Who's the criminal, Biden, Trump, or both? Can you tell by analyzing thier faces?

 

By Hal Brown

Okay, I have my bias and it isn't based on the science or pseudo-science of facial expression analysis.

However, you can find articles about this subject. For example in the British tabloid The Daily Mail which is known for sometimes publishing sensational articles exaggerating scientific findings. (see Wikipedia)

Read article: So, who's the goodie... and the baddie? How you really CAN tell a wrong 'un just by their face (and it's all down to their lips and eyes) 

Here's another article from Synced and republished on Medium:

Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images

Here's another article:

This scary artificial intelligence has learned how to pick out criminals by their faces

and another

Experiment shows You can tell Criminals from Noncriminals because they just Look Different

 Donald Trump called Biden the most corrupt president in history awhile ago.  He calls him corrupt and crocked. In 2020 he called him a criminal:

Reporter Asks Trump Why He Calls Biden A Criminal. Trump Fires Back: ‘You’re A Criminal For Not Reporting It’

This is from Forbes, 10/20/2020, (no link as a subscription is required):

President Donald Trump Friday referred to the family of his presidential opponent Joe Biden as "corrupt," a "criminal enterprise," a "crime family" and an "organized crime family"

This is also from 2020:

‘CAUGHT COLD’ 

Trump says ‘criminal’ Joe Biden ‘should’ve been locked up weeks ago’ and says Bill Barr had mercy on him

Here's more: 

Trump Calls U.S. 'Evil,' Suggests Biden Deserves 'Electric Chair'

Excerpt:

Former President Donald Trump described the U.S. as "Evil" and said he would be sentenced to the "Electric Chair" if he faced the same corruption allegations that are lobbed against President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

"The Witch Hunt continues, and after 6 years and millions of pages of documents, they've got nothing. If I had what Hunter and Joe had, it would be the Electric Chair. Our Country is Rigged, Crooked, and Evil - We must bring it back, and FAST. Next stop, Communism!" Trump posted Sunday morning on his social media platform Truth Social.

He keeps doing this. He recently posted:

 “Joe Biden is the most corrupt President in the history of the United States, which is being undeniably proven in the House of Representatives every single day. But with all of these horrible revelations and facts, why hasn’t Republican “leadership” in the Senate spoken up and rebuked Crooked Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats, Fascists, and Marxists for their criminal acts against our Country, some of them against me. How long does America have to wait for the Senate to ACT?”

Meanwhile back at Rancho Trumpo we have this from Raw Story:

Click above to read

Taken on the face of it (pun intended) without resorting to scientific (or psuedo-scientific) analysis I ask who actually looks more like a criminal, Trump or Biden? For purposes of comparision, who looks more like one of these men?

Click to enlarge

I never heard of Eric Ramsey until now. He has a lesson for spineless Black football players who were on Tommy Tuberville's teams.

 

By Hal Brown

Click photos to enlarge them.

Read this blog story on single page.

The Raw Story + Exclusives published "A deafening silence from Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s Black football players" by Donnell Alexander. I think those without a subscription can read if here.  The author tried unsuccessfully with one notable exception, to reach Black football players who were on Tommy Tuberville's college teams. He wanted to ask them about whether they'd seen instances of his racism back in their college days. Reading the article made me want to scream out loud. Instead of doing this I wrote the following blog.

Only Black former player who spoke out for the article was Eric Ramsey. This is what Wikipedia tells us about him:

Eric Ramsey was a defensive back for Auburn University's football team in the early 1990s who used a tape recorder to secretly record conversations between his football coaches and Booster "Corky" Frost regarding an illicit player payment scheme. Ramsey's allegations also included racist practices at Auburn, including disapproval of inter-racial dating in the community and segregation of black and white players in the resident athletic dorm. After his tapes were revealed, Auburn received strict penalties and probation for the sixth time in the school's history. This scandal prompted Coach Pat Dye's resignation and preceded the hiring of Samford Universityfootball coach Terry Bowden. Read complete profile here.

