April 9, 2023

ProPublica got the first scoop then The Washingtonian put NAZI icing on the Clarence and Crow karma cake

 By Hal Brown

Alternate title and illustration:
ProPublica got the first scoop then The Washingtonian put the NAZI cherry on the Clarence and Crow ice cream sundae.

Below, image illustrating positive or good karma.

Copyrighted to Himalayan Academy Publications, Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii. Licensed for Wikipedia under Creative Commons 

This is the source article to read:

Clarence Thomas’s Billionaire Benefactor Collects Hitler Artifacts

Harlan Crow also reportedly has a garden full of dictator statues. 

WRITTEN BY  
 | PUBLISHED ON 

.....................................................

Karma is a belief from Indian religions which has come into common usage and interpreted as meaning an action and reaction arising from behavior. It often means that if we show goodness, we will reap goodness. This is similar to the idea of paying it forward. In the politics of the day it is frequently used to mean that if one does bad things this will come back to affect someone negatively in the future, whether in this life, or for believers, in a reincarnated life. The phrase "karma bites" has become a meme and often shown in images as someone being bitten in the ass by a dog or in other phrases (web search).

Karma images are all over the Internet:


The first website I looked at this morning was HuffPost  to see what they featured as their featured story. I never expected, of all things, to find NAZI news related, albeit indirectly, to Clarence Thomas. (upper left below). 

ProPublica got the scoop about Clarence Thomas and his availing himself of the "hospitality" of his billionaire bestie.  

This is a story that according to a reporter from ProPublica now on MSNBC the magazine had been working on for month. It qualifies as a real scoop since within hours of being published it was being reported on widely.

This comes from from The Washingtonian. It isn't about Thomas running afoul of the law. It is something that, to put it mildly, makes what he did look worse than tawdry. He not only was close friends with a far-right billionaire, he was friends with a collector of NAZI memorabilia.

Katie Phang, on MSNBC, just called it a bizarre collection of NAZI memorabilia. This strikes me as a mild word to use. "Extremely troubling" would be more appropriate. 



All of the articles about Harlan Crow's NAZI collection cite the article in The Washingtonian and include excerpts so this is the primary source to read.

This Google News search provides links to some of the other articles.

Click above to enlarge image

This is my snarky satirical blog from yesterday. Had I known about this I might have added a flag to the illustration.

Comment fromBen Kalom:

Clarence Thomas...

Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.....

Take a deep sigh. Breathe in, breathe out.

Here's something from The Duty to Warn) FB group keeps referencing from George Lakoff, concerning authoritarians. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_father_model

For anyone who reads my ridiculous comments (ridiculous in that I even try to make a difference), you'll understand I am a product of a strict father-and-mother family system - - - -

THAT FAILED!!!

It failed to regiment and force-fit a person (actually three persons) into pre-determined molds and shape them to be who they simply were not.

Strict parenting is "monkey-see-monkey-do." Authoritative parenting adopts varying styles, sets safety limits, acts like a grown-up for when being a grown-up is required, doesn't assume that kids can make brilliant decisions for themselves, provides, nurtures, encourages, and involves children and youth in activities and pursuits.

If your kid is a sponge and picks up on everything around them, the stimuli work and they'll learn more.

If you have a radish, then you'll get a radish.

Some people are not capable of learning. They migrate toward Berger's self-sovereign personality and learning type.

More on Justice Thomas in another comment...

Here's another little piece to add in: 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas

This is basically undigestible dross about Thomas. Is he interesting? Perhaps. Is he a learned person? Okay, I'll bite. It sure looks like it on paper. Has he set his anchor points such that he's no longer the kid from Pin Point Georgia, and his massive self has adapted to a very cushy lifesyle of catering to lovely white folk who have their token "boy?" Oh, you bet he has. Big time. He'd like to forget all of that hardship. Who wouldn't?

What of his first wife, Kathy Ambush? What of his son, Jamal? Nothing about any of that... swept under the rug.

He's a Catholic? GMAFB!!

