This has been a blog with my opinions on politics, psychology, and pop culture using the Google Blogger platform with the address halbrown.org. As of Oct. 10, 2023 it has been renamed Hal Brown's Stressline and moved to the WordPress platform with the new address Stressline.org - Posts are sometimes serious and sometimes snarky.
... it occurred to me that taken to the extreme if a pregnant woman murders someone and is apprehended the prosecutors have some serious considerations in moving forward. In fact, they may have to let her stay home, perhaps under house arrest, until she gives birth. There are even problems with that which I address below.
On the very most basic level if the fetus is a legally consider to be a person from the moment of conception or on any legally defined post-conception time it cannot be incarcerated.
The woman of course could, and would, even prior to trial if the charge was murder, if she wasn't carrying the fetus inside of her. This would be no different from jailing a single-parent mother along with her toddler because nobody else had custody. The state would take custody of the child and determine where he or she went.
If a collection of cells inside of a woman's uterus is a person, whether an embryo in the earliest post-fertilization stage of development or at anytime later in pregnancy, is a person that just happens not to have been born yet forget the question about the legality of a woman driving in a carpool lane.
There's no case that can be made that it is legal, let alone constitutional, to deprive that pre-born person of its freedom by incarcerating them.
Taking this logic to an extreme, even an arrest is a deprivation of freedom so it would be unconstitutional to arrest a woman who was carrying an unborn person. If a police officer did this it would be a false arrest and I could see lawsuits as a result. It would could make an even more compelling case if the unborn person was locked in the back of a police car or even worse taken to a holding cell in a police station.
Again consider what would happen to a woman suspected of a crime who was arrested while she was with her actually born, living, breathing, thinking, and feeling child. I think in most jurisdictions that child would go with a relative or social services would take temporary custody if the woman was to be deprived of her freedom.
Consider the question about ankle bracelet monitored house arrest to prevent a woman from fleeing to avoid prosecution and whether it would be an infringement of the constitutional right of the unborn child. Who speaks for the fetus who can't talk? Whose to say that the fetus doesn't want to take a walk, or for that matter, go to a country which we don't have an extradition treaty with.
Of course once the child is born unless the woman managed to get pregnant soon after giving birth she could be arrested, go to trail, and if convicted go to prison.
This explains why I believe Daily Kos banned me for life. This is a review of Daily Kos which I posted today on the site review website sitejabber. Since I was banned for my Sept. 7th story which they took off line before I could copy and republish it here I am devoting my blog just to politics. Perviously I could just put links to my Kos stories here and only put photo essays on about road trips to various beautiful and interesting places around Portland. You can find these essays in the Archive column on the right. If I go someplace new I will put a photo essay of that trip here.
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Ithought of writing this after hearing about a teacher who faces suspension in some backwater school district apparently inhabited by some people who would make Neanderthals look like geniuses.
Then there's this: a newly elected district attorney in Tennessee spoke openly about jailing teachers and librarians for spreading information he deems inappropriate. She now denies this a what she'd actually do. I wonder if they will be able to continue in their roles once they're in prison. After all it would be a benefit to the other inmates to have teacher and librarians, even though it would be a loss to the students who actually want to learn the truth about everything from American history to science.
Here are just a few unTrumpified truthy tidbits for the banning buttwipes to use to justify going after me. Maybe they can put me on a banned blogger list.
Abortion
A fetus doesn't experience feelings of pain until about 24 weeks of pregnancy:
Even when a developing fetus can sense a light touch, he doesn’t feel pain the way you do. That requires not only touch receptors, but also the necessary molecules and pathways in the brain to process a pain signal. The neural connections and the brain structures necessary to sense pain don’t develop until at least week 24 of pregnancy.
Simply having the physical structures in place still doesn’t mean a fetus can experience pain. The complex neural circuitry necessary to tell the difference between regular touch and painful touch doesn’t develop until the end of the third trimester. Reference
All of the arguments about life beginning at conception, let alone potential conception, are based on some religious beliefs and have nothing to do with physiology.
This is from Jewish law:
An unborn fetus in Jewish law is not considered a person (Heb. nefesh, lit. “soul”) until it has been born. The fetus is regarded as a part of the mother’s body and not a separate being until it begins to egress from the womb during parturition (childbirth). In fact, until forty days after conception, the fertilized egg is considered as “mere fluid.” These facts form the basis for the Jewish legal view on abortion. Biblical, ic, and rabbinic support for these statements will now be presented. Reference.
