August 28, 2022

Some reflections on politics and being banned from Daily Kos

Readers: Please check the sidebar to see numerous other stories. They have many photo essays from trips around Portland, Oregon documenting beautiful scenery and reviewing many unique restaurants many of which are off the beaten path. You can click any photo to enlarge it. Unfortunately the sidebar has no easy reference titles to you have to click more or less at random to see the stories. Here's my "about me" May 2018 biographical page.

 I'm taking some time off from posting on Daily Kos so I plan to write some of my thoughts about politics here and also post them on my public Facebook page. For a long period I didn't post any political stories on this blog.

Today's featured story from the web (with my image) 

Trump Tries Mobster-In-Chief Role With Attacks On Law Enforcement - HUFFPOST

The ex-president is ready to "burn down the republic" if need be to stop prosecutors from going after him, according to a former GOP congressman.

Excerpt:

America can have peace and tranquility. Or it can have a criminal prosecution of Donald Trump. It cannot have both.

Presenting this mob-like ultimatum appears to have become the former president’s strategy as the FBI and the Department of Justice close in on Trump’s possession of and refusal to return top secret documents he took with him to his Florida social club when he left the White House following his failed coup attempt.

“Nice store you got here. Be a shame if something happened to it,” said Glenn Kirschner, a federal prosecutor who spend more than two decades in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., comparing it to “protection rackets” used by organized crime. “Nice country you got here. Be a shame if a civil war destroyed it.”

In near daily statements on his social media platform, in fundraising emails and in interviews, Trump has called law enforcement officials corrupt, illegitimate and reminiscent of Soviet Russia as he demands that prosecutors drop their investigations.

Even more ominously, Trump, via his legal team, delivered a message to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Aug. 11, three days after the search of his Mar-a-Lago residence, that might have been lifted from the film “The Untouchables”:

The HuffPost top story:







Click image to go to Facebook. I think you need to be a member to read it.




I got banned from posting anything on Daily Kos for a week. It came out for something I put in the above story. I can't post a story nor can I post comments to any story for a week. This is because I put a link to a misogynist phrase (b---h on wheels - what was I thinking? I wonder if I called her a harridan if I would have been banned) noting that it was sexist in the story. You can read the story and see what you think.

This is what got me banned:

The mother of seven is married to Jesse M. Barrett, an attorney. I don’t know anything about her home life but I rather doubt she assumes the handmaiden role with her husband at home. I don’t want to be sexist here but I have a feeling she can fit this definition at times.


They are really scrupulous if they found this on their own (hard to believe as it means they have people reading every story) or a regular reader flagged me, or they have a sophisticated algorithm that follows links which is possible.
The is no appealing such bans. They also keep the story on the website despite objecting to something which is in it.
Coincidentally I really messed up with the original story because I based it on a satire which I was fooled by. Commenters pointed thus out. Fortunately I had a chance to put an explanation on the story before I was banned from posting.

So what would I be thinking of writing about this morning if I could post there? I always attempt to write from an original perspective or on a subject few if any others are writing about.

There's the bass drumbeat, the thump, thump, thump of Trump, Trump, Trump and as I listened to pundits on MSNBC and read the columns in The New York Times and The Washington Post (WaPo) as well as progressive websites which publish opinion like Salon I find numerous good article offering an original slant. I also find clever satire by the Dana Milbank and Alexandra Petri on WaPo.

I laughed out loud at Milbank's OpEd:
 

Herschel Walker’s anti-tree campaign is genius

It is time for us to harden our hearts against the hardwoods, and we shouldn’t go soft on the softwoods, either. Of course, that’s easy for me to say given my profession’s tree-killing heritage; we in the newspaper business still coldly refer to the print paper as the “dead-tree edition.” But trees have been a green, leafy menace for humans ever since Adam and Eve ate forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.

George Washington may not have chopped down the cherry tree, but he should have: Japanese cherry blossoms now cause massive traffic jams in the capital every spring. True, an apple falling from a tree tipped Isaac Newton off to gravity, but it just as easily could have concussed him.

Cats get stuck in trees. Tree branches knock out our power lines. Those forest fires devastating the West? Wouldn’t happen if we didn’t have trees. And, without trees, we wouldn’t have to rake the forest anymore, the way they do in Finland.

 Alexandra Petri wrote:

We are training, but there is no sign yet of my AR-15. Instead, we watched a long PowerPoint about keeping people’s data private and how to use the computer system. It was very frustrating because it contained over 85 slides, and each slide I thought to myself, “This will be the one with the AR-15 and glorious battle plan,” and then it was just about how to remove staples and then add them back later, and this happened 85 times. I asked when we would get to torment the middle class with audits, but Gregory Dunbar (who will sit next to me) said that there is nothing in our mission about that and actually having discretion to audit people who don’t report above $400,000 in income is good because otherwise tax cheats would just all report $399,999, which had not occurred to me. All the computers here are very old and there are big piles of paper everywhere.

