21st Century

IMMIGRANTS UNITE!


POST 1185


First, Minnesota

A thug murdered three Minnesotans, two of them Democratic state legislators. This should come as no surprise, since Trump has been calling since 2015 for violence against Democrats, progressives, protesters and anyone who disagrees with him about anything. He claims to be “your retribution” against “those others.” So of course some wing nut listened to him and took action, perhaps expecting to be pardoned by Trump.

This is just today’s chapter in Trump’s program of I Don’t Care, So Death To You.


To The National Brother/Sisterhood/Childhood of Immigrant Workers
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Yesterday there was a massive national demonstration, an opposition, a revulsion, the rejection of the tyrant’s attack and his anti-America corruption of the values we hold dear. Indeed, our immigrants, whether documented or not, came here to live by those values and they and we won’t stand for this vile little man’s evil.

This President has unleashed his attack thugs, masked gunmen bearing no identification, no badge of any kind, carrying no arrest warrants and exercising no concern for innocent people. He dispatched them with instructions to kidnap anyone who they think looks like they might be in America without documentation – that means Black and Brown people. They select kidnap victims based on their ignorance.

They have arbitrarily claimed thousands of people to be criminals. They have arrested citizens of the United States with the same right to be here as any of us. They possess no evidence of anyone’s wrongdoing and act in the total absence of due process rights. In short, they are thugs acting illegally at the order of a lawless president and you, immigrants, are their primary target.

Demonstrations against this lawlessness are powerful and good, but it will take more for the American public to become fully aware of what these illegal actions mean to Americans. They don’t realize that they themselves will feel the effects of this. They don’t realize that one day the tyrants will run out of Black and Brown people to abuse and others will be next to be labeled enemies. That’s what tyrants always do.

That is why I’m calling for an ad hoc action, a labor strike, to make clear how Trump’s White, Non-At-All-Christian actions will impact everyone. Specifically, I’m calling on:

hotel and restaurant workers

construction laborers

domestic workers

garment workers

farm workers

landscapers

day laborers, like the folks who hang out early in the morning at Home Depots and 7-11s hoping to earn a day’s pay

It’s time to take a stand, so immigrant workers:

DO NOT SHOW UP FOR WORK THIS THURSDAY OR ANY THURSDAY UNTIL THIS CRUELTY STOPS.

.

Maybe some of the White privilege people who whine and moan their “Replacement Theory” lunacy will show up in California’s Central Valley to do stoop labor, like picking strawberries and lettuce. Maybe they’ll do the work of moving heavy wheel barrows full of cement or removing debris from construction sites. Maybe they’ll scrub the pots and pans in a hot commercial kitchen 14 hours a day, or clean befouled hotel rooms left by hotel guest slobs. Maybe they’ll scrub the floors of rich people’s homes.

But none of that is ever going to happen. Here’s what will happen.

None of those angry, privileged White guys will show up to do the hard work our immigrants do every day. Housing construction will slow to a halt, restaurants will close their doors and produce bins in grocery stores will be empty. And there will be a lot of hotel rooms that don’t get cleaned and landscaping around rich guys’ houses will become nothing but weeds.

It’s time to make the point to all American citizens that their way of life is dependent upon the hard working immigrants to this country and that those tax paying immigrants are a major part of the reason for hope for this nation.

Immigrants to America Unite!

You have nothing to lose but the threat of deportation to a torture concentration camp, never to see your family again.

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Memo To Silent Americans

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Turn off the ignorant and the stupid.

.

Treasonous Americans are trying to steal your country, your values, your freedom, your future and your hopes for your children.

They tried an insurrection to murder leaders and take over your government, killing and maiming cops and befouling our Capitol Building.

Trump pardoned the convicted criminals, enabling them to continue to conspire to overthrow us.

The Supreme Court gave the president the right to break our laws with impunity.

Trump and his criminal suck-ups are moving every day to use our military to take action against you and make this a police state.

