June 13, 2016

Most recent articles


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

Thursday, June 30, 2016

"Reality doesn’t give a damn about our beliefs, and so we must instead give a damn about reality.” Astronomer Phil Plait
Read article
by Phil Plait who writes Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog
 and is an astronomer, public speaker,
science evangelizer, and author of 
Death From the Skies!  
Months ago, early on in the Presidential campaign, I made light of Trump, saying that his particular candidacy would crash and burn when he inevitably said or did something so outrageous and horrific that people would flee his side.
I was wrong. I underestimated just how thoroughly the GOP had salted the Earth. Philosophical party planks of climate change denialanti-evolutionanti-intellectualismintolerance, and more have made it such that Trump can literally say almost anything, and it hardly affects his popularity.
Daily Beast gave this enough credence to put it as their top story this morning - If it does turn out that both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were, at the least, serial high-class  whoremongers at this wealthy playboy’s sex parties, how could this effect the election? It seems a simple equation, not that anything is that simple in the body politic. The alleged rape of a 13 year old by Donald Trump aside, if enough people believe that both Clinton and Trump engaged in numerous sexual romps, wouldn’t come as a big surprise to most people. In fact, again leaving out the child rape allegations, the charges would seem to cancel each other out. The main difference is that Hillary Clinton didn’t do anything except not what any psychotherapist of a “normal” client would have urged her to do: divorce the bum.  Trump and Bill Clinton were the bad actors in this tawdry play.

The Billionaire Pedophile Who Could Bring Down Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton

Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Should Warren run for VP, Take The Poll Here

Heather-Digby Parton gives us a social psychology lesson - and concludes, as I have, that Elizabeth Warren is probably the best choice to run as Hillary’s VP. 

Clinton and Warren: It might be exactly the right ticket at the right time 


Many thought that having two women running together would be too much for the U.S. but it's exactly what we need 

Read entire article
[P]eople assimilate new information in a selective fashion. When people get information that supports what they initially thought, they give it considerable weight. When they get information that undermines their initial beliefs, they tend to dismiss it…This natural human tendency explains why it’s so hard to dislodge false rumors and factual errors. Corrections can even be self-defeating, leading people to stronger commitment to their erroneous beliefs.[…]

But they may reconsider if the information comes from a source they cannot dismiss. People are most likely to find a source credible if they closely identify with it or begin in essential agreement with it. In such cases, their reaction is not, “how predictable and uninformative that someone like that would think something so evil and foolish,” but instead, “if someone like that disagrees with me, maybe I had better rethink.”
I think that in the case of people being persuaded to vote for Hillary-Elizabeth instead of, in the case of diehard Bernie supporters voting 3rd party or not voting, or fence-sitting Trump-??? supporters voting for him, what would work would be the evidence of their own eyes coming from watching Hillary and Elizabeth continue their joint appearances, and seeing Elizabeth on there own at rallies and in interviews.  Here’s more from Heather-Digby Parton:
"There are those  who assume that two women at the top of the ticket is too much for the country to handle. After all, it took nearly 230 years for one to even be nominated by a major party for the top job .I thought that myself but after seeing them together I changed my mind. It looked like a natural combination to me. When you think about it, it’s simply illogical to be willing to vote for a woman president but unwilling to vote for a woman to replace her if something happened. That makes no sense. And if you are the type of person who believes that a woman at the top of the ticket needs a man around to keep her steady, why would the VP have to be that person? The administration will surely be filled with men, they always are. In any case, there’s really nothing new about voting for president and VP of the same gender. "
"Most importantly,  the Republicans have nominated a man whose views about everything, but especially women, are nothing short of antediluvian. The prospect of a campaign featuring two strong women standing toe to toe with Trump is just too delicious to pass up. It’s already making him come unglued."

Heather Digby Parton
Heather Digby Parton, also known as "Digby," is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.
While in this article Parton doesn’t get into what kind of vice president she’d be (you can only write about so much), my opinion is that she would not only make a great VP, she’d become the most influential person in this role only tied with Dick Cheney.


Related: 

Bernie Blew It

Elizabeth Warren is the surrogate he was supposed to be. His supporters have become Clinton’s. How Sanders overplayed his hand

Tuesday, June 28, 2016
From Huffington Post: Have you ever wondered what Donald Trump — that human cheese puff of hate, insecurity and intimidation — was like back in the day? Did the presumptive Republican presidential nominee take a turn for the worse somewhere on the rough road we call life? Or was he always the same lopsided combo of an oversized ego and undersized hands?
Well, if this Robert Crumb comic “Point the Finger,” featured in the first edition of Hup! in 1989, is any indication, Trump was always very ... well, Trump-like.
The comic features a showdown between R. Crumb and D. Trump; the self-deprecating and tortured artist versus the smug and superior business mogul. It’s not so surprising that many of Crumb’s descriptions of Trump are resoundingly relevant today. You can read the entire comic here.


“It just kind of proves that people over there aren’t really smart, but apparently it’s just the accent makes them seem smart,” Colbert said.
“Well, you’ve had your little vote. Now the British economy is tanking. The pound has plunged to its lowest level since 1985. Right now the most stable currency in the U.K. is the Cadbury Creme Egg.”
Colbert noted that Google searches for “What happens after we leave the EU?” spiked 250% after the referendum passed.
“Which,” he said, “is kind of like Googling ‘What happens after unprotected sex?’ on the way to the baby shower.”

Samantha Bee lends her snarky humor to a take on Brexit:

Samantha Bee had Scottish actor Danid Tennant (who played the 10th Dr. Who) read some choice Tweets from Scots after Trump came out and supported the Brexit vote: They voted to remain you wiggly slice, They voted to Remain you witless fucking cocksplat, Scotland voted overwhelmingly to stay in Europe you toupeed fucktrumpet, Scotland voted to stay you numpty, They voted to remain and they hate your guts, you ludicrous tangerine ball bag, Scotland voted Remain you weapons grade plum.

Monday, June 27, 2016
If you missed Rachel Maddow’s 15 minute segment discussing what Hillary need in a VP and why Elizabeth fits the bill… including an old interview with Hillary saying she would definitely consider an all woman ticket.

This Is What a Hillary Clinton–Elizabeth Warren Ticket Would Look Like

























Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton shared the stage in Cincinnati on Monday for the first time this year. The joint appearance was widely considered to be a vice-presidential-nomination audition for Warren—but watching the action you would be forgiven for thinking she already has the part. Continued here.

Or: Vice President Al Franken?
Comments here

I lean strongly towards Hilary picking Elizabeth Warren as her running mate, but it now appears that Senator Al Franken may be her choice. Therefore it is time to learn more about him, so watch this video:

Here’s a short biography:
.
As a sketch comedy writer and featured performer on "Saturday Night Live" (NBC, 1975- ), Al Franken used biting satire and casual irony to skewer all things cultural and political. Partnered with high school friend Tom Davis, Franken earned big laughs - and the occasional outrage - for his shock jock-like parodies and sketches that fearlessly targeted presidents, celebrities and even the president of NBC, which resulted in Franken's five-year departure from the show. When he returned in 1985, Franken was more subdued, though no less funny, veering away from the over-the-top satire of the past. Always looking to expand into different arenas and never afraid to back down from a fight, Franken delved deeper into his political interests, particularly after he left "SNL" in 1995. Fueled by his outrage at the conservative movement in the mid-1990s, Franken wrote several bestselling books that skewered the right in hilarious fashion, while in the next decade he took the fight to the airwaves in 2004 when he landed his own highly-rated radio show on the fledgling liberal network, Air America. A regular participant on USO tours who frequented war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, Franken completed the transformation from entertainment to politics when he ran for United States Senator in 2008, making him one of the rare politically active celebrities who sought to use his fame for the common public good. More from TCM
































al-franken-book.png
This would be ironic...

