Being called an HB may soon become a MAGA attack line, by Hal M. Brown

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 me HB. Take the 1 out and it's me. It has a nice ring to it: aitch-bee. Why I was called this had nothing to do with where I was born. I was born in New York, my mother was born there and my father was born in New Jersey. It was just my initials. Even to this day if I hear someone call out "hey HB" I'll pay attention because I figure they know me.

Now that MAGAs know and are angry about the H1-B visas and how they are granted to foreigners who they think take jobs from Americans, I can see them angrily hurling profane insults at someone they think is here with one shouting "hey HB, get the hell out of my country", using less polite words, and even making threats or committing acts of violence.

I think Trump and Musk envision the people they want to get these visas will look like the man (I made the AI image of) in the sample visa above rather than like another of these (also AI) men shown above.

As for Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy, whose parents immigrated from India, I assume he'd be adamant that visas from counties where people didn't have white skin were granted H1-B visas based on education and skill. He'd know people like his parents would easily be granted them. His father was a graduate of the National Institute of Technology in Calicut and his mother was a graduate of the Mysore Medical College & Research Institute, one of the oldest medical schools in India.

In the twisted world of American politics and society, we now have two disparate groups of people who are persona non grata here as far as one segment of the public goes. Before all the H1-B furor about them was because they were Hispanic whether they were here legally or not. Some might even have had H1-B visas, but most would be the object of scorn and resentment by MAGAs no matter that kind of visa or job they had. They could teach at a university where they might be called a DEI hire, be a health care worker, work in an office, bodega, or mow lawns. Nobody would be telling them to pack their bags and get out because they graduated from a medical school in India. 

People from S.E. Asia and other regions of Asia, while still suffering predjuce coming from some quarters, have managed to avoid the brunt of modern racial bigotry.  Still, we all know this is all about skin color.

A MAGA who knows my politics won't insult me by calling me HB. They are more likely to call me a libtard perhaps prefaced by some choice expletives. I would be one of the people they want to leave the country because I didn't love it they way they thought I should.

They couldn't demand that I be deported because my parents and I were born here, but they'd probably wish I could be deported. They could be like members of Virginia's Friendship Baptist church with their decidely unfriendly sign, shown below. Their sign provoked local controversy.

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If Trump has dementia it can only be hidden for so long. This is may be the biggest "if" hanging over him. by Hal M. Brown, MSW

 

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 have a government led by a man who is constantly described as having a meltdown" and another, Fred Berfel (who makes many good comments which you can read here), posted this Simpsons video saying Trump reminded him of Grampa Simpson. 

In the video Grampa Simpson is compos mentis. He is, in fact, deliberately using something like what Trump calls the weave.

I commented: 

Does anyone in America believe that we should have a government led by a man who is constantly described as having a meltdown

Many of the commenters to this article also raised the question of Trump's mental deterioration. Click images below to enlarge them.

Trump asks "what is going on here?" in his Truth Social post. Indeed, this is the question America should be asking. The man won the election. You'd think this post (and others) were sour grapes coming from the loser of an election. If he wasn't about to be president and wasn't surrounded by sycophants, someone who cared about him would be saying "give it up, man."

Right now we simply do not know with absolute certainty that Trump has early dementia. You can use Google and search "Trump dementia" (click) and find numerous articles wiht speculation about this.  You will find many articles by experts and others who think he does. (Clicking below will enlarge Google search image.)

Dementia always gets worse. The course of the downslide varies but it always gets worse. If Trump has it there will be a point where even the most agressive effort to hide this from the public will fail. The cliche about having to take grandpa's drivers license away because of his dementia won't apply to Trump. I wouldn't want to be standing between Trump and someone who tried to take away his ability to post on Truth Social, let alone their trying to keep him from making public appearances whenever it suits him.

It would be easier for his apologists to dismiss what he posts in Truth Social than what he says extemporaneously in public. If he goes off onto tangents like Grampa Simpson in the video saying this was a brilliant example of the weave would eventually be seen as the gaslighting it was.

Watch the video. Grampa explains that this way of talking was a deliberate trick. Note that Grampa began a fairly logical story but ends up talking about having an onion under his belt (below) and who's image was on a nickel and the toast he was making and JD Rockefeller.

There are lots of "ifs" being pondered about what Trump will do to democracy. I do not to minimize them. Our fate as a nation depends on the answers, but in many ways the biggest "if" may be whether he has early dementia and what will happen if it gets so serious it is impossible to deny.

Then the next matter open to speculation is what would happen if a year or two into Trump's term as a lame duck president J.D. Vance became president. Currently Trump can make decisions without having to worry about being elected again. We can only hope that his malignant narcissism doesn't drive him to exact revenge aganst his enemies and rule like a ruthless dictator, but that his psychopatholgy will abate as it sinks in to him that he's actually president. It would save the country considerable suffering if he just settled back and enjoyed the trappings of power. This depends on how much of a sadist he is and whether he enjoys watching enemies suffer more than having world leaders and CEOs bow down to him. 

