May 11-12, 2018

Updated May 7, 2021

About Me

My name is Hal Brown. I'm 77 years old. I'm a retired Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW, Massachusetts). I was a psychotherapist in private practice in Michigan and Massachusetts and a community mental health center director in Michigan. I was also a cranberry grower in Massachusetts along with my late wife Betty. We were members of the Ocean Spray cooperative. 

Watch Betty in a video about cranberry growing which was broadcast at Thanksgiving time for about ten years on New England Chronicle and the cable show Betsy's Garden.

I am currently living in Portland, Oregon. I 

moved here in 2014, four years after Betty died at the age of 65 after a three month bout with lung cancer. Read her newspaper memorial article here.

Blogging and social media

My primary writing is on the website Daily Kos. About Daily Kos.

All of my 1000 plus Daily Kos stories.

and

Stories about Trumpology, The psychological study and analysis of Donald Trump

I have a Twitter account where every once in awhile a tweet is seen by between 500 and 1000 people.

I also have a public Facebook page where anybody can post or comment.

I update my blog, halbrown.org every day with a link to an original story which I post on Daily Kos. 

I used to write a column on Capitol Hill Blue. This is the oldest political website. I post stories on Daily Kos about "Trumpology: The psychological study and analysis of Donald Trump" and on general political subjects which you can read here. There are over 1,400 of these articles, often referred to as diaries on the website.

Hal and his late wife harvesting cranberries on their bog.

My Professional career

This is me at my home office about about 20 years ago.

I was obviously much younger when this photo was taken. I am old now. This is me last year at Oregon's tallest waterfall, Multnomah Falls (click to enlarge):

Resume

I received my Masters in Social Work from Michigan State University in 1971 and was a psychotherapist until my retirement in. My main salaried work experience was with one of the best community mental health programs in the country, the Mason Mental Health Center (LINK inlcudes photos) , Clinton-Eaton-Ingham Community Mental Health Board headquartered in Lansing, Michigan. I always had a private practice along with my salaried job.  

In addition to practicing psychotherapy, I was the supervisor of two rural mental health centers, a clinical supervisor, and a field instructor helping to train clinical social workers from both Michigan State University and the University of Michigan. I've presented workshops at several state and two national conferences on a variety of clinical topics.  I also particpated in research conducted by Dr. Norman Kagan in a training method called Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) and made several training films with a real client.

Due to budget cuts the Mason Mental Health Center was closed and I was moved to a sister satellite center in St. Johns, the Clinton County Counseling Center. This entailed driving nearly an hour to get to work, quite a change when my office was five minutes from home.

 As the new supervisor I was supposed to remedy some major problems about which heads of all the agencies in the county had been complaining. I discovered the problems were worse than described to me and when I tried to address them by jumping in and initiating major changes without getting permission in advance I got into difficulty with the higher-ups at the main office.

This was after I discovered that the program was held in lower regard by the heads of the other agencies in the county than I had been told. 

The steps I took unilaterally without clearing them with my superiors led to a temporary suspension, which I fought with a lawyer and eventually won a pyrrhic victory and was returned to run the program under untenable circumstances. It was so bad I wasn't allow to work in my office even doing clinical supervision with staff with the door closed. If was seeing a client I could have closed the door of course but the entire time I was there the admissions staff refused to refer clients too me.

When the opportunity presented itself I resigned and my wife and I moved to Massachusetts to take over her family cranberry farm. I kept a small private practice with a home office.

Here's how the Lansing paper described what happened at the Clinton County Counseling Center (click to enlarge):

Click above to enlarge

All the heads of the country agencies wrote me glowing recommendations when I left.

daily.jstor.org

I was in general adult practice where I worked with patients who were businessmen and women, construction and trade workers, housewives, professors, college students, farmers, techies in the electronics and computer industry and executives.

I also have had considerable experience working with with police officers and correction officers in both individual and couple's therapy. 

Because I spent 20 years as an auxiliary police officer in two cities I learned about police stress, I published the number one website on the subject, Police Stressline.  I began the website by posting articles I originally wrote for a print Massachusetts police magaize called Police Log. Some of the online articles were picked up and published in print police magazines. Read Daily Kos article about my police experience.

My Massachsetts office was very private. It was at home with its own waiting room and entrance, overlooking the cranberry bogs which, until the summer of 2006 when they were sold, were owned by my wife and her family. 

My wife Betty and I were Ocean Spray grower-owners and we published one of the first websites to have a major impact on an entire industry, Cranberry Stressline. Because it brought together growers from across the country when there were problems with the management of Ocean Spray the website was credited with promoting a proxy war which resulted in the election of a new board of directors and the firing of the CEO, Robert Hawthorne.

As a therapist I worked with people with anxiety, depression and relationship problems, with people who are compulsive, irritable, anxious, and those who suffer from self-doubt and self-esteem problems. I also worked with people who were struggling with more existential questions such as who they are and what their life was all about. 

I always believed therapy should be a partnership between client and therapist, and that the basis for good therapy is trust, and that it was my responsibility for seeing to it that clients weren't spinning their wheels fruitlessly while I sat back and wait for them "to get it on their own," while I had a pretty good idea where they had to go to resolve their problems. 

I didn't have any particular "brand" of psychotherapy that I practiced, especially since the type of therapy I provided depended on the client's needs and desires. Generally for symptom reduction alone, therapy that gives a client support and encouragement, and helps them better understand self-defeating behaviors and change them, is the most effective. 

My understanding of personality dynamics comes from being trained in psychodynamic and psychoanalytically oriented therapy in the master's program at Michigan State University in the early 1970's. While I did not have post-graduate training in this area (I am not a psychoanalyst), I had considerable experience in providing therapy that was aimed at helping clients gain insight into themselves and how their family of origin influenced who they are.

I also blended what is known as cognitive-behavior therapy into my approach as needed. Basically this helped the client to recognize and change their self-defeating thoughts and behaviors. Whether focused on behavioral change or not my approach to my clients was always informed by my understanding of psychodynamics.

I have discovered over many years that it's the personality of the therapist, their ability to listen, and the connection he or she makes with the client that dictates success or failure in therapy. I tend to be suspicious of any of the "therapy of the month" flavors of treatment often touted in best selling books and by their authors on talk shows.

Other online activities:

I was a weekly columnist for the website Capital Hill Blue for several years. I also had an online column called The Eclectic Digest which was publshed in two large daily papers south of Boston, The Brockton Enterprise and The Patriot Ledger. I have a Facebook page, pictured are my two Westies Mac and Duff:

I post Tweets on Twitter.

Here are some more recent photos of me. They are small but you can click to enlarge them, although why you might want to do that is beyond me.

New: My essays from when I wrote a weekly politcal column for Capitol Hill Blue circa 2009. || Archive of Daily Kos articles ||

\Below: Our days of growing cranberries 

Hal Brown Blog

https://www.dailykos.com  (click images to enlarge)

 

 This is an internationally read blog  with original essays and my  opinions on 

news stories that pique my interest. My Bio; I just found a collection of photos I thought I lost.  Also Internet search for Hal Brown and Trump 

Oct. 28, 2020

'Anonymous,' author of White House tell-all book, revealed to be Miles Taylor, former Trump Homeland Security Chief of staff.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany responded in a statement, calling Taylor a "low-level, disgruntled former staffer" and a "liar and coward who chose anonymity over action and leaking over leading." Disgruntled, okay, but just because he's not a household name I wouldn't call him low level. Here's his Wikipedia page.