History (part of which is called Critical Race Theory or CRT which in fact is hardly theoretical).
Loath that students learn the truth about the history of racism in the United States! All the MAGA's railing against it being taught known damn well that if America had as many arms as the Hindu god Shiva at least one would have blood on its hand.
American history if honestly taught is fraught with not only bigotry but outright cruelty from the slavery days in the Old South to KKK lynchings.
What about modern times? While some politicians may make sure certain supporter wear t-shirts that say, oh for example this...
... we don't really know whether in their heart of, uh, hearts they really believe Whites are superior to Blacks.
And then we have ordinary people making the news in articles like
Does any objective person believe that some police officers have an implicit bias against Blacks (this Michigan State Trooper believes it) and may engage in racial profiling and on some occasions have cost innocent Black people their lives?
Add to how Black people were and are treated what was done to Native Americans and any group the majority White population whose ancestors came from certain countries, with the exception of, well, Jews, Irish, Italians, the list goes on, who they wanted to demonize or steal from and we don't have to do a deep dive into our history to document that our history has a decidedly dark side.
We can divided this into two truthy categories: Covid and climate change. The Trump lies about the former cost the country thousands of deaths according to this:
One can debate whether the philosophies and policies of normal conversative Republicans like Liz Cheney and perhaps Mitt Romney are better for democracy than those of moderate and progressive Democrats. What can't honestly be argued is that the current crop of Trump cultists especially promoters of the big lie, those who want to have the country turn hard-core fascist, those who want to destroy free and fair elections though gerrymandering and voter restrictions are benefiting democracy in the United States. Add to this, judges from the Supreme Court down to the lowest courts, who bend their decisions to fit the political goal they want to achieve. I am talking about the five judges who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and about you, Judge Cannon.
If these achieve their ultimate goals the democracy the Founders envisioned will cease to exist and we become no better, and in someways worse, than counties run by the strongmen Trump so admires.
Psychology
As someone who worked as a psychotherapist for 40 years and ran a community mental health center where I supervised dozens of other therapists and student interns I can address the subject of psychology with some expertise.
Moving to notable politicians we have a group of people who are either incredibly gullible or have a delusional disorder. Marjorie Taylor Greene seems to fit into this category. Some people think she's delusional, others think she's putting on an act.
As for ordinary people, we have an hitherto underestimated number of people who believe things, often called conspiracy theories, that fit on a continuum between highly unlikely to outlandishly ridiculous. Some proudly wave a QAnon flag and buy into all of that group's mishegas while others are are more selective in which things they believe.
Have I left anything out to dare the godless stinking discharge of MAGA effluent to try to ban this?
I suppose I'd be remiss if I didn't note that there is good evidence that the most ardent of Trump supporters can be consider to be members of a cult. This is discussed in this Lawrence O'Donnell interview with psychiatrist Lance Dodes:
Note that he points out that while low intelligence may make some people more susceptible to joining a cult, there are always members who have a fairly high IQ. The above nine minute interview is well worth watching. In it Dodes also calls Trump a dangerous criminal psychopath.
Don't forget you can scroll down to the bottom of any page to make comments. Also the most recent posts to my blog are listed in the archives in the right column.
Remember Ty Cobb, the lawyer in the Trump administration, not Ty Cobb the baseball great with the same name? Cobb, the one with facial hair, was became the second well known Trumper with a mustache who has turned on his boss. John Bolton of course is the other. His third mustache man is, of course, the pillow hugger.
“My personal view is that it’s less a character issue than a personality defect. I believe former President Trump to be a deeply wounded narcissist, and he is often incapable of acting other than in his perceived self-interest, or for revenge.”
It's about time Trump's psychopathology is making it into the mainstream.
I like the symbolism of Ty Cobb now sporting not only his mustache and beard but his long locks of straw colored hair. No Trump combover for him. He lets his hair flow over his shoulders as freely as he shares his opinions.
If you do a Google Image search for Trump as king or emperor you'll find numerous photoshopped images, some better than others (though the DonkeyHotey drawing in the upper left below is one of the most republished). Click to enlarge.
