Posts by: Jack Altschuler

Potpourri v20.0


Read to the end for some fun.

Bang-Bang

Have a look at this Everytown graphic:

Is that something we should be proud of? Perhaps we should be chanting, “We’re number one!” Because with over 20,000 dead and 320 mass shootings already this year, it occurs to me that I may have missed the change in our national values. Maybe murders, brutality and bullying are what we value most now.

A friend recently emailed saying that he lives in a pretty safe, low crime community. I replied that is exactly what the people of Highland Park would have said on July 3rd of last year. The Parkland kids would have said the same thing on February 13, 2018 and the Sandy Hook parents would have used those very words on December 12, 2012. The shoppers at Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo felt just like that on May 13, 2022, same as the shoppers and employees at the Allen Premium Outlets Mall in Texas on May 5 of this year. Those dates were the day before each massacre. Maybe your safe neighborhood doesn’t protect you quite like you think it does.

We’ve known for many years that lobbying congress won’t deliver the gun safety we want. That’s for two reasons. The first is that legislators in the pocket of the gun industry would have to act against their own immediate best interests to deliver what you want, and they just won’t do that.

The second reason you’re not getting what you want is because most of the legislation that affects you is state driven and most of us don’t pay attention to that locus of power until we’re being beaten up – or shot up – by it.

The net of that is that if you are to get the gun safety legislation you want (or legislation for anything else you want), we’ll have to first vote replacement legislators into office at both the state and federal levels, people who believe in what you believe in.

You and I have less than 500 days to make that happen.

In a fundraiser email last week .  .  .

.  .  .  Adam Schiff told of the MAGA Republican House censure of him for the dastardly deed of doing his job. He’s too stand-up a guy to use the word “dastardly,” but I’m not above such a thing. Neither was the House Democratic caucus, which chanted “SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!” at the MAGA flame throwers and their spineless Speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Of course, the shame accusation aimed at those people fell on their deaf ears, because they are incapable of recognizing their shame, so Schiff wrote,

President Franklin Roosevelt once said, “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.” I have been called a liar by the architects of the Big Lie, a fraud by fraudsters from Donald Trump to George Santos, and an enemy of the state by those who cheered on the insurrection on our Capitol.

I wear their enmity, their falsehoods, and their censure like a badge of honor. [emphasis Schiff’s]

Read Schiff’s paragraph again to fully appreciate this dreadful display of MAGA hypocrisy.

It’s a damned shame that so many Americans long ago sold out and lost their ability to feel their shame. We need a lot more stand-up people and we’re most unlikely to find them in that shame incapable MAGA crowd.

For a clear demonstration of what patriotism looks and sounds like, give a listen to what Schiff had to say just before the shameful, MAGA party-line censure vote, which included both extremists and the cowards afraid to stand up for what they know is right. Also note that 13 representatives failed to register a vote on this faithless resolution.

The Divine Right of Justices

Emperor Samuel Hirohito’s – I mean Alito’s – hand has been caught in the fancy, enormously expensive vacation cookie jar. It appears that he, like Clarence Thomas, believes that his lofty judicial position puts him above financial reporting requirements. Since Alito has already been attacking the Constitution by forcing his religious views on everyone, perhaps his next move will be to attack Pearl Harbor.

Havin’ a Little Fun

Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, founders of the Sisters of Perpetual Desperation for Attention, have announced that they have joined with the members of the Brotherhood of Low Self-Esteem Over-Compensation and its charter members Jim Jordan, Louis Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Tommy Tuberville, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. The new, combined organization is called The Flaming Order Of Nya-Nya.*

The need for the coupling of these MAGA-stacized orders became clear after they had individually demanded that President Biden resign and turn over the country to the disgraced, twice impeached and multiply indicted Donald Trump.

Biden’s press secretary issued this statement:

“The President gave these demands his partial attention for the entire duration of his snapping closed the case for his aviators and then said, ‘Nah. I don’t think so.'”

That was the trigger moment to merge the groups.

In their first public announcement they declared that the new order will exert great nya-nya pressure on Speaker McCarthy such that they will fully emasculate him not later than the end of this year. They promised to leave nothing but his gavel. “No skeletal structure is expected to remain,” they predicted, “especially back bones.”

In a press conference held on Juneteenth in hopes of distracting White people from the important meaning of that date, they announced that The Flaming Order of Nya-Nya will raise the necessary funds for their work by knitting sweaters for assault rifles and selling them at school board meetings in red states. They are also expecting dark money contributions from Billionaires Against Democracy (BAD), as well as from vacation buddies of Supreme Court Justices.

The stated mission of this new order requires absolute obedience to:

  1. The sacred vow to never allow reality to distract them
  2. The Nya-Nya imperative to always loudly shout something or other

To commemorate the founding of this new order, leaders met in a secret ceremony held behind a Port-a-Potty in a construction zone at the edge of the Ellipse. There, standing in a circle with hands joined in their secret handshake of middle fingers hooked together, they vowed eternal fidelity in their fight to eliminate higher brain functioning everywhere. Most movingly, they knelt, bowed their heads and pledged a holy paean to their hallowed motto:

Hoc Locus De Stultus Est**
.
Late Addition
Focus For Democracy: Zoom Briefing – 2022 Impact Event
Focus for Democracy is a pro-bono donor advisory that approaches political investment in an effective, dynamic, data-driven way.  Learn about the effectiveness of its 2022 Midterm programs and hear the network leaders’ thoughts on the road ahead.
.
This is NOT a fundraiser.
 
Thursday, June 29th
5:00pm PT/8:00pm ET
Register here: https://tinyurl.com/F4DJune29

_____________________________________

* These orders do not exist. They and the reported statements and actions of the individuals named in this section are solely a product of the author’s imagination.

But, hey, given the reality of MAGA, this sounds plausible.

** Literally, “This is the place of stupid.”

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

A Correction and Winning Elections


Correction

In my June 7 post I made a claim about Antifa that promoted discussion. I wrote,

There is no “woke.”
.

That’s just a label used inflame the base, much like they use the label “Antifa.” The panderers like to call out Antifa as though it is an invading army, a threat to our country, rather than an informal collection of Americans who refuse authoritarianism and fascism. Those who identify as Antifa don’t riot, they don’t intimidate other Americans, they don’t make death threats and they do think democracy is a good thing. Imagine that!

Well informed, eagle eye reader Sheila Markin replied privately,

Another good blog post. I agree with you.  But I do have some information that runs counter to the idea that Antifa is not like the far right.

