Thanks to Trump and Hegseth we could have our first bald president. He'd be the first president who has seen Earth from outer space.

 

Until the news broke that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is probing Sen. Mark Kelly on his “illegal orders” video, I thought the top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination were Newsom and Shapiro. Now I add Sen. Kelly as a third and even see him having edge ahead of the other two.

Sabrina Haake wrote about this on Salon today. She didn’t cover how this effects any presdiential ambitions be may have. See this as an important adjunct to what I am writing about.

Excerpt:

The duty to disobey manifestly illegal orders is a cornerstone of international law, with foundations in Nazi atrocities-related post-World War II trials like Nuremberg. Orders of such nature that their unlawfulness is clear and obvious, such as an order to target unarmed civilians, are considered manifestly illegal.

But as the video circulated across social media and cable news, Donald Trump became unglued, unleashing a series of posts confirming that he is a danger to all Americans and unfit to lead the military.

Right now on “Morning Joe” they are talking about the obvious. They are saying that the more this gets media attention the more his possible presidential ambitions are given a boost.

They noted that the Pentagon will also be looking into whether there was some violation of protocol because his medals weren’t in the correct arrangement in this photo he posted:

See this article:

Here he is on Rachel Maddow:

Muscle-head Hegseth is ham-handed when it comes to public perception. He’s trying to turn a national hero whose much admired wife survived not just a bullet that clipped and ear but went into her brain but who was a combat vet and astronaut. 

Not only in this highly publicized endeavor he’s also going after the Boy Scouts. Really, the Boy Scouts!

Excerpt:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies will reportedly result in the Pentagon turning its back on Scouting America, once known as the Boy Scouts or Scouting

According to a leaked proposal obtained by NPR, Hegseth is unhappy with the organization and wants his Department of War to end a 100-year relationship, which would leave officials running the annual National Jamboree scrambling to fill the void.

NPR reported that Hegseth believes the organization, “once endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt, no longer supports the future of American boys,” and is currently designed to “attack boy-friendly spaces.”

Here’s the NPR article:

He’s going after nothing less than an American institution (click to enlarge), the Boy Scouts.

Read: How Norman Rockwell’s Boy Scout Paintings Ended Up in Ohio.

By a chance coincidence as I was looking into whether he was ever a Boy Scout I found an article about him making the news in an unfortunate way for a racially insensitive remark he made at a Boy Scouts of America event in New Jersey in 2018 (see article). My point isn’t that he made the comment which he appologized for, but that he’s the kind of politician who would be invited to speak at a Boy Scout event. 

—- Further updates, if any, will be posted here.

This Salon column is an update to yesterday’s Substack “The dodos of DOGE may be extinct, but they left a lot of damage in their wake.”

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The dodos of DOGE may be extinct, but they left a lot of damage in their wake, by Hal M. Brown

 

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“The dodo bird was a flightless bird that lived on the island of Mauritius and became extinct in the late 17th century, primarily due to human activities such as hunting and habitat destruction. It is often used as a symbol of extinction and the impact of human interference on wildlife.” (AI) 

The dodo was not a bloodthirsty beast. They were omnivores that primarily ate fruits, nuts, seeds, bulbs, and roots. They may, however, have also consumed small invertebrates like crabs and shellfish (reference).

If you call someone a dodo bird you may mean that they are acting like a person who is about to become extinct. However if you say they are a dodo it can have several even less flattering meanings (see reference)

Yesterday we learned the following:

The dodo bird didn’t destroy or disrupt lies the way DOGE did. But like DOGE it did become extinct, or so we’re supposed to believe. 

A web inquiry says that “approximately 300,000 federal employees have been laid off due to the actions of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the Trump administration. This includes significant job cuts across various federal agencies, with many employees being encouraged to resign or take early retirement.” In May The Hill reported that half the layoffs in the country were due to DOGE cuts.

By coincidence reports indicate that DOGE cuts to USAid have been blamed for approximately 300,000 deaths, the same number as jobs lost. Most of those who died were children. Due to cuts that eliminated or otherwise impacted critical programs that support health and well-being. (see, DOGE’s big illusion: the heavy costs of the Trump administration’s so-called efficiency.)

I rather doubt that Trump has shown DOGE the door because he had a flash of compassion. He never even cared about government efficiency. It was just something he could to to show how powerful he was. He liked being best big buds with Elon despite the lunatic leaper looking ridiculous in Oval Office photo ops. I don’t think the fact that DOGE was getting bad press bothered him at all. He probably liked this because he thought he was owning the libs. 

