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.
Other Ukrainian officials also responded on Twitter:
I don't think it's an outlandish assumption to think Musk believes that being the world's richest person he may have the world's biggest brain (we've heard that before).
Why not, then, shouldn't he be able to come up with an idea that will end the war of Russian aggression in Ukraine?
and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry had no background in medicine or medical research.
I suppose in a world where on one extreme we have a former game show host and rule breaking real estate developer becoming a mentally imbalanced woefully uniformed president and on the other extreme we have a comedian becoming a heroic president of another country everyone's idea should be judged on their merits.
Other news of the day
This story is also related to Ukraine though in a very different way:
The Conservative Political Action Conference parroted pro-Kremlin propaganda about Ukraine in a since-deleted tweet, fitting a disturbing pattern in the GOP.
Below: Let's hope dog lovers in Pennsylvania not supporting Walker, where some people may still decide to shoot their dogs when they are unable to hunt anymore, decide that they can't vote for someone who tortures dogs and other animals. They may be able to say let bygones be bygones for paying for his girlfriends abortions or not be bothered by reports that he was a wife beater but hopefully they draw the line at cruelty to animals.
Salon image augmented by Hal Brown
While on the subject of totally unqualified Senate candidates, how about the breaking news about Hershel Walker denying he ever paid for a girlfriend's about claiming this is a total lie? As you may have read in his book he revealed he suffered from multiple personality disorder:
He may be telling the truth as he knows it, or more specifically as he remembers it. In my 40 year career as a psychotherapist I treated five clients with this disorder, currently called dissociative identity disorder. A hallmark of this disorder is that among the various personalities, called alters, there are various kinds of amnesia. In many if not most cases certain personalities can take over with other personalities not having and awareness of what they are doing.
A true cure for this disorder come about when all the identities or alters are integrated into one and there are no amnesiac experiences when one personality is in control and the others aren't and in fact are totally unaware of what is happening.
Walker claims he's been cured but there's no way to prove this. It is an exceeding difficult disorder to treat let alone achieve cure. In my experience the best a therapist can do is try to keep the self-destructive or dangerous personalities from acting on their impulses or desires.
It is quite possible that the personality or personalities that arranged for and funded the abortion blocked the memory from the other personalities. Unless all the personalities are now integrated along with all of their memories, there is a chance Walker is telling the truth as he knows it about the abortion.
Trump, who plainly did not want to lose his top economic adviser, told Cohn he should feel free to publicly voice his disagreement, and encouraged him to go to the briefing-room podium and say whatever he needed to."
"You’ll do the right thing," Haberman writes that Vice President Mike Pence said, while putting an arm around Cohn like some kind of mafia movie.
"Cohn said he would complete his efforts to pass a tax bill, which had been his passion throughout the year, and not stay much longer," the book continues. "'But you should assume I’m done,' Cohn said. He still had his resignation letter in hand, undelivered and unaccepted. As Cohn left the Oval Office, Kelly whispered to him, 'If I were you I’d have shoved that paper up his f*cking ass.'"
"Increasingly core to a lot of people in the Christian faith, and particularly in the white evangelical world, is politics and culture," Wehner said, "and in a sense, faith is engrafted. It’s a secondary issue. A friend of mine uses the term 'hood ornament — that faith becomes a hood ornament: It validates these pre-existing attitudes and ideologies. But the way it’s being done is that people are unaware of it, because they’re going through and, in my experience and in my observations, is they’re proof-texting their preordained political, cultural, sociological beliefs, and then saying this is what the Bible says."
Totally out of left-field...
... because Portland is my adopted hometown I thought I'd share a lesson learned by some crooked strip club owners here. You may know that Portland is known for it's many strip clubs, some of which vie for the title of the quirkiest:
I suspect that these businesses take in a lot of cash, not only because patrons stuff greenbacks into the performers g-strings, but because men don't like to pay using credit cards for obvious reasons. Since I've never been to one I can't say I observed this in person.
Here's the local story about how trying to avoid paying taxes on cash can come with serious consequences:
Articles that piqued my interest as I find them today on bottom of page. Previous stories in sidebar archive.
