STRAIGHTEN UP, DONALD

There has been an awful lot written about Donald Trump over the past few months.  Those articles have examined Trump’s ever changing positions on almost everything except his own chronic physical position.  That is what we will consider here.

No matter how a person may feel about Donald Trump – whether they support his candidacy or oppose it or may have heard the name someplace but can’t place it – everyone seems to agree that he often comes across as an ignorant buffoon who seems to have no control over or concern about what he may say.  His intellect and/or veracity may not be totally to blame for that failing, however.  There may be an underlying physical reason.

A person with proper posture holds his or her head so that the ears are directly over the shoulders.  Watch Donald Trump, though.  He habitually holds his whole head forward from his Trump's postureshoulders.  That posture pulls his first rib out of position, puts undue stress on the scalene muscles, causes headaches and neurological problems and adversely affects a person’s emotions.  Yoga instructors, chiropractors and devotees of the Alexander Technique tell us that chronically poor posture makes us lose touch with our natural rhythms and about the way we feel within ourselves.

Perhaps soon some television network will conduct an interview with Mr. Trump while he wears a cervical collar allowing him to hold his head up properly.  That should improve the clarity of his thinking and let everyone know how he really feels about the important national issues.

19 thoughts on “STRAIGHTEN UP, DONALD

  1. Cats. What can I say? Mimi’s got it all sewed up there. I will send you a return address form for the puppy when he arrives there. And don’t worry about the address. General Delivery Timbuktu has a very nice pet facility.

    • You know, I spend most of my computer time stuck in the impoverished backwaters of the internet, like where I am now. Earlier today, though, I drug myself to some of the “serious” websites and found that when those “serious” commentators write about DT, they get comments like: Hil-LIAR-ry personally killed over 20 people while she was stealing government property from the White House. Deceitful Donald Drumpf would have commented on that behavior back then, but he was in China bribing the Communist government to bring slave laborers to sweat house factories to make his clothing line, which gave him enough money to pay for the abortions needed by all of his mistresses. That is a paraphrase, of course. You can tell because most of the words are spelled correctly. What if one of those irate commentators lost his way and ended up in these comments to learn that down here in the United States we the people don’t care much for ad hominem attacks because the country has already gone to the dogs – particularly the puppies?

      • And then been taken over by the cats because dogs just want to have fun. These days I reserve my ad hominem attacks… No, wait. That’s not right. I just don’t have time for them. I think I’m turning into a dog…

        DT is no more of a sad caricature of humanity than GW Bush was, and the country elected him twice. If I wasn’t so busy being taught how to play fetch the right way and being conditioned to believe in the inherent evil of leashes I’d probably go rat-crazy Rambo on the people in the American electorate who lack all sense of discernment when it comes to identifying who they support and follow. But like they say, you can’t cure stupid. It is what it is.

        If the snarkers and sneerers ever make it this far they won’t last long in these backwaters, you’re right. The lack of opposition would undo them. Don’t you just love the delete/reject comment button? Some days I wish I had one that covered the real human world as well as the virtual one. But then I see a squirrel and I’m all better again.

  2. Murphy left a message on my voice mail asking that I bring this photo to your attention and ask whether you think that you could do such a thing:

      • Voice mail, huh? I suppose the next thing to expect is a truckload of kibble from Amazon. He did get ahold of my wallet the other day. When I came around the corner into the office he acted like he was chewing on it. But there were a couple of paw prints on the keyboard… Excuse me now, I have to just nip around the corner and buy a cannonball and some very heavy chains… Oh, and a dog club.

        • Wait a minute! Voice mail? Where did that picture come from? Perhaps it is all beginning to make sense. Mimi (our cat) says that she never uses the computer, but almost every morning there is cat hair on the keyboard. So now — Lucy Mimi, you got some ‘splainin’ to do. It was probably not a good idea to share my passwords with a cat.

          • You don’t have to share them – cats steal’em. Mimi is obviously a Murphy advocate and would like to have yet another doggy housemate. Let Mimi know that we like her so much as a result of her efforts that we bought her a puppy. He should get there about the same time as the books…

          • Mimi didn’t steal anything. I have a file on the computer in which I keep passwords. I let her keep her passwords there, too.

            As for a puppy, Mimi has never lived with more than one dog, except for brief periods of dog sitting. However, she has read the journals left by cats we had in the past when we had more than one dog. Because of that, we have a contract and are not allowed to own more than a single dog. Cats drive a tough bargain.

