Posts by: Jack Altschuler

Tariffs, Afghanistan and Republicans


Reading time – 3:45; Viewing time – 5:00  .  .  .

Frequent reader, insightful commenter and friend John Calia directed me to a blog by John Mauldin discussing the issue of tariffs and trade wars. Mauldin is comprehensive and clear in his work and I urge you to link through and read his offering.

I was at one time an undergraduate econ major and I recall clearly a lecture by my professor, Dr. George Thatcher at Miami University. He talked about tariffs in great detail and showed how counter-productive they are. He was far too much the gentleman to use the word “idiotic” to describe them, but that word comes to mind as I conjure his clarity of description. He convinced me then of the certain backfire of tariffs and I have seen nothing in the intervening decades to change my mind.

Mauldin is spot on, especially as he invokes the obvious, now called “game theory,” in which other countries will not sit idle as we attempt to stack the deck in favor of the U.S. Other countries will adjust and act in their own best interests. Tariffs will backfire and hurt us greatly.

The Trump administration is focused on two – and only two – objectives. The first and most important is that everything is entirely about Trump getting continuous applause and accolades in his reality-TV-show administration. Declaring us victims of unfair trade deals and promising protective tariffs stokes his “base” and delivers a thundering applause line that feeds his narcissism. And there is a complete absence of people who actually know something about tariffs. What those experts say doesn’t trigger applause, so they’re of no use to Trump.

The second objective is driven by Stephen Bannon, who proudly proclaims that he wants to bring the establishment crashing down. If destroying the established order in its entirety is what is most important to Bannon and, by extension, is important to Trump, tariffs will be a huge aid in the effort. The result will not be pretty for the rest of us, but Bannon will be smiling and thumping his chest and congratulating Trump on how brilliant he is. I’m not sure, though, that even the America Firsters will be thumping their chests when we see hundreds of thousands of jobs disappear and former international friends being not at all friendly to us.

For now, pity General Kelly, who has taken a job where internecine warfare in the White House is the norm. Sadly, I think the likelihood of his success at establishing order and, in the present context, preventing worldwide disorder by means of tariffs, is next to nonexistent. Kelly and the nation deserve better.
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And another thing  .  .  .
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Our war in Afghanistan began with President George W. Bush declaring that we were going after the al Qaeda bad guys who attacked us on 9/11, this following his pulling our CIA people out of Tora Bora and allowing Osama bin Laden to escape. One would think, then, that once al Qaeda had been essentially eliminated that we’d bring our troops home. That didn’t happen.
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Instead, the mission morphed to ensuring that future al Qaeda bad guys wouldn’t have safe haven in Afghanistan. Did you ever see a statement defining that? What would a “no safe haven” Afghanistan look like to our troops slogging through the Afghan desert and mountains? How would we know that we had achieved that goal?
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Then the mission morphed again, this time to fighting the Taliban. I don’t recall the stated goal, nor a justification for warring against them. Note that the Taliban was composed of Afghans – they were religious fundamentalists waging a civil war in that most uncivil country. Why were we involved in that?
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Then the mission changed again to supporting the Afghan military, this with no specifically stated end goal other than, “until they can stand on their own,” something that has never happened in recorded history. How will we know when that has happened?
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The goal posts keep getting moved and this is by far the longest war in American history, continued now through three American presidencies. Somebody please tell me why we are making war in Afghanistan and how we’ll know we’ve accomplished our goals so that we can bring our people home.
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And finally  .  .  .
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Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) published a stunning article in Politico entitled My Party Is In Denial About Donald Trump. It is a call to courage and action and I urge you to read it, keeping in mind that this was penned by a Republican from a very red state,

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!  JA

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

Plumbing


Reading time – 1:34; Viewing time – 2:23  .  .  .

During a recent visit to my dentist I stopped in the men’s room and found a – let’s call it “interesting” – wall sign. Honestly, I have never heard of sensitive plumbing. I mean, isn’t it just a bunch of sturdy pipes? Does the plumbing in a commercial building have feelings? Does it become upset if something that doesn’t belong there gets introduced to its innards? Is anxiety triggered just beyond the next pipe fitting by a careless user? What are we to make of this new age accommodation to the emotions of plumbing?

Well, nothing, of course. But it brought to mind the crude and cruel behavior of those in the White House and Congress and how they seem to view the American people. Perhaps they haven’t seen this sign and don’t realize that the American people, for all our strength and rugged individualism, for all our can-do spirit, have certain sensitivities. There are some things that just don’t go down well.