Ramsey was not one to accept wrongdoing back in 1991:

The most successful sustained period in Auburn football history was undone in part by a “pay for play” scandal that broke early in the 1991 season. In June of that year, former Tigers defensive back Eric Ramsey alleged in a term paper that was made public that Auburn’s football program was “racist and condescending” to African-American players. That September, Ramsey unloaded another bombshell, that he’d been paid by boosters under an elaborate incentive program, and that he had secretly recorded meetings with assistant coaches Larry Blakeney, Steve Dennis and Frank Young in which the scheme — which involved two Auburn boosters funneling money to players through the football staff — was openly discussed. The Birmingham News printed a transcript of several of the tapes in November, on one of which Blakeney can be heard telling Ramsey to keep the arrangement quiet, uttering the infamous phrase “keep it down home, cuz.” The NCAA’s Letter of Inquiry arrived in November 1992, charging the football program with nine violations. Head coach Pat Dye — who had also been the Tigers’ athletic director during the time the violations occurred — resigned a few weeks later on the eve of the Iron Bowl. The following August, Auburn was hit with a two-year bowl ban, a TV ban for 1993 and the loss of 13 scholarships over a four-year period.

Reference 

Here's what Ramsey told Raw Story writer Donnell Alexander about whether the other Black players would expose Tuberville's racism while they played for him:

• "They're not going to do or say anything. They fear the repercussions. They're worried about the consequences.”
• “They are free to do everything, but talk. It all goes back to the mentality of being seen and not heard. It's just something that is ingrained in them.”

Here's how the Raw Story+ article describes what happened after he exposed the payoff scheme at Auburn:

Back then, though? He was fortunate not to be tarred and feathered. At his 1992 graduation from Auburn, Ramsey and his wife were booed, called the N-word and had objects thrown at them. 

“I wasn't worried,” said Ramsey, who identifies as a Christian. “I had a higher purpose.”

Ramsey now is an actor and filmaker, and runs a security firm in California:

Here's the Ramsey Security Agency website.

Here's his Internet Movie DataBase  (IMDB) profile.

Eric B. Ramsey is originally from Birmingham, AL, and is the middle child of nine children. After High School, he began his professional career as a football player with Auburn University, and subsequently he was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs in 1991. After receiving an injury while with the Chiefs he retired from football, and moved to Maryland. Once in Maryland Eric began receiving offers to model professionally, and act in the television and film industry, and that is when his focus changed from sports to the entertainment arena.




In 2005, Mr. Ramsey relocated to Los Angeles, CA where he quickly found his other talents for filmmaking, writing, and producing. In 2007, Eric wrote and executive produced the short film The Promise, which is based on his own personal experiences with college and professional football.




He then went on to write and produce the short film My Brothar's Keeper, which is also loosely based on Eric's personal life experiences. In 2010, he co-wrote, executive produced and starred in Black Rain. Eric wrote, directed, and produced Unspeakable Indiscretions that is receiving rave reviews throughout film festivals across the country. There is just no stopping this creative genius. While one film is still in the festivals, Eric just recently wrote, produced and directed CainAbel, a modern-day version of the biblical story about Adam and Eve's sons.

You can watch his short film, The Promise, here.

The only other former player who has gone public that I can find is White. It's Auburn linebacker-turned-novelist Ace Atkins who was interviewed for the Raw Story article. This is what he tweeted in May:

Read:

Alabama senator on white nationalists in the military: 'I call them Americans'

A spokesperson for GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville said the senator “has kind of a sarcastic sense of humor” and “was expressing doubt about this being a problem in the military.”

Of all the hundreds of Black players who are familiar with Tommy Tuberville and may be able to relate accounts of how his bigotry was manifest when they were on his teams * it is lamentable that only this one has spoken out if they also observed or experienced his racism.

Then again, it is possible that except for rare moments when he let his true feelings and beliefs slip nobody else saw this side of him. Or is it possible that he doesn't have a racist bone in his body?

Perhaps his current comments which have been taken as indications of racism have been misinterpreted. Maybe when an interviewer asked if Tuberville believed white nationalists should be allowed in the military it wasn't racist when he responded by saying “Well, they call them that. I call them Americans” and he just meant this literally. After all, racists who are citizens are Americans the same way Neo-NAZIs, bank robbers, and serial killers are, and the same way that members of the KKK burning crosses and hanging Black people were also American citizens.

