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

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. 





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














blog-071816a.jpg
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:


Previous Page





No comments:

This blog has moved to a new address

  This website is migrating Due to a problem with this platform, Google Blogger, I have moved my blog to WordPress and given it a new addres...