Posts by: Jack Altschuler

Flash Message for Joe Biden and All Democrats


Reading time – 3:32  .  .  .

Even the most casual observer knows that Donald Trump will spin everything about coronavirus so that he looks good. He will lie, he will try to force revisionist history on us and he will declare in unambiguous terms that only he can lead us out of the pandemic. He’ll tell us he knows more than the doctors and the epidemiologists and that only because of him has the astonishingly self-defeating COVID-19 test kit shortage been solved.

There will be more, of course, but the point is that he will ignore and deny his months long bumbling of this crisis. Instead, he will declare his genius and heroism in protecting the citizens of this country. The question for those of us living in the real world is how we will deal with this hurricane of presidential self-serving, deadly fantasy. Here’s how:

DEMOCRATS, GET YOUR HEADS OFF OF PURITY TESTS AND BORING POLICY ARGUMENTS AND

GET IN FRONT OF THIS!

  1. Unite behind one voice.
  2. Establish a single point of contact for COVID-19 information.
  3. Declare exactly what needs to be done, including enlisting the Army Corps of Engineers to refit appropriate structures like hotels, barracks, apartment buildings, field houses and more to become auxiliary hospital facilities. Utilize FEMA resources wherever it’s possible (tents, mobile living facilities, food stockpiles, transportation equipment, etc.).
  4. Secure beds – any beds – for these new facilities.
  5. Order manufacturing facilities to shift from whatever they were constructing to make COVID-19 test kits, hospital masks, gowns, respirators, ventilators, specialty ICU equipment, oxygen generation machines and all the rest of the medical materials we’ll need.
  6. Establish drive-thru testing stations everywhere so that all 325,000,000 Americans can be screened, including those showing no symptoms.
  7. Establish an emergency education panel to identify best practices to help teachers to educate our millions of school children remotely.
  8. Figure out safe food and medical supply, including delivery services that don’t put delivery people and recipients at greater risk.
  9. Require broadband and internet services providers to maximize performance for everyone.
  10. Provide emergency funding for the development of a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19. This is no time to hide behind “free market” philosophies. When a vaccine is available require all Americans to be vaccinated, including the anti-vax crowd. And make the vaccine available to the entire world immediately. If another country develops a vaccine first, go get it.

Then stand in front of the American people and deliver a presidential message of leadership, outlining your plan, calling for sacrifice for our common good and declaring your belief in all of us. Do it before President Nero bumbles through the same message reading a Tele-Promp-Ter. Be the presidential one.

We can’t wait until the next debate for this declaration because more people will die. DO THIS NOW!

And DON’T deliver your message from the podium standing shoulder-to-shoulder with politicians and healthcare professionals, all of whom know better than to be close enough to breathe, cough and sneeze on one another. Lead by example.

WHOOPS! You’re too late.

Yesterday the President held a presser with VP Pence, the head of the VA and a couple of medical types, all foolishly standing shoulder-to-shoulder. They outlined some of what’s in the list above.

Trump continued his happy talk, although he’s sounding a little more serious about this pandemic. At least he isn’t still telling us that the virus will magically go away.

The experts by the podium were very short on specificity. We heard about a phantom self-swab test kit and that a couple of hospital ships are being deployed – somewhere.

Except we learned later that both ships are down for maintenance and one won’t be ready for weeks. Worse, these ships have no medical staff. They will have to round up doctors, nurses and technicians in order to be of any use to us. The problem is that there are no spare medical people. All are maxed out at existing hospitals or they’re down with coronavirus. So for now, hospital ships are largely yet more Trumpian happy talk.

We heard that FEMA is being put on alert, although we haven’t a clue what they will do, nor do they.

So, maybe it’s not too late to stand up and be the presidential one. Americans want the truth. What if someone told it to them? Try it.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Destiny


Reading time – 2:46  .  .  .

President Trump has not just bungled facts, spewed false happy talk and continued to lie his way through his presidency and this pandemic. He has also made clear that he is not responsible for anything that’s happening if he thinks it might make him look bad.

He told us that he’s not responsible for our total lack of preparedness for COVID-19 or for its reach or for the severity of its impact, this in the face of his having completely disbanded our Pandemic Response Team and cut funding for the CDC in 2018. The people he canned are the very people who made up the very team that could have minimized our suffering due to COVID-19, had they been in place and had they proper funding and authority. Of course, the President would also have had to listen to them, follow their advice and not say stupid stuff. There was never much of a chance of any of that happening.

So, here’s a little snark from last Sunday’s post, in case you missed it. It is not offered because of the snark; it is offered because this is our reality.

As Granny struggles in her hospital bed, gasping for just a little more air from her respirator for her pneumonia-soaked lungs, her MAGA hat wearing family is gathered around her. They know this is the end and they weep for their love of her and for their looming loss. Suddenly, the lights go blue-black, the walls begin to shake, and the ceiling speakers boom in Darth Vader’s voice: “It is your des-ti-ny.” And they tremble in their horror and their fear, because all at once they realize that this is what they chose.*

It didn’t have to be this way for Granny, but we made it this way. We made this our destiny.