Adapted screen shot from "24"
Trump has expressed violent thoughts and fantasies from telling audiences to beat up anti-Trump protesters to saying he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
Psychologically he's a malignant narcissist, a man without conscience or empathy who has grandiose fantasies you can see in lifestyle with the gilded trappings more appropriate to an old-time emperor or king than a U.S. president.
We know Trump lives in world where alternate reality and reality gets mixed up.
We know he doesn’t read and loves to watch TV.
We know it seems like he lives in episodes of The Twilight Zone.
He also may identify with characters he sees as heroic in TV shows which play on his machismo and his paranoia.
His cult has picked up on this as demonstrated by the number of depictions of him as Superman or Rocky:
And even as Captain America:
I wonder if there's a collection of this memorabilia among the documents the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago (or "Mar-a-Uh-Oh," see below).
Perhaps Trump watched "24" where Jack Bauer saved the world in 24 hours, often by using torture.
In fact, Trump has said he believes torture works and he has endorsed its use:
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump stepped up his defense Wednesday of enhanced interrogation techniques when dealing with terror detainees, saying “torture works.”
“Of course waterboarding is bad, but it’s not like chopping off heads,” Trump said at a campaign event in Bluffton, South Carolina.
The billionaire businessman has repeatedly defended the use of waterboarding in recent days since he mentioned it at a Republican debate earlier this month. Trump wrote an op-ed in USA Today on Monday saying he wouldn’t “take anything off the table” when interrogating terror detainees, but Wednesday’s remarks were the first time he embraced the word “torture.” CNN Politics
It happens that Jack Bauer used waterboarding on "24"...
Today we have this from "Morning Joe" as reported on RawStory:
He understands he can't win, so what is he doing now?" Scarborough continued. "His rhetoric is becoming more violent, he's embracing QAnon conspiracy theories, he's actually boiling down his supporters, not doing what any politician who would want to win would be doing. He's boiling down support to find people that will support him for an overthrow of the federal government. That's my belief, and oh, wait -- that's what he tried to do on Jan. 6, just a couple of years ago. Just look and see what he's doing and ask yourself, why would he come out and try to get the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate killed? Why would he talk about a death wish in all caps? Why would he make a racist slur against a former member of his Cabinet who happens to be Mitch McConnell's wife? Why would he embrace QAnon conspiracy theories? Why would he keep, again, getting more and more radical when he knows it will only drive down the support?"
"The clear answer, as he supports the election deniers, is he wants to succeed in 2024 in the way he failed in 2020," Scarborough concluded, "and he's obviously ready to use violence to do that."
Here's a report from MSNBC:
Excerpt about Trump' s Truth Social post:
As a substantive matter, nearly all of this was gibberish — Trump seems convinced that the Green New Deal is being implemented, reality notwithstanding — but it was the “death wish” phrasing that stood out. Against a backdrop of elected officials facing violent threats without modern precedent, the former president apparently thought it’d be wise to publish a message that looked an awful lot like a threat
...
To the surprise of no one, no GOP leaders stepped up over the weekend to defend McConnell or Chao. The party also made no effort to criticize Trump’s racist comments.
In fact, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida made some Sunday show appearances yesterday and was repeatedly asked if he’d denounce the former president’s latest tantrum. He refused, sticking instead to vague platitudes.
Trump’s dangerous “death wish” rhetoric will continue so long as Republicans, paralyzed by fear, continue to look away.
The Hill summarizes a Wall Street Journal editorial. The paper is owned by Rupert Murdoch and their opinion represents the thinking of the editorial board. They call his posted remarks reckless and condemn his using the term "death wish" regarding Mitch McConnell.
“Mr. Trump’s apologists claim he merely meant Mr. McConnell has a political death wish, but that isn’t what he wrote,” The Wall Street Journal editors wrote. “It’s all too easy to imagine some fanatic taking Mr. Trump seriously and literally, and attempting to kill Mr. McConnell. Many supporters took Mr. Trump’s rhetoric about former Vice President Mike Pence all too seriously on Jan. 6.”
The editorial also references Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who told The New York Times that she wouldn’t be surprised if a lawmaker gets killed amid a heightened threat environment.
A peripheral question I have is related to Trump's psychology. This is whether putting "death wish" in all caps in a Truth Social post means Trump is deliberately sending a message to violence prone members of his cult that he is essentially issue a fatwa against Mitch McConnell or is expressing his own fantasy of the powerful Senate Minority Leader, and major thorn in his side, being physically attacked or worse.
