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.
Trump's "real" State of the Union speech is a version of Where's Truth Waldo when there's no Waldo in the picture.
By Hal Brown
CLICK above to enlarge. Hint: You can try but if you want to find Truth-telling Waldo, aka Trump and/or Sarah Sanders (do I need to mention Santos), because this is a beach with honest people lots of luck...
If you are reading this I very much doubt you watched Trump version of the response to President Biden's State of the Union address on NewsMax or looked at Truth Social. Of course, like me you may have held you nose when you saw this article on HUFFPOST and watched it from the link below:
The former president turned his supposed rebuttal of Biden's speech into an acrid campaign rant.
Trump, reading off a teleprompter, went on in a near monotone with his grating voice.
The first words out of Donald Trump's mouth were "here's the real state of the union" which if you think about it is an attack against Sarah Huckabee Sanders for presumably giving a speech about the unreal state of the union.
Occasionally he made an attempt to modulate his voice to the "this is horrible" level, for example when he said that "savage criminals and violent criminals are being released from jail to continue their crime wave" which of course the blames on President Biden.
The man seems incapable of transitioning from his rabblerousing mostly extemporaneous speaking style used at his rallies to reading off a teleprompter. Without the energy he seems to suck out of his cheering cultists he seems benumbed.
The reference to the weaponization Justice Department included what seemed to be a "poor me" plea for sympathy was "and I’m a victim of it — is persecuting his political opponents.”
According to Trump, Joe Biden's Justice Department is not only trying to indoctrinate our children but trying to mutilate them. It is unclear whether this is a reference to transexual surgery or the QAnon conspiracy that children are being killed to harvest adrenochrome, i.e. that "liberal politicians and Hollywood "elites" are harvesting the blood of children to extract adrenochrome for its psychedelic and life-extending benefits.Reference.
If that's not bad enough he goes onto say Biden is trying to lead us to the brink of World War Three." Trump, lest we forget, has a secret plan for stopping this which is a no-brainer: stop helping Ukraine and make sure Russia wins the war.
Wait for this bit of projection. This may be the best part.
Trump accuses Biden of being the most corrupt president in history. He must have his own definition of the meaning of that word. It certainly doesn't fit what the dictionary says: "having or showing a willingness to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain."
Of course Trump has good news.
He says that "we're" going to reverse every crisis, calamity, and disaster caused by Joe Biden, using the royal "we" before saying, with a rare use of the first person singular, that "I'm running for president to end the destruction of our country to complete the unfinished business of making America great again."
Postscript:
Its far as lies, I could say the same thing about what Sarah "I can't believe she's a state governor" Sanders said in her official GOP rebuttal as far as a truth-check.
This is what I wrote about it yesterday:
She was all over the place with her emphasis on how horrible the Democrats are in promoting so-called "woke" policies and using the word freedom numerous times. Of course she's trying to gaslight everyone as if by describing the destruction of freedom as freedom it will make people question their own sanity.
Just about every part of the anti-woke culture war is an attempt to take away freedom, from a woman's right to choose to the right to read what you want to read, to learning the truth about racism in America, to a person's genderidentity choice. It's as if she thinks that the more she uses the word freedom she will distract from the fact that these anti-wokers want to subjugate those they disagree with.
The Sandra Sanders speech wasn't psychiatric word salad, it was deliberate gaslighting
By Hal Brown, MSW
Those of us who watch MSNBC keep hearing terms like unhinged and untethered from reality, and today in the Raw Story article shown above (with my added picture) "word salad" is a term used to describe the GOP response Sarah Sanders gave to the State of the Union speech.
These terms tend to be used colloquially but many of them have counterparts in psychiatry. "Word salad" is one of them. Used to describe the Sanders rebuttal it is meant to be a mishmash of ingredients which, alas, for a chef would make a hard to stomach salad.
In psychiatry those who speak in a word salad are manifesting a symptom of a serious disorder.
A word salad, or schizophasia, is a "confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases",[1] most often used to describe a symptom of a neurological or mental disorder. The term schizophasia is used in particular to describe the confused language that may be evident in schizophrenia.[2] The words may or may not be grammatically correct, but are semantically confused to the point that the listener cannot extract any meaning from them. The term is often used in psychiatry as well as in theoretical linguistics to describe a type of grammatical acceptability judgement by native speakers, and in computer programming to describe textual randomization.
In psychiatry
Word salad may describe a symptom of neurological or psychiatric conditions in which a person attempts to communicate an idea, but words and phrases that may appear to be random and unrelated come out in an incoherent sequence instead. Often, the person is unaware that he or she did not make sense. It appears in people with dementia and schizophrenia,[3] as well as after anoxic brain injury. In schizophrenia it is also referred to as schizophasia.[2]Clang associations are especially characteristic of mania, as seen in bipolar disorder, as a somewhat more severe variation of flight of ideas. In extreme mania, the patient's speech may become incoherent, with associations markedly loosened, thus presenting as a veritable word salad.
I am not saying that Sanders has a psychiatric disorder. This is more what she was doing, also from Wikipedia:
Deliberate use
Narcissistic word salad is a type of purposefully confusing speech, using circular reasoning, logical fallacies and other rhetorical devices to disorient and manipulate a person or group. Some antisocial and narcissistic people use it in gaslighting their targets.
She was all over the place with her emphasis on how horrible the Democrats are in promoting so-called "woke" policies and using the word freedom numerous times. Of course she's trying to gaslight everyone as if by describing the destruction of freedom as freedom it will make people question their own sanity.
