February 22, 2023

Trump's publicity stunt article about going to the railroad explosion town gets the paper towel treatment in Raw Story comments

 


By Hal Brown

Evening Update: You couldn't make this shit up/....



Click above to read article. The ex-president took “Trump Spring Water” to an Ohio town reeling from a derailment disaster, along with some water he said was of “a much lesser quality.”

Afternoon Update:

Click above to read article

......

Trump wants to show up President Biden who visited a war zone and was hailed both for his bravery and his empathy. Now Trump wants to show off his empathy for those who suffered from the toxic cloud from the train wreck in Ohio by going there. 

He isn't even there yet and it is already making the news:

Click above to enlarge image

Politico's article doesn't say anything about paper towels but does explain how Trump's intention can backfire:

Click above to read article
Excerpt:

Donald Trump’s visit to the site of a toxic train derailment in Ohio is offering a political opening to battered Biden administration officials — by calling new attention to the former president’s record of rolling back regulations on both rail safety and hazardous chemicals.

Trump’s administration withdrew an Obama-era proposal to require faster brakes on trains carrying highly flammable materials, ended regular rail safety audits of railroads, and mothballed a pending rule requiring freight trains to have at least two crew members. He also placed a veteran of the chemical industry in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety office, where she made industry-friendly changes to how the agency studied health risks.

Here's the HUFFPOST top of website article:

Click above to read article

This is how Fox is covering his planned trip:

Click above to read article
It's not surprising that the Fox article attacks Biden, however it may have answered the question about whether Trump is actually donating personal money to help the citizens:

Trump is expected to donate thousands of gallons of cleaning supplies, along with 13 pallets of water to East Palestine. A single pallet typically holds a couple of thousand bottles of water. The former president is teaming up with nonprofit organizations Blue Line Moving and KORTX. 
For the curious, this is what a pallet of water looks like and how much it costs:
Click above to see on Amazon. 13 pallets would cost $7,345 which I assume Trump could pay for himself.

The article also says he will donate thousands of gallons of cleaning supplies which brings up the question as to whether this will include paper towels, a question that goes unanswered.

Numerous commenters to a Raw Story article about Trump's planned visit referenced his dismal record on rail safety, but I was struck by how many commenters to the Raw Story article (scroll down) about this referenced the paper towel debacle in Puerto Rico.

"They had these beautiful, soft towels. Very good towels,” Trump told Mike Huckabee." Click above to read article

From Raw Story:

Click above to read article.

Below is the Raw Story comment that leaped out at me because of the photo. It was followed by other comments related to the paper towel spectacle from Puerto Rico.

  • Avatar

    Will Trump be throwing out paper towels? Will he shout out, 'where's my African-American?'

    • The motherfcker is so vain, he'll make the story about him! Melania in stilettos giving out water, Trump throwing paper towels, and "Whose boat is this", Trump and Melania attending three different hurricane tragedies. So, expect nothing but attacks on Biden and Mayor Pete.


      I wonder how many paper towel rolls will be thrown today. tRump lacks any basic human concern for anyone but himself so this could be interesting.


      Maybe the jerk will give out paper towels.


      What use will this easy to spot liar, grifter, coward, fraud and corrupt unfit incompetent Russian dupe be a disaster? The Six Time Bankrupt fraud is used to causing them, not fixing them.

      Is he bringing paper towels to throw them?


      Here comes tossed rolls of paper towels. Praise the Lord.


      Let's see, shooting basketball hoops with paper towel rolls probably won't work. What can the poor schmuck do to show his sincerity? On second thoughts, maybe they can soak up the toxic chemicals with those towels?


      Get him a roll of Bounty and he'll be fine.


      Bet he forgot his
      ... paper towels ...


      Anyone who has analyzed Trump's personality, whether a mental health expert or not, knows that Trump is the exemplar of someone incapable of empathy. Furthermore, they know he relishes making people suffer. This makes him a sadist. He is a bully. This is a characteristic prevalent among MAGA Republicans. See "Understanding the sadistic bullies in the GOP" my blog from yesterday.

      \

      Updates:


      Trump's East Palestine stunt could backfire because 'he's not known for empathy': Maggie Haberman

      I'm sure the fine citizens of East Palestine can't wait to have a fat, flatulent fascist prick lob paper towels at them like an asshole.


      Hey, Trump has empathy. This is nothing a few paper towels and MAGA hats thrown into the crowd won't fix. Amirite or amirite?


      By now, he'll descend into tossing used toilet paper.