Adultry: The Lincoln Project went "there" watch:

My view:

I think it all depends on New York, both state and city. Even if Biden keeps his word not to interfere with DOJ investigations he may select an Attorney General who doesn't want to inflame the divisions in the country more than they are already inflamed. In New York I can see civil indictments and trials for Trump and those involved from the Trump Organization which could result in humongous fines but no prison time. For one thing there is a lower standard of proof (preponderance of the evidence) in a civil case than a criminal one (beyond a reasonable doubt). We are already in a civil war. If and when he loses it could get much worse.

I haven't seen this yet though as a fan of Sarah Cooper I plan to do so. I did watch the Borat movie last night. I didn't like gross-out bits because 1) they are not to my taste, and 2) they are an effort, failed in my opinion, to get cheap laughs. I did laugh out loud a few times and the much publicized segment with Rudy Giuliani was excellent showing what a Trump sycophant and worm he is. Also, his narcissism made him incredibly gullible. It did prompt me to look up to see how many of the other segments used real people. He really did crash a CPAC event where Mike Pence was speaking.

Below: More comedy - a parody so real seeming it could be real

 Ivanka Trump praises her dad for ‘doing the YMCA’ as Americans die from COVID -watch video below

Michigan Judge Accused of Jeopardizing Safety and Democracy With Reversal of Open Carry Ban at Polling Places 

Citing her "sworn duty to protect every voter and their right to cast the ballot free from intimidation and harassment," the Democratic secretary of state vows to appeal the judge's injunction. 

New Study Suggests COVID-19 May Age Some Patients' Brains By 10 Years

Ny Times 

We’ve all heard how U.S. leadership failed its citizens with its pandemic response. We had the playbooks, we had the money, we had the experts. We just … didn’t use them.

But it turns out, other countries did. Because U.S. public health leaders and scientists have been planning for a catastrophe just like Covid-19 for decades, and, in typical American fashion, we didn’t just write the pandemic playbook — we exported it around the world.

In this video, we went searching for evidence that the public health innovations and scientific progress this country is famous for are still alive and well. Our journey to find lifesaving American initiatives introduced us to some interesting people: from a virus hunter in the bat caves in Thailand to a group of South Korean epidemiologists who just might have predicted this pandemic.

What we found doesn’t change the fact that more than 220,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, but it sheds light on a part of the U.S. pandemic response that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention: that America’s decades of pandemic planning actually did save lives. Just not at home.

Oct. 27, 2020

My Daily Kos story:

Below: Stories that piqued my interest today.

Raging Trump wants the Supreme Court to save him. Here’s why it probably won’t, Greg Sargent, Wash. Post (subscription). 

Excerpts:

(..saving Trump is) unlikely. A lot of things would have to line up perfectly for that to happen.

In the Wisconsin decision, the eight-justice court ruled that ballots that arrive after Election Day, but were mailed before, will not be accepted. The ruling from the five conservatives is stirring angst because it suggests more rulings that could tip the election to Trump.

But this will only happen if a series of unlikely scenarios all line up.

Fears of an intervention

One big fear is this could mean the high court will end up overruling a recent Pennsylvania state supreme court decision allowing for the acceptance of mail ballots that arrive up to three days after Election Day.

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With Barrett now on the court, there might be five conservative justices now prepared to do this.

But here’s the rub: To do so, they’d have to contradict a principle that Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh articulated in his Wisconsin opinion. He argued that Wisconsin couldn’t extend the period for accepting ballots because this constituted “changing state election rules too close to an election.”

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But if the Supreme Court now nixes the extended deadline in Pennsylvania, this would also constitute changing election rules when "an election is imminent.”

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But the conservative justices cannot get around the fact that a change now would be undoing a state of affairs that the court itself created for voters, by deadlocking.

An unlikely scenario

It’s also increasingly unlikely that there will be enough late-arriving ballots in Pennsylvania to make the difference.

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“You’d have to have enough late-arriving ballots to make a difference in a state and have that state make the difference in the election,” Vladeck said.

Yet another thing to fear

Still another possibility might be that the high court finds a way to halt the counting of mail ballots even if they arrived on or before Election Day. Kavanaugh’s ruling also vaguely declared that if the results aren’t announced on or right after Election Day, it might create “suspicions of impropriety.”

This could theoretically be twisted into a rationale for halting a post-Election Day count.

That declaration is absurd, since the whole point of allowing for weeks to pass before certification is to avoid such suspicions. And as election expert Rick Hasen notes, there isn’t any result to cast doubt upon until all votes are counted.

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Beyond this, Vladeck notes that such a ruling is unlikely: It would require five conservatives to break with their hallowed principle of state legislative control over voting rules, since those legislatures themselves created vote-by-mail systems.

Two parts of this struck me. 1) That Fox News played the speech and 2) Trump has nothing better to do in the afternoon than watch Fox News. ‘Fake speech’: Trump rages at live television as Fox News gives Obama 30 minutes to rip president

Clinical psychologist Alan Blotcky predicts what life after Trump will be like — and how the president will respond if he loses

Excerpt: It is possible to bring those people back from that (fears promoted by Trump), but Dr. Blotcky says it will come with Biden including them as part of his new administration. 

“If you cut off the head, which is Trump, I think there is going to be residual stuff, but I think if Joe Biden keeps talking about being the president for all Americans, and not just Democrats, that’s the strategy. That’s the attitude you have to have — that our new president has to be the president for all of us, and they have to listen to him,” Dr. Blotcky went on. “A lot of his supporters, I see them in the crowds, are people who really have been left behind by this economy and they feel like they are not listened to or valued. And I think one of the major functions of the president is to listen to everybody and have everybody feel like we’re a part of what we’re trying to do in this democracy.” 

In the immediate aftermath, Dr. Blotcky agrees that the Trump supporters will still take to the streets and that there will be violence, but that Biden will have the capacity to calm the nation much more so than Trump. 

“If [Trump] gets agitated and riled up, you’re going to see a lot of his supporters get agitated and riled up,” he explained.

His fans ‘would follow Trump off a cliff’: 14 key traits revealed in psychological analysis of people who support the president, by Bobby Azarian, neuroscientist 

Revealed: ex-members of Amy Coney Barrett faith group tell of trauma and sexual abuse

Read Aunt Lydia story.

Oct. 26, 2020

House Judiciary GOP slammed for ‘bizarre and psychopathic’ tweet implying Barrett is a birthday gift for Hillary Clinton

This Scary Statistic Predicts Growing US Political Violence — Whatever Happens On Election Day

If you watch broadcast TV you've seen these ads. You may have even believed them. Read this: Americans Took Prevagen for Years—as the FDA Questioned Its Safety

If you haven’t watch Madam Secretary and plan todo so there are major spoilers here.

Inside 'Madam Secretary's' Trump-Like Impeachment Episode —

Co-star Keith Carradine, who plays the president on the CBS drama, talks with The Hollywood Reporter about the show's real-life parallels.

 (This title is a misrepresentation because it really involves initiation of the 25th Amendment rather than impeachment.)

I missed watching Madam Secretary when if first aired so I am streaming it now. It stars Téa Leoni as the Secretary of State, her husband is played be Tim Daly as a professor at the War College, expert on world religions, and sometime CIA agent, Bebe Neuworth plays her chief of staff, and Keith Carradine plays the president.

It is a refreshing escape to watch episodes about a functional administration where everyone is trying to do the right thing. The contrasts with the Trump administration are stark.

It is one of those shows about the presidency like The West Wing (which I have yet to watch) and Designated Survivor which I have watched which give us examples of a presidents who make Trump look like the inept malevolent clown he is. Even Scandal and House of Cards, both of which I did watch, gave us presidents I’d trade for Trump in a second. 

I’m up to season four. Last night there was an episode that rang so true to Donald Trump that I was prompted to do a Google search to learn more about it.

