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Trump worked his David Copperfield distraction beautifully yesterday when he suggested that the United States should take over Gaza, using the military if necessary. A good magician sometimes uses distraction and misdirection to pull off an illusion: Whether the magic is of a “pocket trick” variety or a large stage production, misdirection is the central secret. The…
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There are so many Trump travesties every day that it is hard for me to decide which is bad enough to write about. Here’s one comparatively minor story that got my attention from HUFFPOST: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘Disturbing’ Post About Reporter’s Foreign Accent Is Slammed. I followed up on this and found that this was also…
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Trump might as well add people with disabilities to his list of people like those I depicted above who don’t have the rights of “real” citizens and don’t belong here in his America. Sorry guys, the FAA won’t hire you. In case you doubt me when I say Trump dosen’t have any empathy for people…
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Frank Figluizzi,who served as assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, posted a photo of someone painting a wall at the FBI Academy on BlueSky (here) which lists operativenss, fairness, compassion, integrity, initative, respect, and stability as some of the core values of the agency. It also lists diversity. The photo was published in The Washington Post article …
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Nuff said. I post my Substacks (formerly blogs) on several platforms. They are on Substack where, if you want to submit your email, you can be notified of all new blog posts. They are on HalBrown.org. They are also on Stressline.org I also post them on Medium because this enables them to be easily found on internet searches.
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I have admired Rachel Maddow ever since she began her show on MSNBC. I always agree with everything she says. I don’t always agree with how she says it or how she produces her show. I address the latter today.Last night Rachel Maddow found something to smile and chuckle over about something Trump did. I found…
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Joseph Goebbels served his master well as his minister of propaganda. Without television Hitler didn’t need a pretty face. I watched Rachel last night when she explained unequivocally that Trump was intent on becoming a dictator and implied that anyone who denied this was a fool. If you watched this you may have had trouble falling asleep…
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Rachel Maddow is known for wearing the same black outfit on all of her shows. Kash Patel wants to put her in prison orange. Patel aspires to be Trump’s Hermann Göring. To fully appreciate why I titled this the way I did, watch the 11 minute segment of last night’s Rachel Maddow show (here). Here are…
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This is a sequel to yesterday’s Substact: Trump and MAGA cohorts don’t lack empathy. As sadists, they have perverse empathy. I wrote this in part as a reaction to the following: ‘Cruel’: Ex-GOP lawmaker slams Trump’s border czar for Dr. Phil stunt: RawStory Needless to say, Phil McGraw is an embarrasment to me and any…
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I wasn’t sure which word to use in the title of this Substack to describe the unique kind of empathy Trump and his MAGA cohorts have. The other terms I considered were obscene, meaing offensive to moral principles, and repugnant. I settled on “perverse” because it was less judgmental. It decribes a person or their actions showing a deliberate and…
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I intended to write about my negative reaction to some of the hosts and guests on MSNBC laughing or expressing any kind of amusement when they talk about Trump or his minions. I don’t want to pick on Rachel Maddow in particular, but she seems to be the worst offender. Others like Lawrence O’Donnell, Michelle…
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Sabrina Haake’s Substack “Haake Take” today A king pardons his army: J6 was a rehearsal. By pardoning the most violent among them, Trump has begun recruitment for the real event prompted me to make a comment.Then I realized this would be a good topic for my own Substack. I added a bit to it and added an…
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As we enter the dark days of democracy’s death there are several positive things I can think about Trump’s grandiose narcissism that can derail his quest to establish his ruthlessly cruel dictatorship. The obvious one is that some of his plans will fail so egregiously that some of his supporters in Congress will turn against…
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There he was. Jeff Bezos, the owner of both Amazon and The Washington Post, along with Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and the less familiar owner of Google, Sundar Pichai, in Billionaires Row at the inauguration. If he only owned Amazon, all things considered with Trump’s affection for oligarchs, it would make sense for him to be…