If Franken became vice president, what with the usual speculation that ultimately he could run for president, the amazing irony would be that he wrote Why Not Me? The Inside Story of the Making and Unmaking of the Franken Presidency in 1999.
Franken’s best known book is Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, about which Amazon says: 
Al Franken, one of our “savviest satirists” (People), has been studying the rhetoric of the Right. He has listened to their cries of “slander,” “bias,” and even “treason.” He has examined the Bush administration’s policies of squandering our surplus, ravaging the environment, and alienating the rest of the world. He’s even watched Fox News. A lot.
And, in this fair and balanced report, Al bravely and candidly exposes them all for what they are: liars. Lying, lying liars. Al destroys the liberal media bias myth by doing what his targets seem incapable of: getting his facts straight. Using the Right’s own words against them, he takes on the pundits, the politicians, and the issues, in the most talked about book of the year.
Timely, provocative, unfailingly honest, and always funny, Lies sticks it to the most right-wing administration in memory, and to the right-wing media hacks who do its bidding.
































al-franken-book2.png
Franken’s best seller.

Fox News sought damages from Franken, claiming in its lawsuit that the book's subtitle violated its trademark of the slogan "Fair and Balanced". The lawsuit was dismissed, and the attempt backfired on Fox News in that it provided Franken with free publicity just as the book was launched. "The book was originally scheduled to be released Sept. 22 but will be made available Aug. 21," according to its publisher. "We sped up the release because of tremendous demand for the book, generated by recent events."
In the lawsuit, Fox described Franken as "intoxicated or deranged" as well as "shrill and unstable." In response, Franken joked that he had trademarked the word "funny", and that Fox had infringed his intellectual property rights by characterizing him as "unfunny." The publicity resulting from the lawsuit propelled Franken's yet-to-be-released book to #1 on Amazon.com.[3]
Here’s Franken destroying the hateful Ann Coulter with his answer to the question “who would you rather be FDR or Hitler.  Wikipedia


Minnesota has a Democratic governor, Mark Dayton, who would appoint Franken's temporary successor until a special election is held.
.

I just watched Elizabeth giving her introduction speech at her first campaign rally with Hillary. She was amazing.  She’s still my first choice. Al is my second choice. 
.
Sunday, June 26, 2016

There has been lots of comments on Daily Kos lambasting Salon for publishing so many anti-Clinton articles since she won the nomination. These come from disgruntled Bernie supporters. They outdid themselves with the following… my comment is below the photo they used on their main page.

I wrote a longer piece on Daily Kos, which is now getting a few comments, here.

Claws for concern: Hillary Clinton is conveniently vague when it comes to animal rights. Americans more than ever are concerned about animal welfare, but it's hard to suss how much Hillary cares about it
Saturday, June 25, 1016 What would Donald Trump have to do to loose your vote? Here are the answers from Trump supporters… the most interesting was whether it was revealed he had a swastika tattoo and the guy said “he probably does, I have friends who have swastikas on their shoulders and they’re cool.”
 Tweet of the day:
Friday, June 24, 2016
Trump off-script again...

A top adviser to Hillary Clinton said Friday that Donald Trump's post-Brexit press conference from his Scottish golf course was "pathological" and offered proof he's a "reckless and erratic egomaniac."
"Donald Trump actively rooted for this outcome, and he's rooting for the economic turmoil in its wake," said Jake Sullivan, senior policy adviser with the Clinton campaign, during a conference call with reporters. "He said that the falling British pound is good for his golf business. He actually said that. He actually put his golf business ahead of the interests of working families in the United States.” Business Insider
Image by me…. Any bets whether Paul Manafort will last until the convention?


Quote of the Day: Trump talking about his Scottish golf club after news that BREXIT vote to have UK leave the EU led to the pound plummeting to a 30 year low….  "When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry, to be honest. Thursdays, June 23, 2016 Is this all you got department:
Read Comments.
There’s another anti-Hillary book coming out, “Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience With Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate,” out June 28, depicting a cheating Bill Clinton and an unstable and tyrannical Hillary Clinton.
It is reviewed in the New York Post. This one is by a former uniformed Secret Service agent who makes all sorts of negative claims disparaging Hillary Clinton. Most of them are seemingly based on her volatility, her feelings of entitlement, and a tendency to put down those she considered to be at her beck and call. Here’s a Politico article about it.  .
A commenter lists the worst charges which I assume he found on a website somewhere since I rather doubt he did all this reading and research. 
.
My response is “so what… they’ve got בופּקיס.”*
.
She's still 1,000 times more qualified to be president than Trump. Besides, assuming any of these things are true, if some of this was due to her being at her wits end trying to cope with Bill's dalliances I can see her having a really short fuse. .
Max Palmetto commented on Politico. He’s assuming that whoever wrote this anti-Clinton books actually remembered “actual words.”  That is highly unlikely. 
EIGHT HILLARY QUOTES FROM DIFFERENT BOOKS
her actual words :

(1) "Where is the Godamn flag? I want the Godamn fucking flag up every morning at fucking sunrise.
From the book "Inside the White House" by Ronald Kessler, p. 244 Hillary to staff at the Arkansas Governor's mansion on Labor Day 1991.

(2) “Fuck off! It's enough I have to see you shit-kickers every day! I'm not going to talk to you, too!!
Just do your Godamn job and keep your mouth shut."
From the book "America Evita" by Christopher Anderson, p.90; Hillary to her State Trooper bodyguards after one of them greeted her with "Good Morning."

(3) "If you want to remain on this detail, get your fucking ass over here and grab those bags!"
From the book "The First Partner" p. 259; Hillary to a Secret Service Agent who was reluctant to carry her luggage because he wanted to keep his hands
free in case of an incident.

(4) "Stay the fuck back, stay the fuck back away from me! Don't come within ten yards of me, or else! Just fucking do as I say, Okay!!?"
From the book "Unlimited Access" by Clinton’s FBI Agent-in-Charge, Gary Aldridge, p. 139; Hillary is screaming at her Secret Service detail.

(5) "Where's the miserable cock sucker?" (otherwise known as “Bill Clinton”)
From the book "The Truth about Hillary" by Edward Klein, p.5; Hillary shouting at a Secret Service officer.

(6) "You fucking idiot" From the book "Crossfire" ~pg. 84;
Hillary to a StateTrooper who was driving her to an event.

(7) "Put this on the ground! I left my sunglasses in the limo.
I need those fucking sunglasses! We need to go back !
From the book "Dereliction of Duty" p. 71-72; Hillary to Marine One helicopter pilot to turn back while en route to Air Force One.

(8) "Come on Bill, put your dick up! You can't fuck her here!! "
From the book "Inside the White House" by Ronald Kessler, p. 243; Hillary to Gov. Bill Clinton when she spots him talking with an attractive female

This ill-tempered, violent, loud-mouth, hateful and abusive woman wants to be your next President, and have total control as Commander and Chief of our Military, the very Military for which she has shown incredible disdain throughout her public life.

