and now it really begins ...

[drjohncarpenter]

Warning sign.











40 out of 44 Cabinet members will not endorse the convicted felon.

VOTE BLUE for our precious democracy.

[latebloomer]

Trump Rants About Sharks, and Everyone Just Pretends It’s Normal

Par for the course. Trump is Trump. But imagine the response if Joe Biden had said it.

By Brian Klaas, The Atlantic, June 12, 2024

Hours before meeting with his probation officer about his recent felony convictions, a leading candidate for U.S. president went on a bizarre rant about sharks.

Sharks, Donald Trump claimed, were attacking more frequently than usual (not true) and posed a newfound risk because boats were being required to use batteries (not true), which would cause them to sink because they were too heavy (really, really not true—the world’s heaviest cruise ship, the Icon of the Seas, managed to stay afloat because of the laws of physics despite weighing more than 550 million pounds).

Trump, undeterred by truth or science, invoked his intellectual credentials by mentioning his “relationship to MIT.” (Trump’s uncle was a professor at the university, pioneering rotational radiation therapy, which seems a somewhat tenuous connection for conferring shark- or battery-related expertise to his nephew.) If Trump had been able to ask his uncle about the risks of being electrocuted by a boat battery because, as Trump put it, “there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water,” perhaps the professor would have informed him that high-capacity batteries would rapidly discharge in seawater and pose minuscule risk to humans because the water conducts electricity far better than human bodies do.

Sharks appear to have troubled Trump’s mind for years. On July 4, 2013, Trump twice tweeted about them, saying, “Sorry folks, I’m just not a fan of sharks—and don’t worry, they will be around long after we are gone.” Two minutes later, he followed that nugget of wisdom with: “Sharks are last on my list—other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!”

These deranged rants are tempting to laugh off. They’re par for the course. Trump is Trump. But Trump may also soon be the president of the United States. Imagine the response if Joe Biden had made the same rambling remarks, word for word. Consider this excerpt:

“I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery’s underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’ By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of shark … I watched some guys justifying it today: ‘Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy.”

Coming from Biden, that exact statement might have prompted calls from across the political spectrum for him to drop out of the race. From Trump, it was a blip that barely registered. I’ve previously called this dynamic “the banality of crazy”: Trump’s ludicrous statements are ignored precisely because they’re so routine—and routine occurrences don’t drive the news. They are the proverbial “dog bites man” stories that get ignored by the press. Except that even this truism breaks down when it comes to the asymmetry between coverage of Trump and Biden: Based on Google News tallies, the news story about Biden’s dog biting a Secret Service agent spurred far more press coverage than Trump saying that he would order shoplifters to be shot without a trial if he became president.

Still, Trump appears to be benefiting from the sheer superfluity of crazy. At rallies, the former president makes stream-of-consciousness statements that would raise questions about the mental acuity of anyone who said them at, say, the tail end of a night at a neighborhood bar, but that somehow don’t generate the same level of concern within the press or the Republican Party when Trump says them in front of a cheering crowd. By contrast, when Biden makes a gaffe—mixing up a name or a date rather than, for example, suggesting that boats sink because they’re heavy—questions arise about his mental fitness to be president. A president who occasionally misspeaks is far less worrying than one who purveys delusional fantasies and conspiracy theories. Biden may gaffe, but he lives in reality; Trump often doesn’t.

Today, a prominent New York Times columnist called on one of the two candidates to drop out. Astonishingly, it wasn’t the authoritarian felon who inspired a violent mob to attack the Capitol, tried to overturn a democratic election, has been banned from doing business in New York due to fraud—and yet again showcased his loose grip on reality by ranting about sharks.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/trump-shark-rant/678666/

And this is the unembarassed Republicans' probable candidate for President of the United States? Geez! Trump isn't the only one who's deranged!

[latebloomer]

Let’s Talk About Trump’s Gibberish

Rambling about shark electrocutions is not normal.