First of all, the Catholic dogma he absorbed growing up and as a young adult didn't stop him from getting divorced.
It didn't stop him from being a weirdo with Anita Hill.
It hasn't tempered him in any way about his Antonin Scalia carbon copy views of everything conservative, a system that keeps a partition between the few wealthy folk and nearly everyone else.

Conservatism is about being a new-found form of royalty. Donald pretty much stripped the veil from that cloudy reality. He just wants to be king of a small country named Duh-Mericah, where his subjects are all stupid, uneducated, difficult, agitated, and they swallow his every thought hook, line and sinker.

Clarence is just another "StepinFetchit" idiotype, espousing the cause of "if you can't beat 'em, join em."

He sure did find hisself a good ol' boy (Harlan Crow) who loves his “house {N-word;expletive}.” The guy also loves his Nazi stuff, maybe he's just a collector, maybe he's into the bullshitty mystic cultish nonsense that Hitlerites seem to go for.


He is certainly not educating people about the dangers of fascism. Crow could care less. He’s just another rich person, who uses the system to build a pile of money, roll about in it, and Crow just doesn’t care about anything that Thomas should be emphatic about.


Thomas is just another guy who got lucky, got aligned in the right way, and now needs to disappear into the slithery fabric of American life.


He’s not that poor child from Pin Point GA who probably had ideals.


Maybe it is time for him to step away, go enjoy his friendships, for as long as they’ll keep him around, go discover how little Ginny wants to have anything to do with him once he is no longer able to manifest her weirdo stuff.


Like I offered in the earlier comment - - -


I came from a system that failed to shape me into a specific mold.


I did not reject that mold outright; I found a way to use the notions of that molding to sculpt a self that is not decadent.
When I see prominent people failing to break out and cease the “can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” groupthink, which is exactly where Clarence Thomas is right now, I advocate for their abdication of the seat of power.


He needs to find out for sure that he’s no longer useful to them, and become useful to himself, as the person he once was.
Antonin Scalia’s comrade is now just another humbug, wannabee lapdog for a bunch of folks who are disgustingly weird and perverse.


Time for another SCOTUS seat to open up…



Addendum:


ProPublica (/proʊˈpʌblɪkə/[2]), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City. In 2010, it became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, for a piece[3] written by one of its journalists[4][5] and published in The New York Times Magazine[6] as well as on ProPublica.org.[7] ProPublica states that its investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time investigative reporters, and the resulting stories are distributed to news partners for publication or broadcast. In some cases, reporters from both ProPublica and its partners work together on a story. ProPublica has partnered with more than 90 different news organizations, and it has won six Pulitzer Prizes.[8]
About The Washingtonian (Wikipedia)

Washingtonian is a monthly magazine distributed in the Washington, D.C. area. It was founded in 1965 by Laughlin Phillips and Robert J. Myers. The magazine describes itself as "The Magazine Washington Lives By".[2] The magazine's core focuses are local feature journalism, guide book–style articles, real estate, and politics.
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April 8, 2023

Why Clarence Thomas shouldn't have had to disclose his trips to visit his close friends

By Hal Brown

In view of what came out since I originally wrote this with the top illustration (see Sunday blog here) I added the bottom image.
.....................

Clarence and Ginni have two besties. They happen to be fairly rich. To quote what Clarence said:

“Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over 25 years. As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter-century we have known them.”

People, with the exception of hermits and totally anti-social curmudgeons, have friends. Most have a range of friends some of whom are closer than others.

On occasion they may exchange gifts, say for birthdays, and how expensive, or lavish, these gifts are varies. Some people visit each other so often that they rarely if ever bring presents. On special occasions people of modest means may bring a bottle of supermarket wine when they eat over at a friend's house. 

It may look tawdry, or worse, for Clarence and Ginni Thomas to have considered travel on a private jet and being entertained on a big boat not to be things they need to have reported as gifts, but rich people consider their planes and yachts to be homes away from home. What's the difference, really, between having meal prepared by a chef and having your pal flip burgers on a backyard grill? Food is food, right?

People may be served hamburgers or they may serve filet mignon on special occasions. Wealthy people may treat their houseguests to Dom Perignon champagne and expensive cheese. The super rich may serve astronomically expensive vintage wine, Croatian truffles, and  "Strottarga Bianco" caviar .

