October 31, 2016

 

Our political system has given us two flawed presidential candidates: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. To not vote is an abrogation of civic duty. To vote third party or write in another candidate is a cop out. One must choose.

Donald Trump has more than his fair share of flaws. Don Rickles must envy him. Trump has managed to insult large portions of the population –Hispanics, veterans, and Muslims. He made disgusting and vulgar comments about women. I am embarrassed to tell my twenty-something daughters that I am voting for this man.

But Hillary Clinton is nothing to write home about either. Her main claim to fame is that she attached herself to one of the most gifted politicians in a generation and enabled his infidelities and abuse of women in return for political power.  Her entire career is predicated on the notion that the rules do not apply to her – from trading cattle futures on inside information, Travelgate, stealing White House furniture, destroying e-mail evidence of her malfeasance along with manipulating the hopelessly corrupt Clinton foundation to enrich herself.

Most reasonable people would agree that when looking at the character flaws of these candidates, it’s a push.  So why choose Trump?

The answer is that we must look at the forces behind each candidate. Donald Trump, for all his flaws, is fighting for the Rule of Law. Over the past decades, a new ruling class has emerged that believes the hoi polloi is incapable of self-government. A cognitive elite has taken over our judiciary, Federal Reserve and bureaucracy and rules by fiat. Interest rates are set at artificially low rates decimating savers. Trade agreements are passed in lame duck sessions enriching the ruling class while our poor must compete with Third World workers and illegal immigrants for jobs.Our judicial system allowed abortion, prohibited prayer in our schools and allowed pornography to proliferate. Conjugal relations became a recreational sport rather than an act of love.  This destroyed the family structure. The opiate of the masses is now opiates.

Meanwhile, a new plutocracy arose that made the robber barons of yore look like pikers. Our professional politicians are now dancing bears for internet billionaires, corporate chieftains and financial speculators. As was demonstrated in the financial crisis of 2008, these people never lose. The Dodd-Frank bill passed under President Obama allows further bail outs without Congressional approval.

Our ruling class was chugging along and enjoying its perks when two men emerged – Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. The undemocratic rules of the Democratic Party checkmated Sanders, but Donald Trump was not to be denied. He has unleashed a populist fury that our mendacious media is working overtime to quash.

There is an element of the Republican Party that finds Trump so repulsive they refuse to support him, even though they agree with him on 80% of the issues. These people believe they can live to fight another day.  They are delusional.

Our ruling class lead by Hillary Clinton has seen the belly of the beast.  Clinton said as much when she characterized half of Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” A cautious politician like Clinton does not make a statement like this out of the blue. She has every intention of driving these people into political Neverland if she wins by taking away their guns, First Amendment rights and jobs. Pardons will be issued to all involved in any Clinton scandals. Judges will rule that illegals can vote and taxpayer money will fund liberal grass root operatives. Meanwhile, voting will switch to the internet, making fraud impossible to prove. The media will stand on the sidelines waving Pom- Poms. The opinions of the masses will become even more irrelevant.

Only one man can stop this: Donald Trump. That’s just the way the cards fell. Should he decide to rule in a dictatorial fashion or renege on his promises, he will be immediately thwarted, either by the judiciary or his supporters. Clinton will have no such constraints. As one Republican Party insider told me, “Trump is all that we have.” Deal with it or get used to democracy being destroyed for at least a generation.

 

 

 

 

 

            October 12, 2016

   One of my daughters was asked by her corporate co-workers who her favorite football team is. Michelle has no interest in football and said so. But her colleagues persisted and she, like the dutiful daughter she is, said it was the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“Dad, I had immediate respect.”

Exactly. Being a Steeler fan gives one elevated social status. It places you in an elite class of clear thinkers who exude confidence and good cheer. You’re a member of the Greenwich Yacht Club, The Porcellian Club at Harvard, Skull and Bones at Yale. You can trace your ancestry to Plymouth Rock. Who cares? I’m a Steeler fan.

The existence of Steeler Nation, a loose confederation of Steeler fans across the country, has confounded sociologists for decades. It has been widely assumed that the Steeler Nation is a product of the diaspora of fecund Steeler fans from western Pennsylvania. There is some truth to this, but it does not account for our numbers. But now new evidence has come to light.

Primary care physicians, psychiatrists and social workers across the nation have realized that converting their patients to Steeler fans greatly improves health by reducing stress and anxiety. Thus, the need for medications for hypertension, depression and other ailments are reduced.Dr. Benjamin Walker of Anchorage Alaska recently published a letter in the Archives of Internal Medicine stating that he counsels his patients with erectile dysfunction to become Steeler fans. Since doing so, he has not written a Viagra prescription in two years. Dr. Cheryl Seltzer, a psychotherapist from Fargo, North Dakota, became frustrated treating the women who were victims of domestic violence with useless group therapy. When she decided to counsel them to become Steeler fans, the rate of domestic violence against her patients plummeted to zero. Unfortunately, local authorities forced her to discontinue her therapy when a suspicious increase in wood chipper sales correlated with the mysterious disappearance of the abusers.

But it was not until a recent study from Duke University, published in the prestigious American Journal of Psychiatry, proved these anecdotal findings.Toddlers were randomized into five groups and were required to wear football jerseys from the Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots, Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets. The fifth control group wore normal attire.  These toddlers were then assessed for various landmarks and personality traits at three month intervals.