Last Friday the President bragged about non-existent tests for COVID-19 and about drive-thru testing sites that are nothing but fantasy. He has no plans to enlist the Army Corps of Engineers to transform buildings to meet the enormous hospital capacity we’ll need in just a couple of weeks. There’s no action to re-purpose unused manufacturing capacity to build the ventilators, hospital protective gear or anything else that is already in desperately short supply. The result of this ineptitude is that more people will die for lack of testing and care.

The differentiator that is invisible to Trump is that this isn’t a reality TV show, a make believe land where he can make up stuff and it becomes so, where everyone goes out for drinks after the taping. This isn’t a Hollywood movie where murdered characters get up after doing a scene and go home at the end of the day. This is real life and death and the people who will die from this virus will never go out for drinks or ever go home again because they will stay dead. Worse, more will die because of Trump’s ineptitude and dishonesty, including Granny.

This pandemic is completely over the head of this President and this time it isn’t a little thing like a trillion dollar gift to his rich pals. This time it is life or death for countless Americans. He is incompetent to discharge the duties of his office, including protecting the citizens of this country.

Back to the Star Wars metaphor:

Both Darth Vader and the evil Emperor told Luke Skywalker that joining with them was his destiny. With just the force of his will he refused both of them and that destiny and eventually set things right throughout the galaxy. We can do that. We can refuse the destiny of so many Americans gasping their last breaths due to COVID-19. We can lead our country and the world to set things right.

It’s about our choices as a nation and the consequences our choices bring. We can make our own des-ti-ny. That’s always been the American way.

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Finally, the people of Italy are just ahead of us in dealing with this killer disease. Here is a video message from them that you’re sure to want to watch .

Second finally, Mike Pence proudly claimed on Monday that we have a million COVID-19 test kits out right now. Great – perhaps that’s true. Only 319 million to go.

Really finally, it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Large gatherings are prohibited, so drink a Guinness in your kitchen and be your own parade.

* The legal thing: The Empire Strikes Back (from which this clip is taken) and all other movies are copyrighted material. I pay royalties to be allowed to use movie clips legally both here and in my leadership keynotes and workshops. Just thought you might like to know.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Consequences


Reading time – 3:55  .  .  .

Caution: There’s just a little bit of snark at the very end. Please practice safe snark.

We’re still in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, although if they were able to speak for themselves the over 5,800 people who have died of the illness might describe this stage a bit differently. Nevertheless, all healthcare professionals have made it clear that this is going to get far worse before it gets better. What you need to know is where we are and how we got here. That will be instructive for knowing where we must go.

To become clear about where we are with this disease you can view a regularly updated global tracker at the Johns Hopkins CSSE site. The acceleration of the numbers is most alarming, as we’re seeing a doubling of cases every six days. Click here for a most useful analogy that explains that.

As for how we got here, start with this: we knew about this virus as far back as December 2019 – a quarter of a year ago. The epidemiologists were clear at that time that this was going to be a very big problem and advised immediate preparation; however, their cautionary recommendations were ignored. Perhaps as bad, had we taken their advice, there would have been a huge obstacle to overcome in order for anything helpful to happen. Here’s why.

President Donald Trump fired the U.S. Pandemic Response Team in 2018, calling it a cost cutting measure. I don’t buy it.

The Pandemic Response Team had been instituted by President Obama following the successful battle against the Ebola virus in 2014. It included sub-teams at the CDC, the Defense Department and at the National Security Agency so that we would be ready in all those areas when – not if – the next pandemic arrived. Based on so many other episodes of Trump, in his boundless insecurity, deleting Obama’s programs regardless of their value to the nation, my belief about his motivation to disband this critical unit is that it was yet another effort to erase everything bearing Obama’s name.*

Regardless, the professionals were removed. Those firings left us with no immediate expertise or mechanisms to deal with a new pandemic. None. And Trump accepts no responsibility for that. Further, “Trump also cut [overall] funding for the CDC, forcing the CDC to cancel its efforts to help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics .  .  .  Among the countries abandoned? China.”

COVID-19 was first identified in Wuhan City, China. Had we helped to mitigate its spread then, world conditions might be far better right now.

This story gets worse, as you know, because we still don’t have one tenth of one percent of the testing capability we need. The CDC’s kit was fouled by a bad reagent, making it essentially useless. Our commercial labs are still ramping up and we haven’t sourced test kits from abroad. The resources we do have are not just insufficient in quantity, but are also slow and cumbersome. There are other proven options ready to go now, including a machine made in Germany that can produce accurate results in 1 hour instead of 4 hours or even a day or two. However, the FDA is bumbling through authorization to use these machines. Here’s a link to a full report on how this COVID-19 testing ineptitude happened.

