<4. The Scapegoat And The Golden Boy

A narcissist doesn’t have children to show them unconditional love, as any normal father or mother would. The narcissist has children in order to get a new source of narcissistic supply.

Narcissists objectify their children, and do not see them as human beings, but as mere extensions of themselves. Children of a narcissistic parent do not get love, but tyranny disguised as approval or disapproval. In a family where there is a narcissistic father or mother, the children will play roles, which will be assigned by the narcissist: the golden boy and the scapegoat.

The golden boy is the favorite child of the narcissist, who will be a reflection of himself/herself. For the narcissistic parent, the golden boy is perfect, always does everything right, is flawless and does not make mistakes. The narcissist treats, pampers, and defends the golden child, regardless if he or she misbehaves. The golden child learns, starting when he/she is a toddler, to demand special treatment, to blame others for his/her mistakes, to manipulate and lie, knowing that they will not be punished by his/her narcissistic parent as long as he/she obeys and praises him/her.

The scapegoat is the child most hated by the narcissist; the black sheep of the family. The narcissist thinks that the scapegoat does everything wrong; a rude and ungrateful rebel. This kid, contrary to the golden child, is at fault for all the family problems. The narcissistic father or mother will criticize, humiliate, disapprove of, and blame the scapegoat, even when this child has done nothing wrong.

5. Hoovering

The term “hoovering” comes from that well-known brand of vacuum cleaner. It is a manipulation technique that the narcissist employs to win back his/her victim(s), hoovering them back into his/her life through emotional blackmailing.

If you ever get involved with a narcissist, be ready to understand and face this manipulation phase as part of your relationship. Hoovering can happen a few months after the narcissist has left you (or you have split up with them), or sometimes years can pass before they search for you and try to hoover you back.

These are some examples of hoovering (very creative, as you can see):

– You receive a message saying they are worried about you: He/she wants to know how you are, how you feel, if you are depressed, sad, etc. He/she fakes worry for you to see if you fall again and go back to him/her.

– He/she gets in touch as if nothing has happened: “How are you? What have you been doing?” He/she tells you stuff that has happened to him/her as if nothing had been going on between the two of you. He/she calls you or texts you on your birthday, at Christmas, or on other important dates.

– Manipulation with third parties (i.e. children): “I know that you hate me, but tell your nephew that I cannot attend his birthday, but I love him very much.”

– He/she has cancer, is suffering from a stroke, or wants to commit suicide. This is a classic of the narcissist. He/she tests how much you still care for them, to see if you run to help them. It is like a toddler having a tantrum, checking to see if screaming out loud leads to the attention they desire.

– Messages that were supposed to be meant for another person: they send messages to you “by mistake,” as they were “allegedly” meant for someone else (a new partner, for instance) to provoke a response or cause jealousy.

– Twin souls: they contact you to tell you that you are their twin soul, that you are meant for each other, that you will always be the love of his/her life, that you will never find someone like him/her, that what you had was pure love. Romeo looks like a jerk compared to them....>

<6. Gaslighting

This is a pattern of emotional abuse used by the narcissist in which the victim is manipulated in order to make himself/herself doubt his/her own perception, judgement or memory. It is designed to make the victim feel anxious, confused, or even depressed.

The origin of the term comes from a 1940s British movie called “Gaslight” directed by Thorold Dickinson, based on the theatre piece Gas Light written by Patrick Hamilton (known as Angel Street in USA). In the movie, a man manipulates his wife to make her think that she is crazy in order to steal her hidden fortune.

He hides things such as pictures and jewels, while making her think that she is the responsible one, but has just forgotten about it. The term refers to the gaslight that the husband uses in the attic while he searches for the hidden treasure. The woman sees the lights, but the husband insists that she is imagining them.

Some examples of gaslighting by the narcissist are:

– Pretending not to understand what the victim says or refusing to listen.

– Denial of what he/she said, even just minutes before, then later blaming the victim for never listening to him/her.

– Changing the subject saying that he/she doesn´t want to talk about that (even when they were talking about something else entirely).

– Accusing the abused party of having an overactive imagination and of “living in the clouds.”

