them die.  Faith.

HMONG CHILD

There is a disturbing, maddening book called, "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" about a Hmong girl who has a severe epileptic (seizure) disorder and she lives in Davis, California where her parents bring her to the Emergency Room at the UC Davis Hospital and they revive her, stop her seizures and send her home with anticonvulsant therapy but the parents do not give the girl her medicine because they believe, as Hmong do, that illness is caused by a disturbance in the universe, so the girl goes on seizing and suffering. The doctors called this child abuse and fight it through the courts. Those parents are not doing what's best for that child.

Michelle Bachmann and Donald Trump hear from a lady in the parking lot or from some other equally reliable source that vaccinations cause autism or mental retardation or cerebral palsy or who knows what and on the basis of that scientific analysis they advocate for vaccine free babies.

Yersin

Alexandre Yersin, a student of Louis Pasteur goes to Vietnam around 1900 and he gets a telegram from Pasteur telling him of an outbreak of bubonic plague in Hong Kong.  Yersin does not ask the lady in the parking lot what is causing the Black Death. He has been trained in science. He gets on a boat and gets to Hong Kong, where the British, who are then in charge, dismiss him because he doesn't speak English and he looks pretty scruffy to them and they have their own expert, who totally fails to identify the causative organism, but Yersin, using the techniques of SCIENCE, actually identifies the beast, and not just that--he raises a vaccine to Pasterela Pestis (as he names the organism) and when Plague breaks out back at his home base in Vietnam he is uses his vaccine to save hundreds of patients.

Oh, what we do to children

Throughout the centuries, we have had to chose whether to believe in science we do not fully understand or to put our faith in people "of faith."

Mr. Trump clearly rejects scientists because, well we can only guess why. I suspect he rejects science because it doesn't allow him to believe what he wants to believe and it's a power thing with him.

In some African countries Presidents have denied HIV causes AIDS.  They think its a Western plot to gain control of Africa. Mr. Trump believes climate change is a Chinese plot.

We are back in the Dark Ages now. And soon, we will see what pestilence looks like, when the anti vaccine people have their way.