It’s Friday the 13th, so what could possibly go wrong?

For Trump, the answer is simple: Everything. In the past week, every single thing that could possibly have gone wrong for Trump has done so. It’s like he’s lived through a week of Murphy’s law, Word from insiders is that Trump is figuratively falling apart: lashing out at everyone, fuming incessantly, shouting, having fits. Remember that this is someone who is haunted by two things: the investigation into Russia, and his utter inability to handle criticism. This week has been a banner seven days for both.

Continue Reading “Freak Out Friday – April 13, 2018” →

As I said last week, I have been reading “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” in which 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts sound off on the case of the President.

Continue Reading “Freak Out Friday – April 6, 2018” →

I have produced a new novel which is an adventure of the classic hero, Zorro. Published later this year by Bold Venture Press (the current publishers of the many Zorro novels and short stories written by his creator, Johnston McCulley) the title of book will be “Zorro and the Little Devil.”

I will be writing more about this over on my Patreon account tomorrow.

PAD

I am currently attending the Indianapolis Comic Con, and I’m in a rare good mood. The fans are great, my books are selling. Everything is great, which means I’m in no spirit to do the mental tailspin I have to embrace when talking about Trump.

So I’m going to do something different this week. I’m going to recommend a book to you. It’s called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”

Now you must understand that modern psychiatry is bound by something called the Goldwater Rule. The requirement of this rule is that psychiatrists will not write psychological profiles of public figures if they had not had a chance to examine them personally.

Doctor Brandy Lee, the book’s editor, argues rather convincingly that psychiatrists have another duty that takes precedence: to warn the public when there is an individual whose actions and thinking provides–with all respect to Oliver Wendell Holmes–a clear and present danger. The psychiatrists who contributed to this book are convinced that Trump meets that criteria.

I am currently in the process of reading it, and it’s fascinating. When you or I claim that Trump is a dangerous narcissist, those are the opinions of laymen with some fundamental psychological knowledge garnered from reading. When psychiatrists are saying it, that gives the diagnosis far greater weight.

I will be writing a full review of this book by next Friday. I will then throw it open for discussion. If you want to join in, grab a copy and start reading. It will both fascinate and terrify you.

PAD

Rick Santorum, former presidential candidate and royal dickweed, had this to say during “State of the Nation,” a CNN program, about the kids protesting guns this past Saturday. Do not read this while drinking coffee since you will likely do a spit take:

“How about those kids, instead of looking to someone else to solve their problems, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations where there is a violent shooter and you can actually respond to that. They took action to ask someone to pass a law. They didn’t take action to say, ‘How do I as an individual deal with this problem? How am I gonna do something about stopping bullying in my community. What am I gonna do to actually help respond to a shooter.”

So basically, Rick Santorum, who used to be a senator, is flat out stating that expecting congress to make laws that ban certain weapons, increases the age where one can buy a gun, or demands far more stringent background checks before handing someone a weapon of death, is a waste of time. That the NRA has their nuts in such a collective stranglehold. that demanding something be done will accomplish nothing. Do not expect your representatives to represent you. Do not ask the lawmakers to make laws.

Instead the only thing you can do is accept that violence will be done to you at the will of shooters, and the ONLY thing you can do is learn CPR. Realize that the people in charge of passing laws for your protection are leaving you on your own.

What in God’s name does any of this have to do with bullying? The shooters aren’t bullies; they’re homicidal lunatics. Bullies harass you for your lunch money. If they’re shooting guns at you, then it’s an attempted murderer.

I mean, part of me thinks the kids may really be wasting their time because the NRA will never let anything be done to pull back America’s obsession with guns. But I support their “We’re not gonna take it” attitude. Plus let us not forget that many of them are going to be voting in 2020, and they are not going to forget how Trump and Santorum’s former colleagues left them hung out to dry while accepting donations and instructions from the NRA.

