Steve Bannon may know that there is a huge risk that Trump will go off the rails in the debate and is looking for any excuse, no matter how far fetched, for him to back out. By Hal Brown, MSW

 

This was revealed in this RawStory article today 'They cut off my microphone': Trump spokesperson runs to Steve Bannon after CNN cuts her.

The article begins

Karoline Leavitt, the national spokesperson for the Trump 2024 campaign, showed up on Steve Bannon's War Room program Monday just hours after CNN abruptly ended her interview for insulting the network's debate moderators.

"And why are we in Atlanta, ma'am, with CNN, who controls the microphone on Thursday?" Bannon asked about the upcoming debate.

It concludes with Bannon's suggestion:

"CNN owes you an apology today," Bannon told Leavitt. "And if we don't get that apology to Karoline Leavitt and to the Trump campaign and to MAGA today, President Trump should cancel this."

Here's another article about the incident: 'Pathetic!' MAGA reacts with fury to CNN's cutting off Trump spokesperson's angry rant.

Considering that there's no way CNN is going to issue an apology for one of their hosts refusing to allow a guest to attack Jake Tapper, a CNN host who will be one of the moderators for the first debate, if Trump wants to heed Bannon's advice he has a reason to back out of the debate.

Bannon may have seen Trump at his worst, perhaps in the evening when he is sundowning with dementia. If so he knows that there is a huge risk that his cognitive problems will be so evident during the debate that they will be extremely difficult to convince Trump leaning but still undecided voters that the shark-electric boat type references and even more recently his going off on a rambling incoherent tangent about hair washing (see  'Off his rocker': Morning Joe mocks Trump rant that was so 'crazy' Fox News cut away) are just Trump being Trump. Is Trump play acting the joker and the buffoon spewing disconnected often self-agrandizing stories like "my uncle was a genuis at MIT and I've got his genes" or can't he help himself? 

If he can't help himself this is a strong indication he suffers from early dementia. He doesn't consciously know he's suffering from this debilitating irreversible disorder, but at some level may sense it which is why he attacks President Biden for being senile.

This is from Morning Joe:

National affairs analyst John Heilemann brought up a speech from last weekend, when Trump babbled about electric boat batteries and shark attacks.

"When Fox News thinks there is too much lather going on with Donald Trump and they are, like, too much lather, he likes to lather, a lot of lather," Heilemnann said. "That is how you know that he has jumped – you mentioned sharks there, I think I heard you. I don't think he talked about sharks in this event, but he has metaphorically jumped the shark."

Even if Bannon hasn't been with Trump in recent days it's likely he has seen his rallies. If he doesn't know anything about sundowning in dementia he may have concluded that the rules for the debate will not work to Trump's advantage, and in fact, may make him more likely to go off the rails like a train on a broken bridge which plunges into a river of no return.

Watch the Lone Ranger video these photos are from.

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Ten Commandments touting Trump given nickname by HuffPost: Dengenerate Don, and this glove fits. By Hal Brown, MSW

 

The article (link here) doesn't include the word "degenerate" presumably because the editors thought the choice of the word didn't need an explanation.

This article from Politico Magazine reminds us why the term degenetrate is appropriate. Of course I added Moses below:

Excerpts:

[Trump’s lawyers] wanted to say the other day that it was “he said, she said.” It wasn’t “he said, she said.” It was “he said” versus “she said, she said, she said, she said.” So there has been an enormous outcry of appreciation from mostly women for what E. Jean has done.

The Politico article is mostly about legal aspects of the case, but here are more excerpts which show what a degenerate Trump is:

It was very hard for her to use the word “rape.” It was very hard for her to acknowledge that she’d been hurt by it. And it was really during the case itself — like somewhere in her head — she knew that she’d been unable to date any man since what happened, but she had a really hard time acknowledging the link.

And just so people understand: The reason for the link is — and this is a classic response to trauma — she believed that she was at fault for when she ran into Trump at the store for kind of having this jocular, kind of flirty conversation together, which they were, for sure, until he pushed her into the dressing room. And she blamed herself and thought that was a stupid thing to do. And as a result, since the assault, she had been unable to flirt with a man who was eligible because that had gotten her into such trouble.

And then, of course, there's this:

Gov. Jeff Landry gave a gift to Donald Trump. Now Trump can run as The Ten Commandment in the schools choice and the candidate of a new main man, Moses, another version of being the chosen candidate of God and Jesus. Perhaps he'd think this could prompt more Jews to vote for him.