Donald Trump is an inveterate television watcher so I assume today he'd be hard pressed to avoid all the coverage of the ceremonies making Charles the King.
In addition to the very British pomp and circumstance he'll see interviews with normal, let me underline normal, people who love him instead of people who are pathologically unhinged and who would never ever be allowed as guests into any of the castles where he currently rules supreme.
Being King of Mar-a-Lago is hardly enough for the man who has redefined the definition of grandiose narcissism to an extreme that if he wasn't flesh, lots of flesh, and blood, clogged with cholesterol as it probably is, he'd be a cartoon character like Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.
He is only called President Trump as an honorific title probably by people interviewing him on right-wing media, or by those delusional people who think he's still president.
In fact, my cursory research shows (Emily Post for example) that according to proper form he shouldn't even be called Mr. President. The correct form of address for a former president is to use the title of the highest post that he held before becoming president. unless they have a new position with another title.
Whether Melania cares about what she is called in impossible to determine but she can never become a real Queen Consort as Camila will be. She was the Duchess of Cornwall so perhaps Melania can make herself the Duchess of Mar-a-Lago or something equally ridiculous. That is unless she buys into Donald wanting to be king and then I suppose she can insist she's referred to as Queen Consort Melania.
Detail from a painting showing Henry VIII on his 1520 expedition to France. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust
Back to Trump the wanna-be king: we can liken him to King Henry VIII. Let's compared the two...
While Trump never had his wives killed he did divorce two of them and cheated on his first wife, Ivana, with Marla Maples who became his second wife.
He also isn't as fat at Henry XIII was, and he rides a golf cart rather than a horse.
No one remembers Henry VIII fondly. He murdered two of his six wives, divorced two more, lost one in childbirth, and died before he could murder the last one. When you ask pretty much anyone what Henry VIII was all about, they'll mostly just repeat some version of the above, because when you're a wife-killing, smelly egomaniac with zero redeeming qualities, it doesn't really matter what else you did in your life. People are going to remember you for being a wife-killing, smelly egomaniac with zero redeeming qualities.
But Henry VIII was so much more than just those things. He was also greedy, paranoid, a hypocrite, a homophobe, a perpetual loser of wars, and gross. He was very, very gross. Did he have any actual, redeeming qualities? Not that we know of. If he did, they were overshadowed by all of the very bad things he did during his long, awful reign. What bad things? These bad things. Here's the horrible, messed up truth of Henry VIII.
Sound like Trump? There's more:
According to History, the court of Henry VIII was one of history's most opulent. Evidently, no one taught Henry the value of money when he was a child, because just one year after inheriting the throne at the age of 18, he blew most of the kingdom's annual revenue on Christmas parties. Yes, everyone loves an epic party, and plenty of modern people go into debt so that they can buy nice things for everyone on their holiday list, but imagine spending £13.5 million ($18 million) in a single year. Henry's holiday expenses included food, entertainment, and gifts.
That kind of excess continued throughout all of Henry's reign. In fact, he was so into parties that he expanded the kitchens of Hampton Court Palace so they filled 55 rooms. Banquets frequently served up to 14 courses to 600 people and included dishes like grilled beaver tails, whole roasted peacock, and boar's head. So you could say Henry ate his kingdom's fortune, and that would actually be close to accurate.
I wonder if the God-king's swooning sycophants think it should be their deity being officially made King of England today. More to the point, I wonder what King Tut of Trump Tower is thinking today.
You can make comments by scrolling down the the bottom of the page.
Here's some:
I am trying to promoted my stories which now only appear on this blog since I have been banned for life from putting them on Daily Kos. You can read my take on why this happened here. At a minimum these stories for about 80 reads but a few between one and two thousand. Typically they had 10-30 or so comments but a few got over 200.
You can read all of the 1,700 plus stories except the one that got me booted off the site without explanation here. Because I didn't save it I had to recreate the gist of it from memory in my blog story about what happened.
My two favorite columnists are Dana Milbank and Heather "Digby" Parton, and runner up Rick Wilson. The later is known by her fans simply as Digby. After his most recent column I could nickname Milbank as Dana the Divinely inspired.