For example, we’re sensitive to the healthcare needs of one another and we don’t want people thrown under the plumbing just because they aren’t wealthy. We’re sensitive to the thousands who are killed by gun violence every year, so we really want sensible gun laws to protect our dear ones. We’re sensitive to the outrageous tsunami of money heaped into our politics by extremely wealthy people in a pay-to-play scheme – it’s corroding our democracy. We’re sensitive to the inability of those we send to Washington to accomplish much more than naming a post office. We’re sensitive to our rapidly heating planet and fear for the future of our kids and grand kids. And we’re sensitive to the declining standard of living for about 90% of us.

Click me – then sign up to learn more about the Summit for righties, lefties and indies

Tell you what let’s do. Copy the picture above and paste it into an email to your senators, congressperson and to President Trump. Tell them you’re a sensitive American and you want them to solve the vexing problems we face and for them to stop the stupid stuff. Let them know that if they don’t, they’ll be the ones introduced to the plumbing in 2018.

Apologies to all for my tasteless metaphor.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!  JA

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

Thomas Paine Today


Reading time – 4:27; Viewing time – 6:36  .  .  .

Throughout his candidacy President Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” the fetid, stinking hole of Washington DC that had betrayed ordinary Americans. He railed against insiders, the people who made DC worthy of disdain. Then he populated his cabinet with Goldman Sachs banksters. You know, the financial masters of the universe who gambled with your money, then lost it and demanded that you cover their debts? Well, they’re in charge of part of the swamp right now and they’re continuing to grab ever more wealth for themselves and others, like Donald Trump.

Trump continues to pound the drum of accusation and demonization against the press and our judiciary. That’s convenient for any autocrat who wants to undermine the people who hold them accountable and stop their excesses. Actually, Trump sees these people as enemies and he attacks them viciously almost daily. That’s effective in numbing his “base” to the factual reports about his – let’s call them “dalliances” – from the Constitution.

Trump demanded Former FBI Director James Comey’s loyalty to him, which Comey sensibly refused. At the time Comey was looking into possible involvement of Trump and his election team with Russians who meddled with the U.S. election. Comey wouldn’t quash the investigation as Trump asked, so Trump fired him. Eliminating opposition is what autocrats do.

Click me for the nauseating video

Actually, Trump consistently demands loyalty to himself alone and doesn’t seem to recognize that all government hires – including the President – have pledged loyalty to the Constitution of the United States of America and not to the President. However, demanding personal loyalty is what autocrats do. Just recall that infinitely embarrassing (okay, vomitous) Cabinet meeting as his cabinet members took turns fawning over Great Leader. That must have made even psycho autocrat Kim Jung-un in North Korea envious.

Trump uses Twitter to maintain a constant barrage of outrageous, accusatory and false claims – the kind Kellyanne Conway promoted as “alternative facts.” Okay, you could call them lies. They keep us watching Trump’s latest shiny objects instead of his likely treasonous actions.

Trump has created a federal panel to collect all U.S. voter registration information in order to stop our nearly nonexistent voter fraud. Have you any doubt whatsoever that what he really wants to do is to restrict the voting rights of all citizens who are likely to vote against him? Remember, for an autocrat, it’s all about aggregating power.

Trump is trying to replace his chief toady, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with someone who hasn’t recused himself from all things Russia. That will allow the new AG to fire Robert Mueller and end the investigation into Trump’s and the Trump organization’s possibly illegal and possibly treasonous behavior with Russia. Trump has tweeted that he wants the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton for something or other. It seems that Trump wants the people in the Justice Department to be his very own vigilantes and the FBI his thugs. Autocrats like that.

Trump is even looking into his ability to pardon his staff, his family and himself. Should that happen, who will hold Trump accountable? Who will stop him from committing yet more crimes? Given this nearly spineless Republican Party, what else will he be able to get away with? This is the stuff of would-be dictators stacking the deck for themselves so that they can get away with anything.

Earlier in the year Trump tried to refuse all Muslims entry to the U.S., even including returning American citizens who are Muslim. Later he pared down his hate list to people from 7 Muslim-majority countries, not even one of which had attacked us. On July 26 of this year President Trump issued an executive order banning all trans-gender Americans from the military. To whom would such enemy creation and hateful actions appeal? Garry Kasparov can help us understand.

