I'm gonna pull a Dr. Frist here...because I can:

I think Trump has what we USED to call: Organic Brain Syndrome.

Now this term is out of favor in the medical community but quite frankly, I care what they think like I care what Sean Hannity thinks...so THERE.

Organic Brain Syndrome is a catch-all term for non-psychiatric disease of the brain which, among other things, causes an impairment of judgement. Now have you looked at Donald lately from profile - and I don't just mean his face, but the whole torso? He's not just fat: it's like there's something wrong somewhere: thyroid, pituitary, something's not right. I can't put my finger on it but something looks weird about him and qualitatively different.

I know I know: it's beyond speculative, but then again, if I were the examining physician I would note that I would need to rule out metabolic disease given his appearance and behavior. He's become a caricature of himself in recent months and, as outrageous as he's always been, this little series of tirades in which he has been engaged is grossly inappropriate by any standard including the Republican standard which is nadiresque (not Nader-esque).

I think something's wrong with this guy: if an individual did the equivalent in the workplace or home or place of worship or relaxation, they'd be calling the docs immediately. the fact that he's apparently a billionaire gives him insulation but you know what? These people can suffer the same slings and arrows as the rest of us.

Sumpin's up with this guy which goes beyond his psyche...mark my words.

Keeping people updated as to the Pope's visit in Philly:

To preface this brief post: someone I know well told me today: I'm thinking about renting out my house for the Pope's visit - they tell me I can get between 4000 and 5000 dollars for the weekend. It'd be perfect for clergy: there's a church less than a block away and a playground across the street.

Anyway...they're talking about building a four-mile eight-foot fence around Center City for the adventure of a lifetime. Most of our 'rapid' transit won't be stopping at the usual stations in Center City during this onslaught AND one would need to buy a pass to get on and off. The Regional Rail as we call it will be curtailed in many respects and here comes the best part...

There are many buildings within the zone which require 24 hour maintenance or emergency maintenance. One individual whom I know who is in charge of a building told me that once the engineers enter the building they cannot leave and re-enter if the building is deemed significant...whatever that means. He went into some detail which I don't feel comfortable posting on a public forum. Suffice it to say we have quite the National Security Red Zone coming here which I believe is unprecedented in the US of A, at least implemented in this fashion. All the roads are being repaved down here in town and enormous amounts of money are being spent to upgrade sidewalks and intermediate areas. The electronics installed on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway are obviously state of the art AND for the first time ever, there are landmark signs every so many feet indicating the exact quadrant one is located in. We have been told to shut down completely on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday inasmuch as virtually no patients would be able to get to our office easily - certainly not those from out in the suburbs. Monday probably won't be any better as three million people will be trying to get out of town all at the same time.

You know: we just had the President here with all of the usual appropriate security and it hardly disrupted a thing unless you were caught in the motorcade blockages for a few minutes between his speech locales. But this is like something from one of those movies...not certain if it's an apocalyptic film or a fascist film but I'm not liking this at all one bit. Not one bit.

Big crowd in front of the Rittenhouse Hotel

In Philly awaiting the President following his speech to the NAACP.

I have a terrible admission to make here...

No...I'm not an eleven-year troll on this site. No, I didn't vote for Nixon once. No, everything I've posted here is true to my knowledge and beliefs...

My child's first word which she read out loud was "Trump".

My mother of blessed memory lived down in the Atlantic City area in Ventnor Heights. One day when my kid was almost 2, we were driving down the Atlantic City Expressway and intended to exit at Exit 2 which leads to Route 40/322...BUT there was an accident on the ramp so we were forced to take the road into Atlantic City. There, at the base of the expressway was Trump Plaza with the trademark huge sign on the side of the building. My kid, who knew the alphabet well by that time saw the sign and proclaimed "Trump!!"

I almost lost control of the car. I asked my wife, "That ever happen before today?" Her glum response, "No. It hasn't."

And so it began..."it" being my political education of my child, all the while knowing the secret of that day.

We now only play "No-Trump" hands in our Duplicate Bridge game...

held every Wednesday.

That is all....

WTF is this? In North Philly...

"Experts are saying..."

I want to know WTF has happened to "journalism" ion these United States. that of course is an idiot, rhetorical question since we KNOW what has happened.

I have been treated to weeks of news stories, many of which concern nature, e.g. climate change, shark attacks, and the like, wherein the "correspondent" alludes to the statements of "experts".

Do they mean "experts" like those who swore that there were WMD's in Iraq? In traditional journalistic practice, the names of these so-called experts would be named and quoted directly. In that manner, we would know who to credit or hold accountable. Nowadays, the propaganda machine states that if you say the word "expert" or the phrase "noted authorities" then the "news" piece would be assumed to be credible to 99% of the audience "because".

Now I have to use quotation marks around the clock because it's all bullshit all the time.

Remember I told you months ago that there was going to be something in MAD Magazine?

On edit: I couldn't say anything because I know one of the principals and promised him I wouldn't say a word as to exactly what it was...

Here it is...
http://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2015/06/30/chris-christies-world

Some fun today with a RWer and other musings...

Now this one is not entirely unreasonable all of the time, just 92% of the time which, I told him once, makes him in my eyes a Republican Socialist. So he asked me what I thought of the extraordinary security precautions surrounding Philadelphia's July 4th celebration...more on that later...and I told him of course that there'd been a lot of 'chatter' around and that you can't be too careful. Of course we got onto the Pope's visit in late September and he was ruminating as to why this was a bad idea for the city (he's not entirely wrong).