Training is ended, they say. Still no AR-15. I tried to ask, but people kept saying, “You mean a Form 1015?” Instead, I am seated at a desk, where I have to manually enter data from tax forms into a very, very old computer. The last person who occupied this desk was somebody named Phyllis, and there is a card wishing her a happy retirement left behind on the desk and a drawing by her grandson taped to the monitor. I do not see the swelling ranks of an 87,000-person army. I asked where the others were and Gregory said, “What others?” I hope they give me my weapon and my mission soon. I told Gregory that and he laughed. After lunch, he gave me a rubber hat to put on my finger to protect it from paper cuts. “There,” he said, “now you are properly armed for your task.” It does really help, though.

With creative satirists like this it is difficult for me to come up with ideas that come close to their's in originality, let alone be able to write as well as they do.

Here are some of the recent stories I posted on Daily Kos. You can see approximately how many people read them in the column with the left curved arrow which shows the umber of comments. Note the story about Pabst had 226 comments. This suggests readers liked y story but in fact none of the comments had to do with the point of my story. They alll had t do with debating beer.

The stars indicated how many people recommended a story. As you look down the list you can see which stories had the most readers and see that it is is mixed bag as to the topics that interest reader of this very popular progressive website.

Other recent stories below. All 1,400 plus of my Kos stories here.


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August 27, 2022

Donald Trump Jr's redact this Instagram post, my version

 

Don Jr. Posts 'Dick Pic' Of Dad After Affidavit Release: 'Redact This!'

"Hang in there, Mr. President," goofs one die-hard fan.


Here's the version I made....

\'

In the interest of transparency 

This is based on Stormy Daniels description which has led the name Mario Kart to trend on Sept. 18, 2018:

You Don't Want To Know The Trump-Themed Reason Why 'Mario Kart' Is Trending

"I was *very* excited to see Mario Kart trending on Twitter until I found out why."

 

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August 26, 2022

Rare 1960's Ultra Van seen at Gladstone DMV

 I saw this unusual RV at the Gladstone, Oregon DMV today so I took some photos. When the owner came out from inside of it I even had a chance to talk to him. He was at the DMV to get license plates. 

He told me they were made in the 1960's and only about 375 were manufactured by Corvair.  (Remember the book about Corvair "Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader?)

Here are my photos (click to enlarge):






It turns out that there is a club for owners of this rare vehicle (their website is here)







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August 25, 2022

Bathroom art from Ranee's in Oregon City and more toilets

My 1,400 plus political stories are here.

Click in the sidebar to see photo essays of numerous car trips finding unique restaurants and beautiful scenery around Portland.

Bathroom art from Ranee's  in Oregon City and a few other toilet photos. Click images to enlarge. 









I don't remember where these are from:



This was from a trip to Scotland where they take the cleanliness of their public bathrooms very seriously.
This one warns against throwing gum in urinals

Next to a beer keg




No doubt a coveted award

Gaston, Oregon across from The Scream'n Chicken 
and One Horse Cafe


I may be the only person looking at these who once owned outhouses and porta-potties.

When we took over my late wife's parents cranberry bogs there were several 50+ year old outhouses on the property. They were on stilts and the poop just fell onto the open ground. Since we had a backhoe and excavator which the older generations didn't have we dug a deep hole and had our guys build a pretty good looking double seater over it. Then eventually got modern and rented a real porta-potty. Here it is in the snow.




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August 16, 2022

Article about Trump's legal troubles

 In yesterday’s diary “Psychopathology: "It's almost as if Trump wanted this drama and showdown" says GOP Never-Trumper” I used the subtitle 

More about the psychopathology of Donald Trump

AND HOW IT MAY INFLUENCE HIS BEHAVIOR

For the subtitle of this diary I am adding a crucial word:

More about the psychopathology of Donald Trump

AND HOW IT MAY INFLUENCE and Predict HIS BEHAVIOR

In the Monday diary, like I have done in others, I tried to explain how Trump behavior is not always rational, how it is driven by his psychopathology. Focusing on the documents he took to Mar-a-Lago I suggested that the reasons might have had more to do with his psychopathology than his having a planned nefarious agenda.

This morning I came across the following:

According to Trump biographer Tim O'Brien, there are three likely reasons Trump wanted to keep the classified information to himself:

  1. The first reason, O'Brien said, could simply be due to Trump's immature need to hold on to the exclusivity and privileged nature of the presidency he now no longer holds.
  2. The "unfettered greed has motivated Trump his entire life,” ie “money, money, money.”
  3. “Trump could (have been) trying to salvage his reputation.’

