"Under continuous construction"

21st Century

What Is Actually Happening Today


POST 1254

Don Lemon’s Bogus Arrest Isn’t What You Think

He committed journalism. So far that still is not a crime. But it was only a matter of time until Don Lemon would be arrested.

For years Lemon has been critical of Trump. He’s laughed at and ridiculed him, been disparaging, accusatory, condemning and, worse, Lemon has been accurate in his unsympathetic appraisal of the malignant narcissist. That alone would be enough for Trump to jam Lemon into his retribution pipeline, his enemies list, about which both he and Pam Bondi lie, saying it doesn’t exist.

Clearly, Trump believes Lemon has earned retribution and other cruelty. If Trump doesn’t suppress Lemon, Trump would be forced to see himself as a loser, the very worst thing. So he must crush that nasty bug. But there’s more and it’s worse.

Don Lemon is a full time, card carrying Black person. And he compounds that effrontery by being gay. He’s not who the heavy-starch-in-their-underwear, moral storm troopers insist that he must be. Don Lemon is the perfect target for persecution by racist Trump. And there’s moreT

Trump and his fascist lieutenants are on a full court press to eliminate our rights, focused primarily on the First Amendment. They’ve sent their Gestapo to many cities to shut down freedom of speech, the right to assemble and the right to petition government. And they’re on a 50 state rampage to eliminate voting rights for all but those who will vote for Trump.

He’s already attacked freedom of the press with his extortion of CBS, ABC and now his baseless arrests of Don Lemon and other journalists.

Lemon’s arrest isn’t just retribution, It is an attack on our freedom and our democratic foundation.

Historical precedent

It was then-Vice President Dick Cheney on (I think it was) Meet the Press. There was great criticism across the country of Dubya’s invasion of Iraq, Cheney’s pet project. He proclaimed his absolute certainty that deposing the tyrant Saddam was worth our blood and treasure. Far worse, he told we critics of the war that we better watch what we say.

WATCH WHAT WE SAY!?

If we were to criticize him, Dubya, Rumsfeld, their policy, their strategy or their power he would – what? – come gunning for us? Lock us up? Cheney’s was a barely concealed threat against the First Amendment’s protection against government abridgement of our freedom of speech. We might not have seen it then, but that was prelude to today.

Now

Trump, Bondi and a few DOJ bench warmers are saying the same thing, that we better watch what we say. They’re taking Lemon to court to make it stick. Were they to win their blatantly anti-Constitutional case, all freedom will be taken from all of us. The First Amendment will be burned to ashes.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens are already threatened with violence and incarceration, even a torture prison, this as government policy to eliminate our freedoms and place all power in Trump’s hands.

And Trump won’t stop there, Here are a quick list of the Amendments and Article II of the Constitution.

Q. Once the First Amendment is gone, what will be destroyed next?

A. Everything

I say again: Lemon’s arrest isn’t just retribution, It is an attack on our freedom and our democratic foundation.

Duplicitous

Maybe it’s just more of Trump’s miserable, self-serving, living-the-lie bullsh*t. Read this short report from Peter Baker’s January 13 NYT piece, Trump Supports the Protesters, Except Those Protesting Him.

From The Onion

President Trump had a ringing message of solidarity on Tuesday for demonstrators in the streets. “KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” he wrote on social media. He decried “the senseless killing of protesters,” and added that those pulling the triggers “will pay a big price.”

He meant the protesters in Tehran, not Minneapolis. By contrast, the people in the streets of Minnesota, he wrote just 63 minutes earlier, were “anarchists and professional agitators” trying to cover up a fraud scandal. He vowed that “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”

This is yet another example of Trump as democracy destroyer.

Tom Homan, Border Bastard

From Mother Jones:

Homan was a key architect in implementing family separations as acting ICE director in the first Trump administration [Think: thousands of kids in cages. Over 1.000 still are not reunited with their parents.]. In the president’s second term, he was appointed “border czar” to take charge of mass deportations and was investigated over cashing in on it. (We reported with the Project On Government Oversight that many of his former private business clients won lucrative border and immigration-related government contracts.)

Plus, Homan is the $50,000 FBI bag man. And he’s continuing the illegal, un-Constitutional ICE Gestapo brutality in Minneapolis, coming soon to Ohio and Maine.

That’s right: Homan’s appointment to Assistant Chief Cruelty Dispenser is yet another example of Trump as democracy destroyer.

Quote Of The Month

On NBC’s Meet The Press, Sunday, January 18, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained why we are in a state of emergency, by saying,

“The national emergency is avoiding a national emergency.”

Let your eyeballs settle a moment for having gone googly over that idiotic doublespeak.

Next-Gen M1 Abrams Tank. Picture that parked down the street from your house.

There is always the possibility of something causing an emergency. So, if Bessent’s absurd remark has weight, then we are always in a state of national emergency. That’s handy for Trump because that could allow him to cite the Insurrection Act and deploy our active duty military with their weapons of war everywhere in the country.

And that would make it much easier for Trump to destroy democracy and accrue all power to himself.

It Isn’t New, But It’s Just As Ugly

From The Diary of Anne Frank, January 13, 1943:

Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone. The Christians in Holland are also living in fear because their sons are being sent to Germany. Everyone is scared.

We’re living in a mad king, Jaberwocky moment like that right now and it’s very, very dangerous for us all.

Song of the Month

You must listen to Bruce Springsteen’s song Streets of Minneapolis. It’s so strong and so sad and so honoring and so brave.

A Call From July 4, 1776 – Pick Up The Phone. It’s For You

We are endowed with .  .  .

.  .  . certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed .  .  .

.  .  .  but we do not consent to this government!

We are at a choice point. We can either allow ourselves to be terrorized into submitting to Trump’s dictatorship or we can stand against it.

Many ask what we can do. Read Steve Schmidt’s Defiance Is The Cure. Then steel yourself for the patriotic battle that we will win.

Now, tell me you’re seeing what is actually happening today.
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    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 necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

A New Proposal


POST 1251

Let’s take a short break from the ongoing ICE brutality, from the corruption and incompetence of the Trump administration, from its bedrock of self-serving dishonesty, from Trump as pit bull, using every American thing as a fire hydrant to piss on and claim as his own and from the America-defeating Republican cowardice.

You remember Gaza, right? Those people were all over international news for, what, a year? Maybe two? First they were evil for the thousands of rockets they fired into Israeli cities and then for the October 7 massacre.* Then they were victims when Israel hit back. Then they were pitiable for their lack of human basics, like water, food and shelter.

Then something happened somewhere else and the world forgot about them. But their dire circumstances remain and call for something to alleviate the suffering. Oddly, they offer a formerly unimaginable solution to this very old problem in this very old region, so let’s remember these people for a couple of minutes.

The Palestinians can’t have all the territory “from the river to the sea,” regardless of college student chants. The chanters are people who think they are well meaning, but they very much are not.

