Take Westworld and Stepford Wives robots and add a generous helping of crazy and you get the programmed House GOP

 

By Hal Brown

You're reading this. You don't need me to elaborate on the craziness manifest among the headliners in the United States House of Representatives which has resulted in lunatic antics. Consider these automatons censoring Adam Schiff (an obsession with Rep. Ann Paulina Luna) as  a recent example of the GOP Steppford Wives marching in lockstep. Another is the duel between gunslingers Greene and Boebert (who got her orders from God) over who got the idea first to impeach President Biden could be right out of Westworld. The only difference between that gunfight and one staged for tourists is that they use AR-15's instead of six-shooters.

Article from Raw Story here:

Click to read

The vote to censure Adam Schiff was unanimous among the House Republicans so they certainly were acting like robots. The willingness to totally remain silent about the antics of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and let's not forget George Santos, is more wretched robotics.  

I won't even get into how all of these deranged devices defend Donald or refuse to address the Clarence Thomas ethical train wreck.

As I finish this blog this is what's on "Morning Joe" on MSNBC:

If you don't see the Disquis comment section below it is on the bottom of this page.

Tale of Two Gates: Trump-gate and the search for lost Titanic Oceangate sub

 By Hal Brown

If you remember Baby Jessica you probably are at least middle-aged.

Click above to read Time article

When 18 month old Jessica McClure (Wikipedia) fell into a well in 1987 there was no 24 hour cable news coverage. However it still was covered extensively on every over-the-air TV station.

Then in 2018 we had the rescue of the soccer team from the flooded cave in Thailand.  There's nothing like a prolonged dramatic rescue or a devastating hurricane or earthquake to bump coverage of wars and politics off the news.

Today the news is chock-a-block full of reporting about the efforts to rescue a group of wealthy morbid adventurers dying to see where 1,517 passengers and crew of the Titanic lost their lives. These death tourists may or may not actually die themselves. Unlike those on the Titanic, if they do die it is likely their bodies will end up being recovered. 

A cynic might say it would be more appropriate if the sub made it to the Titanic that they were left in the same watery 12,500 foot deep grave as the those of 1,517 who lost their lives, some to sharks and some to drowning on the surface or, if they were trapped below decks meeting their deaths there. This would bring the total Titanic death count to 1,522.

If they are rescued it remains to be seen whether they will be seen as heroes or reckless privileged idiots who cost the Canadian and American governments a small fortune to give them the gift of life. If their bodies are recovered it is yet to be determined how the media will cover the story. 

Oceangate is the name of the company which owns and operates the sub and has a Wikipedia page here.

At present this is these are the Wikipedia entries related to the current incident:

2023 loss of Titan 

Main article: 2023 Titan submersible incident

On 18 June 2023, Titan went missing in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland. The submersible was carrying an expedition of tourists, including Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood, Dawood's son, Suleman, and the founder of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, to view the wreckage of RMS Titanic.^[29][30] The disappearance of the submarine triggered extensive search and rescue efforts to locate the submersible.^[31]

2023 Titan submersible incident

What is ironic is that the suffix "-gate" is defined this way:

Suffice to say that you probably don't want anything associated with you to have "-gate " attached to it unless you own a fence gate company.

There was no Jessica-gate since she innocently fell into a well and anyone following the story breathed a sigh of relief when she was rescued.

Whether the Oceangate company even exists once this story is laid to rest remains to be seen. However, if it does the founder and executives may rue the day they called it Oceangate. The incident may end up being called Oceangate-gate.

At present a web search of Trumpgate or Trump-gate turns up lots of articles dating back to about 2020 to the present. Here's a recent one.

Before Trump-gate there was Russia-gate. Both earned Twitter hashtags: #Trumpgate and #Russiagate. 

The history of the "-gate" suffix refers to single episodes or incidents. 

It may come to pass that Trump-gate will go down in American history books as a description not only of everything having to do with Donald Trump flouting the law and his trashing the traditions of the presidency, but of how close the country came to becoming a autocratic fascist country.

Update: No surprise, this:

The missing Titanic sub is a cesspool of conspiracies and debates over the rich

Sarah K. Burris

June 21, 2023, 7:01 PM ET

Excerpt:

"Literally everything I’ve seen about this missing submarine is insane and sketchy AF… almost none of it makes any sense whatsoever. How long till we find other external factors making it even more so???" the younger Trump tweeted before turning to COVID conspiracies.

"Love the lefties screaming about conspiracies when it seems virtually all of the supposed 'conspiracy theories' that we were told were nonsense (despite almost always being the most plausible answer) have been proven to be dead on. See Wuhan Lab Leak etc.," he later said.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk was infuriated with fact-checking site Snopes, which reported that OceanGate, which was overseeing the expedition, used Starlink for communications. Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which is run by Musk. It's true, but it leaves out a lot of information about the way that the sub was communicating with those at the surface. Musk was furious seeing the link. Rather than trying to correct the claim, he tweeted it was part of a government conspiracy psy-op.

If you don't see the Disquis comment section below it is on the bottom of this page.

Update: Vox had a similar story here.

Could Nobel Peace Prize nominee Trump use "old man defense" in upcoming trial?

By Hal Brown

I'm sure you remember the photo (top, above) which was shared on social media in February of 2019. Raw Story decided to use it in this article today:

Click above to read article

This is what Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer based in Washington, DC, said on Lawrence O'Donnell last night:

"He's going to say he's gotten old. He's been with all these retirees down in Florida. He can't think anything straight. He doesn't know what he has, he forgets things. He gets facts jumbled up," Moss joked. "Look at that clip, he is talking about, 'Oh we were negotiating when Nauta and I got raided.' Well, no, you left something out. There was a subpoena that came after that, after you started giving stuff back. And you lied to the DOJ, you had Nauta moving documents; that's why you got raided. I understand. It happens to a lot of individuals when they move down to Florida. They start to get confused. It will be me one day, I'm sure. But no, this is not a defense. He has clearly walked himself into a bunch of damaging admissions. Jack Smith has gotta be recording all of that, and they are just laughing and popping popcorn because he did nothing to help his case."

I found it interesting that the 2019 photo was used to illustrate this article because Trump was obviously not as old an old man then than he is now. 

In finding the photo on Twitter I came across this from a Chris Hayes show from four years ago:

Click above to enlarge

It's worth watching. The episode includes a description of how Trump bragged about his fake Nobel Peace Prize nomination "for a little thing called the Nobel Peace Prize, perhaps you've heard of it."

You can watch the video here:

Now to the question as to whether it would make sense that Trump could use the "old man defense" in his upcoming documents case trial, now scheduled to begin in mid-August, or any other cases.

Of course there's no such thing as an "old man defense" per se. There are however, the diminished capacity defense and the not reason by reason of insanity plea described here.

These defenses actually might be appropriate for Trump, or more precisely for Trump's lawyers to pursue since he'd never agree to either of them. Being a therapist and not a lawyer I can only suggest that there is evidence that he could avoid prison using either defense. I don't know whether Trump's lawyers would be able to convince a judge to order an involuntary psychiatric assessment to determine whether Trump is capable of making this decision on his own.

My understanding of the law is that a defendant has to be able to understand the charges against him and participate in his own defense in order to stand trial. If this is true then it's possible Trump could be ordered into treatment until he is determined to be "sane enough" to stand trial.

Addendum:

"And by the way, when Bill Barr, who's, you know, a coward, Bill Barr was a coward. Bill Barr didn't do what he was supposed to do. I fired him and he has great hatred. And that's OK, because some people do. And some people love me very much."