False Equivalence: Biden and DeSantis have put aside being nasty to each other

False Equivalence: "Biden and DeSantis have put aside being nasty to each other"

Really?

For President Biden it is sincere, for Gov. DeSantis it's all about optics.

By Hal Brown

Scroll down to read stories that piqued my interest today

Someone on MSNBC was describing President Biden and Gov. DeSantis talking on the phone about the devastation of the hurricane and the need for federal assistance showed that people can put aside their nastiness basically for the common good. 

It is a sign of the times that we have stories like this:

Biden, DeSantis put politics aside with Hurricane Ian bearing down

EXCERPT: After talking to Biden, the governor went on air with Fox News’s Sean Hannity and lauded the administration’s response to the hurricane so far.

“When people’s lives and their property are at risk like this, we all need to work together regardless of party lines,” DeSantis said. “It’s my sense that the administration wants to help.” 

Oh come one! Of course when there's a disaster presidents and governors of opposing parties work together even if the are worse than rivals, even when one of them has an easy going personality and is slow to anger and the other has a nasty streak as wide as the white stripe on a skunk and is just as eager to spray his stink on anyone or any group that he wants to hurt.

Click image to enlarge:

DeSantis wants to keep Florida free, free from migrants, LGBT+ people, anyone he considers "woke", librarians and teachers who tell the truth, basically anyone who disagrees with him on anything. Of course when it comes to federal aide, he'll readily take it and claim as much credit as he can for helping Floridians put their lives back together.

It is breaking news when President Biden expresses anger, for example: 

Angry Biden Screams: ‘I Don’t Want to Hear Any More of These Lies About Reckless Spending!’

It stuck me that Biden and DeSantis would eschew being nasty to each other because of the devastation of hurricane Ian was an outrageous false equivalence. 

From Wikipedia:

False equivalence is an informal fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency. Colloquially, a false equivalence is often called "comparing apples and oranges." This fallacy is committed when one shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show equivalence, especially in order of magnitude, when equivalence is not necessarily the logical result. False equivalence is a common result when an anecdotal similarity is pointed out as equal, but the claim of equivalence does not bear scrutiny because the similarity is based on oversimplification or ignorance of additional factors.

Biden has been excoriated by Republicans but it's never been for being a nasty man. DeSantis... well his stock in trade is being nasty to the core.

This is the last time Biden and DeSantis were pictured meeting together. It was following another catastrophe.

From the article:

3. Shaky relationship for DeSantis and Biden

DeSantis and Biden have had a contentious relationship. Just a week into the new president's term, DeSantis called "disingenuous" White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s claim that Florida had not doled out more than 50% of its vaccine supply. A month later, DeSantis called "absurd" and "unconstitutional" reports that the White House was mulling domestic restrictions for states, like Florida, where there was, at the time, a rise in COVID cases.

4. Allies after Surfside?

Since the Surfside building disaster, the Biden-DeSantis relationship has been publicly cordial and all business. The two men spoke the day after the structure's collapse and discussed the "heroic" efforts of emergency workers. That discussion followed the Biden administration's issuing an emergency declaration for Miami-Dade County. DeSantis has also been holding daily joint briefings in Surfside with a Biden ally in Miami-Dade County, Democratic Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

The USA article reminds us of the last time a Democratic President hugged a Republican governor during a crisis.

Bipartisanship aside, don't expect a Biden-DeSantis embrace. A hug is the lasting image of the last time a Democratic U.S. president was greeted in the state by a Republican Florida governor during an emergency. That is when then-President Barack Obama and then-Gov. Charlie Crist met in Fort Myers in 2009. Democrat Obama came to Florida to pitch a $787 billion stimulus plan. Crist, the state's Republican governor at the time, greeted Obama in a spirit of bipartisanship.

According to Crist, the two shook hands and then Obama leaned in to give him a hug that Crist later said wasn't anything "special." In 2014, Crist, then running for governor as a Democrat, wrote a first-person account of the encounter for Time magazine in which he said: "I didn’t know it yet. But that high-spirited day in Fort Myers—meeting Obama (bad enough) and greeting him with a hug (even worse) — ended my viable life as a Republican politician. I would never have a future in my old party again. My bipartisan hopes and dreams, I would discover soon enough to my shock and disappointment, were vastly overstated and hopelessly out of date."