Reference

Note that the first reason suggested is an aspect of Trump’s psychopathology.

Readers didn’t appear to agree with me in my poll from yesterday. A significant majority of the 1000 plus people who responded to the poll leaned towards believing Trump’s reasons were nefarious. I think Kossacks have a tendency to want to demonize Trump and some want to see him purely as evil or dismiss his psychopathology as not particular relevant; but I see now that my poll was poorly worded because the choices aren’t mutually exclusive and in fact are interrelated.

Screenshot2022-08-16at6.53.26AM.png​

Enlarge image of poll above.

The illustration I made for today’s diary shows the elements of The Dark Triad. The following is from Wikipedia

The dark triad is a psychological theory of personality, first published by Delroy L. Paulhus and Kevin M. Williams in 2002,[1] that describes three notably offensive, but non-pathological personality types: Machiavellianism, sub-clinical narcissistic personality disorder (narcissism), and sub-clinical anti-social personality disorder (psychopathy).[2][3][4][5] Each of these personality types are called dark because each is considered to contain malevolent qualities.[2][6][7][8]

All three dark triad traits are conceptually distinct although empirical evidence shows them to be overlapping. They are associated with a callous–manipulative interpersonal style.[9]

High scores in these traits have been found to statistically increase a person's likelihood to commit crimes, cause social distress, and create severe problems for organizations, especially if they are in leadership positions.[14]They also tend to be less compassionate, agreeable, empathetic, satisfied with their lives, and less likely to believe they and others are good.[15]

A factor analysis found that among the big five personality traits, low agreeableness is the strongest correlate of the dark triad, while neuroticism and a lack of conscientiousness were associated with some of the dark triad members.[11] Agreeableness and the dark triad show correlated change over development.[16]

Three years ago I wrote Therapists warning about Trump's dangerous personality should explain the Dark Triad. It now can be read as prescient but It shouldn’t have taken a weatherman (or experienced psychotherapist) to tell the way the Trump wind was blowing. The warnings were there as laid out in the best seller “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” edited by Bandy Lee, MD (review) and coming from Dr. John Gartner first in his Duty to Warn movement (see Twitter) and later in his documentary #UNFIT (review).

You can see that there is a strong similarity between malignant narcissism which many mental health professionals (myself included) says describes Trump’s psychopathology.  Malignant narcissism is “the psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism.[1] Grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines families and organizations in which they are involved, and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate” Wikipedia entry and The Dark Triad.

Why is it important to understand the personality of Donald Trump at more than a cursory level?

 The answer is in the subtitle to this diary: because it will help to predict his behaviors. I doubt anyone reading this will be engaged in building a legal case against but it is vital they understand his psychopathology to predict the way he will try to extricate himself from the consequences of his law-breaking.

Those building a case against Trump that will prevail in actual court and the court of public opinion have to have a laser-like focus on proving how he broke the law. Determining what his motivations were seem to me as a non-lawyer to be of secondary importance having to do with the consciousness of wrongdoing or mens rea, the later a term you may have heard lawyers discussing on MSNBC.


It is said to be a universal rule that an injury can amount to acrime only when inflicted by intention - that conduct cannot be criminal unless it is shown that one charged with criminal conduct had an awareness or consciousness of some wrongdoing.

It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that ordinarily aperson cannot be convicted of a crime unless that person acts with acertain level of intent.2 This intent requirement is frequently referred to as mens rea. Reference

My point in this and previous diaries about Trump’s psychopathology is summed up in a reference I often post from Sun Tzu in his classic “The Art of War” where he notes that the best way to defeat an enemy is to know him as well as you know yourself:

It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle. Here’s an explanation of what he meant.

Back to our current enemy. To defeat him of course prosecutors) must know themselves, i.e. the strengths and weakness of their cases, but they also must know him and be able to predict his maneuvers. His psychopathology informs them (and us) that he won’t always be rational and sometimes may employ tactics, even have an overall strategy what will  be self-defeating, that could lead to his downfall. One of the primary ones is his narcissism and the belief he is untouchable, something demonstrated in is remark about getting away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. I wrote about this a few days ago in Trump is both the scorpion and the frog: He is in a five front war and one is against himself:

Excerpt: You can see his psychopathology play out in his latest attempt to escape culpability for taking classified documents to Mar a Lago, that he could legally do this because he declassified them apparently in some exercise of presidential prestidigitation and megalomaniacal magic.

This is just another version of “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" 

Prosecutors should understand that Trump probably believes what Nixon expressed and that what with the third rate lawyers he’ll end up won’t try to convince him against using: he might very well try to use this as a defense not because it is a good defense but because of his psychopathology.

x
x


Nixon didn’t go to jail because President Ford pardoned him. Trump might not be so lucky.


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