The truth is that we don’t know how many people in America have the virus because we are unable to test any but extreme cases due to our lack of test kits. That’s an impediment to our knowing who needs to be quarantined so they don’t infect others, where the virus is spreading, the extent of its impact, where to deploy resources like ventilators, protective gear for hospital staff, oxygen generation equipment, surgical masks and so much more.

During Trump’s Oval Office talk on March 11 he told us, “Testing and testing capabilities are expanding rapidly, day by day. We are moving very quickly.” None of that was true. That is a key problem, not just because of our inability to know what’s going on, but because as Trump continues to spew happy talk and magical thinking, he isn’t firmly addressing our very real challenges or providing the leadership we need. Almost as bad, he contradicts the experts who, unlike Trump, are knowledgeable. That leaves all the rest of us not knowing what to believe. That’s a potent way to spread fear.

In my day job I deliver keynotes and workshops on great leadership and I know when I don’t see it.

The point of all of this is not to pen yet another diatribe about our incompetent President. Rather, it is to illustrate how we got to where we are. We must be clear about what can happen when we aren’t careful in our political choices, because this pandemic, which could have been minimized, is in the process of killing hundreds, thousands or even millions of Americans who could have been protected had we been prepared.

Elections do have consequences and what’s happening right now is one of them.

It didn’t have to be this way.**

Links to Resources

There is a cost to getting people tested and to help those who need treatment. Watch the entire clip – ALL THE WAY TO THE END – of Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) making sure we’ll get what we’ll need.

Advice For the Public – World Health Organization – WHO

Nine Charts that Explain the Corona Virus Pandemic – Vox

CoronaVIrus (COVID-2019) – What You Should Know – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Download and read this. It is a PDF format of an email received yesterday from a local shop and contains the comments of four doctors, two of them in Italy. It is long – please read all of it.

Beware of those who poo-poo the threat of COVID-19, claiming far more people die annually from the flu and other terrible things. Every year the flu starts with small numbers; that’s how it was with the terrible Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918; it was the same for Bubonic Plague, which eventually killed 25% of the people in Europe. The disease number comparisons are meaningless until it’s all over. Right now we can’t even see to when this corona virus will be over. Worse, these comparisons can lull people into carelessness. Ignore them.

Fun Facts

We’re already running out of respirators and, as mentioned, the patient load doubles every six days.

It is expected that between 75 – 150 million Americans will contract COVID-19 and 15-20% of those affected will require hospitalization. That’s between 11,250,000 and 30,000,000 hospital patients, nearly all of whom will need to stay a while. Those numbers don’t include patients suffering from other maladies requiring hospitalization.

There are 924,107 staffed hospital beds in the U.S.

Do the math.

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Finally, stay well and don’t do medically foolish stuff. Help your family, friends and neighbors, the old lady across the street – and do it carefully. We’re all in this together. Because Hillary Clinton was right: It takes a village. And we are that village.

  • *President Trump has repeatedly insisted that he’s not to blame for our medically threatening conditions. His having disbanded the Pandemic Response Team puts the lie to his words.
  • ** “This way” – As Granny struggles in her hospital bed, gasping for just a little more air from her respirator for her pneumonia-soaked lungs, her MAGA hat wearing family is gathered around her. They know this is the end and they weep for their love of her and for their looming loss. Then the walls shake, as the ceiling speakers boom in Darth Vader’s voice: “It is your des-ti-ny.” And they tremble in their horror and their fear, because all at once they realize that this is what they chose.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Brats and Beer


Reading time – 1:47  .  .  .

On March 8 I gave a heads up about what we can expect from Republicans in the upcoming general election campaign. I wrote,

The Democratic nominee can expect filth, lies, false associations, fear mongering, muck making, more lies, voter suppression, plus nonstop lies.

And it has already begun.

Do you remember the six (yes, SIX!) House investigations of Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi incident? And the other four? We wasted millions of dollars investigating an evil Republican fantasy. Every one of those gratuitous hearings found Hillary guilty of nothing – NOTHING! What the dishonest Republicans managed to do was to keep a very sad incident before the public for years, sliming Clinton with implied guilt. We don’t know if or how many voters were turned against Clinton by that wretched performance of deceit, but the Republicans are doing it again.

Ron Johnson (R-WI) is the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has been investigating Joe and Hunter Biden and their connections to Ukraine for months. They have been doing that in spite of the fact that the proper agencies have investigated and found absolutely nothing untoward was done by either Biden – NOTHING! But the Republican smear campaign is already rolling and in high gear.

What is clear as can be is that the Republican toadies for Trump want to keep the Biden-Ukraine connection in the public eye until, say, November 4 with the goal of smearing Joe Biden as they did Hillary. As abhorrent as that is, there is good news embedded in it.

Ron Johnson is running for re-election this fall. The good people of Wisconsin don’t like dishonesty and are already less than crazy about him (approval rating of 28%). They may very well send him packing. In Wisconsin, after all, they know when the beer has gone flat and the bratwurst is rotten.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA

 


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

Music Musing and Someone You Didn’t Know You Knew


Reading time – 1:22  .  .  .

