Hal's Sunday Snarky Letter: I added to a photo of Trump's bathroom with the document boxes

I didn't make this. It is going around on social media.

By Hal Brown

The now infamous documents bathroom is in the Lake Room above.

The Sunday Snarky Letter from Hal Brown...

Dear Reader,

The New York Times column "Bathroom Reading at Mar-a-Lago" by Maureen Dowd had a Justice Department photo of boxes of documents in one of Trump's bathrooms as the primary illustration. (Column, subscription, here) Instead of a few copies of People or Time to look at, Trump's guests can relieve themselves while flipping through the pages of secret documents.

I cut and pasted a few elements onto the now famous, or infamous, documents bathroom photo when I saw the column in The New York Times shown above. I found a photoshop of Trump sitting on a toilet so I put him on the toilet in the bathroom photo, I added a can of Coke and Stack of secret documents on the vanity, and pasted at bucket of KFC on the floor next to him.

Then I decided the entire illustration was lame and not very creative, and not even realistic. That's why I deleted it.

The bathroom was referenced by Maureen Dowd in the following paragraph, with my bold added, below:

The special counsel made it clear that this isn’t just a “boxes hoax,” as Trump called it. You can’t purloin classified documents; leave them in the gilt-and-crystal glare of the bathroom, shower, bedroom and ballroom at Mar-a-Lago; and show them off to remind people how important you are. Trump’s ego is his greatest weakness. He couldn’t resist self-aggrandizing. Hey, I got these secret documents.

What I mean is: who the hell is so uncouth, tasteless, and ostentatious to have an oversized crystal chandelier and sconce in one of their bathrooms? While this may be a rhetorical question, I will suggest that it might be someone who would take a can of Diet Coke and a bucket of fried chicken with him while he suffers the consequences of not having enough fiber in his diet... well I don't have to spell that part out further...

Have a pleasant Sunday,

Hal

PS:

Here are two of the comments to Dowd's column which reference the bathroom photo:

Paul N: 

I've often considered installing a chandelier in my bathroom, and frequently considered using the shower as storage space, but both, at the same time? The work of a very stable genius...

@Paul N. The many commentaries have covered just about every angle of this sordid affair in exhausting detail. Where I can add value is to point out the vulgar decoration of that bathroom. The cheap Walmart shower curtain, chintzy glass chandelier, and cliché marble vanity are worthy of a several-count indictment on their own. It takes a lot of money to look that cheap! Indefensible! Bed, bath, and beyond a reasonable doubt! 

This comment makes a good point:

Nothing's more popular at a resort than a convenient yet private bathroom near the pool. Make sure there's reading material for longer visits, and you're a hit! Especially when you lock the door and can stuff a few classified docs in your swimwear!

Addendum:

Click to enlarge any of these:

At least Trump hopes for this...

The Vancouver, WA waterfront, below,
is lovely. The Columbia River is impressive.
 Walking there from from the far parking lot,
not so lovely. 

When I took the photo above last weekend I figured I might find a use for it.

I did:

A personal note:

One of our favorite lunch trips is to eat at Wild Fin, especially when you can eat outside (below).

It is in Vancouver, WA, a short drive from Portland. It is on the Waterfront  Park, below:

Click these to enlarge

He's an innocent man. Just ask him. Can a regular guy who loves KFC be a criminal?

 

By Hal Brown

He says he got more votes than any sitting president by far in 2022. He also says he's an innocent man. He's innocent, he tells us, he's innocent. Soooo innocent!

Everything he was accused of doing wrong was a hoax, a hoax, all a big hoax... a big scam so the Democrats can win an election. 

Oh, and he's always putting America first. America, mind you, not himself.

I'm not making it up. You can hear him say these things here.

Come on unbelievers. Trump is just a regular guy. Sure he lives in a house with a big chandelier in the bathroom where he happens to store stolen secret documents...

... but then again he loves his KFC and Diet Cokes so he must be a regular guy just like you.

Click here if you don't see the Disquis comment section.