Kasparov is likely the best chess player ever and is a Putin critic. Having lived in the Soviet Union he knows a thing or two about autocrats. Here is a Kasparov tweet from the day after Trump tweeted his banning of trans-gender Americans from the military:

That’s what autocrats do. They distract us with outrageous, divisive stupidities and get us to hate each other and then lash out against one another as they go about aggregating all power to themselves. It’s classic divide and conquer.

It’s always dangerous to make comparisons to Adolph Hitler, but there are parallels here. Like Hitler, Trump won a democratic election with less than 50% of the popular vote. Like Hitler, he surrounds

Click me for the article

himself with toadies who will never confront him. Like Hitler, he undermines the rule of law. Like Hitler, he makes bombastic, false declarations that polarize citizens. Like Hitler, he constantly accuses and humiliates others in order to diminish them and to create enemies for followers to hate. Like Hitler, he neutralizes those who might have power to check him. And like Hitler, he tries to incrementally take rights from the people and aggregate power to himself.

Many have warned us about the creep of fascism in America, including me here and here. It is something that I had never dreamed could happen, yet it was foretold by Henry Wallace, FDR’s Vice-President, Professor Timothy Snyder and others. It’s happening in plain sight right now in America.

In another time of peril heaped upon us by an autocratic ruler, Thomas Paine warned us clearly that, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” And so it is today. The bugle is sounding and we must answer the call or we will lose our democracy.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!  JA

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

Harry Potter and What We Are


Reading time – 2:40; Viewing time – 3:44  .  .  .

  • “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” J.K. Rowling, from Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets.

Let’s imagine that Rowling has offered a valuable insight – that it’s our choices that show who we truly are – and consider these points:

  1. Donald Trump has refused to say anything to suggest that he fully agrees with his 17 national security agencies that the Russians hacked not just Hillary Clinton’s and John Podesta’s emails, but also sought to affect our national election. He has compounded that by offering no leadership to counter this ongoing invasion of America by a foreign adversary. He’s dismantling our cyber security oversight and has had more friendly involvement with covertly hostile Russian officials than he’s had with anyone else.
  2. Trump brought top Russian officials into the Oval Office, this in the absence of an American translator. While there he passed top secret espionage information to them, which put Israeli intelligence people in peril.
  3. Trump met for an hour at the G20 dinner with Vladimir Putin. The only other participant in the conversation was Putin’s translator. That means that Trump doesn’t know what was relayed from him to Putin, nor can he know what Putin actually said.
  4. Rex Tillerson is incrementally dismantling the State Department. You know, the people who conduct U.S. diplomacy.
  5. Betsy DeVos is working to dismantle public education.
  6. Scott Pruitt is dismantling the EPA, including the Clean Water Act. Drink up.
  7. I don’t know what Rick Perry is doing to the Department of Energy, about which he knows next to nothing. What we can be sure of is that he wants to eliminate the department, this according to his “Oops!” moment at a Republican debate in 2016.
  8. Trump and the Republicans pound the blatantly false drum beat that Obamacare is dead. Now Trump wants to eliminate it, provide nothing to replace it and leave millions of Americans – 1 in 10 of us – adrift with no access to medical care but the emergency room.
  9. Trump continues to blow off our allies and cozy up to Putin. This is particularly vexing because the Republicans have spent decades telling us that they are the muscular protectors of America against the bad Russians and that the Democrats are weak-kneed and can’t be counted on to stand up to the bad guys. Now, though, the Republicans seem to have Kryptonite strapped to them and they’re mute about Trump’s “love-the-Russians” behavior.
  10. The Onion had a touching and troubling take on what we’re doing about immigration. Watch it here.
  11. Now we hear that Trump is investigating presidential pardons for his staff, his family and for himself, even though nobody has officially been charged with a crime. He’s also working to discredit the Special Counsel and his team and has threatened to fire Robert Mueller. All we’ve heard has come from eyebrow raising pundits. We’ve heard nothing from members of the President’s party. Where is the outrage?

There’s more, of course. The point is that our choices – our actions – declare what we are, just as J.K. Rowling said. What are we saying about who we are?

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!  JA

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

Separation Anxiety


Reading time – 3:29; Viewing time – 4:50  .  .  .