A while back a commercial caught my ear because of the music playing in the background. It was a piece of our music and it dawned on me that this was a most unwelcome tunes grab. Since that time I’ve noted more of that kind of thing and kept an informal survey. Here’s a sampling from just a short term review of television commercials:

Okay, it’s clear whom they’re attempting to appeal to. We all get it. And we can safely assume that copyrights have been honored and appropriate royalties have been paid.

But jeez, they’re stealing our tunes!

Rosalind Palmer Walters died on Wednesday last week at age 95. There’s a good chance that you don’t know her by that name, but you surely know her by her other name: “Rosie the Riveter.”

She didn’t go by Rosie, preferring Roz, and her story is remarkable. She was a child of wealth (daddy was the head of E.R. Squibb). At age 19 and shortly after WW II broke out, she did what so many women did – pitch in – to help their country. She got a job on the night shift in a Connecticut factory popping rivets in the construction of Navy/Marine F4U Corsair fighters.

Vaught F4U Corsair

It’s said that Ms. Walters was the original model for this symbol of American can-do. There were others, too, who were models for “Rosie the Riveter” and we honor all of them for their sacrifice in the name of patriotism. This is especially poignant now, as March 8 was International Women’s Day.

Thank you, Ms. Walters – and all the millions of Rosies.

I urge you to read her New York Times obit here.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Potpourri v10.0


Reading time – 4:31; Viewing time – 7:49  .  .  .

First, some stories you may have missed because of the torrential downpour of coverage of the primary elections and COVID-19. And don’t miss the BREAKING GOOD NEWS at the end.

First Story: Drugs

It is notable that our government is at least putting on a show of wanting to help people hooked on opioids. What makes it notable is that this is the polar opposite of the way we dealt with people hooked on heroin, cocaine, crack and other drugs. Those were commonly (but mistakenly) believed to be primarily a devil in communities of color. Instead of helping those people, they got locked up. But today opioids are slamming white people, so now we go all goodie two-shoes and they get help. Like I said: notable.

Now, A Justice Update

It was easy to miss the U.S. Court of Appeals in DC chickening out Friday before last. Nevertheless, chicken out they did, by refusing to rule on the House of Representatives’ lawsuit to force Don McGahn to testify. They chicken-clucked that they don’t have jurisdiction to consider the case.

You may recall that McGahn was the White House Counsel who twice refused Trump’s order to fire Robert Mueller. He resigned his post over that conflict. Regardless, he was caught in the net of Donald Trump’s baseless, unconstitutional assertion of absolute immunity.

Trump ordered everyone who could so much as spell “Executive Branch” to refuse to testify before House committees. McGahn received a subpoena from the House, ordering him to testify in committee hearings. He defied that subpoena and obeyed He Who Just Makes Stuff Up In Order To Serve Himself and the House sued to force McGahn to show up and testify. The District Court declared the obvious, that there is no absolute immunity and ordered McGahn to testify. The appellate court is the one that chickened out.

By saying that they didn’t have jurisdiction to consider the case they abdicated a primary role of the judiciary. They left no way to resolve disputes between Congress and the Executive Branch. All that’s left is a showdown on the National Mall at high noon between the House Sergeant at Arms and the Secret Service. It’s insanity.

And how very cowardly a way that is to refuse to hold the President accountable. The DC Court of Appeals has enabled this President to vastly expand executive power all the way to authoritarianism, and that’s exactly where he wants to go.

Thanks a lot, D.C. Court of Appeals, for your cowardice in selling out our democracy and the Constitution. Because of your refusal to bring Trump’s stonewalling to justice, you are, indeed, chickens. Buck-buck.

Have you noticed how pervasive is cowardice when it’s time to stand up to this lawless President? It has now infected all three branches of government and has allowed the continuing destruction of Constitutional protections.

On to the Elections

Here Are Three Take-Aways From Super Tuesday

First, it is impossible to overstate the importance and impact of Rep James Clyburn’s (D-SC) endorsement of Joe Biden. His passion, his gravitas and his clarity drove thousands of South Carolinians to the polls to vote for Biden. That tsunami of a win influenced voters across the country, as did the endorsements of Biden from Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke. But it’s more than that.

It’s also the highly energized, impassioned hordes of Bernie supporters who didn’t bother to vote. Sure, they show up at rallies for the sugar high, but when it counts, they’re nowhere to be seen. Further, their volume is out of proportion to their numbers. So much for the dramatically increased turnout of young people Sanders has promised. That’s the second point.

Third, and most powerful, this is a Watergate moment.

By the time the break-in, the cover-up, the investigations and hearings were over and Richard Nixon had resigned in disgrace, our country was reeling from Watergate. Passions ran high, nearly every other issue had been put on a back burner and the country was in pain and exhausted. We needed a way to calm down. Enter Gerald Ford.

