BREAKING NEWS!
POST 1211
Urgent Action Needed Today To Save Kids
My very long time friend Jim Nathan and his wife Karen founded Floridians for Democracy a few years ago and have done some amazing work to preserve and protect what we hold dear about America. Jim writes,
“Florida just became Ground Zero of the Anti-Vaxx Movement. No surprise to us BUT it will spread to other states wanting to be as MAGA as possible.” [see this]
This is what it looked like before vaccines. Those are kids in iron lung machines.
Those controlling Florida state health regulations have decided that children dying from measles, smallpox and becoming paralyzed from polio is okay – and no, that isn’t an exaggeration. We all need to get smart about this, so Jim broadcast this important invitation:
Tonight at 7pm ET I, in collaboration with an emerging new organization, Grandparents for Vaccines, have developed a program with Dr. Arthur Lavin, a nationally respected physician who shares concerns that the anti-vaccine movement is creating serious medical problems for America and beyond.
There was no way of knowing when we began organizing this program that Florida would be the first state in the nation to ban all standard, mandated, life-saving vaccines. Most significantly, this will impact school children, endangering their health and bringing back diseases with life-threatening health complications. Hence, this program is very timely.
Then this – and polio went away – until our anti-vaxxers decided it was okay for kids to become paralyzed. Click to watch the short video.
Attendees will hear from grandparents and others speaking out about the importance of vaccines . . . not from a clinical perspective but through poignant memories of how vaccines helped save millions of lives. Our own Dr. Mike Martin is one of seven storytellers. Mike and my Baby Boom generation’s youngest years occurred during the height of outbreaks of polio, measles, and smallpox . . . all dramatically reduced and nearly totally eradicated by vaccines in recent years. Most parents of school-age children today have never faced the ravages of these horrendous, communicable diseases.
Now, “The Free State of Florida” wants to lead the nation back to a Dark Age of Dreaded Debilitating Diseases. We can’t stop that runaway train tonight, but we can spread the word, increase attendance, and be the first state to help Grandparents for Vaccines in its inaugural kickoff. Encourage friends anywhere (not just in Florida) to attend. Learn from storytellers and discover a new national focus that has become even more critical following yesterday’s announcement.
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Here’s the registration link; spread the word far and wide … NOW! 7pm Eastern Time, Thursday, September 4.
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All of our programs are designed to provide attendees with action steps they can take. This one is simple: encourage young families to ensure they follow traditionally established vaccine routines. Together we can save lives. Together we can make a difference. Let’s not be silent.
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Peace, Jim [all emphasis mine]
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Forward this notice right now to your friends, neighbors, anyone who has kids, anyone who knows a kid, anyone who was once a kid and anyone who wants kids to be healthy. This free program happens tonight, so TAKE ACTION NOW!
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GO!
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The Fine Print:
- Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
- There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
- Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
- 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.
- Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
- Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
- Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.
Click me
JA
Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Today’s American Crisis
POST 1210
I wrote recently asking, Can We Drop The Pretenses and Denial Now? Clearly, I’m not the only one sounding the reality alarm, the point of which is to make clear that we are not in danger of some advancing fascism: we’re in it.
It’s poisoning us, our country, our children and the world with lies and cruelty and the theft of all we hold dear. “The cruelty is the point,” we’ve been told, and we’re too late to prevent that. But we aren’t powerless. We can take action to create the America we believe in, the one where you have full rights, where nobody can snatch you off the street and disappear you, where your children can see a good future for themselves and their children.
Chris Armitage wrote the playbook for what we know in our bones is right and good and actionable in his piece, I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%.
That’s right: zero percent. Once entrenched, fascism lasts for miserable generation after miserable generation. Armitage documents that clearly and when you read his post you’ll know he’s right. This is one of the most frightening and realistic things I’ve read about our plight. It is oddly also one of the most hopeful.
Thomas Paine
His message is today’s version of Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis*. You’ve known Paine’s clarion call to action since you were in high school. The first pamphlet in his series urging that we become an independent America, free from the whims of a mad king, begins, “THESE [sic] are the times that try men’s souls.”
Paine was right then and, indeed, our souls are severely tried again today. We are threatened every minute of every day by a king wannabee who is mad and cruel and who has surrounded himself with sycophants to rule over you for only their own benefit.
This is not a time for “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot,” but a time for We The People to take bold and courageous action. It is time for us to break free from the mesmerizing of baseball and football games, from the vapidity of unreal TV reality shows and from the rest of the escapes from our actual reality. It’s time for us to stand strong with new, powerful and deeply American action.
You need to read Armitage’s post. He’ll make clear what We The People can do. His paper is longer than most things you read and it is vital throughout. Read it. We The People need every member of your family to read it, too, including your crazy Uncle Bubba and Aunt Shoo-Shoo. We need your neighbors, your senators and your representative to read it.
Or we can wallow in the swamp of permanent powerlessness, subjected to the cruelty of mad despots. But we don’t want that. And we know that preventing that perversion of America won’t happen by wishing it away.
