When voting for president, please consider moral character.

In the last few weeks, and Trump in the presidential debate, Trump and JD Vance, the Republican candidates for president and vice president, have publicly lied in saying: “Haitians are eating dogs and cats.”

The vice presidential candidate admitted he lied.  

 On State of the Union (Sept. 15, 2024) with Dana Bash of CNN, Vance said:

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do . . . .”

https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/sotu/date/2024-09-15/segment/01

In that television interview, Dana Bash reported:  “First of all, the Clark County sheriff and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources reviewed 11 months of 911 calls. They only identified two instances of people alleging Haitians were taking geese out of parks. They found zero evidence to substantiate those claims.”

Lying to foster hatred (in a self-servicing way), should be a disqualification for the offices of president and vice president.  But apparently neither Trump nor Vance believes it.

Bill Kristol in his Bulwark column today warned:  “Lies in the service of justifying and encouraging hatred for a minority group. That seems familiar. It’s familiar from the last century in Europe. It’s also familiar from periods of American history, especially with respect to race and immigrants.”

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/vance-trump-and-the-politics-of-hate?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=9qsp7&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

 

 

 

 

 

Long Covid & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

 

A new study on myalgic encephalitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) from the National Institutes of Health also looked at Long Covid whose conditions are considered “closely related,” the Washington Post reported recently.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/11/long-covid-treatment-research-hope/

The Post said that the research was “the most in-depth and multidisciplinary study of ME/CFS to date, involving more than 75 investigators across 15 NIH institutes and taking nearly eight years to complete.” The manuscript was published in Nature Communications.  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45107-3#Sec17

In summarizing the results, the newspaper noted:  “[t]he research provided clear evidence of physiological abnormalities in ME/CFS patients. . . . [r]esearchers found functional and not structural abnormalities. . . . [and] investigators discovered significant differences between men and women. . . . in immune cell populations and markers of inflammation.”

The Post said the study “support[s] the hypothesis that ME/CFS is due to persistent immune activation [or] ‘post-infectious syndromes’ . . . .”  The same characterization may apply to Long Covid and other conditions.

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RE: Social Security and SSI Disability, see SSR 14-1p: Titles II and XVI: Evaluating Cases Involving Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)

https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/rulings/di/01/SSR2014-01-di-01.html

 

Time to Enforce Gag Orders

The judge said that Trump has a record of making “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” statements.

Those statements inspire his MAGA followers to make threatening, inflammatory, denigrating statements and images and videos and to take illegal action.

Judge Merchan (in the NY “hush money” criminal case) imposed a gag order to protect potential witnesses, attorneys, court staff or family members of prosecutors or lawyers and actual or potential jurors.

In the event of Trump’s ignoring the court (gag) orders, I suggest, on the first violation, that the judge institute progressive punishment as one might do with a toddler.

It’s time for Trump to spend an hour in JAIL for his acting contumaciously in violation of court orders and then two hours in JAIL and continuing as necessary until it is 24 hours or multiple days.

 

Presidential Debates 2024

 

Thinking ahead to presidential debates, I think that one requirement ought to be that the moderators have available a microphone audio-kill switch and a commitment by the moderators to use it to keep the participants to agreed-upon times for debate segments.

Additionally, I think that President Joe Biden should plan to walk off the stage should Donald Trump continue talking if the debate moderators do not promptly use a microphone audio-kill switch if Trump goes over his allotted time and/or if he continues talking after his microphone has been cut off.

Regardless of whether there is a studio audience, the president of the United States should not allow himself to be disrespected by an election-denying and rule-of-law denying and common courtesy denying poser like Trump.