THAT WILL BE THE END OF YOUR FREEDOM!
.

DO NOT sleepwalk through reality. DO NO be an existential threat to the United States of America through passivity. DO NOT tolerate the murderous Oath Keeper criminals, the DOGE flying monkeys who stole your personal information and the lying Trump bastards violating your Constitution and your rights every day.

Wake up!

.

America isn’t about any king.

It is about We The People.

We declare that in no uncertain terms right here.

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Pics From The Highland Park NO KINGS Event

Yes that Highland Park. July 4, 2022. 7 killed, 48 wounded. Still this little village turned out over 3,000 yesterday to tell everyone that we will not have a king. We will not tolerate cruelty to anyone. The Law is the law and nobody is above it. Those sentiments were on display in over 2,160 locations nationwide with attendance in the millions.

Paraphrasing Winston Churchill’s address to the House of Commons in the darkest days of the blitzkrieg of the Battle of Britain, June 4, 1940:

We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight them in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight them in our town squares, we shall fight them in the hills. We shall never surrender. We shall fight them in our state houses, we shall fight them in our Congress. We shall fight them in our courts and we shall fight them in our voting booths. We shall rescue and liberate ourselves from their cruelty to carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, we restore our promise of America.

 

kakistocracy | kakəˈstäkrəsē | government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state

 

 

 

Credit to MG for this one


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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 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 length, readability, punctuation, typos and 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


Now Is The Time – It Always Is


POST 1184


Click the pic

On February 19 Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker delivered his State of the State address. Appropriately, most of it was focused on Illinois issues, but he reserved his final comments for the state of our country and the perils we face moving forward.

We are now four months further down the dangerous path Pritzker described and things are turning more dire with every Trump power grab and his every attack on our Constitution. That makes Pritzker’s warning yet more important and urgent.

Down goes Trumpy! Down goes Trumpy! Down goes Trumpy!
Trump ridiculed Biden for tripping on the Air Force One stairs. Do you think he’ll rip himself for doing the same thing? Click the pic

Watch and listen to Gov. Pritzker’s cautionary message. If you’d like to watch his entire address (36 minutes), click here.

Here’s another framing from Pritzker about where we stand in the march of history:

What we do and don’t do matters. It matters right now more than it ever has before. When my future grandkids look back on this moment, I want them to know that my voice was one of the loudest in the room, screaming for justice and fighting against tyranny.

What do you want your grandkids to know about what you did when everything was on the line?

It’s time to stand strong in the face of the tyrants. Here’s what Churchill said about that in 1940 during the Battle of Britain, even as the bombs of Hitler’s blitzkrieg (“lighting war”) exploded in London.

Click me. Definitely click me.

America isn’t about any king.

It is about We The People.

We declare that in no uncertain terms right here.

.

You and I are just like the Founders in our abhorrence of kings – dictators, really. We are threatened by such people right now. That’s why June 14* is

NO KINGS DAY!*

.

“You have to know what you stand for, or you’ll fall for anything.” – Les Brown

Click the map to find a demonstration near you. As of this writing there are over 1,800 of them, all for people across the nation who won’t tolerate Trump’s reign of scams, cruelties, corruption and the destruction of our Constitution he hopes will lead to his dictatorship and make him Orange King Donald I.

So, show up on June 14 to demonstrate who we really are, what we stand for and what we won’t stand for.

And pass this message to others. This existential battle needs all of us – and we need this battle in order to restore our country.

___________________________________________________

* It’s also the day of Trump’s ego-maniacal military parade. Watch for his lying press secretary Karoline Leavitt to lie in a manic, fantastical frenzy about parade attendance, a la Sean Spicer.


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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 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 length, readability, punctuation, typos and 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 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Center-Right – Really?


POST 1182


The Numbers*
Here is What We Americans Want
.