When President Dalton went mad and was basically about to start World War Three against Russia it was impossible not to see Donald Trump having lost the election and deciding to take out his rage by destroying the world.

During Sunday's Madam Secretary, the drama addressed a debate that has been playing out in the media for months: Does the 25thAmendment allow a president to be removed from office if his cabinet deems him mentally unfit? At least in the alternate-future Washington depicted on the CBS political drama, the answer is a resounding "yes."

First, a quick recap: When the American embassy in Bulgaria is seemingly targeted by a sonic attack that's traced back to Russian operatives, an uncharacteristically hawkish President Dalton (Keith Carradine) orders his Secretary of Defense (Mike Pniewski) to fire nuclear missiles at the country's satellites — and then fires him when he refuses to carry out the order. Alarmed by the commander-in-chief's suddenly unhinged behavior, Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord (series star Tea Leoni) and the rest of the cabinet vote to invoke the 25th Amendment to strip him of his powers, thereby avoiding a potential armed conflict.

You can read the article to see how the episode ended.

How many of these TV presidents can you identify? (Click to enlarge image.)

 The West Wing also had a 25th Amendment episode.

Fox News president and top personalities told to quarantine after possible post-debate exposure

Eight days out from a presidential election, the president of Fox News and key members of the network’s election team have been told to quarantine after they were exposed to someone who tested positive for the coronavirus.

Until they test negative for the virus three times in a row, the anchors will be broadcasting their shows from home, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private health matters.

The infected person was on a flight chartered to transport Fox employees from New York to the presidential debate in Nashville. Those on the flight included Jay Wallace, the network president, Bret Baier, the chief political anchor, Martha MacCallum, anchor of Fox’s nightly news show “The Story,” as well as two other members of the network’s election team, Juan Williams and Dana Perino, who are co-hosts of “The Five.”

With Covid-19 Rife Among VP Staffers, Democrats Says Pence Presiding Over Senate a 'Violation of Common Decency'

"Your presence alone could be very dangerous to many people—not just Senators, but to all the truly essential staff—both Democratic and Republican—who must be physically present inside the U.S. Capitol for it to function."

Click to enlarge resignation letter:

Japan’s new prime minister has a rags-to-riches story. But can he save Japan from crisis?

Oct. 25, 2020

Not the biggest story today, but it is my Daily Kos story

2020 ELECTIONS

GOP Senate majority besieged on multiple fronts, 12 seats may be in play

Democrats began the 2020 election cycle with only a narrow path back to the Senate majority. But entering the final week before the election, there are competitive races everywhere.

Republicans are scrambling resources into red and purple states alike — from Kansas and South Carolina to Iowa and North Carolina — cutting down Democrats’ massive financial edge and hoping for a late-breaking turn in their favor, similar to four years ago. But their defensive posture underscores just how broad the playing field is, with nearly a dozen Republican senators in various levels of danger, and only two Democratic seats at risk.

Tough questions undercut Trump’s reliance on local media coverage

The cash-hungry Trump campaign has turned to a cheaper strategy to try to remain on the airwaves, flooding TV and radio through local media bookings and back-to-back-to-back rallies.

But the gambit has been challenged by a trail of negative headlines that have followed the president: articles about rallies that eschew pandemic guidelines, news of people sickened by coronavirus afterward, spats with local officials that dominate regional coverage before and after a visit.

'Deep down, he's a terrified little boy': Bob Woodward, John Bolton, Mary Trump and others on Trump in The Guardian

Brad Pitt narrated this ad:

Mark Meadows Admits White House Is ‘Not Going to Control Pandemic’ Daily Beast

*SHRUGS SHOULDERS*

The White House Chief of Staff told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union, “We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics, and other mitigation areas.”

Missed opportunities for 2020 and beyond, Axios

• Here's a look at how Trump and Biden have addressed, or failed to address, the eight themes that Axios has identified as the most critical trends that will last beyond the election.

1) Mind manipulation on social media 2) Artificial intelligence and robotics 3) China 4) Climate change 5) Health care costs 6) Demographic change 7) Capitalism and inequality 8) Structural racism: 

Most recent international stats (click to enlarge)

Images used on my Daily Kos story:

Oct. 24, 2020

Not the most important story, but it is the story I wrote.

New:

‘This isn’t over’: Lincoln Project issues lawyer letter mocking Jared and Ivanka’s billboard threat

The paranoid pointing finger

Sudan-Israel deal depends on legislative approval, minister says

Deal trumpeted by Donald Trump cannot go ahead without approval of legislative council – which does not yet exist

HuffPost: Donald Trump Has Been Even Worse Than Everyone Expected

New York Times nailed for publishing Republican propaganda — yet again

Two supposedly "average" voters in a Times story turn out to be hardcore Republicans. And it's happened before

BuzzFeed: This Is How Thousands Of Americans Are Preparing To Take On Trump If He Refuses To Leave Office

The latest sheer idiocy from conservative homophobes: Boycotting Oreos - WashPost

Colbert I. King

A screenshot from Oreo’s new ad, “Proud Parent.” (Oreo)

Credit the group One Million Moms with spurring me to brave covid-19-struck Washington, D.C., and make a beeline to the grocery store to purchase some Oreo cookies.

I could do no less in light of a scurrilous campaign the organization has launched against Oreo and its parent company, Mondelez International.

Not to be confused with the Million Mom March gun-safety organization, OneMillionMoms.com is an online ministry of the American Family Association, a self-described “conservative, pro-family” organization based in Tupelo, Miss.

One Million Moms is out of sorts because Oreo has joined with the nonprofit PFLAG — an organization of supportive parents, families and allies of LGBTQ people — to release “Rainbow Oreos.” These are described as cookies filled with Oreo cream in the colors of the Pride flag, and the company has launched the new product with a moving ad depicting a daughter and her partner introducing their relationship to her parents.

'This Is Not Normal':

People Can’t Believe This RNC Tweet About Donald Trump’s Priorities Isn’t A Parody

McConnell Keeps Senate in Session Over Weekend to Shut Down Debate on Barrett, Set Stage for Confirmation Vote

Sen. Jeff Merkley warned that Republicans "are hellbent on ramming through this nomination even if it means torching Senate's traditions, rules, and integrity."

Jake Johnson, staff writer

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License from Common Dreams

Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is keeping the U.S. Senate in session over the weekend in an effort to speedily shut down debate on Amy Coney Barrett and set the stage for the right-wing judge's confirmation to the Supreme Court as early as Monday, just eight days before the November presidential election.

The rare weekend session—something McConnell would not hold to work on desperately needed coronavirus relief—is scheduled to begin at noon on Saturday after the Kentucky Republican filed cloture for Barrett's dark money-backed nomination Friday afternoon. A procedural vote to end debate on Barrett's nomination is set to take place Sunday, teeing up a Monday confirmation vote that is expected to fall largely along party lines.

"This is not normal," tweeted Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, one of the many civil rights groups opposed to Barrett's confirmation. "McConnell is keeping the Senate in session all weekend to rush through Barrett nomination while 52 million people have already voted and as the American people are struggling amid the pandemic. Prioritizing power over people."

McConnell's moves paving the way for a final vote on Barrett came just a day after Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approvedPresident Donald Trump's high court nominee during a Thursday hearing boycotted by Democrats. Like much of the process that preceded it, the vote Thursday violated committee rules requiring the presence of at least two members of the minority party.

"Republicans just voted Amy Coney Barrett out of committee with no Democrats present. This is further proof that the entire process is an illegitimate sham," Meagan Hatcher Mays, director of democracy policy at advocacy group Indivisible, said in a statement following the vote.

