Blowhard Bannon's belligerent bluster begs bighouse stay

 By Hal Brown

Bannon get the Blues

Just announced: Bannon will get four months in prison and minor $6500 fine but can stay out of prison while he appeals and this could take a year.

It is being reported that his appeal will rely on his claiming he relied on an a "advice of counsel" defense. 

First his lawyer spoke and said they had a "bulletproof" appeal.

Then Bannon took to the microphone and made a diatribe. He lambasted the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi. He said the Biden regime will end after the election and Merrick Garland will be the first attorney general to be brought up on charges and impeached.

My impression of Bannon's affect and demeanor belied what his words were saying. He seemed far more subdued than usual. He claimed he'd win an appeal but he isn't delusional. He knows that the chances of winning the appeal are slim despite what his lawyer said and down the road there is a very good chance he will spend time in jail. 

Where would be held if he was indicted? 

"Since contempt of Congress is a federal misdemeanor being prosecuted in DC, White suggested that Bannon would be held in the DC Jail for lockup. The jail holds inmates who either have been sentenced for a misdemeanor, or are awaiting trial. However, depending on space and other factors, the Bureau of Prisons could decide to send him to another minimum security lockup outside of the District." Reference.

It's obvious that the accommodations are a far cry from what he's used to. Four months isn't four years. It isn't even a year. He might even get time off for good behavior. Still, any time spent living in a cell and having to comply with orders from prison guards will be a new experience for Bannon.

This is where Bannon lived in Washington:

(From https://nypost.com/2022/07/08/armed-police-swarm-steve-bannons-dc-home-in-swatting-incident/)

It isn't a mansion but obviously non-too-shabby compared to the DC slammer.

Remember this Steve Bannon form November 16, 2021?

This is an explanation of why this conviction and sentence matters from CNN:

It was a victory for the House Jan. 6 select committee as it continues to seek the cooperation of reluctant witnesses in its historic investigation. It was also a victory for the Justice Department, which is under intense scrutiny for its approach to matters related to the Jan. 6 attack.

Bannon is one of two uncooperative Jan. 6 committee witnesses to be charged so far by the Justice Department for contempt of Congress. Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro was indicted by a grand jury last month for not complying with a committee subpoena and has pleaded not guilty.

Backing up:

Lot's on news when I started watching TV this morning about how much jail time Steve Bannon will serve this morning. Below is Bannon expressing his usual defiance before entering court this morning:

I was looking forward to seeing his being led out the the courthouse in cuffs to the Department of Corrections paddy wagon. Unfortunately because this is a misdemeanor he won't be taken into custody immediately. Rather he'd be given a date when and where he has to surrender to the authorities.

Bannon lost this Hail Mary Mother of Me pass (below):

Then there's this from the Above The Law website:

The subtitle says it all: Good luck, buddy.

In preparation for Steve Bannon’s sentencing hearing Friday, he and the government both submitted sentencing recommendations today. Unsurprisingly, they have very different thoughts on what should happen to the rightwing podcaster after a jury found him guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena for documents and testimony from the January 6 Select Committee.

Prosecutors suggest six months in the hoosegow plus a $200,000 fine, emphasizing that Bannon has “consistently acted in bad faith and with the purpose of frustrating the Committee’s work.”

Here's more from this article:

Perhaps cognizant that promising to go “medieval” on his opponents and describing Judge Carl J. Nichols as conducting “the Moscow show trial of the 1930s” does not necessarily bespeak chastened regret, Bannon’s brief exhorts the court to look beyond the law and dream big.

The ear of a sentencing judge listens for the note of contrition. Someone was convicted. Did they learn their lesson? This case requires something more. It involves larger themes that are important to every American. Should a person be jailed when the caselaw which sets forth the elements of the crime is outdated? Should a person be jailed for the doing the exact same thing that was done by the highest law enforcement officers in this country, yet they received no punishment?

Bannon seems to be both threatening the judge and daring him to do something about it. It doesn't seem to be an indication that he is thinking rationally. The judge ultimately will decide his sentence. 

I am hoping he gets the full six months that the prosecution is asking for. 

We should know soon. Currently this is what is on MSNBC with report that the outcome will be announced any.moment.

Trump supposedly had a bad day yesterday, but did he feel it?

By Hal Brown

 Note the archives are on the right >

 

According to Lisa Rubin writing on The Maddow Blog Trump's day went for bad to worst yesterday. 

Trump is a man who doesn't experience what you and I would call normal human reactions or emotions. About as normal, or fairly common, a reaction that he experiences may be fury when he doesn't get his way. That sometimes appears to be out of control and might be better referred to colloquially as blind rage if it isn't a performance to incite his crowds. With Trump you can never be sure about such things.

I doubt he moped around Mar-a-Lago last night lamenting how bad his day went. I doubt he stormed around throwing pottery against the wall. 

It wouldn't surprise me if he laughed about how he lied his ass off in his E. Jean Carroll deposition and figured that the news about the Eastman emails was pee-pee in the wind. He knows that few members of his Tucker Carlson watching cult would even be aware of this.

Trump's reaction to news like this and like this.