87% of Americans believe Social Security benefits should be maintained or increased

79% of Americans support raising (not cutting) taxes on the wealthy and big corporations

69% of Americans want Medicare For All (MFA)

63% of Americans believe abortion should be legal

53% of Americans believe automatic weapons should be banned**

64% of Americans want stricter gun laws

74% of Americans want Dreamers to have legal status in the U.S.

62% of Americans believe medication abortion should be legal

82% of Americans want Medicaid to either stay the same or increase

60% of Americans oppose ICE raids in schools and places of worship

77% of Americans support maintaining or increasing SNAP (food stamp) benefits

90% of Americans oppose redistricting (gerrymandering) for political advantage

When asked if they’re righties or lefties, millions of Americans claim to be conservatives – center-right or even more to the right. But when they’re asked specifically about their views on the issues above, they respond just as you see – like progressives. The conservative blabbers really should stuff a sock in their claims that this is a center-right country, because that claim just isn’t true.

If We The People want these things and we’ve wanted them for a very long time, how come we don’t have them? Click here for the answer.

From the Kids Who Sat At The Back of the Classroom Shooting Spitballs Instead of Paying Attention
.

30% of Americans think the 2020 election was stolen from Trump

35% of Americans cannot name the 3 branches of government

26% of Americans believe the sun orbits the Earth

4 – 10% of Americans believe the Earth is flat – seriously!

27% of Americans distrust science

There will be no Blue Light Special to save us on the cheap. This is going to cost our blood, sweat and tears. It is a challenge worthy of America.

If we want something better than we are getting, we’ll have to do something different – like elect people to power who will fairly represent us and who will kill the voter suppression practices that poison the heart of America.

It will take generations to fix the mess we’ve allowed to be made by our legislative self-serving cowards who debase themselves to lobbyists and cower before bullies. And we’ve been harmed by the willful indifference of the over 90 million eligible voters whose butts remain on their couches every election. Now is a good time to start the clean-up on Aisle U.S.***

The Department of Hope

It’s time to stop wringing our hands. It’s time to reach down and grab our grit and use it to attack what deserves to be attacked. It’s time to speak the truth about America and Americans and demand the America We The People want. That fight is what gives us hope.

Start by listening to Tim Walz make it plain for you.

Our Streets

You and I are just like the Founders in our abhorrence of kings – dictators, really. We are threatened by such people right now, in part because of the national insanity we’ve tolerated far too long. That’s why June 14 is

NO KINGS DAY!

.

You have to know what you stand for, or you’ll fall for anything.

Click on the map to find a demonstration near you. As of this writing there are over 1,400 of them, all for people across the nation who won’t tolerate Trump’s reign of scams, cruelties, corruption and the destruction of our Constitution he hopes will lead to his dictatorship and make him King Donald I.

But America isn’t about any king. It is about We The People. We declare that in no uncertain terms right here.

So, show up on June 14 to demonstrate who we really are, what we stand for and what we won’t stand for. And pass this message to others. This existential battle needs all of us.

Don’t Ever Back Down

Democrats plan to hire a TACO truck to serve free tacos outside the Republican National Committee headquarters starting this Tuesday – TACO Tuesdays, as in: Trump Always Chickens Out. Said Mother Jones, “.  .  .  [the idea] has since reportedly irked our ever-mercurial, toddler-brain president.”

This kind of tweaking is, of course, childish and undignified. I love it.

Every day in every way, punch the bully in the nose.

Don’t back down. Don’t ever back down.
.

Click me. Definitely click me.

___________________________________________________

* I looked up all the numbers presented here and easily found them from reputable sources with a simple search, “What percentage of Americans want .  .  . ” There are many reports on each of these topics, so there is some variation in the percentages that can be found. However, in no case was there meaningful disagreement from the intent of what is presented here.

** In the wake of any major mass shooting (think: Sandy Hook; Parkland; Topps Supermarket; Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Music Festival; Emanuel AME Church; Tree of Life Synagogue; Tucson-Giffords; etc.) the percentage of Americans who want automatic weapons, large capacity magazines, bump stocks and silencers to be banned goes up to 80-92%.