  3. Now, I’ve been reading through the comments, which are nearly always an exponential addition to the original text. Bob – your paring down sounds great. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that my current home stands at around 680 sq ft, but there is yet MUCH to pare down. I am a tiny house fanatic, without yet a commitment to actually DO anything about said fanaticism. I admire your hutspa.

    Perhaps you could just stick those 3 -5 boxes in the mail to Louis too. He may have some room. That would give you a reason to stop by and chat in person once in a while. Never mind the fact that Louis never said a word about agreeing to this suggestion! heehee.

    As for the puppy, are you really trying to give him away or is this just like the new parent who offers their poopy diapered baby up for auction?

    Anyways. I can’t stay long. We have a community plant swap this morning and I need to get out in my garden and dig up some hostas to give away. (Does anyone ever actually BUY hostas?) Good time to check in on my new plantings too. Looks like a beautiful weekend for yard work! Yeah!

    Have a great week, guys. Bob – you’ll have to let us know when you set sail.

    • Your insight is pretty good, Amy. More like the parent that offers a baby up for adoption, yes. But with some sincere, heartfelt heat behind the impulse. Murphy is still with us – the moron – but he is showing signs of some IQ gain recently. Unfortunately, he’s using most of it to engage in burglary, larceny, and selective hearing. We’re thinking about renaming him “Chuck” because there are times when that is what we want to do with him.

      I do have a box packed and addressed to Louis, but now I can’t remember what’s in it except that it’s books. No, I did not ask permission to send it. Yes, I am going to. Not ask permission – just send it. There are a couple in there that he may want to forward to an old friend of ours, Bert, who is bent in such a way that he teaches math at a university for a living. A great guy, and a very good friend from long, long ago….

      We didn’t buy our hostas. I don’t think that’s allowed in this universe. Would you like a planting from a giant hosta which gets big enough to shade your home in the summertime? We have one in the front yard which we suspect is related to Audrey 2, the “mean, mean mother from outer space” in Little Shop of Horrors. It’s by the front entry, so in the summertime we always use the back door and make it subsist on raccoons and sundry other forms of wildlife, and the occasional lost child or puppy.

      Hey! That gives me an idea.

  4. I’ve been waiting to comment on this post until I had the time and could post something with as much equanimity as you have, Louis. Unfortunately DT still gives me the political version of the dt’s, and time has been lacking, we’re in the throes of a major life change here. But I will say I don’t think the posture accounts for Mr. Trump’s seeming cognitive difficulties. Bernie Sanders hunches too, and he seems to be able to think just fine. I think the source of the problem is not explained by IQ, either – although I do wonder how capable Mr. Trump is on that scale – but Is instead explained better by another measure, EQ, also known as Emotional Quotient. It has been observed by one person that Mr. Trump displays the emotional attributes of an eighth grade girl bully. For the rest of those observations you can go to this link:
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/16/bullying-experts-trump-is-an-eighth-grade-girl.html

    Cheers, and hope you are well and happy.

    • I just wrote a fairly lengthy reply to your succinct and insightful comment, but I somehow lost the whole thing. Computers do that. Let me start over and limit the scope of what I say.

      First, please know that you have my sympathy of empathy or whatever may be appropriate with respect to your major life changes. I have been through too many of those recently and have not enjoyed any of them.

      Now, turning to your comment, I will restrict this reply to your all too accurate recognition of Donald Trump’s propensity to bully others in order to gratify his fragile ego and force his own way upon them. It has been reported that he has urged his supporters to “beat the crap out of” protesters and promised to pay the legal fees of anyone arrested for doing so. Unfortunately, his cult-like followers have acted on that admonition and assaulted and battered those protesting his campaign events, reporters and who knows who else. (There are many references that could be given for these statements, but a fair summary can be found here.)

      If that wasn’t bad enough, we now have to deal with Roger Stone, also. I don’t know how much you know about Mr. Stone. I have never met the man, but am fairly certain that I would dislike him if I did. I think Will Rogers is lucky he never met Stone or he may not have been able to say that he never met a man he didn’t like.