Above: Dana Milbank (left) and Heather "Digby" Parton
Heather "Digby" Parton who writes columns several times a week for Salon and publishes on her blog, Hullaballoo, and Dana Milbank who writes a regular column for The Washington Post, are my two favorite columnists.
Dana, speaking for God, country, and I suppose you might as well throw in an apple pie a la mode...
... begins this column this way:
And, lo, it shall come to pass, on the eighth day of the eleventh month of the Year of our Lord 2022, that Our Heavenly Father shall gather the inhabitants of His Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, from the Sacred City of Filial Love to His Earthly Paradise on the Monongahela, and from all other dwelling places therein; and He shall say, “Riseth up ye and goeth to the polling places; and therein casteth ye thy ballots in such manner that the Heavenly Host doth thunder, ‘Yea, Doug Mastriano, assuredly and verily thou art a cuckoo bird.’ ”— the Gospel according to nobody in particular
He concludes:
Will the good people of Pennsylvania succumb to conspiracy lunacy masquerading as scripture? Or will they, and voters everywhere, decide that this is just one more sign that the false prophets of MAGA have gone entirely too far?
His Washington Post column tops their Opinions section above the conservative columnist Hugh Hewitt who is also a Fox News regular. I never gift Hewitt with a click. You can see his Wikipedia profile here and compare it to Milbank's profile here where you can see that Milbank is no stranger to experiencing the consequences of pushing the limits of snarky satire. For example from Wikipedia: Milbank and Chris Cillizza appeared in a series of humor videos called "Mouthpiece Theater" which appeared on The Washington Post's website. An outcry followed a video in which, during a discussion of the White House "Beer Summit", they chose new brands for a number of people, including "Mad Bitch Beer" for Hillary Clinton. Both men apologized for the video and the series was canceled.
The brief Post profile describes Dana as sketching the foolish, the fallacious, and the felonious in politics. Here's his Twitter page.
To say Digby is as prolific as she is clever is an understatement. On her blog Digby's Hullaballoo she and colleague Tom Sullivan (he is a North Carolina-based writer who posts at Hullabaloo and Scrutiny Hooligans and a former columnist for the Asheville Citizen-Times. His posts have appeared at Crooks and Liars, Campaign for America's Future, Truthout.org, AlterNet, and TomPaine.org.) Between them they post several stories every day.
It will be interesting to see if Trump's lawyers make the case that he magically declassified all those documents with a Vulcan mind-meld when he was still president as his minions have been saying all over television ever since the search.
Trump himself has not intelligibly addressed this latest state of affairs but he has been emitting periodic primal screams as events unfold.
They would be safer in Central Park because Donald Trump doesn't live there, an easy target of all of America's adversaries who know he has all the common sense of a bath mat.
My runner up for favorite columnist is Rick Wilson.
Wilson is a Lincoln Project co-founder who is sometimes on MSNBC. I wrote about him in a Daily Kos essay here. He's not as funny as Dana and Digby but he does have a scalpel sharp wit but sometimes it is a bit too cruel for my sensibility.
Please scroll down to the bottom of the page to read and make comments.
There's a big difference between advocating for violence, which should be verboten on progressive websites where readers can post, and writing about violence and your attitude about self-defense if your community is threatened by armed insurrectionists.
I've been posting on the progressive website Daily Kos (read Wikipedia page about it) for several years. I've put on more than 1700 stories. Any member of their community, i.e., those who have registered there, can post a story. Quite a few of mine had the distinction of being on the Recommended List, and in the past year this was changed to a Trending Stories list of 18 reader posted stories.
Of the last five I posted three made this list including the one I put on a few days ago. That's the one that got me banned.
If you tried to read the Daily Kos story illustrated as shown below a few hours after I posted it you'd have gotten an access denied or other similar message because it had been taken offline. There was with no explanation as to why this was done sent to me.
It turns out that I have been banned, suspended, cancelled, rendered kaput, and unceremoniously dumped there. I supposed whoever made this decision would say I burned my bridges if I ever had more than one, or my solitary bridge to the world of Kos, but from my point of view they burned the bridge for me.
I was one of the very few community members who ever posted an original opinion, idea, perspective, or thought however lame some of them may have been. I'd say that my absence is their loss. I was also the only experienced psychotherapist to regularly post essays about the psychopathology of Donald Trump.