We are the people Emma Lazarus wrote about, the ones welcomed by the Statue of Liberty and by Lazarus’ words emblazoned on that bronze lady. We’re the people “yearning to breathe free.” It is up to us to ensure that we and all who count on us will, indeed, breathe free.
Read Armitage’s clarion call. Now.
Reality Quotes
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- Trump has murdered the concept of facts and truth. He has replaced both with a sick dogma, which has, at its core, a terrible truth: what is true is what Trump and his minions declare it to be.
- Steve Schmidt, Clarity and Conviction, September 1, 2025
Reading together from page 1 of our Citizen Manual, “Nuh-uh. Not okay with us.”
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- Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
- John F. Kennedy
- And that is why we must wake up to the possibilities that Chris Armitage details.
Full disclosure: I don’t know Chris Armitage. Until reading this essay I had never heard of him. I receive no value whatsoever for promoting his essay to you except the pleasure of perhaps making a smidgen of a difference for the betterment of us all.
Anticipatory Regret
What with the obvious physical and mental decline of Trump, my mind wandered to the national tradition of the honoring of dead presidents with a funeral procession. In my mind’s eye I can see the rolling caisson carrying the flag-draped casket of the deceased and the beautiful black stallion, riderless, with polished boots backward in the stirrups. I can see the military in their dress uniforms standing rigidly at attention and the flag hanging sadly at half staff. I can see a black clad widow standing forlornly as the procession passes.
I want none of that for Trump. He deserves none of the tradition and honoring. Plus, I don’t believe that Melania would shed a tear for this faithless man. But it will happen that Trump will be honored in this traditional way because that is what we do, regardless of his incompetence, malfeasance and treachery.
Perhaps it will be a positive thing for us, as we revive a cherished tradition for We The People. This is a time when most of our cherished traditions have been thrown to the dirt and awful people with dirty hearts have wiped their dirty shoes on them.
Perhaps Trump will die in his prison cell where he’s incarcerated for his conviction on 34 felony counts, where his sentence for theft of top secret materials and another sentence for his role in the January 6 insurrection will run concurrently for the next 30 years. If so, it will be bizarre to honor him with our tradition for presidents. I will regret that parade.
There was no traditional funeral procession upon the death of Richard Nixon; just a private ceremony. Perhaps Trump, yet another criminal president, will have the decency to do the same.
Nah. What was I thinking? That kind of decency could never come from Trump.
The Deconstructing Trump Corner
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- Those who cannot remember the past
- are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana, 1905
- Keep Santayana’s words in mind
- as you consider
- the horrors of past fascisms.
- Nothing so soon destroys freedom
- as cowardly and servile acquiescence.
- Clarence Darrow, 1941
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* Paine’s essay was written in a day when people’s attention span had not yet been truncated by both an avalanche of information and the enslavement of us by electronic devices. He got away with publishing an essay that is several times the length of these Disambiguation posts. And the people read them.
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I urge you to read The American Crisis to reconnect yourself in a most visceral way to the real America that you long for.
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The Fine Print:
- Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
- There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
- Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
- 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.
- Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
- Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
- Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.
Click me
JA
Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
The News
POST 1209
First, a Feel-Good
Things are changing. People are standing up and speaking out. Not just the usual suspects, but even Republicans and MAGAs. Even some high profile types are finding their way out of “nice” and are on the attack (at last!). Trump has so outrageously overplayed his hand that we’ve had some electoral wins and a beginning of the possibility of ripping our country out of the treasonous clutches of the fascists. So, what will we do when the good guys are back in charge? It starts with a re-set.
Rick Wilson put some thought to that and wrote a bill to be introduced in Congress on January 20, 2029 or, perhaps, on January 3, 2027. Read his Restoration of America Governance Act, designed to undo much of Trump’s lawless and unconstitutional actions. It’s a short and good read.
Now, Ugly Stuff
- Heather Honey is the election conspiracy theorist liar who claimed that in the 2020 not-stolen election that in Pennsylvania there were 205,000 more votes than voters. Baseless idiocy. She’s all about preventing people from voting and now Trump has named her to a new “election integrity” post at DHS. What could possibly go wrong?
- From Democracy Docket: “On a recent episode of his podcast, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon made a chilling prediction: ICE agents will be stationed near polling places for the 2026 midterm elections.” Last election they made it illegal to bring water to people waiting to vote in long lines on hot days. Thugocracy.
- Louisiana told the justices of the Supreme Court that it will no longer defend the court-ordered map that added a second majority-Black congressional district. Instead, the state argued that any use of race in redistricting is unconstitutional. Yes, really.
- In a separate case, Alabama asked SCOTUS to strike down a lower court ruling requiring it to draw another majority-Black congressional district.
Points 3 & 4 are noteworthy for one reason. The GOP in most red states have worked tirelessly for decades to prevent non-Whites from voting, from purging voter registration roles using cruel racist schemes, to closing nearby polling places, to eliminating ballot drop boxes, to their wildly discriminating voter ID laws and more. Now they’re objecting to rulings that favor fair representation for non-Whites on the basis of racial discrimination! Their hypocrisy has no bottom.