We long ago decided that the First Amendment limitation declaring clearly that, “Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” no longer meant “separation of church and state.” Back in 1956 our enemy was the godless Soviet Union, so we proved we were holier than they were by turf-grabbing God and stamping “In God We Trust” on our currency and any other place the ink would stick. That was far more chest-puffing than the emotionless E Pluribus Unum, which actually had served us well as the motto of the U.S. since 1782. We sure showed those commies something.

The problem, of course, is that there are millions of Americans who don’t trust in the God envisioned by the red-baiters of the 1950s and who should have been protected from that Yoda-phrased motto by the clear implication of the First Amendment. It had long been interpreted as not just freedom of religion, but also freedom from religion.

Fifty years later that didn’t matter to George W. Bush, who promoted public support of religion through what he called “faith-based initiatives.” Translation: Give public tax money to churches. Sadly for the Constitution, that worked – Bush and the Bible thumpers won that round, too.

And they’re winning more ground still. Just this month the Supreme Court decided that public funds could not be withheld from a Missouri religious school which needed to repave its daycare playground surfaces. Once again that means pubic tax dollars will be going to a church.

Betsy DeVos is the latest in the string of would-be reformers of education who just doesn’t get it. She has never attended a public school, having always been in the silver spoon club, nor so much as served on a public school board, so she really has no knowledge of the purview of her department of government. In her educational myopia she thinks that privately owned charter schools and parochial schools are the answer to the problems our education system is facing. Said another way, De Vos wants to give billions of dollars of public tax money to church-owned, church-run schools. In this era of fuzzy-brained legislators and a loud evangelical section of the citizenry, she just might get away with that. Doing so won’t meet our educational challenges, but it will further erode the separation of church and state.

The undermining of the Bill of Rights goes in other directions, too. President Trump wants to revamp our libel laws so he can sue the press whenever he doesn’t like their coverage of him. He publicly demeans and attacks the press, nearly always without justification, so that now our approval of the very people who hold public officials accountable including the President is down to less than one-third. How long do you suppose it will be until the press gets muzzled by an autocratic boot crushing the First Amendment guarantee against the abridgement of freedom of the press?

The moral of this story is that our rights were a very good idea, but only for a while, and they’re no longer rights at all. Many far righties are pushing for a Constitutional Convention so they can remake our entire national framework to their liking. Who do you suppose you’ll run into as you follow the money to learn who will benefit from the abandoning of our rights, the elimination of environmental protections, the shedding of food and pharmaceutical oversight and the denial of climate change? You can trust that it’s the usual suspects, the ones with the very deep pockets. The rights and protections these extremists seek to destroy are no longer even a speed bump on the road to discarding the Constitution entirely.

Frighteningly, we may not be able to count on many of our elected officials to stop that. David Frum clearly outlines the peril in this piece. And former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul makes clear that we cannot count on the President to protect us, either. Former Treasury Secretary Laurence Summers agrees.

With our Republican legislators each scrambling to be the last one to find a spine, the 2018 election looks to be of even greater importance than was the election in 2016. Those of us who continue to believe that the Bill of Rights is a really good thing for America and Americans have our work to do.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!  JA

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

Clarity From a Choir


Reading time – 3:57; Viewing time – 5:13  .  .  .

It’s an amateur choir, but the sound these folks make is stunning. They performed for years under the leadership of their much beloved director, who died suddenly and unexpectedly.

The search for a new director began and they found an interesting guy. He and the board came to a decision about a new vision for the choir, deciding that rather than being solely about music there was a grander service for them to provide. That vision laid clear the path forward.

Everyone in the choir auditioned to remain and, although it was hard to do, some were asked to leave. They simply couldn’t clear the performance bar necessary for the vision of the future.

And it’s working, because the choir is even better than before. Answering the “What do we want?” question first made the “How can we improve?” question easy to answer.

That’s the point. There must be a vision of a better future in order to make sound decisions about how to solve problems and overcome challenges. The test is always about which choice best moves us toward what we want, that better future.

David Brooks writes in his June 27 piece, The G.O.P. Rejects Conservatism, “The current Republican Party has iron, dogmatic rules about the role of government, but no vision about America.”

For example, Republicans chant the mantra “small government, low taxes,” which sounds appealing and which they have never practiced at the federal level in my lifetime. More important, that mantra only describes the government they want. It’s a tactic for something, but they never say what that is.

Now let’s get to the other side of the aisle.

The Democrats can’t seem to articulate much of anything about a vision for America, either. Like the Republicans, they are clear about certain issues. For example, there seems to be a consensus about health care being a right of all Americans, but that isn’t a description of a vision for a better America. It’s a tactic to accomplish something. What does that better America look like according to the Democrats?

