The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    If You Needed Further Proof

    By NCD on Fri, 08/09/2019 - 12:17pm |

    President Trump and his wife Melania and their personal White House staff are empty self absorbed shells of human beings. Robots could provide more empathy. How to describe the first family? No self awareness, no compassion, no recognition of others emotions or loss,  unable to offer sincere condolences,  no feelings for the loss suffered by the infant they hold.  Who but a Trump would grin widely and give a thumbs up, while his also grinning wife holds an injured recently orphaned infant in a hospital? And then publish the photo on the First Ladies twitter? What kind of person does that? Did Trump see this as a personal "win", as all 8 other wounded victims still in the hospital declined to see him?

    On a visit to El Paso this week, the president flashed a thumbs-up when posing with the two-month-old, whose parents Andre and Jordan Anchondo were shot dead last Saturday. When the picture was posted on the first lady’s Twitter account on Thursday, it prompted outrage.    UK Guardian

    The baby's step dad tried to shield his wife and baby by stepping between them and the gunman.  He was killed instantly by one high velocity assault weapon round.

    The round went right through the dad and then killed his wife.

    AK-47's and knockoffs are ballistically designed to kill people, quickly and in large numbers. They have a killing range of 1000 yards, (not feet). Rounds fired can keep killing after penetrating people, wood, metal doors, building structure and vehicles. They are absolutely the worst weapon to use for self defense, unless you are on a battlefield.

    The picture above displays the Trump's blithely unaware vain and self-obsessed behavior.  So inappropriate. And the photo is broadcast by the White House on twitter.

    The Trump's also display key characteristics of sociopaths:

    • Superficial charm.
    • Manipulative and exploitive. They see self-serving behaviors as normal.
    • Grandiose sense of oneself
    • Pathological lying
    • Lack of remorse, shame or guilt

     

    Comments

    If I may offer a suggestion: sociopathic chlld? Still going gaga over the florid praise:

    Trump on said today he received a "beautiful letter" from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, hours before the regime launched further projectiles https://t.co/gMFlJ94M6u

    — POLITICO (@politico) August 10, 2019

    I.E., remember her?

     


    by artappraiser on Fri, 08/09/2019 - 9:10pm

    back to the sociopathic child diagnosis, ran across this in Trump Clarification Syndrome by Dave Remnick @ The New Yorker Friday

    In December, 2003, the columnist Charles Krauthammer made a brief return to his first career, as a psychiatrist. Writing in the Washington Post, he said, “It has been 25 years since I discovered a psychiatric syndrome (for the record: ‘Secondary Mania,’ Archives of General Psychiatry, November 1978), and in the interim I haven’t been looking for new ones. But it’s time to don the white coat again. A plague is abroad in the land. Bush Derangement Syndrome...." [....]

    Krauthammer, who studied psychiatry at Harvard Medical School before becoming disenchanted with the profession [....]

    Krauthammer spent his political youth as a liberal-ish speechwriter for Walter Mondale and ended up a neocon on Fox News. Asked once about his rightward journey, he remarked, “I was young once.” But, as deep as his conservatism ran, Krauthammer, who died last year, refused to get in line with Donald Trump. (In 2016, he voted for an unnamed third-party candidate.) “I used to think Trump was an eleven-year-old, an undeveloped bully,” he wrote in the Post, in an analysis that was as much psychiatric as it was political. “I was off by about ten years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval, and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied. He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value—indeed exists—only insofar as it sustains and inflates him.” Trump, naturally, responded with his customary Burkean eloquence, tweeting that Krauthammer was “a dummy” and “an overrated clown.” [.....]


    by artappraiser on Sat, 08/24/2019 - 1:38am

    Like a 2nd-grade boy who thinks explosions are awesome:


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/25/2019 - 7:12pm

    This would release a lot of radiation into the atmosphere. There are better ways to stop hurricanes. We could have all the military jets fly in a circle in the hurricane opposite to the hurricane's flow and dissipate the energy. Or if every one several hundred miles from the hurricane gathered on the shore in the path of the hurricane and blew against the wind in unison it would probably be enough to blow it off shore. with more powerful hurricanes the people could add to the blowing by waving their hands to create a fanning energy. One wolf can huff and puff and blow a house down. Think of the power created by millions huffing and puffing in unison.


    by ocean-kat on Mon, 08/26/2019 - 4:46pm

    The onlly problem I see is getting everyone to blow in unison. Music might help.


    by ocean-kat on Mon, 08/26/2019 - 6:00pm

    Some people have criticized my ideas as stupid and unworkable. That's not the point. The point is that my goal, to stop hurricanes from hitting the mainland, is not bad. You know, it sure wouldn't hurt to try them out. Let's see if they work.