5. From this “Treason” post detailing Trump’s attack on Nicolle Wallace:
Since returning to power, Donald Trump has unleashed a coordinated assault on the free press unlike anything in American history. He’s personally attacked journalists he wants removed; he’s revived his “enemy of the people” designation against the Constitution’s only protected profession; he’s sued major outlets for coverage he deems unflattering; he’s threatened to revoke broadcast licenses of outlets who don’t cater to his preferences; he’s weaponized the FCC and effectively installed a personal “bias monitor” to oversee CBS News; he’s hijacked Voice of America and turned it into a pro-Trump global news outlet; he’s de-funded organizations like NPR and PBS; he’s changed long-standing Justice Department policies to make it easier to monitor journalists, to seize their records, and to search their homes; and more.
And that’s just about his attacks on one part of the First Amendment.
I’m a political news junkie, so I don’t expect anyone to be as focused on this stuff as I commonly am, but I found myself doing something that, on reflection, is frightening.
I was doing some chores in the kitchen with the TV on CNN. They covered the embarrassingly fawning Cabinet meeting, with seemingly otherwise functional (if unqualified) adults not reporting on their departments, but instead spewing cringe-worthy adulation onto Trump. CNN’s next topic was reporting on Trump’s threats to send our military into Chicago and reflexively I clicked off the TV. I bailed. I dropped out. Couldn’t stomach the river of bile. But if this political junkie dropped out, likely, that means that huge numbers of people won’t pay attention to what is happening to our country. That’s really dangerous.
I’ve dropped back in. We all need to be in.
Next, Bang Bang!
First, let’s recognize that our pathological president is working his hardest to negate everything Obama and Biden accomplished, including the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. However insufficient, that was the first major gun safety legislation passed by Congress in nearly 30 years.
Next, much as it’s so painful to see the reality, let’s recognize the brutality of the murders and wounding of little kids at the Annunciation Catholic Church School in Minneapolis last week.
Now I want you to imagine you’re the mom in the photo to the right, running in near panic for her children. She didn’t even put on her shoes. She just ran. You would, too.
Take a moment to feel her panic, her dread, her terror. That is the reality of every mass shooting, especially when it involves children.
Recognize that Trump wants to make it easier for hate-filled terrorists to get guns, assault rifles, large capacity magazines, bump stocks and more. Trump wants to do nothing to prevent the horror that has overcome that woman or anyone. His actions steadfastly declare that he doesn’t care how many little kids are ripped apart by bullets fired by a hatred filled terrorist.
Last, Some Hopeful Stuff
Chicago Mayor Brandon Jackson stood strong yesterday, calling Trump’s invasion of Chicago exactly what it is. He signed the Protecting Chicago Initiative executive order. It does many things including protecting the people from federal overreach and declaring that the CPD won’t collaborate with Trump’s Gestapo. Jackson joins governors Newsome, Pritzker, Moore, Walz and others standing against and speaking out VERY LOUDLY against Trump’s violations of our Constitution and the militarization of our country. Listen to Mayor Jackson’s powerful presentation here.
You know lots of the reasons why we have to do whatever it takes to defeat Trump, his sycophants, his cowardly, hypocritical legislators, his lying, extremist administration officials, his ICE Gestapo, his education destroyers, his know nothings undermining our healthcare and all of science – all of those who seek to destroy our values. We need to see Rick Wilson’s Restoration of America Governance Act become real.
And we can do that.
The Deconstructing Trump Corner
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- Whoever is careless with truth in small matters
- cannot be trusted in important affairs
- Albert Einstein, 1979
- The truth does not change
- according to our ability
- to stomach it emotionally.
- Flannery O’Connor
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The Fine Print:
- Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
- There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
- Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
- 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.
- Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
- Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
- Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.
Click me
JA
Mid-Term Election
Countdown Timer
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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 ALL OF US to get this job done.
And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
- Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
- There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
- Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
- 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.
- Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
- Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
- Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
Click me
JA
Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
ICYMI*
POST 1208
Got some health issues going on, so no new post today. Instead we reprise a “wake up to reality” call from July 6 titled, The Last Day.
The BBBB
At last there were just enough Republican cowards, liars and hypocrites to pass Trump’s Big Barfy Betrayal Bill. Who would have thought it possible to amass so many legislators more afraid of losing their privileged seats in Congress than motivated to keep people from starving to death or dying of preventable maladies?
The Congressional Republicans cheer
ed and took a group thumbs-up photo after the signing of that awful legislation that is so destructive of the American people and our way of life. They seemed to say “cheers for our side,” as though getting a legislative win were more important than doing what is best for the people.
ed and took a group thumbs-up photo after the signing of that awful legislation that is so destructive of the American people and our way of life. They seemed to say “cheers for our side,” as though getting a legislative win were more important than doing what is best for the people..
That bill is the gateway to the loss of our freedom.
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Its passage has created the next to the last day.
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Who Doesn’t Care?