The Palestinians and the Israelis refuse to live together peacefully. There are sovereignty and religious problems that are intractable and all solutions offered for co-existence have proven to be unacceptable to some or all. People are locked into their stories and will do anything to prove themselves right. But we shouldn’t let self-defeating intransigence get in the way of a solution and the present circumstances offer one that was formerly unthinkable.

As you consider what follows, ignore the current reality of the immobile far right coalition ruling Israel now. It will take more time, but Netanyahu will at last go to prison and the Knesset will balance quite differently.

Israel has all the power in that region right now, so it can dictate. Consider this dictatorial solution.

Click for a larger view.

It is for Israel to declare a two state solution. A new state of Palestine will be carved out of Jordan – the east bank of the Jordan River – and part of Syria and Lebanon. Gazans will be relocated to that territory. Some may not mind being forcibly moved, because Gaza is not much more than rubble now. If they do mind, that won’t matter much, because, again, Israel has all the power and can dictate.

That Jordan, Syria and Lebanon will have to cede territory to the new state of Palestine is a tough one. No country would look favorably on such a loss of its territory. Plus, since 1948 no Arab or Muslim country has ever offered anything to sustain the Palestinian people. They have periodically made wars designed to eradicate Israel and they’ve supplied materials for Hamas to use to build rockets to fire into Israeli cities and kill Israelis. Otherwise, no Arab or Muslim state has ever helped, nor now wants to help Palestinians. This is going to require some truly exceptional diplomacy and perhaps some exquisite arm twisting.

Bear in mind that the current configuration of states in that region is largely due to European countries arbitrarily dictating it be so following WW I. Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon didn’t exist before then.

That carving up of land was done following the Ottoman Empire having grabbed vast territories and reshaped borders for hundreds of years before that. Redefining territory in that region is almost an international sport. While unpalatable to the current countries, carving out land for a new state of Palestine has historical precedent, including the establishment of Israel.

All those Gazans will have to go somewhere. They can’t live within Israel. A separate state is the obvious answer.

Israel will absorb Gaza. They will own what they broke – the Pottery Barn rule. Fixing it will fall entirely to Israel. And Israel will absorb the West Bank for its obvious security value.

To sweeten the deal, Muslims will be allowed access to all their holy sites in Jerusalem. The physical and spiritual security there will be protected by an international guard.

The Palestinians will have to do the very hard work to build a country of their own, perhaps with international help, like the Israelis did. We Americans will have to help. Our no-sighted hard heads will have to deal with the fact that the citizens of the new Palestinian state won’t be their notion of White or Christian. To these hard heads I offer new age psychotherapy: get over it!

This solution is outrageous, yes, but nobody will be able to prevent the implementation of this unilateral solution because, one more time, Israel holds all the cards. Everyone will abhor this idea – everyone – even as nobody – literally nobody – has a better idea.

Sure, there is mountain of details to surmount to make this work. But refusing that climb guarantees unending war, miserable people suffering and dying in spiritual and physical degradation and entirely without hope for a better life. We know that because we’ve seen this movie over and over.

Got a better idea? Put it out there. The world awaits.

Did this piece make you think? Did it distract you from your distractions? Good.

Hurry. People are suffering.

The Last Laugh

From Andy Borowitz, The Borowitz Report of January 9:

LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—In a move that was widely hailed across the free world, on Friday King Charles III of the United Kingdom reasserted British rule over the colonies formerly known as the United States of America.

“In recent days, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller have been advocating a muscular return to colonialism,” the monarch said. “I couldn’t agree more with those chaps.”

“We lost the colonies because our King went insane,” Charles added. “But now the shoe’s on the other bloody foot, isn’t it?”

As for what this change in status would mean for Trump, the King said, “Perhaps he could room with his old chum, my idiot brother.”

_____________________________________

* Right, it was Hamas. But Hamas is composed entirely of Gazans. And the non-Hamas Gazans tolerated Hamas’ constant violence, so it’s on all Gazans, like it or not.

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    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 necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

No Fever, But A Hopeful Dream


POST 1250

January 6, 2027, 9:00 PM EST

East fireplace, Statuary Hall, U.S.Capitol Building. Photo courtesy of Daniel Holt

The mid-term election is over, Congress members have been sworn in and the new Congress is open for business. The Democrats are in the majority in both the House and in the Senate. Hakeem Jeffries is the new Speaker of the House. The majority leader in the Senate is a surprise – Elizabeth Warren.

This evening the two chamber leaders sit in comfortable chairs on either side of the east side fireplace in Statuary Hall in the Capitol Building. Behind them are statues of Alexander Hamilton Stevens of Georgia and Robert M. La Follett of Wisconsin,* both seated. There is a robust fire in the fireplace as red lights on the front of two television cameras glow and Senator Warren begins.

Majority Leader Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Good evening. We’re here to address the American people and to formally declare what your Congress will do so that you know what to expect. We are here to stand guard for you and for our country. Thank you for being with us on this historic night and on this journey of American patriotism.

Democrats have taken majority control of both houses of Congress and we embark now on the ourney to restore our democracy and return the Congress to being a co-equal branch of government focused on the values, the needs and the hopes of We The People, exactly as the Founders intended.

Speaker Hakeem Jeffries: We begin with a symbolic demonstration of the promises we made to you during the mid-term campaign. We invited the minority leaders of both cambers to join us tonight, but they declined. Then, because our country needs both parties to work together and focus on the Constitution, our laws and the oath of office that every one of us has taken, we’ve offered the opportunity to all Congressional Republicans to participate in our ceremony tonight. None accepted our invitation.

Sen. Warren holds up a thick document.

EW: This is a copy of Project 2025, the horrid, anti-America fascism handbook written by the Heritage Foundation. It has been followed for the past two years by our attention seeking, insatiably needy, power grabbing president and our far too compliant Republican colleagues. Tonight Speaker Jeffries and I will rip out every section of this ghastly document, one after another, and throw them into the fire. We will burn them as a symbol, a stake in the ground, to put all on notice, that we will fight back against every one of the abhorrent policies that our Republican colleagues have failed to oppose.

These policies assaulted your rights.They took money from you and gave it to the super rich. They destroyed the agencies that have kept us healthy. They neutered the parts of government that have for decades helped to educate our children. They de-funded what made us the world’s research leader and compromised what has kept all of us safe in a very dangerous world. All of that destruction and more needs to be reversed and fresh air breathed into our country. That’s what we have promised to you that we will do. We begin that sacred duty tonight symbolically casting out this Project 2025 demon.

Sen. Warren hands the document to Speaker Jeffries.

HJ: Speaker Jeffries holds up the document.

The first section in this that is focused on the presidency opens by taking a cheap shot at – and this is exactly what they wrote – the “supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country.” That’s what they disparagingly call most of us. “Woke.”

Whatever “woke” is, it’s their hateful slap in the face of most Americans. Throughout this document the authors seek to divide us and diminish whole swaths of the American people, which inevitably excludes you from the okay group. That stops now.

