This is what the Fox News website thought were the most important stories this morning, and why it matters, By Hal M. Brown

 

 

The top of the Fox News website page when I began to write my Substack this morning featured the article: “From ‘homicide capital’ to safer streets? Memphis area sees policing push.”

This seemed to me to be an attempt to address the publicity about other cities being far more dangerous than D.C. and to normalize federal intervention in them to fight crime. The sending in FBI agents is a Trump alternative to sensibly dealing with root causes of crime and looking at ways to augment local law enforcement from within. Federal grants to local police departments would make more sense than sending addtional FBI agents. Cities like Memphis already have FBI and and DEA agents fighting crime in their usual purview. Of course doing things in a sensible way wouldn’t be as flashy and self-agrandizing for Trump. It also would cede control of fighting most crime to local authorities. This is something dictators do not do.

Here are next articles shown above fromleft to right:

Justice Barrett teases new memoir in abrupt conference exit

This article isn’t really news. It just says that Barrett “emerged as the most-talked-about justice on the high court this term, confounding and frustrating observers as they tried and failed to predict how she would vote, and that “she’s been hailed as the ‘most interesting justice on the bench,’ a ‘trailblazer’ and an iconoclast, among other descriptions.”

Congressman whose DC apartment complex was robbed blasts Democrats for criticizing Trump crime crackdown

This is obviously a pro-Trump D.C. law enforcement takeover article. It is a typical first person account of crime in D.C. applauding Trump’s militarization of policing. 

'The View' co-host Ana Navarro rips Melania Trump's Putin letter as 'so hypocritical you can't believe it'

The last one was actually critical of both Melania and Big Daddy.

She added, "How about the children all over the world who are not receiving U.S. aid because her husband's government decided we shouldn't be feeding starving children all over the world? How about all those kids?"

Navarro sarcastically applauded the first lady’s letter as a "good thing" for Ukrainian children but told her to "start a little closer to home."

"Maybe she should turn around and say the exact same thing to her husband, because there are children in America crying, suffering, going to bed in fear, returning to homes that are abandoned and empty, not knowing where their next meal is coming from because of what her husband is doing," Navarro said.

An interesting thing happened as I was writing this Substack. The article about crime in D.C. changed postions on the main page:

Somebody running the Fox News website decided that a story about crime in Memphis and calling it “the homicide capital” went against the Trump narrative that the nation’s capital was the crime capital. Even though it doesn’t rank number one in homicides you can be sure that Trump wishes it did.

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Taking a break from Trump today, this is about the "must have and must have it now addiction" I think I share with lots of people. Amazon must make big bucks off of people being impatient to get their stuff.

 

I can’t count the number of times I spend the extra $2.99 on Amazon to have a same day delivery rather than a next day delivery.

This morning I decided to buy the pillow shown on the top of the page. I ordered this at 5:00 AM after a fitful night trying to find a comfortable sleeping position on my side. 

Note above that I could have had the item delivered today at no addtional charge if it had cost one cent more. Otherwise it would come tomorrow. If I wanted it today, so I could try it out tonight, I’d need to pay an addtional $2.99. There’s that pesky penny again, as if there’s a difference between $2.99 and $3.00 worth my worrying about. 

However, $2.99 to Amazon has to add up to real money if you consider that there are must be millions of people like me who want an item so badly that they are willing to take the split second to click a box on their computer screen.

Amazon knows about this addiction.

I envision an overnight worker speeding through my local vast Amazon warehouse (see “Amazon opens $500 million Oregon warehouse that stocks 40 million products: Look inside”) on a same day delivery vehicle with flashing red and blue lights and a screaming siren. I don’t know if they really have these, but this is what I imagine.

There’s no way I am alone in what I am callling “the must have and must have it now addiction” since Amazon' wouldn’t offer this option if only a small percentage of people were willing to shell out the addtional $2.99.

I admit I’ve paid this not just for items only available on Amazon, but also to buy things I forgot to pick up when I was shopping or that I could drive down to Ace Hardware to buy. 

I did this a few days ago when I was working on a project that I needed diamond cut-off wheels for my Dremel rotary tool to complete. I was just too lazy to get in the car and drive for a few minutes to pick it up in a nearby store and save $2.99.

