April 25, 2023

From Feb. 26, 2023: Tucker Carlson might be Trump's best pick to run with him for VP

  

Introduction:

The following isn't an original idea. It is, however, one made more relevant today than it was two days ago now that Tucker Carlson is without a job. He must be wondering what to do next... aside from not having anything else that piqued my interest to write about I decided to republish my blog from February.

Click images to enlarge them.


Below: Unchanged blog from Feb. 23, 2023. On the bottom of the page are some images I made yesterday.


By Hal Brown

Anyone who says the following might be the best pick for Trump to ordain as his running mate:

From The Washington Post:

How a small-town train derailment erupted into a culture battle

The East Palestine train accident is one of hundreds each year, but it’s become a significant political flashpoint

Fox News host Tucker Carlson used his show to bring race into the discussion, decrying an alleged lack of urgency by the government for a blue-collar community with few people of color. “Is it because these are not their voters?” he asked Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who agreed with the premise.

This is small potatoes compared to Tucker Carlson's latest coup enabled by Kevin McCarthy. Whether or not other media are able to get all the J6 videos of the Capitol attack his getting first dibs will score big time points with Trump.

What puzzles me is, even though the word is in quotes, why Carlson refers to this as "insurrection day" instead rebranding it with a term that most people peacefully entered the Capitol and were there to make sure the election wasn't stolen. 

With the speculation as to whether Trump would prevail in the GOP primary leaning heavily towards it being the former president there has also been chatter in the punditry about who is angling to be his vice presidential pick. There's no similar discussion about who might be currying favor with Ron DeSantis to persuade him they would be his best running mate choice.

Look at this web search:


First, what would be in it for Tucker Carlson? 

While he's the top banana at Fox News, being second banana to a president of the United States who might die in office would make him president, and assuming Trump lived it would position him to run for president in 2028. The answer for him in one word is "power". He'd have to be patient and should Trump win he knows he'd be hand maiden to a megalomaniac but time would be on his side. In addition, what would he have to lose since if Trump was defeated he could simply go back to his former Fox News gig.

The second and more important question is what would be in it for Trump. What would Carlson bring to the ticket that nobody else would, and what are the drawbacks of having his as a running mate?

The only drawback I can think of is that Tucker is another crowd pleasing performer, an actual star. It's possible he could upstage Trump. He's Marjorie Taylor Greene without being certifiably insane.

The benefits include Carlson's star power. Trump could make sure Carlson never upstages him when they are literally appearing on the same stage by warning him about this. Carlson is smart enough never to do this. 

The only possible better lead-in act for a Trump rally than Tucker Carlson is Marjorie Taylor Greene, but does Trump really want a screaming manic introducing him? Besides, he can include her as a member of his rally show cast and she can appear before Carlson. Greene, Carlson, Trump: now that would be a MAGA crowd pleaser. 

With Trump who would make the best, i.e., the most competent vice president is irrelevant. It was a fluke that he picked Mike Pence who actually had some governing experience. He picked him because he was a national unknown who wouldn't upstage him. He believed in his grandiose self-confidence that he didn't need anyone to help him win.

With Trump running again he may have rethought this and want to run with someone who has their own huge fan base. He may have a moment of humility and want to run with someone that may actually bring him additional votes in the primary coming from those who lean towards DeSantis because they see him as Trumpian without being Trump. 

For Trump it is always about winning. Who can forget this?


The question I have is whether the star of a long-running hit show is if he'd be willing to allow an equally talented understudy to be hired.

Addendum: 

As a reward to Marjorie Taylor Greene Trump could make her his Chief of Staff. She's adept at sucking up and has demonstrated this with Kevin McCarthy. No puns intended here...
Click above to read snarky replies to this tweet.

Can you guess who just tweeted this?

Hubris is the delusion that causes people to mistake themselves for God. They imagine they have power, wisdom and foresight they don’t actually possess. It’s a species of mental illness. 