I’m pretty sure DOGE has gone dodo because his personal relationship with Musk got moldy, mold of the really stinky kind.

All in all it is a good thing they are gone. Damage done. Good riddance.

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Marjorie's road to the White House runs over Vance, Rubio, and Don Jr., and then she's likely to face Newsom or Shapiro. She could win. At least the GOP primary. By Hal M. Brown

 

As someone who looks at politics through the eyes of a psychotherapist, in addition to being a Substacker on the lookout for something original to write about, I consider MTG to be one of four present or recent members of Congress who I consider interesting psychologically. The other three are Lauren Boebert, George Santos, and Matt Gaetz. They are all mental health aberrations but not particularly interesting. 

None of them stand a snowball’s chance in Hell of mounting a credible primary challenge to whoever Trump annoints to replace him assuming he hasn’t declared himself president for life. They have earned their irrelevancy despite the media attention they’ve received.

Currently the three likely people to try to claw their way into the Oval Office, at least to being the GOP primary candidates, are Vance, Rubio, and Donald “Spawn of Trump” Junior. None of them have what could be called the charisma of Boebert, Santos, or Gaetz. Each have their own kind of flash.

None of these six come close to having the charisma, the flash, of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Compared to her they define dull and boring.

If you haven’t seen her announcement, here it is on X:

I see a crucial line in what she said as being “I’m going back to the people that I love to live my life to the fullest as I always have and I look forward to a new path ahead.” For MTG living life to the fullest means being president. How much fuller could her life be than holding her current position as one of the most outspoken members of Congress. There’s only one way to be fuller than that. 

There are various ways MTG could end up sitting behind the deck in the Oval Office, but I see one clear path for her and it involves mostly Marjorie being Marjorie which is something she won’t have any trouble doing.

She is a natural born political predator. She has the feral intelligence of a stalking female lion. 

There’s only one thing that she should not do and I am sure she knows this. It is running for Senator in Georgia. She cannot risk a defeat in a state that elected two Democrats to represent them in the Senate. I don’t think she should run for governor either. She has to be laser focused on running in the GOP presidential primary.

Like that stalking lion she will pick off and devour the weakest animals in the pack of hapless prey. I don’t know whether the first to fall will be Vance, Rubio, or Junior. They may hobble each other trying to curry Big Daddy’s favor. Marjorie will watch this from the bushes as she elevates her own profile as the credible candidate most likely to defeat whoever the Democrats run. She may dismiss the GOP big three as mere Trump wannabes and focus her attacks on Newsom and Shapiro if, as I think likely, they emerge as the top Democratic candidates.

Depending on how much liquid manure Trump sprays on the three Donnie dorks lusting after his job and how they deal with this, Marjorie will be making decisions as to how to attack each of them most effectively. 

How smart is Marjorie at burnishing her image. She knows her optics. Consider just this from her announcement video:

I wouldn’t be surprised if she became president if we saw a small CrossFit gym (Greene used to own a successful one) in a room next to the Oval Office. Marjorie could work out there band have photos posted of her on X.

Marjorie is MAGA. She will emphasize how MAGA she is during the primary and then moderate the MAGA if she wins and runs for president. She’s already successfully apologized for her divisive comments and admitted being wrong. She’ll have no problem once she was running for president saying she sees how she was mislead into believing Trump won the 2020 election for example. Depending on public outcry about the brutality of ICE she could move towards a more humane position on how immigration laws are enforced. The same could go for Trump’s need to flex whatever muscles he has under his flacid flesh by bombing boats and televising snuff videos. Marjorie does NOT (in an earlier version I omitted the word NOT) have to be a macho poseur. 

I see her as having more fire in her belly than Vance, Rubio, and Junior combined. Among the four of them, if I was in a street brawl I would want Marjorie on my side.

She knows she has to achieve a balance between being the tough-guy candidate and being feminine, but not in a woke way.

Look for the first sign she’s aware of the need to do this by signs she’s been working with a voice coach to soften her voice.

Her winning the primary could very well hinge on the answer to the famous beer question (see Wikipedia)

I can answer that one without hesitation. Even though there’s no way I’d vote for her in the general election of the four lilely candidates I would want to have a beer with Marjorie.

She could actually win, especially if the country has descended into a cruel autocratic dictatorship that becomes unpopular with the majority of voters.

If she saw this happening it would be in her interest to do everything she could to assure free and fair elections. She could very well determine that in this kind of election she has a good chance of sitting where she’s a always wanted to sit as shown below:

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