Murders in Milwaukee vs. Murders In The Building: What I'll Be Watching Tonight

 

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist and mental health center director

If you know me through this blog or know me personally you know I am passionate about politics. Even as I type this I have "Morning Joe" on TV and I've already reviewed the breaking poltical news on Raw Story, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

I am also very much aware that it is vitally important for my own, and everyone's, mental health to maintain a balance in life and monitor one's stress level and assure you aren't debilitated by worrying about politics.

All of my friends and aquaintances are mostly very liberal Democrats with a few who are old fashioned Republicans who are appalled at what the GOP has become since MAGA became it's mantra. Among them I know people who find that they have to asiduously ignore poltical news about the threat of autocracy should Trump or another authoritarian becomes president.

When I'm with the latter group I know not to broach the subject of politics. Some of them have even told me that they don't want me to talk about it when I am in their company.

I understand this. Everyone does well to understand what level of worry they can handle. I've been told by a few people that even thinking about politics raises their blood pressure. Some of them know. They've checked.

One of the things I hear is the "why worry about something I can't do anything about" question. I'm not about to lecture anybody about finding something to do, whether it's volunteering in a campaign or donating money to a candidate or cause. What I've said is that if you find yourself stressed out about politics is that it often helps to talk about the subject with like-minded friends. 

For me in addition to talking about politics I write about it in my blog and comments to articles.* I talk about it to a those friends who share my interest.  This is stress relief for me. I know sharing my opinions has a minimal impact in the greater scheme of things, but at least I feel I am doing something.

It seems like a no-brainer, and there's even a book Stress Management for Dummies, but a good way to handle stress is to make a list, mental or actually written, of the things you do that provide you the most enjoyment. Then add to the list things that you've considered doing but for whatever reasons haven't done. 

You can divide fun into passive and active fun if this makes sense to you. You can list the things that you enjoy doing in your home and things you have to leave your abode to do. You can rate them by the effort it takes to engage in an activity. Ask yourself if making an extra effort might be worth it.

This is part of dealing with worry stress by compartmentalizing.  This is what I try to do. It's isn't always easy and I know will become exceedingly difficult, but will really be necessary if Trump or another of his ilk get elected president.

I was a Boy Scout and am familiar with their motto:

The Girl Scouts have the same motto:

These are good words to try to live by.

Here's what my partner and I be doing tonight if you haven't already figured this out. We are into the second season of "Only Murders In The Building" and would rather see how Charles, Oliver, and Mabel figure out whodunnit and how and why they dunnit than watch eight bloviating Republicans only one of whom is entertaining (Chris Christi of course).

Read reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

Footnote:

* The subscrption New York Times and Washington Post as well as HUFFPOST and Raw Story have active comment sections. HUFFPOST allows you to add images to comments as does Raw Story which use Disquis (as does this blog) which allows one to insert images.

For example this is my comment to the Raw Story article 

Busted: Internal emails show Secret Service agent was in contact with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes

Click above to enlarge

Could Trump avoid legal peril and go live in Russia, Russia, Russia as Vlad's roomie?

 

I superimposed Trump's plane over a photo of Moscow Airport Terminal C.

"The failed District Attorney of Fulton County (Atlanta), Fani Willis, insisted on a $200,000 Bond from me. I assume, therefore, that she thought I was a 'flight' risk – I’d fly far away, maybe to Russia, Russia, Russia, share a gold domed suite with Vladimir, never to be seen or heard from again. Would I be able to take my very 'understated' airplane with the gold TRUMP affixed for all to see. Probably not, I’d be much better off flying commercial – I’m sure nobody would recognize me!"

By Hal Brown 

The above Truth Social post is Trump's attempt at showing how unseriously he takes his legal situation and what a great comedy writer he is and is about as close as he ever comes to self-depricating humor and an awareness of his grandiose narcisism.

What Trump doesn't "get" about the bond is that it doesn't prevent him from leaving, or fleeing, the country to live in Russia, Russia, Russia. He can blow off the $200,000 and leave the country to live with Vladimir.