Remember her most vile comment about Benghazi :
“what difference at this point does it make?”
This is what Politico reports:
“Operationally, one who has the working knowledge of how things are done there would realize that certain of those statements do not coincide with the operational plan,” said Jan Gilhooly, AFAUSSS (Association of Former Agents of the United States Secret Service) president and a 29-year Secret Service veteran.
The group’s statement, which POLITICO obtained in advance of its release, very carefully calls Byrne a liar.
“One must question the veracity and content of any book which implies that its author played such an integral part of so many [claimed] incidents. Any critique of management by one who has never managed personnel or programs resounds hollow. Additionally, why would an employee wait in excess of ten years after terminating his employment with the Service to make his allegations public?” it reads. It is reviewed in the New York Post. This one is by a former uniformed Secret Service agent who makes all sorts of negative claims disparaging Hillary Clinton. Most of them are seemingly based on her volatility, her feelings of entitlement, and a tendency to put down those she considered to be at her beck and call. Here’s a Politico article about it.  .
One thing I can easily accept is that the f-word and it’s variations are a part of her working candid vocabulary. Good for her, it’s the best single all-purpose stress reducing utterance.
Another thing I can understand and accept is that when things were going poorly with Bill she took it out on whoever was around. I doubt that she’s proud of this. From everything I read about her from those close to her, she wouldn’t have followed through on her threats to Secret Service agents to have them demoted.

This is from the Vanity Fair article about Trump:
What was clear was how fast and far one could fall from favor. The trip from “genius” to “idiot” was a flash. The former pilots who flew his plane were geniuses, until they made one too many bumpy landings and became “fucking idiots.” The gold carpeting selected in his absence for the locker rooms in the spa at Mar-a-Lago? “What kind of fucking idiot . . . ?” I watched as Trump strutted around the beautifully groomed clay tennis courts on his estate, managed by noted tennis pro Anthony Boulle. The courts had been prepped meticulously for a full day of scheduled matches. Trump took exception to the design of the spaces between courts. In particular, he didn’t like a small metal box—a pump and cooler for the water fountain alongside—which he thought looked ugly. He first questioned its placement, then crudely disparaged it, then kicked the box, which didn’t budge, and then stooped—red-faced and fuming—to tear it loose from its moorings, rupturing a water line and sending a geyser to soak the courts. Boulle looked horrified, a weekend of tennis abruptly drowned. Catching a glimpse of me watching, Trump grimaced.
The good thing about books like this is that Trump would be reckless to use their so-called revelations against Hillary against her, since there are so many more anecdotes about his obnoxious behavior.
* bupkis, goat droppings.
Quote of the morning: "Donald Trump can go run up my ribs.” Wednesday, June 22, 2016 An idea for an Internet video that would be easy to make if David Byrne would allow it. Just play it with images of Donald Trump and the White House on fire. Talking Heads - Burning down the house by Dan_of_the_Land A respite from politics, here’s news that proves that in the world of 140 character Tweets , when it comes to texting, words are becoming even less necessary in text messages: Tuesday, June 21, 2016 From the world of medicine, amazing news from a small but highly significant study:  The first study to ever show Alzheimers can be reversed has just been published
Small trial shows memory loss from Alzheimer's disease can be reversed 
This is incredible. Read in Science Alerts
A new meme is that the Republican Party’s presumptive candidate’s  campaign has degenerated into a  Trumpster Fire.
Through the magic of Google Images I found lots of photos of actual dumpster fires to choose from.
"Blackhawk Down” author’s Vanity Fair article about Trump a must read.

 I’m not going to cut and paste sections of this Vanity Fair article because I want you to read the entire article.
 Trump’s hedonism adds a dimension to understanding his personality that makes him unlike most narcissists. What can you say about a man who has a Renoir on his airplane just so he can brag that it is worth $10 million, and think that the person he is showing off to will be impressed?
Trump is a special kind of narcissist because he has no self-awareness. I don’t mean little self-awareness, I mean literally no self-awareness. No empathy, no-self awareness! He has no interest in understanding how his braggadocio is off-putting to many people. In fact, I don’t even think he’d think his self-congratulatory behavior would be called braggadocio. 
For some reasons, perhaps because Trump let his guard down with him because that author was writing for Playboy and Trump made some false assumptions that he could impress him. 
The writer of the excellent short article I’m recommending you read is Mark Bowden (author of “Black Hawk Down”). He wrote this for Vanity Fair back in December some five months before Trump nailed the nomination.  He describes his experience writing a profile of Trump for Playboy which makes fascinating reading.
He starts with  how he was "prepared to discover that his over-the-top public persona was a clever pose. That underneath was an ironic wit, an ordinary but clever guy.”
He was disabused of that expectation almost immediately after meeting him.
Note: I found another revealing 1997 profile of Trump by Mark Singer in The New Yorker here. If you don’t have a subscription you may not be able to read it…..
apparently you can read it… thanks to those who checked this out (I was playing pickleball for the last two hours)… check the comments below.

The Mark Singer piece is not blocked for non-subscribers. Mr. Singer has a book about to come out, Trump and Me; and has been getting some interviews as a result. I’m sure interest in interviewing him will increase with the book’s release set for July 5.
The Telegraph has a lengthy excerpt from it. It includes a hilarious story that Singer also shared in a 2006 New Yorker article
 the Times reviewed a book I wrote, “Character Studies,” which included my portrait of Trump. “That Trump is already a caricature of a caricature makes him too easy a target, with neither the foot speed nor the wit to defend himself,” the reviewer, Jeff MacGregor, wrote. Three weeks later, the Times Book Review published a delightfully deranged letter from Trump in which he set forth his credentials—“I’ve read John Updike, I’ve read Orhan Pamuk, I’ve read Philip Roth. . . . I’ve been a best-selling author for close to 20 years. Whether you like it or not, facts are facts”—and dispensed with both MacGregor and me. We were “losers” who “just don’t have what it takes.” Facts.
Immediately, “Character Studies” levitated many thousand notches on the Amazon list. How could I thank Trump? Money, I thought, he likes money. I wrote him a check for a thousand dollars, then sensed that that was excessive. I tore it up and wrote another check, which I sent, along with a letter:
“Dear Donald: Thank you so much for that wonderful letter to the New YorkTimes. . . . Though I’m sure that you, as an author, are aware that it’s considered bad form to pay the people who review one’s books, I nevertheless enclose a check for $37.82, a small token of my enormous gratitude. You’re special to me. Also, I enclose a couple of Band-Aids. Because you seem unable to stop picking at this particular scab, these should come in handy. Cheerfully,” etc.
Two weeks later, an envelope arrived, cream-colored with a gold-embossed “TRUMP” logo and, inside, my letter, returned, with a neatly written message from Trump in thick black uppercase letters: “MARK—YOU ARE A TOTAL LOSER—AND YOUR BOOK (AND WRITINGS) SUCKS! BEST WISHES DONALD P.S. AND I HEAR IT IS SELLING BADLY.” I treasure this memento. Indeed, it is now framed, along with a photocopy of the cashed check for $37.82; evidently he needed the money.