No-brainer: 

President Biden will go to Florida. He will meet with Gov. DeSantis and there will be photos of them both looking concerned and all business.

There will be no hugs.

Related:

I won't even click on this or provide you with a link to right-winger Thiessen's Washington Post column.

All DeSantis is showing is that he can play act a being presidential, or in this case acting like a governor ought to act in a disaster. In between tormenting and traumatizing migrants and demonizing the LGBT+ community of Florida he can put aside the persona that has rightfully earned him the Twitter hashtag of DeSatan.

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Related: On Twitter

Other news that piqued my interest today.

The Supreme Court Returns on Monday, Stronger and More Terrible Than Ever

This term, the high court will cement its grip on political life in America, overturning affirmative action and other critical protections along the way.

Obviously this isn't the biggest news story of the day but I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't pleased to read this. I doubt we'll hear the real reasons for this anytime soon.

There's not much available online about husband Perry Greene. This is what I could find from this website:

Speaking of Perry Greene’s academics, he went to the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from there back in 1996.

Net Worth and Career Details of Marjorie husband, Perry Greene

The 48-years-old, Perry Greene is estimated to hold an impressive net worth of $2 million as of 2020. Indeed, he is a millionaire; however, not only him but his better-half, Marjorie also hold that tagline. It is believed that her fortune touches $4 million.

Does Roger Stone have a new tattoo on his back?

Does Roger Stone have a new tattoo on his back

By Hal Brown 

This is from Heather Digby Parton's column:

Is a major bombshell coming? It sure looks like it

If there is one prominent through-line connecting the two most corrupt presidents in U.S. history, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, it would have to be the person of Roger Stone. The man has been at the heart of every election scandal for the past 50 years and he's still at it, even today. It's quite a legacy for the guy who has Richard Nixon's face tattooed on his back. It's lucky he left his chest clear for his last great cause, Donald Trump. Stone's work on Trump's behalf provides the perfect coda to a legendary career as a political dirty trickster and world-class black-ops conspiracy-monger.

Stone has had his fingerprints on every nefarious deed the Republicans have pulled in the last half-century, starting when he was a kid working on Nixon's re-election campaign in 1972, and given the job of spying on rival campaigns and finding devious ways to embarrass them in the press. He has said that during the day he was a scheduler but at night, he was "trafficking in the black arts."

I decided I didn't have anything to say by way of a comment to this column, so I simply posted this:

 I wonder what the other inmates will think of it in the group showers. He looks here to be a muscle muscle-bound hombre so 

he may be safer than a diminutive felon, although if an Never-Trumper and bigger badder inmate decided he didn't like the full-of-himself Stone and wanted to Trump in the eye and express his anger...

better not go there!

We know which prison gang he'd join up with. For his sake he'd better hope they'd accept him because its better to have friends in prison and not be a loner.

If a member of the Aryan Brotherhood was going to have a tattoo of any world leader on his back it wouldn't be Nixon or Trump.

From Wikipedia:

Criminal information
Criminal status	Pardoned, following commutation.
Criminal charge	Felony counts of: Witness tampering Obstructing an official proceeding Making false statements to Congress
Penalty	40 months in federal prison (Stone served no time as President Donald Trump commuted his sentence, then pardoned him.)

Inmates learning about this might not appreciate that they are serving time while Stone avoided this through a pardon.

Criminal information
Criminal status	Pardoned, following commutation.
Criminal charge	Felony counts of: Witness tampering Obstructing an official proceeding Making false statements to Congress
Penalty	40 months in federal prison (Stone served no time as President Donald Trump commuted his sentence, then pardoned him.)

Stories that piqued my interest:

My illustrated comment: 

While I'd have liked to she her testify on live TV I think there is a benefit to her do so virtually. By this I assume it would be by Zoom or some other way so she'd be in her home or someplace where she felt comfortable. This would be likely to give her a false sense of security and she might be less guarded in how she responded to questions. Of course she might take the Fifth to every question she's asked. I think much depends of how much of a true believer she is when it comes to considering Trump a deity with a God given right to rule, and that her husband is functioning like God's right hand.

It look like Fall is here (click photos to enlarge,  from Aurora, Oregon). 

Lunch at Old Colony Pub:

We wondered if this man picking up a take-out order might be the local funeral director.