My blog won't reach very many people, but I can only hope that articles like this in Raw Story and republished for a wider audience on MSN prompt other Tuberville team members whether Black or not, if in fact there are any, who can give examples of Tuberville's racism go public.

Update: Read: Tommy Tuberville made $25m off Black men. God forbid they get anything back from The Guardian about nine months age. The former Auburn football coach earned a small fortune thanks to Black athletes. As a US senator he has shown them little but contempt

This article is more than 9 months old

--------------

*He coached  at Auburn University from 1999 to 2008. He was also the head football coach at the University of Mississippi from 1995 to 1998, Texas Tech University from 2010 to 2012, and the University of Cincinnati from 2013 to 2016)

Election 2024: Silly Season or Stinky Season?

By Hal Brown

Read today's blog story on single page here.

Click above to enlarge

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:

Click images to enlarge
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.

Holy maraschino-cherry macho mishagas, Batman, what's with these push-up 'pulican's?

By Hal Brown

Click smaller images tp enlarge them/

By chance one of the first articles I read this morning had nothing to do with politics but for me it segued into the second one I read and led me to write this blog. The first article was in The Washington Post (subscription)

Weight training can be easy and still build strength. Here’s how.

It served as some motivation to start doing the light weight training lazy-me got out of the habit of doing an embarrassing length of time ago. My dumbbells don't do me any good languishing on the floor of my kitchen pantry (top photo).

The next article, by Amanda Marcotte, which I looked was... 

 

RFK Jr.'s MAGA workouts won't work: It takes more than push-ups to topple Trump

RFK Jr. and other GOP stooges think their fitness videos are impressive, but it's really quite sad

 It at was featured on the top of the page on Salon:

I watched the videos in the the article.

For some convoluted reason in my mind I thought of one of Robin's oft used taglines in the Batman series/

  Robin had many "holy something Batman" phrases. 

Here's a video of 50 other them.

 Seeing these videos he might exclaim Holy maraschino-cherry macho michagas Batman. This was my intial reaction.

Why did this come to me? 

Letting my mind wander, I recalled the time years ago when my friend Helen, her foster daughter, and I used to go to our local Friendly's restaurant and always made sure our favorite waitress waited on us. One time I ordered a sundae with extra cherries for desert and she brought me a sundae topped with as many cherries as would fit on the ample mountain of whipped cream. I think I made this association because the videos in the articles represented the sicky sweet cherries on the top of the sundae.

I have a photo of the actual sundae somewhere. This isn't it but it was taken of me at the same restaurant.

I'd read that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were going back and forth bloviating about having an actual cage fight, battling it out mano-a-manopossibly in Las Vegas.

You may prefer to forget the 2007 fake wrerstling match, Batttle of the Billionaires, between Trump and Vince McMahon with Trump "winning" and getting to shave McMahon's head.

. I'd seen the "this is my Covid protection" video of Margorie Taylor Greene lifting weights and doing swinging pull-ups...

...  and of course most of the Trump photoshopped digital trading cards depicting him as some musclebound superhero.

I hadn't seen RFK Jr. doing push-ups ("getting in shape for my debates with President Biden" which hopefully will never happen) showing off his actual muscled pects and abs. If anything demonstates the egotism and unseriousness of his run for president this one video tweet does.  

I hadn't seen Tom Cotton and Chuck Grassley trying to show off by doing butt-in-the-air push-ups to prove, hmmm, something half-assed point:

Drew Comments, above left, snarkily wrote:

 For some guys who try to act so macho and manly these some sorry ass push-ups no cap Chuck Grassley and Tom Cotton I see why y’all fight for the 2nd amendment so hard. Y’all NEED guns

I have nothing to add to what Amanda Marcotte wrote in her concluding three paragraphs:

Such nonsense also lays the groundwork for other fascist arguments about who does and doesn't count because of their bodies. Women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ people, and disabled people are often targeted with stereotypes of bodily degeneracy, as a pretext for stripping them of basic human rights. There's a reason that Trump and his acolytes like to portray immigrants as diseased or drugged-out, implicitly comparing them to supposedly pure-and-strong white Americans. Dehumanizing people as weak or sickly is a first step towards arguing they must be culled or controlled. There's a reason that the discredited theory of eugenics laid the foundation for the Holocaust.