Ford had been a congressman from Michigan forever. Everyone knew him as a really nice guy, a decent guy, an honest guy, a count-on guy. His big dream was to one day become Speaker of the House. Then suddenly he was President of the United States following Watergate. Perhaps his pardoning of Nixon was his notion of a first step toward calming the nation. Regardless, his calm voice was what the nation needed. But because he was tainted by association with the Watergate scandal, it wasn’t enough.

So, in 1976 we elected a preacher-style peanut farmer. Electing Jimmy Carter President was a complete divorce from everything Watergate and was what the nation most needed. We’re in that kind of moment now.

Beyond the well-earned anger over the destruction of so much of what we hold dear and our horror over the ongoing violation of our values, beyond a desire to set all of that right, we have a hunger for order to replace the chaos. We want an end to the vile language and the abhorrent behavior. We’d like to feel safe and just breathe normally once more.

And that is why so many people voted last Tuesday for Joe Biden instead of pugnacious Bernie Sanders. It wasn’t about policies at all.*

And Finally, The General Election

From this President, his supporters, SuperPACs promoting Trump, SuperPACs denigrating the Democratic nominee, the 501-c4s, slimy Republican operatives, foreign countries’ infiltration and infestation of social media to subvert our election, attempts to misuse parts of government, like false criminal investigations and all the rest  .  .  .

.  .  .  the Democratic nominee can expect filth, lies, false associations, fear mongering, muck making, more lies, voter suppression, plus nonstop lies.

The Democratic candidate will have to stand up to all that and more. He will continually have to focus the election to be a referendum on Trump, his lies, betrayals, incompetencies, his law breaking, his imperiling of our national security and his destruction of our democracy. The candidate must not become defensive or inappropriately angry as lies are spread about him, lies about his record, his qualifications, lies accusing him of illegal acts and personal lies designed to gouge out his heart. He’ll require a backbone of steel to stay focused on attacking Trump again and again. There will be no rest until November 4.

Oddly, people are fighting to get that job. Now, though, it’s our turn.

People are standing in line for up to seven hours to vote in their primaries. The wait is largely because of Republican voter suppression caused by the closing of so many polling places. Good on those voters for their fortitude and their insistence on doing the right thing in the face of Republican voter suppression.

When it’s your turn to vote in your primary and in the general election, get in line and stay in line, no matter how long it takes.

Do it to honor those who went before you, who stood in line all day to do a most American thing. Do it for yourself. Do it for your country.

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Quote of the Week

Elizabeth Warren was “incredibly competent, pragmatic, intelligent and well-spoken — in other words, she never had a chance.” Seth Meyers

BREAKING GOOD NEWS!

Thanks to the untiring work of the good foiks at www.Represent.US, the Virginia state legislature has put on the November ballot a proposed amendment to END GERRYMANDERING. The citizens of Virginia will at last have the opportunity to stop this politically manipulative practice that effectively robs the people of fair representation. Quoting Joe Biden as he described to Barack Obama the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, “This is a BFD.”

Click the pic to the left to have a look at the FaceBook page detailing this wonderful achievement. As well, go to their website and watch the video narrated by Michael Douglas at the top. And have a look at this most informative video Jennifer Lawrence narrates. I promise you’ll learn plenty

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* See Bret Stevens’ column here. Many thanks to J.C. for pointing it out.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

What’s The Difference?


Reading time – 1:59  .  .  .

Following Amy Klobuchar’s announcement that she was dropping from the presidential nomination race and indicated that she intends to endorse Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders was asked for his reaction.

Reporter’s Question:

Are you concerned about the moderates consolidating behind Joe Biden?

Bernie Sanders:

Look, it is no secret. I mean, the Washington Post has 16 articles a day on this. That there is a massive effort trying to stop Bernie Sanders. That’s not a secret to anybody in this room.  The corporate establishment is coming together. The political establishment is coming together and they will do everything. They are really getting nervous that working people are standing up.

His answer gives us insight into Sanders, perhaps in ways he did not intend. Here are three points:

  1. He talked about himself in the third person. It’s a demagogue’s self-serving construct used to promote himself, this time posing as a poor victim. Apparently, we’re supposed to feel sorry for him.
  2. He cites imagined action by “the corporate establishment” and “the political establishment” as though there is an agreed definition of who “they” are and what “they” are doing. His claim that “they” will “do everything” is suggestive that those “others” will cheat, lie and do whatever bad stuff “they” would do, all this without any evidence whatsoever.
  3. He claims (without evidence) that “they” are “really getting nervous because working people are standing up.” In that one claim he makes up motivation out of nothing. He makes it sound like efforts to stop Bernie are the same as efforts to suppress working people, all this without evidence. In addition, he makes “working people” victims, promoting an us-versus-them construct.

What is scary about all this is these are exactly the things that Donald Trump does all the time.

We’ve complained about and been sickened by the divisiveness Trump creates and the painting of some as hocus-pocus enemies, like “fake news” and the “deep state,” whatever that is.

We’ve become weary of the demonizing of “others” that separates us, too, yet here’s Bernie, the front runner for Democrats, and he’s just as manipulative as Trump.