Digby posits three reasons Trump stole the documents, I have a fourth

 

A psychological reason Trump might have stolen the top secret documents 

By Hal Brown 

Scroll down for articles that piqued my interest today

In Heather "Digby" Parton's Salon column she speculates on the following:

Why did he steal the documents? Maggie Haberman's book may hold the answer

Let's review: He's a pack rat; he hoped to sell them; he meant to use them for blackmail. Yes, yes and yes

Of course none of the reasons are mutually exclusive, but I propose a fourth possible reason:

There’’s plenty of speculation as to why Trump wanted to bring top secret documents home to Mar a Lago. I have yet to hear one that isn’t nefarious.  These include his wanting to sell them to foreign adversaries or curry favor with them, but I am posing a different reason just as consistent with his personality. If he wanted to use them to benefit himself in the former way it speaks to his being a traitorous sociopath. I suggest another possiblity. It is based on another aspect of his psychology. This is that he may have wanted to use them as trophies, either to enjoy by himself or to show off to select mucky-mucks who he wanted to impress. This speaks to his over-the-top pathological grandiose narcissism.

If he didn’t take them for evil reasons I lean towards his wanting to show them off because I don’t see Trump as the kind of wealthy person who is like the collector of illegally obtained fine art which he keeps in a vault where he enjoys just sitting by himself enjoying the work of the masters only he is able to look at.

I can see Trump trying to impress a guest, perhaps a foreign leader, a business magnate, sports star, or celebrity and taking them into his trophy room as saying “do you want to see some nuclear documents? I could have started World War III with these.”  Alternatively he could have said “I could have lost World War III with these.”

Trump most likely knew he wasn’t allowed to take home gifts from foreign leaders to show off to his pals but figured that showing these off was no big deal (see From chess sets to model jets, foreign leaders lavish gifts on Trump White House) compared to flashing a document labeled Top Secret with the locations of our nuclear submarines on it. For example Chinese President Xi Jinping gave Trump a paper panel with five columns of calligraphy, valued at $14,400, that’s a big ho-hum.

Of course I may be totally wrong here, but then again sometimes a simple explanation is the right one. Both reasons are consistent with who we know Trump is.

My possible, emphasis on the word possible, reason is not as newsworthy as those being suggested. It doesn’t paint him as an evil traitor. In fact while it might be embarrassing to him to offer this as a defense should the case end up in court, it might be offered to exculpate him. It would be a kind of “not guilty by reason of pathological narcissism.”

On a personal note, I was friends with Biggie Munn’s daughter Jane when he was the athletic director of Michigan State University. She showed me the trophy room he had in his beautifully furnished basement. The walls of the room were lined with shelves and displays of fancy trophies which he or his teams had won dating back to when he was an All-American at the University of Minnesota through his coaching career, to when he eventually became athletic director at MSU. In one way or another he earned each and every one of them. None of them were stolen.

Articles that piqued my interest today

This article makes it sound like Bandy Lee was isolated among the community of mental health professionals. Of course there was a concerted effort to marginalized her in some quarters, but not enough media attention was given to those who agreed with her, and there were lots of us.

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As members of the Duty to Warn society like me know, this is not true. There were thousands of therapists saying in various ways the same thing. Some made a diagnosis (John D Gartner , myself, and others, a malignant narcissist, Lance Dodes, MD, a sociopath) and some not, but all saying he was dangerous.

.

I viewed the reluctance to go public with an actual diagnosis was for some therapists as a way to avoid being accused of breaking the Goldwater Rule or subject to the criticism that one couldn't make a diagnosis without a clinical interview. It seems to be common sense that we have much more information about Trump's psychopathology than we would after a typical clinical assessment interview.

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We also have the observations of a family member the way we might when we interview a family member in some kinds of therapy, and in Trump's case this family member, Mary Trump, is a clinical psychologist.

My tweet for today:

If you're a progressive news junkie read RawStory

If you're a progressive news junkie read RawStory

by Hal Brown

Posted Sept. 26, 2022 updated Sept. 27, 2022

There are several aggregate non-partisan websites to choose from so you don't have to click on individual websites to keep up with news as it breaks and the best opinion stories of the day.

Click image for link

Update from RawStory staff on Twitter where three of their writers react to my tweets:

As these RawStory journalists (above) remind me they indeed do have original reporting! The website has gone far beyond merely being an excellent aggregator and now stands on its own as a unique combination of aggregated and summarized reports coming from other media, opinion, and original reporting.