*** Gallup reports that approval of Congress is 26%. That means that 3 of every 4 Americans disapproves of our Congress. 53% of us disapprove of the job Trump is doing. Why in the world should we tolerate such horrid job performance? Fire these guys!


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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 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 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Emergency


POST 1181


Paramedics Aren’t Enough
We all have to show up for this emergency.
.

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is presented as a budget bill, but its 1,116 pages hide aggressively subversive things buried in its bulk that have nothing to do with budgets and everything to do with crushing our rights and our freedoms. This bill is a clear and present danger to the United States. It is an existential threat to our way of life and the values you and I hold dear.

In a level headed, referenced piece on the site of Campaign Legal Center entitled These Hidden Provisions in the Budget Bill Undermine Our Democracy, Eric Kashdan lays out some examples of the subversion* in this bill.

“An Attack on the Judicial Branch

“The first of these outrageous policies — buried in Section 70302 of the legislation — would severely restrict federal courts’ authority to hold government officials in contempt if they violate judicial orders.”

Just consider the Supreme Court’s order to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. and the Trump Administration’s refusal. This provision would actually make Trump’s criminal contempt of court legal.

“A Flood of False Information in Elections

“The second problematic provision — found within Section 43201(c) of the House reconciliation bill — would impose a 10-year ban on the enforcement of all state and local laws that regulate artificial intelligence (AI), including rules for AI’s use in political campaigns and elections.”

Read that again: This bill will kill the efforts of our states to stop election misinformation, interference and manipulation of voters.

The New York Times has an exhaustive walk-through of this assault on democracy. If you’re feeling too happy, sample your way through it and you’ll be cured.

This “Big Beastly Bill” (kudos to Nancy Kohn and Art Friedson for the label – link through to their post – it’s brilliantly clear) is cloaked as a budget bill but is chock full of democracy destroying provisions like the destruction of checks and balance that has nothing to do with budgetary issues. And it’s full of nuclear attacks on Americans, most especially on non-super rich Americans. It is straight out of the Project 2025 homegrown political terrorist playbook.

The treachery throughout this plan for a bloodless coup is a clear violation of both the Faithless Clause and the Deceit Clause of the Constitution and is likely in violation of various sections of U.S. Code: Title 18 — CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE, especially the Fraud, Unlawful, Cruel and Kaput (collectively the “FUCK Acts”) statutes.**

Trump and his fellow conspirators may well be in violation of sections of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which includes provisions for treason, seditious conspiracy and more. To be accurate, they aren’t trying to overthrow the government. They’re supplanting established norms with a blizzard of self-serving edicts nobody voted for and refusing to honor even a ghost of their oath of office.

Please link through and read this short, clear-headed explanation. There is more bad stuff in this bill than can be listed there, but this will get you started in your research to understand this awful bill.

Good-Bye Norman Rockwell

My wife and I have long enjoyed election day, walking to our local polling place, seeing neighbors there and all of us practicing citizenship. It’s a Norman Rockwell scene that affirms who we all are.

Now, though, we are threatened by tyrants who are working day and night in every venue imaginable to take away our rights of citizenship, to tear down our country, to impoverish you and me and to pocket the spoils for themselves. They want to set fire to that Norman Rockwell scene. That is the imminent danger we face.

Update From Sen. Pig Castrator

At a town hall on May 30 Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) responded to a constituent question about the massive cuts to Medicaid in the Big Beastly Bill – $880 billion – and how that will affect our most vulnerable. She smirked and said, “Well, we’re all going to die.”

That, apparently, is what passes for promoting the general welfare and compassion for the suffering, according to Republicans. See for yourself here. Watch for the smirk at 0.42.

Did You Know?
The Byrd Rule*** allows a single Senator to remove non-budget related provisions from bills that are attempting to be passed under budget reconciliation.
.
CALL YOUR SENATORS, because it takes 60 votes to overcome [a filibuster], and ONLY ONE SENATOR to call out these un-American provisions.
Action

Here are the two things we – you and I – must do.