Where he'd actually live would have to be determined as Putin has eight official residences (read article).

 He might live in his suite (pictured below) where the ceilings have their share of gold.

One of the bedrooms in the Black Sea mansion known as Putin's Palace

Putin's $1.4 billion Black Sea compound is non-too-shabby (Link):

Putin apparently spends much of his time in a mansion in Valdai which is 240 miles from Moscow and has no airport so I assume he'd travel to and from the Kremlin by helicopter.

Putin's bedroom in his residence in Valdai on Lake Valdayskoye

Putin does not actually live in the actual Kremlin the way US presidents live in the White House so Trump could end up living at another of his residences. Putin reportedly spends much of his time in the Novo-Ogaryovo estate in Moscow which has been unofficially termed his de facto residence.

If he wants to end up a Putin's most famous houseguest he'll first have to convince the murderous dictator, who might have to convince his girlfriend gymnast Alina Kabaeva, to have him as a permanent roomie. 

Of course the judge could order him not to leave the country, and order his passport (or passports, he has said he has three) seized.  I don't know exactly how he could fly out of the country in his own plane illegally, but if he managed to sneak onto his plane and it took off on the way to Russia I doubt the Air Force would shoot it down even if it had a fleeing felon onboard.

What the bond does do is described here:

The bond agreement, known as a consent bond order, sets strict rules for Trump’s release. The former president is not allowed to communicate with witnesses or co-defendants about the case, except through his lawyers, and he is barred from intimidating witnesses or co-defendants. He is also forbidden from making any “direct or indirect threat of any nature against the community or to any property in the community,” including in “posts on social media or reposts of posts” by others on social media.

“The defendant shall perform no act to intimidate any person known to him … to be a co-defendant or witness in this case or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice,” the agreement says. (Washington Post)

If he violates the conditions of the bond agreement as by now everyone who has been following this case knows there are actions that Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee can take to punish him from levying fines up to putting him in jail.

Most people, probably including Trump himself, don't think Judge McAfee would take such a final step. 

As noted in Raw Story "former Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen doesn't think the ex-president will be capable of complying with the bail conditions set in Fulton County, Georgia. Still, he anticipates that Trump will only get a slap on the wrist."

This doesn't mean that there's no way Trump can be certain he won't eventually end up incarcerated. He could end up in a Georgia prison and the only way he can be certain he won't be imprisoned for a federal crime is if a Republican is elected president and decides to drop the cases against him or pardon him.

If he does end up doing time at a Club Fed and Biden is president there's always the chance Biden would pardon him but then he'd have to admit guilt and accept the ultimate favor from the man he despises.

Let's say that Trump makes it to Russia and takes up residence there. As long as Putin is in power I don't see him allowing him to be extradited. If Putin is replaced a new leader might send him back to the United States to face charges.

What the United States might be able to do is freeze as many of his assets as possible. This might make a large dent in the money available to him depending on how much has has in foreign accounts in countries that won't cooperate with the US justice system. 

Trump might have tried to take actual cash or valuables like Melania's jewelry with him to sell since the government now has the documents he stole so he couldn't sell them. He'd somehow have to get ahold of as many suitcases full of $100 bills as he could if he wanted cash.

Although he won't get that much, he could sell a kidney. The most recent report I could find on this says he could get between one and five million rubles ($14,300 - $73,000).

The easy way for Trump to make it to Russia, Russia, Russia is to board his plane on a flight meant to go to Atlanta or between Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago for example and have it fly to one of his Russkie pal's pads instead.

For those who suggest that there's no pilot who would agree to fly Trump out of the country illegally consider that he wanted his personal pilot John Duncan  (bleow) to be made the head of the FAA. If he wouldn't do it I think he could find another pilot sufficiently loyal to do this for the right price.

One last thought: there is something the judge, any ot the jduges in his cases, can do that that might bother Trump short of throwing him in the hoosecow. They could confiscate his plane.

Of course he could ask Harlan Crow to have him flown out of the coutnry on his  Bombardier Global 5000 jet (below). 