=========== Rick Douglas nailsTrump one paragraph in a comment to a Huffington Post article about Trump the miser.
Life is a shell game with him. It doesn't matter who the mark is, but in this case it's the American electorate. I'm old enough to have a very long view, but am not a Beltway insider, so consider me a learned schmo who finds Trump as enigmatic as they come. You want theories? I have heard them all. He's in it to win it. He's not serious about becoming POTUS. He's angling to start a cable network and needs the bona fides. Yada, yada, yada. While Donald Trump is the least qualified person to make a run for the White House in modern times, maybe ever, he's a masterful schemer. It's how he has survived all these years. He robs from the poor and keeps the cash. He stiffs the people whom he hires to build his grandiose casinos and hotels. And when they demand payment, he cries foul and sues, or offers them pennies on the dollar. He relishes the chase and the kill and little else. He has neither the intellect nor the temperament to digest policy papers, let alone the art of statecraft, has never learned to listen, and trusts no one except his own adult children. Even Sarah Palin was a governor for a time. Imagine being a poor second to "Mrs. I can see Russia from my house." It's not that the Emperor has no clothes. It's that his pants are on fire.
Monday, June 20, 2016 Lewankoski being unexpectedly ousted is the big Trump news, but who is left in his inner circle: Aside from Hope Hicks, who I never heard of and who makes a fascinating story herself, worthy of a big article in GQ titled “The mystifying trump of Trump’s right hand woman,” , this is who is left:
Left to right: Manafort, Stone, Ivanka, Cohen.
Paul Manafort The campaign chairman and chief strategist worked for Ford, Reagan, Dole, and Bush 41 and made a mint advising sometimes sketchy foreign leaders. He's also had a pad in Trump Tower for years.
Roger Stone A discreet adviser who dresses like a Depression-era banker, Stone's been in Trump's ear for decades. He got his start in politics helping Nixon—whose face he has tattooed on his back. Really.
Ivanka Trump Trump's daughter is an informal but key strategist and plays the part of political wife. It was she, not Melania, who spoke at Trump's announcement speech and campaigned with him in the primaries.
Michael Cohen The lawyer-henchman is known for artful threats. He told a reporter recently to “tread very fucking lightly.… What I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”
First cup of coffee thought: Another reason it would be gutsy for Hillary to pick Elizabeth for her VP partner: It would say screw you to Wall Street. The article suggests her Wall Street donations would dry up, but I really doubt this would happen because these people want to keep whatever influence - or at least access - they can in a Clinton-Warren administration. At the very least, they want invitations to the inaugural parties. Read: "Wall Street Donors seek to block Warren VP pick" in Politico
“If Clinton picked Warren, her whole base on Wall Street would leave her,” said one top Democratic donor who has helped raise millions for Clinton. “They would literally just say, ‘We have no qualms with you moving left, we understand all the things you’ve had to do because of Bernie Sanders, but if you are going there with Warren, we just can’t trust you, you’ve killed it.’” Most big donors don’t want Warren on the ticket because she is the most accomplished anti-Wall Street populist in the Democratic Party. But many also think her presence would drive a potential Clinton administration too far to the left, poison relations with the private sector from the start and ultimately be damaging to the economy.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Read comments here

As I start reading my usual political websites and have an ear tuned to the news on MSNBC I don’t know what, if anything, I’m going to write later this morning. One thing caught my attention on Politico, Hillary Clinton’s path to victory, so of course I click on that cautioning my self before I do not to get too overconfident. Trump has only one path to victory:
… ginning up disaffected, non-college educated, working-class white voters -- many whom may never have voted before -- to sweep across the Rust Belt, in places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio.
I’m not particularly proud of my reaction to this because it seems elitist, snobbish, and in current parlance certainly not politically correct. If it was merely disaffected voters he needed to win, you could say the same thing about Bernie Sanders. Much of his support has been among disaffected voters, the younger of those who may have never voted. However many if not most of them are either in college or college graduates. No matter that they may make the same or even less than those considered working class, when you consider other commonalities rather than economic class they are among those who might - non-PC alert - be called the critical thinking class.
If income is taken out of the equation, can we call the majority of Trump supporters poorly educated and working at blue collar jobs. Those that I’ve seen interviewed who were in college seemed to be, dare I say, gullible.  The term that came to mind for may Trump supporters was “white trash.” I decided to talk a little walk on the Google side and found looking up”white trash”  that there was so much written on a subject I’d have to spent several days wading though the relevant material of write a front page worth Daily Kos essay.
 I thought I’d skim though some of the articles just to get a general idea what academic experts had to say.
In 2013 sociologist  Matt Wray published "White Trash: The Social Origins of a Stigmatize”. He writes about the "deep historical entanglements with the politics of sex, race, and class.” But he reminds us that awhile back the term white trash was synonymous with poor white trash, often synonymous with “trailer park trash.”
 I think the crowds that came out to hear Sarah Palin speak showed us that you didn’t have to be poor or live in a trailer park to be susceptible to demagoguery. 
In 2014 an Urban Dictionary contributor named Mike offered up a pretty good definition of the kind of white trash whose mindset Trump is tapping into: Urban Dictionary:
A term used broadly and often inaccurately to define a person or group of persons whom embody the concepts of ignorance, racism, violence, alcoholism, and anglo-saxon ancestry. It is often used as a label on the poor caucasian working class. Many people are labelled "white trash" because of the clothes they wear and their appearance, regardless of wealth and standing. Many that use this term do not understand the lifestyles of those whom they deride and oftentimes neglect to see that many people in the poor white working class are actually very intelligent tolerant people who tend to like professional wrestling, cheap beer and NASCAR. Many others were born with mental or physical disabilities and are forced into the stereotypical "white trash" lifestyle by the opressive society of the united states which tends to ignore its lowest classes. If correctly applied, the term refers to people such as the military personnel who had a wonderful time playing fraternity pranks on the prisoners of Abu Ghraib prison, the corporate scum who build their big box department stores right across the road from mom and pop stores which are then forced out of business for the greater good of a couple of obscenely rich assholes at the top, idiots who write "dotheads are dirty" on the walls of gas station restrooms that are not even run by east Indians but people of middle-eastern descent yet they are too full of themselves to notice a difference, and especially Texan wannabe cowboys who carelessly overrun foreign countries without noticing the thousands of innocent lives that are constantly being ended and then having the nerve to say "GOD IS ON OUR SIDE! 
As I embarked on my second cup of coffee and reread this definition it hit me that these are the sort of people who are fans of Howard Stern. I expect Stern would proudly say he appeals to white trash. This being said, I think it is telling that Donald Trump has been on the Howard Stern show some two dozen times (according to Huffington Post) where he once said “Do you like girls that are five-foot-one? They call it — they come up to you-know-where.”
In 2013, The New York Post, not known for scholarly articles, had a good opinion piece “When did white trash become normal?"
When Snooki, whose talents include getting sloppy drunk and throwing up on camera, made Barbara Walters’ “Ten Most Fascinating People” list a few years back, one could only ask: Was Octomom not available?
Last year, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” which features a cornucopia of social ills, was TLC’s highest-rated show, attracting more cable viewers than the Republican National Convention, which had the misfortune to share the time slot with the charmers from Georgia. The show’s matriarch, June Shannon, has four daughters by four men, one of whose names she can’t recall.
White Trash is the new normal — and you don’t have to tune in to reality TV to rub elbows with pathologies that once stayed put in Skunk Hollow. White Trash Normal has invaded every nook and cranny of life, from table manners, to dress, to money management.
As unnerving as it is to say, Donald Trump appeals to “the new normal.” Scary. Addendum: There weren’t too many comments on Daily Kos. Some agree with me and others objected to me using the offensive term “white trash.” One commenter summed his the characteristics of white trash quite well.
Donald Trump appeals primarily to individuals who: 1. Don’t like nuance and who prefer for choices to be stark and easy. 2. Respect bullies, and who believe that “might makes right”. 3. Prefer a more autocratic government. 4. Believe that if there were a gun in everyone’s household, that America would be a safer place to live than it is today. 5. Tend to believe that a male-dominated society is a superior society. 6. Tend to believe that “the ends justify the means”. 7. Believe that men should not be sensitive to the feelings of others….that sensitivity in men is “sissification”.
To another who objected to my use of the term likening it to using the N word,  I responded:
 The term white trash can be thrown around loosely but isn’t like the N word at all since it has a far narrower meaning. Serious people — not just sociologists and cultural anthropologists,  can try to categorize people in a sub-culture who share commonalities, always with the caution that there are exceptions. The N word in all-inclusive, and meant as a shorthand way racists describe all people of African ancestry as sub-human. The word hillbilly has tended to be derogatory too, although I suggest with significant differences.  It was certainly used affectionately in “The Beverly Hillbillies” and depicted with warmth is “The Jerk.” What white trash and hillbilly had in common was not being particularly smart in ways which were easy to mock. What is a glaring difference is that the former often was associated with racism while the later had benign associations like with moonshine and banjo music (except in “Deliverance”). There are lines of white trash merchandise on the major online logo clothing retailers Cafe Press and Dazzle: one sports the slogan “mess with me and you mess with the whole trailer park.”  Within the white trash sub-culture there are sub-sub-cultures. For example, there are professional wrestling and NASCAR fans whose idea of a perfect afternoon is watching their favorite entertainment and downing encourage beer to send most of us to the ER with alcohol poisoning. They are no more racist than the typical American — despite the fact that NASCAR had struggled for years to have diversity among the ranks of their top drivers.See none of this is simple. But then I find that when I try to write analytic diaries which can be provocative there will be some who misinterpret or don’t fully grasp what I have to say.
Even more thoughts:
 This is from The New Republic from June 15th about a Trump rally, AmericanHorror Story:
He’d rambled until he couldn’t ramble anymore and seemed spent. He’d exhausted yelling “Shut up, you SILLY WOMAN!” during an odd, misplaced poem that compared immigrants to snakes. At another point, a boy interrupted with “We all bleed red” and was dragged out by security as Trump sarcastically called, “Don’t hurt him! Please don’t hurt that person!” and the crowd replied, “Hurt him! / Hurt him!” As he was led to the doors, a small pack of supporters broke off from the throng and followed as if they meant to pummel him just past the exit. 
Outside, the lot was filled with more vendors and beyond them cars and trucks with Confederate Flag bumper stickers, decals, license plates, and actual Confederate Flags. In the shadow of one I watched a dad spank his child heatedly, as if the man needed somewhere to focus all his anger.
On everybody’s lips were strange non-sequiturs of hate.
“You can’t trust Latinos. Some maybe, but not most.”
“Immigrants aren’t people, honey.”
“You know them crazy black girls, how they are.”
Of course you don’t have to hail from a trailer park or live in a house with four junked cars on the never mowed front lawn to be considered white trash:
 At mind-numbing levels these college boys were playing “I Am a Real American,” the theme music of professional wrestling hero-turned-bigot Hulk Hogan, all while flipping off pedestrians with one hand and flashing Trump yard signs with the other.
Saturday, June 18, 2016 I tweaked my article about Trump TV and put it on Daily Kos (here) where hopefully there will be some interesting comments.