"This nominee refused to say whether or not climate change is real," Mays continued. "She refused to say whether abortion is constitutional. She refused to say whether the ACA is the law of the land. She wouldn't even say whether or not the president can unilaterally change the date of the election. (He can't.) Amy Coney Barrett is an extremist who has no business replacing RBG, and has no business serving on the Supreme Court at all."

In a speech on the Senate floor Friday, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that "by rushing this nomination through the Senate only eight days before a national election, after 50 million Americans have already voted, the Republican majority is steering the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the country in a very dangerous direction."

Schumer proceeded to force the Senate into a closed-door session without cameras or members of the press present in order to "talk face to face about what this might mean for the country." Republicans emerged from the brief session completely undeterred from plowing ahead Barrett's confirmation just ahead of the election.

"As you likely figured out, this didn't work," tweeted Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). "Republicans had no interest in working this out in order to save the Senate. So after a 30 minute break at a crappy rest stop, we are back on the McConnell superhighway to the destruction of the Senate."

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) echoed Murphy, saying that while he can't discuss what specifically was said during the closed session, "you can tell from how briefly we were in there that my GOP colleagues are hellbent on ramming through this nomination even if it means torching Senate's traditions, rules, and integrity."

"Those who care about our country are in anguish," Merkley added. "SCOTUS being corrupted and delegitimized before our eyes. Senate just voted to proceed on Barrett, and McConnell immediately moved to close debate. So much for coverage for preexisting conditions

Covid-19: Poland President Duda tests positive for virus

The second wave of infections is hitting Poland hard, with the number of new cases 22 times higher than the highest number of cases in spring, although testing is now more prevalent.

The number of hospital beds in use by coronavirus patients rose by 6.5% on Friday to 11,496, which means 60% of the total available are now filled.

Under the new restrictions, gatherings of more than five are banned, and children must be accompanied by an adult when outdoors. People aged over 70 are being urged to stay at home.

2020 Maria Goeppert-Mayer Lecture - Nobel Laureate, Physics 2020 - Andrea Ghez, UCLA

Learn about new developments in the study of supermassive black holes. Through the capture and analysis of twenty years of high-resolution imaging, the UCLA Galactic Center Group has moved the case for a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy from a possibility to a certainty and provided the best evidence to date for the existence of these truly exotic objects. This was made possible with the first measurements of stellar orbits around a galactic nucleus. Further advances in state-of-the-art of high-resolution imaging technology on the world’s largest telescopes have greatly expanded the power of using stellar orbits to study black holes. Recent observations have revealed an environment around the black hole that is quite unexpected (young stars where there should be none; a lack of old stars where there should be many; and a puzzling new class of objects). Continued measurements of the motions of stars have solved many of the puzzles posed by these perplexing populations of stars. This work is providing insight into how black holes grow and the role that they play in regulating the growth of their host galaxies. Measurements this past year of stellar orbits at the Galactic Center have provided new insight on how gravity works near a supermassive hole, a new and unexplored regime for this fundamental force of nature.

Latest international stats (click to enlarge)

Oct. 23, 2020

Here is the breakdown of CNN’s poll results:

Thursday’s debate watchers preferred Trump over Biden on the economy (56% say they think Trump would better handle it vs. 44% who say Biden would), and divided about evenly between the two on foreign policy (50% prefer Biden, 48% Trump). Biden held a wide edge as more trusted to handle the coronavirus (57% Biden to 41% Trump), climate change (67% Biden to 29% Trump) and racial inequality in the US (62% Biden to 35% Trump).

What was Trump talking about? How the language of Fox News invaded the final debate.

Jeremy Barr

Excerpt;

During the final presidential debate, President Trump made reference to “the laptop from hell,” “AOC plus three″ and “Russia, Russia, Russia” — yes, said three times in a row.

The material was very familiar to — and maybe only familiar to — regular viewers of Fox News opinion hosts such as Sean Hannity.

“I feel like he almost was speaking the language of Fox prime time,” Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press,” said on NBC after the debate. “If you watch a lot of Fox prime time, you understand what he’s saying. If you don’t, you have no idea.”

It was a point made over and over again across networks as political commentators and journalists wondered aloud whether Trump’s attacks on former vice president Joe Biden flew over the heads of many Americans who aren’t regular consumers of conservative television, radio and websites.

“Some of the punches he threw at Joe Biden I don’t think landed because unless you were Sean Hannity, you probably had no idea what he was talking about,” CNN host Jake Tapper said.

“You need an encyclopedia to understand what is going on because it’s a series of buzzwords that have meaning perhaps if you’ve been studying the Daily Caller,” said CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip. “But if you’re a regular person going about your life, you’re not going to understand what rabbit holes the president is going down.”

GOP pollster says Trump won the final debate but Biden ‘won the war’

from VOX: Winers and losers

Trump Says He’s ‘The Least Racist Person In This Room’ At Final Presidential Debate

The president delivered the jaw-dropping assertion to Kristen Welker, the first Black woman to moderate a presidential debate since 1992.

News flash: Trump behaves himself! But after that flaccid performance, it's almost over

Trump's voters loved him in the first debate. But on Thursday, he seemed sour, flattened and all but defeated

Heather Digby Parton

I was wrong that Trump would lose in 2016. I’m doubling down in 2020. Wash Post 

Fareed Zakaria  

In 2016, I was one of those people who didn’t think Donald Trump could win the presidency.

Conclusion:

There are parts of Trump’s coalition who are anxious about the country’s future — and their own place in it — and are thus susceptible to the snake oil being peddled by a clever salesman. The United States is changing. If you consider the core of Trump’s support — Whites without a college degree — you see that they are shrinking as a share of the adult population. If you take the core of Joe Biden’s support — Whites with a college degree and minorities — they are growing in even greater measure. The New York Times analyzed the data and found that in Florida, the core Trump voting bloc of non-college-educated Whites has fallen by 359,000 since 2016, while the Biden coalition has grown by 1,579,000 people. In Pennsylvania, Trump’s base shrank by 431,000, while Biden’s grew by 449,000.

If Biden wins, his challenge will be to make all Americans understand that the country has always been a grand experiment, an attempt to create the first universal nation. Today, living up to that ideal means embracing all kinds of people — Black and White, native-born and immigrant, gay and straight, and many more. It’s a messy process, and it can seem disruptive and disorderly. It sometimes gets bogged down in squabbles over terminology and political correctness. But it is all part of a noble effort to ensure that everyone in this country finally feels they are included in the American Dream. Ever since the nation’s birth, it has gradually expanded the idea of liberty and democracy, making America great by surging forward into the future rather than lapsing back into nostalgia for the past.

Meanwhile, I will take my chances and once again predict that Trump will lose this election. Humbled as I am after these four years, I would still rather bet on — and believe in — the best in America.

WATCH: Melania snatches hand away from Trump again following debate

Conservatives’ latest smear against Joe Biden gets debunked — by a Fox News reporter

Trump campaign ad about America’s comeback features footage from Russia and Slovenia

Oct. 22, 2020

Excerpt:

The American public is inadequately educated about mental health. It would take a serious, sustained explication, backed by the power and reach of a professional association, to help us understand why the emotional and psychological stability of our leaders matters and can have an impact on all of us. Every day legal experts weigh in on Donald’s unconstitutional or norm-breaking behaviors. Since his covid-19 diagnosis, medical experts have speculated about the course of his illness and the potentially dangerous side effects he may be experiencing as a result of the experimental treatments he’s received. Only the mental health experts have been effectively sidelined.

That doesn’t mean opinions haven’t proliferated about Donald’s mental health. It sometimes seems that everyone but psychiatrists has aired their views: Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, once described Donald’s behavior as “a combination of waking hallucinations, verbal tics, lies surpassing even his usual fabulist standard, aphasias and lunatic blurtings.”