– Accusing the other party of being jealous, possessive, demanding ,… when trying to turn the conversation around in order to conceal something he/she has done.

– Grinding down the victim telling him/her that his/her opinions are ridiculous and childish.>

Recognise yourself, <ursus banalus>? <tosspot of budapest>? <kingmaggot, groomer extraordinaire>?

<Project 2025 is working on a detailed policy playbook for the first 180 days of a potential Trump administration—the “fourth pillar” of its multi-pronged blueprint for the next conservative president—but unlike its 900-page policy agenda that’s garnered widespread scrutiny, secret footage revealed Thursday suggests the public is unlikely to ever find out what it says.

Project 2025 is a multi-part agenda spearheaded by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation that lays out a policy roadmap for the next conservative president—namely Trump—including wide-ranging policy suggestions proposing an entire overhaul of the executive branch.

In addition to a 900-page policy agenda laying out proposals and staffing efforts, Project 2025 says the “fourth pillar” of its plan is a “playbook” providing more detailed policy plans for a future Trump administration’s first 180 days, which includes “a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency.”

Unlike Project 2025’s initial policy agenda, however, that playbook has not been publicly released yet, and secretly recorded footage released Thursday by the Centre for Climate Reporting—in which undercover journalists posing as potential donors spoke directly with Project 2025 authors—underscores that’s by design.

Russell Vought, an author of Project 2025’s agenda who’s reportedly in charge of the work on the playbook, told the journalists the playbook plans are “very, very closely held” and would not be publicly released, with Project 2025 officials instead just handing the materials over directly to an incoming Trump administration.

Micah Meadowcroft, a Vought aide also working on Project 2025, told the undercover journalists the group was intentionally keeping the playbook a secret, including by ensuring staffers know the plans before Trump enters office so they won’t have to converse over government work emails—which means journalists and the public cannot request information about the playbook through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Heritage Foundation has not yet responded to a request for comment on the footage and whether the playbook will be publicly released.

“There are parts of the plan that we will not share with the left,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts told right-wing broadcaster Sebastian Gorka in October about Project 2025. “Just like a good football team, we wouldn’t want to tip off our playbook to the left.” Roberts also said the aim of the playbook is to have “executive orders, rules ready to go … so that when we get to the end of the first calendar year” of a second Trump presidency, “we know that what we’re doing is reclaiming this country.”

House Democrats sent a letter to Roberts earlier in August asking for more details about the playbook and for it to be publicly disclosed, noting Heritage has “conspicuously declined to publish or disclose any of the prioritized early actions that we believe would obviously be the most important parts of Project 2025.” “With all due respect, if the published part of [Project 2025] is so extreme that it has alarmed millions of Americans, including many conservatives, what additional controversy are you worried about?” the lawmakers wrote regarding Roberts’ unwillingness to release the playbook. “Your secrecy invites, and perhaps concedes, the worst negative inferences.”

How the playbook could influence a future Trump presidency. Trump has publicly disavowed Project 2025 and denied any connection to it, and he would not be under any obligation to follow its policies if elected. Vought said in the footage released Thursday he wasn’t worried about Trump’s attacks on Project 2025, however, saying the ex-president has “blessed” Vought’s work and is “very supportive of what we do.” The right-wing official, who previously served in Trump’s administration and was named as an author of the Republican National Committee’s formal 2024 platform, said he maintains a good relationship with Trump and believes his team would be able to directly hand its transition playbook to the ex-president and his aides should Trump be elected. “If a battle plan is out there that will do what he wants, there are people like me that have his trust that will be able to get it to him in whatever position we’re at,” Vought told the undercover reporters....>

<....Project 2025’s original policy agenda proposes sweeping changes to the executive branch that would broadly align it with conservative ideologies and give the president more power. It would eliminate some agencies entirely, like the Departments of Education and Homeland Security, and would broadly replace career civil servants with political appointees. The agenda proposes getting rid of climate change and LGBTQ rights initiatives, ending student loan forgiveness, withdrawing federal approval for abortion drug mifepristone and imposing a baseline tax rate, among other measures. While the details of the playbook are still under wraps, Vought told the undercover journalists the group authored guidance to lawyers on Trump’s authority to use law enforcement against protesters, saying it’s “important for [Trump] to remember and for his lawyers to affirm” that the president “has the ability to, both along the border and elsewhere, to maintain law and order with the military.” Vought also said that while Trump has publicly said he would leave abortion up to the states, he’s “never seen [Trump] stand in the way of a pro-life initiative that actually is real,” and suggested the ex-president would still give power to people in his administration to take steps like defunding Planned Parenthood.

