July 19, 2016


Hal Brown’s July blog
My photo blog is here. +++ Links to all the several dozen articles I cross-posted to Daily Kos with comments are here.

Wednesday, July 19, 2016
Evening update: I’m resisting turning on the TV  to see what Mike Pence has to say. However, I did find an interesting and perhaps not as scary as it might be article on Huffington Post. 

Donald Trump Planning To Just Let Mike Pence Run The Country, Apparently

Trump plans to saddle his veep with most of the duties of being president. Because why not?

One day this past May, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reached out to a senior adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who left the presidential race just a few weeks before. As a candidate, Kasich declared in March that Trump was “really not prepared to be president of the United States,” and the following month he took the highly unusual step of coordinating with his rival Senator Ted Cruz in an effort to deny Trump the nomination. But according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?
When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.

What will Trump do while Pence is handling domestic and foreign affairs? He’ll be making the country great again. It occurred to me that Trump might as well let Pence live in the White House. After all, it’s hardly Mar-a-Lago. Instead, I think he be better suited living in a converted Library of Congress, the books could just be disposed of because, well, you know.... The building is already much more Trumpian than the White House. I took these photos six years ago.



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Rethinking Hillary’s Veep: Go With The Admiral?
Read the poll here


I wrote in several Daily Kos diaries that if Hillary was confident she had the election locked up, she should pick Elizabeth Warren to run with her. About half the 200 or so Kos readers who I polled agreed that she’d be the best choice. 
However, whether it is my panic or a rational analysis that Trump is tightening up the race, I am now thinking she should consider the VP choice as being the person most likely to gain her votes she wouldn’t already get.
I am assuming that the most ardent Bernie supporters, even those with considerable animus towards Hillary, will vote her her. Warren might help with a few of them, but I am just not sure how many on-the-fence progressive voters she’d actually swing towards Hillary.
I’m assuming Hispanics will support her whether or not she has a Hispanic running mate. In any case, Housing Secretary Julian Castro and Rep. Xavier Beccera seem to be off the top of the list.
​Senator Sherrod Brown would loose his seat and a Republican would replace him, so that seems to rule him out.




Stavridis-medals.png

While Kaine and Vilsack, who seem to be on the top of the speculation list at present, are good choices they don’t seem to add much to the ticket. They are hardly household names. 
That brings me to Admiral James G. Starvidis. To say he’s not a household name would be the understatement of the year. But that should hardly matter because of the appeal he would have to so-called suburban soccer moms currently wavering in who to vote for.
Trump is stirring up a panic in many of them, and will continue to exploit their fears that only he can protect them from threats, be they homegrown or overseas. 
ADM James G. Stavridis adds something to the ticket that Trump doesn’t have. The medals on the admiral’s chest actually mean something.

Rather than quote Wikipedia, you can read about him here.
 It wasn’t hard to find the photo The Daily News used, but it would be interesting to know who thought of it or whether someone just Googled train wrecks crashing through buildings (how I found it).
Granville–Paris Express overran the buffer stop, crashed through the station wall before falling onto the Place de Rennes below, where it stood on its nose.

The Daily News is good, but I prefer more obvious phallic imagery.
Prospect of a small handed reprobate as president.


From Huffington Post: "Did the 2016 election season just find its Tina Fey?
Actress/singer Laura Benanti nailed the part of Melania Trump on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday night, offering a comically inept defense against accusations of plagiarism. "


Trump kids really, REALLY, excited 
Code Pink, not so excited ---





Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Evening Update

She’s beautiful, she’s intelligent, she’s submissive to her husband,” Carold Thomas of East Baton Rouge warbled. “She has a very anointed message for women.”

Anointed???

“It’s worse than plagiarism.” David Frum, neo-conservative and former speechwriter for George W. Bush.

The spin from Trump surrogates on this so far has been DENIAL… Coming from the Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort in his press conference this morning…  Blaming it on “the Clinton camp” say further that “when HC is threatened by a female the first thing she does is to try to destroy that person.”
This is how it will be handled from now on, unless Melania herself decides to say she made a mistake she is sorry for. Otherwise, there will be no apology, let alone an acknowledgement that plagiarism even occurred. 
I rather doubt she will since she allowed her handlers to say that she graduated from a university when in fact she dropped out after her first year.

A.J. Delgado, a Trump surrogate and Harvard graduate was asked by Joes Diaz-Ballart about what would have happened to her if she submitted a paper with passages plagiarized, and she didn’t answer, instead denying that anything was plagiarized in Melania’s speech.

This will be the continued use of the time-dishonored, but proven effective, propaganda method of saying something often and long enough so people start to disbelieve the evidence right in front of them.