      A senior administration official, who has been briefed on the president's hurricane bombing suggestion, defended Trump's idea and said it was no cause for alarm. "His goal — to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad," the official said. "His objective is not bad."


    by ocean-kat on Mon, 08/26/2019 - 7:39pm

    The uninhabited north half of Africa could be turned into volcanic glass with outdated nuclear weapons. The dust that everybody knows starts hurricanes, because it is never raked, would be eliminated. Mar-a-Lago would be safe.

    Trinitite glass desert:

     


    by NCD on Mon, 08/26/2019 - 5:54pm

    Great brain storming. We could then mine all that glass. Glass would become so cheap we could replace all plastic bottles with that glass. Environmentalists would be all in for this solution to both hurricanes and plastic pollution. Of course one wonders why the desert isn't raked like they do with the forests in Finland.


    by ocean-kat on Mon, 08/26/2019 - 6:08pm

    It's cheaper to just blow up old nuclear weapons, rather than send to recycling centers. 

    The radiating crystal plutonom, in the glass, also gives a helluva kick, better than cocopuffs.


    by NCD on Mon, 08/26/2019 - 8:18pm

    I see the NYT has done some followup:


    by artappraiser on Fri, 08/09/2019 - 9:14pm

    Trump's a user. The White House released the photo.  The Trump's used the relatives who are Trumpers, to get the baby in as a prop for a photo op, as there were no actual victims, in hospital or released, who wanted to be "consoled" by Trump. The baby has broken fingers from his dead mom falling on him and I don't think the deceased parents are even buried yet.

    The Guardian reports Trump already has dozens of ads on Facebook aimed at Latinos using video clips from the El Paso hospital visit with hospital staff "first responders", and where he apparently attacks Beto Dems etc .


    by NCD on Fri, 08/09/2019 - 10:01pm

    Trump denies the infant was the only El Paso victim who refused to meet him.

    No problem, Trump's co-host of his Presidential Reality Show, despot Kim Jong Un, may join Trump for another Make Denuclearization Great Again Summit episode in the "not too distant future." :

    "..Mr. Trump insisted that reports that several survivors of the mass shooting in El Paso last weekend had refused to see him when he visited their hospital on Wednesday were false, but provided no evidence... The president said that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had offered him “a small apology” for that country’s recent short-range missile tests, which violate United Nations resolutions but which Mr. Trump has brushed off. “I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un in the not too distant future!” he wrote.".  link


    by NCD on Sat, 08/10/2019 - 11:41pm

    Trump blamed the failing NYT for blaming him for racist speech that incited the El Paso shooter. "Hillary won the presidency by 3 million votes," Trump said, "So when you read that the president said something racist it's clear that Hillary said it."


    by ocean-kat on Sat, 08/10/2019 - 11:44pm

    Max Boot @ WaPo today on the newest absurdity: Does Trump really want to debate mental fitness?

    President Trump projects so much that it’s a wonder he hasn’t gotten a job in a movie theater. At 6:44 p.m. on Saturday, about the time that normal people are getting ready for dinner, he tweeted: “Joe Biden just said, ‘We believe in facts, not truth.’ Does anybody really believe he is mentally fit to be president? We are ‘playing’ in a very big and complicated world. Joe doesn’t have a clue!”

    Is this really the debate that Trump wants to have? Does he really want to have an argument about who is “mentally fit to be president” and who has a “clue” about what’s happening in the world? Because his own utterances of the past few days have confirmed what everyone who hasn’t joined his cult already knows: He is both unfit to be president and utterly clueless.

    Just a few hours before launching his attack on Biden, Trump retweeted a comedian’s sick suggestion that the Clintons were responsible for the suicide of accused child molester Jeffrey Epstein [....]


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 4:05pm

    OK....how about who's the "rock star",,?