This is a problem. Not necessarily because characterizations like this lack validity, but because such assessments can inadvertently undermine the seriousness of the case when experts fail to provide an appropriate context in which to understand the psychopathologies. If we look at the past 3½ years, Donald has lied publicly in excess of 20,000 times; he has impulsively, and against all reason, gone against the advice of experts who could have helped contain the pandemic and protect the economy; he has put private citizens at risk by attacking them on Twitter because they have criticized him; he has proved himself to be incapable of accepting responsibility, changing course or exhibiting empathy. As Courtney Fingar wrote recently in the New Statesman: “The public can observe all these things too, but does so largely without translation or explanation by actual experts. In the end, what was written as a rule to curb speculation has, in fact, allowed it to run rampant.”

Donald’s rhetoric and behavior do have an enormous impact on and play an outsize role in the day-to-day lives of more than 300 million Americans and more in the larger world. We are, in this respect, in a relationship with him, even if it is inevitably one-sided. While it is impossible to diagnose him in the technical sense — because diagnosis is a stringent process that requires certain steps to be followed and certain data to be collected in a very specific way — shifting our focus from the diagnosis to the impact that erratic, impulsive, psychologically disordered behavior can have on those in a relationship, no matter how one-sided or involuntary, is not just useful but necessary.

I am a trained clinical psychologist and have worked as a clinician. If Donald had walked into my office for an evaluation, I would have gathered less information about him from a normal intake interview than I could gather from the countless hours of video available from his decades in the public eye. Usually when self-reports aren’t available — because the patient is either unable or unwilling to offer information — the clinician often turns to those close to the patient in order to fill in the blanks. But none of that is necessary because examples of Donald’s disordered, impulsive, self-defeating and destructive behavior, which are unlikely to present themselves in a clinical setting, have been extensively recorded.

Alan Stone, a Harvard professor of psychiatry, wrote that, as citizens, “psychiatrists enjoy freedom of speech — just not in their professional capacity.” Individual psychiatrists have agency and can speak if they want to. But to have a substantive and effective conversation about Donald’s fitness for office, a foundation must be laid by a governing body that can more effectively communicate the overarching concerns.

Adopting a notionally neutral stance in this case doesn’t just create a void where professional expertise should be — it serves to normalize dysfunctional behavior. Paradoxically, the suggestion seems to be that speaking out about mental illness is the problem. But in truth, it is remaining silent about Donald’s obvious psychological impairment that is stigmatizing. By claiming that its silence is neutral, the APA is essentially granting Donald’s campaign an in-kind contribution while the American people remain subject to his often deranged and unpredictable behavior, without the tools necessary to evaluate it or understand how it renders him unfit for the office he holds.

NO doubt he wants to hurt "60 Minutes" ratings by releasing this. WATCH: Trump tells Lesley Stahl that he’s ‘not okay’ with her asking tough questions prior to trainwreck interview

‘Delusional narcissist’ Trump ignites mockery after ‘embarrassing’ himself in 60 Minutes ‘meltdown’

Excerpt from NY Times:

The footage released by Mr. Trump — which shows only the president, and not his interlocutor — was filmed by White House staff members; CBS said that the president’s aides had pledged to use the footage “for archival purposes only.”

“The White House’s unprecedented decision to disregard their agreement with CBS News and release their footage will not deter ‘60 Minutes’ from providing its full, fair and contextual reporting which presidents have participated in for decades,” CBS News said in a statement.

The interview with Ms. Stahl is set to air on Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes,” which also features interviews with the Democratic candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California.

Mr. Trump was clearly upset at the way the interview, filmed at the White House on Tuesday, had gone. Soon after leaving the interview — and declining to tape a planned segment with Vice President Mike Pence — Mr. Trump began taunting Ms. Stahl on Twitter, posting a short video of her at the taping and noting that she had not been wearing a mask.

Psychologist Kevin Washington: Trump is waging “psychic terrorism” against Black Americans

Donald Trump didn't create the traumatic ideology of white supremacy, says Washington. But he helped unleash it

What Republican internal polling can actually tell us

Partisans don't want to release polls that are bad for their side. That means the polls sponsored by a party, candidate or partisan organization tend to be biased in favor of the side releasing the poll. 

That's why it was amazing to find that on average, Trump was doing 5 points worse than he did in 2016 in the states and districts in released Republican and conservative polls.

Oct. 21, 2020

 by Greg Sargent, WaPo column

Why Trump’s endgame is to rage at Lesley Stahl

Excerpts:

But in a very real sense people such as Stahl and Fauci actually are the chief opponents Trump must contend with in the campaign’s final days. They are the figures he perceives to be standing in the way of his effort to conduct this campaign in an entirely invented universe that he’d hoped to manufacture for this very purpose.

Trump unloaded on Stahl at a rally on Tuesday night, showing that he’s still stewing about an interview he did with “60 Minutes,” which is set to air on Sunday but apparently went very badly....

Yet The Post reports that what really angered Trump was Stahl’s aggressive questioning about his attacks on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and his disputes with Fauci, as one person with knowledge of the interview noted. And there’s this:

Stahl also told him during the interview that allegations about [Joe] Biden’s son Hunter were not verified and that the Obama administration did not spy on the Trump campaign. Many of the questions were about the coronavirus pandemic and his handling of it, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the interview frankly.

Trump was so upset about the interview that “he complained about it all day,” reports The Post, and his aides believe his public anger “might actually boost the ratings of a tough interview.”

Why might this have enraged Trump? Because Trump has gone to tremendous lengths to manufacture precisely the illusions that Stahl apparently sought to puncture, yet these efforts are failing.

Trump will end his presidency as he began it: Whining, by George Will

Excerpt:

As the Donald Trump parenthesis in the republic’s history closes, he is opening the sluices on his reservoir of invectives and self-pity. A practitioner of crybaby conservatism — no one, he thinks, has suffered so much since Job lost his camels and acquired boils — and ever a weakling, Trump will end his presidency as he began it: whining.

His first day cloaked in presidential dignity he spent disputing photographic proof that his inauguration crowd was substantially smaller than his immediate predecessor’s. Trump’s day of complaining continued at the CIA headquarters, at the wall commemorating those who died serving the agency. His presidency that began with a wallow in self-pity probably will end in ignominy when he slinks away pouting, trailing clouds of recriminations, without a trace of John McCain’s graciousness on election night 2008:

“Sen. [Barack] Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day — though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her Creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise. . . . And my heart is filled with nothing but gratitude . . . to the American people for giving me a fair hearing before deciding that Sen. Obama and my old friend, Sen. Joe Biden, should have the honor of leading us for the next four years.”

Nothing is going according to plan

Right now, Trump is loudly calling on Attorney General William P. Barr to launch some sort of investigation into the new Hunter Biden pseudo-revelations about emails supposedly discovered on his laptop. This whole scandal is based on largely unverified accusations and false premises.

But the point for our purposes here is that Trump is angrily demanding that top officials in his government announce actions that make this “scandal” seem real. Stahl pointed out that the story is unverified, which is 100 percent correct, but this isn’t what was supposed to happen.

You see, this story was supposed to be “verified” by now, or seem verified. Yet there are no indications that Barr will deliver, and most news organizations are treating it with great skepticism.

Similarly, Trump had expected that Barr would produce major revelations in his “review” of the origins of the Russia investigation, which would make the bogus “Obamagate” scandal seem true, thus proving that his opponent, Joe Biden, belonged to a criminal administration.

But Barr has let it be known that no report is forthcoming in time for the election. Stahl pointed out that the Obama administration didn’t spy on Trump’s campaign, which is true. But this was supposed to be “verified” by now, or seemverified.