I said to him, "You know why the Pope is coming to Philly, right?" He answered, " Do I...?" I said, "Probably not. You see, the Pope is going to announce the existence of alien life and its contact with the militaries and certain civilian centers of the world. Who better than one of the very few titular heads of an organized religion? Many people might not believe a politician: we all know they lie continuously, but the Pope....now he's NOT gonna lie, right?"

He was stunned...and started laughing thinking I wasn't serious. He asked, "Why in Philadelphia?" I looked around to make sure no one else was around and said, "Because Philadelphia is STILL the REAL capitol of the United States. That Washington business is just a front...we know that there are immensely powerful people pulling the strings and the Command and Control Center is located beneath the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and it entrance is the stairway long closed in the Art Museum which leads down to the subway station that was built but no line technically extended to it from the Broad Street Subway. The huge door on the Kelly Drive side was constructed ostensibly to be able to move railroad cars in but in fact is the entrance for vehicles and other materiel to be placed into the vaulted chasm which lies deep beneath where the Pope himself is going to make this proclamation."

He looked at me as though I were crazy and I laughed and said, "Just kidding." But he spent the rest of the visit looking at me peculiarly.

And I don't blame him....isn't that just nuts?

Or is it?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Anyway...usually we have a small security operation which consists of a black van with a dome which parks on the Parkway when we have these massive events. This time we have what looks like a military communications station being set up near the Art Museum as you come off Martin Luther King Drive. I've never ever seen anything like it before as a civilian. Also, we have new signage on the Parkway where the July 4th Celebration and the Pope will be celebrating Mass. this signage identifies every few feet on the Parkway by code and one could imagine that if someone needed to be somewhere, you could tell them the exact place you wanted them to be. In all the years I've attended events there - although I no longer do because crowds scare me as I've aged - we have never had any demarcations like these. This should be a very very interesting time here. This is a BFD with respect to these events: to paraphrase the KYW 1060 News Station motto: All Pope, All the Time.

I found myself moved nearly to tears yesterday with the SCOTUS decision...

I grew up as a straight male in New Hope, PA. Those of you who are familiar with the town, know that it was euphemistically termed an 'artists' colony which it was...but it was also a place where gay and straight people could easily live side by side and just conduct their lives in the way in which they wished to live. Interestingly and parenthetically, south of New Hope, on Street Road in Bensalem was a little development called Concord Park where mixed race couples could reside without having crosses burned on their lawns routinely. But that is a story for another day.

It really has been a wondrous week but the ruling yesterday reminded me of something my mother of blessed memory said to me a couple years before she passed away. She said that she had lived through remarkable technological advances: Man on the Moon, transistors, television, central air conditioning, mass automobile manufacturing, jet travel, and the like, but that these advances and their exponential rapidity of growth were to be expected as this is how intellectual curiosity combined with capitalist motivations would evolve. But the one thing which shocked her beyond words was the fact that she had been born in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, the daughter of an immigrant from the outskirts of Moscow, and that she had lived long enough to see the fall of the Soviet Bloc. This to her was almost unbelievable. Again, parenthetically, she stated that during the process of collapse, the only Western individual who was right on the mark was, and she used to almost gag when she'd say his name, Dick Nixon, who warned of the subterranean issues which would express themselves upon the release of the Communist Yoke. This to her was the moment of her lifetime that was stunning, more than any other.

Well, I know how she felt, because on Friday, I felt the exact same way: that in my lifetime with this Congress, and with the hate-filled biases which seem to be pervasive, this liberation and granting of deserved-rights to a large populus within this country is almost unbelievable to me, although I sensed very recently that the Court would do this since none other than Ted Olson backed it, probably for nefarious reasons of his and his wing of the Republican Party for whom he does his "duty". That being said, I told my child that this is a great moment in the history of the nation; that since women being granted the right to vote in 1920, and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills of the 1960's, this seems to happen ever 40-50 years and this was the moment for this generation. It is just remarkable.

So in my youth, I understood the nature of prejudice certainly as a Jewish youth living in a very predominantly WASP area, but the ubiquitous societal discrimination against gays and lesbians I found peculiar, since where I lived, we all "just got along". As I matured, I came to understand much of the psychology of bigotry and hatred and the psychosexual complexities of mankind, including, but not limited to, repression, denial, and irrationality. I want to say that I believe that my early success as a practitioner was due to the fact that the ever-increasing gay and lesbian and now transgender population of my area found comfort here because I clearly made no judgements concerning the sexuality of the individual: nice people were treated nicely and professionally, not nice people were treated professionally and more formally, regardless of their interests elsewhere. I understood the nature of GRID, renamed more accurately AIDS before most in my profession here and helped many through their long-suffering terminal illness which wreaks havoc intraorally, causing great pain and infection. It was a terrible time but they all could find solace here even while many dentists were attempting not to treat these individuals for (ignorant) fear of coming down with the disease themselves. I consider this ongoing era to be one of the most tragic in the history of the world - such immense loss.

It is therefore for me, a singular moment in my existence which has been tied to the Community for virtually my entire life. I'm so pleased for everyone: the individuals, their families, their friends, and for the society in general, which will benefit immensely from this remarkable moment in time. As my When I was young, I never would have believed that I would live long enough to witness and experience this moment.