AI Generated

Perhaps Landry wants to be the last minute choice to run as his vice president. It took a New York minute for Trump to jump on the 10 Commandments in schools bandwagon. 

I can see the impulsive Trump deciding to surprise everyone, almost everyone since I wouldn't be surprise, to chose Landry to run as his vice presidential running mate. After all, he has become a national star of the Evangelicals almost overnight. He has demonstrated Trumpian in-you-face audacity.

This story is all over the news. For example on MSNBC this morning:

Trump is now saying how wonderful the 10 Commandments are and how much he believes in them. I very much doubt that he could discuss in any depth how the actual commandments enumerated in the Bible are relevant to living an ethical and moral life today. Consider this description of the 10 Commandments from observing the sabbath to not stealing, to not committing adultry to not coveting your neighbors wife or servant: 

It would be a frigid day in Hell that Trump would be able to cricically analyze the 10 Commandments the way this website does.

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The 10 Commandments in schools, by Hal Brown, MSW

Above is a tweet from someone who no longer has an account on X.

Here's the governor of Louisiana justifying manadating the display of the 10 Commandments in his state's schools:

Here are a few of the relpies to Aaron Rupar's tweets:

Jeff Landry is casting himself as God's messenger, the Judeo-Christain God of course (no doubt not wanting to emphasize the "Judeo" part of this too much.

It's possible that Landry thought that Satan wrote the First Amendment to keep God out of the classroom:

AI generated image with hotpot.ai

Wikipedia has a long list of alternatives to the 10 Commandments here.

Geroge Carlin's is personal and snarky:

In his twelfth HBO stand-up comedy special Complaints and Grievances, Carlin reduces the Ten Commandments to three:^[6]

1. Thou shalt always be honest and faithful, especially to the provider of thy nookie.
2. Thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone – unless, of course, they pray to a different invisible man from the one you pray to.
3. Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.

The rest of them are serious. Here are some examples:

Richard Dawkins is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and author. These are the alternative to the Ten Commandments written by blogger Adam Lee,^[9] [10] cited by Dawkins in his book The God Delusion:^[11]

1. Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.
2. In all things, strive to cause no harm.
3. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.
4. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.
5. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.
6. Always seek to be learning something new.
7. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.
8. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.
9. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.
10. Question everything.

Dawkins uses these proposed commandments to make a larger point that "it is the sort of list that any ordinary, decent person today would come up with". He then adds four more of his own devising:

• Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else) and leave others to enjoy theirs in private whatever their inclinations, which are none of your business.
• Do not discriminate or oppress on the basis of sex, race or (as far as possible) species.
• Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.
• Value the future on a timescale longer than your own.

Christopher Hitchens was an English American author, columnist, essayist, orator, religious and literary critic, social critic, and journalist. 

His new Ten Commandments are:^[12][13]

1. Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or their color.
2. Do not ever even think of using people as private property, or as owned, or as slaves.
3. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations.
4. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child.
5. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature — why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them?
6. Be aware that you, too, are an animal, and dependent on the web of nature. Try and think and act accordingly.
7. Do not imagine that you can escape judgement if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife.
8. Turn off that cell phone — you can have no idea how unimportant your call is to us.
9. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. And terrible sexual repressions.
10. Be willing to renounce any god or any faith if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above.

• In short: Don't swallow your moral code in tablet form.

The Atheists' New Ten Commandments (2015)

These are the ten winning beliefs of the Rethink Prize, a crowdsourcing competition to rethink the Ten Commandments. The contest drew more than 2,800 submissions from 18 countries and 27 U.S. states. Winners were selected by a panel of judges.^[16][17]

1. Be open-minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.
2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.
3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.
4. Every person has the right to control of their body.
5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.
6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognize that you must take responsibility for them.
7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you, and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.
8. We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations.
9. There is no one right way to live.
10. Leave the world a better place than you found it.

My partner, who is a yogi, suggested I add  these, the Yamas and Niyamas which are the 10 ethical codes of yoga.

The 5 Yamas followed by the 5 Niyamas are:

1. Kindness
2. Truthfulness
3. Non-stealing
4. Self-restraint
5. Non-coveting
6. Purity (or cleanliness)
7. Contentment
8. Austerity
9. Self-study
10. Surrender to a higher power

My own code would leave God or any divinity out and would add instead that one should not assume they always know all the answers. I don't think one has to surrender to a high power to lead an ethical and moral life. They should be able to take criticism and look unflinchingly at their own biases.

Instead of this attempt to indoctrinate students and, I suspect to, gain attention for himself, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry could have held a statewide contest for students to devise their own list of dos and don'ts for moral and ethical behavior.