The information comes from a counseling client I worked with about a year ago. He was a blogger on the left and had become an influencer. But someone revealed that he was an attorney and that he worked in BigLaw. After that he was assaulted verbally and threatened by “antifa.” The emotional toll was very heavy. He stopped blogging and invested more in his legal career but he was emotionally damaged by this.

The mere fact that he worked for BigLaw caused the backlash against him. He made good money which was considered a sin. His ideas were no longer considered valid. In my opinion extremism on the right and the left is bad news. Closed minded people are bad news. The right is worse but both the right and left are guilty of extremism and it is extremism that is so corrosive.

I’m not an expert on left wing social media, so I checked it out with Jay Becker to get her take on this. She introduced me to Antifa years ago. Here’s what she wrote:

The basic story has a ring of plausibility, not so much as an attack by “antifa” but because the tactics described are themselves so widespread among activists generally who identify as “woke:” rejecting or accepting a person because of their identity, not their political analysis (“standpoint epistemology”), rejecting ideas based on their source, not their content, etc. In this case, the person was canceled because he was a lawyer and worked for BigLaw, regardless of what he was advocating in his political writings, assuming that those threatening him were not making connections between his professional life and his advocacy, according to your friend’s report.
.
Verbal assaults have become common on social media against those who challenge whatever the latest “woke” tenets are, and any deviation can get you canceled by a virtual mob. That’s scary and intimidating, which stymies any real discussion, let alone debate. I have experienced this firsthand in trying to build resistance to abortion bans with Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights. Many people find these methods disturbing and grumble about them among themselves. The Revcoms (revolutionary communists) are taking this destructive phenomenon on directly. Here’s their 7 point indictment of “woke” as it has devolved, and here’s a playlist of their videos. I suggest starting with the speech Sunsara Taylor gave recently at UCLA, second on the playlist. (Watch at least the first 15 minutes, and you’ll see the “woke” bullies in action.)
.
So, I’m veering off from “antifa” but staying on topic because what your friend describes is so prevalent in how a generation of young people who do care about racism, fascism, misogyny, etc. is being trained to think and approach the world, which [is] doing a lot of harm. I hope it sheds some light, thanks for asking.
.
It seems that the unspoken invitation of social media to be a jerk is irresistible, regardless of which end of the political spectrum is its source.
.

Here’s a message to these left and right abusers. It comes from their moms:

Don’t be a jerk!

Thanks ever so much to Sheila and Jay for their insights and for permission to post their comments – big help.

I stand corrected.

What’s Your Message, Governor?

New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu delivered Republican clarity for all to see in his Washington Post opinion piece on June 5. He opened with, “Our [Republican] party is on a collision course toward electoral irrelevance without significant corrective action.” He declared, ” . . . candidates should not get into this race to further a vanity campaign, to sell books or to audition to serve as Donald Trump’s vice president.” So far, so good.

Sununu claims his vast worth as a leader and influencer and focuses direction for Republicans, saying, “We need to expand beyond the culture wars that alienate independents, young voters and suburban moms.” The problem with that is not about expanding beyond culture wars. That would be okay, it seems, although I don’t know what expanding means, since it doesn’t seem to mean stopping the lunacy,

The problem is that Sununu focuses on gaining votes. Not on what is right, moral, ethical, what We The People want or what’s best for the country. Just the pragmatics to gain votes and win elections.

Recall the so-called “Autopsy” that Republicans did after being pummeled in the 2012 election. That, too, was all about gaining more votes, not about changing Republicans’ evil ways. Indeed, they completely ignored that they were out of step with the vast majority of Americans. They ignored their own advice following that autopsy and have only become more entrenched in culture wars, demonizing and appealing to drooling, fang-toothed extremists.

There probably isn’t any reason to believe that Republican candidates will follow Sununu’s self-serving advice, nor will they get themselves aligned with the things the vast majority of Americans want. They will just continue to manipulate the system in order to retain their minority control, doing things like voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering.

Meanwhile, Sununu awaits the clamor for him to get into the race.

And Finally, FYI, The Key Provision of the Presidential Records Act (44 U.S.C. Chapter 22)

§ 2202. Ownership of Presidential records

The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records;

Specifically, the PRA:

•  Establishes that Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.

And that is why Donald J. Trump is going to prison.

Plus for election interference in Georgia.

Plus for  multiple counts of fraud in New York.

Plus for incitement of insurrection in DC.

Several years ago I predicted that once out of office, Trump will spend the rest of his days as a defendant in court and in prison. Easy forecasting.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Complacency


Caution: Offensive and Crude Language

There is an old series of hateful tropes passed along as jokes designed to embolden and inflame the already hateful and to attract new, impressionable recruits. They attack people they see as unworthy and make them an object of scorn. The oldest hatred – thousands of years of it – continues to target Jews.

Here’s an example of hate humor that illustrates this. But prepare yourself, because this is truly awful stuff.

Q. What do you call 6 million dead Jews?

A. A good start.

Yes, hatred is as crude and cruel and savage as that. And for those feeling oppressed, marginalized and disrespected, that kind of hate humor is quite appealing. It gives the aggrieved someone to blame – a boogeyman – for their lot in life. It leads to brainlessly shouting “Seig Heil!” and moronically chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” with a bunch of other juiced up skinheads in Charlottesville.

Heather Heyer – pic from her Facebook account

That led to a malicious bigot ramming his car into a protest rally, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 28 others and it led to 11 dead at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. There are material consequences to hate jokes and hate tropes.

The would-be fascists use violence to get their way. They are increasingly bold and some of them get elected to positions of power. That happens for just two reasons:

  1. Angry people are motivated and they turn out to vote for hateful, angry candidates.
  2. Complacent people, those just going about their lives and not paying attention, don’t vote.

That gives the haters the reins of power. And that leads to authoritarians tearing down our democracy, our safety and our way of life. The loss of safety for those hated by the bullies is obvious, but history is full of examples that show that eventually there is loss of safety and freedom for everyone. And all of this leads to radicalized terrorists killing innocent people.

Here’s Heather Heyer’s final Facebook post:

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

Are you outraged?

Hunter S. Thompson observed during the enormously illegal Nixon years that we were, “America acting on its worst impulses.” The same is true for all of the so-called populist tantrums, from the Civil War, to George Wallace standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama to stop Blacks from entering, to the traitorous January 6 insurrection, to today’s Republican reality deniers and voter suppressors.