    The President was treated like a Rock Star inside the hospital, which was all caught on video. They all loved seeing their great President!

       — Dan Scavino Jr. (@Scavino45) August 7, 2019 White House Social Media Director

    Never gonna let you down
    Never gonna run around and desert you
    Never gonna make you cry
    Never gonna say goodbye

    by NCD on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 6:10pm

    But but but I was under the impression that being a rock star was a bad thing

    Inside Joe Biden’s rock-star treatment for Florida speech @ NYPost, Feb. 26 (I note that this meme was flogged at many right wing sites at the time.

    So earlier in the year the self-described billionaire was the real man of the people and the supposed blue dog was the phony that's really the rock star, hobnobbing with "Hollywood" and their ilk.

    These Trump operatives, they got short memories about brand?


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 9:07pm

    They're trying everything under the sun. Tonight he's a uniter, not a divider, heh:

    This —> https://t.co/6YyIGZ80ru

    — Brit Hume (@brithume) August 12, 2019

    He's a shape-shifting god-like figure, he can be whatever you want him to be. He's a stable genius, after all.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 9:36pm

    Gees I was kind of being facetious about zany branding efforts. But then I just went over to WaPo home page and see this:

    Trump vexed by branding crisis: How to shed the label of ‘racist’

    Throughout his career as a real estate magnate, a celebrity provocateur and a politician, President Trump has recoiled from being called the r-word, even though some of his actions and words have been plainly racist.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 2:01am

    bizarre projection game going on here:

    You are losing your fastball— very weak troll. Bullying is the most anti-American thing in our culture and it is emanating from the Oval Office. Many have called and are willing to work on a necessary replacement. Time to call in a good relief pitcher. @potus is lost. https://t.co/7fiFHbd7O6

    — Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) August 12, 2019

    Edit to add:

     


    by artappraiser on Tue, 08/13/2019 - 1:07am


    by artappraiser on Wed, 08/14/2019 - 11:04pm

    All that is likely true but  I don't see how it helps to have Scaramucci say it. On could easily say that Scaramucci had mentally declined also but to do that one would have to assume against all evidence that at one point he had some mental agility.


    by ocean-kat on Wed, 08/14/2019 - 11:24pm

    Kind of my thought.

    Is psychopath + mentally feeble better or worse than just psychopath?

    Hitler was addicted to pervitin the last yea or so - watching him drool convinced the new commandant over Paris *not* to destroy the city as per orders, certainly the first time he disobeyed.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 08/15/2019 - 6:14am

    He's on a real tear with an "I am not a racist" meme after the lousy Fox News poll results. He retweeted all of these in a row late Sun. evening:

     

    Retweet @POTUS isn't RACIST when @Prince wrote @realDonaldTrump Black Version!

    Donald Trump: Black Version
    Maybe that's WHAT YOU NEED
    A man that fulfills YOUR EVERY WISH
    YOUR EVERY DREAM

    Donald Trump: Black Version
    COME ON TAKE A CHANCE
    A 2020 @WhiteHouse
    A Real Bromance! pic.twitter.com/3vPaU7AKde

    — Oliver McGee PhD MBA (@OliverMcGee) August 18, 2019

     

    Retweet The Lies, False Facts & Fake News of @CNN's @Acosta on @POTUS!

    Raise Your Hand if you LOVE @realDonaldTrump has SHUTOFF the @WhiteHouse @PressSec Briefing Cameras & KICKED THE PRESS OUTSIDE next to a Buzzing Marine One Helicopter!

    Where's Acosta @AprilDRyan on the Lawn? pic.twitter.com/JYHhpFnvJB

    — Oliver McGee PhD MBA (@OliverMcGee) August 19, 2019

     

    Wow. Throwback to when Senator Barack Obama agreed with @realDonaldTrump on immigration! RT this so your friends see this! pic.twitter.com/W8216TwO52

    — Oliver McGee PhD MBA (@OliverMcGee) January 7, 2018

     

    WATCH: “MSNBC is rewarding hate-filled conspiracy theorists with air time because their Trump Derangement Syndrome demands it” — @JesseBWatters https://t.co/F9KpoYEUXj

    — TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) August 18, 2019

     