Vance has to pay attention to the base more than Trump does. I rather doubt he will accept the team Trump put together for top positions. He will be looking for people loyal to him. He won't have to please Trump. He will want to please the voters. The country will discover what he really stands for.

There are two routes aside from Trump being impeached to Vance becoming president in the next four years. One in that Trump dies. The other is through the 25th Amendment. This has to be initiated by the vice president and approved by the majority of the Cabinet. If Trump succumbed to severe dementia unless he resigned he would have to be removed though the 25th Amendment.

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That Laura Loomer is even in the news shows how off the rails this country is. By Hal M. Brown

 

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 is even relevant.

Consider how Loomer became so newsworthy.

This is how her profile begins:

Laura Elizabeth Loomer (born May 21, 1993)^[1] is an American far-right^[a] political activist, conspiracy theorist,^[b] and internet personality. She was the Republican nominee to represent Florida's 21st congressional district in the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections, losing to Democrat Lois Frankel.^[2][3] She also ran in the Republican primary for Florida's 11th congressional district in 2022, losing to incumbent Daniel Webster.^[4]

Loomer has worked as an activist for several organizations, including Project Veritas, the Geller Report, Rebel News, and InfoWars. She has described herself as being "pro-white nationalism" and a "proud Islamophobe",^[c][d] and gained notoriety as a result of being banned from numerous social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, payment processors, vehicles for hire, and food delivery mobile apps for various reasons, including violating policies on hate speech and posting misinformation.^[5][6][7][8]Loomer has also been banned and removed from events, and had press credentials revoked, for harassment and causing disturbances.^[8][9]

Donald Trump sought to hire Loomer to his presidential campaign in April 2023, but his senior campaign advisors successfully discouraged Trump from doing so.^[10][11][12] By September 2024, some Trump supporters and others expressed concerns about Loomer's continuing presence around and influence on Trump.^[13][14]

It buggers the imagination how Trump could even let her be involved in his campaign, let alone fly on a plane with him. If he'd taken the time to read her Wikipedia profile it would have given him as much information as an FBI background check. 

Who knows whether he had fantasies like this about her:

Because Loomer has been lambasting Elon Musk she's been stripped of her Blue Check on X (read article).  

Excerpt:

"The elephant in the room is that Elon Musk, who is not MAGA and never has been, is a total f------ drag on the Trump transition," she wrote on X. "He's a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar-a-Lago in an effort to... be the point man for all his accomplices in big Tech to slither in."

After Musk accused Loomer of "trolling for attention," she unloaded on him in response.

"Telling the truth isn't trolling," she said. "You bought your way into MAGA 5 minutes ago after Trump almost had his head blown off in Butler... we all know you only donated your money so you could influence immigration policy and protect your buddy Xi Jinping."

Shortly after this, Loomer had her official blue check verification badge removed, and she also reported being stripped of her paid subscribers.

Just an aside: Although I know that calling anything "stage 5" is bad because with cancer stage four is the worst, her using the term prompted me to look up ""stage 5 clinger" and it turns out it is a "thing." 

Here we have someone whose net worth is a meager $10 million at war with Elon Musk. It is like the isaland of Nauru declared war on the United States. She's still on X (here), but even if Musk kicks her off entirely she still has her own Rumble website and a Facebook page.

If she is exiled from X it will only heighten media coverage of their feud.

This being said, it is fascinating and pleasing to me to see someone like Loomer engaging in a no holds barred dispute with Elon Musk and more than just holding her own. She is as good as he is at hurling insults. 

Here we have the richest man in the world, who just a few days about was being called President Musk, paying attention to someboy who, in a sane world would be a nobody making the news. Perhaps he also wants to play kissy face with her.

This all takes attention away from the most important stories. These are about how Trump and his cadre of "the cruelty is the point" psychopaths are about to wreak havoc on our democracy.

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Trump is like an insecure bully trying to scare everyone by doing a cannonball into a crowded swimming pool, by Hal M. Brown

 

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 Musk is getting and squash the speculation about who really is the president.

Making sure everyone knows he is president rather than Elon Musk is only part of what is motivating him to want to take headline grabbing action on his first day in office and then what he will do during his first days and weeks as president.

If you were lucky enough to go to swimming pools with your friends when you were a kid you probably watched some big bully try to show off by doing a cannon ball in the the midst of everyone in the pool and frighten the smaller children.

I think this is akin to what Trump is doing. He wants to be cheered on by MAGA and instill fear in his enemies.

He thinks he can emerge from the pool as some kind of superhero.

Thanks to AI I could offer you the images which show how Trump would really look if he did this rather than how he wishes he could look.

We actually have a president who sees himself as reincarnation of Superman (as if he'd adhere to The Man of Steel's credo with truth, justice, and the American way actually meaning what it was supposed to mean). 