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I was thinking of using “Democracy’s Dark Dark Day” as the title for this but it seemed to be too obvious. Here’s the quote from Mary Trump that prompted me to write this: “Tomorrow (meaning today) will be a very dark day—there is no pretending otherwise. But I do take comfort in the knowledge that so much…
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What is happening in Israel may bump some of the coverage of tomorrow’s inauguration off non-stop TV coverage. Even if it does, somewhere around the half of the country who might be inclined to watch at least the high point of any inauguration would find watching Trump sworn in too upsetting. The actual hand on…
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The titles of the same Sabrina Haake essay about Pete Hegseth have a different emphasis. RawStory’s title emphasized his lack of qualifications. On her substack, The Haake Take, the author focuses on his view about when it is permissible to use lethal force even if it might not be legal. Hegseth may not be the least qualified Trump…
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There was one line that struck me as particularly telling in The NY Times (subscription) article How Trump’s Border Czar Thomas Homan Found MAGA. It isn’t about Homan. Is is about Trump. The goes beyond Trump saying he admires someone who is tough on policy, which Homan is. Trump was saying he admires him because he sees him…
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The photo of Pete Hegseth wearing a bathing suit after being in a swim event across the Hudson River is making the rounds on social and regular media. He has a large American flag over his shoulder. In addition to wearing the bathing suit, his displaying the flag is begging for people to pay attention to…
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The Jack Smith report about Trump’s election interference was released last night a bit after midnight. Just before 1:30 AM Trump took to Truth Social to blast late night comic Seth Meyers. This is because Meyers said “Trump is caught in the middle between the MAGA diehards and the rich oligarchs who helped him get…
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I don’t see anything surprising or particularly wrong with the story above. It makes sense that a conservative Canadian poltician like Alberta’s premier Danielle Smith wants to curry favor with Trump. What struck me was the hat Trump was wearing. With Trump, vanity is a prominent part of his narcissism. In this way he’s more like Narcissus than a…
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Bear with me on this, and if you haven’t figured out why I used the illustrations above you will.My partner and I are on the keto diet to lose the weight we gained during the pandemic. That’s irrelevant to the point of this blog. To explain though, I was getting bored with the regimen of no carb…
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If wine consumption is reduced significantly it will hurt wine grape growers in my home state of Oregon, across the country, and in the rest of the world. I don’t know what crops, if any, would replace the grapes growing in our beautiful wine country. The picture is from one of our many road trips…
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I’m not going to write about how Trump again proved he’s above the law by getting barely a slap on the wrist in his sentencing this morning. Instead, I will focus on another wrist. This is the wrist of Mark Zuckerberg who, of course, is in the news having announced that he is ceasing to…
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‘Malignancy’: Historian says ‘everything just feels worse all the time’ with Trump is the article in RawStory that prompted me to write, for the umpteenth time, about Trump being a malignant narcissist. I also posted a comment along with an AI picture of Trump looking at himself in a mirror. Wikipedia gets everything right about…
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How the holy Hell does Hezbo-f*cken-llah being involved in Jan. 6th pop into Trump’s brain when he’s downplaying what happened on Jan. 6th? Here’s is the excerpt about this from HuffPost: Trump took questions from reporters near the end of the roughly hour-long remarks, during which he pledged to make “major pardons” for people convicted of…
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The United States is about to embark on its second great national experiment with Donald Trump being certified as the winner of the 2024 election as president. Very possibly this will mean Project 2025 will be initiated laying out the guiding principles of his administration. (Click above to enlarge) There’s nothing astonishingly original in my…
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I began to write today’s blog after reading this: I made this llustration using AI: You can read about how the panel on “Morning Joe” reacted to the leak here. This was supposedly leaked to NBC News. I wonder if John Barron “leaked” what Trump said. After all, Trump wants to rub the lib’s noses in the fact that…
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Above is my way of expressing what RawStory conveyed in the illustration for WaPo staffer resigns after paper spikes cartoon that jabbed billionaires cozying to Trump Ann Telnaes is one of my favorite editorial cartoonists. Her overseers at The Washington Post spiked a cartoon for expressing an opinion they objected to. Then she resigned in…
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Most mental health professionals who are saying this are not neurologists, let alone neurologists who specialize in dementia. Many mental health professionals are absolutely, positively convinced Trump has dementia. I seem like a lone voice among them saying we need more evidence. I am not an expert, but because I live in a continuing care retirement…
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Even thinking that Trump would be a model for a modern day Rodin to turn into a 21st century version of The Thinker is no doubt a stretch for most of my readers. I would venture to say most of you would more likely think that if an artist, a cartoonist for example, wanted to…
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“Asked about it as he walked into a New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump responded, ‘I’ll be there.’ Pressed on whether he’d spoken to members of Carter’s family, Trump said he’d rather not say.” (Reference) It is true that when one uses “dignified” and “Trump” in the same sentence the context has…
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Click to read above article This was my comment: I wrote: This is clearly a diversion. I wrote about how he does this here: Trump is throwing yet another dead cat on the table.There’s nothing that really needs to change as far as creating something like the EU. With smaller countries in Europe this made sense.…
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No matter that historians and polls rank Jimmy Carter near the middle of American presidents in terms of best to worst, all of them say something like the following (with my highlights): Based on the C-SPAN survey, Jimmy Carter is ranked 26th out of 45 pre-Biden presidents. Carter’s ranking among his White House peers was…
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The H1-B visa controversy is all over the news (see Google News search). It involves immigration but has nothing to do with our southern border. Click image above to enlarge. The vast majority of Trump’s base never heard of H1-B visas or other kinds of visas until recently. At times in my life a few people have called…
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Trump’s post on Truth Social (shown above, click to enlarge) was the subject of an article in RawStory. One of the commenters to the article “‘What is going on here???’ Trump melts down over Harris endorsements weeks after election” questioned in one way or another whether Trump had dementia.” wrote “Does anyone in America believe that we should…
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Consider this Google News search for Laura Loomer. I like this story from The Times of India in part because of their illustration. Click above to enlarge image. Groypers are a group of alt-right and white nationalist activists, provocateurs, and Internet trolls.Look at Loomer’s Wikipedia profile. Read about her background and history and ask yourself why this woman…
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Below is the article in RawStory by Travis Getty that inspired me to put together this AI illustrated blog: ‘Red meat for MAGA’: Trump said to be prepping ‘early shock-and-awe campaign’ in new term. Yesterday I wrote about deadcatting and how Turmp is throwing dead cats on the table to distract from all the publicity Elon…
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Will Susie Wiles go from being one of Trump’s closest and trusted advisors to be vaporized by Musk’s Starlink satellite disintegration ray? This is from an AP article published the day after the election about her: She can control some of Trump’s worst impulses Wiles was able to help control Trump’s worst impulses — not…
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How long before Trump starts wearing the MAGA Panama hat? I want bragging rights for predicting this if he does. President Theodore Roosevelt wore a Panama hat when he visited the Panama Canal. Will Turmp wear his own version when he goes there if he can take it back? My hunch is that Trump felt…
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This is the CDC information about the bird flu. At present the bird, or avain, flu is not highly effective at infecting humans. Read more from the Oregon Public Broadcasting article here. This is the concerning takeaway from the article: There are two paths the virus could take to get better at infecting humans Good news is,…
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Under the influence of ketamine, by Sabrina Haake I am an admirer of Sabrina Haake who publishes a SubStack with the eponymous and rhyming title of The Haake Take. Her columns are also published on RawStory, Salon, and elsewhere. She is an attorney specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She ran unsuccessfully in an Indiana Democratic primary for Congress in 2020.In the…
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As I completed this blog this was on CNN: I can’t take the comparision between the competition for the designation of “boss” as in “who’s the boss” between Trump and Musk beyond the title of the long running award winning (eight seasons) tv series starring Tony Danza and Judith Light as the the adults, Tony and Angela,…
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The irony of all this, depicted above with a generic AI created billionaire bending at the knees (you have to imagine he’s before Trump), is that Ben Franklin ended up with his face on the $100 bill. I wonder how he’d feel today about the role money plays in politics? He might remind us of…
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D. Earl Stephens gets it right in his RawStory essay “Americans get off on hurt, cruelty and revenge — and soulless Trump is their hero.” I read two articles is RawStory prior to deciding to write this. Before reading the essay by D. Earl Stephens (above) I read this: Highlighted below is what struck me as revelatory:…
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This is from the Raw Story article above: President-elect Donald Trump managed to cobble together a popular vote-winning coalition and he did so by making notable but modest gains with certain minority groups. But the problem for him, wrote Ronald Brownstein for CNN, is that he won the election with a group of voters who broadly don’t like him, and may not even agree…
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I found the Venn diagram below in a Facebook post. Then I made a version with a DonkeyHotey caricature of Trump in the middle. I was planning to end the blog without making my own version but changed my mind and made one which you can see below. Click above to enlarge. I don’t know…
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Consider how public perception might have been changed if all the articles and signs saying “Donald Trump becomes the first convicted felon to be elected president” instead said “Donald Trump becomes the first convicted rapist or sexual abuser felon to be elected president” or billboards were put up like my version of the one below:…
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Wikipedia has an entry on “age and health concerns” about Donald Trump (here) which refers to dementia. Click to enlarge image. The photo Wiki used is from this November and you could say that whoever decided to use it intended to be a comment about his cogntive health. What’s ChatGPT Mary Trump (article above) thinks her…
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AI Overview of my psychological analysis of Donald Trump from Google. The phrase “Trump mentally ill psychopathic malignant narcissist Hal Brown MSW” refers to the opinions and analysis of Hal Brown, an MSW (Master of Social Work) and retired psychotherapist, who has written extensively on the subject of Donald Trump’s mental state. Hal Brown, along…
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This story has been given a lot of coverage. Here’s the HUPPOST story about it. This should elicit a “well, duh, this ought to be obvious you brainwashed eejit” response and need no explanation. This means you Megan McCain and everyone else saying this. Her’s what she tweeted with a few replies. (You can read all of…
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The fact that Reuters wrote the headline “Venezuela’s opposition leader Machado wins Nobel Peace Prize, White House critical” for their article is nauseating. Why? Here’s the part that is appalling and unprecedented: HuffPost had several stories about this: Story one. Story two. Story three. Machado, in stark contrast to Trump’s spokespeople, praised Trump and even dedicated it…
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The skin is the largest human organ. Look up Trump and thin skinned and you will find how many people, including his psychologist cousin Mary Trump, have described his, metaphorically, as extremely thin skinned. Clicking above will enlarge the image. You can look up the articles yourself. Trump had to endure a number of abrasions to…
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In his address to the general and admirals Trump bragged about using the most expensive high quality paper with real gold on it for the documents promoting generals and admirals. Then we went on blasting Biden for using an auto-pen, though it is not clear whether he ever did this with these particular documents. Trump…
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It is best to read my posts here: https://halbrown.substack.com Trump doesn’t care about what’s in The Smithsonian. He’s just puking up another distraction. It’s an unfunny woke joke. It’s along the lines of his Kennedy Center Awards nonsense. It got a lot of coverage, much of it mocking his insatiable need for attention, but it…
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Paul Krugman hardly needs publicity. Check this out: Below is what the Daily Beast article about this looks like. If you’re reading this and don’t know who Paul Krugman is, and admire him for his insights, you must be a Trumper who by some twist of fate stumbled on my Substack. This is the comment…
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It is best to read my posts on Substack here. It is free. If you subscribe you will get an email whenever I post. Below is from April 24th.
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