Here’s the really odd thing. They continue in this section of their Mein Kampf manifesto to quote Founder James Madison in Federalist No. 47, with his warning,

“[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

But that is exactly what President Trump and his compliant Republican Congress have been doing – fyranny!

The Republican authors of this domestic terrorism manual give us no clue why they point Madison’s accusing finger at themselves, as that puts the lie to everything else they wrote. Perhaps in their cruelty, they really just don’t get it.

EW: They have brought us tyranny. You can see it in the escalating grocery store prices caused by the president’s illegal tariffs. You can see it as masked gunmen bang down doors and drag people out of their homes. You can see it as they rip our people out of their vehicles and throw them to the ground. You can hear it as a fellow immobilized in an ICE agent’s headlock yells repeatedly “I’m a citizen!. I have identification!” and the agent yells, “I don’t care” and proceeds to throw him into an ICE vehicle. And you can see it as ICE agents gun down American citizens who pose no threat and who have broken no laws.

You can see how they terrorize our citizens everywhere they can, hiding behind their face masks, Kevlar vests and menacing their weapons of war. They do all this as our perverse, obscene, un-American Justice Department bestows on them a claim of immunity. You can see it as millions have lost their jobs and you can see it as our Department of Justice violates our laws every day. This stuff is right out of the Project 2025 playbook. And it’s the stuff Hitler did. It’s what Stalin did and it’s what decades of Chinese leaders have done. Brutality and intimidation. And Trump and the Republicans are doing it now.

We’ll have no more of that.

Speaker Jeffries rips that section from the Project 2025 document, throws it into the fire and hands the rest of the document to Sen. Warren.

EW: Let’s look at another section.

They proceed to unmask the anti-American directives in this horrid document until the entire thing – all 922 pages – is in flames, one section at a time being reduced to ash.

EW: Together we welcome back our republic, our democracy and the America that we love.

_________________________

But today, January 18, 2026, the destruction of our republic, committed by fascist wannabes, continues. If you have doubts about that, check with anyone in Minneapolis. Or Portland. Or New Jersey. Or Chicago. Or .  .  .
.
The symbolism of this dream must be made real.
.
Trump, in his manipulations, his money and power grabs and his mania to out-Putin Putin; in his inept, incompetent and criminal lieutenants who wield their power with the glee of imbecilic sociopaths; his Gestapo attacks, beatings, jailings and murders carried on with impunity and immunity – it’s all a package designed to drive us to despair and to make us succumb to Trump’s destruction of our democracy so that he can be our all powerful dictator. We must not – we cannot let that happen. Our job is to make this democracy dream come true.
.
The antidote to despair is action.

Take action!

________________________________________

* Many thanks go to Daniel Holt, Associate Historian, US Senate Historical Office for his help in identifying the gentlemen represented by the statues on either side of the east fireplace.

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    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 necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

An Update – With Questions


POST 1249

ICE Murders

Intending no disrespect, Renee Nicole Good is still dead. That’s the way it is when an ICE thug shoots someone in the face or shoots them pretty much anywhere else. It isn’t a movie and the actors don’t get to go home. Renee Nicole Good is and will remain dead and her children will remain orphans.

That was said to make it clear that she isn’t a statistic or an avatar. She was a real person just like you and me and now she’s dead because of ICE brutality directed by Donald “Shaky Brain” Trump, Stephen “Goebbels” Miller, Christi “Puppy Killer with a Rolex” Noem and Pam “President’s Hit Man” Bondi.

It doesn’t get more real or more permanent than dead, and our titular leaders don’t give a damn about that or anything important to you, like your life, just as they don’t care about Renee Good losing hers.

Two more innocents were gunned down by Border Patrol last week in Portland, OR, so it seems right to do a count of the deaths by our immigration thugs. Here’s what I found from Google AI.

Since January 1, 2017, ICE has reported that 70 people have died in its custody. [Note that we don’t know how many have died in the El Salvador torture prison.]

Independent reports suggest a higher potential number, with a 2024 analysis by the ACLU, Physicians for Human Rights, and American Oversight finding that 95% of 52 deaths in ICE custody between 2017 and 2021 were potentially preventable with adequate medical care. 
.

A report by The Trace revealed that between 2015 and 2021, 59 shootings by ICE officers resulted in 23 fatalities. [We must have had a lot of domestic terrorist drivers who tried to run down ICE agents in those years.]

More recent reports from late 2025 and early 2026 indicate a notable increase in the use of force.
.
During the current Trump second term, federal immigration agents have shot at civilians at least 16 times, resulting in four deaths and at least seven injuries, according to a data analysis. [all emphasis original]
.
None of the deaths of incarcerated people were of White guys. But most, maybe all, of the deaths of protesters gunned down by ICE were White. Make of that what you will.
Questions

Do you feel safer?

Is our nation safer?

Is it okay for a vigilante quality posse of goons to shoot law abiding people?

Is this the kind of country you expected or want?

Did you vote for this? This question will make a lot of people twist their innards. Guilt is a terrible thing.

More Pesky Questions

Have you noticed that nearly all the Immigration and Customs Enforcement – ICE – action is happening hundreds to thousands of miles from our borders, where there is no immigration going on?

Can we now stop pretending that what is going on has anything to do with the enforcement of our immigration laws?

Can we now publicly declare that our officially designed domestic terrorism is actually about racial domination in pursuit of White racial purity? You know: like superior Aryan purity?

Playing With Numbers

It’s clear that making this a White Christian nation is a key priority of Trump, MAGA and most super rich guys. So, what would it look like if we removed all those pesky “others”?

We’re already well on the way to expelling all Brown and Black people. People with Somali ancestry are obviously next to be imprisoned and expelled, even though between 70 and 83% of them are U.S. citizens and most others are here legally. But this is the Trump era, so those numbers are no impediment to ICE thuggery.

Muslims, Jews and Asians will likely be next. I have no clue what they’ll do with/to Native Americans. Since Trump likes Andrew Jackson so much, maybe there will be another Trail of Tears that leads to deportation vehicles.

The population of the country is about 348 million, so when we get rid of the 60% of unwelcome non-White, non-Christian “others” the population will be about 139 million.

That leaves me wondering who will do all the jobs that those disappeared people are doing now. What will Trump do with all the vacant rooms in his hotels? What will be our sense of ourselves? Don’t ask me because I won’t make the cut. I’ll be looking for a country to live in.

Three Questions

Who will remove Emma Lazarus’ poem from the base of the Statue of Liberty?

The last line to each stanza of the Star Spangled Banner is “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,” just as Francis Scott Key wrote it. Who will compose a revised last line that both rhymes and reflects our new and deeply compromised freedom and bravery?

When Trump has Arlington National Cemetery dug up to build the “Nobody has ever seen anything like this” Trump U.S. National Golf Course, what will he do with the 430,000 caskets and headstones of all those “suckers and losers”? How will the caskets and headstones be kept properly paired?