Were Thompson still alive and chronicling our stumbles (some of them forward), he surely would have used his same words for America today. He would have blistering criticism of the reality denial that is rampant in America and the constant claims of victimhood – “America acting on its worst impulses.”

Joan Didion said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” The haters have their stories that they believe justify their hatred. The fascist lovers have their stories that they believe justify killing democracy and establishing despotic rule. The victimhood lovers always have their fantasies.

And we who believe that America should live up to its promise have our story, too.
.

Our collective safety hinges on the establishment of that story as our true story. The elements required for that include a shared reality, the rule of law and what Thomas Jefferson called “an enlightened citizenry.” You already know what lack of an enlightened citizenry does to our country.

Most of us believe in science and learning, knowledge and wisdom, cause and effect. More to the point, too many reject all of that.

Millions more of us are needed for the science, learning, knowledge and wisdom story. Specifically needed are the 33% of eligible voters who didn’t vote in 2020 and the 47.8% who didn’t show up in 2022.

Without them we are doomed to be repeatedly attacked by the haters and our democracy will always balance precariously on the edge of a cliff – until that balance is lost. Our country, our story, needs all of us right now.

There’s good news and there’s bad news about this.

The good news is that even in the face of this decades-long assault on reality and our democracy by authoritarian wannabes, our country will continue to stand.

The bad news is that if we don’t do something to stop these assaults, this may not be a country you want to live in. The hate jokes and the hate tropes will metastasize and your freedom will be gone.

It seems quite clear – and history teaches us – that under the yoke of despotism We The People would be powerless and cruelly subjugated. Maybe we should ensure that such a thing never happens in America.

Again, Heather Heyer said,

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

So again, are you outraged?

A Bit of Sunshine

Take a look at the updated Gallup tracking poll of how Americans see themselves on social issues. Could it be that Independents and Democrats combined have the muscle to stop the crazies and their war on Social Security, Medicare and trying to jam Christian nationalism and authoritarianism down the throats of all Americans? Do the math for 2023. Add the percents of moderates and liberals. There are more of us than there are haters and despotism lovers.

Click me

Required Reading For Every American

Every day we are assaulted by the Republican snake venom of outlandish, idiotic lies, distortions and pretend patriotism, like,

Biden crime family

Weaponized DOJ

Senate candidate Todd Akin’s claim, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Anything said by – you know: the usual suspects.

Actual, factual truth is the antidote to Republican snake venom. That’s why you’re going to read Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters From An American” of June 15.

Then you’re going to share it because you are paying attention and you are outraged and you aren’t complacent. To make that easy to do, just forward this post.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

I’m Sorry


I’m sorry that Republican legislators are so angry and that they hate the Constitution, our laws and America itself so terribly that they are calling for angry, radical people to make violence on our citizens and on our nation.

I’m sorry that angry people are threatening to kill Merrick Garland’s wife and children and Jack Smith and his wife.

I’m sorry that Republicans are stuck in a spin cycle of whataboutism, and can’t get out. They can no longer make a declarative statement about just one issue, like the indictment. They instead have to justify the unjustifiable with phantom comparisons to Democrats, as though some other wrongdoing justifies this one.

I’m sorry that no matter what happens, Republicans are poor victims of Democrats, elites, gays, educators, hordes of would-be immigrants who are stealing our jobs and all the rest of the mean-spirited idiocy. So many poor baby Republican victims.

I’m sorry that Hillary had all those emails on her private server and that when it was searched for classified information by the Trump Bogeyman Super Snoopers they couldn’t find any. They only found documents which were classified after they were removed. They determined that Hillary had broken no law, but Trump and his angry hordes still chanted to lock her up. They still do.

I’m sorry that Trump made his DOJ continue an investigation into the Clinton Foundation for the duration of most of his administration, even though his investigators neither believed there was any there there, nor did they ever find any. (This sounds like weaponization – let’s have Jim Jordan check it out.) Nevertheless, Trump trumpeted lies about the Foundation. He still does, as do his sycophants.

I’m sorry that Trump and every Republican who has blurted an opinion about the indictment of Trump blames Biden for “weaponizing” the DOJ against poor, suffering Trump, this is in spite of the fact – yes, fact – that only Trump used the DOJ in that way – ref: one paragraph up. Their false blurting is in spite of the fact that Biden has strictly kept hands off what the DOJ does. It is in spite of the fact that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is independent even of Merrick Garland’s purview, as well as of Biden’s. And it is in spite of the fact that Trump has not been indicted by Biden or the DOJ. He’s been indicted by a grand jury of south Florida citizens.

I’m sorry that Joseph Goebbels was right about how The Big Lie works, that all that is required to get people to believe lies and propaganda and to do horrible things is to bellow it out, over and over until the weak of mind believe. In the present case, that has led 88% of Republican primary voters (the hair-on-fire, pitchforks and torches crowd) to believe that the indictment of Trump was politically motivated. They believe the lies to be truth.

I’m sorry that whatever lawyers Trump can manage to hang onto will make pretrial motions with baseless, bogus accusations, like “prosecutorial misconduct,” solely for the purpose of bogging down the trial. Then it will get postponed by Trump suck up judge Aileen Cannon because it will then conflict with the 2024 election. You fill in the blanks illustrating what will happen next.

I’m sorry this guy stands with Trump.

Most of All, I’m Sorry

that so many Americans hate America and want to tear it down, and that there aren’t yet armies of Americans in the streets demonstrating for democracy, people who love America and want to protect and defend it and the Constitution.

But there could be. There’s still time.

Denée Benton

Oh, And I’m Glad .  .  .

.  .  .  that at the 2023 Tony Awards on. Sunday actor Denée Benton announced the Excellence in Theatre Education Award from Carnegie Mellon University, saying,

“While I am certain that the current grand wizard, I’m sorry, excuse me, governor of my home state [of Florida] will be changing the name of this following town immediately .  .  .  Plantation, Florida.” [emphasis mine]

Brilliant.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Indictment of the Century – Until the Next One


Don’t you preferJack Smith’s perpetual “Don’t mess with me” face than that of the Orangeman’s?

We are being cautioned that the indictment of a former president and presidential candidate is a dark and serious moment in American history. I agree with the serious part, but this is a moment of light, not dark. It is a time of  cleansing sunshine and I just can’t stop smiling. This is a joyous seriousness.

We learned on Friday, June 9 that Trump has been indicted on 37 counts of criminal behavior. You can view the indicting document here – there’s a print button on the top right of that page. This is an easy read and you need to read it.