      Here are related stories: 


      'Like a campaign rally': Trump to impose 'big show' on suffering East Palestine residents


      East Palestine mayor fears Trump visit will turn them into ‘political pawns’

      February 21, 2023

      Understanding the sadistic bullies in the GOP

       By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist


      Bullies may or may not be literally sick in the medical or psychiatric sense. However, some of them could be diagnosed as what is now called (in the diagnostic manual or DSM) anti-social personality but best understood by the public as being sociopaths even though they only have some of these characteristics:
      Consider any politician or personality and click off how many of these traits they exhibit:

      • Not following social norms, usually shown by constant law-breaking
      • Continuous lying for your personal gain
      • Impulsive behavior
      • High amounts of physical aggression, sometimes getting into fights
      • No care for your safety or the safety of others
      • Financial or social irresponsibility
      • A lack of remorse after physically or emotionally hurting someone
      I would broaden these criteria as follows (in red). Ask yourself whether this would change how you assess someone.

      • Not following social norms, usually shown by constant law-breaking or defiance of generally accept ed norm of good behavior
      • Continuous lying for your personal gain
      • Impulsive behavior
      • High amounts of physical aggression, sometimes getting into fights or heated arguments
      • No care for your safety or the safety of others including making other feel unsafe
      • Financial or social irresponsibility the later including in a way someone you'd consider social responsible would act.
      • A lack of remorse after physically or emotionally hurting someone (emphasis on causing emotional distress)

      Some bullies, Donald Trump being an exemplar, can reasonably be described as not only meeting the criteria for being a malignant narcissistic personalty (also not an "official" diagnosis) but also having sadistic personality disorder.
      A sadistic tooth-drawer using a cord to extract a tooth from an angonized patient. Pen drawing after J. Collier, 1773. Iconographic Collections Keywords: John Collie CC by 4.0

      This diagnosis was in the 1987 diagnostic manual but removed in subsequent editions because the psychiatrists writing the manual thought it would be used as a defense in criminal trials. Consider the traits listed for this disorder:

      According to the DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria Sadistic personality disorder is defined by a pervasive pattern of sadistic and cruel behavior that begins in early adulthood. It was defined by four of the following.

      • Has used physical cruelty or violence for the purpose of establishing dominance in a relationship (not merely to achieve some noninterpersonal goal, such as striking someone in order to rob him/her).
      • Humiliates or demeans people in the presence of others.
      • Has treated or disciplined someone under his/her control unusually harshly.
      • Is amused by, or takes pleasure in, the psychological or physical suffering of others (including animals).
      • Has lied for the purpose of harming or inflicting pain on others (not merely to achieve some other goal).
      • Gets other people to do what he/she wants by frightening them (through intimidation or even terror).
      • Restricts the autonomy of people with whom he or she has a close relationship, e.g., will not let spouse leave the house unaccompanied or permit teenage daughter to attend social functions.
      • Is fascinated by violence, weapons, injury, or torture.

      Theodore Millon, a psychogist, broke down the types of sadistic disorder:

      SubtypeDescriptionPersonality traits
      Spineless sadismIncluding avoidant featuresInsecure, bogus, and cowardly; venomous dominance and cruelty is counterphobic; weakness counteracted by group support; public swaggering; selects powerless scapegoats.
      Tyrannical sadismIncluding negativistic featuresRelishes menacing and brutalizing others, forcing them to cower and submit; verbally cutting and scathing, accusatory and destructive; intentionally surly, abusive, inhumane, unmerciful.
      Enforcing sadismIncluding compulsive featuresHostility sublimated in the "public interest," cops, "bossy" supervisors, deans, judges; possesses the "right" to be pitiless, merciless, coarse, and barbarous; task is to control and punish, to search out rule breakers.
      Explosive sadismIncluding borderlinefeaturesUnpredictably precipitous outbursts and fury; uncontrollable rage and fearsome attacks; feelings of humiliation are pent-up and discharged; subsequently contrite.


      It must be noted that people can have more than one psychiatric diagnosis and that being a sadist can be part of another disorder, for example alcoholism. One can, but not necessarily, need to meet the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder to be a sadist. 

      Everyone understands that a bully is one who is habitually cruel, insulting, or threatening to others who are weaker, smaller, or in some way vulnerable.

      Bullies don't always target specific people or groups who are weaker, smaller, or vulnerable. Some just try to bully everyone any figure their aggression will be so broad it will work to intimidate some while others will be able to resist it or fight back.