    Trump rarely uses racial categories. It is the media and Democratic leaders who routinely issue race-based denunciations, writes @HMDatMI ⁦@MorningsMaria⁩ ⁦@FoxBusiness⁩ https://t.co/hejJnfA0OQ

    — Maria Bartiromo (@MariaBartiromo) August 19, 2019

    by artappraiser on Mon, 08/19/2019 - 12:21am

    new meme-a least to me-possibly taken from or targeted at the evangelical fan contingent:

    The last president I know of who compared himself to the Messiah was Andrew Johnson. He was impeached for the speeches in question. https://t.co/0aVElDYMW7

    — Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) August 21, 2019

     


    by artappraiser on Wed, 08/21/2019 - 1:55pm

    This is interesting on "I am the chosen one", that C-Span has tweeted the cut with just those words. C-Span is famous to the point of parody of them to always go to extreme lengths not to editorialize, but in this case, they are basically doing so:

     


    by artappraiser on Wed, 08/21/2019 - 2:14pm

    the "respect must be paid" meme:


    by artappraiser on Wed, 08/21/2019 - 2:07pm

    You'll like this one, NCD (I always tend to think more of figures like Roy Cohn and P.T. Barnum rather than Hitler, but that's another thing, it's my penchant for the cultural historian nuance thing, they are all on the same demagogue scale):


    by artappraiser on Wed, 08/21/2019 - 2:25pm

    p.s. I am reminded that this is all basically laid out in Gustav Le Bon's The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind in 1895. A lot of the early 20th century demagogue's read it. Some historians argue he was more important than his contemporary Freud.


    by artappraiser on Wed, 08/21/2019 - 2:31pm

    Trump is looking on the edge of a panic breakdown. Scared. He hates everyone who doesn't adore him, and those he will abandon also. 

    The parallels with Hitler are too great.  Who knows what Trump or Hitler really "believe"? They believe they are God, or "chosen" by fate.  Look at what they create. Hitler got Ordinary Men to personally execute with guns, tens of thousands of defenceless Jews. Trump has ICE abusing children. Hateful killers mowing down minorities.

    Scaramucci says Trump will eventually "turn on the entire nation." Hitler did too:

    "On March 19, 1945, Adolf Hitler issued his infamous “Nero Decree,” which called for the systematic destruction of Germany. The order was largely thwarted by Hitler's armaments minister, Albert Speer, and highlighted Hitler's waning authority as the Third Reich collapsed.

    According to Speer's memoirs, “Inside the Third Reich,” Hitler then told him: “If the war is lost, the people will be lost also. It is not necessary to worry about what the German people will need for elemental survival. On the contrary, it is best for us to destroy even these things. For the nation has proved to be the weaker, and the future belongs solely to the stronger eastern nations. In any case, only those who are inferior will remain after this struggle, for the good have already been killed.”


    by NCD on Wed, 08/21/2019 - 5:18pm

    "Essential Emptiness of Donald Trump" MSNBC, with Harvard psychiatrist.

     


    by NCD on Thu, 08/22/2019 - 7:39pm

    Yo have to name a thing a thing

    Trump is psychotic 

    Trump is a racist.


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 08/22/2019 - 8:01pm

    Just another example of the endless flim-flam

    Trump is a shameless BSer. Listen to him pretend that he’s a big fan of the Bible in this clip when he clearly knows nothing about it. It’s an SNL skit come to life. pic.twitter.com/uGC3Unfgic

    — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 22, 2019

    edit to add:

     


    by artappraiser on Fri, 08/23/2019 - 12:53am

    My favorite part of the bible is the begats. Long lines of births without any abortions. Some of them were rapes and incest which proves Steve King was right, "without rape and incest, there wouldn’t “be any population of the world left.” The bible proves it as is always true.


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 08/23/2019 - 1:13am

    Must've been a great student to have in class at Wharton. "Did you do the reading?" " yeah, it was great - all of it. Don't want to get into specifics - it's very personal."

    Maybe they could ask him how he squares Paul's teaching to spread the word with his refusal to mention even one word. Or even choose between plagues and forgiveness - pretty tough there.