There isn’t anyone who doubts Trump’s guilt, not even the far right mouth breathers who declared his innocence even before the indictments were unsealed. They’re just slaves to the cult master’s wails of victimhood.

From Adam Kinzinger’s Country First post of June 10 regarding Republican leaders:

If you listen closely, most of these leaders and personalities aren’t claiming he’s innocent; they’re saying the Democrats have done bad things, too. “And, you know, that should cancel everything out, right?” [emphasis original]

But if we follow the what-about-ist logic to its natural conclusion, we find ourselves in a hellscape where any unethical or immoral behavior can be excused by someone else’s bad behavior . . . and running for office cocoons you from criminal prosecution because accountability would be “election interference” or “weaponizing justice.”

Craziness.

There is one thing, though, about his guilt.

Trump has been bragging and clucking in his social media posts, in TV appearances, at his rallies and at the CNN so-called town hall that he had the right to have had those documents by virtue of the Presidential Records Act. He said that to declassify the classified documents all he had to do was to think “declassify” and click his heels 3 times. Okay, I made up the heels part. And we know that he’s been a total idiot for confessing his wrongdoing repeatedly, knowing that indictments were coming ever-nearer.

But maybe he’s not a total idiot. Maybe he’s been gaming the system all along with his claims of his honesty and his rights.

I’m wondering if he can beat the rap or minimize the penalties by claiming he thought that what he was doing was legal. “There was no illegal intent,” his attorneys will claim. “There is no mens rea*. He’s innocent of conspiring to thwart the law.”

We all know that ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it, but sometimes ignorance can have a large impact on the outcome of a criminal case. Can he can get away with his malfeasance by claiming cluelessness? Can he create a hung jury by convincing just one juror that he’s made a simple, honest mistake? This is most worrisome.

Meanwhile, we’ve received news about Trump suck-up judge Aileen Cannon. She was appointed by Trump and proceeded to disgrace herself with idiotic rulings during the case focused on the seizing of documents from Trump’s Mar-A-Lago hidey hole. Two of her rulings were so egregiously terrible that she was reversed by the very conservative 11th District Appellate Court and she was admonished in scathing terms. Be sure to keep an eye out for Cannon’s thumb on the scale of justice as this stolen documents case proceeds – or stalls with bogus delays, dragging it into the 2024 election. This could get ugly.

It has already become ugly in MAGA-land. Immediately upon release of the indictment Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Clay Higgins (R-LA) tweeted incitements to extremists. They did that long before they could have read the indictment, so it’s safe to assume they were spring loaded to call for violence at the slightest provocation. Apparently, they see themselves as the vanguard for the itchy, twitchy, trigger finger crowd.

These congressmen, dishonorable colleagues of actually honorable representatives, are just the first to attempt to incite violence. I fear there will be more like them who will be far more direct in their calls to violence. We are in the crosshairs of violent, angry, self-righteous people who are looking for an excuse to harm innocents.

Public memory is short. We so quickly forget the suffering caused by terrible events, like what actually happens in war. The soldiers come home scarred and silent, wanting most to forget. We erect monuments and mumble brave words and wave flags as though all that happened was glorious.

But there really was an American Civil War and we killed over 600,000 of our citizens, wounding at least 8 times more. Those soldiers, too, wanted to forget the carnage and the suffering.

It seems that forgetting is exactly what We The People have done, because now our perpetually angry who have never been to war are calling for a new civil war. How quickly we forget.

The lyrics of Where Have All The Flowers Gone are ringing in my ears.

Quotes For This Time of Indictment

“You heavens above, rain down my righteousness; let the clouds shower it down. Let the earth open wide, let salvation spring up, let righteousness flourish with it;” – Isaiah 45:8

“You DOJ in Washington, let the felony charges rain down like rule-of-law infusions for our sickened land. Let the doors of our prisons open wide for the wicked to enter and shut with finality behind them. Let accountability spring up in righteousness and the Earth tremble as a warning to all who would act wrongly.” – Jack 1:1

‘Nuther Thing

Somebody please explain why Trump Tower in New York and Trump’s The Bedminster Club haven’t been searched for stolen government documents. I haven’t found anything to suggest that either place has been tossed by the FBI, even though there is evidence that boxes of stolen government documents were moved from Mar-A-Lago to Bedminster, which leads to speculation that some might have been moved to Trump Tower, too.

Finally

Trump’s bottomless, never-ending malfeasance will provide all the motivation necessary for ongoing indictments. So, watch this space for the next exciting episode of The Indictment of the Century – Until The Next One.

And just for fun:

Mar-a-Lago Raiders

______________________________

* mens rea – the intention or knowledge of wrongdoing that constitutes part of a crime, as opposed to the action or conduct of the accused. – OxfordLanguages See also Wikipedia.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Problem Isn’t Woke


“Florida is where woke goes to die.”

Governor Ron DeSantis, (R-Cruelty) loves to say that in his devoid-of-personality way. It’s obvious that it tickles him to declare stupid things that elicit favor from the base. He seems to revel in encouraging exclusion, intimidation and authoritarian, anti-American behavior. He knows what makes him happy.

I tuned in to a bit of the CNN town hall with Nikki Haley and was immediately smacked in the face by her own pandering to the base and constant focus on applause lines, rather than saying anything that actually means something of value to non-extremists. She’s pretty much like DeSantis.

For example, she criticized Biden’s climate initiative to get us off our fossil fuel diet. Electric vehicles are heavier, she told us, and our bridges can’t handle that, so we’ll have to rebuild a gazillion bridges, a cost that Biden omits from the projected cost of transportation conversion.

Heavier? And if they are, is that a barrier to taking action to save the planet and ourselves? Okay, that sounds stupid, but let’s check, shall we?

Here are three popular 4-door sedans, each with room for 5 passengers:

The 2023 Tesla Model 3 has a curb weight of 3880 lbs.

The 2023 Chevrolet Malibu has a curb weight of 3159 lbs.

The 2023 Toyota Camry has a curb weight of 3340 lbs.

Okay, Nikki, you nailed the key problem. it looks like we have as much as 721 pounds of excess, bridge-crushing woke in the electric car. The mindless audience applause still rings in that auditorium.

Jake Tapper, usually a reliable interviewer who doesn’t let interviewees get away with dodging questions or giving dodgy replies, let Haley get away with her practiced, intelligence-free statements. That went on the entire time I was able to tolerate watching the spectacle.