Why, you might, or might not, ask why did I want the diamond discs so quickly? I needed them to cut 6 and 10 inches off the steel bars shown below holding a multi-color dimming lamp over a large flower pot next to my patio:

I maintain the flowers not just for myself and my partner to enjoy, but for everyone else who walks by since they are on a path residents where we live often walk down and I see them admiring the flowers.

We are a nation of impatient people. I don’t know how many of us suffer from a must have it and must have it now syndrome. I don’t even know it it can be called a syndrome or an addiction. I don’t think it’s a true addition since one can stop without withdrawl symptoms. I just see it in myself and with people all around me.

I know it is better for my mental health, and for lots of people’s mental health, to learn how to chill out under various circumatances. Unhealthy impatience could be associated with getting an item they want, but it could learning to relax when you are waiting something good to happen, or it could be when someone is stuck in a traffic jam or waiting for just about anything.

I am not advocating that everyone learn to meditate. This requires discipline and commitment. It is worth a try for anybody and I won’t rule out doing it, but then I am not feeling sanguine about doing it. I think I am reasonably adept at not getting restless or anxious when I know that there’s nothing I can to to speed something up. However, on the $2.99 issue, there IS something I can easily do to speed something up.

I am just saying more people should take a breath, relax, ask themselves if they, for example, really have to have some item, whether it is something they actually need or something they just want, today or whether being impatient is worth $2.99.

Maybe there are times when it is a helpful exercise to resist clicking that Amazon same day delivery box and make yourself wait until tomorrow.

Not every Amazon item comes with a same day option. When I look at an Amazon search page I scroll the pages looking for the item I want that can be delivered in the shortest time even if it costs significantly more money.

This is really nuts. But then again. I don’t see changing this behavior. 

I really do want to try that damn pillow tonight! I wonder how much more I’d spend to get it today. I really think Amazon has come up with the perfect amount, at least for me. I would pay an even $3.00, but I don’t think I’d pay $4.00. Even $3.50 might be too much. 

11:00 AM Update:

Comments on the news. This is just plain insane. I wonder what Zelenskyy and Macron were thinking. Did they understand the the 4 more years referred to a third term?

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NY Times headline reminds me of what we hear on so many cop shows. It also reminds me of how often TV cops don't say these words for the sake of drama.

 

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I was struck by the title of this article in The New York Times:

The article begins:

This time, when President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine arrives in the Oval Office, he will come with backup.

An array of European prime ministers and presidents are flying in for the meeting on Monday to make sure that a viable, defensible Ukraine survives whatever carving up of its territory is about to happen at the negotiating table.

But they are also there to make certain that the trans-Atlantic alliance emerges intact. President Trump’s instant reversal on the critical issue of obtaining a cease-fire before negotiating over land or security guarantees has left many of them shaken, and wondering whether Mr. Trump had once again been swayed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

By most accounts, the European officials want to ensure that Mr. Trump has not pivoted too close to the Russian side, and does not try to strong-arm Mr. Zelensky into a deal that will ultimately sow the seeds of Ukraine’s dissolution. And they want to safeguard against the risk of the United States, the linchpin of European security since NATO’s creation in 1949, undermining that interest.

This reminded me of the TV cop show trope when a cop, sometimes alone and sometimes with a partner, is about to enter the house of a suspect they believe is dangerous.

When we watch the show we may say “call for backup you idiot or idiots. Sometimes one partner says it to another. 

For dramatic effect the cop, or pair of cops, never wait for backup. They always enter the house by themselves.

Officer Zelenskyy went into the criminals lair by himself the first time. We know what happened to him then.

Now he is being more than prudent. He is being damn smart. 

In fact, since he knows the nature of the threat and that the crime boss he’s about to confront has been laying in wait for him and has consulted with his international criminal counterpart, he is bringing his version of a SWAT team.

I say, good for him.

Addendum:

I was pleased that other media didn’t use the word “backup.” For example, the AP:

Excerpt:

KYIV (AP) — European and NATO leaders announced Sunday that they’ll be joining President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington for crucial talks with President Donald Trump, rallying around the Ukrainian leader after his exclusion from Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The remarkable move — with one European leader after another announcing that they’ll be at Zelenskyy’s side when he travels to the White House on Monday — was an apparent effort to ensure that the meetinggoes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated the Ukrainian president in a heated Oval Office encounter.