    Why are the "reporters" even there? To help him whack off? I don't think he needs any help.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 08/23/2019 - 1:48am

    can't let this one go unnoted, was particularly sociopathic:


    by artappraiser on Fri, 08/23/2019 - 4:46am


    by artappraiser on Fri, 08/23/2019 - 3:20pm

    Friday on MSNBC: Scaramucci Rips Trump As ‘Melting Down Like A Nuclear Reactor,’ Tells GOP To Get Him Out, via HuffPost, Fri. 11:30 pm ET, with video clip.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 08/24/2019 - 1:49am

    As usual, troll-in-chief says "fuggedaboudit, just kidding" on two items. From Politico.com menu

    1. Trump: 'Chosen one' remark was sarcasm

    2. Trump praises Danish PM after calling her 'nasty' in Greenland row 

     And I noticed that Thurs. on his twitter feed, he had these to remind us what he really cares about, 

    a full retweet of this

    TV RATINGS: Thursday August 22nd, Fox News had a commanding lead over MSNBC and CNN in total viewers, with the most-watched hours being @seanhannity, @TuckerCarlson, @IngrahamAngle, @thefive, @BretBaier & @marthamaccallum. https://t.co/3p6s8Aebnf pic.twitter.com/nTTEEeWGDE

    — TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) August 23, 2019

    followed by this:

    Such a sad and pathetic fall for @CNN and Jeff Z! https://t.co/vrivSUlDi3

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2019

    He says outrageous things off the top of his head because it gets him world attention: the all publicity is good publicity rule. He feels powerful when he can make "the elites" freak out. This is one of the main thing I have seen fans like about him, that he can get a rise out of world elites. They feel less powerless vicariously.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 08/24/2019 - 10:09pm

    Proof. Interesting product, usually used when a result is not verifiable through immediate sensation.

    But I cannot feel things anymore. Somebody slipped something into my drink.


    by moat on Mon, 08/26/2019 - 6:18pm

    An Old television show “Designing Women” had a classic line that applies to Trump

    [Charlene tries to comfort Suzanne as she struggles to do good works after being miraculously spared when her car is totaled.]
    Charlene: If God had intended you to do good works, you probably wouldn't have been born so shallow.

    https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Designing_Women_(season_2)

     


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 08/26/2019 - 9:10pm

    Maybe God intended for Trump to prove what a bunch of immoral hypocrites Republicans are, that the country is still full of idiots and racists, and both sides are definitely not the same!


    by NCD on Mon, 08/26/2019 - 10:41pm

    Keeping up with the laugh a day quota: Trump says he's 'an environmentalist' after skipping G-7 climate meeting @ TheHill.com, Aug. 26


    by artappraiser on Tue, 08/27/2019 - 1:40am

    He's got a new one, trending right now: #TrumpHatesMilitaryFamilies


    by artappraiser on Thu, 08/29/2019 - 3:20am

    @ FEMA:


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/01/2019 - 2:14pm

    Getting accurate weather reports continues to be hard work, it seems, even for stable geniuses:


    by artappraiser on Mon, 09/09/2019 - 11:14pm

    Even Orwell never imagined The Party would lie about the weather.  Ignorance is Strength !


    by NCD on Tue, 09/10/2019 - 12:09am

    but wait, there's more!


    by artappraiser on Tue, 09/10/2019 - 1:16am

    You couldn't possibly parody him enough, NCD.  This tops everything we've seen so far, we definitely a psychopathic child as president if true: straight out of "Bad Seed"

    from Shoot Them in the Legs, Trump Suggested: Inside His Border War

    by Michael D. Shear & Hirschfeld Davis @ NYTimes.com, Oct. 1.

    Beginning excerpt to fill out background before the above paragraph:

    WASHINGTON — The Oval Office meeting this past March began, as so many had, with President Trump fuming about migrants. But this time he had a solution. As White House advisers listened astonished, he ordered them to shut down the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico — by noon the next day.

    The advisers feared the president’s edict would trap American tourists in Mexico, strand children at schools on both sides of the border and create an economic meltdown in two countries. Yet they also knew how much the president’s zeal to stop immigration had sent him lurching for solutions, one more extreme than the next [....]


    by artappraiser on Wed, 10/02/2019 - 1:48am

    The projection thing, it appears it's genetic!


    by artappraiser on Thu, 10/10/2019 - 2:06pm

    BS


    by Danni (not verified) on Wed, 10/23/2019 - 2:30pm