Campaigning in a fictional universe

Oddly, it’s almost as if Trump has assumed all along that he can’t win a reality-based argument and a fair election against Biden. Instead, he set about using the government to manufacture fictions that would define the parameters within which this campaign would unfold...

No outcome in which Trump loses the election is legitimate, he now claims. Millions of mail ballots will be coming from who knows where, Trump insists, so how can you trust the counting of them? This means full-scale manipulation in the war over who appears to win the vote count is justified.

And to this day, the entire GOP is required to play along with the illusion that Trump mostly vanquished the coronavirus through his spectacular leadership. The crowning conclusion to this was to be Trump’s success in bulldozing a vaccine through in time for his reelection.

But that too fell apart, cases are again on the rise and Fauci is telling the American people hard truths about what lies ahead. That’s exactly why Trump is raging at him, and Stahl, too, sought to burst this illusion.

It’s doubtful that Trump will end up releasing the full footage of the Stahl interview. But if he does, my bet is that it will dramatically illustrate his rage at Stahl for deflating his fictional universe. The one that by now was supposed to seem true.

Below: Murdoch watch

• Hal Brown

  Trump offended at every level. Where Reagan had been a “morning in America” optimist, Trump warned of carnage as he raged and insulted; Reagan had a core of deeply held beliefs while Trump’s essential outlook was what suited his instincts and interests; where Reagan had an expansive view of US global leadership, Trump saw America as a victim being ripped off; where Reagan’s confidence saw him back immigration and free trade, Trump was a passionate double protectionist.

  • Like
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• Hal Brown

  The core of Trump’s appeal lay in tribalism and nationalism. His message was the bankruptcy of old conservatism — it was too global, too Wall Street, too economic libertarian and out-of-touch elitist. Trump said what mattered were national borders, government intervention, cultural traditions and national pride. That meant knowing the differences between citizens and foreigners, jobs in China and jobs in America and honouring the difference between a man and a woman.

  But Trump’s campaign against the system in 2016 was much easier than his 2020 campaign as an incumbent President. Four years in the White House have proved Trump does not possess the discipline, consistency and focus to ­entrench a new settlement based on populist and nationalistic ­conservatism.

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• Hal Brown

  Trump is a rebel, not a governor. He is a shooting star, not a ­policy builder. He cannot turn populist sentiment into a governing model. A narcissist obsessed by his own needs cannot create a new structure for his country. Every stakeholder quickly learnt Trump was a compulsive deal-maker.

  Anything could be traded. Everything was negotiable. No principle would stand in the way of Trump’s advantage. His governing model violated every notion of conservative principle.

I wonder what Amy Coney Barrett thinks of these stories.

Related: 

Pope Francis says Christians 'must apologize' to gay people

Pope Francis has said that gays deserve an apology from Christians for the way they have been treated. He also said apologies were owed to other groups marginalized by the church, such as women and the poor.

also related:

Excerpt:

What disqualifies Barrett is the extreme moral relativism she displayed in her confirmation hearing. Not so long ago, moral relativism was the war cry of cultural conservatives, at least since then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger enounced the "dictatorship of relativism" at the last Mass before the cardinals entered the conclave of 2005 from which Ratzinger emerged as Pope Benedict XVI.

For example, after acknowledging that COVID-19 is contagious and that smoking causes cancer, she declined to affirm that climate change is happening, Barrett called the issue of climate change "a very contentious matter of public debate." Is that true? It is certainly the case that Trump is not sure what, if anything, he makes of climate change.

But let's be clear: Denying climate change is not that far from QAnon conspiracy theories. If Barrett really has doubts on the subject, she is not intellectually qualified to serve on the bench, and we suspect she knows that. She was simply willing to embrace moral relativism rather than risk a nasty tweet from the man who nominated her.

When Sen. Kamala Harris asked her a direct question — "Prior to your nomination, were you aware of President Trump's statement committing to nominate judges who will strike down the Affordable Care Act? And I'd appreciate a yes or no answer" — Barrett said she could not recall.

Really? You would think that in the days leading up to her nomination, Barrett would have followed closely, or been briefed upon, what the president did and did not say about his criteria in selecting a judge.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar asked Barrett if she thought it was against the law to intimidate voters at the polls and, even more strangely, Barrett refused to affirm that it was. Originalists like to claim that their method of interpreting the Constitution is the only method that genuinely honors democracy, but how is that possible if intimidation of voters is permitted?

This leads to the most repugnant realization about Barrett's relativism: In her commitment to originalism and textualism, she claims not to be interpreting the law or the Constitution at all. In her worldview, the Constitution is virtually a self-interpreting text. If that were so, why would we need judges?

Amy Coney Barrett Won’t Discuss Ties To The Country’s Biggest Oil Lobby

About Amy Coney Barrett’s secret anti-gay church stint

BUSTED: Rudy Giuliani tricked by Sasha Baron Cohen into having ‘indiscreet encounter’ with young actress

...................

The images are posted below so I can enlarge them on my Daly Kos story.

Oct. 20, 2020

Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say

More than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter casting doubt on the provenance of a New York Post story on the former vice president's son.

Trump threatens to post ‘60 Minutes’ video before CBS in panic over how how badly his interview went

Trump ‘abruptly’ storms out of 60 Minutes interview and refuses to return

new title:

Leaked Reports Show White House Knew Of COVID-19 Spike As Trump Downplayed Crisis

SCOTUS mail-in voting ruling raises alarm: Democrats may “never win another national election"

Excerpt Ignore the bullshit story below left: 

It is karmically fitting, not to mention metaphorically apt, that Donald Trump’s last stand is beginning right now in a hotel room in Las Vegas, where many a desperate man, way behind the game, plots one last grand scheme, not only to recoup vast losses, but to win big. This is the place for that kind of thinking.

Trump is at his hotel, in full histrionic melt down mode, where he did a conference call with campaign staff and media Monday morning. The steroids must be kicking in, because he’s declaring that he’s the only one who’s on top of it, and he’s on a roll, and he’s going to win reelection. Right-o. The ghosts of gamblers past are soaking it all in. They know narcissism and grandiosity when they see it. They’ve seen better men than Donald Trump crash and burn — Elvis Presley being one of them.

Admiral McRaven, In Charge Of Bin Laden Raid, Endorses Biden In Stinging Trump Rebuke

From The Bulwark: I once went hunting with my uncle as a young man. During our walk through the woods we encountered a raccoon that had become enmeshed in a small length of rusty barbed wire. The raccoon was trying to gnaw off its own leg while also alternately furiously attacking the barbed wire. The results were bloody and unsuccessful.

The image forever seared in my mind from that occasion reminds me now of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.

In one of Trump’s potential superspreader rallies in the South over the weekend, he stunned no one by suggesting that his political opponent should be locked upfor fictional criminal offenses. After all, he suggested the same thing for his opponent in 2016.

Donald Trump has little original programming left. He’s playing his “Best Of” reruns. The base is buying, but the base is dwindling and the president is floundering in a cesspool of tautologies and twisted, self-negating sentences.

2 More Funny Feelings About 2020 Politico

Whatever appeal his unfiltered thoughts once held has now worn off. Americans are tired of having beers with Trump. His own supporters are tired of having beers with Trump. In hundreds of interviews this year with MAGA loyalists, I have noted only a handful in which the person did not, unsolicited, point to the president’s behavior as exhausting and inappropriate. Strip away all the policy fights, all the administrative action (or inaction), all the culture war politics, and the decision for many people comes down to a basic conclusion: They just do not approve of the president as a human being.