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Why Venezuela?


POST 1246

Severe Mental Illness

This pic is small because*

Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough, details the background of her severely emotionally damaged and galactically needy Uncle Donny. She knows the details because it is family lore to her. Alas, I’ve heard her speak many times but have not read her book. Nor do I have formal training or credentials as a mental health expert, but why should that stop me from explaining the real story about Venezuela?

We start where Trump started: his daddy didn’t care much about him and paid him no attention, no matter how outrageously he acted. He was left with massive validation deficits and lifelong severe daddy issues.

He was sent to military school in the hope that the discipline there would magically convert this primitive savage into a civilized human being, but that hope was dashed. His school record shows that he was a bully and actually tried to throw a fellow cadet out a window.

He was mentored by his father’s attorney, Roy Cohn, an awful man who aided Joseph McCarthy in his communist witch hunts that ruined countless lives.

From Google AI:

.  .  .  Roy Cohn was Donald Trump’s fiercely loyal mentor, trusted advisor, and surrogate father figure, teaching [Trump] ruthless tactics for business and media manipulation;

So, Trump found a daddy to give him attention and who taught him world class manipulation. Cohn taught him to never apologize for anything and to never admit making an error. He taught Trump to always double down and attack. Trump was a good student of Cohn’s lessons in cruelty, as the past 10 years attest.

Of course, you’ve observed his excessive need for adulation, including those disgusting, fawning Cabinet meetings. You’ve seen his inability to remain focused, his need to constantly attack others and much more mentally unstable stuff. In fact, he just attacked a sovereign nation and brought charges against its president that are laughably amateurish. And that leads to the reasons for that invasion and kidnapping.

You may recognize the pic to the left, as it was published in the Disambiguation last Sunday as The Onion used it. Trump does this show off pose for his executive orders, so I proposed that because his actions are so blatantly an infantile lurch for attention, the proper caption for the picture is, “Look! Look! I made a boom-boom!“. It’s a piece of his lifelong mania of craving attention, which brings us to Venezuela.

Little Donny had his sycophantic, brain-free bumblers cobble together a massive invasion force. They bombed an apartment building, destroyed infrastructure in Caracas and killed what’s estimated to be 32 members of the Venezuelan military and an unknown number of innocent civilians, all to kidnap the president of that country and his wife.

Trump has admitted repeatedly that the invasion was about securing Venezuelan oil. He’s going to sic our big petro companies on the country and its oil fields, they’ll rebuild oil pumping infrastructure and everyone will make a lot of money. Which is a load of horse pucky, because the petro guys don’t want the opportunity to spend billions of dollars in such an unsure venture. They were burned badly doing that years ago, plus the price of oil is so low that it’s uneconomical to pump it at all.

Trump hasn’t even mentioned drug smuggling as a motivation for his cruelty heaped on Venezuela, which is sensible, since most illicit drugs shipped from Venezuela go to Europe, not to the U.S. Plus, he had already pardoned Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had shipped over 400 tons of cocaine and illegal weapons into the U.S. After that outrageous pardon, it’s hard for Trump to claim he’s tough on the illegal drug trade.

He’s already rattling his sabre at neighboring Columbia and Cuba and threatening to buy Greenland or just take it from Denmark.

That is a map of Greenland overlaid by the red, white and blue, captioned, “SOON”. It’s from the wife of American chief Nazi Stephen Miller. It was posted Saturday on X after our invasion of Venezuela. Not surprisingly, the Danes, who own Greenland, don’t like it.

So, now we’re down to the real reasons for Trump’s invasion and kidnapping of the head of a country.

His messages and his actions couldn’t be clearer: he’s demonstrating that he’s so powerful that he can do anything, he can dominate anyone, that he has no need to be truthful or obey the law and that he can intimidate everyone. Said another way, his message is,

Look! Look! I’m so special! I’m so powerful!
Look at the impressive things I’ve done, Daddy!
Now for sure you’ll love me!
.

But Daddy will never love him. Never.

Nothing will ever be enough for Trump and he doesn’t care how many people he harms in his quest for what he cannot have, including the 32+ he just killed in Venezuela and the over 100 he blew up in their small boats; including the people he bombed in Nigeria and Syria; including the people victimized by Trump’s Gestapo, our unaccountable ICE thugs. He loves fascism for its gift of absolute power. There’s no need for him to consider other people, because he can just run over them, and even whole countries.

From Rick Wilson, Venezuela is the Iraq of Vietnams, The Easy Part Is Over:

Snatching the bad guy is the easy part.

The hard part is what happens next: when the cameras leave, when the speeches fade, and when reality shows up with the butcher’s bill.

And this is where the danger starts, because the Trump administration is built to win news cycles, not outcomes.

Be clear that winning news cycles is solely about “Look at me!”

Trump is locked in his constant parade of ever-expanding, ever more outrageous actions to gain attention and approval that he didn’t get and will never get from Daddy.

About the Fascism Part

From Steve Sheffey:

Here’s a “Clip from the 1942 Spencer [Tracy] / [Katherine] Hepburn film Keeper of the Flame that could have been filmed today.”

The film’s message of lawlessness, domination and crushing cruelty is frighteningly familiar.

At the time of this film we were fighting fascism and fascists and between 50 – 85 million people died. We had our democracy wits about us then. We won the fight and saved our democracy and made democracy available to all who wanted it. We need those same wits about us again to once more fight fascists, except this time we have to fight them here in America.

All because Trump has gigantic daddy issues.

And that’s why we invaded Venezuela. Or maybe it was a practice run for invading Cuba, as Lawrence O’Donnell posited last night. Regardless, it’s all about daddy issues.

For further context and some actual reality in this fabricated, Trump-led awful fantasy that darkens our skies every day, read Heather Cox Richardson’s January 6 post. Who but a mentally and emotionally compromised person would do all that harm?

___________________________________________

* This pic is small because I can’t stand looking at that crepe’s face and because he’s such a small, insignificant person. He knows it and he’s terrified that you’ll figure that out.

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    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 necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Doing “Things”


POST 1245

Preface: Nearly all of this post was written prior to the American invasion and kidnapping done in Venezuela yesterday. Consequently, there are just a few comments about that particular dog wagging and lawbreaking included here. We will do a deeper dive soon. Meanwhile, keep your eye on the prize.

Click me for the story by The Onion. My preferred caption for all of the posed pictures of Trump signing an executive order is, “Look! Look! I made a boom-boom!”

We the People are an endlessly clever and creative band and we relentlessly ridicule those who have earned and richly deserve our contempt and shaming. The year just past provided non-stop material for satire and verbal punches in the nose to our national abusers of decency, the law, the Constitution and even rational thinking. A few favorites are sprinkled in this post.