Already on Wikipedia: In April 2010, Baio posted a controversial political statement on his Twitter account. His posting, "Taxes are DONE...That should feed, house & provide medical for a few lazy non working people at my expense. Have a great Monday!" was picked up by the blog Jezebel, and the heated web-based discussion between Baio, his wife, the Jezebel.com authors, Jezebel readers and Baio fans received outside coverage.[19][20][21]
In 2012, Baio endorsed Mitt Romney for president.[22] In an interview with Ashley Webster, Baio opined regarding President Barack Obama that he couldn't tell "whether he's dumb, he's a Muslim or he's a Muslim sympathizer, and I don't think he's dumb."[23]
Scott Baio spoke at the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention following fellow celebrity speaker Willie Robertson, star of the show Duck Dynasty.[24] In this context, The New Yorker Magazine called him "a recently unearthed (and strangely angry) eighties sitcom star."[25]







9:20 PM Pacific Time: Breaking news tonight - headlines tomorrow: Melania’s speech plagiarized from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech: In two passages, 29 identical words and six similar words, and in second passage 22 out of 26 words were identical. Chris Mathews says that whoever wrote the speech did this on purpose, that it was so obvious that it probably was an act of sabotage.







One is sublime, the other ridiculous reprehensible… 
...Trump questioned the legitimacy of Obama’s grief and concern. “I watched the president, and sometimes thwords are okay. But you just look at the body language and there’s something going on. Look, there’s something going on,” Trump told “Fox and Friends” on Monday.“There’s just bad feeling,” he said. More
“I think most progressives would love to see Elizabeth Warren,” said Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who is running in his state’s Democratic Senate primary. “There’s an obvious warmth that people feel toward Elizabeth Warren that isn’t duplicated by any other Democratic figure. People feel that they can believe in her, which is very important in motivating our folks to vote.” More
Comments here
...Trump questioned the legitimacy of Obama’s grief and concern. “I watched the president, and sometimes thwords are okay. But you just look at the body language and there’s something going on. Look, there’s something going on,” Trump told “Fox and Friends” on Monday.“There’s just bad feeling,” he said. More
























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www.dailykos.com/… From today’s Tom Tomorrow cartoon

There is no filter from brain to mouth with Trump - which in one way is a good thing because despite all the pressure to appear presidential which we can assume is coming from the sane people close to him, he either can't or won't heed their advice. I lean towards “can’t.”
We know there’s pressure to rein in the inflammatory positions which he will occasionally heed, witness his shift regarding no longer banning all Muslims from coming to the United States. But off the cuff he still can’t control himself. (See latest news on Muslim ban.)
I want Trump to keep revealing that he’s not only hateful and hate-fueled, but that he’s unbalanced.  If he does this, that’s the good news. 
The unhinged true self of Trump being repeatedly revealed will hopefully convince sensible Republicans not to vote for him. Unfortunately, the media is complicit in buying into the probability that Trump can morph into a new being, and actually become “presidential” or as I would put it, a person without ingrained mental pathology.
The bad news  obviously is that he could become president - a hatefilled and hate-fueled narcissist is bad enough, but a president who can't self-regulate and is also showing more and more that he is (at the least) showing traits of paranoid personality disorder .... look at it this way.... combine the former Nazi Dr. Strangelove and the manic paranoid General Jack D. Ripper and we have President Trump. 
Many people will but the cynical attempt to use the recent news to scare people into voting for Trump. What evil genius came up with the new slogan “Make America Safe Again?” It fits right in with “Make America Great Again” and “Law and Order President” was already used by Nixon.
In the space of a few days two things happened on the presidential campaign trail that repeat the script of a presidential election nearly a half century back. Trump boasted in a speech that he was the “law and order candidate.” Close on the heels of this, new polls showed that in the three states that will again likely decide the election, Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, Trump surged in the polls to either edge or pull to a statistical dead heat with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.www.politico.com/...
Trump’s “law and order” boast and his poll resurgence are no accident. In the election a half century ago, GOP presidential candidate Richard Nixon virtually made the slogan law and order and crime in the streets his signature themes. He was brutal and direct in one speech when he flatly said that the “solution to the crime problem is not the quadrupling of funds for any governmental war on poverty but more convictions.” publiceye.org/…
 The terrifying part is that it worked then and will work with lots of people now. And even more disturbing is that while Nixon had many faults, he wasn’t batshit crazy.
























batshit-crazy1.jpg
So, as a refresher….

Paranoid personality disorder is characterized by a pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent. This usually begins in early adulthood and presents in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:
  • Suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her
  • Is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of friends or associates
  • Is reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against him or her
  • Reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events
  • Persistently bears grudges (i.e., is unforgiving of insults, injuries, or slights)
  • Perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that are not apparent to others, and is quick to react angrily or to counterattack
  • Has recurrent suspicions, without justification, regarding fidelity of spouse or sexual partner. Psych Central
If enough the majority of American voters want a president who believes in what they believe in, and don’t care that he is a hedonistic narcissist, and are too blind and stupid to see that he is mentally unbalanced, then we will elect a president who is also a batshit crazy paranoid. 
Related: Ethics, Shrinks, and Trump: Should they speak out?

JUST TAKE A FEW MINUTES AND LISTEN:


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