In addition to its policy work, Project 2025 is also working on staffing a possible second Trump administration, including through a LinkedIn-style database for federal employee hopefuls and training programs for potential government staffers. ProPublica published many of those training videos, which are not otherwise publicly available, in which GOP figures urge future workers to be “on board with helping implement a dramatic course correction,” “eradicate” references to climate change in government materials, and avoid creating paper trails of their work.

Project 2025 is part of a decades-long effort by the Heritage Foundation to advise incoming conservative presidents, with the organization saying they’ve provided policy agendas since Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The Heritage Foundation first released its initial policy proposals through Project 2025 in 2023, but the agenda only garnered widespread attention in recent months, as the Biden and Harris campaigns have pointed to the agenda to persuade voters not to elect Trump and as Trump has spoken out against the project. Trump claimed in a July Truth Social post that he has “nothing to do” with Project 2025 and thinks some of its ideas are “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” and Trump campaign advisor Chris LaCivita has denounced the project as a “pain in the ass” to the ex-president’s campaign. Project 2025 head Paul Dans stepped down from his position in August amid the criticism, and Roberts also moved back the publication of his forthcoming book proposing a “second American Revolution” until after the election, which has a foreword by Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio. The Centre for Climate Reporting’s footage of Vought and Meadowcroft is the latest in a stream of reports that have tied Trump to Project 2025 despite his attempts to distance himself from it, including noting hundreds of people from his former administration are involved with Project 2025 and a Washington Post interview with Roberts from April in which the Heritage chief said he had “personally” briefed Trump on the project.>

<Donald Trump has enlisted the help of former Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as he fine-tunes for his first debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Gabbard, 43, took part in a recent strategy session with the former president, 78, at his Mar-Lago estate ahead of his September debate against the 59-year-old Democratic nominee, according to the New York Times.

Gabbard, who at one point was on Trump’s lengthy running mate shortlist, has experience debating Harris dating back to their time as Democratic presidential primary candidates in 2019, and she unleashed a blistering attack on the then-California senator’s record as top prosecutor in the Golden State in one of their showdowns.

Gabbard, a former Democrat, has experience debating Harris during the 2020 presidential primary race.

The Trump campaign confirmed that the former Democratic congresswoman was helping the former president, who is famously not a fan of traditional debate prep, get in shape for his face-off with Harris.

“[Trump has] proven to be one of the best debaters in political history as evidenced by his knockout blow to Joe Biden,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Times.

“He does not need traditional debate prep but will continue to meet with respected policy advisers and effective communicators like Tulsi Gabbard, who successfully dominated Kamala Harris on the debate stage in 2020,” she added.

At a July 2019 primary debate, Gabbard pilloried Harris’ record as California’s attorney general.

“There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” Gabbard said in the viral moment.

“She blocked evidence, she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so.”

At a subsequent debate, Harris charged that Gabbard’s foreign policy views and criticisms of the Democratic Party establishment made her unfit to seek the party’s nomination for president.

“Our Democratic Party, unfortunately, is not the party that is of, by and for the people,” Gabbard shot back, arguing that the party “continues to be influenced by the foreign policy establishment represented by Hillary Clinton and others.”

The zinger was met with approval from the Trump campaign, which retweeted a clip of the exchange.

Harris dropped out of the presidential primary race shortly after that November 2019 debate while Gabbard suspended her campaign in March 2020.

Trump and Harris will square off for the first time in Philadelphia on Sep. 10 on ABC.>

<One of the reasons I write this letter to you each day is to arm you with the facts and analyses you need to respond to the garbage coming out of the Trump campaign and Trump’s Republican Party.

Today I want to talk to you about Social Security.