First, though, please accept my thanks for reading these posts and sometimes commenting on them. We all can do our part in this war to stop fascism, to protect and defend our Constitution, our democracy and our way of life and to restore decency to its place at the forefront of our cherished values. These posts are part of my modest effort to do just that. Indeed, when you see a message in these posts encouraging you to share them and to encourage others to subscribe (one more time: it is still and will remain a freebie!) it’s for the purpose of stretching the reach of the message from those of us who think democracy is a pretty good thing worthy of our collective moral muscle, to those who need our encouragement.

This particular post is less my words than direction to the brilliance of others. We start with the year end post of Prof. Heather Cox Richardson.

Click me

She brings context and points a finger at the guilty responsible for so many deeply destructive, anti-Constitutional and outright illegal things that have happened since January 20. Most examples are blood boilers, preludes to full-on fascism, but some really good stuff happened, too, like judicial decisions that pinned Trump’s ears back. Those are fun.

Many commentaries are persuasive, yet most often we’re left not knowing what to do to make the change we want to come about. Turns out some people can help fill that “huh?” hole.

For example, Robert Reich published 10 Crucial Things You Can Do in 2026 and it’s a really good list. You’ll know how to do every one of those “things”.

Here’s one of my “things”.

Are you on the fence about mean girl puppy murderer and poser in front of men illegally jammed into a torture prison at her direction, Christie Noem? Should she be removed from her post as Secretary of Homeland Security?

First, Watch this little video of Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (IL-3) as she skewers Noem by detailing her lies, her law breaking and her joyful cruelty. Then decide a proper fate for her.

Next, call your representative and senators and demand that they oust this talent-less Eva Braun by means of a humiliating impeachment. That’s a “thing” you can do.

Now Some Bitter, Well-Earned Congratulations:

Watch and listen to Jesse Welles’ message about recruiting ICE thugs. If you want more to make you think, click here.

– to the many millions of Americans who voted for Trump and who have lost their Obamacare subsidy so that their healthcare insurance now costs more than double what it cost last week. That will make it completely impossible for millions to get insurance at all and they will be relegated like so many to only the hospital emergency room for healthcare, including for their children. Millions of them live in red states and they didn’t vote for this to happen.

– to the hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens and legal residents who have been unjustly thrown to the ground, handcuffed, their faces mashed into the pavement, thrown into unmarked vans and either imprisoned or deported, all without an arrest warrant or even reasonable suspicion of any wrongdoing. It sucks to be an American with fascists in power and only the sociopaths voted for this.

– to the millions of kids who now go hungry because of the cruel withholding of SNAP benefits, a huge proportion of which used to go to families in red states. Again, they voted for Trump, but they didn’t vote for this to happen.

Grifting with Jesus

– to all the dozens of Venezuelans who have been illegally murdered at sea and now on land, but who were never formally accused of, incarcerated for, convicted of or sentenced for any crime.

– to all of us for our windfall benefit created by Trump’s piracy at sea of at least two oil super tankers filled with Venezuelan oil.

– to the hundreds of thousands of people around the world who have died of starvation or lack of inexpensive medicines because Trump ended the USAID program.

– to all of us for the blatant crushing under heel of the First Amendment on Christmas day by Trump and various departments of what’s left of our government. “If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other unalienable rights. Those in charge of government could throw representative government out the window and make themselves tyrants.” Read Heather Cox Richardson for this sad story.

Maybe you’d prefer an upside down Bible from the steps of St. John’s Church.

– to the terrorist cult of MAGA for its cheering Trump auctioning off a hastily painted Jesus, where he announced through his actions yet again that there is no bottom. There is nothing so undignified, so clownishly demeaning of our country that Trump will refuse the opportunity to grab it by its septic tank and tarnish our nation before the world.

– to Merrick Garland and his timid DOJ for epic, even galactic foot dragging, thereby refusing to enforce our laws. That allowed Trump to run in and win the 2024 election. See William A. Finnegan’s take down of what happened. This story will gnarl your innards yet again over the DOJ cowardice that enabled the current, ongoing destruction of our Constitution and blatant lawlessness, every bit as much as our lap dog Republican Congress has enabled that through the same cowardice.

Yes, really

– to the people of Venezuela for losing their country to Donald Trump. He’s made it clear that he admires and wants to be like Vladimir Putin, invading a sovereign nation, bombing facilities and killing its citizens. Trump has gone even farther by kidnapping its leader. Now he’s just like Putin. Maybe worse.

NOTE: Don’t be distracted. This invasion and kidnapping have nothing to do with drugs, democracy, elections or how bad or how illegitimate is Maduro as president of Venezuela. It is about the massive reserves of oil beneath that country and what that’s worth to Trump. That’s why we’ll “run the country.” Plus it’s a first step toward domination of all of South America and maybe Greenland, because Trump desperately needs to show what a strongman he is.

– finally, congratulations to us, for our dog being wagged relentlessly by yet another illegal Trump military distraction. But We The People will not let the Epstein scandal go away and Trump will get what he is due.

You know that this congratulatory list could be very long and you understand the sarcasm. You get that we cannot – we must not – tolerate more of this, which means that you and I must take action because our dire circumstances have become worse. Whatever you and I are doing, it isn’t enough. This is a great and lasting task before us. But, what to do? Try this to jump start your engine:

  • I can’t vouch for the claimed connection to anyone named Van Gogh, but the message is clear and compelling. There is a blank page before us waiting for what’s next in our story of democracy and it is our honor to write that story.

I repeat: Whatever you and I are doing, it isn’t enough. But we can do “things” and keep on doing “things”.

Many, many thanks to all who step up, do “things” and carry a load for the sake of all of us.

  • Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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    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 necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Year End – Part Two


POST 1243

The Terrible Truth

The DOJ, led by fearless suck ups Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche, has complied with about one smidgenth of what is required of them by law. Legislation demands that they turn over to Congress all – as in: ALL – files, documents, images, video recordings and the rest of the material in its possession related to Jeffrey Epstein and his heinous crimes, not later than midnight, December 19. Instead they turned over just a small fraction of the materials, saying they’d dribble out more over the next weeks.

In addition, they redacted documents so heavily that there is page after page with nothing but a solid black mask. The redactions were supposed to be used only to protect the names of the over 1,200 victims of child sex trafficking and rape and to protect national security, in the imaginary instance that such protection were necessary. Instead what Congress and We The People received was an extensive exercise in the use of black ink, likely protecting those who deserve no protection. Worse, our corrupt DOJ exposed the names of many of the victims of those horrible abuses.

We are left to realize that any evidence of wrongdoing by Trump and those he wants to protect (read: donors, rich supplicants and political power suppliers) will suddenly vanish – POOF! – just like the text on those wholly redacted pages.

TOL’ Ya So

I told you this was going to happen and it took no clairvoyance to figure that out, because dishonest, illegal and morally corrupt is what Trump and his fawners do. Expect many months of stalling and lies waiting for the required documentation. And expect evidence of wrongdoing by big fish to somehow be “lost.” But something deeper is showing itself.