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) offered an amendment to stop the Republicans from cutting half the funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Board. That’s the agency that has caused over $20 billion to be returned to Americans who had been cheated by a bank, credit card company or the like. Every Republican voted against her amendment.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) submitted an amendment to increase taxes on income over $10 million. Every Republican voted against that.
Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) had an amendment about Medicaid. The Republicans want to take it away from 17 million Americans. Her amendment was to at least keep in place Medicaid for brand new babies and their moms while they are in the hospital. Every Republican voted against it. Hey, if babies die, they die. Same for moms. These are the “pro-life” guys. Hypocrites.
Sen. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) amendment opposed the Republican plan to cut food assistance for low income families. It would guarantee food assistance at least for families with children under age 12. Every Republican voted against it.
The Republicans are for letting millions of Africans die from lack of medicines and surplus food already paid for and ready to ship.
The answer to the question beginning this section is that Republicans don’t care.
From Robert Reich:
[Their BBBB] establishes an anti-immigrant police state in America, replete with a standing army of ICE agents and a gulag of detention facilities that transform ICE into the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the government and it’s accountable to no one.
That is Trump’s private fascist army.
All of this is stuff you don’t want and perhaps you don’t even want to hear about, but this is what you get from Trump and his cowardly Republicans.
And we may have few chances left to vote them out of office. Trump said so.
The Posse Of Destruction Makes It Worse
From The Onion. Click me
John Roberts, Chief Justice to those other 5 black robed thieves of liberty, has placed himself in history to be the leader of the cabal who wouldn’t do their jobs – that “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” thing. Instead, they have substituted the name “Trump.”
The Roberts Court outrageously gave the President a get out of jail free card, allowing him to commit practically any crime while President and do so with no consequences (Trump v. United States). That matches nearly all of Trump’s no-accountability life. Then the Court put a nail in the coffin of birthright citizenship (Trump v. CASA). That oughta keep non-Whites from voting.
There are more Roberts assaults on our Constitution, of course. These are just two of the most recent.
John Roberts and his Posse of Destruction have abandoned their sworn duty (the real one) and have systematically dismantled our We The People protections from government cruelty. Indeed, they have neutered nearly every avenue to protect this nation from the onslaught of fascism and a cruel dictator.
That has dire consequences for your freedom.
The Final Manipulation
From Wikipedia:
The Reichstag fire . . . was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday, 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany . . . the Nazis attributed the fire to a group of Communist agitators, used it as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government, and induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties and pursue a “ruthless confrontation” with the Communists. This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.
That freedom killing Decree lasted until the end of the war.
Trump just got his horrible BBBB passed. It will give him radically enlarged power; hence, its passage signals the next to the last day. Now he needs something else big to solidify his dictatorship, so watch for some large act that looks like sabotage. He will blame Democrats, immigrants, LGBTQ citizens and journalists. He’ll use it to curtail our freedom and to declare a state of martial law. That will put Marines in your town and your freedom will be gone.
Then our Republican controlled Congress will sit like lap dogs, mute and meek, and watch Trump dissolve Congress and the courts. Trump will be a dictator exactly as he declared he would be when he said maybe there won’t be another election.
Then by extension, Prof. Timothy Snyder’s post Concentration Camp Labor tells us what comes next, powered by ICE thugs, who bring us deportations of innocents, imprisonments in concentration camps and then the normalization of slave labor.
I know that all sounds radical, outrageous. The German people didn’t see it coming, either.
Nevertheless, that will be the last day.
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Unless There Is A Lot Of Action
First, a definition: autocracy = dictatorship
And dictators are never good for the people. The Founders knew that because they lived under a dictator, mad King George III. He was a lot like Dementia King Donald I. We need to get to the same level of clarity as our Founders possessed.
Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt wrote How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy? and I strongly recommend that you read it. The article ends with this:
America’s slide into authoritarianism is reversible. But no one has ever defeated autocracy from the sidelines
Got it?
A Question About Our Self-Debasement Into Fascism
Every day Trump and his Gestapo are kidnapping people, beating them, killing them, locking them up and deporting them. Due process isn’t something even thinkable under these circumstances. Now they’re making jokes about detainees being eaten by alligators. They’re even selling Alligator Alcatraz merch. That extreme cruelty is being normalized and it’s being done in your name.
Here’s the question:
Are you okay with that?
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Here’s How Trump Will Be Defeated
Trump will issue an executive order and an all-caps tweet ordering the carving of his likeness into Mt. Rushmore. It will be done as he demands, at “warp speed.” Construction will begin immediately.
At the point where his mug shot is discernible there will be a 7.5 magnitude earthquake directly beneath the far right side of the mountain. The likenesses of the other four presidents will be completely unharmed, but the portion of Mt. Rushmore with Trump’s face will disintegrate, with huge rocks plunging to the valley below, The only remaining evidence of Trump will be a slightly orange cast to the dust hanging in the air.
MAGAs, Christian nationalists, insurrectionists and Bible thumpers will stand in awe from seeing God’s judgment declared upon Trump right before their eyes and they will abandon him instantly, paving the way for a return of freedom and representative government.