I’m reminded of a recent conversation I had with Dan Crenshaw, the Republican congressman from Texas. He shared how in Harris County—particularly in some of the affluent suburbs—many voters he encountered, including center-right Republicans, are refusing to support Trump’s reelection. I asked him why.

“They have a personal dislike for him. It’s just that simple,” Crenshaw said.

Crenshaw is right. If Trump loses, history will record any number of contributing factors to his political demise. But it should place them all in the context of that “simple” underlying reality.

Pompeo reportedly ignored outraged employees to address group that supports 'ex-gay' therapy

Local Portland: As if our protests haven't been disturbing enough, watch this video.

Oct. 19, 2020

Click to enlarge

I added Dr.Fauci.

The shipwreck of SS American Star on the shore of Fuerteventura, 

CC BY-SA 3.0

‘Fox & Friends’ Host Steve Doocy to Trump: Stop Talking About Hunter Biden

Birx tells friends she was relieved after Trump adviser Scott Atlas' inaccurate mask tweet was removed

‘Backing out again?’: Trump ridiculed for trying to ‘wimp’ out of debate with whiny letter about the topics

Will Trump get away with this? Trump Blames ‘Fauci And These Idiots’ For His Own Coronavirus Ineptitude or this? Trump administration facing new investigation over political interference at the CDC and FDA

Trump launches a frenzied effort to save his brand

“‘I am not a sick person, ever’ is how he sees himself,” said one longtime Trump chronicler. “He has always defined every outcome as a victory even when it wasn’t.”

Trump is falling way behind with female voters. His response? "Lock her up!"

Misogyny helped Trump in 2016, and he wants to repeat by attacking Gretchen Whitmer — but so far it's not working

Summary of Jennifer Rubin's Wash. Post column on John Cornyn and Republicans like him who ‘deserve to lose’ for fear of standing up to Trump

Long before he was infected with COVID-19, Trump was a sick man unprepared and unable to serve the American people in any position of leadership. Physically, according to some notable independent physicians who have reviewed information released by Trump's doctors, the 74-year-old president suffers from worrisome comorbidities, including heart disease and obesity. Mentally, in the view of some of the country's top mental health professionals who have studied the president's behavior and rhetoric, Trump suffers from malignant narcissism, a toxic mix of narcissistic personality disorder, sociopathy, paranoia and sadism.

• DONALD TRUMP

1 HOUR AGO

A Long List of Shady Financial Mysteries Trump Still Refuses to Explain

If Trump is going to ask Biden to reveal info about his family…

Summary of above research article here

Trump Keeps Saying He Could Stay in Power Longer, Urges Crowd to Chant “12 More Years”

Small images are for use on other websites.

Oct. 18, 2020

Excerpt:

Another surprise victory is unlikely to happen again if this election is looked at from the same perspective of neuroscience that I used to account for the surprising outcome in 2016. Briefly, that article explained how our brain provides two different mechanisms of decision-making; one is conscious and deliberative, and the other is automatic, driven by emotion and especially by fear. Trump’s strategy does not target the neural circuitry of reason in the cerebral cortex; it provokes the limbic system. In the 2016 election, undecided voters were influenced by the brain’s fear-driven impulses—more simply, gut instinct—once they arrived inside the voting booth, even though they were unable to explain their decision to pre-election pollsters in a carefully reasoned manner. 

In 2020, Trump continues to use the same strategy of appealing to the brain’s threat-detection circuitry and emotion-based decision process to attract votes and vilify opponents.

.........

But fear-driven appeals will likely persuade fewer voters this time, because we overcome fear in two ways: by reason and experience. Inhibitory neural pathways from the prefrontal cortex to the limbic system will enable reason to quash fear if the dangers are not grounded in fact. The type of street violence Trump rails against now was not the norm during the Obama and Biden years. Nor was fear that Biden would turn the U.S. into a socialist state an issue even a year ago. On the contrary, Biden defeated the self-described “democratic socialist” candidate Bernie Sanders in the presidential primaries. 

A psychology- and neuroscience-based perspective also illuminates Trump’s constant interruptions and insults during the first presidential debate, steamrolling over the moderator’s futile efforts to have a reasoned airing of facts and positions. The structure of a debate is designed to engage the deliberative reasoning in the brain’s cerebral cortex, so Trump annihilated the format to inflame emotion in the limbic system.

New York Post Published Hunter Biden Report Amid Newsroom Doubts

Some reporters withheld their bylines and questioned the credibility of an article that made the tabloid’s front page on Wednesday.

Excerpt:

The New York Post’s front-page article about Hunter Biden on Wednesday was written mostly by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it, two Post employees said.

Bruce Golding, a reporter at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid since 2007, did not allow his byline to be used because he had concerns over the article’s credibility, the two Post employees said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

Coming late in a heated presidential campaign, the article suggested that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had used his position to enrich his son Hunter when he was vice president. The Post based the story on photos and documents the paper said it had taken from the hard drive of a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden.

Many Post staff members questioned whether the paper had done enough to verify the authenticity of the hard drive’s contents, said five people with knowledge of the tabloid’s inner workings. Staff members also had concerns about the reliability of its sources and its timing, the people said.

The article named two sources: Stephen K. Bannon, the former adviser to President Trump now facing federal fraud charges, who was said to have made the paper aware of the hard drive last month; and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who was said to have given the paper “a copy” of the hard drive on Oct. 11.

Mr. Giuliani said he chose The Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.”

Paranoid Trump compiling enemies list of conservatives who are turning on him: Summary of Daily Beast report This will be a diversion until he loses. After that we may look back and think that we thought he was off-the-rails cray-cray then but he could end up so unmoored from reality Pence will have to initiate the 25th Amendment.

Below: Is this the best surrogate you can dredge up from the Hollywood D list?

'You not going to see the end of Trump': Steve Bannon says President Trump will run again in 2024 if he loses the upcoming election

.

Trump continues bizarre appeals to suburban women as he campaigns in Covid hotspots

 If President Donald Trump loses his reelection bid in November, it will be in part because of his fundamental misunderstanding of the beliefs of "suburban women," whom he has tried to win back with a series of bizarre and racist appeals that seem more targeted to a stereotype from the 1950s and 1960s than the American women who actually live in those areas today. 

Many of the female voters who have abandoned Trump recoil from his divisive language and disapprove of both his handling of race relations and the pandemic. But he has tried to convince them to support him through a campaign of fear and xenophobia, with claims about the Democratic agenda that plunge deep into the realm of the ridiculous and would be believed only by the most naïve, low-information voters. 

His speech Saturday night in Michigan exemplified those political miscalculations when it comes to women he has referred to as the "suburban housewives of America" as he tried to create fear about crime from immigrants and argued that Joe Biden will upend life in the suburbs by putting public housing projects in the middle of leafy neighborhoods -- a reference to an Obama-era housing regulation aimed at ending segregation. 

Infectious Disease Expert: The ‘Darkest Of The Entire Pandemic’ Has Yet To Come

Click image to enlarge:

RELATED Journal "Science" editor calls out Trump administration

Saturday Night Live cold open

Fulfillment of prophecy? Yes, some evangelicals really do believe Trump is the "chosen one"

Conclusion (below left):

The history of prophetic movements tells us that if Trump fails to secure a second term, a variety of reactions are possible. Some will blame him and begin to withdraw their identification. Others will fight the cognitive dissonance and blame dark powers. The prophets will develop a new timeline for the restoration. Some Christian nationalists may for a time refuse to "stand down," but eventually they will develop other perspectives. There is no one-size-fits-all method of de-conversion from a religious or ideological position. The best way to limit post-election violence would be to give his supporters a face-saving way to back down from their prophecy-inflated reality. It may not work all at once, but it's the first step in beginning to heal the schisms upon which Trump has so cannily capitalized.