Pete Buttigieg was right at the last debate, saying that a battle between Sanders and Trump would be nothing but chaos. Worse, regardless of who would win such a contest, our norms, our decency and our democracy would be torn down.

Far right or far left – is there a difference to us which extremism we dump on ourselves?

————————————


Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Science and The New Police Squads


CAUTION TO SENSITIVE READERS: This post contains snarky descriptors that include a couple of words Mom told you not to say. Reader and viewer discretion is advised.

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Reading time – 4:05; Viewing time – 6:27  .  .  .

We’ve had many years of various people denying science:

It’s Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) denying global warming, even as the tides rolled across the streets of Miami Beach, flooding the sandals and pants legs of tourists and the businesses of his constituents.

It’s Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) speaking from the well of the Senate and displaying a snowball as proof that there is no global warming .

It’s Donald Trump not only denying global warming, but blaming the entire controversy on the Chinese, saying they created a hoax designed to harm our economy. He makes his phantasmagorical claim, even as Pacific islands are swallowed by the waves.

But here’s the thing: The disappearance of huge amounts of Arctic and Antarctic ice and the commensurate rise in sea levels don’t care whether anyone believes in them; they just continue to be the stark reality.

Storms are becoming more frequent and more severe. Rainfall distribution is drastically altered, creating both zones of flooding and expanded zones of drought where those never existed. The changes are impacting food production, health and habitability. Reality denial doesn’t affect any of that.

It’s the same reality thing with gravity. It will continue to glue us to the ground and will make the Earth continue to do laps around the sun instead of flying off into the cosmos regardless of whether anyone thinks gravity exists. We know that because scientists who have studied this, who are really smart and really knowledgeable have drawn valid conclusions from facts that are irrefutable. That’s the reality, whether we like it or not.

It’s both remarkable and wondrous that each of us is free to believe whatever stupid, short-term, self-serving crap we want to believe. There are no Police Dumb-Ass Squads to lock up wingnuts who reject observable reality. But we’ve reached a new low, however impossible it may seem that there is someplace lower, and it involves the denial of science and reality.

At his hastily called press conference on Wednesday, the President of the United States gave us a verbal pat on the hand that was devoid of both reality and science. He told us not to worry because Coronavirus (COVID-19) is no biggy. He told us that we’ll have a vaccine to deal with it “very soon,” even though everyone from our government healthcare agencies to the healthcare industry itself, the people who are working to develop a vaccine, have told us flatly that it will take a minimum of 12 – 18 months before a vaccine is available, and that’s only if all goes well.

Trump continued with his reality denial, telling us that the risk of Coronavirus to Americans is small. He told us our 15 cases (actually, there were 60 when Trump spoke) would be down to 1 or 2 soon and the virus would disappear almost magically. And you can believe that’s all true only if you block your eyes and ears so that you can’t detect the lightning fast spread of this killer disease around the world.

To be clear, “risk” involves not what exists, but what may be coming. Trump ignored and continues to ignore the reality of the risk we face and he put us all in greater danger with his false words. We should be alarmed by this risk of pandemic. Not panicked; alarmed.

Trump has put VP Mike Pence at the head of our response team to deal with Coronavirus, explaining that he made that decision because of Pence’s expertise and great success when he was governor of Indiana dealing with HIV. That’s when Pence took 2 months to do anything at all. Then he refused to implement a needle sharing program that would have limited HIV infections. Then he declared the cure was to pray away HIV. That was his great success in Indiana. Seriously.

In addition, Trump has muzzled our healthcare experts, the very people we need to hear from regularly. That leaves us to decide whether we can trust whatever dribbles out of the mouths of our healthcare ignorant politicians. Putting Pence in charge and muzzling the people who actually know something about disease are yet more Trump reality denial and are likely to harm Americans.

Because as John Pavlovitz wrote, You Can’t Gaslight a Pandemic, Donald. It’s that pesky reality thing. It just won’t go away, no matter how many lies and misleading statements are spewed. And reality denial isn’t limited to politicians.

Shockingly, a group of anti-vaccine activists in Maine got an initiative called Question 1 onto their ballot, seeking to repeal a law requiring schoolchildren to be vaccinated. Their slogan is “Reject Big Pharma.” I think instead they should be honest and use the slogan, “We don’t care if our kids infect your kids.”

There’s no vaccine for Coronavirus, but when there is, the reality is that we’re going to force-vaccinate everyone in order to stop this pandemic. And we damned well will be thanking Big Pharma for saving our lives. To the anti-vaccine activists in Maine: Just shut up.

Reality tells us that we are facing an existential threat from Coronavirus, regardless of Trump’s or anyone else’s denials of science and reality. This pandemic is coming soon to a community near you and there is precious little any of us can do about it, other than to be sensibly defensive. Don’t let “He Who Lies When the Truth Would Do” lull you into passivity. His lying and misleading are now more than moral outrages; they are life threatening if we allow them to be. It’s time to prepare and to take extra healthcare measures.

