My new US House rep. mouths standard GOP answer when asked about Trump running

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

My new US House rep inside Trump's mouth in a DonkeyHotey caricature

I was very much invested in my Oregon elections this year because there was a chance that two Democrats in our most blue state I supported might loose. One was Tina Kotek running for governor and the other was  Jamie McLeod-Skinner running to represent our newly redrawn 5th Congressional District.

It was a huge relief when Kotek beat her far right challenger Christine Drazen, but businesswoman and former large suburban Portland city mayor Lori Chavez-DeRemer won her race.

Click above to read and view video

I read the above article (afterwards I watched the video that went with it). Just from reading the article I began to think that perhaps she won't be that bad:

For example these are the responses that seemed hopeful:

“That’s one of the things I focused on as mayor. You’re a non-partisan mayor. You’re representing everyone in the city. We have to do the same here,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “I will always reach across the aisle to make sure I’m listening to the other side.”

Notably her response to one question was not in the website article, but was in the video. She was asked about her opinion about the conviction of Oath Keeper Stuart Rhodes. It was almost unbelievable that she said she hadn't been following this and had no comment. Either she was lying or hopelessly out of touch. I vote for the former.

Then I got to the last part of the article (at six minutes on the video):

Looking ahead to 2024, in light of Donald Trump announcing his presidential bid, Chavez DeRemer stated her support for whoever ends up at the top of the Republican ticket.

“I think we’re going to see a lot of Republicans running and we’ll see if he becomes the top of the ticket for the Republican party. I will support the nominee, but at this point I think it’s wide open for us to make those decisions early,” Chavez-DeRemer said.

This might as well come from a GOP talking point 3-5 card because it is pretty much word for word what other Republicans are saying when asked the same question.

After reading the article I watched the video on the website to try to be fair in my judgment that the interviewer was, to put it mildly, utterly horrible and an example of the kind of softball interview that would get a student fired from a college newspaper. 

This interview by Ken Bodie, a local TV station morning anchor, was published and aired on Dec. 3rd. Online it was updated on Dec. 4th. I think it came after Trump's appearance with Ye and Fuentes and possibly before his "suspend the Constitution" post. She should have been asked about her opinions about these if either had already occurred.

This is what Jennifer Rubin wrote in The Washington Post (summarized here on RawStory):

"It should not be too much to ask that serious media outlets label the GOP accurately as a threat to constitutional government and to democracy," she added, "No member of the media should allow Republican candidates, officeholders or operatives to escape an interview without declaring whether they would support for president a self-described opponent of the Constitution."

Here's a comment similar to what Chavez-DeRemer said from this ABC News article:

Trump's call to suspend Constitution not a 2024 deal-breaker, leading House Republican says

Republican Ohio Rep. Dave Joyce said Sunday that he didn't want to be drawn into commenting on Donald Trump's recent call to suspend the Constitution over baseless claims of 2020 election fraud.

Joyce, the chair of the Republican Governance Group, a centrist group in the House, was asked by ABC "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos to respond to Trump's post on Saturday on his Truth Social platform. The former president wrongly asserted that the "massive fraud" -- which did not occur -- "allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."

Joyce initially declined to respond, saying he didn't know what Trump said on social media and that the public wasn't "interested in looking backwards." But Stephanopoulos pressed further, and Joyce ultimately said that Trump's comment should be taken "in context" but that it wouldn't prevent him from supporting Trump if he ends up winning the nomination.  

Addendum: This would be my version of this article.

Forego social media and bring back press release

 Forgo social media and bring back the press release

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

When it came widely disseminating information before social media there was group email and before that there were newsroom wire services and before that I suppose there was the ticker-tape machine which was used for stock market transactions.

Today even The White House uses social media, especially Twitter, to communicate messages to the media. If they are going to use Twitter I think it is only fair they use other similar platforms like Mastodon and Tribel. For example this is how their latest message seems to have gotten out. I don't know how since it wasn't on their official Twitter account but this is what various media websites have a link to:

I tried to find out where original statement came from. It wasn't a direct tweet from Andrew Bates, it was on his Twitter page as the retweet you see above.  Christopher Cadelgo is a reporter for Politico. It wasn't here either: 

These are their tweets from the prior 19 hours (click to enlarge):

If there's an urgent message that President Biden or White House wants to send there is always the press conference, but there's nothing between that and using the Internet.

If you want to see what the official White House website has to say about what Trump said about suspending the Constitution and try to look at their official website and type in a dot com this is where you go:

Someone obviously figured out that many people would land on this website by mistake and registering the URL was a valuable idea.

When you realize your error and type in dot gov you go to the official website:

Then if you want to find the actual statement which was posted on Twitter you're out of luck because it isn't anywhere to be found where you'd expect it to be:

Trump uses his own version of Twitter, Truth Social, as an alternative to issuing a press release. While Truth Social is an overall failure for Trump it is a success since everything he posts there is covered by the media.

For any government official or entity, any public or private organization or institution, and any individual in the public eye there is an alternative to using the social media platform owned and controlled by Elon Musk even though it currently has the most reach. 

For those wanting to reach the media Wirth a message it would require compiling a group email list, although I would guess some of these are languishing unused in numerous computers. 