PAD

You know, when I first embarked on “Freak Out Friday,” I thought it would be around for far shorter a time than it has been. I personally gave Trump six months, tops. How could I have foreseen that the GOP would be so desperate to hang onto power that they would flush away virtually every policy that they ever claimed to govern by and made everything subservient to Trump and his idiot minions. What’s truly impressive is that for almost every schmuck that Trump put into place when he first began, he has managed to blow through them and replace them with someone indisputably worse. I’m positive that sooner or later he’s going to decide to end the Russian investigation and get rid of Robert Mueller. When (not if) he does, the Republicans are then going to be in a really interesting situation, because a number of highly placed ones have flat out stated that if Trump does that, it’s “the beginning of the end” of his presidency. Of course when I heard that, my reaction was the same as yours: The BEGINNING of the end? Trump has already told so many lies, screwed up so many times, the subject of so many law suits, that if he’d been a Democrat the GOP would have launched impeachment proceedings months ago.

1). Dear John: I have to admit, I am a huge fan of John Bolton. I was first introduced to his work when he did a lovely and unappreciated comic book series called “Marada,” written by Chris Claremont. Readers largely ignored it because it wasn’t X-Men, but I really liked it.

Now it might be that John would be able to do a worthy job of National Security Advisor if Trump had chosen him, but no. He selected John R. Bolton, the dìçk that George W. Bush selected to be our ambassador to the United Nations back in 2005. You remember the United Nations: that would be the organization that Bolton claimed, if it vanished tomorrow, that would make no difference to the world. Bolton is a half-assed warhawk who believes an unprovoked first strike nuclear assault on North Korea, which would establish the US as a rogue state and would likely trigger World War III, is a perfectly okay idea. He’s also anxious to get rid of the Iran nuclear deal, which most experts say is an extraordinarily bad thing to do. And now this guy is going to be counseling the other guy who has his fingers on the nuclear football. We are in a truly horrific situation, and I’m thinking the only way to stop it is to pray that within a few months, Bolton is shown the door just as so many of his predecessors have done. But I fear that won’t be the case.

2). Oh, sure. That’s the reason.After panicking his staff with his threat to veto the spending bill, he finally signed off on it ostensibly because it did so much for the military. Astoundingly–no, wait, wrong word. Typically–that’s better–he blamed the complete lack of support for the DACA dreamers squarely on the party that was actively advocating for helping them, the Democrats. The Dems eventually wound up being blamed for “abandoning” the Dreamers by not making legislation supporting them part of the spending bill, which is certainly true enough. But it ignores the fact that the only reason for the Dreamers being screwed was because Trump did away with the Obama-era declarations that helped them, and the Republicans are the ones who have studiously avoided discussing or supporting the fates of the 800,000 immigrants that Trump hung out to dry. It’s just remarkable that the Democrats manage to find new ways to be blamed for the horrific, unfeeling actions of Trump and the GOP.

3). Don’t worry, everything is safe. I mention this even though Trump had nothing to do with it because, actually he had everything to do with it. Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels’ suit against Trump, posted on Twitter a photo of what looked like a CD in a safe, saying “If ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’ how many words is this worth???” The obvious insinuation is that the CD has proof of Daniels’ claims to have had an affair with Trump. It still remains utterly amazing–no, wait, typical again–that the GOP impeached Clinton for getting a bløw jøb but continues to let Trump, who had an extended affair with God knows how many women, keep sitting in the Oval Office.

Did he do anything right? Well, yes, though I hate to admit it. Calling Putin and congratulating him despite his staff explicitly saying he shouldn’t, was the correct move. At the end of the day, he’s the dámņëd POTUS, and that sometimes involves calling up bášŧárd dictators on the phone and congratulating them on rigging yet another vote. Yes, we know the Russians also helped rig ours. Yes, we know that Trump did collude with them, if for no other reason than he keeps saying “There was no collusion” with the same vehemence that Nixon said he was not a thief, and Clinton said he didn’t have sex with that woman. He’s fooling exactly one person, and that person is himself. The rest of us know how this thing is likely going to end, with Trump trudging off on a helicopter as President Mike Pence waves good-bye and then pardons him.

Jesus, there really is no good end to this, is there.

PAD

Here is the simple truth that we can all admit. The Texas bomber was a young white Christian kid. So he’s a bomber.

But if he had had dark skin and been Muslim, he would have been a terrorist. Because let’s face it: that’s what he is. Sending bombs in packages and terrorizing a community. He is a terrorist in every sense of the word, but won’t be recorded as one because only Muslims can be terrorists. And not all the fences or Muslim travel bans in the world would have affected him.

PAD