U.N. Warns Trump May Be 7 Months Away From Acquiring Nuclear Weapons

NEW YORK—According to an alarming new global risk report published Tuesday by the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump may be just seven months away from acquiring nuclear weapons. “A year ago, the threat didn’t seem great enough to warrant serious concern, but at this moment, a nuclear-capable Trump is now a very real and very imminent possibility,” said UNODA high representative Kim Won-soo, adding that the agency’s current projections showed Trump potentially procuring nuclear weapons, as well as advanced ballistic missile technology, as early as January of next year. “The longer we wait to act, the closer he comes to obtaining a nuclear arsenal. The final red line for preventing him from acquiring this devastating capability comes in early November. If he is not properly dealt with before then, there will be no way to stop him from going nuclear.” While U.N. officials said the international community should prepare for the destabilizing effects of Trump acquiring such weapons, they still held out hope that citizens of his nation might yet rise up against him and topple the extremist before he posed a global existential threat. The fact of the matter is that this isn’t satire! Friday, June 17, 2016 TNT is taken, TTN sounds silly, so Trump will probably just name his cable network “Trump"
I originally wrote most of this without realizing that other great minds were also writing about Trump’s post-election plans for starting his own TV network. When I saw that Daily Kos had a well researched main story about it , “Is the Trump campaign just a pilot episode of Trump TV?” I just put it on as a comment. But then I figured, what the hell, I can flesh out my thoughts, add some hopefully creative perspectives, and add my voice to the madding crowd of other writers. 
What knows what is in the mind of Trump? I think he started out as a lark, a way to satisfy his ego, but never thought it would go this far. Somewhere along the way he realized he could actually win the nomination. I doubt he ever though he could win the general. Still, he was having too much fun playing Trump and shaking up the Republican establishment, which I doubt he ever cared about. I doubt he gave a hoot about the whether Hillary won, or even believed she would be the ruination of the country. Besides, he doesn’t care about anybody but himself. I mean literally, he doesn’t care about his wife or his daughters or his cold-blooded endangered animal shooting sons. 
So for Trump going on into the future to be really happy he needs to loose the election, and while he’d like it to be a squeaker, he’ll settle for going out in a blaze of glory because he has no choice.
The time has passed for him to tether himself to a teleprompter and begin to take medications to appear presidential (and securely hinged).
Trump wants to be the most famous person in the world for the rest of his life. Presidents come and go, they are famous for awhile when they leave office, like Bill Clinton. But then their fame wears off and they are replaced by the next president. The same with sports figures like Muhammad Ali. Trump want to be Hugh Hefner on steroids (sorry for that image). He wants to develop a brand out of himself and indulge in hedonistic pleasures — how long before he gets tired of of Melania — until he croaks. 
He may do this by developing a cable network or two, like the modest (in comparison) and much better looking Ted Turner  did. In addition to on Daily Kos, There’s an article in Vanity Fair about this, and also on alternet www.alternet.org/…
Developing a cable network seems to be the best, perhaps the only, way to stay in the public eye, since just having one dumbass show wouldn’t satisfy his ego anymore. He’s not about to become a Jerry Seinfeld. 
Despite the ratings success of “The Apprentice” he must know he can’t develop a network built just around his cult of personality.
The Trump version of “The Truman Show” will wear thin pretty quickly. Furthermore, Trump’s day to day life isn’t as interesting or charmingly weird as Ozzie Osborne’s, though it might be as grotesque as Honey BooBoo’s. The Don Rickles show only lasted one season for 17 episodes in 1968, and his comeback attempt with his own show bombed after 13 episodes in 1972. Unlike Trump, "The Merchant of Venom" and "Mr. Warmth,” actually was a talented comedian.
Trump might just be able to pull this off. He could pick and choose the shows he wanted to star in and be his own boss. He could put together his network by poaching a few  successful shows from other networks, for example Duck Dynasty.
 All the conspiracy and ghost hunting shows could be recreated cheaply. He could give Alex Jones and David Duke their own shows. Hunting and fishing shows are popular and not expensive to produce.
He could get the conservative talk show stars still supporting him to leave radio to be on his network. He could put the most reprehensible together for their own show. Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Bachmann, and Sarah Palin could have their own show, kind of a nausea inducing version of “The View.”
The real coup would be to cut profit sharing deals with the already rich Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern to come on board.
 Most disturbing, he could give his bloodthirsty big game trophy hunting sons their own show. 
If this all comes to pass, remember, you heard it here first.







































trump-tv.png
Photo Credit: Mike Licht/Shutterstock

I’m not saying I know for certain that Phyllis is the Trump pick for VP, but he hasn’t denied it. This would rally the many female voters for whom this icon is a heroine, and of course their husbands. So much for Hillary’s claim she’d be better for women.
Friday, June 17, 2016