Crow himself might like living in a mansion on the Black Sea, and while I am in a flight of fancy, perhaps Clarence and Ginni Thomas might also move there.

Is Trump the greatest man whoever lived, even greater than Jesus, or just the brand new Jesus?

 

If you want to save yourself the ordeal of listening to this decidely untalented excuse for a country singer just check out the lyrics to this song. They call Trump the greatest man who ever lived which I suppose means the writer either doesn't think Jesus was a man or that he thinks Trump is greater than Jesus. 

The singer/songwriter says Trump is the brand new Jesus. It you believe that Jesus was fully a man, as many religious scholars do (see reference) and Trump is the greatest man who ever lived, it stands to reason (that pesky word, reason, again) that Trump is greater than Jesus.

https://richiegoodfellow.ba...

Here's the first verse:

Here comes Donald, 

The greatest man who ever lived. 

Here comes Donald, 

The most important man on the planet. 

I vote for him and I'm not afraid to show it. 

He's changed my life and he doesn't even know it. 

God Bless Donald, 

The greatest man who ever lived. 

and when I praise the Lord, 

I'm thinking 'bout the President x 3 

Donald Trump is the Brand New Jesus Christ

I was prompted to write this after reading this on Raw Story:

Click above to read

The article above rferences this interview in The Bulwark

I found the Trump is the Brand New Jesus song when I read the article about Trump and the evangelicals and thought of writing a blog about it so I looked for a picture to use as an illustration searching Google Images for "Trump as Jesus" and the found the image on the second row far right linked to the webbage with the song.

Obviously there's a contradiction between the Rambo warrior Trump thinks he is and wants other people to see him as and a beatifically smiling Jesus figure holding a lamb.

Here's another similar illustration from a Who, What, Where article titled Trump the Secong Coming (here).

I haven't found any record of Trump ever having a pet and I doubt he'd acutally be comfotable even holding a lamb. There is a new digital Trump card showing him with a dog however:

Since he's made money off of these so-called trading cards (which aren't even on cardboard) I wonder if we'll see more of them only now they may be depicting him as a muscle bound Jesus like in these:

This is quite the contrast with Jesus as imagined by Renaissance artists:

 

Dolly Parton's new album "Rockstar" with geriatic music icons, should remind us that Biden is a super-ager

 

A lot was made of the time Biden fell off his bicycle. However I don't think anybody pointed out how fit he was in the first place to even be riding a bike which he could fall off from. 

Trump's main form of exercise seem to be walking from his golf cart to hit a golf ball.

You can listen to "Let It Be" be clicking either images above.

Here's an article from Raw Story about Rockstar, Dolly Parton's new album which include numbers not only with Sir Paul, Ringo, Peter Frampton, and Mick Fleetwood on Let It Be, but also Elton John, Sting, Lizzo, Pink, Debbie Harry, Steve Perry, Steven Tyler, Stevie Nicks, Pat Benatar, Joan Jett, John Fogerty, Miley Cyrus and Ann and Nancy Wilson on other songs.

Aside from what promises to be an instant classic album this Dolly Parton collaboration is a celebration of geriatic musicians. All except Miley Cyrus (30) and Lizzo (35) are 70 (Pat Benatar) or older.

A geriatric music icon who is missing is Mick Jagger who is still rocking and on tour at the age of 80, but then again you can't have everything.

Reading about this led me to take the lazy route to writing a blog for today and republishing with a few revisions my May 30 piece about ageism and how it relates to politics.

 Biden and Trump's candidacy and ageism

WaPo column "3 reasons we’re stuck with Trump and Biden" led me to write about ageism in America and say humbly that at almost 80 if it was between me and Trump I'm more cognitively capable of being president.

This is the opinion column that jumped out at me when I looked at The Washington Post online on May 30, 2023:

Megan McArdle is described by Wikipedia as a right-leaning journalist. 

The question I pose is whether this column by McArdle and the polls she cites reflect ageism. I will turn 80 in January. I live in a senior community where while I know many residents who succumb to dementia or demonstrate cognitive decline in their early seventies, I also know many who are cognitively sharp well into their nineties. 