___________________________________________________
* In case you missed it.
Mid-Term Election
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And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
- Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
- There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
- Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
- 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.
- Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
- Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
- Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
Click me
JA
Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
A Start
POST 1207
Congress
Amazingly, even Rs and performative MAGAs are offended by the sex trafficking of children and child rape, so they’re demanding all of the Epstein materials. It’s likely that these guys once knew someone who was a girl and are horrified by what Epstein, Maxwell and their clients (johns, really) did to them. Maybe the awfulness is close enough to home that they’re willing to displease even the foremost frequent flyer on Epstein’s Nubile Express, what with his attempts to cover up his behavior to avoid accountability for what pretty much everyone believes he did. Now we know what it takes to break through the Republican cowardice to get them to begin to stand upright. It’s a start.
Blast From The Past
Ronald Reagan, he of the “Government isn’t the solution to our problem; government is the problem” brain-free campaign sloganeering, used to be Saint Ronny. Nobody talks much about him now, so perhaps his sainthood has been voided. Regardless, this former B actor had great White House script writers and he delivered his lines well.
Here he is explaining tariffs to We The Ignorant. Watch this and imagine what Trump would call Reagan today. Trump is the one who said John McCain wasn’t a hero and that our military dead were suckers and losers. He’s the one who turns on former supporters and friends for the most trivial of reasons, just to exact revenge. He calls it retribution. You can ask John Bolton how that works now.
And people are beginning to react to his thin skinned delusions. It’s a start.
Voting Rights
Paul Weyrich didn’t want you to vote, because far righties’ “leverage” goes up when fewer people vote. Click me.
Perhaps our greatest fighters for our supposedly Constitutionally protected voting rights are Marc Elias and his team of snarling, biting pit bull legal fighters. They file blizzards of lawsuits against gerrymandering, illegal purging of voters’ registrations, closing of polling places, removal of ballot drop boxes, the killing of mail in ballot options and more. We know that the cheaters will continue to cheat – they always have. And we know that the job of stopping their abuse of We The People will never end.
The Republicans have been public about their scummy tricks and un-American attitude on who should vote and who they think shouldn’t vote at least since Paul Weyrich, a founder of the hateful Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), guys who write extremist legislation for Republicans to pass. He openly declared his un-American recommendations in 1980. Click the pic and hear the slime drip from his mouth. The good news is that Elias and his team are on duty, doing great work to protect all of us, to stop the cheaters. You might want to subscribe to his Substack and throw a few bucks their way. It’s a start.
Finally – as in: At Last
Gov. Gavin Newsome has taken the fight to Trump and shoved it in his face. He declared war on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his abhorrent Trump-demanded, mid-decade gerrymandering to create 5 more Republican seats in the House. Every day Newsome mocks Trump by tweeting at him in Trump’s own communication style.
I’ve been asking who will lead us out of the valley of democracy death for a long time. We’ve been hoping for a Democrat to stand up and smack the far right liars and cheaters and now we have one. It’s a start.
The Deconstructing Trump Corner
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- It is against Stupidity in every shape and form
- that we have to wage our eternal battle.
- William Booth, 1890
- Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist
- while you react to life on his own terms.
- Elizabeth Bowen,1938
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The Fine Print:
- Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
- There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
- Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
- 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.
- Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
- Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
- Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.
Click me
JA
Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
What I’m Seeing
POST 1206
Unconservative
The right wing has taken a terrible blow to its head, its heart and its morals and has become not the right wing, but the wrong wing. Perhaps you’ve wondered what actual conservatives have been thinking for the past years as they’ve allow themselves to become compromised and putrefied.
Patty Vasquez has thought about that and she offers a warning to them in her post, Dear Conservatives: Trump Is Betraying Everything You Stand For, although it may already be way too late to reach them. Read it and then pass it along to Uncle Bubba and Aunt Spunky. Maybe they were once conservatives back in the days before Newt Gingrich began the angry, self-focused, extremist pollution of our politics that started us on the downward spiral to today’s not-conservative fascism.
No Comment Needed
Click me for the story – but you already know it.
Clear Message
Trump took all those trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane, the Nubile Express, to frolic on Sex Traffic Island. Is there actually anyone who believes that Trump was there just to play poker or to splat his 300 pound overload onto a beach chair? O’ the horror of the nasty visual of him in swimming trunks and a much too long red necktie!
He recently had Air Force 1 fly him to Scotland at a cost of millions of dollars of your tax payer money and offered only some phony, manufactured excuses for the trip. The real reasons for the trip were to promote his golf courses there – on our dime – and also to distract you from the Epstein story, the scum bag tattle tale of sin and lawbreaking that will not go away. And no, you’re not surprised.
The Scots have an opinion on all this and especially on Trump’s obvious criminality. They’ve offered a message for him, presented by some Scots who have a fine clarity about right and wrong and a skill for expressing their views ever-so-elegantly. Many thanks to pal Kirk Landers for sending the link.
NOTE: This video contains strong language guaranteed to be offensive to some. If you are one of the “some” people, please use good judgment.
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Everyone else, yer gonna love this.
______________________________________________
Deconstructing Trump Corner will return on Sunday.
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The Fine Print:
- Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
- There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
- Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
- 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.
- Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
- Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
- Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.
Click me
JA
Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Can We Drop The Pretenses and Denial Now?
POST 1205
It’s About One Thing and One Thing Only
The Trump immigration cruelty, breaking of laws and the rest have nothing to do with immigration. They have nothing to do with the economy. They are unrelated to international trade or safe borders, disease prevention, ending war or the Nobel Peace Prize.
Click me for the story.
The cruelty is about getting rid of Brown and Black people, which is why ICE locks up even legal Brown American citizens and doesn’t discriminate between immigrants with or without a criminal record. In fact, ICE doesn’t even check for criminal records. They just kidnap people, zip-tie them and send them to a hell hole prison. Make America White Again!
The cruelty is about establishing public fear of Trump so that he has all the power. Even big law firms, major universities and financial institutions are chickening out and bending the knee for what they seem to believe is their short term advantage or perhaps protection from Trump’s cruelty.
That is compounded by Trump’s incremental militarization of our cities – notably only where there are Black mayors. Trump threatens several more cities with the deployment of our military and none of them is near the top of the list of cities with the most crime. He threatened New York, Baltimore, Chicago and Oakland, all Democratic strongholds with large African-American populations. They could be next and won’t that be a fine distraction from the withheld Epstein files?
Militarization is what dictators do to suppress and control the population.
During his first administration Trump ordered Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to have his troops “shoot [protesters] in the legs.” Milley refused, but now that Trump has fired the generals most likely to refuse his illegal orders and has replaced them with Trump sycophants, what do you suppose will happen when there are peaceful protests that Trump doesn’t like and they are surrounded by our troops carrying weapons of war?
That’s essentially what happened at Kent State in 1970 when Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on unarmed peaceful protesters (full disclosure: they were saying mean things about the administration). Guardsmen killed four and injured nine kids. Who was the idiot who issued live ammunition?
Surely, Trump figures that fear will keep we rubes in line.
Again, this is what dictators do to suppress and control the population.
All of that is diabolically supported by a cowardly Republican controlled Congress and the Supreme Court that was hand picked by Trump. Whatever their beliefs, they are all receiving death threats from Trump thugs, making it most unlikely that they will stand up to him.
Every Trump outrage is about one thing and one thing only: Making Trump a king. Der Führer.
Can we drop the pretenses and denial now?
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Address of August 14*
In urging you to read her whole post, here’s an excerpt from Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s report of August 14.
Noting that “this time requires us to act anew, not just think anew,” Newsom nodded to President Abraham Lincoln’s famous call from 1862: “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
The Staples Singers
Trump bungled every aspect, every detail of his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage on Friday. The bungling began even before the two met. Trump landed first and Putin showed up late, causing Trump to have to wait for him for nearly an hour, making Trump look like a chump.
Then Trump treated Putin to red carpet treatment and gave him a ride in the presidential “Beast.” At the end they parted, saying false, hollow niceties about one another and Mr. Art of the Deal flew away with no deal and with no pathway to a deal. Trump just plain got played by Putin – again. That affects all of us and, oddly, connects to The Staples Singers.
I listened to their wonderful hit Respect Yourself the other day and heard their message a bit differently than I did in 1972 when it topped the charts. Back then it was a message to our angry and disrespectful and the violence prone people, suffering in the midst of great and largely justified public rage in our country. Today I heard it as a message to all of us to respect ourselves and one another by proudly standing up for what we know is right.
We know the Alaska meeting was wrong for America and the world. We know this Epstein stuff stinks 16 different ways, that disappearing people is wrong and awful and unlawful, that the assaults on our healthcare, the education of our children and the security of old people who paid into a system that now owes them are all wrong. And we know that abandoning Ukraine, giving it lies instead of munitions and turning our back on those embattled people is wrong on so many levels.
So, have a listen to Respect Yourself for a message – see if it speaks to you, giving you guidance for your actions today. And do, indeed, respect yourself.
The Deconstructing Trump Corner
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- Truth is on
- the march
- and nothing
- can stop it
- Émile Zola, 1898
- We must always take sides.
- Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
- Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
- Elie Wiesel, in Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Dec. 10, 1986
- _______________________________________________
- * Watch the entire session. This is what you’ve longed to hear. It will fill your heart and stiffen your spine with resolve.
-
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And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
- Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
- There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
- Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
- 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.
- Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
- Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
- Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.
Click me
JA
Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Inside-Out, Upside-Down
POST 1204
The CDC Shooting – Domestic Terrorism
A deranged soldier in the war on sanity opened fire at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, killing a police officer. Apparently, the shooter was killed by police, halting his threat to others.
The shooter was vehemently anti-vaxx, as encouraged by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert “Brain Worm, Dead Bear” Kennedy. Here’s a piece of a STAT report on the violence.