Once we Americans agree on what we want, then a sensible discussion can begin about how to achieve that. Absent a vision, we wind up squabbling over individual issues with no concept of how or whether the various tactics help move us toward that vision.

I still like the Jeffersonian statement in the first few sentences of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Do we as a nation still hold those truths to be self-evident? If that’s the vision, then the solutions to our challenges must be measured against that vision. Honestly, I never hear a discussion that sounds even remotely that grand, yet that is what is needed if we are to get beyond selfish squabbling and solve our very complicated challenges.

Let’s take this one step further.

What if the people now in charge have a very different vision for the future of America than you do? What if you’re being played right now to benefit those holding the reins? Don’t imagine this as a propeller hat notion, because that happens regularly around the world and right here in America, too. For example, while we were grieving over 9/11, George W. Bush used that tragedy as an excuse to invade Iraq and get draconian, un-constitutional laws passed in order to spy on you.

To flesh this out more clearly, have a look at Naomi Klein’s work on governments using public shock to advance their power grabbing. Here’s a link to her short video. Watch it when you think your bones can tolerate being rattled.

Rachel Maddow almost got punked by government-planted fake news last week. This is really sneaky stuff – your government planted fake news in her inbox in order to discredit the press in general and Maddow in particular when she aired the lies. Perhaps they did that because she’s been steadfast in reporting on the Russian hacking story. Had Maddow taken the bait of that fake Top Secret document, the Discreditor-in-Chief would have railed against the press and we would likely be left with one less watchdog over government at a time when we need all the members of our press A-team suited up. Here’s a link to the reporting.

Both the Maddow and Klein pieces bear heavily on a vision for America and you likely won’t like the vision these pieces point to. For more on this read Seth Abramson’s Twitter string and you’ll understand more fully how compromised America’s future is becoming.

Many thanks to C. H. for pointing me to these pieces.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!  JA

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

Bluster and Garbage


Reading time – 2:11; Viewing time – 3:18  .  .  .

North Korea launched a rocket this week that appears to have the capabilites of an intercontinental ballistic missile – that is to say, with sufficient fuel, it could span continents. Be clear that ours is the first continent to the east of North Korea.

Surely, Trump consulted his generals to learn what they saw as our options for response to North Korea’s missile launch. But given the decimation of the ranks of our State Department by Trump, what is your confidence that he also consulted our top diplomats or our State Department personnel in Seoul, South Korea before launching missiles in the face of Kim Jong-un?

We’ve been cautioned repeatedly not to pay attention to what is said by Trump administration people, but instead to pay attention to their actions. The actions related to North Korea that we’ve seen President Trump take so far include:

– sending an aircraft carrier to within striking distance of North Korea

– parking a pair of nuclear submarines off the coast of North Korea

– and firing a pair of ballistic missiles from South Korea this week

These are repeated tweaks to the nose of the infantile North Korean dictator. It’s likely he doesn’t want to be embarrassed on the world stage, so how do you imagine he will react to Trump’s actions? Exactly how is anyone now safer or more secure because of Trump’s responses?

George W. Bush famously put little stock in diplomacy, preferring instead to swagger on the world stage with a nuke tucked into each holster of his gun belt. He started wars with two countries, neither of which posed a clear and present danger to the United States, nor did either attack us, but Bush did show the world who’s boss. Donald Trump has similar disdain for the power of subtle diplomacy and he similarly blusters, wanting to be seen as macho.

While in Poland before the G20 meeting, Trump was asked about military action against North Korea. He declared, “I have some pretty severe things that we are thinking about.” That’s swagger and bluster and we are left to worry about what follows such threatening talk.

The history books are fat with the descriptions of the devastating consequences to humanity due to leaders who swagger and bluster. The difference now is that within easy reach of such leaders are intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs.

In the original Star Wars movie the three main characters take refuge in the garbage bay of an enemy star ship. Luke says that things could be worse. That’s when the walls of the bay begin to close on them and they realize they are in a trash compactor. Han Solo replies to Luke, “Things are worse.”

And so they are for the United States, as, in the absence of diplomacy, we veer ever-closer to military conflict with North Korea. Should that happen, it will be a humanitarian disaster.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!  JA

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

The Magician


Reading time – 2:41; Viewing time – 3:59  .  .  .