1. Immediately phone both of your senators – no snail mail, no email – whether they’re Democratic, Republican or Independent. You can reach them through the

U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121

.

Tell them to invoke the Byrd Rule** on every single non-budgetary provision in this bill. That won’t fix everything, so they’ll also have to invoke the filibuster, too, if/when it comes time for voting on the entire caca package. Then tell them to VOTE NO on this attack-on-America bill.


2. Attend a NO KINGS protest on June 14. Click the map below for clarity about why you need to be there and to find a rally near you. I promise you that you’ll be emboldened and proud stand with people who show up to practice citizenship and to declare, “NO KINGS ON MY WATCH!

Also, listen to New York Attorney General  Letitia James tell us it’s time to stand up and fight back. Do not give in to fear.

Finger Pointing Department

If you want to know who to blame for our ongoing debacle (root cause, primary driver), it might surprise you to learn that it isn’t Donald Trump. It’s who enabled Trump to happen. Click here.

Head Scratcher Department

Country Joe McDonald sang his song I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag at Woodstock 55 years ago. In it he asked about the Viet Nam war, “What are we fighting for?” I’d like to hear some of today’s Trump supporters answer that question – what are they fighting for?

_________________________________________________

sub·ver·sion
/səbˈvərZHən,səbˈvərSHən/
  1. the undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution.
    “the ruthless subversion of democracy”
    Source: Oxford Languages

** These Clauses and statutes don’t exist, but they should so that we can accurately describe the un-American actions of today’s faithless, selfish, cowardly Republican saboteurs and hold them accountable.

*** From Google AI:

The Byrd Rule is a Senate rule that limits what can be included in reconciliation legislation to provisions that directly affect the federal budget, specifically spending and revenues. It prevents reconciliation bills from becoming vehicles for non-budgetary policy changes. 

Click here for a plain language explanation of the Byrd Rule, or here if you want to really get down in the weeds with it.

Countdown to November 3, 2026
Mid-Term Election

Countdown Timer

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Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get 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 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Downhill


POST 1177


Deterioration

During an ABC interview our president boldly and repeatedly embarrassed himself by claiming that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 terrorist gang member. Trump tried to prove it by showing a picture of Mr. Garcia’s left hand with “MS13” tattooed on his knuckles.

But here’s the Snopes fact check article that exposes Trump’s claim as bunk. They wrote,

While publicly available evidence confirmed the image shared by Trump was authentic in origin, it also confirmed the image had been altered to insert the text “MS-13” above the actual tattoos — in effect annotating them. There was no clear evidence the symbols on Abrego Garcia’s fingers proved an affiliation with MS-13. [emphasis mine]

Okay, so Trump lied. No breaking news there.

A couple weeks ago Trump declared that, “The price of eggs went down 92%.” But there is no place in the United States where the price of eggs went down 92%. Trump lied again, a fact based right here on Earth 1.

The egg lie is pointless. It’s stupid. The other lie has enormous impact, not just on Mr. Garcia, who remains in an El Salvador gulag, but on our foundational principle of the rule of law and, consequently, on all of us.

If Trump believes that the false things he says are true, then instead of his being dishonest, he would be delusional, mentally separated from reality, cognitively dysfunctional.

Going downhill.

The Garcia and the egg lies are just a couple of the most recent demonstrations of what makes Trump the poster boy for the 25th Amendment.

From Robert Reich’s post, Don’t Call Them “Potential Conflicts of Interest. They’re Corruption:

Words matter. When the media points out Trump’s “potential conflicts of interest,” as it has in recent days when describing Trump’s growing crypto enterprise, it doesn’t come close to telling the public what’s really going on — unprecedented paybacks and self-dealing by the president of the United States, using his office to make billions.

