Just a short comment about Dianne Feinstein

By Hal Brown, MSW, retired after 40 years of practicing psychotherapy. Formerly director of a mental health center and in psychoanalytically oriented private practice.

There are more and more reports that Diane Feinstein is getting more and more confused and that she is contradicting herself from one day to the next regarding important matters. 

Her contradiction of her staff announcing her saying he had no imminent plans for this made the news but Raw Story + (subscrition) reports this:

Forgetting the assault weapon ban

In January, California endured back-to-back mass shootings within 48-hours of each other.

While celebrating the Lunar New Year on Jan. 21 in Monterey Park, 11 people were slaughtered and another nine left permanently scarred. Two days later, on Jan. 23, in northern California, a farmworker killed seven people while injuring at least eight others.

Later that day, as Californians reeled from their second mass shooting in two days, Feinstein’s office reintroduced the historic 1990s assault weapon ban she had championed.

Three days later, Feinstein couldn’t remember her own measure. .

Abortion confusion

Last year, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision that effectively overturned Roe v. Wade nationally while leaving abortion policy to each state, Democrats coast-to-coast cheered after Kansas residents voted to keep abortion legal.

It took a few moments for Sen. Feinstein to remember the earth-moving news from the Great Plains.

Once she remembered, Feinstein was optimistic as she told Raw Story that upending Roe was an "enlightened finding" by the right wing of the Supreme Court.

These kinds of forgetting often are signs of early demential or Alzheimer's. 

Articles about what was speculated to be her cognitive decline go back at least to 2020: Dianne Feinstein ‘seriously struggling’ with cognitive decline, NY Post Cognitive decline is a general term usually referred to older people who have a form of dementia. (Note: Alzheimer's and dementia: What's the difference?)

I live in a continuing care retirement community and know many people going through the stages of dementia. Of course lots of people have to deal with this with loved ones and friends. I see that some people grasp that this is happening to themselves and most tragically others are in denial. I have seen both. 

If Feinstein deteriorates rapidly and enters the middle or end stages of dementia or Alzheimer's what will happen then?

Related articles:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein faces first calls to resign from members of Congress NBC News

Dianne Feinstein vows to return to her post as Democrats call for her to resign, The Guardian 

At first the abortion pill appellate court ruling headlines looked somewhat positive, but then I read the fine print.

By Hal Brown, MSW, retired after 40 years of practicing psychotherapy. Formerly director of a mental health center and in psychoanalytically oriented private practice.

Here's the HUFFPOST article shown above.

I was feeling happy about yesterday's news that Justin Pearson joined his colleague Justin Jones in being returned to the Tennessee House of Representatives. This morning, could it be that I'd be reading happy news two days in a row?

I had a fleeting moment of feeling good when I saw the first part of the headline above but then reading the italicized "tighter rules" part I held my breath as I clicked to read the article.

"Tighter rules" indeed. Make that "insane rules" instead. Consider:

When the drug was initially approved in 2000, the FDA limited its use to up to seven weeks of pregnancy. It also required three in-person office visits: the first to administer mifepristone, the next to administer the second drug misoprostol and the third to address any complications. It also required a doctor’s supervision and a reporting system for any serious consequences associated with the drug.

If the appeals court’s action stands, those would again be the terms under which mifepristone could be dispensed for now.

Prior to the ruling of Texas Judge Kacsmaryk women could have the drug prescribed up to 11 weeks of pregnancy and could use Telehealth for doctor visits and have the pill sent by mail.

Just mentioned on MSNBC, previously the generic version was allowed. Now it isn't.

Women who want to terminate a pregnancy in the safest way and the doctors who now have to see a doctor three times are having to, at least for the present, go though, to say the least, a medically unnecessary hassle.

Have you tried to get into see your primary care doctor for an urgent problem recently? It's not like they have lots of free time to squeeze you in for an appointment within a week, let alone on the same day. 

This is why there are so many urgent care centers where people generally see a nurse practitioner or physician assistant who they've never seen before.

It is odd that the two Trump appointed judges who were responsible for the ruling of the three judge panel mostly likely believe that using any means to terminate a pregnancy is morally wrong and the equivalent of murder, while I would bet the farm that Donald Trump would throw a woman off a cliff if she got inconveniently pregnant with a child he wanted to get rid of.

Related: 

How the appeals court ruling makes medication abortion access more complicated, CNN

Update:

Click above to read article

Thanks for reading. Scroll down to make comments and share on social media. The archives and tags are on the bottom. 

Stats don't count those who read on 
Booksie and Medium

Who's the son of Frederick Christ Trump Sr., talking about when he says "most people when they inherit, they lose it?"

By Hal Brown, MSW, retired after 40 years of practicing psychotherapy. Formerly director of a mental health center and in psychoanalytically oriented private practice.

Unless you worship at the feet of Donald J. Trump and your judgment is distorted you might wonder whether had the former president been looking at himself clearly the above statement referring to "smarts" ought to have been "many people are like me, they inherited it but eventually they lost it."

Trump's praise of Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong Un is getting media coverage today.

Click above and below to enlarge images

One has to wonder what Putin and
 Kim are thinking in these photos.

Here's a video of a segment from Morning Joe with a discussion of this.

The following is a transcript of the relevant portion of the interview:

Trump: “Top of the line. Top line. They’re all top of the line. Are our guys not top of the line? Never was. These are top of the line people at the top of their game. President Xi is a brilliant man. 

If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find, there’s nobody like that. The look, the brain, the whole thing. 

We had a great relationship. You know, when he first came to Mar-a-Lago, It was so organized by them and by us, but by them very pom, pom, pom. Everything’s like business. No games, you know. 

They don’t say, Gee, how did the Yankees do last night? Oh, that was a wonderful. They don’t care. They don’t care about anything. I said, You ever go to a Broadway play? I’ll take you to one. Do you ever have plays like do you ever go.. No, I don’t know. 

He’s all this is business. These aren’t game players, right? I like it, you know, in a way, I like it. You have no life. But that’s what he likes.”

Carlson: “Yeah.”

Trump: “Top of the line. Smart. Top of the line. When they came in, it was supposed to be a meeting that lasted exactly 15 minutes. . So we go to breakout sessions with all they had. Like 40 people. We had 40 people, you know, the comparables. Right? And we’re sitting across the table from each other in the ballroom of Mar a Lago. 

It was an amazing scene, but our meeting was supposed to take 15 minutes. It took 4 hours. We got along so well. 

People ask how smart is Kim Jong Un? Kim Jong Un is smart too. You know, when you come out and as a young man at 24, 23, even though he sort of inherits it, most people when they inherit, they lose it. And that’s easy stuff. He took over a country, a very smart people, very, very energetic people, very tough people at a very young age. And he has total dominate control. That’s not easy. 

These are these are very smart. Putin, very smart. Now, he’s had in and probably a bad year. If he took over all of Ukraine and what are we going to do because Biden is so committed to Ukraine. What happens if it’s a not winnable war? You know, there are people that say Ukraine cannot win. You can’t beat Russia. Russia right now, I’m not saying anything out of school. I read it in one of our newspapers. So, you know, it’s probably fake news, but maybe not. I don’t think it is. 

Russia right now is making massive amounts of ammunition. Sounds simple, right? But they’re making massive beyond anything they’ve ever made before. We don’t have any ammunition. We’ve given it to Ukraine. We’re not we’re not prepared to fight. I rebuilt our military, new planes, new tanks, new everything. They’ve taken, the military that I’ve rebuilt, and they’ve given it all to Ukraine. I mean, massive amounts.”

If you want to understand the depth of disorganization of the way Trump's mind functions read the transcript. I suspect most of you glossed over it. Even if you did read it, read it again even though it may be painful. 

What is in this man's head? Is there no filter between his brain and his mouth? Does he think he's a history teacher analyzing the intelligence of despotic leaders? Who will be discussed in his next class? Probably Hitler, Stalin, and Mao...

Does he think his audience, even his Fox News audience, have favorable opinions of the most prominent dictators making the news today?

Is this just another example of Trump strategically trying to own the Libs or is it a manifestation of his deteriorating mental condition?

We can only speculate as to the answers to these questions.

What jumped out at me was the line in my title and shown in TV screen photo I used for my illustration. What Trump shares with Kim that he doesn't share with Putin and Xi is that they both inherited their positions from their fathers. Kim Jong-un is the third son of Kim Jong-il, who  was the country's second Supreme Leader from 1994 to 2011. He is a grandson of Kim Il-sung, who was the founder and first Supreme Leader of North Korea from it's establishment it's in 1948 until he died in 1994. (Wikipedia)

Donald John Trump was the son of the man pictured below. Go figure... I didn't know what his middle name was until I searched for a photo.

His middle name was probably pronounced Krist rather than Christ as in Jesus Christ. It was his mother's surname:

Not to get off on a tangent (loath that I would ever do that for the sake of being snarky) but perhaps the former president was given his middle name after John the Baptist.

Related: This demonstrates how disorganized Trump's thinking is from the Carlson interview:

 

Living in a country where 25% like, love, or worship Donald Trump

 By Hal Brown, MSW

This was on Morning Joe:

 

Click above to enlarge

Mika Brzezinski said of Trump, "Republican senators want him to stay away from the races in 2024 following losses by his hand-picked candidates during the last cycle. If his legal issues don't take him off the ballot, maybe his poll numbers will; a new survey shows he is losing support rapidly, dropping like a rock."