Given the disparity of the obscene tormenting by ICE and the Department of Justice of everyone who looks even a little Hispanic and the special rules that continue to enrich the already rich and the faux release of Epstein documents, we now have our perfect polar opposites richly displayed. Together they illustrate what we all know is the terrible truth:

  • There is a special version of justice
  • for the rich and powerful
  • and a very different and cruel version of it
  • for the rest of us.
Humans

Rodney King:

“Can’t we all just get along?” *

Me:

No. It’s not even a remote possibility.

You:

Why not?

Me:

Because some people are maniacal about dominating others. Fight them and there is literally or figuratively blood in the streets. Or if you go along to get along with the power Nazis, that will mean surrender and submission. Loss of your autonomy. Life as a door mat.

Some other guy:

But most major religions – that’s where we commonly turn for moral guidance – talk about some version of wolves living with the lamb and the leopard lying down with the kid and the calf lying with the young lion – Isaiah 11:6.

Me:

Right. But the actual outcome of that co-habitation is well fed wolves, leopards and lions. It’s the same kind of contradiction with beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks – Isaiah 2:4. There will always be bad guys and we better have more than fanciful wishes and bits of messianic philosophy for dealing with them.

Democrats are beginning to go on the offensive against the domination brutes and the freedom thieves, like taking the reins to drive the Epstein investigation. We are hearing from people with stiffened spines. Maybe we’re seeing the beginnings of hope.

See footnote ** below

Here’s an accurate, if hand-wringing, description from Bret Stephens about the orange menace to the world:

— what more is there to say about the character of this petty, hollow, squalid, overstuffed man? — sometimes the point bears stressing: We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House.

And from Steven Beschloss

No matter how long I live after we get through this dark chapter, I will never get over the immorality, the amorality, the corruption, the criminality and the cruelty in service to one of the worst humans to ever walk the earth.

Key Learning

That is our starting point.
.

There will be a ton of work to do and it is going to take over a generation to fix what loathsome Trump has broken and to establish a new national ethos worthy of a democracy. A key question for all of us is whether we have the grit to stay that course. That won’t be easy in a country where instant gratification isn’t fast enough. Nevertheless, keep the faith and do the work, because it falls to us to fix this.

Finally, Ending the Year Like An Odd Animal

President Donald Trump continues to wag the dog to distract us from the Epstein trafficking and pedophilia and his cover-up. Here are some of those wags.

  1. Last week Trump had our mighty military send deadly rockets into northwest Nigeria. He said it was to attack ISIS because they were killing Christians. That looked so very satisfyingly protective of Christianity until the leader of Nigeria said that ISIS brutality wasn’t focused on Christians.
  2. Then he attacked Syria the same way and with the same lame excuse.
  3. Last week Trump also pirated another Venezuelan oil tanker and threatened to steal a third.
  4. Even as courts have slapped his hand he’s ramped up recruiting and training of new ICE agents. He promised yet more bonuses to them to induce more thugs to join and pretend to fight the few criminals they can find. Plus get them to imprison and rendition people who are here legally, including U.S. citizens.

Watch for more tails wagging the dog – they’re on the way. Woof.

_______________________________________________

* King is commonly quoted as having said that, but what he actually said was, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along?”

King said that during the 1972 riots in LA, this from a guy whose Wikipedia entry begins, “Rodney Glen King (April 2, 1965 – June 17, 2012) was an American victim of police brutality. On March 3, 1991, he was severely beaten by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department . . . ” That’s how the lambs, leopards and lions thing worked for him. Even so, he called for peace. If you need a dose of injustice outrage, read the Wikipedia entry of how he was brutalized. If you want to hear about a guy with class, you’ll get that from that Wikipedia entry, too.

Note that the Los Angeles riots were triggered by the police officers being found not guilty for beating the snot out of King. We humans don’t respond well to such injustice, so people spoke out in the only way they would be heard.

Come to think of it, those LA cops kicked and beat King as he lay on the pavement, even as he posed no threat to anyone. That sounds a lot like today’s ICE agents, our American Gestapo. It also sounds like our Defense Department dealing with shipwrecked survivors.

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Your Government At Work – Maybe


POST 1237

Click me

Today is Pearl Harbor Day. No one alive on that day could have foreseen the intentional decline of the United States of America that has occurred, brought to us by political self-dealing, greed, power lust and voter indifference. Those at Pearl Harbor 84 years ago didn’t fight and die for the mess we have now. Read this.

The Rusty Wheels of Government

Take a look at this:

H.J.Res.54 – Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States providing that the rights protected and extended by the Constitution are the rights of natural persons only. (119th Congress)
Sponsor: Rep. Jayapal, Pramila [D-WA-7] (Introduced 02/12/2025)

Has changes in:

    • Cosponsors (1 new, 68 total)
      • Cosponsor: 12/03/2025: Rep. Goldman, Daniel S. [D-NY-10]

My representative hasn’t sponsored this critical bill yet, so I wrote to him asking him to cosponsor this legislation that is designed to allow for the elimination of Big Money from our elections, our politics and our laws and to ensure that the protection of our rights extends only to flesh and blood human beings. You know: reverse the dreadedful Citizens United manipulated Supreme Court decision.

If your rep hasn’t signed on yet, tell them what you want. Here’s a link to find his/her contact info. Just enter your zip code in the lookup box on the top right of that page. Your doing that will be part of lubrication for those rusty wheels of government.

Got The Alleged Bad Guy

You’ll recall that Trump directed thousands of people to storm the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, inciting that insurrection. When they had vandalized everything they could find, tried to find Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi so they could lynch them and had defecated in the halls of Congress, they left with Trump saying he loved them and that they were fine people and patriots all.

Over 1,500 were tried and convicted of crimes. Then Trump, the tough on crime president, pardoned all of them in 2025, including the thugs who tried to kill cops. Isn’t he just the epitome of tough-on-crime?

Last Thursday our government bad guys catchers announced that they had arrested the guy they are sure planted the backpack bombs in DC just before that January 6, 2021 insurrection. Did I mention that it was planned and incited by Donald Trump.

The alleged perp catching isn’t the news. What is most significant is how the presenters of this nab spoke in a news conference. Note that the team included Attorney General Pam Bondi, Director of the FBI Kash Patel, Assistant FBI director Dan Bongino and U.S. Attorney for DC, Jeanine Pirro. Here’s what they did and said that is worthy of note.

  1. The entire event was little more than a self-congratulatory victory lap, all speakers chanting their own version of, “We’re so great! We’re so great! Na, na, noo, noo! We’re so great!” like so many high school jerks. They are so pleased to take nearly all the credit for the bust and give just an honorable mention to the FBI agents who did all of the hard work. So much for professionalism.
  2. Every speaker presented with righteous superiority the various failings, ineptitude and the unworthiness of President Biden and his entire administration. They’ll have us know that for four years they did nothing to find the bad guy, our performative ones say. And weren’t we lucky to finally have these real professionals at work for the American People? No, really, they’re just so great!

And there was more embarrassing stuff.

