This from the Internet – a Mayo Clinic informational posting on TIA which stands for Transient Ischemic Attack. “A transient ischemic attack can serve as both a warning of a future stroke and an opportunity to prevent it.”
I had not perused the Internet to learn about TIA as the Internet is not a Medical Doctor and can be most alarming and nonfactual. But I bravely set out to see what was out there using a reliable source, the Mayo Clinic . As you can see, it was reassuring. Also learning that ‘stress’ can increase the risk up to 59%.” Good bye stress in my life, it has been reduced, as a result of the corona virus with no causal looters or men in my life. But do not mess with me, you on the shortened list, or you are gone as well.
It is my considered opinion that the fear of the unknown is the principle use of stress in this modern world. The more one learns, the more peace is achieved. Subsequent blogs may reveal examples, or perhaps not – depending on unfolding events.
But to switch to United States politics – this appeared, actually reported on Al Jazeera a Qatar based network.
“A New York Times report saying President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax the year he entered the White House has added yet another dynamic to a contentious and fast-developing election season.The report, which included the revelation that thanks to colossal losses, Trump paid no federal income tax at all in 11 of the 18 years the Times reviewed, is set to tarnish the president’s decades-crafted image as a successful businessman. That carefully maintained brand helped Trump capture the presidency in 2016” Such a charming man that Trump but also such a charming country that had let him get away with this shit for years and years and years. The beat goes on! However, the revelations further deepen the uncertainty surrounding a tumultuous presidential campaign set against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, racial unrest in American cities and a ferocious battle over the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Trump revelations are also expected to feature prominently in the first presidential debate with challenger Joe Biden on Tuesday, turning attention to tax documents that, despite tradition, Trump has kept from the public eye.
Well, just between you and me and the gate post, I am not counting on Biden to save the day as I have increasingly viewed him as inept (which is having or showing no skill; clumsy.) Its synonyms are:unskilful, unskilled, inexpert, amateurish, crude, rough; clumsy, awkward, maladroit, unhandy, heavy-handed, all thumbs, bungling, blundering, bumbling, botched; unproductive, unsuccessful, ineffectual, inadequate, inferior, substandard, wanting, lacking, not up to scratch; all fingers and thumbs; cack-handed, ham-fisted, ham-handed, butterfingered; North American informa
More from Al Jazeera “From his homes, his aircraft – and $70,000 on hairstyling during his television show The Apprentice – Trump has deeply intertwined his luxurious lifestyle with his business dealing, to the benefit of tax liability, according to the Times report.
For that hairdo, $70,000 – you must be kidding?!? How bloody ridiculous. That hairdo is a joke and worth no money at all . I have great hair at a fraction of the cost. (You do see that Al Jazeera does need my humour machine, but no offers have been forthcoming.
“In contrast, the Times found that a large sum of Trump’s profits came from selling his own brand. It reported the former reality television star reported making a combined $427.4m from
2004 to 2018 by selling his name and image through various endorsements and licensing deal” Well, those of us in Vancouver know about that – the Tiah’s paid a fortune for using the name of Trump International Hotel and Tower. But the hotel is closed, perhaps used as a homeless shelter and the Tiah’s (the Canadian branch) have declared bankruptcy. It serves you right Joo Kim Tiah – such bad taste to license the Trump moniker.
The New Yorker also weighed in on Trump and his taxes. “Readers learn that Trump, who inherited an immense fortune from his father, found countless ways to squander his capital. And, like his old man, he also found countless ways to short the government, including, according to the Times, paying his daughter Ivanka legally dubious consulting fees. At the same time, Trump has accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars in debt that he must soon repay. He is an almost comically inept businessman; he is the sum of his debt and bankruptcies. Nearly everything he touches turns to lead. Were it not for his investments in Trump Tower, “The Apprentice,” and little else—and were it not for the tireless ministrations of his accountants—he would likely be on his back. The question is: Will anyone care?
Readers inclined to think of Trump as a liar and threat to national well-being will doubtless relish every detail in the Times report, not least because it confirms, with documentary evidence, what so many have always suspected and what reporters such as Wayne Barrett and Tim O’Brien were writing decades ago: that Trump is a shady and conniving operator whose practices betray contempt for everyone from his contractors and employees to the federal government. The Times article is hardly the first to provide evidence of Trump’s grift, but its details are particularly numerous and galling. Moreover, it comes two days before Trump’s first debate with Joe Biden and five weeks before the election. Are there undecided voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, Wisconsin, and beyond who will come upon this new information and finally say to themselves, “This is too much. No more,” and not vote for Trump? It’s hard to know.The President’s reaction to the story was entirely predictable: deny, deflect, and cast blame elsewhere. Accompanied by his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, he came to the White House press room shortly after the story dropped and attacked the Times (“Everything was wrong; they are so bad”) and the Internal Revenue Service. The Twitter storm saying that he was only playing by the rules of the game is sure to follow.
Trump has long been convinced, as he so memorably put it, four years ago, that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, O.K.?” And it is probably true, that for many of his supporters, his character—the dishonesty, the bigotry, the incompetence—is a given. It’s “baked in,” as the Washington cliché has it. No matter what Trump does, no matter what journalists go on revealing, he has, for the “base,” delivered on his promise to upend “the system” and inflame the élites. Some supporters believe that he has lowered their taxes (he hasn’t), defanged North Korea (he hasn’t), and ironed out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (he hasn’t). For the Republican leadership, Trump remains tolerable because he appoints right-wing judges and cossets corporate interests.A reader of the Times bombshell, then, can reasonably ask, how is this different from the last bombshell? How is it different from the memoirs by Mary Trump and Michael Cohen? From calling fallen U.S. soldiers “suckers” and “losers”? From all the generals, intelligence officers, and government officials telling Bob Woodward in “Rage” that Trump poses a threat to national security that is even more grave than anyone imagines? Four years ago, Tony Schwartz, Trump’s ghostwriter for “The Art of the Deal,” told The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.” This might have seemed overheated at the time—the result of a former collaborator’s guilty conscience—and yet, in Woodward’s new book, we read of Secretary of Defense James Mattis sleeping in his clothes at night for fear that he’ll have to race back to the office because the needless war of words between two erratic leaders, Trump and Kim Jong Un, might lead to an unspeakable conflagration.
I do love the down and dirty politics of the USA – Middle East politics is getting a bit too esoteric for me. Love that word esoteric and all of its synonyms obscure, arcane, recherché, rarefied, recondite, abstract, difficult, hard, puzzling, perplexing, enigmatic, inscrutable, cryptic, Delphic; complex, complicated, involved, over/above one’s head, incomprehensible, opaque, unfathomable, impenetrable, mysterious, occult, little known, hidden, secret, private, mystic, magical, cabbalisti. The Middle East is definitely unfathomable, enigmatic, recondite and abstract. Nonetheless I remain most popular in the Middle East, more about that later. .