Preface: This is being recorded on the 4th of July, a day for pancakes in the park, a parade, picnics and barbecue and, of course, fireworks. There is much to celebrate in the red, white and blue.

At the same time we have challenges – you could call them opportunities to form a more perfect union. The biggest one of all, though, isn’t about that more perfect union; it’s about whether we will have a union at all. That is the focus of this offering.

Spoiler alert: Magicians don’t do magic.

They don’t make something vanish or appear by supernatural means and the lady doesn’t get sawed in half. Instead, they fool us by getting us to pay attention to something they’re doing right in front of us while at the same time and out of sight they are crafting the part that really matters. That is to say, what they do directs our focus so that we don’t pay attention to what is critically important. That accurately describes what Donald Trump does every day.

He is the best in the world at creating distractions so that we don’t look at what’s most important. He tweets flamboyant personal attacks, makes idiotic claims and acts like a 10-year-old brat on the playground. He lies about easily provable facts and when he’s caught lying he doubles down on his lies. He publicly contradicts the people in his own administration. He promises to abandon our allies, sucks up to vicious autocrats and threatens world stability.

As dangerous as all of his stupid stuff is, it’s actually a collection of distractions this magician is using to keep us from focusing on the one existentially important issue: Russia is taking control of the United States of America.

Seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies have declared unequivocally that the Russians hacked the DNC, John Podesta and voter databases in at least 20 states. They used Wikileaks to make public some emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s prospects, thus enhancing Trump’s chances of winning. They micro-targeted innocent Americans with fake news in order to influence them to vote against Hillary and for Trump. Were any of this a physical assault instead of virtual, it would be a Russian invasion of our country with enemy troops storming our shores and darkening our skies.

Here’s the critical piece: It’s just short of 6 months into the Trump administration and Donald Trump has done absolutely nothing to investigate, sanction or even acknowledge the Russians’ actions. NOTHING!

Instead of protecting the security, integrity and sovereignty of the United States, Trump has fired the FBI director.and he’s threatened to fire the independent counsel investigating Russian hacking. Get that we’ve been attacked and the President of the United States, whose paramount function is national security, has tried to impede the investigations of the attacker and otherwise just sits on his hands refusing to protect our country.

The July 4th flag waving is over and it’s time to acknowledge that there has been a coup in America. Have a look at Keith Olbermann’s comments here and here about this. Then lean hard on your senators and representative to take action to preserve and protect our country. Tell your family and friends to join you on the streets. Otherwise, there won’t be a sovereign United States of America and we can kiss the American dream good-bye.

This isn’t a Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals issue. This is a test of patriotism. Don’t flunk this one.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!  JA

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

As Easy as Breathing


Reading time – 3:04; Viewing time – 4:16  .  .  .

Of course  you’ve heard about the latest kerfuffle spawned by the Tweeter-in-Chief. It seems there wasn’t much going on in the world on June 29 that needed the attention of the President of the United States, so he used his time to tweet cruel attacks at Mika Brzezinski both about her intelligence and her appearance. He took a couple of swipes at Joe Scarborough, too. As weird as that is, things became even more weird at the press briefing that afternoon.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the President’s press briefer and surrogate liar, said in responding to questions about Trump’s mean spirited, unnecessary tweets – and I’m not quoting her, but this really was the essence of her message – “Well, those guys were really  mean to the President and called him mean names. They hurt his feelings, so he hit back at them, fighting fire with fire.”

Brzezinski and Scarborough have repeatedly criticized Trump’s loony policies, his raw racism and his love of unconstitutional actions. They’ve called him out when he has lied. Their comments have been fact- and reality-based and that’s about as rough as they have given Trump. That’s all it takes to tweak the nose of this thin-skinned bully and put him in a snit. Even the President’s wife has let us know that when he’s “hit” he’ll hit back “10 times harder.” What will happen when Kim Jong-Un calls Trump a mean name? How are you feeling about Trump having the nuclear codes?

It’s child’s play to manipulate Trump – the Saudis did it with ease and that put our base and our military personnel in Qatar at risk.  What will happen when Trump meets with Putin at the G20?

Back to Sanders speaking for the President. She said – and I’m just paraphrasing here to accurately give you the deep philosophy of this entire administration – “Everyone at the White House is a victim of some sort of unfair treatment, and aren’t all those press people so dishonest and unfair when they outline what we’ve said and done. Just look what they’ve done to us and they’re just meanies and it’s all their fault so they deserve for us to say mean things about them.” Look up “victim mentality” anywhere and you’ll see a detailing of the Trump administration and its pathological whining and victim-hood. It’s always about someone else being a bad guy to them.