Trump’s Claim That He’d Be Better For Women Than Hillary Is Stunningly Absurd - Huffington Post

He calls women “pigs” and doesn’t support paid family leave.
Vice presidential pick proves how great he’d be for women.
Related

Former Ms. Universe Urges Immigrants To Join Her In Becoming Citizens To Vote Against Donald Trump

Venezuelan model and actress Alicia Machado says it took her many years to get over get over the abuse she suffered at the hands of Donald Trump when she was crowned Ms. Universe in 1996.  
“He made me feel small,” she told ThinkProgress in Spanish. “He threatened me, treated me rudely. He called me ‘Ms. Housekeeping’ in front of his friends.”  
Trump, then the owner of the beauty pageant, publicly mocked Machado for gaining weight and forced her to exercise in front of TV cameras. She said she was depressed and suffered from an eating disorder for several years as a result. 
“He hates girls,” she said. “He considers girls to be less. We have another status, to him.”
Online here.
The most famous psychoanalysts of the day at Clark University,
1909: Sigmund Freud, G. Stanley Hall, Carl Jung;
Back row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sándor Ferencz.

Ethics, Shrinks, and Trump: Should they speak out?

I’ve written three article here posted as Daily Kos diaries about the possible psychopathology of Donald Trump. I wrote about Donald Trump having many of the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. I speculated about whether he actually believed the conspiracy theories he’s be spouting. If he did, I  offered the opinion that he might have some characteristics of paranoid personality disorder. I most recently wondered whether his germophobia might mean he had some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder. 
Two commenters on Daily Kos said I was being unethical as a psychotherapist in writing about someone 1) without their permission, and 2) not ever having conducted an in-person diagnostic assessment of them.
I always try to respond to serious criticism and found that as I made my case that I thought it was not only ethical for those with expertise in the mental health professions to assess the fitness of a candidate for office, but was remiss of them not to do so when they saw indications that their mental health problems made them unsuitable for office.
In doing a lot of research on this I learned that this was quite a controversy going back to Barry Goldwater candidacy. 
If you don’t want to wade through my entire diary, and I realize many will find it tedious, I will sum up by saying I agree with the following (emphasis mine):
 Jerome Kroll, professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota and an author of the 2016 paper, (said) it’s disingenuous to ask psychiatrists to tiptoe around the diagnosing of public figures while still commenting on diagnoses — talking about narcissism, but not about whether Donald Trump is a narcissist, for instance. Especially when psychiatrists are allowed to diagnose dead people — a specialty called psychohistory — using data that’s not much different from what someone might use to diagnose the living Trump.
Second, Kroll and his co-author, independent clinical psychiatrist Claire Pouncey, object to the way the rule stifles a psychiatrist’s ability to speak his or her mind. Certainly, Pouncey told me, psychiatrists shouldn’t run around shooting their mouths off about things they haven’t deeply studied. But it’s impossible, she said, to distinguish between the psychiatrist as a professional and the psychiatrist as a person — and that person might feel a very real ethical obligation to talk about their perspective on the mental health of a public figure angling for a position of power over the whole country. From: “Psychiatrists Can’t Tell Us What They Think About Trump” by Maggie Koerth-Baker 
Here ate the two comments I wrote lengthy answers to. At the end there’s a poll. I’d like to know what you think and the ethics and even the duty of therapists to speak out on Donald Trump and any other candidate they have strong reservations about based on psychiatric symptoms.
1)
A reader commented to my writing this: “I would be remiss in my duty to use my expertise as a Kos diarist who is a mental health professional to delve into the possibility that Trump has characteristics of DSM-5 psychiatric disorders.”
There is no duty, as a Daily Kos diarist, or as a mental health professional, to attempt diagnosis of psychiatric disorder of public figures, political opponents, or anyone else, over the internet.
Furthermore, the practice has high risks. Use of diagnostic terminology for speculative political attacks will misinform readers about the nature of evaluation and the patient-professional relationship, and could inadvertently reflect negatively on the mental health professions.
Also, any claim of benefit balancing the harm, in these particular circumstances, is unreasonable. No one here will be voting for Donald Trump. Any perceived need to warn readers here is not very real.
 My response:
Don’t you know a snarky comment when you read it — of course there’s no “duty” as a Kos diarist to write anything as you well know having posted several hundred diaries, and besides anybody who posts within the guidelines can be a Kos diarist. However, if you want to get technical there is a “kind of ethical duty” for those who understand mental illness because of their training to speak out when they see it manifest in a public figure (when that illness may make them unfit for office).
If the emperor has no clothes and someone sees it, they need to shout it out, and the Internet is a way of doing this. 
It’s not like I am some loony or unethical loner deviant therapist writing about Trump’s apparent symptomatology. Pundits and shrinks with the bona fides of having written books and being professors are already weighing in on indications of Trump’s psychopathology, but they parse their words carefully because of what’s called “the Goldwater Rule.”
The Goldwater rule is the informal name for a precept of medical ethicspromulgated by the American Psychiatric Association. It forbids psychiatrists from commenting on individuals' mental state without examining them personally and being authorized by the person to make such comments. The rule has no official name; it is simply Section 7.3 of the APA's ethics principles.
The issue arose in the 1960s when Fact magazine published the article "The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater."The magazine polled psychiatrists about American Senator Barry Goldwater and whether he was fit to be president.