It was very disappointing, much like the misnamed Trump town hall. That’s where CNN’s Kaitlan Collins was powerless to stem the tide – the tsunami, really – of Trump’s fact-free, self-serving delusions in the form of applause lines. The entire event, complete with no audience members who were not faithful Trumpers, was nothing more than a Trump Rally. No news or informed, intelligent ideas were to be found anywhere in the vicinity.

All of Haley’s, Trump’s and DeSantis’ anti-woke pandering is nothing more than bumper sticker fictions that call extremists to hatred and domination of unacceptable “others.” These presidential candidates are world class inciters with the finest of reality-free applause lines.

There is no “woke.”
.

That’s just a label used inflame the base, much like they use the label “Antifa.” The panderers like to call out Antifa as though it is an invading army, a threat to our country, rather than an informal collection of Americans who refuse authoritarianism and fascism. Those who identify as Antifa don’t riot, they don’t intimidate other Americans, they don’t make death threats and they do think democracy is a good thing. Imagine that!

The problem we in America have is not woke. Our problem is the haters and manipulators who try to make people afraid of their boogeyman du jour. They pander for voters’ support by inciting hatred and violence using their cruel fictions about other Americans. They are the ones who least resemble what we used to call American values and who stand in the way of our recapturing them.

There is no woke that goes to Florida to die. There is just a cadre of liars creating an incentive to hatred and violence and, perhaps, causing others to die. That’s the real threat and they put it into law, like this:

Definition: “Stand Your Ground” law. A mechanism to boil testosterone and create dead bodies. It is much beloved by haters and other insecure, cowardly people and embodies the true essence of anti-woke.

Woke Clarity From Another Source

Retired attorney and thoughtful person Ralph Bernstein leads a weekly political discussion group via Zoom. In his agendum (yes, he uses that term correctly) for yesterday’s session, he offered this discussion teaser:

Repub [sic] legislators, judges who are said to be right-wing judges, and MAGA activists have set out to trample on free speech and individual rights in the name of battling “wokeism.” If they don’t like what teachers say about history, they gag them. If they don’t like certain books, they ban them. If they don’t like a corporation defending LGBTQ rights, they retaliate against it. Their crusade has become an expression of not only white Christian nationalism but of contempt for the Constitution and the First Amendment.

If you’d like to attend and participate in Ralph’s no-charge discussions, drop him a line at [email protected].

Woke Must-Read of the Week

From the John Pavlovitz essay, Woke Will Win, June 5, 2023 (click through and read this excellent post in full):

The leveraging of irrational fear is nothing new.

Throughout history it has been the go-to tactic of the worst of politics and religion.

When you lack substantive ideas, you need an encroaching enemy to move and motivate people.

When you have nothing redemptive to offer, you have to create a violent adversary for them to run from and push back against.

When vulnerable people are placed in your path, you need to somehow turn those people into a threat to be exterminated.

If you can’t or won’t engage in difficult conversations about complex issues, you turn words into monsters:

Illegals.
CRT.
Plandemic.
The jab.
Groomers.
Woke.

Anti-Woke Book Ban Selection of the Week

If sex, adultery, slavery, sex trafficking and murder are forbidden topics, this according to the anti-wokers, then we absolutely must ban the Bible. That is a nasty set of human debauchery tales if ever there was one. These books quite obviously don’t belong in libraries, schools, homes and other places where impressionable children might come upon them.

In fact, I don’t think you should be reading such salacious material either. As Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography, “I know it when I see it.” So do you.

If you are to be a flamer who burns those awful books, you better start gathering them and tossing them into a dumpster right now. Otherwise, Ron DeSantis and those 11 crazies responsible for so much book banning are going to have all the puritanical, witchy fun, as well as the ego rush that comes from bullying.

A Peculiarity

Yesterday was June 6. On that day in 1944 we and our allies made the Normandy invasion, the major push to defeat the Nazis and bring WW II to an end. What is peculiar now is the lack of recognition of the date in the news and elsewhere. D-Day used to be a major event in the public consciousness, but apparently no longer.

It’s just my speculation, but perhaps that is happening because of the rapid loss of those of our Greatest Generation who fought for our democracy, now dying at the rate of about 180 per day. That number used to be many times greater, but, of course, there are so few left.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Canary plus The Good Old Days


This Is a Get Smarter Opportunity

We are sometimes given a gift – a chance to see into the future, if only we will look at what is before us. That’s what we have right now.

You’ve heard of the many democracy, freedom and rights abuses Ron DeSantis and his rubber stamp Republican Florida legislature have inflicted on the citizens of Florida. He has sucked up to as many White supremacist grievances, fears and hatreds as he could in order to get extremists to support his bid to become an authoritarian president.

His assaults represent far worse than oppression of Floridians: DeSantis and his extremists are normalizing fascism.

DeSantis’ actions leave us with an obvious clarity about what he would do to our entire country were he to get his hands on the reins of power. That is why I believe that

Florida is the canary in the fascist infested coal mine.
.

If you’re skeptical about this, read Thom Hartmann’s take. You won’t be skeptical anymore.

You don’t have to be a Floridian to be worried about this, because we see similar things happening elsewhere. That’s why I’m encouraging you to get smart about this, wherever you are.

My friends Jim and Karen Nathan have co-founded Floridians For Democracy, a group dedicated to protecting democracy in Florida and, by extension, where you live. It is to that end that they are inviting you to two informative Zoom sessions:

    • “White Supremacist Activities in Florida: A brave sheriff and a state representative“
    • Jun 7, 2023, 7:00PM EDT. Co-Sponsored by SWFL Voices for Racial Justice
    • and Concerned Citizens of Lower Lee County
    • “Saving Democracy” with Author David Pepper
    •                                                          June 15, 2023, 5:30PM EDT. Co-Sponsored by Floridians for Democracy and SWFL Voices for Racial Justice

Here’s a link to full program descriptions and the Zoom link to each session. Note that these sessions come to you without cost and they are not fundraisers. They are education that is offered because you need to know.

Make no mistake: this is not just about DeSantis attacking minorities or even just about Florida. This is about all the anti-democracy bullies all over America stealing education from our children, cheating Americans of their voting rights, reducing women to second class citizens, refusing gun safety and all the rest.

This matters to you because one day DeSantis and the bullies will be coming for you and you’re going to hate it when they crash through your door.

The Good Old Days

As the default/budget bill was being readied for a vote in the House last Wednesday, Ron DeSantis was pontifi-whining about it, stupidly saying that we’re going to go bankrupt. Other idiot extremist Republicans were saying similarly stupid, apocalyptic things.