Toxic masculinity and fitness fetishization also do lesser but real harm to the authoritarian personalities that get caught up in it. Right-wing websites and influencers like Alex Jones and Joe Rogan are always grifting their audiences by pitching useless supplements with false hopes of physical perfectability. People who believe Kennedy's silly claim about 35-minute workouts might get frustrated when it doesn't work out for them and develop eating disorders or other bad health habits response. And, of course, there's all the people who believed that only "weak" people need vaccines, and ended up either very sick or dying from COVID-19.

Working out is a good thing to do and being fit is a fine goal to have. It just turns to poison in the hands of fascists, who conflate fitness with moral superiority. Your push-up count says nothing about your character or fitness to lead. But your choice to post cringey workout videos as campaign proves that you're bankrupt in both departments. 

I didn't know who Jack White was. Then I read what he posted on Instagram. Now I like him... a lot.

 

By Hal Brown

View on one page here.

Before today I'd never heard of Jack White (Wikipedia profile). I discovered he is the frontman for the rock group White Stripes. I read an article about him in HUFFPOST this morning. It was posted on July 10th but I just noticed it. 

Jack White Puts 'Disgusting' Trump-Supporting Celebs On Blast

The rocker called out Mel Gibson, Mark Wahlberg and Guy Fieri after they were photographed with the former president over the weekend.

I know who Jack Black is, though I admit that I didn't know that along with being an actor and comedian he's also a rock musician. Not surprisingly he has been an outspoked critic of Donald Trump. But Jack White was a headscratcher for me.

Shame on me for being so out of touch with the rock world that I didn't know who he was considering he's not only been ranked as one of the 100 best quitarists of all time, but In 2012, the New York Times called him "the coolest, weirdest and savviest rockstar of our time".^[3] 

The HUFFPOST article had a link to this Instagram post:

The White Stripes song "Seven Nation Army" was referred to in the HUFFPOST article so of course I chose it to be the song I listened to and decided to include in this blog:

Click above to hear song

The lyrics are here.

This isn't the first time Jack White used Instagram to rail against someone. Here's what he posted about Elon Musk (for ease of reading I added paragraph breaks):

“So you gave trump his twitter platform back. Absolutely disgusting, Elon. That is officially an asshole move. Why dont you be truthful? Tell it like it is; people like you and Joe Rogan (who gives platforms to liars like alex jones etc.); you come into a ton of money, see the tax bill, despise paying your fair share, and then think moving to Texas and supporting whatever republican you can is going to help you keep more of your money. (How else could trump possibly interest you?) 

You intend to give platforms to known liars and wash your hands like pontius pilate and claim no responsibility? trump was removed from twitter because he incited violence multiple times, people died and were injured as a result of his lies and his ego, (let alone what his coup did to attempt to destroy democracy and our Capitol). 

And how about the division and the families broken apart from his rhetoric and what it did to this country? That’s not “free speech” or “what the poll decided” or whatever nonsense you’re claiming it to be; this is straight up you trying to help a fascist have a platform so you can eventually get your tax breaks. I mean, how many more billions do you need that you have to risk democracy itself to obtain it? 

You did a lot of amazing things with Tesla, Elon, and you deserve a lot of compliments in that department (i personally supported the hell out of that venture), but you've gone too far and are now using your power to promote horrible, violence inducing liars, who are taking the country and the world backwards and endangering the democracy that made you rich and successful in the first place. 

I am a believer in free speech, but for example i’m not about to let the KKK hold a rally at our record label's performance stage. That’s one of the platforms we control and have a say in, it’s not town square operated by the government. And if i owned a gas station, i wouldn’t be selling the KKK gasoline to burn crosses either and then wash my hands as if i didn’t help facilitate hatred. You took on a big responsibility with your purchase, and “free speech” isn’t some umbrella that protects you from that.