There is no doubt among members of Trump's cult there are some who are mentally ill and some who are so unswervingly loyal to him that they want to become martyrs to him and his cause and that they would at the least consider trying to assassinate someone they thought Trump wanted eliminated.
Regardless of Trump's conscious or unconscious intent the fact of the matter is that, as the title in Steve Benen's article indicates, Trump's rhetoric is dangerous and could lead to violence.
Postscript:
After I got the idea of calling Trump's gaudy golfatorium Mar-a-Uh-Oh I saw this column in the Washington Post with the word in the title:
The premise of the column is that polls may misrepresent who likely voters will vote for.
Excerpts:
This isn’t just about a single poll or a single state. I regularly talk with pollsters and campaigns, and I hear a common lament: Trump voters distrust pollsters and the media that reports on poll results, and simply won’t participate, out of protest or paranoia.
Or, if they do respond, they might present a problem that has long vexed political pros: social desirability bias, wherein people answering a poll-taker’s questions tend to shade their opinions and provide what they perceive as the socially acceptable answer.
Trump supporters might have the added worry of being attacked for frankly stating their views. Stories of those affiliated with Trump being arrested, subpoenaed, doxed or mocked — with Trump providing angry amplification — result in a lower social trust of strangers inquiring about political views.
.
The undercounting of voters who lack college degrees could mean also missing some Democratic-leaning Black and Hispanic voters too, of course, but they make up a much smaller portion of the electorate and, in any case, don’t tend to share the protest-or-paranoia mind-set that makes Trump-friendly Republicans difficult to poll.
One national pollster has called these under-polled Trump supporters “submerged voters” and the term seems apt, given how much can occur underneath the whitecaps of a roiling political seascape. He isn’t alone. Other pollsters have told me they share this view, and even their diligent efforts to counteract the effect — such as moving away from phone calls toward more online surveys and oversampling known GOP voters — have been unavailing.
FiveThirtyEight polling maven Nate Silver challenges the presumption that 2022 polling inaccurately favors Democrats, but acknowledges that his organization’s modeling “actually assumes that current polling probably does overstate the case for Democrats.”
One thing seems obvious: Until most voters trust the institutions and individuals in the political sphere, submerged voters will sink ever-deeper, not surfacing until Election Day, to cast their previously untracked votes.
As articles which pique my interest are published today I will post them below. I want to thank new readers of my blog from the United States and other countries and note that my previous stories are all in the archive sidebar.
Bret Stephens makes a case of Biden pardoning Trump for the Mar-a-Lago documents theft, Gail Collins counters.
Excerpts:
Bret: A pardon does a few things. First, as you suggested, it denies Trump the martyr card. Second, it humiliates him and tacitly requires him to recognize Biden as the legitimate president. Third, it saves the Justice Department from a potentially very tricky prosecution that it very well might not be able to win. And finally, it returns the public’s gaze to the far more important issue, which is Trump’s culpability for Jan. 6, which has oddly fallen off the radar screen.
On the downside —
Gail: Sorry, my bottom line is no no no no no. Don’t love the idea of trying him at all, but as I see it, the man is a criminal, and we can’t just say that doesn’t matter because he used to be in the White House.
Give me your final thought and then let me ask you about the other Big Republican Guy, the governor of Florida.
Bret: If Trump faces prosecution for the documents, it all but guarantees that no Republican will challenge him in a primary if he decides to run again. But if Biden pardons him, he will be a more diminished figure, making it likelier that he will face a real challenger. And given the choice — a miserable one, I will admit — I’d much rather see The Ron as the Republican nominee than The Don.
In an interview with Rolling Stone published on Sunday evening, former D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone delivered an expletive-laden rant against House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the likely next Speaker of the House if Republicans win control of Congress in November.
“I think at night, when the lights are turned off, Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan have some pretty choice words to say about the fact that they have to hang on Kevin McCarthy’s wall,” Fanone told Alex Morris. “They did some f*cking above-average things. And they’ve got to adorn the wall of this f*cking weasel b*tch named Kevin McCarthy, with his fake f*cking spray-on tan, whose f**king claim to fame, at least in my eyes, is the fact that he amassed a collection of Donald Trump’s favorite-flavored Starburst, put them in a Mason jar, and presented them to f*cking Donald Trump. What the f*ck, dude?”