Worn under the starched Presidential dress shirt every day?

Perhaps you were hoping for something more adult than, “Look what they’re doing to me” to be coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Decide if you want the President to continually spark attention-grabbing forest fires around himself or if you want him to deal with America’s vexing challenges. We don’t have the bandwidth for both.

Getting back to my labeling of Sanders as the President’s surrogate liar, and to illustrate the point, in that same press briefing Sanders asserted that the President has never called for violence. That’s true, as long as you ignore all the times during the campaign when he brayed from the podium, calling for violence against protesters and members of the press. Sanders is either ignorant and maybe stupid (and I don’t believe either of those is accurate) or she’s lying just like her boss does.

Click here to link to the New York Daily News article

No, he really didn’t have the biggest crowds on inauguration day. And he has not gotten the most done of any president in the first 6 months. And he lied about jobs at Carrier and Ford. See David Leonhardt’s New York Times piece here for a complete detailing, if you can stomach reliving Trump’s lies. And recognize that Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeat the President’s lies at every press briefing.

Infantile name calling and lying are as easy as breathing for the people of the Trump administration. Every time they lie and demean they erect barriers to progress, they encourage divisiveness and they assault the dignity of America. We will deserve better when we stand up and demand it.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!  JA

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

Plans for What?


Reading time – 2:45; Viewing time  – 3:58  .  .  .

Healthcare is our current favorite distraction from the Russian cyber invasion of America and the possible involvement of Trump groupies, so let’s have a look at what the geniuses in Congress have proposed for the health and well being of all Americans.

It’s well established that the House and Senate attempts at delivering on the brainless “repeal and replace” mantra have little to do with healthcare delivery to Americans. Healthcare is simply the cover for an $800 billion dollar gift to already rich people. In the unlikely circumstance that you aren’t fully enraged by that, consider that part of the windfall for the wealthy is a reimbursement of taxes paid on financial transactions, money that was used to fund Medicare expansion for our poor under Obamacare.

That’s right: these plans dig a deeper hole of debt for America because the 1% need more money. I guess I missed that turn when Republicans stopped obsessing over debt. Nice to know that it doesn’t matter any more, so it’s okay to slather more cash on the rich.

Enough about the struggling wealthy. We’ll let them pull themselves up by their Gucci bootstraps and instead have a look at how the House and Senate plans will affect you.

Click me to see the 5 things to know about Mitch McConnell

If you’re poor, you’re screwed. The Congressional Budget Office”s analysis is that under the House plan 23 million more Americans will be cut out of healthcare insurance entirely, which will effectively leave them without primary healthcare; under the Senate version that number drops to an only slightly less cruel 22 million more Americans whose medical needs we’ll ignore. Either way, tens of millions of Americans will have nothing but a last ditch, begging for mercy trip to the emergency room as their primary healthcare. Those trips are always made well after medical attention is needed, so the conditions presented to emergency room staff are far worse and often irreversible. That means people who might have been cured will die.

Plus a visit to the emergency room costs more than any other way to deliver healthcare, driving our overall cost much higher. Be clear that every hospital is required to deliver healthcare to whoever shows up at their door, regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. That means that the cost to care for a poor person who drags into the emergency room and receives that expensive care is passed along to all the patients who can pay, like you. That’s how slashing Medicaid will drive up your cost of healthcare.

Click me to link to the article

The Kaiser Family Foundation has crafted a nifty way to learn how the various cruel congressional plans stack up against the ACA (Obamacare). Access the comparison with the Senate plan (“BCRA”) here; link to the comparison with the House plan (“AHCA”) here. Just enter your age, income and the state in which you live. Then click on your county, review the results and decide which plan you like best. Be sure to look ahead to what these plans will cost you 10 or 20 years from now. Good chance you’ll be surprised – and not pleasantly so.

But that’s just you. Before deciding which plan to support be sure to consider the poor people who will have no place to go but the emergency room for medical care under either congressional plan. Also, don’t forget the rich people who need your financial support.

Click me to link to the article

The net of this is that both the Republicans in Congress and the president are so desperate to “get a win” that they are sucking up to the wealthy and abandoning our poor. That is to say, the win means more to them than life or death of our most vulnerable.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!  JA

 

 


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

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