Thusday night, the Situation Room simulation, by Hal Brown, MSW

 

Click to enlarge image.

Trump has been relentlessly trying to make excuses for Biden performing well as the Thursday night debate appoaches, for example suggesting he take a drug test to see if a good performance could be due to his taking performance enhancing drugs or even resting up in a log cabin prior to the debate. He was referring to Camp David where like the young Abraham Lincoln people live in log cabins. This was an odd reminder from Trump who compares himself to Lincoln.

If Trump is preparing for the debates at all it has to be in between rallies where he makes joking threats about "the ovens" to Jewish people, fantasizing about setting "up a migrant league of fighters," swerving into his sharks and electic boats story, and reminiscing about the "late, great Hannibal Lecter" and asking his audience which Trump they'd like to see in the debate, the one where he calls Biden the worst president ever or being calm and collected.

There are two basic kinds of vitally important decisions presidents must make. One are those that allow for carefull consideration and consultation over a period of days or weeks. The others are driven by sudden events which, although hopefully not coming out of the blue, aspects of, or the timing of which, may be unanticipated. These are events that lead the president and top officials to meet in the White House Situation rooms. 

These don't have to be rapidly developing international crises. The West Coast could finally have the predicted devasting earthquake called "The Big One" or there could be a an incident of homegrown terrorism where dozens are killed.

The most well known photo of a real meeting in the Situation Room (really the room adjacent to it) is, of course, the raid which resulted in Navy SEAL Team Six killing Osama bin Laden. Trump has to hate this photo and the story that goes with it..

While this raid took place at 1:00 AM in Pakistan and this was watched at 4 PM in Washington it could very well have been in the wee hours of the morning here if if was in another part of the world.

American voters must consider who they trust to be president if, for example, Russia used a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. They could decimate Keiv with such a weapon. They might time this to occur very late at night here, or coincide with the president being in Air Force One in the middle of the night on an overeas flight, where there is an airbourne version of the Situation Room. 

With radioactive fallout drifting into one or more NATO countries and Ukraine having basically lost the war Trump could decide to do nothing, or he could launch a massive nuclear retaliation depending on his state of mind at the time. Biden likely would already have a plan in place for this and similar eventualities and defintely not make a decision based on his mood.

Thanks to his posts on Truth Social, and previously on Twitter, we know what Trump's state of mind is when he's rage tweeting when most of us are sound asleep. We also have seen how in the recent year or two these posts have become more and more unhinged.

The closest we will come to seeing how Trump functions under pressure at 1:00 AM is the debate which will be between 9-10:30 PM. Ideally I'd like to see him debate Biden at one in the morning after both of them were surprised and taken to the debate stage, but of course that won't happen.

If it did Trump would have the edge in alertness since he'd probably already be awake and Biden would, like most people, be a bit groggy and have to get the cobwebs out. 

I've written before that if Trump has early dementia he will be sundowning during the debate. However, even if he doesn't have dementia we will see him in a time period he isn't used to public speaking except for having interviews with Trump friendly media hosts.

Biden, of course, did well in his prime time State of the Union Address but this was rehearsed and not a debate.

I'd watch the debate even if was live at 1:00 AM although for me being in Oregon it would only be 10 PM, still past my usual bedtime, but that's what naps are for. I'd like to see both candidates functioning as if they were dealing with a crisis at 1:00 AM.

You can read this and previous blogs on two websites. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.

Read on the WordPress Stressline.org

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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.

You can read this and previous blogs on two websites. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.

Read on the WordPress Stressline.org

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Read on the Google Blogger platform HalBrown.org This version has a Disquis comment section which makes it easy to post links and images.

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.

You can read this and previous blogs on two websites. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.

Read on the WordPress Stressline.org

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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.

You can read this and previous blogs on two websites. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.

Read on the WordPress Stressline.org

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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:

You can read this and previous blogs on two websites. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.

Read on the WordPress Stressline.org

or….

Read on the Google Blogger platform HalBrown.org This version has a Disquis comment section which makes it easy to post links and images.