      A few years ago, before I knew anything about him, I read a book he “co-wrote” that proposed that it was Lyndon Johnson who planned and orchestrated the assassination of President Kennedy. While I have no reason to doubt that that is true, the book was a rehash of previous conspiracy theories combined with tasteless and salacious gossip. Roger Stone has been the “co-author” of several other books exposing the dark side of other political figures, but he does not seem to have ever written anything by himself. That makes me think that his “co-authors” do most of the writing. (I wouldn’t mind a gig like that if it paid well).

      Mr. Stone was previously an adviser to Richard Nixon, and he seems proud of that for some reason. I even read in The New Yorker that he has a tattoo of Nixon on his back. His public relations/lobbying firm has represented such clients as the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) , while UNITA was receiving tens of millions of dollars of “covert” American aid to wage a civil war that killed more than 100,000 Angolan civilians.

      He is a self-admitted master of “dirty tricks,” and also seems proud of that for some reason. It is not a big surprise that he is now described as a long-time “ally” of Donald Trump, though he does not seem to have any official position with Trump’s campaign. In an interview last week, Mr. Stone threatened that there would be “days of rage” at the Republican convention if the delegates tried to “steal” the nomination from Trump. He stated that “ We [whoever “we” is] will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal.” Doing so would permit Trump’s supporters to single out those delegates for perhaps extended “discussion.” You can read a summary of some of his remarks here.

      I could go on about this, but would only get more upset. I will simply refer to the Supreme Court’s landmark 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which said that even hateful and racist speech is protected by the First Amendment unless “it is advocacy directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” If the Trump cultists cause any harm to any of the delegates at the convention, I hope that both Roger Stone and Donald Trump will be held accountable.

      • Well said, Louis.

        DT’s inciting remarks seem to already have crossed over the First Amendment line and now consist of a pattern of ongoing, undeniably inciteful remarks. Being held legally accountable at this point is likely mitigated by the qualification of “imminent” lawless action.

        Naturally, DT’s own unmitigated lack of responsibility for what he says allows him to believe that all responsibility for acts of irresponsibility to which he is connected would in his tiny little world view be the responsibility of others, and he would ever be blameless. Head nearing exploding now, I will leave it at that for now.

        As for the background puppet masters embedded like ticks in the body politic for years like Roger Stone, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et al,who endure for decades beyond elections in the shadows and lawless badlands of politics, and torture and rack and stretch ethics, morality and the law unmercifully for their own advantage and gain – well, all I can say is that their works and results prove that they are evil, and I for one often suspect that particular form of evil is rooted in a combination of a pathological nature and social nurture similar to that of sociopaths and psychopaths.

        And now for something completely different.

        Our latest major life change is in addition to the major life change of Murphy, the new puppy, who has now put us through TWO cycles where we were so fed up with puppy life that we actually advertised him to the first person who showed up. Murphy is still with us but much depends on how well we can all adjust to one another. More about that some other time.

        MLC #2 is more fun. At least we hope so. We are selling our home here in the mountains and plan to full-time RV for at least two years, if not the rest of our lives. The “Getting Light” New Years resolution of 2015 has morphed into a full-blown divestiture of practically everything we’ve managed to accumulate since 1986 – the last time we did such a thing. Surprisingly it is more liberating and invigorating than draining to cut loose the accumulation of 30 years, even when it comes to mementos, books, photos, and keepsakes. We’re going to cut our worldly belongings down to the bone, although it does appear now that we will end up with about 5 medium-size boxes worth of things to store – but that estimate is on the fat side. We may hold it to three or less.

        I have some books I thought you might like and haven’t decided yet whether to just unceremoniously mail them to you or walk the high ground and get your input first. Guess we’ll both just have to wait and see what happens that. 😉

        • I am glad to see that your major life changes are more exciting and certainly more pleasant than mine have been. Sympathy is clearly not called for here, so I will extend empathy. I can understand where you are coming from, sort of.

          I am sure you are aware, but you should try to remember, that before we had computers puppies were nature’s way of teaching us humility, patience and obedience. I know you would have enjoyed your own “Travels With Charlie,” and you probably have those stories to tell, anyway. Surely, “Travels With Murphy” will be just as rewarding.

          • “…before we had computers puppies were nature’s way of teaching us humility, patience and obedience.”

            In the vernacular of our rapidly deteriorating language, “True, dat.”

  5. What an interesting thought that The Donald’s nasty temperment could be improved by doing some therapeutic yoga.

    • Almost anything would help him, but some yoga or Feldenkrais or something like that may be the best place to start.

Leave a Reply to Bob G Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *