Natalie Profant Komuro

30+ years immersed in helping homeless people & the people serving them. Love a good laugh.

[Natalie Profant Komuro @Anacapa]

@lizzo Last night my husband dreamt he was driving you around in an 1967 Austin Healey 3000. He’s 78! 😆 he said you were very nice.

[Natalie Profant Komuro @Anacapa]

@aspiringpeasant Gladiolus bloomed at the end of March in Riverside.

[Rich Connor @RichConnor2]

@JonLemire @gtconway3d

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

8:06 AM. The man whose name is on a book I wrote posted: "A whole civilization will die tonight."

I am a ghostwriter. In 1987, I wrote the most famous business book in American history.

Half the advance. Half the royalties. Eighteen months in his office, listening to his phone calls. He would flatter, threaten, hang up, and call the next person the greatest. I wrote it all down. I made it sound like strategy.

Chapter 1 was about thinking big. I wrote that about condominiums.

This morning, at 8:06 AM, the man whose name is on the cover posted seven sentences to a social media platform. The first: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."

That is Chapter 1.

I wrote that about condominiums.

Chapter 3 was about leverage. "The best thing you can do is deal from strength." The example was a zoning board. The technique was implying you had options you didn't have.

He is using Chapter 3 on a strait that carries 20% of the world's oil. The zoning board is a shipping lane. The leverage is a navy.

I invented a phrase for him. "Truthful hyperbole." An innocent form of exaggeration, I wrote. A very effective form of promotion.

I was describing how he inflated square footage.

Thirteen thousand targets struck. Two thousand and fifty-six dead. Twenty-four thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven wounded.

I wrote "truthful hyperbole" about square footage.

Chapter 4 was about timing. When to make the call. When to let them wait. When to close. I was describing a contractor negotiation.

He paused the bombing for Easter. Resumed it Monday. His Defense Secretary compared the rescue of a downed pilot to the resurrection of Christ. Shot down on Good Friday. Hidden in a cave on Saturday. Rescued as the sun rose on Easter Sunday.

I wrote about timing. I was describing when to return a phone call.

At the Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn, while children hunted eggs, he told the cameras: "We are obliterating their country. And I hate to do it, but we are obliterating."

Chapter 2 was about promotion. I wrote that about how to sell a building.

A reporter asked if destroying every bridge in a nation of 88 million constituted war crimes.

Three words: "Not worried about it."

A journalist reported a downed pilot missing behind enemy lines. He threatened to jail the reporter. I looked through the manuscript. There is no chapter on press freedom. There is no chapter on international law. There is no chapter on what happens when the contractor you're threatening is a civilization.

I didn't write those chapters. I was writing about real estate. He didn't notice they were missing. He doesn't read.

Someone asked if God supported the war. "God is good."

There is no chapter on theology either.

Chapter 7 was about knowing when to walk away. I described a stalled deal. The lesson was patience.

He walked away from every alliance his country had built in eighty years. Forty countries formed a coalition to guard the strait because nobody answered the phone.

In my journal, in 1986, I wrote: "All he is is 'stomp, stomp, stomp' — recognition from outside, bigger, more, a whole series of things that go nowhere in particular."

Forty years. Nothing has changed except the size of the things being stomped.

I know he never read the book. Eighteen months together, I never saw one on his desk. Not mine. Not anyone's. The man whose name is on the most famous business book in American history has never read a book.

He didn't need to. It was never a manual. It was a mirror. He looked at the cover — his name, in gold, larger than the title, as he'd requested — and saw everything he needed.

"A whole civilization will die tonight."

Seven sentences. 8:06 AM. A Tuesday.

I called it truthful hyperbole.

He is calling it foreign policy.

I built the mythology. He added a military.

[Senator Mark Kelly @SenMarkKelly]

"A whole civilization will die tonight” are words no President of the United States had ever spoken until this morning. Donald Trump’s behavior is unhinged and making Americans less safe. After a 25-year career in the United States Navy, I have never met or served with anyone who so completely lacks the qualities of good leadership as Donald Trump does.

If the President takes the actions he has threatened to take, countless Iranian civilians will die, it will massively escalate this war, and the United States will be seen as a country without a moral or ethical compass. That will make Americans less safe right now and risk the lives of thousands of service members. The consequences will have a lasting and damaging effect on our nation.

Trump's mistakes have led us to this perilous moment, but the solution is not to escalate even further. This must stop.

[Paula Poundstone @paulapoundstone]

Hey, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA,
I'm gonna be at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Arts— Fri. June 12. https://t.co/EGPefYR19C Get tickets. Come laugh. It's health care.

[Nancy Pelosi @TeamPelosi]

To every trans person: you deserve to be seen, respected, protected, honored and loved just as you are. Your life and joy matter and your presence enriches our communities. Democrats will never stop fighting for your dignity, safety and equality! -NP

#TransDayOfVisibility

[Protect Kamala Harris ✊ @DisavowTrump20]

General Mark Milley: “We don’t take an oath to a king or queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

RETWEET if you stand with General Milley on No Kings Day!

[Natalie Profant Komuro @Anacapa]

@ajlamesa Health care must include dental and vision, too. And when will Americans understand that health care investments are economic drivers?

[Natalie Profant Komuro @Anacapa]

@sberg0 Thanks, Steve.

[Staff Sergeant Johnson @Colonel_Myway]

BREAKING FOX SPORTS NEWS: Capitol Hill stunned as Rep. Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) takes time off from Congress to compete in men’s figure skating.

[Natalie Profant Komuro @Anacapa]

@SharonKyle00 Thanks!

[Natalie Profant Komuro @Anacapa]

@TraceeM @Acyn @atrupar

[Rick Wilson @TheRickWilson]

Just reposting this from last year. It’s shocking how much of this has already come to pass.

[WHO Sudan @whosudan]

On #WorldPolioDay, @WHO reaffirms its commitment to eradicate #polio through surveillance & vaccines to protect every child in #Sudan, including children in hard-to-reach areas like #Darfur.
#UnitedToEndPolio

[Natalie Profant Komuro @Anacapa]

@johncusack We aren’t even starting until 5:30 in Riverside.

[Slower and Older @SlowerAndOlder]

@GovPressOffice 5 south San Clemente. Go around or stay away

[Heidi Hall @Heidi4Congress]

[1/3] Have you seen the fluff press pieces about Kevin Kiley wanting to get back to work in Congress? More optics and pretend outrage, still no spine. Is he pushing back against use of the Insurrection Act to put the military in our cities? NO!

[Cory Booker @CoryBooker]

This is the power of justice, access and inclusion. We all benefit when we all support each other.

op: chronicallyjenni (via IG)