Don't call Trump's behavior inexplicable, Digby, when you wondered about this you gave the reason twice in your column

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist

Heather "Digby" Parton is one of my three or four favorite columnists. She writes for Salon. Today she wrote:

The legal dominoes finally start to fall against Trump

Trump has lost the shield of the presidency that kept him safe for four years and the rule of law is coming for him

What I want to address here is just one word, emphasized below, in one sentence:

Trump has acted in inexplicably suspicious and self-defeating ways since he first ran for president in 2016. From calling on Russia to hack his rival's emails to his strange affinity for the worst dictators on the planet to his pathological lying about everything, Donald Trump has acted in ways that only cult members could excuse as normal.

Digby ends this paragraph writing that "Trump has acted in ways that only cult members could excuse as normal" which contradicts her saying the reasons for his behavior are inexplicable. They aren't inexplicable. Only cult members, who themselves aren't normal, think his actions are normal.

When I say normal in this context I mean mentally or psychologically normal. When I say I say abnormal II use it in the way it is used in abnormal psychology courses. I don't mean normal like, for example, saying that most professional basketball players are normally great if they make it into the pros while the likes of Michael Jordan and LeBron James are extraordinarily great, thus abnormal.

If I, who as a kid in when playing playground basketball game of HORSE, was so bad I think in my entire life probably only managed to sink one in 10 free throws, to go out for the basketball teams would be an inexplicable and self-defeating thing to do and especially humiliating considering the girls liked to watch the boys play. the 

Digby then goes on to express puzzlement by using the word "vexing" about the reasons he behaves in ultimately self-defeating ways:

This Mar-a-Lago case is especially vexing. When he decided to tell the government to go pound sand, he was not some naif who hadn't been in government before and didn't know the rules. He'd been president for four years by that time and knew very well that he was not supposed to keep classified documents at his beach club. And if they had been taken by accident in his chaotic move from the White House, he also knew very well that he should just give them back. But he refused, once again raising suspicions that he must be doing something nefarious with them. His behavior ever since then has done nothing to allay those concerns. Again, nobody normal would behave this way.

I highlighted several words above which provide the explanation. 

I propose that Digby and others flesh out such descriptions with modifiers, for example psychiatrically normal, or write things like no mentally stable person would act in ways that are so self-defeating.

I'd like to say I am writing this to bury the analysis of Trump once and for all since I've written about his psychiatric diagnosis so many times before. Between the minuscule contribution I've made to this body of work and what so many other mental health professionals have written I wouldn't be surprised if his personality has been analyzed by experts more than all other world leaders including Hitler, Lincoln, and Churchill.

Trump is now (see "Psychiatrists warn Trump's psychosis will grow as he becomes more desperate"), and Hitler was, a despot whose behavior many experts tried to understand though psychology.  Lincoln is said to have struggled with clinical depression . It has also be speculated that Churchill suffered from bouts of depression and mania. 

One of the most quoted sayings since Trump became a threat to democracy and mental health professionals began to write about how dangerous his psychopathology made him (a best selling book by mental health professionals was even titled "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump") was from "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu written in the 5th century BC. In it's various translations it means in essence that the best way to win at war is to know your enemy as well as you know yourself.

The best way to assure victory in a war or battle is to predict what your opponent will do before they do it. There are two way which work in tandem to do this. One is to look at past behavior as indices of future behavior and the other is to fully understand the personality of your opponent.

About the blog:

Here's a mystery. For unknown reasons all week the blog has had the largest percentage of readers logging on from Singapore. All I can think of is that this had something to do with this:

World's spy chiefs connect in secret conclave at Shangri-La Dialogue security meeting in Singapore

Perhaps this spy drama is a fantasy. There are expats from all over the world living in Singapore. Perhaps through word of mouth some of them have been following the blog. I'd appreciate anyone logging on from there comment and let me know who they are and how they discovered the blog, and what they think of it.

If you don't see the Diquis comment section below click here.

Was it an accidental moment of truth that Fox News online pictured Trump as most corrupt

 

By Hal Brown

My friend watched Fox News last night while we were watching MSNBC. I don't know why she subjects herself to this blood pressure raising torture. She said they were spinning the story as Biden prosecuting Trump to try to steal the election and that they had Steven Miller on (article and video).

While I never tune into Fox News, for the hell of it I thought I'd look at the Fox News website and above at the top of the blog is what I saw.

It struck me as a weird that Trump was pictured with the words "most corrupt" in caps and quotes under his photo. Could Fox News be editorializing that they had a sudden eureka moment of truth, justice, and the American way and were telling us that Trump was the most corrupt?