Former surgeon general Jerome Adams writes in a First Opinion essay that the shooting “is not an isolated event,” but rather “a dire reflection of ever-escalating threats public health workers face in a climate increasingly shaped by misinformation, politicization, and inflammatory rhetoric.” Read the essay.
Adams is a master of understatement. Imagine being a public health worker, committed to protecting the health of all of us, and some MAGA pea brain and others like him want to kill you because of your life of service to them and others. Like a lot in America today, this is inside-out, upside-down.
The Trumpstein* Catastrophe
I remember my high school biology teacher standing behind the lab table that stood at the front of the room and served as his desk. It had a black stone top, on which he had placed a recently deceased frog, which obediently lay in repose on its back.
My teacher then inserted an electrical probe into the top of one leg muscle – the frog’s, not his own – and the dead frog’s leg jerked out suddenly, just as it had when he was alive and on the move. The probe was removed and the extended leg retracted back to the relaxed position. My teacher then repeated the procedure and out stretched Mr. Frog’s leg once again. Then teacher gave him a zap again and again, but something was changing. Before long the leg extensions were far less powerful and at last the leg failed to respond to stimulus at all. Tough day for Froggy.
The point, of course, was to demonstrate a declining response to repeated stimulus and today we are in danger of being the frog. We are overwhelmed by Trump’s continuing insults to our values, our culture, our Constitution and the very structure of what keeps us safe. Worse, we are at risk of reacting less enthusiastically to his outrages, like:
firing the messenger who brought him bad labor numbers
moving pedophile sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to a country club prison
lying about economic and jobs numbers
arranging to meet Putin on American soil (no way he’ll extradite war criminal Putin to the International Criminal Court, where there’s an arrest warrant for him for kidnapping, murdering civilians and lots more) and refusing to include President Zelenskyy in the “peace talks,” which really are Ukraine surrender talks
organizing and expanding his Gestapo to arrest people with no warrant and no probable cause
making appointments to positions of power for nothing but talent-less Trump suck ups
creating global economic chaos with bi-polar tariffs and no-deal deals
There’s more every day. Little wonder some of us have a case of over-stimulated frog leg syndrome.
Our failure to respond to his outrages, though, is exactly what Trump wants. He wants his every day idiocies to distract us from his more serious crimes, like bringing down our way of life and replacing it with fascism, with Trump as Der Führer. And, of course, he’s binging on feeding us distractions from the Trumpstein Catastrophe.
Don’t take his bait. Don’t ever let him beat you into exhausted submission to his brutality and his inside-out, upside-down cruelty. Flip yourself over on your personal mental health lab table and hop to the job we all must do. Which leads to this.
Knife Fights
I quoted Patty Vasquez in my last post, and with good reason. Gotta come back to her today. Here are a couple of paragraphs from her August 11 post.
Democrats Finally Stop Bringing Spoons to a Knife Fight:
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[Trump] doesn’t just break the rules. He forces everyone else to break them too. He makes corruption look like the only rational response to corruption. He turns defending democracy into an argument for abandoning democratic principles.
The Texas Democrats hiding in Illinois didn’t want to flee their state. They wanted to do their jobs, represent their constituents, and follow the rules. But Trump made that impossible. He turned governing into a hostage situation where the only choice was collaboration or exile.
Trump is polluting our entire culture with his inside-out, upside-down distortion of reality and the undermining of the principles we used to live by. THAT is why we must fight.
The Deconstructing Trump Corner
Our regular feature is joined today by two folk offerings from We The Folks. Click through each and enjoy the clever work of people speaking out with just enough Trump deconstruction snark to fit this space and make you smile. Then enjoy the historical wisdom that breathes yet today.
-
Click me
-
Click me
- I decline utterly to be impartial
- as between the fire brigade and the fire.
- Winston Churchill, 1926
- Stand with anybody that stands right.
- Stand with him while he is right,
- and part with him when he goes wrong.
- Abraham Lincoln, 1854
________________________________________________
* Credit to Keith Olbermann for the term
-
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Thanks!
The Fine Print:
- Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
- There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
- Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
- 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.
- Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
- Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
- Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.
Click me
JA
Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Pharaohs
POST 1203
Who’s the Pharaoh?
WW II resulted in 6 million Jews being murdered. They made up over 36% of all Jews worldwide. But all the Jews in the world accounted for just 0.7% of world population. One result of that was world sympathy for this tiny minority that was the wretched victim of the hatred and brutality of the Holocaust. That sympathy was part of the impetus for the United Nations vote to recognize the new state of Israel.
Israel continued to enjoy world sympathy and support, partly because of recurrent attacks on Israel by Arab and Muslim states in the area. We all love an underdog. Sometimes.
That world support ratcheted up on October 7, 2023 with the horrific attacks by Hamas. But then Israel mounted its offense and now has backed itself into a corner. Its hard line position of ongoing military attacks on the rubble that is Gaza and, far worse, the Israeli blockade of food and medical supplies – humanitarian aid – intended for Palestinians has raised the anger of millions. Due to that cruelty Israel is fast losing world support and making itself a pariah state.