Please watch the 26 minute circus sideshow for yourself. Then come back to the Comments section below and let everyone know what other horribles I missed.

This complete lack of professionalism and childish bravado is what Americans voted for, however unknowingly. Now we wait as this story plays out, There will be charges made of possession of forbidden materials and whatever other charges they can conjure. There will be a trial held and the perp will go to prison, unless, of course, Bondi’s DOJ geniuses find ways to screw up this trial, too, like they did the James Comey and Letitia James prosecutions. If all that happens while Trump is still in office, watch for this perp to receive a January 6-worthy presidential pardon, unless, of course, Trump finds out that the guy is Black.

In Yet Another Attack .  .  .

.  .  .  on American values, the Trump White House issued its 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States of America. Giving credit where it might be due, it’s possible that there isn’t even a handful of staffers who can spell “strategy,” much less know what it is, but their numbers wouldn’t include key players, because they’re just players.

This is a document that blows off all U.S. obligations to NATO, abdicates international order, promotes U.S. imperialism, embraces tough guy murderous rulers and promises to roll over all of Latin America to “protect our interests,” whatever that convenient phrase might mean when uttered by any Project 2025 extremist.

This document is an ugly read that will offend your very being, so instead read Heather Cox Richardson’s piece about it from her December 5 post. Be sure to first take your heart attack pills.

The Ignoble Prize

It became clear even to Trump he will never be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, this for substantial reasons having to do with a lack of peace influenced by him, plus his continuing international belligerency. But his fragile ego needs a prize, so a solution was found. It is for Trump to award himself the first ever FIFA (soccer) Peace Prize. That brought raucous international disapproval and booing of fans, who declared, “This is pathetic.” The inscription on the medal reads, “For continuing discreditable service against the common man and attacks against laudable values.”

In receiving the award Trump said that he was so moved that he was speechless. He then proceeded to babble incoherently for 40 minutes, mispronouncing slurs against Presidents Obama and Biden and mimicking his insults of Sen. Adam Schiff. Reporters around the world once again bemoaned that America chose Trump as the best we could offer.

es
Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Starting To Set Things Right


POST 1236

Cheers For Freedom Of Speech

One of the most valuable rights we Americans have is the right of free speech. What that means is that the government is prohibited from restricting our speech, stopping us from saying what we want to say, even if we are criticizing the government or any of its employees. There are some exceptions, like for slander, liable and incitement to violence. That’s how it’s been since 1789 and it’s worked pretty well for our democracy and our freedom all this time. We can say pretty much what we want to say, as did six legislators who told the truth about the prohibition of military personnel to obey illegal orders. See the Special Slime section in this post for more.

The government may not censor us just because some wrinkly, thin-skinned official cries “MEANY!” or “UNFAIR!” or “TRAITOR” on the playground at recess time and throws an infantile tantrum, then runs to his fixer, his present day Roy Cohn (his AG, Bondi) demanding prosecution of whoever dared to speak truth about him.

Having so many opportunities to right grievous presidential wrongs, we’re getting better at this.

A Mini-Summary

A court says Alina Habba, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s surrogate for unconstitutional cases, is an illegal U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. The appeals court agrees and replaced Habba with Desiree Leigh Grace. Immediately Bondi fired Grace and put Habba back into control of that office. We’ll see how long that lasts, because judges typically have the last say.

Click me for the U.S. Department of Revisionist History

Another court says beauty queen Lindsey Halligan was not properly vetted and appointed, so it dumped her cases against James Comey and Letitia James, then spanked her hand with judicial smack downs. Andy Borowitz opined that Halligan’s dream is to go to law school some day.

It seems that maybe, possibly, might be, could be Pete Hegseth has finally crossed a red line. Following 10 months of saying stupid things, he ordered our military to kill survivors of our homicidal drone strikes on boats in international waters. A lot of people have their underwear in a bunch over that, including senators and representatives. They say those acts are war crimes and murder. Ya think? At last Hegseth may get what he has coming; specifically a boot out the White House back door and perhaps prosecutions for his impressive list of illegal actions. We’ll all have lots to say about this deviant in the coming months.

AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks earned his title  of czar only because: 1. Nobody knows what someone in charge of AI and/or crypto does or should do; 2. Donald Trump likes big superlative seeming stuff that gets attention, like the title “czar.”

Hard to read. It’s a huge billboard in Chicago not far from  Broadview that reads “IMPEACH TRUMP.”

Adapted from a quotation by management expert Peter Drucker:

“We are using the word ‘czar’ only because ‘charlatan’ is too long to fit into a headline.”

That quote can be used for just about every Trump appointment. And yeah, I get to say that. It’s that freedom of speech thing.

Our reality show president has been waging a verbal war on narco-terrorism, perhaps believing he can Truth Social it into submission and randomly kill whoever someone tells him is a drug something or other. Apparently, even the dementia-addled have the right of free speech, much as that sucks in this case.

Trump is definitely a tough guy who is verbally tough on narco-terrorism and Hispanic landscapers, but now he has pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras. He was convicted in the United States of a vast drug-trafficking operation that prosecutors said dumped over 400 million tons of drugs into the U.S. Trump has pardoned this biggest narco-terrorist of them all, enraging Elmer Fudd, who oinked furiously, “I’ll get that wasco, if it’s the wast thing I eva do!” So much for Trump being the narco tough guy.

Since the power of pardons rests solely with the sitting president we can’t prosecute Trump for this affront. We are left with investigating how much money was given to Trump for that pardon. Watch for that investigation as Trump’s biggest pay-to-play bribe. It might be part of a package of bribery investigations starting in 2027, then pursued by the Department of Justice in 2029.

Click me for the transformational story.

We’re starting to set things right. My notion is that it’s going to take more than a generation to clean up all the terrible mess the infant tyrant has made. It will take many years to remove his bad boys and bad girls and prosecute them in accordance with the law. Let’s hope that foot dragging Merrick Garland has nothing to do with initiating those prosecutions so that we don’t get stymied by the statute of limitations.

That said, courts are largely doing what they are supposed to do, although John Roberts cannot live long enough to somehow be worthy of forgiveness for giving immunity from prosecution to Trump. Our Republican legislators are beginning to see that it may be safe for them to retrieve their spines from the Senate and House Cloak Rooms, where they checked them upon being sworn in.

It’s Partisan

President Donald Trump has told us that the Epstein thing is a partisan witch hunt being conducted by Democrats, much like his claim about Russians helping him in his elections; like “affordability” and inflation; like Hegseth’s “Kill them all” criminality; like so many issues. It’s about the other party. So, I have a question.

My party is the Constitution of the United States. What is Trump’s party?

Now is the time to come to the aid of your Constitution.
Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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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 necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Slurs, Slights, Slime and Special Slime


POST 1233

Click me for the full story.

Slurs

From Rick Wilson’s post, Quiet, Piggy:

On Air Force One, which is far below the standards of his upcoming gilded Qatari bribe jet, Trump pointed his finger at Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey and snapped, “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy,” because she committed the unpardonable sin of asking about the Epstein files and what he knew.

