Cynical-C

From Bloomberg:

Donald Trump has been U.S. president for less than six months but it’s been enough time to send opinions of American leadership plunging.

According to a Pew Research Center public survey of 37 countries, a median of just 22 percent of respondents have confidence in Trump to do the right thing in international matters, compared with 64 percent at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency. As a country, the U.S.’s favorable rating fell in the same period to 49 percent from 64 percent.

Israel and Russia were the only countries surveyed where the public prefers Trump to Obama.

According to Pew, the steepest slides in the view of Trump came in European allies such as Sweden, Netherlands and Germany, and in South Korea. The decline was less pronounced in some majority-Muslim countries such as Turkey, Tunisia and Jordan, partly because approval for Obama was already low. For instance, only 14 percent of Jordanians had trust in Obama at the end of his tenure, compared with 9 percent for Trump. By comparison, 93 percent of Swedes had confidence in Obama and only 10 percent feel the same way about Trump.

On February 25, 2017 a stray cat came to our door, meowing very loudly. His left rear leg was injured. We took him to the vet. The vet examined the cat and took X-Rays. She said there was no bone damage in the left rear leg and that probably some other cat bit him in the leg and the wound got infected, hence the swelling. She also said there were some old wounds on the left side of his body and a bone fracture in his left front leg which probably happened weeks ago, hence the limping. But it had started to heal. The vet started the antibiotic treatment and gave him some medication for internal and external parasites because there were lots of fleas and ticks on him ( Like he didn’t have enough problems. Damn you blood-sucking parasites!). The cat stayed at the clinic for two nights. On February 27, I went to the clinic again.
After the cleansing, I took him home. And we continued the antibiotic treatment, we gave him intramuscular injections two times a day for 5 days. At first he couldn’t put any weight on his left rear leg.
I cleansed the wound with antiseptics 3 times a day. He cleansed the wound with his tongue 30 times a day.
Then he started to run.
At the end of the five-day treatment, we went to the vet again. She said the wound looked fine and we stopped the antibiotics. The cat was ready to go outside because it was March and it was very difficult to keep him indoors so we let him out. Now he lives in our garden with other cats.

And the update after 40 days.

I’m rereading the series in french which is good practice except it takes me forever.

You’re a wizard, Harry!

Twenty years ago today, British publisher Bloomsbury released J.K. Rowling’s debut novel, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” the first in the seven-book series about a boy wizard that went on to become a global phenomenon.

The outspoken billionaire author, who was living in relative poverty when she first completed her manuscript, took to Twitter on Monday to celebrate the milestone.

Less ‘mean’?

Twenty two million fewer people would have insurance under the Senate GOP’s health care bill by 2026 when compared to current law, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday. The CBO’s analysis of the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act, which would partially dismantle the Affordable Care Act, comes just days before the Senate is expected to vote on the bill.

The analysis find that the Senate Republicans did not much better than their House counterparts—whose Obamacare repeal bill the CBO found would result in 23 million losing insurance—in staving off devastating coverage losses under their plans. The CBO said of the Senate bill on Monday that the first round of coverage losses, some 15 million in 2018, would come from the elimination of the individual mandate.

As time goes on, the Senate bill’s deep cuts to Medicaid would take hold, and the CBO predicted that by 2026 enrollment in the program among those under 65 would fall by 16 percent.

As a blogger, I try to stay out of the Internet:

White House employee Ivanka Trump apparently has a rather curious understanding of what it means to be a senior adviser to the president. On Monday, she informed Fox & Friends that despite having an office in the West Wing, “I try to stay out of politics.”

Trump went on to say: “I instead like to focus on areas where I can add positive value, where I can contribute to the agenda. Policies around workforce development, about ensuring that barriers are removed for the American working family … focusing on how we can help our veterans and how we can really deliver them the care that they so need.”