It is Carlson's latest tweet:

I am sure that the graduate of Harvard and Yale Law knows the meaning of the word "hubris". He's obviously not referring to himself, a high priest of hubris.


Thanks for reading. If you are reading this on halbrown.org scroll down to make comments and share on social media. The archives and tags are on the bottom of the main page. If you are reading on Booksie,Substack,, or Medium click below to go to the blog web page. 

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In June of 2016 the blog had the most readers. Here's what I was posting then.

Updates:

I asked ChatGPT AI to write a Shakespearian style sonnet about Tucker. This is what it came up with before the service got overloaded and couldn't be accessed. I wanted it to write a haiku about Tucker.

Oh, Carlson Tucker, pundit fierce and bold, Whose tongue doth lash with wit and venom keen, Thou art a force to make the blood run cold, When thou dost speak of politics and spleen.

Thy voice doth ring with cadence like a bell, And words like arrows pierce the heart and mind, Thou art a champion of the right-wing swell, And of conservative ideals thou art aligned.

Yet some do find thy rhetoric too harsh, And claim that thou dost stoke the flames of hate, But thou dost hold thy ground with steadfast marsh, And boldly speak the truth, though others chide and berate.

So let the critics rail and vent their spleen, For Carlson Tucker, thou art our pundit king.

Here's what it came up with as an Ogden Nash style poem:

Tucker Carlson, a man of the hour, His opinions, they do tower, A pundit with a gift of gab, Whose words can make the viewers grab.

He talks of politics and the state, His commentary, never late, Some might say his views are skewed, But his arguments, they do exude.

He's got a wit like no one else, A pundit who's not on the shelf, He's got the charm, he's got the flair, And his followers, they do not spare.

So whether you love him or you hate, Tucker Carlson, he won't abate, His commentary, he will always bring, A pundit who can make you sing.

This is the limerick it generated:

There once was a pundit named Tucker, Whose views on politics would often sucker, He'd speak with great zeal, And sometimes appeal, To those who found his arguments tougher.

 I could change the fifth line to a dirty one...

Click above to read

Excerpt:

"What if he runs?" Wilson added. "He's rich enough. He'd instantly have an online fundraising juggernaut second only to Trump, and perhaps surpassing him. He's polarizing, terrible, and utterly amoral ... in short, better than Ron DeSantis for the base. I'd argue he's the only Republican who presents a material danger to Donald Trump in a primary. Celebrity, money, mental acuity, cynicism, pro-Putin isolationism, and an overt love of authoritarianism are a pretty strong secret sauce for the MAGA base. Celebrity got Trump the [White House]. It could certainly do the same for Tucker."

All the qualities that make Carlson's potential candidacy seem far-fetched would be considered strengths in a GOP primary, Wilson argues.

"Spare me your 'That could never happen. Even Trump's GOP would never vote for a former TV host pushing white replacement theory,'" he wrote. "That's PRECISELY who they'd vote for."

"This iteration of 'A Face In the Crowd' doesn't end with a revelation of the real character of the showman-as-politician," Wilson concluded. "This one ends with Tucker running and possibly winning a herrenvolk campaign, where his flaws don't matter, only his capacity for hate."

New: HUFFPOST assumes everyone knows Harry Potter and that everyone but Harry is afraid to call Voldemort by his name... my image. The story just notes how hardly anybody on Fox News is mentioning the Tucker Carlson story.

Addendum:

These are some images I made yesterday:

Below: Not too many people assume Tucker is dead, more likely with his star power if he has died it is only temporary and he'll be a zombie king leading his undead hoard to continue his attack on the living liberals.

Below: Only Tucker and perhaps a few top Fox News insiders know why Rupert Murdoch really fired him. It is possible that the reason is quite simple. Murdoch may have seen a behind the scenes video of Tucker joking about why Lesley Ann Smith said they called off their engagement.



Below, the HUFFPOST top story title and above what they really meant to say



April 24, 2023

Rudy and GOP MAGA maniacs in the House want to turn Hunter Biden into a master spy...

 

Hal Brown's Blog

This is a blog with my opinions on politics, psychology, and other subjects. My posts are sometimes serious and sometimes snarky. I'm a retired MSW clinical social worker/psychotherapist and mental health center director who was also a cranberry farmer. Scroll archives on bottom of page to see previous blog stories. There are new ones added almost every day, although if I don't have anything original to say I try not to say anything at all.

There was no there there with Benghazi so at least there is a there there with the GOP's apoplectic reaction to Bud Lite commercials. There is a there there if you believe that anything related to accepting LGBTQ+ people as regular folks is akin, if not worse than, fattening up your baby and eating it's liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

There is a there that's actually there with Hunter Biden. This "there" is that he actually did have a laptop. What is on it is not known is what's on it, well, if you believe Rudy Giuliani, he knows what's on it. 


Last night when I read the article Giuliani hints he could use Hunter Biden's laptop as defense in Dominion case initially I had nothing particular to write about. I did think of an illustration (above) which basically conveyed my reaction.

Excerpt:

Instead of blaming Trump's election loss on voting machines, Giuliani focused on the theory that suppression of a story about Hunter Biden caused Trump to lose. 

Attorney Robert Costello spoke as a guest on Giuliani's Sunday radio program.

"Well, they knew it was going to involve Hunter Biden because they knew that once I gave the laptop to you and you were going to various media organizations to see whether they would publish this material they were concerned," Costello said. 

According to the statistics," the attorney added, "17% of the people that voted for Biden said that they would not have voted for Biden they would have voted for Trump if they knew what was on the laptop."

Giuliani declared Costello's statistics to be "proven facts."

"So you could say the election was the election was stolen before it was stolen," Giuliani declared. "I mean before you get to counting."

That was last night. This morning I decided to expand on my thoughts and republish a blog (bottom of page) which I wrote about Hunter Biden in February.

What, pray tell, is supposed to be on the laptop that would have been so damaging to Hunter Biden, that could possibly lead people not to vote for his father? I'll get to that.

Forget the jiggered voting machines programmed to change Trump votes to Biden votes. It was Hunter's Mac laptop that led to the illegitimate election of Joe Biden.


....
In October 2020, a controversy emerged involving data from a laptop that belonged to Hunter Bidenthat was abandoned at a Delaware computer shop in 2019. Three weeks before the 2020 United States presidential election, the New York Post published a front page story that presented emails from the laptop, alleging they showed corruption by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The story was based on information provided to Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of incumbent president and candidate Donald Trump by the computer shop's owner, John Paul Mac Isaac. Forensic analysis later authenticated some of the data on the laptop, including one of two key emails used by the Post in their initial reporting.[1][2]

Trump attempted to turn the story into an October surprise to hurt Joe Biden's campaign, saying he had acted corruptly regarding Ukraine while in office.[3][4][5] The hard drive data had been shared with the FBI and Republican operatives such as Trump advisor Steve Bannon before it became publicly known.[6]

PolitiFact wrote in June 2021 that, while "over time, there has been less doubt that the laptop did in fact belong to Hunter Biden", the laptop "was real in the sense that it exists, but it didn't prove much", as "[n]othing from the laptop has revealed illegal or unethical behavior by Joe Biden as vice president with regard to his son's tenure as a director for Burisma".[7]


The computer repairman who ended up with Hunter's Mac, by sheer chance, was named Mac.

I'm rewatching "Designated Survivor" now with my partner who never saw it. If you haven't watched it I'm not giving you a major spoiler to write that in it a member of the US House who is a spy ends up becoming vice president (lower right below). Perhaps Rudy watched the series and from the fevered recesses of his mind this percolated up and became his own delusion.

Does Rudy think that the laptop contains proof that Hunter and his father were in cahoots in a conspiracy to make him president along with co-conspirators Volodymyr Zelensky and (who knows what the deranged Rudy believes) the evil Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his white pussycat?

The best spies never get caught. We may never discover they even existed. They certainly would never leave traces of their nefarious machinations on a laptop, let alone send it to a repair shop. Then again, Hunter made some bad choices in his life so perhaps there's a remote, however minuscule, possibility that Hunter is a spy. Maybe he managed to cover up the highest of high treason committed by his vice president father which thus enabled him to become president.

If Trump was Putin's puppet, maybe Joe Biden was working for the ultimate puppet master George Soros.

Soros or, for James Bond fans, Smersh, it doesn't really matter who one believes Hunter, and Joe's, overlord was. After all, who are you going to believe, Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor or hapless Hunter?


Update: 

Hunter Biden's lawyer fires shot at 'unhinged' Marjorie Taylor Greene


This is what I wrote on Feb. 2, 2024:


Left, DonkeyHotey caricature, right my adaptation 


.


Thanks for reading. If you are reading this on halbrown.org scroll down to make comments and share on social media. The archives and tags are on the bottom of the main page. If you are reading on Booksie,Substack,, or Medium click below to go to the blog web page. 

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In June of 2016 the blog had the most readers. Here's what I was posting then.

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April 23, 2023

Toxically masculine men boycotting Bud Lite fear the Babadook, as so do many women...

Hal Brown's Blog

This is a blog with my opinions on politics, psychology, and other subjects. My posts are sometimes serious and sometimes snarky. I'm a retired MSW clinical social worker/psychotherapist and mental health center director who was also a cranberry farmer. Scroll archives on bottom of page to see previous blog stories. There are new ones added almost every day, although if I don't have anything original to say I try not to say anything at all.

If the Disquis comment section isn't on the bottom of this page click here to comment and scroll down the page.

If it's a word or if it's in a look you can't get rid of the Babadook. Movie poster above in center.
The monster design for the Babadook movie poster was inspired by The Man in the Beaver Hat in
 
London After Midnight (1927) above. Public domain 
"For some, trans people represent just the latest
 
Babadook, a complex fear they cannot tolerate." Wash. Post essay

Glass on right added by Hal Click to read article (subscription

I knew there was a controversy involving Bud Lite somehow endorsing through their recent advertising the dreaded acceptance of members of the LQBTQ+ community as just being plain regular folks. Bud Lite became a target of the frothing at the mouth rabid woke warriors.

I wasn't following the story until I saw and read the opinion essay by Brian Broone, an author I wasn't familiar with, in this morning's Washington Post about toxic masculinity. The article focuses on men. There are, of course, many women, perhaps just as many as men, who buy into the woke fear mongering.

Here's an excerpt: 

Dylan Mulvaney, a trans influencer with more than 10 million followers, documented her transition over the course of a year. To celebrate Day 365 of her journey, Bud Light sent her some personalized cans of beer. She unveiled them on TikTok in a partnership with Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch.

This attempt on Bud Light’s part to be forward-thinking about how its customers live and love has been met with a backlash by one group of people who seem to believe that another group of people should not exist. Kid Rock used his gun to shoot several cases of the beer; another guy destroyed a can of Bud Light with a baseball bat in a typical digital tantrum.

For some, trans people represent just the latest Babadook, a complex fear they cannot tolerate.

A note to those folks who are upset that Anheuser-Busch relied on a trans woman as a quasi-spokesperson: Whether you like it or not, queer people have been drinking “your beer” for decades. In fact, as long as there’s been beer, queer people have been drinking it.

Mulvaney’s celebration for some reason threatened the very existence of a whole bunch of guys who aren’t ready for that reality. This will surprise no one who has ever been a small boy. Every boy knows the sting of being called a sissy. Boys are raised to believe that so-called feminine traits represent a danger they must avoid. Boys learn early that they can expect to be punished if they stray in any way into risky, weakening feminine behaviors. These lessons take root deep in our psyches as youngsters, and they stay there forever.

This is from Fox Business News:

We can thank one far-right extremist for what has come to be called the culture war and it, perhaps amazingly, isn't Donald Trump. 

When you come right down to it, the fact that Ron DeSantis, a deadly dull Florida stocky stick in the mud man, managed to demonize all things LGBTQ+ is dumbfounding.