Headlines like the following included terms that are relative:

What's to be defined as a lavish gift?

There are some people who would scoff at the description of what The NY Times headlines as lavish gifts.

Is there a line between driving to visit friends for dinner, having your kids play in their above ground pool, and having a barbecue, and what the Thomas's did by being transported in a common Bombardier Global 5000 private jet and being entertained on yacht that in the snobby yachting world wouldn't even be considered a super yacht. 

After all the Crows are said to be worth a paltry $2 billion. There are super yachts that cost  almost that much or more. 

The Michela Rose is the boat the Thomas's were entertained on.

There are private jets that cost much more than the one the couple own. For example the AirBus A380 owned by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal goes for $600 million.

To mirror Marc Antony's eulogy for Julius Caesar indulge me when I say that I come not to bury Thomas nor to praise him. The evil Thomas has done, and is likely to continue to do, will be his legacy. There is no Brutus to end his tenure.  

There are those who argue that no person should be above the law and those who contend that only Donald Trump should be above the law. Clarence Thomas gave the appearance of impropriety, but did he break any laws in accepting the hospitality of his close friends and not reporting this?

There are those in public office who are scrupulous about accepting absolutely nothing of value from anyone who might be trying to influence them.  For example, I have a friend who used to work for a U.S. Senator as a senior aide. From time to time they reminded them that they shouldn't let a lobbyist pick up the tab when they dined out. There are others in official positions who may be a bit looser when it comes to such matters.

Here's a related example from The Clarence Thomas Scandal Is What's Wrong With Our Democracy (HUFFPOST)

What are the ethical boundaries for people who have political power and influence?

I once invited a local lawmaker to lunch for an interview. Lunch would be on me. He wouldn’t allow it. “I wouldn’t even let you buy me a cup of coffee at Starbucks,” he told me.

At least that was a good thing, since I’m not exactly a fan of Starbucks.


A member of Congress, the executive branch, or the judiciary may engage with lobbyists and others who want to influence policy. It's also possible they could be friends with them. This, truly, could put one in a sticky wicket.

These revelations about Clarence hopefully has him meandering in a mucilaginous morass. If he and Ginni are feeling stuck in the muck it makes me happy. However, I rather doubt anything will come of it. I have a feeling that this will prove to be a tempest in a teapot, although it may be an expensive teapot.

Updates: You'll need a subscription to read why The Wall Street Journal says this is a smear.

"The left is furious it lost control of the Supreme Court, and it wants it back by whatever means possible. The latest effort is a smear on Justice Thomas."


Is it illegal for Thomas to receive gifts? 

Generally speaking, Supreme Court justices are required to disclose any perks that they receive if they are valued at more than $415 and they aren't reimbursed, according to public filings for judicial officers and employees. Those perks may include travel, food or lodging. 

But some exceptions can include situations when a person hosts a justice on their own property, in which case food and lodging would not have to be disclosed. But this exception does not apply to travel expenses such as costs for a private plane, however. 

Additionally, it appears Thomas should have reported vacations at Crow's Camp Topridge resort in New York because the developer technically owns the resort through a company, as opposed to owning it personally, according to ProPublica.

This confirms that everything that the Thomases accepted by way of hospitality on the Crow's yacht wasn't different than it would have been if they went to a friend's backyard barbecue. The travel expenses should have been reported.

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April 7, 2023

A pschoanalyst assesses what's likely happening with Trump as he faces legal consequences

 By Hal Brown

Justin Frank's book cover has a giant Trump head on the traditional Freudian couch. 


I made the illustration below showing that Trump is not "normal" which I meant to convey just how atypical his personality is. This doesn't mean it is impossible to understand how his mind works, what motivates him, and how to best predict his future behavior. It means that this is a very difficult endeavor requiring a particular knowledge base and skill set.

Thanks to Raw Story's Tom Boggioni, who summarized the Chauncey DeVega interview which was published in Salon, (link below) with psychoanalyst Justin Frank, MD (here 'Caged animal' Trump may need a 'secure padded cell' as trial progresses: psychiatrist ) I don't have to do it.

If you don't read the interview at least I think you should consider reading the summary on Raw Story. Still, I think you will find the interview illuminating and I hope you read it.

"He is visualizing burning things and blowing them up": How Trump may be coping with being caught

Justin Frank, author of "Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President," on this week's historic indictments

These are the three quotes Salon emphasized:

One more excerpt:

Predators can massively regress in such circumstances and lose even a modicum of self-control. They lash out and need to be restrained for their safety and that of their caregivers. That's why we have secure padded cells (euphemized as "quiet rooms") inside locked wards in mental hospitals.

These are colloquially often referred to as "rubber rooms". Illustration modified by HB.

I have been writing about how people shouldn't assume that they know with absolute certainty what Trump has been feeling these days as he faces the legal consequences of his actions. (see footnote)

Justin Frank doesn't do this. His comments are replete with modifiers which explain that Trump is most likely experiencing certain emotions and why this is the case with him given his personality type. 

What Frank offers is an exposition of what I was too lazy to even try to write about. Besides, he is a psychoanalyst as opposed to a psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist which I was for the 40+ years of my career. He simply is far better qualified than I am  to dig this deeply into what those in the mental health field call the psychodynamics of an individual.

Addendum:

In this exclusive interview, Thom and Dr. Frank talk about psychosis, whether or not if it is contagious / hereditary, the presidency, plus much much more.


Dr. Frank has also been on the Lawrence O'Donnell show.

Update: This is gratifying



Footnote (my previous blogs on this subject):




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April 6, 2023

Wash. Post artists take liberties in drawing Trump during his arraignment.

 By Hal Brown

The drawing below is what caught my attention in The Washington Post (subscription article) this morning:

Top caption: "Reporters inside the courtroom noted that Trump seemed disengaged with those around him during the arraignment. (Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)" Bottom: two screen grabs from when cameras were allowed in the courtroom. Click image above to enlarge.

In the article there's another sketch by a different artist (click image to enlarge):


Many journalists have speculated on what they thought Trump felt during his arraignment. Of course they don't know. They are basing assumptions based on what a normal person would feel.

Of all the images from the video coverage this is only one shows Trump outwardly expressing what one can reasonably construe as a feeling:

I wrote about how people are making assumptions that they know, or think they know, how Trump is feeling twice in the past few days. 

Nobody knows for certain how Trump feels except Trump

and

Michael Cohen and others claim to know what's in Trump's headspace. They don't.


Today we have non-written speculation in the form of drawings which, unless Trump changed his facial expressions drastically, exaggerate his feelings.

All I am attempting to convey is that those writing about or talking about how Trump feels ought to be more precise in using modifiers like "probably" and "a typical person" since Trump has an unusual personality. He doesn't experience his external world the way the vast majority of people do.

In this way he is more like the most ardent members of his cult who perceive reality in a distorted, sometime even clinically paranoid way.

My own educated guess, as someone who was a psychotherapist for over 40 years, is that Trump is most likely engaging in psychological denial and keeping his anxiety buried (i.e., unconscious), but that for fleeting moments it leaks into awareness. Even if he doesn't actually think about his plight he may not be able to totally control his facial expressions. He's been an actor all of his adult life, a performance artist. He's no Robert DeNiro who is known not only for playing many kinds of characters, from Travis Bickel to Frankenstein's monster, for staying in character even when the cameras aren't rolling.

Trump has played two similar public roles: whatever he was supposed to be on "The Apprentice" and, as a politician, the uber-confident self-aggrandizing macho-man.

I noted in a previous blog that there is something that Trump can't control. These are his dreams. Whether nightmares or anxiety dreams of being helpless and being harmed, these would show what is in his unconscious mind. Unless he sleeps with Melania (debatable) nobody knows if he wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

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April 5, 2023

Stage Four Legal Cancer: Trump admitted he committed a much bigger crime than stealing the documents

 By Hal Brown

These are the words he used:

Click image above to go to tweet

“God bless you all. I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” he said, adding that the only crime he’s committed is trying “to defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.”

Jack Smith might ask the jury that if Trump literally stood on a gallows, put a noose around Mike Pence's neck, and opened the trapdoor under his feet, and then said he didn't commit a crime because he was defending the nation, did this justify what he did.