Jack White isn't Taylor Swift, the pop mega-mega star who is anything but mega-MAGA. She stayed out of politics for years but became political a few years ago. She also posts on Instagram - read 2020 Newsweeek article about her politics. Still, Jack White has a substantial following in the rock world, and reaches people who don't follow singers like Swift and those from other muscial genres. 

Every celebrity who has a chance to influence people's opinions and opening their eyes to the dangers of Trump and other extremist right wing polticians may help, if not always to change minds,  to prompt some people who wouldn't otherwise vote to cast their votes for Democrats.

Double Take on seeing that the House Ethics Committee reaching out to witnesses in revived Matt Gaetz probe. Did I read this right?

 

Middle: Rep. Michael Guest

Load only this page, includes Disquis comments.

By Hal Brown

This news came after Matt Gaetz's attempt to make FBI Director Christopher Wray look like a ciminal who is trying to protect a nefarious crime family: see 

Rep. Matt Gaetz Grills FBI Director About Hunter "Shakedown" Message: "Are You Protecting The Bidens?"

Links to article, not to Twitter

I did a double take when I saw that the House, the GOP House and home not only to Gaetz but the Freedom (to be Conspicacy Spinning Lunatics) Caucus which he's a member of, was reviving the ethics probe of Gaetz which began when the Democrats were in control.

From the CNN article:

Now chaired by Republican Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi, the panel quietly restarted its investigation earlier this year without publicly laying out its targets anew. The decision to begin reaching out to witnesses, made by Guest and ranking Democratic member, Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, is the first formal step the committee has taken since the ethics investigation resumed. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN this week he doesn’t “know anything about” the investigation, noting that he’s barred by House rules from discussing it with committee members. The Republican-led investigation into Gaetz comes as the Florida congressman finds himself repeatedly at odds with his party’s leadership. 

“I never know anything on (the) Ethics Committee,” McCarthy told CNN. “I don’t know what investigations they have. I don’t know anything about it.” 

Asked to comment on whether he thinks the investigation should move forward, McCarthy declined to do so and referred questions to the committee.

I'd never heard of Rep. Michael Guest so, of course, I checked him out on Wikipedia (here).

He was born in the Woodbury, New Jersey which is in the southern part of the state and a suburb of Philadelphia. I don't know how he ended up living in Mississippi although his official website tells us that he graduated from high school there and went to college and law school in the state:

Congressman Guest is a Rankin County resident and a graduate of Brandon High School. He and his family are members of Brandon Baptist Church, where Congressman Guest serves as a Sunday school teacher for young men in high school. He received a degree in accounting from Mississippi State University and his law degree from The University of Mississippi. Congressman Guest is a member of the Rankin County Bar Association and the Mississippi Bar Association. He is married to the former Haley Kennedy of Brandon, and they have two sons, Kennedy and Patton. The Guests' newest family addition is their dog, Winston Churchill.

What may be the most relevant aspect of his chairing this committee as it investigates Gaetz may be in the second paragraph (highlighted) about his tenure in the House (below from Wikipedia):

In December 2020, Guest was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated^[9] Trump. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of an election held by another state.^[10][11][12]

On May 19, 2021, Guest was one of 35 Republicans who joined all Democrats in voting to approve legislation to establish the January 6, 2021 commission meant to investigate the storming of the U.S. Capitol.^[13]

In June 2022, after a leaked decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to revoke the right to abortion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Guest wrote to the Department of Homeland Security to demand action in the wake of attacks by Jane's Revenge, which Guest called an "anarchist extremist group" that targets crisis pregnancy centers and other anti-abortionorganizations.^[14]

In August 2022, Guest was named ranking member of the House Ethics Committee upon the death of former ranking member Jackie Walorski.^[15]

Guest was among the 71 Republicans who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House.^[16]

Considering that there are 222 GOP members of the House being one of 35 crossing the aisle in this controversial vote may prove to be an indication he is will to put poltics aside and risk retribrition from hard right members of the House GOP who consider Gaetz to be one of their own.

As far as justice prevailing, Trump is a giant orange rockfish and Gaetz is a baby shrimp. 

Even so, frying him with a finding that he violated House ethics would barely whet the appetite for holding people accountable, but it would be satisfying to see that something came of it.