Holy maraschino-cherry macho mishagas, Batman, what's with these push-up 'pulican's?

By Hal Brown

Click smaller images tp enlarge them/

By chance one of the first articles I read this morning had nothing to do with politics but for me it segued into the second one I read and led me to write this blog. The first article was in The Washington Post (subscription)

Weight training can be easy and still build strength. Here’s how.

It served as some motivation to start doing the light weight training lazy-me got out of the habit of doing an embarrassing length of time ago. My dumbbells don't do me any good languishing on the floor of my kitchen pantry (top photo).

The next article, by Amanda Marcotte, which I looked was... 

 

RFK Jr.'s MAGA workouts won't work: It takes more than push-ups to topple Trump

RFK Jr. and other GOP stooges think their fitness videos are impressive, but it's really quite sad

 It at was featured on the top of the page on Salon:

I watched the videos in the the article.

For some convoluted reason in my mind I thought of one of Robin's oft used taglines in the Batman series/

  Robin had many "holy something Batman" phrases. 

Here's a video of 50 other them.

 Seeing these videos he might exclaim Holy maraschino-cherry macho michagas Batman. This was my intial reaction.

Why did this come to me? 

Letting my mind wander, I recalled the time years ago when my friend Helen, her foster daughter, and I used to go to our local Friendly's restaurant and always made sure our favorite waitress waited on us. One time I ordered a sundae with extra cherries for desert and she brought me a sundae topped with as many cherries as would fit on the ample mountain of whipped cream. I think I made this association because the videos in the articles represented the sicky sweet cherries on the top of the sundae.

I have a photo of the actual sundae somewhere. This isn't it but it was taken of me at the same restaurant.

I'd read that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were going back and forth bloviating about having an actual cage fight, battling it out mano-a-manopossibly in Las Vegas.

You may prefer to forget the 2007 fake wrerstling match, Batttle of the Billionaires, between Trump and Vince McMahon with Trump "winning" and getting to shave McMahon's head.

. I'd seen the "this is my Covid protection" video of Margorie Taylor Greene lifting weights and doing swinging pull-ups...

...  and of course most of the Trump photoshopped digital trading cards depicting him as some musclebound superhero.

I hadn't seen RFK Jr. doing push-ups ("getting in shape for my debates with President Biden" which hopefully will never happen) showing off his actual muscled pects and abs. If anything demonstates the egotism and unseriousness of his run for president this one video tweet does.  

I hadn't seen Tom Cotton and Chuck Grassley trying to show off by doing butt-in-the-air push-ups to prove, hmmm, something half-assed point:

Drew Comments, above left, snarkily wrote:

 For some guys who try to act so macho and manly these some sorry ass push-ups no cap Chuck Grassley and Tom Cotton I see why y’all fight for the 2nd amendment so hard. Y’all NEED guns

I have nothing to add to what Amanda Marcotte wrote in her concluding three paragraphs:

Such nonsense also lays the groundwork for other fascist arguments about who does and doesn't count because of their bodies. Women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ people, and disabled people are often targeted with stereotypes of bodily degeneracy, as a pretext for stripping them of basic human rights. There's a reason that Trump and his acolytes like to portray immigrants as diseased or drugged-out, implicitly comparing them to supposedly pure-and-strong white Americans. Dehumanizing people as weak or sickly is a first step towards arguing they must be culled or controlled. There's a reason that the discredited theory of eugenics laid the foundation for the Holocaust.

Toxic masculinity and fitness fetishization also do lesser but real harm to the authoritarian personalities that get caught up in it. Right-wing websites and influencers like Alex Jones and Joe Rogan are always grifting their audiences by pitching useless supplements with false hopes of physical perfectability. People who believe Kennedy's silly claim about 35-minute workouts might get frustrated when it doesn't work out for them and develop eating disorders or other bad health habits response. And, of course, there's all the people who believed that only "weak" people need vaccines, and ended up either very sick or dying from COVID-19.

Working out is a good thing to do and being fit is a fine goal to have. It just turns to poison in the hands of fascists, who conflate fitness with moral superiority. Your push-up count says nothing about your character or fitness to lead. But your choice to post cringey workout videos as campaign proves that you're bankrupt in both departments. 

Trump has Israeli artifacts at Mar-a-Lago. They want them back. Send Mossad to get them.

 

Above: Mossad logo with the  seven-branched candelabrum that is described in the Hebrew Bible and in later ancient sources as having been used in the Tabernacle and in the Temple in Jerusalem. Since ancient times, it has served as a symbol representing the Jewish people and Judaism in both the Land of Israel and the Diaspora. It eventually became the State of Israel's official emblem after its founding in 1948. The menorah used for Hanukkah has nine branches.

View on single page here.

This story just broke in Haaretz (subscription required).

Israeli Antiquities Are Stranded at Trump's Florida Estate as Authorities Fail to Retrieve Them

Israeli clay lamps, intended for a brief exhibition in Washington D.C. in 2019, got stranded in the U.S. due to the pandemic. Recently, they were found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida

 It is being reported on other news websites. This is an excerpt:

A source told Haaretz they wouldn’t be surprised if “the items Israel seeks are also eventually found in some bathroom there”.