This is how The Washington Post put it:

How’s that for a wishy-washy title?

The BBC focused on the day itself rather than the fact that Zelenskyy is being accompanied by other world leaders:

The worst title I saw was this from the UK edition of The Guardian.

It seems obvious to me that whoever wrote this insulting unserious title is patting themselves on the back thinking how fucken clever they are. In fact, it suggests that Zelenskyy is weak and not smart.

Afterthought:

If there’s any doubt that Trump has become an enemy, all Zelenskyy and the European leaders have to do is read this Trump Truth Social post:

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The woke jokes and belligerent bloviating won't save Trump from his disasters, let alone owning the catastrophe that will cost lives, by Hal M. Brown

 Trump doesn’t care about what’s in The Smithsonian. He’s just puking up another distraction. It’s an unfunny woke joke. It’s along the lines of his Kennedy Center Awards nonsense. It got a lot of coverage, much of it mocking his insatiable need for attention, but it was a distraction.

The distractions seemed to be meant to take public attention away from the Epstein matter, the bad jobs numbers, and the failure the tariffs, but that was two days ago. 

Right now they aren’t about a “mere” disaster, they are about a catastrophe which he wants you to ignore and desperately wants to go away. This, of course, is the Alaska meeting and the war in Ukraine. 

If he watches MSNBC, and he’s known to do this, he will see discussions about the failure of the Putin meeting and how he reacted:

How he reacted to news about the Putin meeting failing shows us how this got to him:

This one reeks of flop sweat:

Now the rubber is hitting the road. He has to achieve an end to the war. He has an extraordinary meeting tomorrow. Previously we expected Zelinskyy to be meeting with Trump alone. Now we learn he won’t be meeting with Trump by himself:

I don’t know whether Zelenskyy thought of this or not, but if he did it is brilliant. I hope the other seven world leaders fly in and join him in a caravan of limos driving up to the White House for the meeting. That would be some photo op even before they go inside. Trump probaly will have his minions in the meeting as he did the last time. Monday Zelenskyy will have his own heavy hitters. They aren’t just national leaders, but they also have their own armies.

Trump won’t end the war, because doing so would mean Ukraine giving up territory to Russia. He can’t allow this because Putin won’t let him. He knows this. This will all end up in a huge stamp on his presidential promise to end the war saying it was an epic fail (hence my illustration).

What Trump is likely to do is escalate the war he can control, at least to some extent. He thinks he can control it. This is his war against Amercian cities and to a lesser extent his war on woke.

The city war isn’t going as well as he hoped it would. Consider coverage like this:

He is counting on the active duty military to act as his SS, but whether they will do this remains to be determined. If you subscribe to The NY Times read what David French, a combat veteran himself, had to say about this here.

Excerpt:

Much of the commentary surrounding President Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to Los Angeles and now Washington, D.C., has centered on its impact on American democracy. Do we want to live in a republic that puts military boots on city streets at the whim of a politician, rather than in response to an extraordinary need?

He concludes:

I don’t doubt that members of the military deployed in Washington will still try to show the way. A vast majority have far too much integrity, far too much discipline and far too much affection for their fellow Americans to become the kind of jackbooted oppressors you see in the worst militaries abroad. They’ll perform a misguided mission with honor.

When that mission is a vengeful, partisan deployment to American streets, however, it risks straining the social compact that binds a democracy to its military. The Army may want to hold the line, but Donald Trump does not, and few people can do more damage to our nation’s armed forces than a commander in chief who is consumed with rage and drunk with power.

This is my reaction to this:

Trump has his Devil eyes on Democratic cities. Some point out that the local courts will impede this, but let’s not forget that while Trump so far has been able to control his people with guns (and now may arm the soldiers in DC) cities also have their own people with guns. The New York City Police have about 33,000 sworn officers. 

Whether Trump thinks his dictatorial control has hardened to the extent he goes beyond making threats remains to be seen. Still, these threats provide a distraction.

As for the war on woke, while this gets media attention, when it comes right down to it outrageous as trying to rewrite American history it doesn’t matter all that much in the great scheme of things. I doubt Trump cares about woke, even when it comes to drag shows or trans people in sports. His rants are a performance for people who do care. I doubt that most of those who do care believe Trump care as much as they do if he cares at all.

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