You don't need to be his psychoanalyst to know that Trump imagines himself to be a masculine superhero with extraordinary powers. He has sold his digital cards depicting himself as a muscle bound Superman.

That so many people could vote for someone who has these delusions is an insult to the intelligence of millions of Americans. Trump also insulted voters by not keeping these fantasies to himself but by sharing them. 

Lots of kids have fantasies about being a superhero. When I was young I used to fantasize about being Mighty Mouse. (His theme song tells about his credo. Click here to hear it and watch a 20 minute episode.) This no doubt says a lot about me. 

These are people who might even buy the AI images below:

All of Trump's current blustering is an attempt to to show the country, and the world, how powerful he is and that he is not someone anyone should consider messing with. Below on the left is how he sees himself and on the right is how I and many others see him.

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Trump is thowing dead cats on the table to divert attention from the President Musk meme. Expect more deadcatting and beware of wag the dog. by Hal M Brown

 

I discovered that the metaphor about throwing a dead cat on the table to divert media and public attention was an actual political strategy when I read this on BlueSky:

I tried to use AI to make an illustration for today's blog that wouldn't be too upsetting. I am a cat lover and have had a dozen wonderful cats in my family in my life. My first was Bibby who was part of our family past the time I went to college (shown with my sister, Jenifer), and my next cat, Demetrious who, like Bibby lived to be 23.

What Trump has done has been effective. Instead of all the furor over Elon Musk being president and Trump being his puppet, we have Trump threatening to annex Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, send federal troops into Mexico, and execute as many prisoners as possible, making the news.

The following is from Wikipedia:

The dead cat strategy, also known as deadcatting, is the political strategy of deliberately making a shocking announcement to divert media attention away from problems or failures in other areas.^[1][2] The present name for the strategy has been associated with British former prime minister Boris Johnson's political strategist Lynton Crosby.

While he was mayor of London, Boris Johnson wrote a column for the 3 March 2013 edition of The Telegraph in which he described the "dead cat" as a piece of Australian political strategy about what to do in a situation in which the argument is being lost and "the facts are overwhelmingly against you".^[3][4]

There is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don't mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout, "Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!" In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.^[1]

Johnson employed the Australian Lynton Crosby as his campaign manager during the 2008 and 2012 London mayoral elections, leading to press speculation that he was the "Australian friend" in the story.^[5][4]

Only at the very end of the Wikipedia article is Donald Trump mentioned. It should be updated.

Rodwell notes the term later finding a place in media coverage of the "outrageous pronouncements" made by Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries and his later presidential transition in the United States,

Just because Trump has used deadcating to take attention away from Elon Musk this doesn't mean that Musk can't do the same thing to regain the limelight. 

Today Musk is in the news for suggesting cognitive tests for goverment officials. The thing with this is that while there is a legitmate concern about people with dementia serving such a mandate would be impossible to initiate. Still, his suggesting it makes headlines and discussed on TV news.

It was even covered in Pravda.

Deadcatting is similar to how polticians use wag-the-dog:

Wag the dog is a political term for the act of creating a diversion from a damaging issue usually through military force. It stems from the generic use of the term to mean a small and seemingly unimportant entity (the tail) controls a bigger, more important one (the dog). It is usually used by a politician when they are in a scandal, in hopes that people forget about the scandal and focus on the more important issue. The phrase originates in the saying "a dog is smarter than its tail, but if the tail were smarter, then it would wag the dog."^[1] The concept has strong intersections with many other aspects of Diversionary foreign policy, particularly the rally 'round the flag effect, as wag the dog actions tend to both distract and seek to bolster support through these actions. (Wikipedia)

You may be familiar with this term because it was the name of a film:

Wag the Dog is a 1997 American black comedy political satire film starring  Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro.^[1] Produced and directed by Barry Levinson, the film centers on a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer who fabricate a war in Albania to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal.  (Wikipedia)

Wag the dog is arguably far worse than deadcatting when it comes to Donald Trump. If he wants to divert attention from a failed policy, broken promises, or any of his political troubles, he could actually invade a county. 

This is also from Wikipedia:

During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, President Clinton ordered missile strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan shortly after the story broke, drawing comparisons with the film and popularizing usage of the phrase.^[5] During impeachment proceedings, Clinton also bombed Iraq, drawing stronger "wag the dog" allusions.^[6] With the scandal still on the public's mind in March 1999, his administration launched a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. These action drew more attention to the phrase, growing its popularity.^[7]

It has been used multiple times for former President Donald Trump. First, in April 2017 when he conducted airstrikes against Syria during an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections,^[3] and again in January 2020, after a U.S. airstrike assassination of Iran's General Qasem Soleimani occurred during first impeachment trials of former President Trump.^[8] 

That's it for today.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah.

I post my blogs on Stressline.org where you can subscribe (for free everywhere) and on Substack where, if you want to submit your email, you can be notified of all new blog posts. I also post them on Medium because this enables them to be easily found on internet searches.

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