Rule

The rule itself reads:
On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement. Wikipedia
I call this out as a load of crap, because who else is more qualified to warn the public about a candidate having a real psychiatric disorder (which may or is likely to make them unsuitable to hold office)? Those psychiatrists and other mental health professionals who do publish seem to think that they can get around the so-called Goldwater rule by offering the disclaimer that they have not seen the individual in person and then gotten an authorization to please information to the public. Right! Does anybody think for a moment anyone who has published clinical impressions of Trump has done a real diagnostic interview with him?  I think it is high and mighty for psychiatrists and other therapists to say they need “proper authorization” to diagnose somebody who is a public figure.
It’s not just me who is willing to go public with a diagnosis. 
For mental-health professionals, Donald Trump is at once easily diagnosed but slightly confounding. “Remarkably narcissistic,” said developmental psychologist Howard Gardner,a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education. “Textbook narcissistic personality disorder,” echoed clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis. “He’s so classic that I’m archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example of his characteristics,” said clinical psychologist George Simon, who conducts lectures and seminars on manipulative behavior. “Otherwise, I would have had to hire actors and write vignettes. He’s like a dream come true.” from 
IS DONALD TRUMP ACTUALLY A NARCISSIST? THERAPISTS WEIGH IN!
As his presidential campaign trundles forward, millions of sane Americans are wondering: What exactly is wrong with this strange individual? Now, we have an answer.
As for the Goldwater Rule:
As evidenced by the Vanity Fair, story, however, not all mental health professionals believe it’s that clear cut. What’s more, disagreement over the Goldwater Rule isn’t as simple as “here’s what psychiatrists believe and here are a few bad apples who break the rules.” Last week, the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (JAAPL) published a paper questioning the foundations of the Goldwater Rule and arguing that the rule stifles psychiatrists’ ability to speak their conscience. And that perspective is nothing new. The Goldwater Rule has been controversial within the field of psychiatry since it was enacted in 1973, said Brian Cooke, a forensic and clinical psychiatrist at the University of Florida who wrote a 2014 paper, also published in JAAPL, arguing in favor of the rule.
Dan McAdams said that he was very careful not to make a psychiatric diagnosis in his article about Trump’s narcissism. But he as much as said he had a narcissistic personalty disorder. Still he “protected” himself by dancing around making a diagnosis, and still manage to be published in The Atantic, a cover article no less.
Every day were hear and read about Trump being a narcissist — and not just narcissistic — but I’ve heard him called a malignant narcissist — so it’s not like this is new.
When psychotherapists attempt to diagnosis Trump, there is little if any risk that readers will be misinformed about the nature of psychological evaluation done with a client for the purposes of treatment, and everyone understands the sanctity of the therapist-client relationship.
Even Hillary Clinton said the following:
In a speech last week, Hillary Clinton took her befuddlement with Donald Trump and dropped it squarely at the feet of America’s mental health professionals. “I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants,” she said, in response to comments Trump had made marveling at the political effectiveness of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
On another diary comment section I wrote in a response to a psychiatrist with a similar complaint chapter and verse explaining the long history (which he should have been familiar with) dating back to Freud  of using the insights of psychology to understand public figures. The first analysis of a nation’s leader was a report prepared for the OSS analyzing Hitler. Obviously nobody interviewed him. It is now in the public domain and makes interesting reading.
I’ll end with referring you to the article I just found, and quoted above, which I will add to the diary because it is so relevant to the topic you raise.
There’s even more about the subject of psychotherapists diagnosing public figures like Trump. This is my response to a psychiatrist who wrote on my diary about Trump having a paranoid disorder if he really believes conspiracy theories:
2)
A psychiatrist wrote:
Jun 13 · 10:11:17 AM
It is ethically not correct to diagnose a person without having examined that person. And I am in no way and will never ever support or defend Donald Trump. I am talking about making diagnoses. And I am talking about subjecting people who have the diagnoses you are talking about, indirectly implying that they are like Donald Trump. Donald Trump is Donald Trump and as said before, his actions and words, his bigotry, speaks for itself. It is wrong to associate other people, who have a psychiatric diagnosis, with him. So I say, bad on you. I say that as a psychiatrist who treats people who are stigmatized enough by our society without being associated with the likes of Donald Trump.









































I am sorry you think “bad on me.” If I wrote about a serial killer having dissociative personality disorder, would this mean I am implying that those with this disorder who, as you know, are most often sexual abuse victims, are compared to a serial killer? By far most people with narcissistic personality disorder, who after all mask a fragile sense of self-esteem, are nothing like Trump. That isn’t to say that they don’t make life difficult for those they live and work with.
There is a time honored history of using the tools of psychology to help understand famous people, some alive and some long dead. This practice, sometimes referred to as psycho-biography, is not without its detractors, see “The Psychoanalysis of Historical Characters”; but there are many academics who make this a specialty. Some in fact are English, literature, and history professors who have studied psychology or are themselves psychoanalysts  or  psychologists.  See Professor talks psychoanalysis and history and especially THE VALUE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS  IN WRITING BIOGRAPHY.
Below, from Wikipedia
Psychobiography is a field within the realms of psychology/biography that analyzes the lives of historically significant individuals through the use of psychological theory and research. The goal of this particular field is to develop a better understanding of some notable individual by applying psychological theories to their biographies in order to further explain the motives behind some of the actions and decisions made by that person. Some of the more popular subjects of psychobiographies include figures such as Adolf HitlerVincent van GoghWilliam ShakespeareMartin Luther King, Jr.Abraham Lincoln, and Saddam Hussein. A typical biography is often very descriptive, and tries to record every notable event that happened in a person’s lifetime, whereas a psychobiography primarily focuses on some particular events, and tries to better understand why they happened. This field’s potential has not only aided in developing a better understanding to many notable biographies throughout history, but has also inspired direction and insight into the field of psychology.
One of the first great examples of this field’s utility was Dr. Henry Murray’s report on the analysis of Adolf Hitler’s personality during the end of WWII. Forced to psychoanalyze from a distance, Dr. Murray used multiple sources, including Hitler's genealogy, Hitler’s own writings, and biographies of Hitler, so that the Allied forces could understand his personality in order to best predict his behavior. By applying a theory of personality that consisted of 20 psychogenic needs, Dr. Murray presumed Hitler’s personality as “counteractive narcism”, and was able to correctly predict the German leader's suicide in the face of his country’s defeat. This work by Dr. Murray not only helped establish personality psychology as a behavioral science, but it also showed how the field of psychobiography could be applied as a means of psychoanalysis.[3]
Sigmund Freud's analysis of Leonardo da Vinci (titled "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood") is generally considered to be the first "modern" psychobiography.[4] Persons who have been the subject of psychobiographical research include Freud, Adolf Hitler,[5] Sylvia PlathCarl JungVincent van GoghMartin Luther,[6] Abraham LincolnElvis PresleySøren KierkegaardFriedrich Nietzsche,[7] Andrew Jackson, and Richard Nixon.[8]
Thursday, June 16, 2014 The shrinks-eye view of Trump, Chapter 3 COMMENT