Kamala Harris team strikes back after David Perdue's 'incredibly racist' attack on her name

Oct. 17, 2020

.

Some of his supporters aren't that stable either - Video:

Watchdog group accuses Amy Coney Barrett of “unconscionable cruelty” in teen rape case - she is truly Aunt Lydia from Handmaid's Tale

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has been accused of "unconscionable cruelty" by a watchdog group over her role in an appellate court decision overturning a district court which found a Wisconsin county liable for millions in damages to a woman who alleged she had been repeatedly raped by a jail guard.

"After a 19-year old pregnant prison inmate was repeatedly raped by a prison guard, Amy Coney Barrett ruled that the county responsible for the prison could not be held liable because the sexual assaults fell outside of the guard's official duties. Her judgment demonstrates a level of unconscionable cruelty that has no place on the high court," Kyle Herrig, president of the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US, told Salon. "The only thing more concerning than the rush to confirm by Senate Republicans is what we are learning about Amy Coney Barrett's extremist record. It is hardly surprising that she has dodged question after question during her testimony."

• 99 REASONS TO DUMP TRUMP 
• OPINION 

The fog of Trump: Trump’s endlessly confusing administration is another reason to deny him a second term

By DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL BOARD

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |

OCT 16, 2020 AT 4:00 AM

Link above, Photo adapted by HB

Above photos here so I can put them on my Daily Kos story 

Oct. 16, 2020

‘Worst American President’: New York Times Flames ‘Racist Demagogue’ Trump Summary from Huffpost.

Above images from The NY Times

Preface:

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.

Mr. Trump’s ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.

The editorial board does not lightly indict a duly elected president. During Mr. Trump’s term, we have called out his racism and his xenophobia. We have critiqued his vandalism of the postwar consensus, a system of alliances and relationships around the globe that cost a great many lives to establish and maintain. We have, again and again, deplored his divisive rhetoric and his malicious attacks on fellow Americans. Yet when the Senate refused to convict the president for obvious abuses of power and obstruction, we counseled his political opponents to focus their outrage on defeating him at the ballot box.

Nov. 3 can be a turning point. This is an election about the country’s future, and what path its citizens wish to choose.

CORONAVIRUS

Pfizer delivers final blow to Trump's hope for preelection vaccine

There won’t be a coronavirus vaccine ready before Election Day, despite President Donald Trump’s repeated promises and vaccine makers’ breakneck speed.

A dueling town halls upside: Media finally focuses on the wide gulf between Biden and Trump

The nation's top political reporters actually focused on the extreme contrast between the candidates, not spectacle

Breaking news: Trump claims that his $421 million debt is “tiny.” He apparently owes more than twice that amount 

In fact, Trump's company reportedly owes about $340 million to German financial giant Deutsche Bank, the embattled institution which was one of the few banks willing to lend him money after a series of bankruptcies and defaults. While Trump appeared to acknowledge the $421 million in personally guaranteed loans that were reported by The Times, a Forbes analysis found that Trump's total debt was actually closer to $1 billion.

WASHINGTON – NBC moderator Savannah Guthrie prodded President Donald Trump Thursday during his town hall when talking about him retweeting conspiracy theories, saying he's not just "someone's crazy uncle."

Guthrie pressed Trump on his penchant for tweets that spread disinformation, including one post he retweeted that contained a conspiracy theory that former Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama orchestrated a cover-up that included the Navy SEAL Team Six faking the death of terrorist Osama bin Laden.

"That was a retweet. That was an opinion of somebody and that was a retweet. I'll put it out there. People can decide for themselves. I don't take a position," Trump said in defending his tweet.

"You're the president," Guthrie responded. "You're not someone's crazy uncle who can retweet whatever. USA Today

Read VOX article above. Winner: Biden, Loser Trump, Winner, substance, Winner, FOMO (fear of missing out), Winner, host Savannah Guthrie, Winner, QAnon, Loser, the individual mandate, Loser, Trump's purported toughness 

Six takeaways from Trump and Biden's dueling town halls - they are really false equivalents - The Hill

5 takeaways from the dueling Trump and Biden town halls, Wash. Post

1. Trump’s smorgasbord of misinformation and false choices — deftly called out

2. Biden had the steady showing he needed with the clock ticking down

3. Trump steps into another non-denouncing minefield — on QAnon

4. Biden opens the door further on court-packing and says he’ll confirm a stance soon

5. Trump’s last negative test before his coronavirus diagnosis: Still clear as mud

From The NY Times:

A Combative Trump and a Deliberate Biden Spar From Afar at Town Halls

President Trump spoke positively about an extremist conspiracy-theory group, expressed skepticism about mask-wearing, rebuked his own F.B.I. director and attacked the legitimacy of the 2020 election in a televised town hall forum on Thursday, veering far away from a focused campaign appeal. Instead, he further stoked the country’s political rifts as his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., pushed a deliberate message anchored in concerns over public health and promises to restore political norms.

Mr. Trump’s defensive and combative performance came on a night that was supposed to feature a debate between him and Mr. Biden, but that morphed into a long-distance study in contrasts on different television networks after the president declined to participate in a virtual debate.

On the central issue of the election, the coronavirus pandemic, the two candidates appeared to inhabit not just different television sets but different universes. Mr. Biden has made the full embrace of strict public health guidelines the centerpiece of his candidacy, while Mr. Trump has continued to defy even the recommendations of his own government on matters as basic as the use of masks — a pattern that persisted in their opposing events on Thursday.

Mr. Biden lashed virtually every aspect of the president’s handling of the health crisis, including his language on masks.

“The words of a president matter,” Mr. Biden said. “When a president doesn’t wear a mask or makes fun of folks like me when I was wearing a mask for a long time, then, you know, people say, ‘Well, it mustn’t be that important.’”

In perhaps his most incendiary remarks, Mr. Trump repeatedly declined to disavow QAnon, a pro-Trump internet community that has been described by law enforcement as a potential domestic terrorism threat. The president professed to have no knowledge of the group, and as a result could not disavow it, but then demonstrated specific knowledge of one of its core conspiracy theories involving pedophilia that is entirely false.

Savannah Guthrie Compared Trump To A "Crazy Uncle" For Sharing False Bin Laden Conspiracy Theories

"You're the president," the Today show anchor told Trump about his false Osama bin Laden tweets. "You're not someone's crazy uncle who can retweet whatever."

Fact check: Digging into Trump's false claim that CDC found that 85% of people who wear masks get the coronavirus

Bits/pieces:

As the report notes, a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows a dramatic drop in support for the president “among white male voters without college degrees …. from an enormous 35 points to a significant but narrowing 19 points.”

According to Nick Stevens, 30, a Texas small-business owner, he is a Republican who is holding his nose and voting for Democratic challenger Joe Biden because he can’t handle Trump any longer.  Rawstory

WHO Study Finds Remdesivir Has ‘Little Or No Effect’ On Preventing  Deaths — 10/16/20, 6:15 a.m. ET

The World Health Organization said the antiviral drug remdesivir — one of the many drugs President Donald Trump was given to treat his coronavirus infection — has “little to no effect” on mortality for patients hospitalized with the coronavirus, CNN reported.

The WHO looked at four therapeutics in a study covering more than 11,000 coronavirus patients in 30 countries. Along with remdesivir, the study analyzed the use of hydroxychloroquine; a combination of the anti-HIV drugs lopinavir and ritonavir; and interferon.

“For each drug in the study, the effect on mortality was disappointingly unpromising,” WHO said. The study hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal but the WHO published the results themselves.

The disappointing result differs from an earlier study in the U.S. that found that remdesivir shortens recovery time by about a third in those hospitalized with serious illness.

— Liza Hearon