Ageism, which is defined as prejudice or discrimination towards elders, is prevalent in America. This is in contrast to Asian countries, some African countries, Native American culture, and other societies, where elders are revered for their wisdom. (See "The Wisdom of Elders" in Psychology Today and "7 Cultures That Celebrate Aging and Respect Their Elders" in HUFFPOST. )

McArdle begins her May 30 column, which if you subscribe to The Washington Post you can read here, as follows:

In an April NBC poll, nearly two-thirds of voters said they did not think Trump should run for president again — and more than two-thirds said the same thing about Biden, in large part because they think he’s too old. How did a once-great nation end up facing an election between two very old, very unpopular White dudes?

I can sketch out the proximate causes. On the Republican side, just as in 2016, a massive primary field is splitting the votes of the moderates, giving Trump plenty of room to consolidate his ultra-MAGA minority. Democrats, meanwhile, have no good options as long as the vice presidency is occupied by the hapless Kamala D. Harris, whose impolitic blurtings, inability to hold staff and tendency to choke under pressure make her an even less appealing candidate than her boss. Every Democratic operative I’ve asked blanched at the thought of running her — and also agreed that for reasons of coalition management, she cannot be pushed aside.

Aside from using the word "stuck" which in context is a pejorative, I found this paragraph problematic:

Yet that only describes the problem; it does not explain why we seem stuck with two broadly disliked candidates, one already in his 80s and the other turning 78 before Election Day 2024. Nor does it explain America’s broader problem of political gerontocracy, as embodied by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who seems too cognitively impaired to fully carry out her duties or to realize she ought to retire.

Biden is only disliked by the GOP. He may be disliked as a candidate by Democrats because of his age but he is not personally disliked the way Trump is.  To include both Trump and Biden with Feinstein as emblematic of what is wrong with having seniors in political power, which McArdle calls a political gerontocracy, is patently unfair. Feinstein is an outlier because she has a serious cognitive impairment. With the average ages of 117th Congress at 58.4 years for Representatives and 64.3 years for Senators we are stretching it to call this a political gerontocracy. Being 58 or 64 is not being old. Sure it is reasonable to say Trump and Biden are old, but of those two only one has his reality testing impaired which is a sign of cognitive impairment.

Both Trump and Biden statistically have a higher chance of dying than if they were, say, in their fifties or sixties, but because as far as we know neither has a life threatening medical condition both could live into their nineties and, while risk of dementia increases as one ages, many elders never develop the disease. 

A poll of Democrats should include a question asking whether assuming Biden will live with no impairments until he is in his nineties would you favor him as a candidate.

Calling Trump and Biden "relics of an era when America was more stratified by race and gender but less polarized by income, education, ideology or party" McArdle's concluding paragraphs shift focus from a critique of Trump and Biden's age to the way they speak:

Perhaps more importantly, they also talk like it. For both the Wharton transfer student and the guy who graduated near the bottom of his law school class, lower-middlebrow is their native language. In the mouths of the younger products of the high-intensity meritocratic rat race, this register of the American dialect sounds foreign — and given that only about one-third of U.S. adults have a college diploma, this matters a lot. In fact, it is in many ways the most compelling of the three explanations. It is also the most depressing, not so much for what it says about Biden and Trump, but for what it says about younger politicians: They don’t think like non-college voters — and therefore can’t communicate so well with them.

It’s very risky to be so dependent on people who are well into their golden years, who will not be with us forever. And what will American politics look like when the front-row kids who can’t speak lower-middlebrow are the only ones left in the room?

Trump, who despite his lack of exercise and poor diet, seems to have the DNA to be a super-ager. I suggest that to say either Biden or Trump is unfit to be president soley because of their age is ageism. 

My impression is that when the 50 year old McArdle writes "golden years" she isn't really being complementary. Perhaps I react this way because I will be 80 in January and although to function well I generally need a 45 minute mid-afternoon nap I am both cognitively and physically unimpaired and if the choice was between myself and Donald Trump in all humility can say that political positions aside I would be more capable of carrying out the responsibilities of being president.

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