They all long so dearly for the good old days when fiscally responsible Republicans were in charge and they never added to our national debt. That made me wonder which days those were, so I dug around and the chart below is the product of that digging.

The numbers represent the total each president added to our national debt over the course of their administrations. Harding and Coolidge delivered surpluses. All the rest gave us more debt.

Most notably, each administration added billions of dollars of debt until Reagan came along and ratcheted that up to trillions. He put six times more debt on the U.S. than his Democratic predecessor did. In fact, he added just shy of twice the debt of all preceding presidents combined!

You can blame his supply side economics for much of that. He truly was Saint Ronny the Reverse Robin Hood, patron saint of giveaways to the rich. Republicans still genuflect at the sound of his fiscally larcenous name.

Simple fact: In large measure our national debt is a function of both low and lowered taxes matched with increased spending. Somehow such debt, while a big DUH! to the rest of us, is not easily understood by supply-siders, who believe Tooth-Fairy-like that we will have increased revenue by means of decreased revenue.
.

George W. Bush dramatically lowered taxes while starting two “off balance sheet” wars. I still don’t know what that term means. He doubled our national debt over all previous presidents combined, including Reagan! Oddly, that failed to impress voters.

The debt Dubya left for us is hardly a surprise, given his wars and his tax cuts. What is surprising is how Trump managed to increase our national debt in one term even more than Dubya did in two terms.

The Dubya and Trump tax cuts for the rich cost the U.S. nearly $10 trillion and included tax breaks for yachts and private jets.* We’re left with the glow of enhancing the lives of rich people and with the bill they left for us.

Someone please tell me which are the Republicans’ good old days when they were in charge, were fiscally responsible and didn’t add to our national debt.

Take a look at the chart and see if the “tax and spend” label that Republicans like to staple to the chests of Democrats makes sense to you. Or the Republican claims of fiscal responsibility. Or the moronic belief in supply-side economics. If any of that makes sense to you, you will immediately be sent to a 3rd grade remedial math class to see if you can keep up with 8-year-olds doing flash cards.

Source: The Balance

________________________________

* It’s heartwarming to know that the new budget just squeezed out of the Congress cuts $21 billion in funding from the IRS. That was a critical thing for Republicans. Two points about that:

  1. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that hobbling the ability to go after tax cheats will result in $40 billion in lost revenue, resulting in an increase to the debt of $19 billion.
  2. Gotta answer this question: Why was it so important for the Republicans to inhibit the IRS from chasing down rich tax crooks? Hint: Can you say “donors” boys and girls?
  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Thugocracy


In a stunning cave-in to thugs, Target, the retail department store, chickened out and pulled some of its LGBTQ-friendly merchandise from its shelves. The company has been offering such things for 10 years, typically in June, which is Pride Month. But stores have received threats of violence from LGBTQ haters, which puts both employees and customers at risk.

In a PR scrubbed statement, company spokeswoman Kayla Castañeda said, “Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.” That is to say, they surrendered to the thugs. This all came shortly after Brian Cornell, CEO of Target, had bragged about company actions regarding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

I’ll say it differently: Target self-censored not because of law, but because of fear. Score one for the thugs.

We all understand the decision to pull merchandise that extremists apparently think warrants threats of violence. Both such threats and even violence itself are not uncommon experiences in the LGBTQ world. And make no mistake: threats of violence are themselves violence. But, Houston, we have a problem, because the thugs have figured out how to get their way using violence. And it’s worse than that.

Leaders in politics, religion, punditry and those performing public temper tantrums have instructed Americans to fear and hate LGBTQ people. People like Ron DeSantis, governor of the hate state of Florida, uses words like “indoctrinate” to make parents afraid of the existence of people who are different from them. With all that stoking of passions of hatred it’s little wonder that extremists have amped up both their violence and their threats of violence.

After all, we have politicians publicly encouraging the extremists to hatred and violence. Ask Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss about that. All they did was to be election workers and they were besieged with threats from the haters. The thugs banged on their doors, parked their lookout cars in front of their houses for hours in stakeouts and did even more to intimidate these women, to the point where they could no longer keep their jobs or even feel safe shopping for groceries. The thugs threatened them because Republican politicians lied, claiming a stolen election. Now those women live in fear all the time because the street thugs were incited by the Republican political thugs to threaten violence against innocent people.

Thugocracy. That’s what we have and as far as I can tell, nobody has a fix for this unless the inciters can be redirected or muzzled. But that’s a First Amendment problem that the haters deftly use to continue to stoke hatred.

And all the while they tell us they’re Christians. They hate and threaten and do violence just the way Jesus taught them, right?

No, not right! Jesus didn’t give any such instruction.

These false Christians do the kind of thing that Bill Maher warns us about. Some of the very worst atrocities in history have been religious wars or violence justified and incited by religion. Think: 9/11; The Crusades; our violence against indigenous people; hundreds of years of slavery.

Self-justification using religion is just the thing to justify getting one’s way and now it’s being used against LGBTQ people and Target by today’s thugs. If fascism comes to America – thugocracy – these guys will make great Storm Troopers.

If this progresses, expect lots of murders and your own self-censoring, as  you succumb to thugs, just as Target has done. Today’s nearly bare library shelves in some Republican controlled states have been made that way by self-appointed, ego-puffing guardians of extremist, delusional versions of correctness. The shelves will be restocked with new publications that have been scrubbed of anything that isn’t strictly White and Christian. The new books will contain nothing that even hints at actual history.

Just understand that this thugocracy business is real. It is vexing and it will not go away until we as a society demand that it go away and some strong and determined people strand up for truth, justice and the professed American way. You know: values, like democracy, human rights – all that messy stuff that makes our way of life possible. It’s quite unlike thugocracy.

Thugocracy Is The Official Platform

Thugocracy is the formally sanctioned, enthusiastically practiced, democracy crushing policy of the Republican Party. It smells a lot like fascism. See the next section of this post for more.

Their so-called negotiations with President Biden were in actuality designed to ensure that we will become the world’s biggest driver of economic and political pandemonium and its biggest economic cheat. Republicans tried to make this more likely by proposing to dump all the pain of budget cuts on low income Americans, which is now Republican dogma.

David Corn of Mother Jones, reports of their proposal that:

“The GOP position literally was this: We will allow the US government to pay its bills—which includes those run up by the Trump administration and a Republican Congress—and avoid an economic calamity, if you stick it to Americans who need help.”

But that’s just a bleeding heart liberal saying that, right? Not so fast.

