Remember Ukraine today and that whatever Trump was and is, Putin is an active war criminal

 

Photo modified by author from Creative Commons color picture here.

By Hal Brown

I was listening to BBC on the radio last night and they reported on Putin's latest attack on civilian targets, in this instance an attack killing at least 11 people in Zelenskyy's hometown. They also described how the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, which Putin shamelessly and nonsensically blames on Ukraine, has flooded thousands of acres of prime farmland and will create a major food crisis. Flood waters are polluting acres of rich farmland and moving landmines into new areas where they will have to be found and removed.

Americans who follow the news will be focused on Trump's court appearance, but while this is going on Ukrainian civilians will be waiting for the next attack by Putin's forces. 

Trump is called all kinds of names by his detractors. He's been likened to Hitler but this misses the fact that the world  has in Putin a Hitler, albeit minus the systematic attempt to exterminate Germany's Jewish population (and others).

Trump is often accused of blaming others for his worst misdeeds as he professes his own innocence. Compared to Putin's claiming that Zelenskyy was a NAZI Trump's turning the truth inside-out is small potatoes. 

I was looking for a non-copyrighted picture (like the one I modified above) to use for this blog and came across one used to illustrate this recent editorial in The Guardian which is worth reading:

The Guardian view on Vladimir Putin’s war: terror without purpose

The subtitle is "The fog of war is thick in Ukraine, but certain strategic and moral truths remain crystal clear" and the caption under the picture reads "Mr Putin’s war is sustained by his monstrous pride."

Take a look at the photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of the A.P. which illustrates The Guardian editorial. Of the many pictures of Putin which you can find with an image search this one (in the seventh row of the image search) seems to  best convey both the monstrous pride noted in the caption and the evil within this 21st century war criminal.

While many of us will be watching coverage of the unprecedented historic event in Miami today on TV, it would be good to give pause to be thankful that we are even able to have electricity to turn on our televisions, let alone not have to be hunkering down in a bomb shelter worrying about our lives and the lives of our loved ones who are in combat against Putin's invaders.

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Looking back on the blog: Here's what I posted in 2015.

Let's not forget Lady Justice holds the scales in one hand and a sharp sword in the other

 

By Hal Brown

Former Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) said "Lady Justice is showing us she has an understanding of karma and a sense of humor" (Reference) but she's never shown as smiling. She does hold a sworn and at times she can be seen as a purveyor of karma.

As shown in my illustration above, Trump has two overlapping mouths. This represents the conundrum of trying to understand Trump. He says things that are demonstrable lies, but we never know whether he believes what he says.

Here's what I think David Jolly is describing in interview with Nicole Wallace dwhen he said the following from the article in Raw Story.

"You could not write the projection that Donald Trump was engaged in, then Secretary Clinton, to now be facing his own loss of liberty about what exactly he accused her of. I think Donald Trump knows that and understands that. I think Donald Trump knows that his wisest strategy is not to win this case in the southern district of Florida but to win the presidency. And that is why you're seeing this two-tiered strategy. Attorneys are left with a client who continues to lie to himself and misrepresent. But it's a political strategy that he sees as working."

There are contradictions here. 

Psychological projection is an unconscious process. While Trump is accusing Hillary Clinton of doing what he did (and of course he's comparing an arsonist to an overripe apple considering that what Hillary did with the email server is nothing like what he did). This is projection in the colloquial sense, i.e. to accuse someone of doing something wrong to deflect from the fact you did something wrong, often worse, that what they did.

We just don't know what Trump believes. 

Therefore, when Jolly goes on saying that Trump knows that his wisest strategy is not to win the Florida case but to win the presidency again, it is just speculation to say what he knows. From what I hear Trump saying about the documents case it seems that he very much cares about winning that case.

I don't see the two tiered strategy Jolly describes.

Then Jolly goes on to say that Trump continues to lie to himself, which of course entails misrepresentation. But if this is due to his lying to himself, then it isn't deliberate misrepresentation even though it is a misrepresentation of the truth.

Finally, how can all that we observe coming from Trump be a political strategy that he sees as working if he is lying to himself? If he is lying to himself to this degree then he is delusional. If he is delusional he is not mentally capable of devising a rational strategy.

If there is such a thing as karma it works in mysterious and erratic way. If Lady Justice is about to wield the sword of karma and strike Trump down, or  to put it another way, give him his just deserts, I don't think she'll be chuckling to herself finding it the least but amusing. 

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My other blogs today:

HUFFPOST title editorializes in title, but gets it wrong, The Rolling Stones got it right.

Sorry, Jennifer Rubin, Bill Barr can't play a vital role in helping Republicans accept that Trump is unfit for office

HUFFPOST title editorializes in title, but gets it wrong, The Rolling Stones got it right.

