Hal Brown's Blog - changed to Hal Brown's Stressline: Election 2024

July 22, 2023

Election 2024: Silly Season or Stinky Season?

By Hal Brown

Read today's blog story on single page here.

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Link to article "Like ‘wearing a Speedo’: Fox News freaks out over Biden wearing sneakers in public ‘instead of dress shoes’"

#sneakergate is now a hashtag on Twitter:

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They don't link to Twitter

Then there's this...

See "Trump shares image of his minor son being used in political attack"

The two articles above caught my eye this morning. I thought how downright absurb, or silly if you will, they were.

I suppose one way look at this is that there are some creative Trump supporters. After all, how does one turn the fact that instead of wearing sneakers meaning that President Biden is athletic they say this is proof postive he's senile?

I'm 79 and mentally and physically fit. The four pairs of shoes I own languish in a box at the back of my closet since I rarely wear them. In fact, I don't even own a necktie. Then again, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not president of anything. As you can see I am one of the many who have discovered HOKA shoes which I wear in warm weather whenever I don't wear sandals.

Perhaps this Rosanna_RosannaDanna, who may or may not have made the image but did post it on Truth Social, thinks they are a brilliant satirist. Whoever it is took their handle, with the name spelled not quite correctly, from the Gilda Radner SNL character. They've been on Reddit (here) for four years but never posted anything.

The youngest Trump progeny (that we know of) has been kept out of poltics (though he still makes the news on some websites like this article about how he supposedly won't tell his father he loves him). From what I've read Melania wants to insulate him from daddy's poltical world. She might not be happy that Big Daddy reposted this image on Truth Social and that this is a story being shared. Horrors upon horror, not only did it make Raw Story, but it's on my blog.

It breaks my heart that Melania might be perturbed at Donald.

As for Rosanna: what a way to get national attention! It tempts me to join Truth Social and see if I can get Trump to re-post something I put on his personal online sandbox. One might ask "Who let the cat do his business in that particular sandbox?"

These attempts to smear President Biden are all rather silly, but then we have the likes of the class-act Marjorie Taylor Greene who thought it appropriate to hold up those photos of Hunter Biden with a scantily clad woman, supposedly a prostitute, at a House committee hearing.

We already have Jim Jordan's jingoistic juggernaut, James Comer's crime confabulations, and of course the master of miserable himself, Donald J. Trump... one may ask:

For those not familiar with the reverse question mark, it means the statement is rhetorical.

February 15, 2023

Just for fun: Stephen Colbert on Trump's new name for DeSantis: Meatball Ron, plus Billy Joel video

By Hal Brown

Above: caricatures by DonkeyHotey, illustration by author, click image to enlarge.

I think that the Meatball Ron story was first reported in The New York Times on Feb. 12th.

Link above, subscription

Excerpt:

Since November, despite the criticism he faced at the time, Mr. Trump has periodically hit out at his potential rival, albeit to a relatively small audience. He posted his most recent innuendo about the governor on Truth Social, where he has just under five million followers. And he has insulted Mr. DeSantis in casual conversations, describing him as “Meatball Ron,” an apparent dig at his appearance, or “Shutdown Ron,” a reference to restrictions the governor put in place at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

The media jumped all over this story so Trump got lots of free publicity (see news search for Meatball Ron)

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This was covered by Fox News here:

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Although I read that Trump was going to try out his new nickname for Ron DeSantis, Meatball Ron, I hadn't seen the Stephen Colbert segment about this where he sang the Billy Joel 1983 classic, Uptown Girl, with new lyrics. This was referenced with a link to the music video of the song in this article in Raw Story.

Click above to read article

I watched his 10 minute segment here, and then watched the Billy Joel version (scroll down). Colbert was very funny especially in his skewering of Nikki Haley. His singing his Meatball Ron lyrics to the tune of Uptown Girl was inspired.