Matt Gaetz, (R-Sex Trafficking Accusations) openly described Republican “negotiations” as hostage taking. And the budget proposal Republicans have offered refuses tax increases for the wealthy, cuts the ability of the IRS to go after high wealth tax cheats and it cuts programs for poor and middle class Americans.

And it is all done under the watchful eye of 20 ultra-extremists (not conservatives), any one of whom can bring down McCarthy’s speakership and all of whom want to bring down our government and our democracy.

That’s thugocracy in action by a Republican minority that has been given enormous leverage by a public minority of haters and grievance whiners.

Can you spot the thugs in this picture?

The Must Read of These Fraught Times
Thugs are working their fascist best to crush all you hold dear.
.

History Professor Heather Cox Richardson has found a way to get the message through to all of us. Her clear explanation is sourced from a U.S. government War Department pamphlet distributed to our troops in 1945, Army Times, Orientation Fact Sheet 64. It is titled:

FASCISM! [emphasis original]
.

Click me

There is chaos all around us, including the ongoing assaults on our freedoms and our rights and the minority control by thugs who refuse what We the People want. What do you suppose that’s really about?

Read Prof. Richardson’s piece quoting the original publication. If you would like to read the full, original 8-page pamphlet just the way our fighting men and women did when they risked their lives in 1945 to save our lives, you can find it here.

Course Note

To pass today’s course in citizenship and save our democracy for your children and grandchildren, you must know this material!

There will be a test.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Cut The Crap – Part Two


Debt Ceiling Crisis Averted – This Time

Reports last night said that President Biden and the Republican hostage takers had come to an agreement such that the world economy will not crash next week. I’m glad, of course, that the sky will not fall, but I find it abhorrent that extortion has been rewarded. Again.

I would have been far happier to learn that the President was invoking the 14th Amendment, which would retire forever our foolish requirement to secure permission to pay our bills.

Immigration Crap

It isn’t about Title 42. It isn’t about Biden. It isn’t even about Trump. It’s entirely about Congress.

Dubya tried to get things inched along toward immigration reform, but Congress killed that. Reagan did a little, but it was a spit in the ocean of what was needed.

It’s Congress’ job to create immigration laws and rules and it has steadfastly refused for decades to do anything to make things better. Indeed, Congress can’t even deal with our Dreamers in any way other than to make them political pawns. That has allowed a huge train wreck of a mess to pile up and has stifled our national growth.

One hundred years ago the United States’ most hated immigrants were the Irish and the Italians. Plus the Chinese. And always Jews. Really, anyone who wasn’t both White enough and Protestant. Now the favorite whipping boys and girls are Hispanics from – gasp! – across the Rio Grande River. They’re – what are the words? – not like us. Most of them aren’t either White or Protestant. They are so easily Evangelically objectionable.

Sadly, immigration memory is short enough for most Americans to forget the hard, hard path of their own families and why their forebears came here. That makes it difficult for therm to empathize with those seeking something better for their children or fleeing death in their home countries.

There’s only one way to fix this: Congress has to do its job and

CUT THE CRAP!

Speaking of Immigration, Here’s A Crazy Idea

It’s so easy to claim the stupid and hateful replacement theory as a powerful tool of bigotry, but try this on for size.

We have an enormous shortage of labor in the U.S. and a tiny 3.5% unemployment rate. At the same time, we have an enormous number of people wanting to enter the U.S. to work. Maybe there are ways to fix this craziness.

What if we allowed immigrants to enter our country? We’ll give them green cards and let them work. What if we set them up with Social Security numbers and they were to pay taxes, just like you do?

We can hire immigrants for laborer jobs to aid in the projects that are the rebuilding of our infrastructure. They can build parks in blighted urban areas, build and renovate housing, plant trees in our tens of thousands of acres of burned forests and more. We’ve done this before. It was call the WPA and CCC, the CWA and NIRA and other agencies that put Americans – and immigrants – to work building America.

And under a formula to be determined (perhaps the one that allowed your ancestors to become citizens of the U.S.), we’ll give them a path to citizenship.

Maybe some of these new immigrants will start business. Maybe you’ll find a terrific job there. When we peal back the layers of fear and protectiveness and hatred, this is the story of America.

You get the idea. In doing such things we don’t just improve our physical existence. We also restore our national soul by ending the cruelty we condone and restoring the American Dream. And we gain new, patriotic Americans.

Too many believe that everything is a zero-sum game, where one person beginning a climb to a better existence means someone else is knocked down. But that just isn’t what happens. That’s never been what happens. Immigrants help to build our economy. All we need is the national will to face reality and for Congress to do its job and

CUT THE CRAP!

THE Major Case

There is grave danger in Raleigh.

Harper v. Moore is the North Carolina case now being decided by the Supreme Court. The substance of this anti-democracy case is whether states have the right for their legislatures to override the will of the people.

If the Supreme Court gives the green light, the Republican super-majority North Carolina legislature (not it’s Democratic governor) will be able to completely ignore its citizens. It will have the power to stuff all the ballots voters cast into a dumpster, set it on fire and send its own hand-picked, extremist slate of electors for president to be counted in Congress on January 6.

Yes, really.

This is as corrupt as Vladimir Putin’s elections. Instead of counting ballots he just makes up his winning percentage.

Effectively, that’s what the North Carolina far right extremist legislators want to be able to do. That paved road to dictatorship could have the blessing of the Supreme Court via its six far right extremist, lied-to-the-Senate-Judiciary-Committee justices.

Did I mention “anti-democracy?”

Here’s a short summary of the case from Wikipedia:

Moore v. Harper is an ongoing United States Supreme Court case related to the independent state legislature theory (ISL), arising from the redistricting of North Carolina‘s districts by the North Carolina legislature following the 2020 census, which the state courts found to be too artificial and partisan, and an extreme case of gerrymandering in favor of the Republican Party.[1][2]

It’s so hard to imagine that the Republican North Carolina legislature might do something so outrageous, so undemocratic, so despotic.

NOT!

It’s easy to imagine that because it’s what they always do.

Have a look at what conservative federal judge Michael Luttig has to say about this.

Now imagine that not only North Carolina, but all the Republican controlled states, tripping on the hallucinatory drug of authoritarianism, did the same thing.

The Court’s decision is expected soon. So, “Hey, Supreme Court:

CUT THE CRAP!”

BTW

There is a lot of criticism and hand wringing over Biden’s 40-something percent job approval rating. To put that into perspective, at this point in his first term, Ronald Reagan had an approval rating of just 35%. Trump’s approval rating never got out of the 40s.