 

There's no mention of Trumpworld playing with fire per se in the article which it titled: 

Trump, Allies Escalate Attacks On Criminal Case.

I think the appropriate saying is more like playing with matches, especially around a spilled can of gasoline. Of course children do play with fire whether they use matches or lighters and as such they are playing with fire. 

This being pointed out, I might suggest that this Rolling Stones song could apply to Donald Trump thinking he can play his games with Jack Smith.

For that matter, this Talking Heads classic also applies to Trump:

 

Just saying....

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This is the second blog for the day. The first one is here.

Sorry, Jennifer Rubin, Bill Barr can't play a vital role in helping Republicans accept that Trump is unfit for office

 

The words in Jennifer Rubin's opinion piece in The Washington Post (here, subscription) which I've highlighted below are why I say that Bill Barr can't play a vital role in helping Republicans accept that Trump is unfit for office:

 As Trump’s former attorney general, Barr’s willingness to speak out tells Republicans still capable of reason that the case is real, it’s serious, it cannot be brushed off and that the Justice Department didn’t engage in misconduct. Barr could break through the right-wing media bubble that shelters millions of Republicans from reality. They have convinced themselves that Trump is innocent and/or that this will all go away. Even after word of the indictment spread, Republican politicians continued to attack the Justice Department as if it, not Trump, were on trial. Barr is there to shake them by the lapels, effectively telling them, “No, he’s in big trouble because he did something very, very wrong.”

To be capable of reason one has to be willing to engage in critical thinking. People who aren't seriously mentally impaired are capable of reason, of rational thought, but before they exercise these "brain muscles" they have to be willing to accept they may have to alter beliefs they have not only held before, but shared with others, sometimes in very public ways.

Barr has said that if even half of what Trump has been accused of can be proved in court, he's toast.

You can listen to Barr here:

Consider that following these remarks by Barr, Trump called him  a "disgruntled former employee' & lazy Attorney General who was weak & totally ineffective" and wrote on Truth Social:

"He doesn't mean what he's saying, it's just MISINFORMATION.Barr's doing it because he hates 'TRUMP' for firing him. He was deathly afraid of the Radical Left when they said they would Impeach him. He knows the Indictment is Bull.... Turn off FoxNews when that 'Gutless Pig' is on!"

Jennifer Rubin wrote that "Trump’s former counsel Ty Cobb told CNN, 'I think Trump is in an enormous amount of trouble. This indictment is about as carefully structured and evidentially supported as any indictment in history.' Law professor Jonathan Turley, who frequently defended Trump’s behavior during his impeachments, wrote, 'For two years, I have said that the Mar-a-Lago charges — particularly obstruction — represent the greatest threat to Donald Trump. It remains baffling why Trump forced this issue over these documents rather than just give them all back.'" Nobody who isn't a political junkie really knows who they are (although they might recognize Cobb with his mustache and flowing locks). 

Consider that Daddy Trump even turned on his most favorite progeny, Ivanka after she supported Bill Barr:

Posting to Truth Social -- the social media network Trump launched after being kicked off Twitter -- Trump continued to repeat false claims about the 2020 election as he mocked the committee's work and lashed out at comments Ivanka Trump and former Attorney General Bill Barr made in videotaped depositions.

"Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results," Trump wrote after she said she agreed with Barr's assessment that there was no amount of fraud sufficient enough to overturn his loss.

"It affected my perspective," Ivanka Trump told the committee about Barr's assessment. "I respect Attorney General Barr, so I accepted what he was saying."

Trump fired back Friday that Ivanka "had long since checked out, and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!)."  Reference

Even if there was a cat in the presumably petless Mar-a-Lago who had hidden away Melania's tongue and it was returned to her along with all the copies of the couple's prenuptial agreement, and she decided she could reign as a queen in the Manhattan social scene as a redeemed heroine, none of the dyed in the wool Trump supports would blink when Trump disavowed her. 

Trump after all could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they'd shrug it off, and he could call his dear Melania any horrific name in his book of insults and they'd figure she deserved it for her disloyalty. Remember Megyn Kelly?

There's a Trumptown cult and it's members would drink his Kool-Aide if he told them to.

So, so sorry Jennifer Rubin, even Bill Barr won't be able to get enough  members of Trump's cult to think rationally. 

Update:

Trump continued by calling Barr "weak" and taking a shot at his weight.

"And now he goes and he sits down — if they can find a chair for him, because it's not that easy — and he sits down and he just bloviates and it's disgraceful," Trump said. "It's actually unpatriotic. It's so bad for our country, just so bad. But, you know, he's got a lot of hatred." From:

Trump rages at Bill Barr on Truth Social for admitting Mar-a-Lago indictment is "very, very damning"

Real mature, Donald...

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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