      In some ways it's a race to the top of the list for who is the biggest bully in the GOP. Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis (see 

      'Coldblooded' DeSantis buried for 'playing dumb' about Russian slaughter in Ukraine)  vie for the title, but there are runner-ups like, among politicians, Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Among celebrities pretending to be pundits Tucker Carlson beats everyone else. They compete for the Ms/Mr. Non-congeniality award.


      Not everyone can pull off being a bully. Someone can try and be so bad at it people they attempt to bully don't take them seriously. They may not have the demeanor to elicit fear in those they want to victimize. However, if they have the power to hurt them, for example a work boss, even if they come across as meek, they can be effective bullies.

      There are several benefits to being a successful bully. One is that if a person is a sadist they get pleasure from making people suffer. Another is that it helps them achieve their goals. From a personality perspective because many, perhaps most, of these bullies harbor feelings of insecurity, in some cases because they were bullied in childhood, becoming a bully protects them from experiencing these feelings.

      Hopefully it is obvious that a person doesn't have to be a MAGA Republican to be a sadistic bully. I am sure there are liberal Democrats who meet the criteria. 


      I think we have to look at being a perfectionist who is intolerant with those who don't meet high performance expectations but don't take any pleasure in making underlings uncomfortable and compare them with those who relish making them squirm. 

      I am hard pressed to think of any Democrats in the public eye who come close to meeting the actual criteria for being sadist personalities.

      ^^^^^^^^

      February 20, 2023

      Quite a contrast: Biden visits Kyiv,, Trump used a Pence visit to blackmail Zelensky

       By Hal Brown

      There was a commercial on MSNBC so when I sat down this morning with my cup of coffee I clicked on HUFFPOST to see what their lead story was.

      I want to share the third thing I thought about when I read the following:


      This was the main page of the BBC website:

      I read these articles before I saw the news on MSNBC:

       The first things I thought were a mixture of "good on him" feelings about being proud that the United States had president like him. Next, I thought briefly about how stringent the secrecy and security had to have been. Then, third, I thought about this:

      Excerpt:

      President Trump repeatedly involved Vice President Pence in efforts to exert pressure on the leader of Ukraine at a time when the president was using other channels to solicit information that he hoped would be damaging to a Democratic rival, current and former U.S. officials said.


      Trump instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May — an event White House officials had pushed to put on the vice president’s calendar — when Ukraine’s new leader was seeking recognition and support from Washington, the officials said.

      The last president to visit a war zone was George W. Bush who visited Iraq in 2003. This was probably a high point in his dismal presidency (see last paragraph here). Biden joins Bush, Lincoln, FDR, Eisenhower, and LBJ on the list of presidents who have visited war zones.

      The logistics of the trip are now being reported including the fact the Russia was notified about it in advance:

      Excerpt:

      The trip that Biden made into Kyiv was “bold” and “risky,” and done after months of planning for a range of security concerns, according to several White House officials.


      The logistics were coordinated with a range of different government agencies, which included threat assessments to determine if Biden could safely enter and exit the war-torn country. It was made more challenging, officials said, because there is no U.S. military presence in Ukraine.


      “This was a historic visit unprecedented in modern times to have the president of the United States visit the capital of a country at war where the us military doesn’t control the critical infrastructure,” said Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser.

      There's a video here of an air raid siren going off as Biden and Zelensky visit the historic St. Micahel's Cathedral. I don't think anything in presidential history compares with this.

      Watch the video (below) here:




       



      . .

      .



      Watching the President of the United States walk down the line of Ukrainian officials and shake hands with each of them was inspiring enough but then this happened with one of them:

      ........

      Update: I wasn't the only one to think along these lines. This is from David Rothkopf.


      Excerpt:

      In sending this message, Biden pointedly evoked without mentioning his name yet another American president in a visit to the Eastern edges of Europe: Donald Trump during his 2018 Helsinki meeting with President Vladimir Putin. Biden went to Europe to send Putin a message of American and allied strength. Trump went to grovel before Putin. Biden stood up for American values and our allies. Trump said he trusted Putin more than America’s own intelligence and law enforcement services. Biden embodied America’s strength. Trump illustrated and represented our greatest weakness.

      A year after Trump embarrassed the country in Helsinki, he compounded the offense by withholding aid from Ukraine in an attempt to extort Zelensky into doing political dirty work against Biden to help Trump’s reelection efforts. It was an illegal act that ultimately led to Trump’s first impeachment. At the same time and throughout the following year according to reports from Trump’s own top advisors, he was actively advocating to withdraw American troops from Europe.