The results were illuminating. Children attired in Steeler jerseys radiated self-confidence and worked well with others. Those wearing Cowboy jerseys immediately had inflated opinions of their abilities while under-performing in pre-school. The children in Patriot outfits outperformed all groups in reading and mathematical aptitude, but it was discovered they figured out how to download an app with the test answers.

There was not enough data to determine the final parameters in those with Jets attire. The researchers concluded that it was unethical to allow the toddlers to wear Jets outfits as they immediately became constant whiners who were impossible to toilet train.

Thus if you are disgusted with the present political climate and no longer wish to watch Bill O’Reilly, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews or listen to the idiotic ramblings of Karl Rove, become a Steeler fan. Not only is it good for your health; but there is nothing better than firing up a Partagas, sipping on some XO Hennessy Cognac and watching Big Ben, Le’Veon Bell, James Harrison, Antonio Brown and the fourth person of the Blessed Trinity, Mike Tomlin obliterating some hapless opponent on your big screen TV.

 

 

September 12, 2016

As with the e-mail scandal, Hillary Clinton is not leveling with the American people about her health status. Her recent episode of pneumonia, which appears to have been covered up for weeks given her chronic cough, is a perfect example. While there have been scattered comments from her doctors, there has been some information that is disturbing. Let’s take a look at the facts.

The most forthcoming letter on Ms. Clinton’s health was written by her internist, Dr. Lisa Bardack. This letter notes that Ms. Clinton is basically in good health and suffers from some minor problems such as hypothyroidism and occasional episodes of deep venous thrombosis, a condition not unusual for someone who flies frequently.But there was an episode in which Ms. Clinton became dehydrated, fainted and suffered head trauma. Dr. Bardack describes this as follows:

“In December of 2012, Mrs. Clinton suffered a stomach virus after traveling, became dehydrated, fainted and sustained a concussion. During the follow-up evaluation, Mrs. Clinton was found to have a transverse sinus thrombosis and began anticoagulant therapy to dissolve the clot. As a result of the concussion, Mrs. Clinton developed double vision for a period of time and benefited from wearing glasses with a Fresnel prism. Her concussion symptoms, including the double vision, resolved within two months and she discontinued the use of the prism.”

This is where questions begin to arise. Double vision is not a diagnosis. It is a symptom. Dr. Bardack neglects to mention what the diagnosis was. But we can look at a picture of Mrs. Clinton during this time period and get a reasonable idea of what her diagnosis was.

From this picture, we can see that the pupils in Ms. Clinton’s eyes are equal in diameter and there is no drooping of her eyelids. The Fresnel prism that Dr. Bardack refers to is the piece of plastic in the glasses for her left eye with the vertical lines etched into it. From this picture, the odds are that Ms. Clinton had what is called a sixth nerve palsy, which caused her to have side-by-side double vision. The sixth nerve connects the brain to the muscles of the eyes that move the eyes sideways. When one or both is damaged, the eyes point in different directions and the patient experiences double vision.

Most patients, except those with a lazy or blind eye, find double vision to be intolerable and the treatment is to occlude one eye, wear prism glasses or have surgery to realign the eyes. Fortunately for most patients including Ms. Clinton, sixth nerve palsies usually resolve on their own. Thus in her case, the prism glasses were no longer necessary after two months.

The question that must now be asked is why Ms. Clinton had a sixth nerve palsy. Head trauma is a definite possibility, as Dr. Bardack states. High blood pressure and diabetes are also causes but Ms. Clinton has neither of these conditions. This can be seen in Lyme disease, but unless her doctors were brain dead, she was checked for this condition, especially since she lives in a tick-ridden Westchester County.

But in my thirty years as a practicing ophthalmologist, I have never seen a sixth nerve palsy caused by minor head trauma. When this happens, the patient really smashes his or her head. This causes swelling in the brain and stretches the sixth nerve. Is this the real reason Ms. Clinton had a sixth nerve palsy? The fact that Dr. Bardack’s letter states that Ms. Clinton had transverse sinus thrombosis makes this more likely. This is basically a fancy medical word for a blood clot in the brain. Was this clot caused by her head trauma? Did Ms. Clinton suffer any brain damage from this trauma? Was brain surgery needed to evacuate this clot? Is this the real reason she won’t release the medical records of this event?

The Clinton campaign further destroyed its credibility on the health issue by stating that while attending a 9/11 event, she fainted due to the heat. When a video surfaced indicating that she could barely walk, they retracted their statement and said that she was diagnosed with pneumonia two days before the incident. But why does Ms. Clinton have pneumonia? She has had a chronic cough for weeks if not months. Every medical student knows that pneumonia in an older patient often masks lung cancer. Ms. Clinton must release her X-rays to prove this is not the case.

It may well be that Mrs. Clinton is fine. After all, she is trying to keep a schedule that most people half her age would have difficulty following. But if this is the case, there should be no reason to hide the medical records of her head trauma, concussion and pneumonia. When presidential-candidate John McCain admitted that he had skin melanoma (a potentially fatal condition) the press hounded him until he released hundreds of pages of medical records to prove that the melanoma had not spread. Ms. Clinton should give the voters the same courtesy.