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While I look at Google News, have several keyword Google News email notifications enabled, and subscribe to Yahoo News, and have friends who are satisfied to use Facebook in this way, my preferred website as a liberal is RawStory.

This is a highly partisan progressive website. The website acquired a similar website, AlterNet, in 2018. Recently they also began to cross publish stories which were originally published on Salon and Salon posts some original RawStory articles. 

RawStory publishes original opinion pieces by senior editors Travis Gettys, Sarah Burris, Bob Brigham, and Tom Boggioni. While not as well known as other opinion columnists from major media like The New York Times and The Washington Post, and progressive websites like Salon, they are just as good. What they lack by way of columnists is someone as adept as writing satire as Dana Milbank (Wash. Post) and Heather "Digby" Parton (Salon). I'd also like to see them have an editorial cartoonist, it would be great if they could publish someone as good as Ann Telnaes from the Washington Post.

They also have staff reporters like Matthew Chapman and  Jordan Green who covers extremism. Green spent 16 years writing for alt-weeklies and freelancing for the Washington Post and other publications (his story today).

One of the benefits of RawStory is that they are more than a aggregator because it summarizes articles from other websites with enough excerpts so you get the gist of the story and explanations of the main points of the articles, and then they provide a link to the article. This enables you to follow articles on websites to which you don't have a subscription.

Another plus of RawStory is that they have a comments section. It previously used Disqus, but now they use their own comment platform. Once you register or sign in with Facebook or Google it is easy to post your comment and you can even include images. When you post an image it makes your comment stand out. Because they don't have between 1000 and 3000 comments like some stories in The New York Times and The Washington Post (both subscription websites) you will often find more give and take between a smaller number of commenters. If you want to make a comment to a story they write about which for example, appeared on Daily Beast or Salon which don't allow comments, you can post one on RawStory or just read what other comments had to say.

Update:

Here's an example of a Salon top of the page story which also was the lead story on RawStory until it was bumped down by a news story. This is a difference between the websites. Salon usually keeps the same story in a primary location for much of the day while the same story moves down the page quickly as newer stories are posted.

I couldn't make a comment on Salon but could post this on RawStory:

Click to enlarge

Last, but certainly not the least benefit of RawStory as a aggregator of breaking news of interest to progressives is that they manage to get their story online very rapidly. For example within an hour after something is discussed on an MSNBC show RawStory reports on it with a link. For example reporting on a segment from Morning Joe:

The only fault with RawStory is that in their rush to get a story online they occasionally make minor typos. This is easy to do when you don't have a proofreader so I forgive them. Since I read it so frequently I send in corrections so I suppose I am at least one of their unofficial proofreaders. It is to their credit that they not only fix the errors rapidly they also send me a personal email thanking me. 

Click above and below to enlarge images.

Here's the Wikipedia page on RawStory.

If you read the Wiki page you'll see that the website isn't perfect. They have made mistakes. Also this is from Media Bias Factcheck.

In review, Raw Story is primarily a news aggregation site that aggregates news from AFP and Reuters. Raw Story also summarizes information from other sources such as this: “Irate customer drags salon owner 50 feet to her death after running out on manicure without paying.” Infrequently, they publish original stories such as this: Trans activists detained in Arizona and threatened with deportation due to bureaucratic catch-22. Raw Story consistently utilizes strong, emotionally loaded headlines such as “Trump insists border wall will be ‘all concrete’ — except where it’s ‘see-through’: ‘Makes sense to me!’” and “MSNBC’s Morning Joe mocks ‘confused’ Trump over shutdown boasts: ‘Voters are blaming him.’”

Raw Story generally sources credible media outlets such as the Washington Blade, Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Generally, story selection always favors the left and frequently has an anti-Trump tone. Raw Story has published misleading articles promoting miracle cures such as this: Scientists discover virus that kills all grades of breast cancer ‘within seven days.’ This headline is misleading, as, within the article, they clearly state, “but not in normal mammary epithelial cells.” Regarding consensus science, they sometimes promote anti-GMO propaganda; however, they also publish credible, scientifically sound information.

Failed Fact Checks

• A factual search reveals a Half-True claim from Politifact, a false claim, and an Unproven claim with Snopes. They have also promoted misinformation during the 2020 election.
  