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If The Daily Beast really was Satan's website as CPAC boss Matt Schlapp and his wife claimed I would defintely subscribe, by Hal Brown, MSW

 

I read this article in RawStory: Matt Schlapp taunts reporter over layoffs at his publication -- and it backfires instantly.

The part that got my attention follows:

Schlapp and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, have been on a crusade against The Daily Beast ever since it first broke news that a former staffer for failed GOP candidate Herschel Walker's campaign accused him of grabbing his crotch.

"The Daily Beast is Satan’s publication to persecute Christians and their families," Mercedes Schlapp declared at one point.

RawStory covered this in August of 2023: 'Satan's publication': Matt and Mercedes Schlapp flip out at The Daily Beast after more allegations emerge.

Excerpt:

Conservative power couple Matt and Mercedes Schlapp on Wednesday lashed out at The Daily Beast a day after the publication claimed that he offered to settle a lawsuit alleging that he committed sexual battery, despite the fact that he has flatly denied all such allegations.

"The Daily Beast is Satan’s publication to persecute Christians and their families," complained Mercedes Schlapp on Twitter.

Matt Schlapp himself then chimed in and responded, "Soon to start a weekend edition: the Saturday Satan."

Here's some background:

In addition to its recent scoop on Schlapp's purported offer to settle a sexual battery lawsuit, The Daily Beast also first broke the news that Carlton Huffman, a staffer for failed Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker's campaign had accused the American Conservative Union chief of grabbing his crotch in the fall of 2022.

Huffman is also not the only person lobbing such allegations against the 55-year-old Schlapp, as the Washington Post reported over the weekend that other sexual misconduct allegations have been leveled against him by two other men who are significantly younger than he is.

"In one incident, a staffer said Schlapp attempted to kiss him while drinking late after a work function in 2017," the Post reported. "In another incident, Schlapp allegedly made unwanted physical advances on someone else’s employee during a CPAC business trip in Palm Beach, Fla., in early 2022."

I have so many subscriptions (including, of course RawStory+) that I've been reluctant to subscribe to Daily Beast (and I appreciate RS summarizing their subscriber only articles)... this could tempt me to subscribe.

This is the original tweet from Mrs. Schlapp:

More replies to her tweet:

If Satan did have a website The Daily Beast would be the perfect name for it. Assuming, as many Evangelical Christian's believe, Satan (aka "The Beast") did exist it I wouldn't miss reading his Magnificant Malevolence's morning musings

Chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation states, “Let the one with understanding reckon the meaning of the number of the Beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.”

He might want to change the font in the logo:

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There are lot more important issues today to write about than anything about Maria Bartiromo, but I couldn't resist her latest loaf lunacy, by Hal Brown, MSW

In early June Maria Bartiromo pushed a debunked theory about juror's 'cousin' in Trump trial and yesterday she claimed that a loaf of bread costs $13 under President Biden (read story). 

Excerpt:

In a Thursday Fox News segment about the economy, host Sandra Smith noted that officials in Biden's White House had pointed to improving economic conditions.

"So we've seen this even though the White House keeps touting, you know, economic improvement in economic policies that are working for Americans, the polls still show people are not happy," Smith said.

"You're right," Bartiromo agreed. "And you know why, Sandra? I think it's because the kitchen table issue of everything's too expensive, and that's really what keeps getting in the way."

"In the last few years, real wages have gone down, and inflation has gone up. We're talking about up 20% or so on Joe Biden's watch," she continued. "As someone told me the other day, they spent $13 on a loaf of bread; I thought, what?"

My favorite bread is Jewish seeded rye bread. I have fond memories of my mother taking my sister and I to a local bakery where she'd buy two loaves of fresh-from-the-oven sliced rye bread. Just the aroma of the freshly baked bread had our mouths watering by the time we got to the car. The crust was crisp and the inside melted in your mouth. By the time we got home my sister and I would have almost finished eating one of the loaves. 

You can buy a loaf of gourmet rye bread for $13 or more. I have been tempted to treat myself to the breads shown below just to see if they are worth the price.

As anyone who actually shops knows, a loaf of bread costs between $1.50 and five or six dollars for gourmet breads. 

Still, it is very possible someone did tell Bartiromo that they'd bought a $13 loaf of bread though it is quite possible that they weren't lamenting the high price of groceries. If I decided to spring for a $13 loaf of rye bread I would be telling my friends about it and letting them know if I thought it was worth the price.

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