The trustees of Social Security — of which yours truly was once a member — say the program will be able to pay full benefits only until 2033. After that, Social Security will be able to dole out only roughly 77 percent of benefits due.

Trump has pledged to protect Social Security but hasn’t offered a plan for how to do that.

Instead, he is promising to repeal taxes on Social Security benefits.

This will not save Social Security. In fact, quite the opposite. Without the revenue from Social Security taxes, the Social Security trust fund will run out of money even sooner.

This has been the Republican goal for years: Social Security is one of the most popular and successful government programs ever created, not only helping retirees but also keeping 26 million people out of poverty.

Getting rid of Social Security will, in the minds of Republican strategists, open the way to getting rid of much else Americans depend on.

Why is Social Security running out of money? Not because so many boomers are retiring.

The Social Security trustees anticipated the boom in boomer retirements. This is why Social Security was amended back in 1983, to gradually increase the age for collecting full retirement benefits from 65 to 67. That change is helping finance the boomers’ retirement.

The real reason Social Security is running out of money is something the trustees never anticipated: how much total income is going to the top.

A big part of the American working population today is earning less than the Social Security trustees anticipated years ago — reducing revenue flowing into the program.

Had the pay of American workers kept up with the trend decades ago — as well as their growing productivity — their Social Security payments would have kept the program flush.

But a much larger chunk of the nation’s total income is now going to the top compared to decades ago.

Yet income subject to the Social Security payroll tax is capped. No dollar of earnings above the cap is taxed. The cap in 2024 is $168,600.

So, as the rich have become far richer, more and more of the nation’s total income has escaped the Social Security payroll tax.

A CEO earning $20 million a year pays Social Security taxes on roughly 1 percent of their income, while a worker earning under the cap pays Social Security taxes on 100 percent of their income.

They both end up paying the same amount of money into the program. This isn’t fair.

The rise in the amount of income above the cap due to inequality has cost the Social Security Trust Fund reserve an estimated $1.4 trillion since 1983.

The solution is obvious: Scrap the cap and make the rich pay more in Social Security taxes.

One plan introduced by Democrats in Congress would eliminate the cap on earnings over $250,000 and also subject investment income to Social Security taxes.

It’s estimated that this would extend the solvency of Social Security for the next 75 years without raising taxes on 93 percent of American households.

Bottom line: Trump’s plan will destroy Social Security.

The Democrats’ plan will save it —and do so fairly.

If we want to ensure Social Security’s long-term future, and that working people can retire with dignity, we must make the wealthy pay their fair share.>

<[Event "3rd Bradley Open"] [Site "Windsor Locks Conn"]
[Date "1998.08.01"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Winer, Steven"]
[Black "Formanek, Edward"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "D19"]
[WhiteElo "2325"]
[BlackElo "2389"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.d4 exd4 5.e5 d5 6.Bb5 Ne4 7.Nxd4 Bc5 8.O-O Bd7 9.Bxc6 bxc6 10.Be3 Qe7 11.f3 Nd6 12.Bf2 Nf5 13.c3 O-O 14.b4 Bb6 15.Re1 a5 16.bxa5 Bxa5 17.Qd3 Nxd4 18.Bxd4 c5 19.Bf2 d4 20.Rc1 Qg5 21.Nd2 Bf5 22.Ne4 Bxe4 23.fxe4 Bxc3 24.Rxc3 dxc3 25.Qxc3 Rfe8 26.Bg3 Qe7 27.a4 Qd7 28.Qxc5 Rxa4 29.Rxa4 Qd1+ 30.Kf2 Qxa4 31.Qxc7 Qxe4 32.h4 Qd4+ 33.Kf3 f5 34.Bf4 Qe4+ 35.Kg3 Ra8 36.Qc1 h6 37.Qd2 Ra3+ 38.Kh2 Ra4 39.Kg3 Rd4 40.Qc1 Kh7 41.Qf1 g5 42.hxg5 hxg5 43.Bc1 Qxe5+ 44.Kf2 Kg6 45.Qa6+ Kh5 46.Qa7 Kg6 47.Qa8 Qe6 48.Be3 Rc4 49.Qa7 f4 50.Bd2 Rc2 51.Qd4 Qe3+ 52.Qxe3 fxe3+ 53.Kxe3 Kf5 54.g3 Rxd2 0-1>

Nope, <ursus banalus>: the 'dishonest sun' will continue to control content here, not you.