I also like to depict the governor who thought it would prove how ballsy he was by going after Disney because of their LGBTQ+ supportive position this way:


I adapted an image posted by someone else.

Of course his floating the nudnik notion of building a prison next to Disney World or trying to find a corporation willing to invest in opening a competing amusement park when the Orlando Universal Resort is already nearby reeked of hot Floridian flop sweat.

He also has done after everything related to historic American racism as a dire and imminent threat to the very existence to the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of everyone who really matters.

While Donald Trump makes fleeting references to how bad being woke is I doubt all that many of his supporters think he gives 1 ½ shits about this.

Yet across the country there are enough people who used to drink Bud Lite to heed the call to stop doing so and cause a decrease in sales. In fact, calling this a bloodbath as Fox Business News does, isn't far off if the plummeting orders in the bars they surveyed reflect a national trend.

The anti-woke movement has had incredible success in lumping together a group of fears many people have into one Babadock.

Who knew? 

This is from Wikipedia:

 LGBT community

In October 2016, a Tumblr user joked that the Babadook is openly gay; in December 2016, another Tumblr user posted a viral screenshot showing the movie classified by Netflix as an LGBT film.[62][31] Despite the absence of overt references to LGBT culture in the film, fans and journalists generated interpretations of queer subtext in the film (dubbed "Babadiscourse"[62]) that were often tongue-in-cheek, but occasionally more serious, highlighting the character's dramatic persona, grotesque costume, and chaotic effect within a traditional family structure. In June 2017, The Babadook trended on Twitter and was displayed as a symbol during that year's Pride Month.[63][64] The social media response became so strong that theatres in Los Angeles took the opportunity to hold screenings of the film for charity.[65] Michael Bronski said to the Los Angeles Times: "In this moment, who better than the Babadook to represent not only queer desire, but queer antagonism, queer in-your-faceness, queer queerness?", and drew comparisons to historic connections between queerness and horror fiction such as Frankenstein and Dracula.[66]

Jennifer Kent said that she "loved" the meme, saying that "I think it's crazy and [the meme] just kept him alive. I thought ah, you bastard. He doesn't want to die so he's finding ways to become relevant."[67]

Donald Trump legitimized the bigotry of a large swath of white Americans against people of color. He allowed people who kept their racism secret to be open about it. 

Trump may or may not be kicking himself for allowing DeSantis for  taking advantage of the homophobia in so many people and adding his turning the teaching about American racism into a war against the new Confederacy.

The good news, reported in a 2019 article, is that Americans Are Becoming Less Racist and Homophobic (link).

Excerpt:

The resurgence of openly racist attitudes in the Trump era has led many observers to question whether the apparent reduction in prejudice in recent years was an illusion. New research provides a reassuring answer.

Researchers find that both conscious and unconscious bias regarding race and sexual orientation declined significantly between 2007 and 2016. For racial attitudes, this change was largely generational, whereas the more relaxed attitudes toward sexuality were found in the population as a whole.

What this tells us is that Americans are less racist and homophobic than they used to be. Because of this, that only having a few policies like being Latino anti-immigration and enacting voter fraud laws to run on, far-right politicians like Trump and DeSantis are taking advantage of cultural issues, gut issues. They want to scare the bejesus out of their base telling them to be terrified of the Babadook.

Addendum:

A poem by DAMETRIAS, 2014

The Babadook


If it's in a word, or if it's in a book
you can't get rid of the Babadook.
He wears a hat
he's tall and black
but that's how they describe him in his book.
A rumbling sound, than three sharp knocks
you better run, or he'll hold you in his locks.
ba-ba-ba-dook-dook-dook...
Your closet opens
and your honestly hopin'
that he won't hear a sound
but that's when you know that he's around.
The book close
you have an itch under your nose
and that's just how the story goes.
So close your eyes and count to ten
better hope you don't wake up again.
'Cause if it's in a word, or if it's in a book
you can't get rid of the Babadook
.... you'll see him if you look


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