Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts

October 9, 2025

Wash Post editorial about Trump's Nobel Peace Prize and Tylenol poll show what dire straits the country is in, and it isn't just about headaches, by Hal M. Brown

If I had a headache this morning, no matter what Trump and RFK Jr. say, I might very well take ibuprofen (Tylenol). Fortunately I don’t have a headache, no thanks to my worries about what Trump, both his henchmen and women, and his bend-at-the knees minions are doing to the country.

As for bend-at-the-knees Trumpers, I include the editorial board at The Washington Post. I had CNN on this morning while I was looking at this article in RawStory: ‘Stunning, but not’: Observers rip Washington Post for ‘humiliating’ op-ed on Trump.

I still have my subscription to the Post so

since I still am subscribed I can share what the editorial looks like:

It has this cringeworthy opening paragraph:

The announcement that Israel and Hamas have agreed to President Donald Trump’s plan to end the two-year war in Gaza could be the biggest diplomatic achievement of his second term. Indeed, if the deal holds, Trump can legitimately bolster his claim to be a peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

If you click on the Peace Prize link you go to this article:

That article begins:

Of all the golden glories that Donald Trump has accumulated — the statues, sneakers, even a golden pager — one gleaming medallion has eluded the 79-year-old president: the Nobel Peace Prize.
The annual award, set to be announced Friday, has occupied Trump for months, along with a recurring complaint that he’ll be overlooked despite his global peacemaking efforts.
“We settled seven wars. We’re close to settling an eighth. And I think we’ll end up settling the Russia situation, which is horrible,” Trump said Wednesday, when asked whether he expected to claim the prize when the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee steps solemnly up to a microphone in his grand Oslo headquarters. “I don’t think anybody in history settled that many. But perhaps they’ll find a reason not to give it to me.”

This is an analysis from The New York Times.

It begins:

President Trump is at the brink of the biggest diplomatic accomplishment of his second term — a cessation of the brutal war between Israel and Hamas — and on Wednesday evening he made clear he was eager to fly to the Middle East to preside over a cease-fire and welcome hostages who have spent two long years in underground captivity.
For Mr. Trump, success in this venture is the ultimate test of his self-described goal as a deal maker and a peacemaker — and a pathway to the Nobel Peace Prize he has so openly coveted. By chance, the winner for 2025 is scheduled to be announced just hours before he may be departing to take his victory lap in Egypt and Israel.
Much could go wrong in coming days, and in the Middle East it often does. The “peace” deal Mr. Trump heralded on Truth Social on Wednesday evening may look more like another temporary pause in a war that started with Israel’s founding in 1948, and has never ended.

Note the difference in tone between it and how the Washington Post editorial board seems to be glorifying Trump.

Here’s another Wash. Post article with a photo of Marco Rubio whispering in a presidential looking Trump’s ear:

That article included the text of Trump’s Truth Social post:

“I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan. This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace “BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!”

Trump wrote “peacemakers” plural, but he really wants the world, and the Noble committee, to see it as a singular.

What gets to me is that at least in the United States this will probably work. Here’s where I segue into a poll about Tylenol.

Above is what was shown on CNN when I was up early this morning trying to think of what to write about. It came on after an interview with an American relative of a hostage about to be released by Hamas. He was effusively praising Trump for this.

They showed a video of Trump unequivocally stating that nobody should take Tylenol and showed the result of the poll about how Amercians in general felt about the risk of taking Tylenol. Here’s the breakdown by Democrats and Republicans:

Of all the things Trump has done and is about to do to destroy Democracy the Tylenol matter is minor but it does represent how he is able to get millions of people to turn off their bullshit detectors and believe anything he says.

He might even be able to sway even more people to believe that he, and he alone, deserves the Peace Prize if the Gaza peace holds. If anybody deserves the Peace Prize it isn’t any one person. It is all the people that tried to stop Trump from cementing his cruel dictatorship. There is absolutely nothing Trump can do to merit his winning the Peace Prize. A year or two from now if Trump is awarded the prize the Nobel committee and the world may look back at this with horror.

The real story that should be told is that the man who wants to glorify himself and wants to be seen as a “peacemaker” is waging war on American citizens and treating those who he claims are here illegally as vermin.

Back to the Tylenol poll: If 30% of the population have been convinced to ignore science and believe something just because Trump says it is true it shows how suspectible to propaganda certain people are. No matter what baldfaced lies are spun by Trump and his minions, there are people who believe them.

Just as I finish writing this, Kristi Noem is on TV sitting next to Trump lying her ass off about what she saw in my city of Portland. Millions of people will see and believe this.

I don’t have a headache, but I do need aother cup of strong coffee.

An appalling number of people are programmed to believe lies like this. For example another story, a total fabrication and fantasy intended to induce fear, was given exposure on CNN following the segment showing Noem:

Related: RawStory was also watching CNN at the same time I was. Here’s their analysis.

Also:

Trump’s ‘naked hunger’ for Nobel prize may be his undoing

Here’s another article from RawStory about a diffrent Washington Post editorial. This was about them try to recast key parts of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

June 19, 2025

Who's got the balls, Bondi and Noem or Gabbard? By Hal M. Brown Tulsi Gabbard been making the news for standing up to the biggest baddest ballsy bully boss in the country.

This story has been updated here.