Once this is done the same people in charge of posting a tweet to get a statement out to the media could simple send it out as a press release via email.

Of course any organization or individual could still use Twitter but considering that this platform is controlled by Elon Musk I personally would hope that nobody did this. It legitimizes Twitter as a news source and subsidizes the platform which means more money in influence for Musk.

As far as alternatives for those who want to leave Twitter I prefer Mastodon. I wrote abut this here:

Here's my profile.

Individuals, including journalists, are divided over whether or not to leave Twitter. As I write this it is been discussed of Ali Velshi's MSNBC show. You can read "Why I'm Not Leaving Twitter" by Karen Attiah (left below) if you have a Washington Post subscription here.

Ali Velshi expressed mixed feeling about it but said he still uses Twitter and also uses these: 

As an aside, I am actually supportive of having Donald Trump use Truth Social, or if he wants to return to the all embracing arms of Elon Musk, to use Twitter. This is because with either platform he expresses himself without a filter and reveals what he really thinks. He doesn't have handlers urging him to stick to reading what has been prepared for him on a teleprompter. On social media he is his own worst enemy and the nightmare of any defense attorney who is trying to keep him out of jail.

I wonder whether Special Counsel Jack Smith will see this as Trump confessing to sedition:

The right-wing speechwriter Robert Strom just wrote in the highly conservative publication Hot Air that Trump has finally committed political suicide and will never recover:

"It’s like a social science experiment with 350 million participants. Researchers are asking: just how batsh!t crazy does a person have to be to lose 95% of their fans? For some reason, Trump has decided to participate as the experimental subject," Strom added, "There are several obvious things about Trump’s statement that are simply politically stupid. Like, really really stupid. Assuming there were no legal or ethical barriers to either calling a new election or suspending the Constitution (stay with me here, I know that is insane!), it is still politically stupid."

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Pot and psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon

 Pot and psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon

by Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

Two slightly related stories caught my eye on the website of a local Portland area TV station. Once I started writing about them my mind wandered far afield to cover other subjects.

Former employee reveals details about Shroom House’s operation

Here's another article:

The use of psilocybin mushrooms will be legal in Oregon next year but apparently they are available now - the article concludes:

“I’ve never even seen this stuff before. So I’m trying,” said Scott Yon, a customer at Shroom House. “I understand it may not be legally up yet, but in Portland, it doesn’t seem like people get arrested for anything.”

Even though the Oregon Health Authority and police say this is not legal, the long lines seen outside the store show the simple economics of supply and demand.

I've considered trying psilocybin mushrooms once the clinics, where someone trained to help you navigate the experience will help you, to see what unexplored part of my mind was opened to my consciousness. 

Since the psychedelic era there were two groups (not mutually exclusive) of people who used LSD and similar substances. Some belonged to the "turn on, tune in, drop out" group, a term popularized by Timothy Leary, and the others wanted to discover more about themselves. Some eventually followers of Richard Alpert who was Leary's partner, who became Baba Ram Das, and led a movement aimed at spiritual enlightenment.

When I was in college during the height of hippie and counterculture psychedelic times (1963-1967) I knew lots of people in the former group. There was a people's park I often walked through at Michigan State where students camped out and got stoned. Reference. 

I have concluded that I don't want to take the risk of using psilocybin. I am leery of any substance that leads me to be out of control of where my mind goes. Once a psychoactive drug is in your brain there's no "off" switch. You have to ride out the experience.

I like to be able to embark on unstructured  mental journeys to see where my unconscious leads me, but I want to be able to exert some conscious control.

I have friends who meditate using one or another technique. Almost everyday I spend time just letting my mind wander freely. I am not sure whether this would be considered mediation but I like the experience.

Since my mid-teens I paid a lot attention to my dreams, what Freud called "the royal road to the unconscious" and in fact read two paperback books by Freud when I was in my teens. One was his "Introduction of Psychoanalysis" and the other was "The Interpretation of Dreams."

Karl Jung agreed and wrote that “the dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche.”

These readings led me to understand that there was much more to people, including myself, than they were aware of. This understanding always informed the kind of therapy I practiced for 40 years. I feel the crucial way therapy helps is the relationship between client and therapist, but that there are times with certain clients when it is helpful to facilitate insight into why they are distressed. 

The following article should be both cautionary and reassuring to those using cannabis, which is legal for recreational use in Oregon:

OLCC issues marijuana product recall due to potential pesticide contamination

While I've tried high in CBD cannabis edibles to help sleep through the night I find that I don't like the effect that even the amount of THC, usually about a third, has on me. I makes my mind race and causes near hallucinatory images. I don't use any cannabis at all now, but I live in a senior community where many friends and acquaintances use it. If you visit any of the  560 + Oregon pot stores you will see customers ranging in age from 21 to 91 or older.  You will see hipsters looking for a better high to elders with bad hips relying on budmasters, the pot store version of your pharmacist, suggest varieties to help with different ailments.

It should be reassuring to cannabis users that the state is testing the products, but it seems to be common sense that anyone trying a new variety realize that the testing takes time to find contaminants so they need to make changes with caution.

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