Hopefully this portends that the Supreme Court won't be quite as bad as we anticipate:
I wonder how well his pillows absorb tears...
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from a prominent supporter of former President Donald Trumpwho is trying to fend off a defamation suit from a voting company he falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election.
Michael Lindell, the founder of MyPillow and a regular presence at Trump's rallies, is fighting a $1.3 billion defamation suit filed in federal court by US Dominion, the company that manufacturers voting machines used in several battleground states.
Lindell's effort was denied by a Trump-appointed U.S. District judge last year. When Lindell appealed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the case was not ready for review. Lindell asked the Supreme Court to rule that he could immediately appeal in order to avoid "long and expensive" court proceedings.
This is an excuse to repost the image I made for my blog post yesterday:
I'm not a cartoonist so I rely on InPixio and BeFunky to make most of my illustrations. Here's what political cartoonist Ann Telanaes posted on Twitter and in her The Washington Post column today:
According to the conservative commentator, what McCarthy has planned is nothing less than to "Benghazi" the Bidens, by which she means hold endless hearings while harassing the president with an impeachment threat as a way to disrupt the second half of his four-year term. At the root of it all, Carpenter explained, is hopes that by harassing the Bidens they will increase their chances in the 2024 presidential election whether Biden is on the ticket or not.
I wrote about the Supreme Court yesterday (here). I expect we'll see more articles about them as their new session brings one horrific decision after another. Here's what one of my favorite columnists had to say today:
The Supreme Court's public-opinion nosedive might be related to the fact that one prominent justice is married to someone who actively promoted the Big Lie and sought to overturn the 2020 election.
All those opinions came virtually on top of each other at the end of the court's spring term, and its approval rating sank precipitously right after that. But the more recent nosedive in public opinion is likely also connected to the fact that one prominent justice is married to someone who was heavily involved in the post-election Big Lie campaign, and perhaps with illegal attempts to overturn the election. Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, was interviewed last week by the House Jan. 6 committee, and reportedly said that she still believes the 2020 election was stolen. That all might be considered a case of very poor judgment by the spouse of a Supreme Court justice, if it weren't for the fact that Thomas has refused to recuse himself from any cases pertaining to Donald Trump — and has consistently supported Trump in pretty much every instance. Furthermore, the public has gradually become aware that Thomas and the other justices aren't required to adhere to any clear ethics rules or standards — because there aren't any.
This should be interesting. Damnit, just I could say this about all or most of the case they will run on this term:
The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear two cases seeking to hold social media companies financially responsible for terrorist attacks.
Relatives of people killed in terrorist attacks in France and Turkey had sued Google, Twitter, and Facebook. They accused the companies of helping terrorists spread their message and radicalize new recruits. From HuffPost
I don't believe that Trump is going to plea bargain. I think he could go to prison, but it is more likely that he will serve home confinement. In all likelihood, he will be convicted of multiple felonies. I don't know if there's ever going to be a perp walk, but I don't think it's a fantasy either. There's a good chance that Trump will end up with a felony conviction. I know he has cut deals in civil cases, but that's just writing checks. To reiterate, I do not believe that Trump will plead out. This all goes so much to the core of Trump's identity that he will try to tear the country apart before he settles one of these criminal cases.
Donald Trump will incite violence on his behalf. He will try to pretend it is something spontaneous. Does Trump have enough power and influence over his followers to threaten the republic? I don't think so. But I do think it's enough to be dangerous. Trump has enough influence that people could get hurt.
WASHINGTON (AP) — GOP Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire said Donald Trump is "crazy" and joked that if the former Republican president was admitted to a mental hospital, "he ain't getting out!"
Sununu skewered Trump during the Gridiron Club's spring dinner Saturday night, an annual Washington gathering featuring skits and speeches from Democrats, Republicans and journalists that are expected to "singe" but "not burn" the capital's political elite.
"He's (expletive) crazy!" Sununu said in salty remarks that roasted members of both parties as well as the Washington journalists who cover them. The governor added: "The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. And I'll say it this way: I don't think he's so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if he were in one, he ain't getting out!"