The image above is from Instagram. It saves me the trouble of making my own picture. Below is what was posted in reply to it:

By now you’ve no doubt read stories like,'“Outside looking in': Intel official reportedly 'rubs Trump the wrong way' “ about Tulsi Gabbard disagreeing with the assessment that Iran was on the verge of devoloping a nuclear bomb.

This has been all over the news. On MSNBC they’re showing images from the times when Tulsi Gabbard was on Trump’s good side.

Yesterday balls were in the news courtesy of Sen. Elissa Slotkin:

We know what the expression means:

Here’s a lengthy explanation of how the idiom is used.

Now we have a woman who has been making the news for standing up to the biggest baddest ballsy bully boss in the country and actually, from all we can tell, having done her job properly. She seems to have met with actual experts, in her case top analysts in the country’s intelligence agencies, and instead of demanding that they justify something Trump wanted to hear, told them to tell her what their assessment was.

I suspect that they told her not only that Iran wasn’t poised to construct a nuclear bomb in any minute, but that doing so was a lot more difficult than many laymen think it is.

Could it be that a Trump woman created an atmosphere among her top tier of advisors, and within all the agencies under her purview, where politics didn’t play the major part of doing their job?

I think it is worth taking a look at just who Tulsi Gabbard, the Democrat who turned Republican and supported Donald Trump, really is. Check out the Wikipedia profile here. (Clicking below will enlarge image)

Holy shit! Perhaps she actually is qualified to do her job!

Among the Trump’s bevvy of bullying beauties maybe she’s the only one who really has balls… and also the Aloha Spirit.

Please feel free to share my Substacks.

And don’t forget to…

June 17, 2025

Trump's decision about joining Israel's war against Iran with a bunker busting bomb will rest on emotion rather than logic.

Trump has lusted over being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (click Google search) for brokering a deal with Iran to assure they stopped their pursuit of nuclear weapons or for ending the war in Ukraine. This was clearly to make him feel good. He’s always wanted to stick his Nobel Peace Prize in the eyes of all of his critics. Of all the people who were awarded the world’s most prestigious prize the one who he is most resentful of has to be Barack Obama. Trump isn’t even listed as a notable omission.

Trump is a person driven by feelings. He doesn’t make decisions by first considering reason and logic. He makes them based on how they enhance his feelings of superiority and power.

I don’t know enough about international relations to opine with confidence on what will happen if Iran eventually becomes a nuclear armed power. It does seem on the face of it that unless the United States uses its Air Force to destroy the deeply buried unranium enrichment facility or faclicites eventually they will have a nuclear weapon. If this happens the balance of power in the region will change. Perhaps this would be akin to what it is like between India and Pakistan. They would join the countries where nuclear war is avoided because such a war would destroy both countries. This is the MAD scenario, mutually assured destruction.

All this should be what Trump will be considering today when he meets with his security team in the Situation Room.

First, consider the optics of using the Situation Room for this meeting. He could hold this meeting in any secure room in the White House. It will make for a better photo op to show him presiding over a meeting in this room. This is a minor point.

The major matter is what he will do and why he will do it. I think that whoever is in favor of entering the war and authorizing the use of bunker buster bombs alone with our planes to drop them will have a bang-up presentation ready for him. It will probably include graphics showing how such munitions work and possibly a video.

If he’s been watching TV he’s already seen pictures like this which I assume also are on Fox News:

Trump may have looked up bunker buster bomb on the internet, although it is unknown whether Trump ever uses the Google machine and Wikipedia. If he looked it up he’d find this post on, of all things, a mixed martial arts website.

They have this video. I can see it being shown to Trump.

If he looked up bunker buster bomb on Wikipedia and waded through the description of how they work, perhaps with someone to explain the technicalities of how they did what they can do, he’d be impressed.

He likely would think “this is no ordinary bomb.” I can see Hegseth saying “this is one big bad bomb Mr. President. You’ve got it, maybe you should use it.”

The crucial word is big. Trump loves the word when applied to anything Trump. Big and biggest. Biggest bill, biggest parade, biggest crowd, and of course biggest brain. One might speculate that there’s some unconscious inscurity Trump has about size.

You don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to interpret what the mental imagery of the bunker buster bomb penetrating a hardened uranium enrichment facility and exploding deep inside of it signifies in the unconscious mind.

Updates:

Check out this Nick Anderson cartoon. It says pretty much what this Substack is about.
Unless Trump is playing a game of chicken with Iran, this deployment suggests that before long we will be dropping those bunker busiting bombs: 'Unprecedented mass deployment' of warplanes across Atlantic fuels war fears.
Note that in the post shown below, Trump is already sounding like the United States is engaged with Israel in fighting Iran:
4) Trump actually referred to his mood (reference). I can imagine what world leaders, both with our allies and adversaries, think when they see how Trump makes vital decisions based on his mood.
President Donald Trump denied early on Tuesday having had contact with leaders in Iran, saying he hadn't reached out about a potential ceasefire and that he was "not too much in the mood" to negotiate with Iran.
"I've been negotiating. I told them to do the deal," Trump said. "They should have done the deal. The cities have been blown to pieces, lost a lot of people. They should have done the deal. I told them do the deal, so I don't know. I'm not too much in the mood to negotiate."

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Hal Brown's Substack (fomerly Hal Brown's Blog)