Israel is trying to recover 'national treasures' held at Trump's Florida home... read article

Here's another article, this one from Business Insider:

Trump has always put  - would I be cycnical to suggest- a political show on for Jews during Hannukah. He once celebrated Hannukah with a menorah from the Tarnów ghetto (article). 

Above: President Trump seen during the lighting of the Menorah by Moshe Margareten during an evening Hanukkah Reception in the East Room of the White House, December 11, 2019. I doubt this is a menorah loaned by Israel since the one described is ceramic.

Specifically celebrating Hannukah has become a fairly recent annual tradition.  The first American president to have a Hannukah party or celebration was in 2001 under Predient George W. Bush. (Reference) 

Oh ye, of little faith, who may think Trump only celebrated a Jewish holiday in the White House because he felt he had to do so and that in his black heart of hearts he harbors anti-Semetic feelings. You may point to how he has used anti-Semtic tropes (see 22021 CNN article: Trump uses anti-Semitic tropes to again criticize Jewish America), but don't forget his deep love for Jared and Ivanka.

It occurred to me that if Israel really wanted the antiquities back from Trump they'd have to go get them by whatever means possible. After all, the United States had to get a warrant and send the FBI to retrieve the stolen White House documents.

I thought  about the fact that one of the most effective intelligence agencies in the world capable of operations outside of their own countries is Mossad. They've tracked down NAZI's and in 1972's Operation Wrath of God dealt with the perpetrators of the Olympic massacre in Munich.

Here's a list of Mossad operations that we know about.

The most effective way to assure the Isreali antiquities are returned is to send Mossad agents to get them. Maybe they could enlist Jared in finding out where they are squirreled away. I would be shocked, shocked I tell you, if Mossad didn't already have agents posing as rich Jewish members of the Mar-a-Lago golf club.

Addendum:

I wasn't going to write a blog about this until I looked up Mossad and saw that their logo had the seven candle menorah. I thought that this was close enough to the nine candle Hanukkah version.

I haven''t been able to find a photo of the actual  ancient ceramic candles which were sent from Israel to the US for a Hanukkah event at the White House attended by Trump or a photo of Trump with the menorah. I don't know if Trump used them for a photo op. I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

The fate of Nixon should temper Trump's arrogant confidence, but what about Napoleon?

 

By Hal Brown

I was enjoying the side-by-side photos of Trump and Nixon with their thumbs up (left) supposedly projecting supreme confidence which Raw Story used to illustrate the article Trump allies plan to rip apart major post-Nixon reforms that limit presidential power: report. 

The reason Nixon's photo was used is because of the following:

As the paper (NY Times) writes, Trump and his allies want to rip apart many of the guardrails that were put in place after the presidency of Richard Nixon that prevented presidents from abusing their power to go after political opponents.

Putting them side-by-side conveys a second message. It is, of course, the ultimate fate of Richard Nixon.

Putting photos of the two of them side-by-side isn't new, for example:

Nixon's fate should represent a cautionary tale for Trump. 

There are certainly other historic leaders he should be thinking of to disabuse himself of his confidence thinking he is going to heroically make it through all of the attempts to bring him down. From Hitler to Hussein, history is fraught with stories of leaders who thought they could rule their domains as they wished with impunity only to go down in humiliating defeat.

Let's consider one leader that may not immediately come to mind: Napoleon, and where he ended up if only because like him Trump could be incredibly lucky and not spend his final years in an actual prison. 

Both could end up in serving a sentence living in a house near the sea.

If Trump was sentenced to home confinement he would live in the luxury of Mar-a-Lago, quite possibly minus the fun of being able to hold parties with adoring fans. 

The watercolor of Napolean shown on St. Helena, where he was forced to live in exile by the British, may look idyllic but his accommodations were anything but luxurious.

Consider this from Wikipedia:

Napoleon stayed for two months at Briars pavilion before he was moved to Longwood House, a large wooden bungalow on Saint Helena, in December 1815. By this point, the house had fallen into disrepair. The location and interior of the house was damp, windswept and unhealthy. The Times published articles insinuating the British government was trying to hasten his death. Napoleon often complained of the living conditions of Longwood House in letters to the island's governor and his custodian, Hudson Lowe, while his attendants complained of "colds, catarrhs, damp floors and poor provisions."  

Modern scientists have speculated that his later illness may have arisen from arsenic poisoning caused by copper arsenite in the wallpaper at Longwood House.

With a small cadre of followers, Napoleon dictated his memoirs and grumbled about the living conditions. Lowe cut Napoleon's expenditure, ruled that no gifts were allowed if they mentioned his imperial status, and made his supporters sign a guarantee they would stay with the prisoner indefinitely. When he held a dinner party, men were expected to wear military dress and "women [appeared] in evening gowns and gems. It was an explicit denial of the circumstances of his captivity".

While the Longword House wasn't Mar-a-Lago, it is interesting to note that he was allowed to hold parties. It would remain to be seen if Trump's "gaolers" would allow him to throw parties.