Click above to enlarge image

If you read articles like "George Conway warns of Trump 'meltdown to end all meltdowns'" you might think, or at least hope, that Trump is near the brink of descending into irreversible Mad Hatter madness.

Public domain image adapted by Hal Brown

You might very well be wrong. Trump isn't normal. There's a timeworn cliche in psychology that is used to explain the difference between neurosis and psychosis:

Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them.

One of the primary differences between what used to be called neurosis (and now has other names like anxiety disorder or depressive disorder) and psychosis is that those suffering from a neurosis can discern reality from unreality. To varying degrees those suffering from psychosis have impaired reality testing.

Of course Trump actually owns his version of a castle, but that isn't the point. 

Trump has rigid and primitive ways of dealing with things that happen to him that would devastate most people. In psychology the ways people cope with stress are called defense mechanisms and everyone uses them. 

Some, like humor, are considered by experts to be healthy. Somewhere in the middle is projection. This is unconsciously taking unwanted emotions or traits you don’t like about yourself and attributing them to someone else. Trump frequently uses this but it may be conscious or partially conscious.  

The most unhealthy defense is denial. This is where everything that doesn't fit into one's belief system is denied.

This is where I trying to decide whether or not to resort to what has become a cheap cliche.

It may very well be that Trump doesn't have a worry in the world, at least a worry he actually takes seriously.

Let's hope that at some point in the near future reality will bite him, and bite him (to use a word he likes) bigly.

You can use your imagination to visualize what part of his anatomy you want reality to sink its teeth into.

Previous four editions:

• The vicious "art" of political photoshopping
• Investigation: The mystery of how Trump got Judge ...
• Is Trump crazy or crazy like a fox? It may be up t...
• Trump Junior praises conspiracy theorists for patt...

Comment below.

The vicious "art" of political photoshopping

By Hal Brown

One of my favorite illustrations is below. I showed Trump during his hour long outside time in prison playing golf with his little putter. Since I doubt he'd be in the general population I assume he'd be in a segregated cell but he'd still be allowed outside once a day for exercise. 

It took longer to find the perfect photo of a prison yard which actually had a fenced in area with some grass in it than it did for me to find a picture of Trump putting and add it. I could have tried to put him in prison orange pants but as you can see in the second picture that didn't come out very well.

When I was a kid too old to really read the articles in The New Yorker, which we subscribed to, I always looked forward to each issue to look at the cartoons. Charles Addams was my favorite. This probably says a lot about my personality. I aspired to be a cartoonist when I grow up, but alas I couldn't draw well enough. I remember drawing a cartoon of a severed head floating down a river singing "I ain't got no body." 

It was only when easily to learn inexpensive photo manipulation software became available that I was able to put hopefully better ideas into illustrations. Before I was banned from posting on Daily Kos I was the only one who regularly posted their own illustrations for stories they pit on the website.

Frequently when I end up writing on a political topic I think of an illustration to create to use before I give much thought to what I'm going to write.

I enjoy writing but there is an element of work in this since I have to not only try to come up with an original perspective on an issue in the news, but compose grammatical and coherent sentences and also try to be clever and snarky. Making the illustrations is pure enjoyment. It may take as many as 10 steps to put together an illustration but it never feels like work.

In addition to the simple things I can do on my laptop screen I use two inexpensive programs, InPixio and BeFunky. I don't use Photoshop itself. Years ago Kleenex became cleanex and referred to any facial tissue.Google used to mean any Internet search and now it's a verb, to google. Photoshop is still a product but "photoshop" is often used lower case to mean any image manipulation.

I used InPixio to add a football to a photoshop somebody else made:

Click to enlarge

In yesterday's blog story I also used someone else's image to make my own. I took this image...

and using both BeFunky and InPixio created this one:

Because that story was about Judge Cannon as well as Trump I made this image of her to go with this caption: 

Judge Cannon's reputation among what appears to be the vast majority of legal scholars seems to be in ruins. Does she care? My impression is that she couldn't care less even though she is in dire need of the legal version of a visit to the emergency room.

I often post my images on Twitter:

A caricaturist who calls himself DonkeyHotey (to be pronounced Don Quixote) allows anyone to use his pictures with credit. I often use them, for example the numerous caricatures of Trump which I used to make this one adding the playing cards:

I used BeFunky to change Trump's face and InPixio to add the vomit to this image:

Sometimes I just make an image to post as a comment to an article on RawStory since they allow pictures in the comments section. I used this in an article about Marjorie Taylor Greene. I used BeFunky to turn a color photo of her into the black and white version below, and InPixio to put her in front of an old time KKK rally.

Here's how I turned a Trump frown upside down and a Judge Cannon smile into a frown:

I found the secret stamps online and a stack of file folders and added them to the photo of Mr. Spock. It takes an extra step to copy just his fingers so they seem to be holding the documents.

I added the hot air to this and put the caricature of Musk into space next to his Tesla.

I used these in one blog story:

Even if I could draw I'd be hard pressed to be as creative as the most well-known political cartoonists. For example, Ann Telnaes is a political cartoonist for The Washington Post who creates some of the best in the genre. You can see some of them if you don't subscribe on Twitter. Here's a recent one, click below to animate it.

 

I have to take a break now. If I have time I'll find some of what I consider my better illustrations.