Overall, we rate Raw Story Left Biased based on story selection that favors the left and Mixed for factual reporting due to half-true, false, and unproven claims, as well as the promotion of mild pseudoscience misinformation. (5/15/2016) Updated (M. Huitsing 08/10/2022)

 I suggest using good sense when reading stories that report on things that seem almost too good to be true if you're a progressive. Use due diligence in following up to see if the same story is being reported independently by other media known for scrupulous fact-checking.

I compared RawStory with Daily Kos on a review website called sitejabber.   Daily Kos is the site which banned me after I posted over 1,700 stories there. I tried not to engage in sour grapes and be objective in my review:

I find Kos pales in comparison for aggregating political news article published elsewhere along with excerpts to RawStory. The later recently added original articles. The pluses are that Kos allows anybody to post their own stories, called diaries, and that there's often thought provoking discussing in the comments. The minus is that community posted stories rarely include original material and opinion, in fact they don't even have an opinion section like major newspapers. For my take on why my story got me banned, with the story removed from the site, without any reason sent to me, can be found if you Google my name, Hal Brown, and a keyword like Daily Kos or Trump. That will get you to my blog.

Tip for consumers:

I do not find Daily Kos to be a particularly useful site for political news or opinion.There are better websites to do this with. If you want to post your own material it is the only liberal website I know of where any registered member of what they call their community can do so and potentially get up to 2000 readers and over 200 comments as I did a about a dozen times with my over 1,700 posts there before I was banned without them letting me know why.

Stories that piqued my interest when I first posted this blog story:

I adore alliterations. I am a wee bit ashamed to admit that I have been known to use the thesaurus to build on an initial idea with only three or four words. For example in describing Trump using a magic wand to declassify top secret documents I wrote he was a flying fat fatuous fantasy flailing fairy. 

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Main points from Washington Post Column on possible Russian use of nukes:

Demonstration shot over uninhabitated area- least likely because it wouldn't be shocking enough. 

This explosion would not require a nuclear response by the United States. To prevent further escalation, President Biden could call for Russia’s international isolation (China and India, for example, would quickly distance themselves), impose extraordinarily harsh new sanctions and issue warnings of grave consequences should Russia proceed with additional explosions.

Low-yield weapon. Russia could fire a “low-yield” nuclear weapon on a Ukrainian military target. The explosion would kill hundreds or thousands and cause significant damage.

This might be the most likely scenario. Again, it would not require a “response in kind” by the United States, though some would urge that. The likely response, in addition to those in scenario one, would be massive increases in military aid to Ukraine and possibly concerted NATO or U.S. strikes on the Russian units that launched the attack.

Large-yield weapon. Putin could dial up the explosive force of the attack to the 50- or 100-kiloton range, or about three to six times the Hiroshima bomb. 

This would almost certainly trigger a direct U.S. or NATO response, though not likely nuclear. The United States and NATO have sufficient precise, powerful conventional weapons that they could use to devastate Russian forces in Ukraine and command headquarters, including those units responsible for the attack. This would likely be accompanied by large-scale cyber operations.

Nuclear attack on NATO. This is the least likely scenario. Russian first-use doctrine includes the option of striking NATO targets.This could trigger a nuclear response. Some would argue a limited nuclear counterstrike was necessary to preserve nuclear deterrence. More likely is an all-out conventional assault to try to eliminate either Putin himself or the weapons he commands before he strikes again.

These are horrible scenarios to consider. If you are worried, you are having the appropriate reaction. We should do all we can now to prepare a massive political response that might deter Putin from crossing the nuclear line.

Click above to read

About Daily Kos:

I have a negative opinion about Daily Kos since I think I am justified in believing they unfairly banned me for a story I posted there without ever letting me know why or giving me a chance to appeal. I wanted to check out if I was still banned, something I could do just by clicking on a story to see if I could make a comment. I couldn't, so I know I am still banned. I noticed that they are tracking how many times I click on a story and asking me for a donation. I consider this crass chutzpa even if it is done automatically. I certainly won't be donating to them and will refrain from clicking on any of their stories. 

Words that jumped out in Jennifer Rubin's column

 Words that jumped out to me in Jennifer Rubin's column

by Hal Brown

Stories breaking through the day that piqued my interest are on the bottom of the page.