Read of the Week

Of course you’re sick of hearing about the debt ceiling and the certainty of economic and democratic doomsday if we default via the fecklessness* of the insane Republicans in the House. They and this stupid, self-inflicted crisis over whether we’ll pay the bills we’ve already run up should never have happened. It began as lies and continues now in a master class of greed and deceit.

Read Thom Hartmann’s excellent explainer The Debt Ceiling is just “Two Santas” in Drag. You’ll see how We The People have been terminally duped by self-serving Republican dishonesty. Then let me know how you feel about it.

Quote of the Week

“It’s important to remember that the global autocratic movement is not solely about creating a traditional religious society; it is about destroying democracy to concentrate wealth and power in a small group of men, usually white men, who will dominate the rest of us.”

  • Prof. Heather Cox Richardson,
  • Letters From an American, May 21, 2023
  • You can find Cut The Crap – Part One here.
  • _________________________________
  • * feckless | ˈfekləs | adjective
  • lacking initiative or strength of character; irresponsible
    • – Apple dictionary
  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Cut The Crap – Part One


Broken News

In a stunning display of muscular, applause sucking fantasies, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) announced that he is a candidate to become his party’s nominee for President of the United States.

He dutifully blamed President Biden for all problems, stopping just short of blaming Biden for mosquito bites. As significant, he claimed credit for everything that has gone well, including the things that most or all Republicans voted against, like the infrastructure projects they tried to kill, then went home and bragged to constituents about how they had brought home the bacon for them.

Cut the crap, Tim.

More Broken News

THIS PICTURE IS A FAKE

The May 22 AI generated picture of a FAKE bombing of the Pentagon (to the left) isn’t even a good fake, but it was good enough for Bloomberg News to pick it up. It went viral on Twitter and elsewhere and first responders had to show up before it was announced that this is a completely FAKE picture. There was no fire or harm done to the Pentagon or to any personnel.

The technology to produce fakes is only going to get better and we stand to be fooled so often that we’ll learn to distrust news reports, government – everything. That leaves us with this core question:

Who stands to benefit from the undermining of public trust?
.

Post your answer in the Comments section below.

Pig Troughs and Justice

We’re being played for chumps by industry and by political toadies who are in the pocket of Big Money. Here’s the key to what needs to be done for We The People.

Reverse the Citizens United decision – the one that reinforced the Boston v. Bellotti decision that legalized political bribery*. And while we’re at it, impeach Chief Justice John Roberts for

– lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee in his  confirmation hearing, saying that he believes in stare decisis (honoring past Supreme Court decisions, like Roe). Same for Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito and Coney Barrett

– lying to that same committee, saying (or implying) that Roe is settled law. Same for Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito and Coney Barrett – probably Thomas, too.

– and most egregiously, for causing the lawyers to return to the court following the CU decision on the case that was presented to the court. This time Roberts directed the attorneys to argue rights for corporations, something that was not in contest in the Citizens United case. That debasement of our system of justice and the Court’s decision on it gave corporations the same rights as people like you, including the right to give huge sums of black money to PACs that distort our election system in favor of rich guys.

In his dissent from this nefarious decision, Justice Souter said that in addressing an issue that was not raised by the litigants, “ . . . the majority changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.” Souter was right. This is a prime example of right wing manipulation of our laws and institutions for the purpose of destroying our democracy.

For all their wailing about spending, Republicans don’t want to touch programs that line the pockets of their big money donors. Instead, they want our poor and disadvantaged to carry the load. Here’s what that means.

McCarthy and his hollow-headed, far right extremists have figured out that the American people like Social Security and Medicare A LOT and that cutting those programs would be political suicide, so they want to cut other stuff instead, like veterans medical benefits and

” .  .  .  public health; food safety inspections; air traffic control operations; the administration of Medicare and Social Security; housing and other assistance for families with low incomes; education and job training; and scientific and medical research, to name just a few.” – Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

They want to cut everything that helps actual people.

Kevin McCarthy and his co-conspirators are trying to bring down the government of the United States in every way possible. Right now they are attempting extortion using the debt ceiling approval process to get budget concessions like those listed above. “After all,” they say, “spending is directly linked to our national debt.” That’s like saying that we can’t send a rocket to the moon because there’s that gravity thing on Earth. Moronic.

If Republicans were serious about wanting to trim spending they could have done so with their congressional majorities during the Trump or the George W. Bush years. In fact. with the support of his congresses, Dubya piled up more debt than all previous administrations combined. Don’t forget there were those two “off balance sheet” wars.

Both Dubya and Trump increased spending every year while cutting taxes for the ultra rich and thereby ballooning our national debt.

So, no, the Republicans aren’t serious about dealing with spending or debt. They just want to bludgeon Democrats by cutting programs that help people in order to prove how tough they are. They want to brag about their phantom fiscal responsibility and crash our government and our democracy so that they can take over in a fascist putsch. You know: fusing industry with government in a despotic rule over We the People.

Cut the crap, Republicans.

Because these industry representatives (meaning senators and representatives in the pockets of Big Money) will not cut the crap, we’ll have to dump them and replace them with people who will cut the crap. Repeal and replace is the phrase the Republicans like to use about Obamacare, so let’s use it for what We The People want – to repeal and replace these Republican industry toadies.

The replacements will be the same people who will create sensible gun safety legislation, will restore abortion rights, will refuse to abandon our most vulnerable, will honor and keep faith with our military .  .  . you know the list. It’s all the stuff that the vast majority of We The People want. We’ll only get it when we dump the bad guys who are doing the crap – delivering minority controlled tyranny – and replace them with those who will serve We The People.

BTWs

In case you were thinking Biden would get rolled by right wing extremist Republicans who want to hold our nation hostage, take a look at this, posted last Sunday.

And here’s a love tweet for Kevin McCarthy, who still hasn’t replied to my request for all those January 6 videos he sent to Tucker Carlson.

 Watch for Cut The Crap – Part two this Wednesday, May 24.

____________________________________

* From Thom Hartmann:

“The following year Richard Nixon put [Justice Lewis] Powell on the Supreme Court, where he personally authored the 1978 Boston v. Bellotti decision that claimed corporations are persons with rights under the Bill of Rights and corporate money in politics wasn’t bribery or corruption (as it had been under the law since the founding of the republic) but merely an exercise of First Amendment-protected free speech. Money wasn’t money: it was speech.”

And that “speech” is way louder with orders of magnitude more money powering it. Citizens United took that farther and wider and has effectively silenced you.

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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