Trump, it has been pointed out by some in the media, already admitted he took the documents (saying that he could do so because he could declassify them just by thinking the thought) even though taking any documents, top secret or not, is against the law. (See "Trump appears to concede he illegally retained official documents'")

This will make things easy for Jack Smith to indict on the Mar-a-Lago documents case. It shows that Trump knew all about taking the documents, supposedly thinking he had a right to do so, and once he was disabused of this false belief or claim, still refused to return them. This is obstruction, a serious felony. Add all this together we have Michael Jordan levels of several game winning slam dunks for Jack Smith.

This is one of the two cases Smith is working on. From what we know it is seems to be easy to win. 

The other federal case is Trump's involvement and legal culpability in the January 6th insurrection. This may include things he did on the days prior to January 6th, but centers around how he incited the audience at his rally earlier in the day to march to the Capitol and engage in a violent attempt to stop Mike Pence from certifying the election of President Biden.

His statement is an admission of culpability in committing a crime, really crimes, far more significant than the admission in the documents case. It is an admission that he is aware he has committed crimes related to everything he did in an attempt to remain in power despite losing the election. This goes far beyond just trying to find the extra votes in Georgia through fraud. It involves inciting, aiding, and abetting the Jan. 6th insurrection, and an attempt to undermine the Constitution and the peaceful transfer of powers.

These are the only "crimes" that could be what he said would involve his "fearlessly" defending the nation from those seeking to destroy it.

A jury hearing and reading the many hyperbolic claims that Trump made without him as president the country would be destroyed ought to be persuaded to take him at his words. 

In the "only crime I committed" statement he is admitting that he knew what he did to remain in power was a crime.

Jack Smith isn't the only prosecutor for whom Trump has offered up a prosecutorial ammunition on a silver platter. Not only does Fani Willis have a tape of Trump asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to recalculate the state's vote in his favor, but Trump said it was an "absolutely PERFECT (sic) call."

Aside from the fact that Trump has to contend with high profile four cases against him he also has two civil suits, ones from Eric Swallwell and from Rep. Bennie Thompson about the insurrection. 

Trump has two years where he'll be slogging though one legal tarpit after another. Through this period he will be trying to put on his warrior face as a fearless presidential candidate.

He's set up this Superman image of himself in his iconography (see the illustration of some of his digital trading cards) and his self-aggrandizing rally speeches and rhetorical like  "I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution” from his CPAC speech.

Trump will have to strike a pose of being the aggrieved victim without looking like he is experiencing the least bit of fear. Lindsay Graham can get tearful on his behalf, but don't expect Trump's eyes to moisten let alone shed a tear. I have my doubts if his tear ducts are even functional.

No matter how stressed out or anxious he may be feeling - or not be feeling (see below for two previous blogs about what Trump may or may not feel) it is important to note that denial is a primitive defense mechanism. It is brittle and the one most easily to shatter when hit by the ball-peen hammer of reality.

As his legal woes metastasize like various types of cancer from the equivalent of a squamish cell lesion which is uncomfortably treated but easily cured to the aggressive and deadly brain cancer known as glioblastoma which took John McCain's life. 

We may not know for some time what Jack Smith will charge Trump with, if anything. However, if it is something akin to inciting a resurrection in an attempt to overturn an election sticking with the cancer metaphor, for Trump this will be the near equivalent of having to try to survive a stage four malignancy.

Related blogs:

Nobody knows for certain how Trump feels except Trump

and

Michael Cohen and others claim to know what's in Trump's headspace. They don't.


Addendum: It isn't just American tabloids which have fun with their covers about Trump. Below is the UK Daily Mirror.
They also have an article about Melania and Ivanka not being seen at his post-arraignment Mar-a-Lago speech which they call a rant.

Excerpt:

Donald Trump's wife Melania and daughter Ivanka were nowhere to be seen as the former President lashed out at prosecutors and the judge after his historic arrest.

After his appearance at court on Tuesday, April 4, loudmouth Trump returned to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida where he addressed friends, family and supporters and lavished praise on members of his family.



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