      There is no doubt that had Trump been re-elected, today we would be witnessing an American president standing alongside his Russian counterpart not Zelensky, marking the weakening of the West, not its enduring strength. Perhaps that prospect, the sense that America was weak and divided and did not care about Ukraine, would not lead the fight to preserve democracy, encouraged Putin to undertake his ill-fated, hugely costly, profoundly ill-considered invasion last February. It seems likely it had an effect leading to that disastrous miscalculation.

      Noon update:

      From Fox Business:

      'Bold move': Fox Business host gushes over Biden's 'game-changer' Ukraine visit

      Fox Business host Stuart Varney praised President Joe Biden on Monday for a surprise visit to the war zone in Ukraine.

      Varney reacted on his Fox Business program just hours after Biden visited Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. 

      "This could be a game-changer," Varney announced. "President Biden makes a surprise visit to Ukraine. It was a very well-kept secret. He took a train from the Polish border to Kyiv. And even as air raid sirens were sounding, he was meeting with President Zelensky. And then, walking the streets in a war zone! Highly symbolic."

      ........

      Unrelated to the visit per se I noted that story was headline news on major media websites like The New York Times ... 

      ... and even the partisan Fox News had it on the opening page so you didn't have to scroll down to see it...
      ... but the supposedly nonpartisan CNN website had it so far down the page you had to scroll down twice to see it:

      Perhaps this is another sign that under new leadership CNN has moved closer to being like Fox News. Consider: 

      The changes at CNN look politically motivated. That should concern us all. By Robert Reich.

      This article is more than 5 months old

      February 19, 2023

      J6 Committee top investigator lays out a provable case that Trump led a conspiracy to overturn election

       By Hal Brown

      The Raw Story summary -

      Trump's Jan. 6 conspiracy 'potentially broader' than final House report described: lead investigator

       - of The New York Times article -

      Timothy J. Heaphy Led the House Jan. 6 Investigation. Here’s What He Learned.

      The top staff investigator for the House inquiry on the Capitol attack opened up about his biggest takeaways and why proving intent is the key to a criminal charge against former President Donald J. Trump.

       - doesn't do it justice (no pun intended).

      Unfortunately you have to subscribe to The New York Times to read the revealing and unnerving interview with Timothy J. Heaphy (Wiki profile), the former U.S. attorney who served as the top staff investigator for the Jan. 6th Committee. 

      Asked by Luke Broadwater, author of the article (profile), when the J6 Committee realized they would be breaking new ground, Heaphy said it was when the J6 Committee saw how early the multipart plan to stop the transfer of power started to take shape:

      The world had seen the violence of the Capitol and how awful it was. But how we got there, and how methodical and intentional it was — this ratcheting up of pressure that ultimately culminates in the president inciting a mob to disrupt the joint session — that was new. 

       Below, the emphasis in red is mine:

      When we started to see intentional conduct, specific steps that appear to be designed to disrupt the joint session of Congress, that’s where it starts to sound criminal. The whole key for the special counsel is intent. The more evidence that we saw of the president’s intent, and others working with him, to take steps — without basis in fact or law — to prevent the transfer of power from happening, it started to feel more and more like possible criminal conduct.

      Heaphy was asked by Broadwater to address the failures of law enforcement to prevent the attack on the Capitol and the workings of the J6 Committee, which he did, but the meat of interview as far as I am concerned in how former the former president is implicated in being the leader of an illegal conspiracy. This is in scattered almost wlly-nilly through the interview. 

      Another excerpt: 

      There’s evidence that the specific intent to disrupt the joint session extends beyond President Trump. There is a cast of characters that includes the ones you mentioned (i.e. John Easton and Jefferey Clark). I think you could look at [Rudolph W.] Giuliani, and Mark Meadows. I think that the Justice Department has to look very closely at whether there was an agreement or conspiracy.

      As far as I am concerned, the only reason we need to know how far beyond Trump the conspiracy extended, besides bringing the conspirators to justice, is to make an airtight care against the leader of the conspiracy.

      There is only one person who must, absolutely must, suffer the consequences for trying to treasonously sabotage our democracy. I don't care whether everyone else goes free, makes a fortune selling tell-all books and getting gigs on Fox News as long as Donald Trump gets one or more fair trials for the felonies there is enough evidence to indict him for having committed.