And it may be time to recruit Police Dumb-Ass Squads to arrest the reality deniers, who will harm us unless we stop them. Come to think of it, we can do that on November 3rd. And we must not get this one wrong.*

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*This is important: Read Tom Friedman’s astonishingly sensible post, Dems: You Can Defeat Trump in a Landslide from the Feb. 25 New York Times. Click this link to view it online or click here to download a PDF hard copy.

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Quote of the Week

“Mike Bloomberg wants to buy the election with his own money. Bernie Sanders wants to buy it with ours.” – courtesy of R.M.

————————————


Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Enough is Enough


Reading time – 1:56  .  .  .

(Jack is standing behind the island counter in his kitchen. A sunny back yard is seen through the windows behind him. He pumps his right arm up and down for emphasis as he speaks.)

We’ve heard this socialist, communist-sounding stuff for far too long.

Bernie keeps pushing free stuff as though it might really be free and as though he thinks that government is the best solution for every challenge. He constantly demeans our business people and companies as though all of them are criminals. As if that weren’t enough, now he’s singing the praises of Fidel Castro. If you were to craft a plan designed to disgust and repel the majority of American voters, you couldn’t concoct a better one.

In 2016 Donald Trump won the votes of millions of people, largely for two reasons:

  1. People were angry at government and Trump wasn’t a politician, so they hoped he would do better.
  2. And millions of people voted for him solely because he wasn’t Hillary.
→Bernie Sanders is in the process of driving millions of Americans to vote for Trump solely because he isn’t Bernie.

 

I’ve had it up to here (points to the bottom of his nose) with Bernie’s craziness and self-defeat.

I’m sick and tired (strong right arm pumping) of this extreme lefty nonsense. His radical base loves the power of his dark side, but most Americans don’t.

Like the people in Duluth, MN, Punxsutawney, PA and Kalamazoo, MI who don’t go for that stuff. Neither do people in Dayton, OH, El Paso, TX, Charlotte, NC, Flagstaff, AZ or Tallahassee, FL. This crazy, self-defeating nonsense has to stop. RIGHT NOW! (two arm pumps). ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! (two more arm pumps).

(Shift to camera two, 90° left. The background is dark and it’s difficult to make out details.)

Recently Bernie bragged,

“I’ve got news for the Republican establishment. I’ve got news for the Democratic establishment. They can’t stop us.”

He’s wrong.

The easy way for Republicans to stop Bernie is for him to be the Democratic nominee. Then Donald Trump will win and be President for four more years. No sane person could want that (awkward gesture, arms to both sides, palms up).

The are two ways for Democrats to stop this runaway, self-destructive Bernie train. The far lefties are energized to vote, so first, mobs of non-radical Democratic voters have to show up for their primaries and vote for a moderate, non-Bernie candidate. Given our pervasive national apathy toward elections (only about 30% of eligible voters participate in primaries), this simply cannot be the only strategy.

The second way is for at least 4 candidates to drop out of the race and throw their support to the remaining moderate candidate. Economics will cause some candidates to quit the race. Others will have to volunteer. Then those who leave the race must endorse the remaining moderate candidate. That will give us an electable nominee. Otherwise, Trump will win and democracy will die. The trade off is as stark and as simple as that.

There are 350,000,000 people in America and about 50% of them meet the qualifications to be President of the United States. I want this current group of candidates to prove to us that they are better than a random selection from our citizen pool. I want them to demonstrate to us that our democracy is more important than their ambitions.

I’m sick and tired (much arm pumping) of self-defeat.

WAKE UP, CANDIDATES and WAKE UP, AMERICA before it’s too late.

APPENDIX

Read the Critical notes for 2020 Democratic candidates who want to get elected at the end of the post linked here.

————————————


Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

How The Country Was Lost – in Retrospect


Reading time – 4:03  .  .  .

It started well before the 2016 election. It started with birtherism.

The formal start of Donald Trump’s campaign began with a vile slur against Mexican people coming to this country. That was the first clear indication of the torrent of hate mongering to come. It continued with his Muslim ban and all his racial, ethnic and religious dog whistles and outright verbal attacks, including his infamous Charlottesville “good people on both sides” slur.

His declaration that we need more immigrants from Norway made it clear that the only people who would be welcome immigrants would be white European Christians. His ongoing marginalization of minority populations powerfully served to divide and even polarize the citizens, which weakened opposition to Trump and continues to this day.

During the 2016 campaign Trump repeatedly claimed that the election was rigged. He attacked the FBI, especially James Comey. Then he praised the FBI when Comey, announced – twice – the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails right before the election. When Trump won the election, oddly enough, the election was no longer rigged.

Not much later Trump resumed his back stabbing of Comey because he wouldn’t pledge fealty to Donald Trump, instead sticking with his oath to protect and defend the Constitution, which included investigating Russian interference in the election. That’s when Trump declared that the FBI was both corrupt and demoralized because of corrupt, weak leadership and resumed his attacks on Comey, eventually firing him and demanding that he be investigated for some imagined wrongdoing. What is significant about all the criticism is the profound effect it had in undermining public confidence in government.