The Children of Israel (Hebrews, not yet Jews) entered Egypt roughly 3,800 years ago. They wound up slaves to the Pharaoh and at last escaped in what was named the Exodus about 430 years later. Passover is a story of redemption from slavery and the universal wish for freedom. Pharaoh kept freedom from the Children of Israel.
But now Israel is the pharaoh, oppressing Palestinians.
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Today’s Other Pharaoh, If We Let Him
Chicago radio personality Patty Vasquez (WCPT, 820-AM, Chicago) has managed to connect the dots into a clarity that you’ve felt in your bones but may have been unable to articulate. From her post Everything is For Sale: Trump Turned Democracy into a Transaction:
[Trump is b]uying more political power. Buying favorable testimony. Everything is negotiable when you’re running the country like your personal criminal enterprise.
The Texas gerrymander isn’t about fair representation, it’s about purchasing a House majority. The Maxwell interviews aren’t about justice for victims, they’re about shopping for dirt on [Trump’s] enemies. Every institution, every norm, every democratic tradition is just another item in Trump’s democracy yard sale.
We’re not sliding toward authoritarianism anymore. We’re there. And we better start fighting our way out.
Because now Trump is an American pharaoh.
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Recall Jimmy Buffett’s call to us: “There’s still so much to be done.” Find a way to make good trouble. Find a way to disobey.
We’ll find nobody in the Trump administration or in any suck up red state who will change their evil ways because we asked nicely, so we have to resort to something with muscle.
I’m calling for a nationwide strike – a work stoppage
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– by all immigrant workers. It’s detailed here and it’s no joke.
Rosa Parks refused to obey the order to move to the back of the bus and she became an avatar for courage to fight what was wrong. The Montgomery, AL city officials refused to abandon their racist, segregationist ways. Nothing could sway them until Montgomery’s Black people refused to ride the city buses. They boycotted for over a year and, faced with bankruptcy of the system, the city at last succumbed to the insistent, non-violent pressure of the brave people who, instead of riding the bus, walked miles to create change.
We’re in a similar position now. Trump will never give in to demands for democracy because of our demonstrations alone. Far more powerful will be our refusing to work.
– Let the produce rot in the fields
– Let building construction grind to a halt
– Let restaurants and hotels be unable to operate, including Mar-a-Lago
– Let rich people’s landscaping become overgrown and go to seed
It may be insufficient for only immigrants to strike and it may be grossly unfair, too. So, let’s expand this strike to all democracy loving Americans. Our rights and power to withhold ourselves is something no ICE goons can stop and no Presidential temper tantrum or boundless greed can control.
Let my people go!
Who The Other Side Is
Mehdi Hassan is an impossibly intelligent fellow. He recently had a whirlwind debate with 20 people, one at a time. They were young Trump voters who proclaimed world views vastly different from Hassan’s and likely from yours. Their self-proclaimed identities went all the way from racists and White supremacists to self-proclaimed fascists and Nazis. You know: D*cks.
The back-and-forth is fascinating. As interesting as the debate are the reactions of the group when they are watching others engaging with Hassan. You may be surprised and likely appalled at what they applaud. Watch the exchange here.
Medical News
Scientists at the Center on Brain Dysfunction have isolated a new and powerful bacterium. This has been a decades long effort to identify the cause of self-destructive and often cruel behavior that eventually leads to pronounced dementia. The bacterium has been identified as:
Stupidococcus Stupidoniae
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Stupidococcus readily infects others, especially in closed environments, like in Congressional caucus rooms and in cloak rooms. In early stages a patient with stupidococcus may sound lucid and even confident in making pronouncements, but as the infection progresses logical functions deteriorate markedly.
Speech patterns become increasingly unintelligible, with words garbled and flamboyant phrases repeated many times in a single, overly long sentence. Unsupported superlative claims that adjoin most statements are like nothing anyone has ever seen. That is especially pernicious, as a person suffering from stupidococcus may appear to be confident but actually his internal light is, at best, only flickering. Practitioners should monitor for signs of paranoia, often manifest by violence, like subjects throwing ketchup on the wall.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced last week that he is terminating grants for further research of this disease so that people don’t come to expect anything from government. His funding cuts for mRNA research should close the door on progress toward disease prevention and reduce what he called “socialist aid” to millions who suffer from this now incurable disease and others. Kennedy declared that his actions will combat waste, fraud and abuse and that he expects the number of new cases of autism to decline, offering no plausible explanation for that.
Upon hearing the news of Kennedy’s financial aid cuts to medical research, former head of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele reminded Americans that, “You can’t cure stupid,” adding, “and now we never will.”
The Deconstructing Trump Corner
.
- Office tends to confer a dreadful plausibility
- on even the most negligible of those who hold it.
- Mark Lawson 1992
- Among all the diseases of the mind
- there is not one more epidemical
- or more pernicious than the love of flattery.
- Richard Steele, 1711
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And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
- Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
- There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
- Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
- 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.
- Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
- Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
- Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.
Click me
JA
Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