This ban not only means that I cannot post my own stories on Daily Kos where on a few occasions as many as 2,000 readers looked at them, but I can't comment on any of the other stories there. I can still read them and see the comments other people post.
Nobody can see the story that prompted this. I tried to recreate elements of it here but unfortunately didn't copy it so I am unable to post the original.
If anyone happens to be able to post on Daily Kos wants to risk being banned themselves they can post a story along the lines of "What the hell happened to Hal Brown" and post a link to this blog page.
Here's the full photo of me as a reserve police officer, which I was for 20 years, both in Michigan and Massachusetts.
The reason I used the police photos of me, a much younger version, was to explain my own experience with law enforcement and firearms. While never in the military I was trained to use a them as a reserve police officer. I had occasion to draw my revolver (we all used them before police departments switched to semi-automatic pistols) a few times when on foot patrol we entered dark store when we found open doors. I also drew my weapon once while in the woods look for an escaped country jail prisoner and stood by the road with a shotgun when we backed up sheriff's deputies who had stopped a carload of men on the expressway.
Here's the screen I got when I tried to look at the story:
Here's a screen grab of my profile on Daily Kos (click any image to enlarge):
Even though you can't read the story shown above you can still read any of my other stories here. I have been banned but I haven't been erased.
I don't think whoever read it grasped the nuance of my story when I was banned for posting it - Daily Kos is not big on nuance. Not only is my story offline but unfortunately I didn't copy it to post on my blog, something I generally do. Therefore nobody can look at what I wrote to judge for themselves whether in any way, shaped or form I was advocating violence.
I told the personal story of how the other day I was sitting on my girlfriend's fourth floor balcony which overlook a row of duplexes in our continuing care retirement community where we live. I live in one of the duplexes. We were talking about the potential for violence here in Portland what with the fact that groups like The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys being attracted to our liberal community where in the past they engaged in violent clashes sometimes with Antifa members.
Now of course they have escalated their threats to warn of armed violence should Trump be indicted and there are articles about what could happen if Trump is reelected as far as what is often called a new civil war.
I wrote about how her balcony offered a good spot for a snippers nest where if it came to it I could get dirt from our resident gardens and fill sandbags and buy a deer rifle at the nearby gun store. I wrote that if the leader of an armed group threatened our little mostly liberal community of elderly folks, taking out the leader as he marched down the street could make the others turn tail and run.
I suppose one couldsay that is advocating violence. I contend it is using violence as self-defense.
As I think of why someone at Daily Kos banned me with telling me why all I can come up with is that a reader flagged my story as break the rule against advocating violence and an administrator gave the story a cursory reading and decided to ban me without telling me they were doing so, and to remove the story entirely, judging that I was advocating violence.
It should be a no-brainer that I was writing about self-defense, albeit from a rather dramatized and I wouldn't argue if someone might say it conveyed a macho viewpoint although friends would tell you I come across as anything but macho.
Before it was taken offline it moved to about No. 12 of 18 stories on the Trending List, thus showing that lots of readers were interested in it.
The are numerous stories posted on Kos and very few make this trending list. Three of my last five including this made the list. The story before it got removed had something like 50 recommendations, and over 80 comments with few exceptions agreeing with what I wrote.
About 450 people took the poll (which indicates about how many people read it) with about 90% saying that if it came to defending democracy against an armed insurrection they personally would seriously consider fighting back with their own firearms.
These numbers are very high considering it had only been online for several hours.
I doubt I will ever be able to post political opinions on Daily Kos but will continue to post them on my blog. I hope those of you who liked what I wrote on Daily Kos will read what I post on my blog.
I am not up to trying to recreate the story at this time. Instead, below are the images I used and which are related to the story which related my thinking of an imaginary situation where the retirement community where I live was attacked by armed insurrectionists and I was on a balcony where I could use a sniper rifle to slow them down or make them turn tail and run. It was pure fantasy and by no means was I advocating violence.
I referenced how Portland became a magnet for groups like Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and that I lived in the closest retirement community to the end of one of the light rail stations from downtown Portland.
Each of the following photos fit into the narrative of my story. The gun shop website is for a store a few blocks from where I live.
Below are photos I took of the cars in front of the Trump flag man's house.
If anyone has their own website and wants to republish anything I posted on Daily Kos let me know and I am sure in most instances I will give you permission to do so.