Willie Geist said "25 percent -- you're dipping into being a fringe political candidate. 25 percent is a terrible number if you're trying to win a general election again."

It is gratifying to see that Trump's most recent poll ratings have shown his favorability ratings have dropped to 25%.  The pundits on "Morning Joe" are saying this means his chances of winning a general election are slim. 

Still, living in a country where one quarter of the population like, love, or worship Donald Trump is dismaying. If you're reading this, with the exception on a few pro-Trumpers who like to troll the comments section of my blogs, you may be troubled that if you go into a restaurant where the diners are representative of the sentiments of the country and there are four tables around you one of them will be occupied by people who may want to have you deported or worse.

It doesn't matter to me that some of these people are ill-informed (i.e. low information voters), have lower than average IQ's, are gullible, may be clinically paranoid, and/or have been unable to or not inclined to master critical thinking skills. They may have been brainwashed. They may have had unmet needs met by affiliation and acceptance by a group of like-minded Trump supporters. 

They may revel in being MAGA or now ULTRA-MAGA. Perhaps they felt like outsiders previously and now they feel like insiders.

They wear the symbols and fly the flags proudly. Some of them, after years without a social identity, may find they finally feel they belong.

As much as I may understand what motivates these people what matters to me is that if you add all these people together they support a man who if he became president again would turn the county into a near-dictatorship. It would be an authoritarian state where only the favored minority of white citizens would enjoy living in America, so beautiful for halcyon skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the enameled plain where good people are crowned with brotherhood. You know, the country described here.

I supposed this all depends on what it means to say someone is a good person. There are those among the 25% who consider themselves to be good despite that some of them condone violence against us. These people may think I am a bad and not worthy of being an American. Very possibly they also think you're an unworthy bad person as well.

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

Thanks for reading. Scroll down to make comments and share on social media. The archives and tags are on the bottom. 

A tale of two judges: who deserves the title of Judge Dreadful

 By Hal Brown

Has anybody wondered whether Clarence Thomas is jealous of a hitherto before obscure federal judge in Texas? The Supreme Court justice known for being reticent to say much of anything during litigation has rarely given interviews. This isn't to say he doesn't enjoy publicity. He has managed to elevate himself to being the most well-known Supreme Court justice.

The notion that he wants to avoid publicity is belied by the fact that he hasn't reined in his wife whose activities have shined a bright light on him. 

I believe he loves the spotlight. I think he is so arrogant that he doesn't care whether there are dark shadows around the spotlight. For Clarence, at least until now, all publicity is good publicity. While liberals demonize him he has become a hero to the far right significantly because he is the object of intense progressive scorn.

The current so-called scandal won't hurt Clarence's reputation with those who admire him. After all, these are the same people who worship at the foot of their golden idol Donald Trump and in their weird "Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous" manner they enjoy observing the opulent life he leads. 

Now along comes this upstart judge with a name most people would be hard pressed to spell.

How dare he hog the headlines?

Meanwhile, another judge few people outside of the state of Washington, Thomas O. Rice (left), has earned a laurel wreath for both smarts and heroism for making a conflicting ruling, thus making it quite likely that the case will fast-track to the Supreme Court. Ironically, once in the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas will be faced with either going along with Judge Kacsmaryk or contradicting his ruling.

Addendum:

For those who, like me, only knew the name Judge Dredd, this is from Wikipedia:

Judge Joseph Dredd is a fictional character created by writer John Wagnerand artist Carlos Ezquerra. He first appeared in the second issue of 2000 AD(1977), which is a British weekly anthology comic. He is the magazine's longest-running character. He also appears in a number of film and video game adaptations.

Judge Dredd is a law enforcement and judicial officer in the dystopian future city of Mega-City One, which covers most of the east coast of North America. He is a "street judge", empowered to summarily arrest, convict, sentence, and execute criminals.

In Great Britain, the character of Dredd and his name are sometimes invoked in discussions of police states, authoritarianism, and the rule of law.^[2] Over the years, Judge Dredd has been hailed as one of the best satires of American and British culture with an uncanny trend to predict upcoming trends and events such as mass surveillance, the rise of populist leaders, and the COVID-19 pandemic.^[3] In 2011, IGN ranked Judge Dredd 35th among the top 100 comic book heroes of all time.^[4]

Judge Dredd made his live-action debut in 1995 in Judge Dredd, portrayed by Sylvester Stallone. Later, he was portrayed by Karl Urban in the 2012 adaptation Dredd. In audio dramas by Big Finish Productions, Dredd is voiced by Toby Longworth.

Thanks for reading. Scroll down to make comments and share on social media. The archives and tags are on the bottom.