How much psychopathology can be crammed under that orange hair? Now we discover that crew who worked on "The Apprentice” say, among other decidedly unflattering things about him, that he was a germophobe.“He’s not good with people touching him, he’s very germophobic,” said one crew member. “We were instructed never to touch him—he wouldn’t shake hands,” said another. (From “Apprentice crew members on their old boss” in Slate.)
This is what Mother Jones said:
A self-confessed germaphobe (the word has two correct spellings), Trump doesn’t even like to push a ground floor elevator button because it’s been tapped by so many people....This does not sit well with the masses, let alone the PTA crowd. Trump especially avoids shaking hands with teachers, since they are likely to be have been “in touch” with too many germy kids.
We don’t know if his germophobia (if he has it) leads to frequent hand cleaning, but dollars to donuts it does, and like on the TV show Monk, he has his assistant nearby to hand him antibacterial wipes. 
I would be remiss in my duty to use my expertise as a Kos diarist who is a mental health professional to delve into the possibility that Trump has characteristics of DSM-5 psychiatric disorders. I have already written about Trump and narcissistic personality disorder (“A psychologist analyzes Trump the narcissist”) and paranoid personality disorder (“Another diagnosis for Trump. Is he really paranoid?”).
But why does it even matter if he has a germ phobia, lots of people do?
The answer is simple. Because there are other characteristics which people with this phobia may have which may be undesirable in a president.
Of course, germophobia is a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder.  If he engages in anxiety reducing compulsive checking, or counting like the opssessive-compuslive TV detective Adrian Monk, that would lend significant credence to making this diagnosis. 
Most non-mental health professional don’t differentiate between obsessive compulsive disorder, often just called OCD, and obsessive compulsive personality disorder. (OCPD) There are many similarities between the two and not all experts agree on the degree of co-morbidity between the two.
One of the main differences between obsessive compulsive disorder and its personality disorder cousin is that people with the former are quite aware of it and how it disrupts their lives, people with the later tend not to think there’s anything wrong with them. People with OCD have unwanted thoughts, while people with OCPD believe that their thoughts are correct. 
People with both, or overlapping, disorders have a concern with orderliness, , excessive attention to details, mental and interpersonal control, and a need for control over one's environment, at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency.and miserliness are also seen often in those with this personality disorder. (Wikipedia and other sources)
While Trump may not have enough of the characteristics to actually make either of these diagnoses, when we have observed of him suggests he may have some of the the “symptoms." For one, he is obsessed with certain things like menstruating women, the size of their breasts, Mexicans, Muslims, his poll numbers, that not a single hair is out of place on his head, etc. Those suffering from this disorder often have the same thoughts repeatedly and we can certainly see that in his speech patterns.
What does all this matter? Not much taken by itself. But add these questions to all the other behaviors suggestive of Trump suffering from personality disorders, and one has to be concerned that we have someone running for president who is not only a misogynist, a bigot, a xenophobe, and a serial liar, he’s not capable of completely rational decision making, especially under stress when he has shown himself to be impulsive.  When I post on Daily Kos I usually respond to people when they take issue with what I write. I ended up writing a long answer to this, so I thought I’d add it here:
The comment 
Jun 16 · 04:59:28 PM
I would be remiss in my duty to use my expertise as a Kos diarist who is a mental health professional to delve into the possibility that Trump has characteristics of DSM-5 psychiatric disorders.
There is no duty, as a Daily Kos diarist, or as a mental health professional, to attempt diagnosis of psychiatric disorder of public figures, political opponents, or anyone else, over the internet.
Furthermore, the practice has high risks. Use of diagnostic terminology for speculative political attacks will misinform readers about the nature of evaluation and the patient-professional relationship, and could inadvertently reflect negatively on the mental health professions.
Also, any claim of benefit balancing the harm, in these particular circumstances, is unreasonable. No one here will be voting for Donald Trump. Any perceived need to warn readers here is not very real.









































Don’t you know a snarky comment when you read it — of course there’s no “duty” as a Kos diarist to write anything as you well know having posted several hundred diaries, and besides anybody who posts within the guidelines can be a Kos diarist. However, if you want to get technical there is a “kind of duty” for those who understand mental illness because of their training to speak out when they see it manifest in a public figure.
If the emperor has no clothes and someone see it, they need to shout it out, and the Internet is a way of doing this. 
It’s not like I am some loony or unethical loner deviant therapist writing about Trump’s apparent symptomatology. Pundits and shrinks with the bona fides of having written books and being professors are already weighing in on indications of Trump’s psychopathology, but they parse their words carefully because of what’s called “the Goldwater Rule.”
The Goldwater rule is the informal name for a precept of medical ethicspromulgated by the American Psychiatric Association. It forbids psychiatrists from commenting on individuals' mental state without examining them personally and being authorized by the person to make such comments. The rule has no official name; it is simply Section 7.3 of the APA's ethics principles.
The issue arose in the 1960s when Fact magazine published the article "The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater."The magazine polled psychiatrists about American Senator Barry Goldwater and whether he was fit to be president.

Rule

The rule itself reads:
On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement. Wikipedia
I call this out as a load of crap, because who else is more qualified to warn the public about a candidate having a real psychiatric disorder? Those psychiatrists and other mental health professionals seem to think that they can get around the so-called Goldwater rule by offering the disclaimer that they have not seen the individual in person and gotten an authorization to please information to the public. Right! Does anybody think for a moment anyone who has published clinical impressions of Trump has done a real diagnostic interview with him.  I think it is high and mighty for psychiatrists and other therapists to say they need “proper authorization” to diagnose somebody who is a public figure.
It’s not just me who is will to go public with a diagnosis. 
For mental-health professionals, Donald Trump is at once easily diagnosed but slightly confounding. “Remarkably narcissistic,” said developmental psychologist Howard Gardner,a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education. “Textbook narcissistic personality disorder,” echoed clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis. “He’s so classic that I’m archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example of his characteristics,” said clinical psychologist George Simon, who conducts lectures and seminars on manipulative behavior. “Otherwise, I would have had to hire actors and write vignettes. He’s like a dream come true.” from 
IS DONALD TRUMP ACTUALLY A NARCISSIST? THERAPISTS WEIGH IN!
As his presidential campaign trundles forward, millions of sane Americans are wondering: What exactly is wrong with this strange individual? Now, we have an answer.
As for the Goldwater Rule:
As evidenced by the Vanity Fair, story, however, not all mental health professionals believe it’s that clear cut. What’s more, disagreement over the Goldwater Rule isn’t as simple as “here’s what psychiatrists believe and here are a few bad apples who break the rules.” Last week, the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (JAAPL) published a paper questioning the foundations of the Goldwater Rule and arguing that the rule stifles psychiatrists’ ability to speak their conscience. And that perspective is nothing new. The Goldwater Rule has been controversial within the field of psychiatry since it was enacted in 1973, said Brian Cooke, a forensic and clinical psychiatrist at the University of Florida who wrote a 2014 paper, also published in JAAPL, arguing in favor of the rule.
Dan McAdams, wrote that was very careful not to make a psychiatric diagnosis in his article. But he as much as said Trump had a narcissistic personalty disorder. Still he “protected” himself by dancing around making a diagnosis, and still he managed to be published in The Atantic.
If you had bothered clicking on that I wrote about Trump the narcissist you’d see that The Atlantic had a cover article by this psychologist about this subject. In fact every day were hear and read about Trump being a narcissist — and not just narcissistic — but I’ve heard him called a malignant narcissist — so it’s not like this is new.
When psychotherapists attempt to diagnosis Trump, there is little if any risk that readers will be misinformed about the nature of psychological evaluation done with a client for the purposes of treatment and anyone understanding the sanctity of the therapist-client relationship. Even Hillary Clinton said the following:
In a speech last week, Hillary Clinton took her befuddlement with Donald Trump and dropped it squarely at the feet of America’s mental health professionals. “I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants,” she said, in response to comments Trump had made marveling at the political effectiveness of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
On another diary comment section I wrote in a response to a psychiatrist with a similar complaint chapter and verse explaining the long history (which he should have been familiar with) dating back to Freud  of using the insights of psychology to understand public figures. The first analysis of a nation’s leader was a report prepared for the OSS analyzing Hitler. Obviously nobody interviewed him. It is now in the public domain and makes interesting reading.
I’ll end with referring you to the article I just found, and quoted above, which I will add to the diary because it is so relevant to the topic you raise.
Trump is helping us come up with some new or newish words and phrases like these from Rick Wilson:  dipshittery, Cheeto Jesus, and unspinnable ratfuck. Trump has driven me to the thesaurus many times as I try to find the exact words to describe the effluence oozing out from between the grotesque fleshy protuberances we would call fish lips and he would call irresistible kissing magnets.
Breaking News: Trump hires famous Mexicans to head his Latino outreach team.

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