The clarification wasn't on the front page. It was in the first paragraph of the story that image was linked to:

EXCLUSIVE: Trump says indictment is 'election interference at the highest level'

 It, as shown above in my illustration, is:

Former President Trump said his federal indictment is "election interference at the highest level," telling Fox News Digital that the Biden administration is "the most corrupt" in history.

For a second I took the illustration literally at face value, i.e., the face that is pictured is of the most corrupt president in American history. Then I thought that it being on the main page of the Fox News website would be unprecedented. I had to check this out.

I discovered that what Fox News was trying to convey would be more accurately illustrated with a picture of Trump ranting that the Biden administration is the most corrupt in history.

They also could have found an unflattering photo of Biden to convey their meaning and used a photo like this:

This is what Trump and his MAGA mouthpieces want everyone to believe.

The article goes on at considerable length to attempt to paint President Biden as a bribery accepting criminal without evidence because supposedly Hunter Biden accepted $5 million from Burisma to get then Vice President Biden to make sure Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Slotkin, who was investigating the company, was fired.

According to the article:

The confidential source said the Burisma executive told him he "paid" the Bidens in such a manner "through so many different bank accounts" that investigators would not be able to "unravel this for at least 10 years."

The document then makes reference to "the Big Guy," which, has been said to be a reference to Joe Biden. 

It is believable that the troubled Hunter Biden was a grifter and took the money, but only someone willing to believe without evidence that Joe Biden was totally lacking in ethics, basically a illegitimately elected president, and a money-hungry criminal who would readily accept a bribe.

Of course, there are millions of Americans convinced that Joe Biden is an illegitimately elected president, a card carrying communist, and the Devil dressed in drag dragooning toddlers into changing their genders. 

About the blog:

Here's a mystery. For unknown reasons all week the blog has had the largest percentage of readers logging on from Singapore. All I can think of is that this had something to do with this:

World's spy chiefs connect in secret conclave at Shangri-La Dialogue security meeting in Singapore

There are expats from all over the world living in Singapore. Perhaps thorough word of mouth some of them have been following the blog. I'd appreciate anyone logging on from their comment and let me know who they are and how they discovered the blog, and what they think of it.

If you don't see the Disquis comment section below it is here.

Homelessness: Daytime nightmare about to unfold in Portland

 

Public domain, Creative Commons..

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist

This is a classic case of municipal decision makers putting the cart before the horse, only in this case the cart is a shopping cart. A ban of daytime camping just enacted in Portland, Oregon may make daytime scenes like this (above) more common.

Homelessness is multifaceted problem but not a particularly complex one to remedy. My intention isn't to elaborate on how to solve the problem. It should be a no-brainer. It certainly isn't the harsh measure of forcing people currently living in tents to wander the streets during the day in the hopes that this will force them to live in approved housing. 

Aside from the fact that there are not enough places for them to live, there are reasons that have to be addressed as to why those who don't avail themselves of such housing make the choice to live on the streets.

Here's the disturbing news for everyone who calls a tent their home in Portland, OR, and anyone with a modicum of empathy for them:

Click above to read article

I have a Portland (Oregon) street address although I really live a few hundred feet from the line between the city a suburban town that is on the terminus of one of the light rail lines from downtown. Low income passes are free or cost as little as $3. This is only relevant because Portland is banning daytime camping. More people will be able to head outside of city limits to find places to live on the street.

This may result in more homeless people deciding to set up camps in the town closest to me where we don't have resources to serve their needs.  Here's another article:

‘Inevitable’: Portland City Council passes daytime camping ban

The ban requires people living in tents to pack up and vacate between 8 AM and 8PM. It will go into effect on July 7th. Talk about a very unhappy Independence Day for the numerous people who live in tents within the city limits of Portland.

I appreciate Portland, the western part of Oregon, and our state government for being very progressive in numerous ways. Unfortunately, I am ashamed for the city because they are taking this inhumane and draconian measure before there are enough solutions in place so nobody has to be ejected from their tents to pay a fine they can't afford, and possibly end up in jail. Lest anyone forget, these tents are their homes and when in clusters they are their neighborhoods.

Update: 

People living on the streets, business owners have mixed reactions to Portland daytime camping ban