By Tom Nichols, June 12, 2024, The Atlantic

Perhaps the greatest trick Donald Trump ever pulled was convincing millions of people—and the American media—to treat his lapses into fantasies and gibberish as a normal, meaningful form of oratory. But Trump is not a normal person, and his speeches are not normal political events.

For too long, Trump has gotten away with pretending that his emotional issues are just part of some offbeat New York charm or an expression of his enthusiasm for public performance. But Trump is obviously unfit—and something is profoundly wrong with a political environment in which he can now say almost anything, no matter how weird, and his comments will get a couple of days of coverage and then a shrug, as if to say: Another day, another Trump rant about sharks.

Wait, what?

Yes, sharks. In Las Vegas on Sunday, Trump went off-script—I have to assume that no competent speechwriter would have drafted this—and riffed on the important question of how to electrocute a shark while one attacks. He had been talking, he claims, to someone about electric boats: “I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’”

As usual, Trump noted how much he impressed his interlocutor with his very smart hypothetical: “And he said, ‘Nobody ever asks this question,’ and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT. Very smart.” (MIT? Trump’s uncle taught there and retired over a half-century ago, when Trump was in his 20s, and died in 1985. Trump often implies that his uncle passed on MIT’s brainpower by genetic osmosis or something.)

This ramble went on for a bit longer, until Trump made it clear that given his choice, he’d rather be zapped instead of eaten: “But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that, we’re going to end it for boats, we’re going to end it for trucks.”

Hopefully, this puts to rest any pressing questions among Americans about the presumptive Republican nominee’s feelings on electric vehicles and their relationship to at least two gruesome ways to die.

Sure, it seems funny—Haha! Uncle Don is telling that crazy shark story again!—until we remember that this man wants to return to a position where he would hold America’s secrets, be responsible for the execution of our laws, and preside as the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world. A moment that seems like oddball humor should, in fact, terrify any American voter, because this behavior in anyone else would be an instant disqualification for any political office, let alone the presidency. (Actually, a delusional, rambling felon known to have owned weapons would likely fail a security check for even a visit to the Oval Office.)

Nor was the Vegas monologue the first time: Trump for years has fallen off one verbal cliff after another, with barely a ripple in the national consciousness. I am not a psychiatrist, and I am not diagnosing Trump with anything. I am, however, a man who has lived on this earth for more than 60 years, and I know someone who has serious emotional problems when I see them played out in front of me, over and over. The 45th president is a disturbed person. He cannot be trusted with any position of responsibility—and especially not with a nuclear arsenal of over 1500 weapons. One wrong move could lead to global incineration.

Why hasn’t there been more sustained and serious attention paid to Trump’s emotional state?

First, Trump’s target audience is used to him. Watch the silence that descends over the crowds at such moments; when Trump wanders off into the recesses of his own mind, they chit-chat or check their phones or look around, waiting for him to come back and offer them an applause line. For them, it’s all just part of the show.

Second, Trump’s staff tries to put just enough policy fiber into Trump’s nutty verbal soufflés that they can always sell a talking point later, as if his off-ramps from reality are merely tiny bumps in otherwise sensible speeches. Trump himself occasionally seems surprised when these policy nuggets pop up in a speech; when reading the teleprompter, he sometimes adds comments such as “so true, so true,” perhaps because he’s encountering someone else’s words for the first time and agreeing with them. Thus, they will later claim that questions about sharks or long-dead uncles are just bad-faith distractions from substance. (These are the same Republicans who claim that every verbal stumble from Joe Biden indicates full-blown dementia.)

Third, and perhaps most concerning in terms of public discussion, many people in the media have fallen under the spell of the Jedi hand-waves from Trump and his people that none of this is as disturbing and weird as it sounds. The refs have been worked: A significant segment of the media—and even the Democratic Party—has bought into a Republican narrative that asking whether Trump is mentally unstable is somehow biased and elitist, the kind of thing that could only occur to Beltway mandarins who don’t understand how the candidate talks to normal people.