      If he is found innocent because a jury or juries think a case hasn't been made beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed crimes and he walks free, I will have no choice but to deal with my disappointment and anger. I will have to live with my belief, my lack of having a reasonable doubt, that he really did the equivalent of committing a murder on Fifth Avenue and got away with it.

      A footnote to history is that Trump is the only president to have said things about getting aways with committing felonies. Another, lest we forget, is "grabbing" line from the Access Hollywood tape. Of course there also are the "perfect" phone calls he made, to Zelensky and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. 

      Addendum:

      To understand the meaning of reasonable doubt one must grasp that such a finding does not mean that the person being tried is innocent.

      Under U.S. law, a defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty. Reasonable doubt stems from insufficient evidence. If it cannot be proved without a doubt that the defendant is guilty, that person should not be convicted. Verdicts do not necessarily reflect the truth, they reflect the evidence presented. A defendant’s actual innocence or guilt may be an abstraction. (Reference)

      A moment of snark:

      I meant this to be a serious blog but when someone posted a cartoon on another Raw Story article I didn't resist my impulse to make an illustration to go with it.

      The sheriff's badge was added to the picture of Lucy. I didn't enlarge Trump's ass though a number of people used photo manipulation to make it even bigger.




       

      February 18, 2023

      As a dauntless opinion writer I was tempted to join Truth Social

       By Hal Brown

      Above: Truth Social is America's "Big Tent" social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology.

      Currently I depend on various websites to report on what Trump posts on his Truth Social platform. For example Raw Story has a story about a particularly unhinged and wack-a-toon post:

      Trump obviously hoped to make money from Truth Social.


      He also no doubt wanted bragging rights about how many millions of followers he had there compared to when he was on Twitter.

      The failure to achieve these goals have turned out to be irrelevant because Trump now has his own megaphone. He totally controls it. While not everything he posts there is widely shared in the media he can throw random shit at the wall and see what sticks in the media.  

      Trump isn't on Twitter. Elon Musk, no doubt wanting him to start tweeting again to boost Twitter's statistics, reinstated him. His most recent tweet is from January 8, 2021 when he was supposedly permanently banned.

      I doubt Trump would go back to making Twitter tweets because he has an agreement with Truth Social to post there six hours before he posts anywhere else. Not only that, but he would have to admit that Truth Social failed and Elon Musk had more business acumen than he did.

      Just as all major media outlets have staff assigned to watching Fox News and keeping up with other right-wing media, and finding tweets to add to articles which are relevant to the subject being covered, they have staff assigned to monitoring Truth Social. It's nice work if you can get it, and can stand watching Tucker Carlson if you're assigned to Fox News, since you can do it from home.  

      I could get on Truth Social for free. I could watch Fox News. I could check out all the online right-wing websites. I probably would come up with ideas for what I hope would be an original and perhaps particularly snarky take on something for this blog.

      This would mean devoting a lot of time suffering through watching and reading, to put it bluntly, a lot of crap. I am retired and nobody has decided offer to pay me to do this, plus if they did it would have to be lot of money for me to even agree to devote a few hours a day to doing this.

      If I joined the platform, aside from writing about Trump's Truth Social posts, I might wile away some time screwing around with Trump by replying to his posts with over-the-top fawning replies dripping with thinly veiling sarcasm aimed at stroking his ego. I wouldn't be critical of him, what's the fun in that? He'd probably never see my posts. All that would accomplish is trying to see if I could get kicked off the platform and that would only get me a subject for one blog.

      The fun of flippant fawning would be to try to get Trump to "re-Truth" (his version of a re-tweet) a reply he thinks is complementary to something he posts when in fact it comes from someone who thinks he might be gullible enough to believe I am a member of his cult.

      Therefore, here's my decision: 

      Sorry, MSNBC, Raw Story, HUFFPOST, Daily Beast, et. al, I'm not going to accept bundles of cash to be one of your work-from-home right-wing media monitors. Besides, I figure most of you are using interns to do this.

      Tempted as I am, I won't join Truth Social, and "truth" be told, part of the reason is that I am a little afraid I might enjoy posting there so much I'd become addicted to this useless endeavor.

      Addendum:

      Remember this guy?

      Truth Social is run by Trump Media & Technology Group, and headed by Devin Nunes. In 2022, Talking Points Memo stated Nunes' remuneration was $750,000 per year.

      From Newsweek:  

      Devin Nunes' Cow Celebrates Congressman's Resignation 


      You've read my opinions but unless you've talked to me you've never them in heard my voice. Now, thanks to Salon's Chauncey Dega you can in his podcast. By Hal M. Brown,

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