Just about every part of the anti-woke culture war is an attempt to take away freedom, from a woman's right to choose to the right to read what you want to read, to learning the truth about racism I'm America, to your genderidentity choice. It's as if she thinks that the more she uses the word freedom she will distract from the fact that these anti-workers want to subjugate those they disagree with.
I can't answer the answer the question as to whether anyone noticed that I haven't posted a blog for about 36 hours. It's early evening here in Oregon. For two days I have been without Internet and television because Comcast/XFinity was supposedly upgrading our service.
My TV and Internet just came back on.
I listened to President Biden's State of the Union Address on the radio but missed out on being able to both hear and see the Republican maniacal screaming. I missed being able to hear what the MSNBC crew had to say.
I haven't had time to immerse myself in the news as I usually to early every morning to see if I am inspired to write something which I hope will be a more or less original opinion on a subject.
Who will really be standing behind Biden in the State of The Union Address
By Hal Brown
It's supposed to be the House Speaker, but who will really be there symbolically as the real power in the House?
As far a McCarthy goes, he made his bed and now he has to sleep in it. I hope this takes away some of the glory he'd otherwise feel standing in a place of honor during the State of the Union Address.
I bet Greene wishes that she was selected to give the GOP response instead of Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will deliver the GOP’s response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night ― but viewers might want to do some fact-checking before taking anything she says at face value.
During Sanders’ two-year tenure as the press secretary for Donald Trump’s White House, stint as a Fox News commentator and new job as Arkansas’ Republican governor, Sanders has earned a reputation among her critics for lying with ease ― something she’s admitted under oath to doing ― and fiercely defending Trump’s most offensive behavior.
I wouldn't say that all, or even most, of the Republicans in the House of Representatives would benefit, indeed, that the country would benefit, from an assessment by psychiatrists to see if they'e be helped with treatment by major medications known to reduce delusional thing.
Will he become Jim Janus-faced Judas Jordan and run for president against Trump?
By Hal Brown
Note to regular blog readers: I doubt I will be putting a new blog on today since due to upgrades my Internet provider is working on all day I won't have any service.
Jordan is power mad. I believe that as a staunch supporter of Trump he has no real loyalty to him, hence the alliterative title of this blog.
I think the chances are slim to none that he'd hesitate to run against him in the primary if he saw an opening in what is sure to be a crowded field even when the long shots drop out.
While DeSantis and Trump compete for media attention with each other, Jordan will be all over the news for the next two years. He'll be center stage without trying while Trump, DeSantis, and anyone else trying to get media attention will be desperate to be booked for interviews. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of them, horror of horrors for most Republicans, on MSNBC.
Nobody has ever accused this congressman of being a shrinking violet. His belligerent personality is constantly on display in the media. We've seen his scowling, sneering, or screaming mouth and his pointing finger ad nauseam.
I wonder if his right index finger is insured for a million dollars.
He is sometimes called "Gym Jordan" because of accusations that as a wrestling coach at Ohio State he ignored and covered up allegations of the sexual abuse by the team doctor of some 150 athletes (reference).
Jordan received a BS from The University of Wisconsin - Madison, a masters degree from Ohio State, and went on to get a law degree from the less than stellar Capitol University Law School. It is an ABA accredited private law school located in downtown Columbus.U.S. News & World Reportlisted Capital's full-time Juris Doctor program as "Rank Not Published" in 2018, but in 2022 it was ranked as tied for No. 147-193 out of 197 schools in Best Law Schools. (Wikipedia)
Call him Gym or not, I have never heard Jim Jordan called dumb. His deciding to get a law degree at a school that might have been easier to get admitted to than a highly ranked school might have been a smart decision.
Ron DeSantis seems positioned to be Trump's number one competitor although while the field has some other top contenders it is interesting to note that absent from this list is Jim Jordan:
Declared Candidates
Nikki Haley, Former Ambassador to the United Nations
Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States
Possible Candidates
Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas
Liz Cheney, U.S. representative from Wyoming (At-Large District)
Chris Christie, Former Governor of New Jersey
Bob Corker, Former Senator from Tennessee
Tom Cotton, U.S. Senator from Arkansas
Daniel Crenshaw, U.S. Representative from Texas (2nd District)
Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator from Texas
Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida
Doug Ducey, Governor of Arizona
Mike DeWine, Governor of Ohio
Joni Ernst, U.S. Senator from Iowa
Josh Hawley, U.S. Senator from Missouri
Larry Hogan, Governor of Maryland
Adam Kinzinger, U.S. Representative from Illinois (16th District)
Mike Lee, U.S. Senator from Utah
Kristi Noem, Governor of South Dakota
Mike Pence, Former Vice President of the United States
Mike Pompeo, Former Secretary of State
Mitt Romney, U.S. Senator from Utah
Marco Rubio, U.S. Senator from Florida
Ben Sasse, U.S. Senator from Nebraska
Rick Scott, U.S. Senator from Florida
Tim Scott, U.S. Senator from South Carolina
Elise Stefanik, U.S. Representative from New York (21st District)
Chris Sununu, Governor of New Hampshire
Glenn Youngkin, Governor of Virginia
If it turns out that Jim Jordan does decide to run I will expect major prognostication points.
Update:
I thought this was a joke:
It was real. Maybe it is an example of Jordan's idea of what's funny. It did get him in the media.