Then,

He did not call Catherine Lucey “piggy” because he’s concerned about her health. He did it because she asked about Epstein, the files, and what Trump knew. When cornered on anything that smells like legal exposure, he defaults to the playground, because that is who he has always been: a 79-year-old mean girl with worse hair and more indictments.

Later,

Trump’s body insults are part of his dominance game. He is telling that reporter, and every woman watching, that the price of challenging him is public humiliation. He is sending a message to every young woman in journalism who watched that clip: ask a hard question, and the President of the United States might turn you into a meme, a punchline, a target for his howling online mob.

Trump saves his most rotten vitriol to spit it at women, whom he continues to think of only as sex toys, so he attacks their appearance. There has been plenty of commentary about Trump’s frequent demeaning of women, but Wilson’s is the best take down I’ve seen.

Trump tries to humiliate men, too, but never for their appearance – only for Trump’s need to demean their intelligence and competence. They are a threat to him due to his lack of both. Hence, he reverts to his playground bully name calling default. All of it comes from this now dementia addled, obese, decaying Petri dish smear of a human.

He continues to degenerate in full view, even as his apologists ramp up their excuses, denials and lies. It’s both a sad spectacle and grossly dis-empowering to our country that this rotting-in-place president is displayed before the world.

Slights

The sweet and touching remembrances by dear ones at the Dick Cheney memorial on Thursday were heartfelt and appropriate. The memories from professional colleagues surely spoke accurately and appreciatively of their experiences with the departed. This was the right place for such things. Yet we must remember a fuller picture than that.

He was nicknamed Darth Cheney for justified reasons. He helped spread the lies that brought us into two intractable and arguably illegal wars that killed hundreds of thousands for no significant benefit to any but our defense contractors. He was a promoter of our country torturing prisoners and of our abandoning the rule of law.

He was an architect of the plan that he and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld hatched, declaring that Iraqi oil would pay for that war. It was a plan for nothing less than piracy.

Cheney held onto his Halliburton stock and this so-called selfless servant to our nation profited handsomely. Sound familiar?

He also outed Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer (i.e. spy), putting her life and that of her husband, Amb. Joe Wilson, at risk and ending her career.

Cheney proudly declared that budget deficits don’t matter, so he, Dubya and Rumsfeld conducted their wars “off balance sheet.” I still don’t know what that means, but I do know about the trillions of dollars of national debt they piled onto our backs. And our children’s. And our grandchildren’s. And  .  .  .

So, let the tears of loss for some fall as they may, but let’s not forget the fuller story and thereby inappropriately deify one responsible for so much death and destruction.

Here are more slights.

George W. and Laura Bush were at the Cheney memorial, as were Joe and Jill Biden, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Al Gore and Dan Quayle. Notably absent were Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama, who were invited to attend. Read whatever you like into those absences from a state funeral.

The sitting president of the United States, Donald Trump, and his nowhere-to-be-seen wife, Melania, plus J.D. Vance weren’t there because they weren’t invited.

Note that I intended to insert a photo of Cheney into this section and, in the end, I couldn’t get myself to do it

Slime

16 million men.

That’s how many Americans went to war to battle and eliminate the hatred and barbarity that swastikas represent. Are we losing our collective memory of those men, what they stood for and what they stood against? Did we forget the horrors of fascism?

It took us hundreds of years to figure out that a noose is a symbol of terror and hatred. At last in 2022 we got The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act signed into law. Now it looks like things are changing that could challenge that.

Here’s the beginning of WaPo’s story from Thursday, November 20. Click the headline pic for the full story.

The U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify the swastika — an emblem of fascism and white supremacy inextricably linked to the murder of millions of Jews and the deaths of more than 400,000 U.S. troops who died fighting [Nazis and their swastikas] in World War II — as a hate symbol, according to a new policy that takes effect next month.

Instead, the Coast Guard will classify the Nazi-era insignia as “potentially divisive” under its new guidelines.

“Potentially divisive?” Ya think? Is that the terminology the Coast Guard used in 1943 as they were patrolling our coasts looking for Nazi u-boats and aircraft?

Later that same day, The Hill reported:

Click the pic for the full story.

Makes me wonder if the slimy Trump administration leaked a story just to see what the public response might be, this in order to find out what they could get away with. Wouldn’t legalizing Nazi and White supremacy symbols in our military just tickle our hatred-stoked White supremacists, our un-Christian nationalists and our various extremist haters who think lynching is a fun, all-American way to cut loose on a Saturday night? That leak oughta solidify support from President Bone Spurs’ base.

Consider yourself slimed.

Special Slime

Six Democratic lawmakers, every one a veteran of military service, our intelligence services or both, published a PSA video for our military folks, reminding them not to obey illegal orders. Indeed, they are required to refuse illegal orders and are taught and ordered as such by the instructors at our military academies and elsewhere. That directive is in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).* It is also in the Department of Defense Law of War manual, which specifies that “responsible commanders are required to decline to carry out orders that are contrary to the law of war.” 

President Bone Spurs has been issuing plenty of illegal orders, like sending the Marines into Los Angeles and murdering people in small boats in international waters. Harry Litman reports, “As Marty Lederman has documented in a comprehensive analysis, neither the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force nor any Title 10 operational authority plausibly applies [to render attacks on Venezuelan fishing boats legal].

These lawmakers said in their video that our troops should obey their oath to the Constitution and not obey illegal orders from superiors. For their efforts, these patriots were rewarded by Trump calling them traitors guilty of sedition and promoting the idea that they be hanged.

That set Trump’s howling mob to making death threats against them. These hystericals can’t figure out that not only these six patriots, but all of us should protect and defend the Constitution instead of obeying the Dementia-In-Chief.

That’s constitutional slime, as well as inciting violence, which is illegal.

For more detail on Trump’s perfidy and calls for yet more murder, this time of elected officials, read Heather Cox Richardson’s post.

Just For Sardonic Grins

This is some of why I’ve long considered myself an Eisenhower Republican. Realistically, that kind of conservatism – yes, that’s what it was called – is long gone. But if enough Democrats can regain their spines, that stuff might yet be coming, but only if we demand it.

Tell you what: Go tell your senators and representative what you want.

Finally, Andy Borowitz reported that Lindsey Halligan Reveals Her Dream is to Someday Go to Law School. Might be a little late for her.

___________________________________________

* Examples of illegal orders from the UCMJ linked article:

A superior orders a soldier to engage in war crimes, such as:

Targeting civilians intentionally. [Think: murdering civilians in small boats in international waters]

Torturing prisoners of war. [Think: waterboarding. See the above in the Cheney section.]

Looting or pillaging property

A commanding officer orders personnel to suppress lawful protests in violation of First Amendment rights. [Think: Lafayette Park in 2020 and in U.S. cities in 2025]

Violations of International Laws. [Think: those small boats and those illegal wars]

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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