Over the next four years the attacks on government and the undermining of our institutions were constant, including attacks on the press as “fake news,” which had the effect of reducing people’s trust in those who hold public officials – like the President – accountable. He gutted the State Department, brutally criticized “the generals”, fired everyone who showed so much as a raised eyebrow of disagreement and installed Trump loyalists throughout his Cabinet. That many had been lobbyists for the industries they were now to monitor was a plus for Trump and his control.

The undermining of government was powerfully enforced through vitriolic verbal attacks, many scandalous accusations and a continuous tweet storm of rage. His angry supporters, roughly 38% of the population, loved it. His raised middle finger tantrums spoke for them and their sense of betrayal and their disgust with government. It was tolerated by many centrists because of weak, ineffectual opposition.

Republicans were terrified of crossing him because of his verbal attacks and the certainty that they would get “primaried,” the dynamic that prevented his removal from office following his impeachment. This is exactly how a minority wrests power from the majority.

During the impeachment proceedings numerous State Department and military people testified under subpoena, even though Trump had ordered all Executive Branch personnel to refuse to testify as part of his stonewalling of the investigation. His response following the Senate refusal to convict him was to fire all who had testified and even some who had not. That created a powerful deterrent to anyone who might otherwise speak up in the future, giving Trump complete power over them.

Only one more thing was needed to secure absolute power: control of the judiciary and the intelligence community, the departments of government that have the power to investigate him. After that, there would be no impediment left to stop Trump’s assuming total control of the country.

Trump installed William Barr to the post of Attorney General and Barr wasted no time in becoming the personal attorney for Trump, instead of for the nation. Most notably, when the Mueller Report was released to him, Barr quickly said that he had reviewed the entire document and released a summary, in which he claimed that the report exonerated Trump of any wrongdoing, including conspiring with the Russians.

When Barr at last released the report, it was found that he had redacted so much of the Mueller report that many of Barr’s lies about it couldn’t be fact checked immediately. What was checkable was that Mueller specifically did not exonerate Trump, nor clear him of colluding with the Russians. But Barr’s dishonest summary was out for weeks before the complete report was released and that delay controlled the narrative for Trump.

Later, Barr inserted himself into Justice Department investigations with the clear intent to protect Trump’s operatives and attack his opponents. Indeed, Barr instructed federal prosecutors that all new investigations had to get approval from him or his designee, giving himself the power to protect Trump. This is precisely the way all authoritarians operate, using the legitimate mechanisms of government to dismantle its protections against abuse.

The final act of wresting total control came when the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) reported to the appropriate committees of Congress about Russian interference in the 2020 election. Even though the briefings were federally mandated, Trump fired the DNI and replaced him with a completely inexperienced Trump loyalist. In addition, he fired other long serving Intelligence Agency personnel.

With that, Trump effectively had dictatorial control over all of government. That even gave him the power to declare a national emergency and use that to cancel the 2020 election.

And that, in shorthand, is how the country was lost.

Buy and read this book. Click on it.

Critical notes for 2020 Democratic candidates who want to get elected:
  1. In order to win the 2020 election, it must be – it must only be – a referendum on Trump. You must attack and continue to attack. You must never stop putting before the public his criminality, his racism, his cruelty (at every opportunity decry his putting children in cages), his attempts to eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, his sell out of hard working Americans, his neutering of our national security in order to benefit Putin and the rest of his un-American outrages. Say it with me: UN-AMERICAN. Conservative and center-right voters see themselves as bedrock Americans, so this labeling of Trump will drive a wedge between them and the un-American president. Say it again: UN-AMERICAN.
  2. You must stop the circular firing squad. Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, you must obey the 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Democrat. Don’t do Trump’s work for him. Ever.
  3. Of course the primary election is important, BUT, every word you say in the primary season can and will be used against you in the general election. So, if you want to win the general election – you’re going to hate this –  you must stop promoting far left policies and memes, regardless of how fervently you believe in them. That includes Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, free college tuition, erasing student debt, socialism, calling out to “brothers and sisters” and the rest. Promoting those things will ensure that you only get the votes you already have from your base. You’ll drive away all the other votes that you need in order to win in the general election and Donald Trump will be reelected. Stop pissing off the 78% of the electorate that doesn’t embrace those ideas, because you need their votes in order to win.
  4. Stop your wonkiness about policies altogether. You bore listeners (i.e. voters). Okay, your true believers love it and they cheer wildly and you puff up and ride a high with each cheer. Everyone else has changed the channel. In all debates and speeches, you must make every issue solely a referendum on Trump. Park your wonk on your desk and don’t go back to find it until the general election is over.
  5. Following the Milwaukee DNC convention when you’re the nominee, you must make the election solely a referendum on Trump. Refer to points #1 and #4 above for further clarification.

————————————


Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

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