<The first thing to know about Kamala Harris’s campaign for California attorney general is that she was not necessarily favored to win.

It was 2010 — the pinnacle of the Tea Party’s power — and Ms. Harris was running statewide for the first time and struggling to shed the same San Francisco liberal label that Donald J. Trump is yet again wielding as an epithet.

Ms. Harris, then 45, was already seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party. “The female Barack Obama,” Gwen Ifill had memorably tagged her the year before. But plenty of rising stars are snuffed out early, and Ms. Harris was facing a formidable Republican foe that year in Steve Cooley, the popular and moderate district attorney of Los Angeles County.

Mr. Cooley’s reputation as an evenhanded, corruption-busting prosecutor had put him tied or narrowly ahead of Ms. Harris entering October — largely on the strength of his uncommon popularity for a Republican in Los Angeles. He had won election three times in what is the state’s most populous Democratic stronghold.

Ms. Harris was running out of both time and money when she arrived at their only debate on the first Tuesday of October. Then, about 45 minutes into the hourlong clash, Mr. Cooley gave an answer that was frank, fateful and foolish.

It was a turning point in the campaign. Ms. Harris would escape a month later with one of the narrowest statewide victories in modern California history — by less than 0.85 percent of the vote. Yet even on election night, Ms. Harris’s chances had appeared so bleak that Mr. Cooley declared victory. The race remained unsettled for three weeks.

“Everyone writes history like it’s all inevitable,” said Ms. Harris’s chief strategist in the 2010 race, Averell “Ace” Smith. Her first statewide win, he said, was anything but.

“That was as close to a near-death experience for a political career as you can get,” said Chris Jankowski, a Republican strategist who then led a national G.O.P. group that spent $1 million in a failed bid to end Ms. Harris’s career before it could really get started. “If she had lost that race, she would not be the nominee for president — no chance.”

Now, as Ms. Harris arrives this week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, seeking to become the first woman to serve as president in U.S. history, that long-forgotten moment at a debate nearly 14 years ago stands out as one of the least known yet most consequential pivot points in the arc of her political career.

This is the story of those 47 seconds — and what followed.

To say the lone face-off of the 2010 attorney general’s race drew little fanfare would be an understatement.

It was held at noon far from the state’s biggest media markets and inside a practice courtroom at the law school of the University of California, Davis. To the best of anyone’s recollection, it did not even air live on television. The moderator, a local television political reporter named Kevin Riggs, had sat down with three other journalists who served as panelists just that morning at a coffee shop to divide up topics.

Dan Morain, who worked for The Sacramento Bee’s editorial page, asked who would bring up double-dipping — that is, taking both a public salary and a public pension. It had been an issue in the Republican primary, first raised by John Eastman, Mr. Cooley’s primary opponent. Mr. Eastman is better known now for his efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office after the 2020 election, which resulted in an indictment and disbarment.

“I’m going to ask that,” replied Jack Leonard, a Los Angeles Times reporter who covered Mr. Cooley.

Public pensions were a white-hot topic at the time, and Mr. Cooley was making waves for prosecuting public corruption in the city of Bell, where local officials were pulling in outlandish salaries in an impoverished municipality.

Inside the practice courtroom, Mr. Leonard outlined that the $150,000 salary of the California attorney general was half of the $292,300 salary that Mr. Cooley was earning as the local district attorney. If he double-dipped by taking a taxpayer-paid pension as a former district attorney and a taxpayer-paid salary as the state attorney general, Mr. Cooley would be in line to make more than $400,000.

“Do you plan to double-dip by taking both a pension and your salary as attorney general?” Mr. Leonard asked.

“Yes, I do,” Mr. Cooley said without hesitation.

He glanced at Ms. Harris. She said nothing.

“I earned it.”

But Mr. Cooley was not yet done. “I definitely earned whatever pension rights I have, and I will certainly rely upon that to supplement the very low, incredibly low salary that’s paid to the attorney general,” he added.>