Such objections are mendacious nonsense and represent a massive double standard. As Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post wrote today: “It is irresponsible to obsess over President Biden’s tendency to mangle a couple of words in a speech while Donald Trump is out there sounding detached from reality.” Biden’s mush-mouthed moments fall well within the range of normal gaffes. Had he or any other American politician said anything even remotely like one of Trump’s bizarre digressions, we’d be flooded with front-page stories about it. Pundits would be solemnly calling for a Much Needed National Conversation about the 25th Amendment.

It is long past time for anyone who isn’t in the Trump base to admit, and to keep talking about, something that has been obvious for years: Donald Trump is unstable. Some of these problems were evident when he first ran, and we now know from revelations by many of his former staff that his problems processing information and staying tethered to reality are not part of some hammy act.

Worse, the people who once managed Trump’s cognitive and emotional issues are gone, never to return. A second Trump White House will be staffed with the bottom of the barrel—the opportunists and hangers-on willing to work for a reprehensible man. His Oval Office will be empty of responsible and experienced public servants if the day comes when someone has to explain to him why the war might be about to erupt on the Korean peninsula or why the Russian or Chinese nuclear forces have gone on alert, and he starts talking about frying sharks with boat batteries.

The 45th president is deeply unwell. It is long past time for Americans, including those in public life, to recognize his inability to serve as the 47th.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/trump-sharks-las-vegas-rally-speech/678667/

My, oh, my. I must be prescient. In mid-2016, I wrote to Ivanka Trump that I thought her father was unwell, that his candidacy was not beneficial to his mental or emotional health, which seemed shaky to me, and that the notions he was espousing and the vitriol he was pouring forth were not beneficial to anyone els's mental or emotional health, or to the stability of of the body politic -- the people -- of the United State. I begged her to persuade him to withdraw. Too bad she didn't do so. She certainly has, herself, withdrawn, apparently having learned the cost of the portal she took to lies, deception, conspiracy theories, and general mendacity.

Trump's backers all want the world he's describing: disordered and deranged, vengeful, chaotic, and violent. The oligarchs plan to gain more control and riches; the politicians plan to continue to be big fish in their small portions of the national pond, and the ordinary people hope to obtain some sort of Neverland where all their dreams will come true, and THEY -- all the people who are the reason MAGAs are jealous or angry or frightened -- will be punished. Those are sick fantasies, all of them destructive to the American ideas of the pursuit of happiness and of liberty and justice for all.

[drjohncarpenter]

Pathological liar lies yet again.











Deranged, convicted felons should not be anywhere near our White House.

Ever.

[drjohncarpenter]

Good analogy.

Andrew Weissmann (weissmann11 on Threads)
@AWeissmann_

From David Sedaris on Trump vs Biden:

"I think​ of being​ on an airplane.​ The flight attendant comes​ down the aisle​ with her food cart and, eventually,​ parks​ it beside my seat.​ “Can I inter​est you in the chick​en?​” she asks.​ “Or would​ you prefer the platter of sh'it with bits of broke​n glass​ in it?"

To be undecided in this elect​ion is to pause​ for a moment and then ask how the chick​en is cooked.”

8:14 AM · Jun 12, 2024
https://x.com/AWeissmann_/status/1800909657155789179

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sedaris



Eat well.

VOTE BLUE.

[drjohncarpenter]

It's down to one choice: America or MAGA?







Trump Goes to Capitol Hill for 1st Time Since Jan. 6 Riots
The Warning with Steve Schmidt - June 13, 2024





145 days until the presidential election.

VOTE BLUE to preserve our precious democracy.

[monkboughtlunch]

[drjohncarpenter]

Today, CURRENT president.











President Joseph R. Biden.

Leading the country, making things better for all of us.

[drjohncarpenter]

Yup.

[drjohncarpenter]

Convicted felon / GOP presidential candidate's black outreach.














JFC.

VOTE BLUE already. This man is a complete and utter fraud.

[drjohncarpenter]

Fascist felon already knows he's going to lose, again.










The ex-president wants to erode faith in a free and fair election.

It's meant to destroy our precious democracy.

Not on my watch. Or yours.

VOTE BLUE.

[drjohncarpenter]

Today, CURRENT president.











Yup.

President Joseph R. Biden.

Leading the country, making things better for all of us, here and around the world.

[rickeap]

Do you want to be electrocuted or eaten by a shark?
The world is again laughing at his nonsense, but in reality, this deranged gibberish is nothing new and people still voted for him.

[Rob]

.......and people still voted for him.

They have no idea what they are voting for. Have you actually seen most of his supporters? They have an IQ of about 19. They are the same types of people that Trump would have nothing to do with if he didn't need their votes. The man is a complete embarrassment and the sooner he disappears, the better off we'll be. I still cannot believe that this buffoon was actually the President of the United States.

The GOP now days is absolutely pathetic.

[elvisfan51]

.......and people still voted for him.

They have no idea what they are voting for. Have you actually seen most of his supporters? They have an IQ of about 19. They are the same types of people that Trump would have nothing to do with if he didn't need their votes. The man is a complete embarrassment and the sooner he disappears, the better off we'll be. I still cannot believe that this buffoon was actually the President of the United States.

The GOP now days is absolutely pathetic.

But not as pathetic as those buffoons that support that POS Joe Biden. Our once great country.....gone completely to hell in less than 4 years. And my IQ is above 19 as I have a college degree. I am a military veteran and served in Vietnam, so I pretty much have an idea what I am voting for.

[Rob]

It is still a great country and for anyone who doesn't think so, I'll be glad to help them pack to move elsewhere. From one veteran to another, thank you for your service.

However, you think our country has gone to hell now? Put Trump back in the White House and you'll see what a great country this once was.

[drjohncarpenter]

They have no idea what they are voting for. Have you actually seen most of his supporters? They have an IQ of about 19. They are the same types of people that Trump would have nothing to do with if he didn't need their votes. The man is a complete embarrassment and the sooner he disappears, the better off we'll be. I still cannot believe that this buffoon was actually the President of the United States.

The GOP now days is absolutely pathetic.

It is still a great country and for anyone who doesn't think so, I'll be glad to help them pack to move elsewhere. From one veteran to another, thank you for your service.

However, you think our country has gone to hell now? Put Trump back in the White House and you'll see what a great country this once was.

The GodFather of FECC has spoken.

[drjohncarpenter]

Today's GOP.











What a joke. What a failure.

VOTE BLUE in November.

America doesn't need a convict in the Oval Office.

[drjohncarpenter]

Rob is right.

[drjohncarpenter]

Public service announcement.

[drjohncarpenter]

Today's GOP, rotten to the core.











She's correct.

[drjohncarpenter]

Pay attention.











VOTE BLUE.

American democracy is precious.

[latebloomer]

For anyone who has not yet had a look at Project 2025, please do so at once. This is the Foreword, the short version, and it is appalling:

https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf

Please read it, and please share the link with everyone you can, and encourage them all to read it, too.

The people who drafted this plan call themselves conservatives, but they are reactionaries, determined to drag us back to the days of unchallenged white superiority, of the Father Knows Best families that never existed. This is the world Samuel Alito thinks should be rebuilt. It's not a pipe dream, but a PLAN, and we have to do everything possible to stop it, now and in the future. This is why Repubs don't care about Trump's sordid conduct; they just want a Repub in the White House -- even one as patently thuggish and self-serving as Trump.

Heaven won't help us if we won't help ourselves.

VOTE BLUE up and down the ballot.

[drjohncarpenter]

All he does is lie.












America doesn't need a lying, convicted felon in the White House.

VOTE BLUE.

[drjohncarpenter]

GOP candidate's mental decline.














Yikes.

Unfit for the job in the Oval Office.

Or any job.