The correct word is corruption. [emphasis original]

Trump holds a private dinner at the White House for major speculators who purchase his new cryptocurrency, earning him and his allies $900,000 in trading fees in just under two days. One senator calls this “the most brazenly corrupt thing a president has ever done.”

Further downhill.

Now there’s the $480 million jet bribe.

During his first term there was nonstop talk about Trump’s obvious emoluments violations that constantly attended him like water swirling in a toilet. The Republican controlled Congress let Trump get away with his grift, just as this Congress sits spinelessly watching his grift today.

It looks like there is little Trump criminality that is low enough to motivate Republican legislators to honor their oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution.

Like I said: Downhill.

From Michael Cohen’s post, This Ain’t the Godfather, Morons**, explaining why so many Americans support this mob boss:

” . . . in a country broken by inequality, fear, and rage, people want to believe in someone who promises to punish the people they blame for their pain.”

“With Trump back in office, it’s no longer an act; it’s a goddamn sequel. But this time, he’s not just throwing tantrums on Twitter. He’s purging government agencies, pardoning his goons, and rewriting the rules to protect himself. This is mob rule in a democracy’s clothing.”

“America loves an outlaw. We romanticize the antihero. But we forget the lesson every one of those gangster stories teaches us: it always ends in blood. In betrayal. In regret.”

Not-So-Fun Facts

Not-So-Fun Fact #1:

Trump’s repugnant, organizationally illiterate, DUI Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has announced that he is firing 20% of our flag officers (generals and admirals). They’re the guys with long experience and with the knowledge and good judgement that take decades to accumulate. They’re the folks who know national defense and who live the concepts of integrity and accountability. Hegseth is dumping 20% of these knowledge and expertise resources.

He’s also announced plans to eliminate legacy weapons and equipment programs. He’s said little about what these are.

Wait: He’s dumping our smart people and a bunch of our munitions. Who in the world might benefit from us hobbling ourselves like that?

Not-So-Fun Fact #2:

Musk and Trump have conspired to give worldwide dominance of internet services to Musk’s Starlink. Other than the tsunami of money for Musk, it’s a grab for worldwide dominance of AI. How do you feel about putting Musk in charge of everything, including your private, personal information and whatever you’re thinking and saying?

Plus, Musk warns us, the Sun is expanding and will affect and then eat Earth in 5 billion years. Musk realized as a child the threat we face and wants to go to Mars pronto. After all, we only have billions (with a “B”) of years until doomsday. There’s too much to unpack here, so read Heather Cox Richardson’s piece from last Wednesday.

Like I said: Downhill.

Thinking Beyond The Current Tweak To Your Sensibilities

As Trump slides down the mental acuity and corruption sewer pipe we are left with a terrible reality. Were Trump to leave office before January 20, 2029, J.D. Vance would move into the Oval Office. That’s actually as bad as Trump staying there, because Vance is just as comfortable as Trump is with dishonesty and betrayal of the Constitution and our laws. Worse, he’s cunning, slimy and indebted to a bunch of mega-billionaire Project 2025 types (read: greedy billionaire bastards) who paved his way to the vice-presidency on a highway of greenbacks. What could possibly go wrong?

Also from Robert Reich:

Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy. [emphasis original]

He’s right, but most people don’t know what oligarchy is. Instead, try this when you speak of the threat we face:

Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and greedy billionaire dictator wannabes. – JA

Reich also said,

Unlike income or wealth, power is a zero-sum game. The more of it at the top, the less of it anywhere else.

He’s right. It’s time we stopped our downhill slide and started us and our country back to becoming once again the shining city on the hill.

__________________________________________

* Trump remains the undisputed champion of deceit. They even track Trump’s mendacity in Australia. From Independent Australia’s Victoria Fielding in her post, Donald Trump is the world’s most audacious liar:

Trump’s entire political career has been one lie after the other — a fire hydrant of small, medium-sized and huge lies, lies told to hide other lies, lies told to confuse, to attack, to undermine, to pretend he is something he’s not, to cover up for what he’s done, to justify the unjustifiable, to shirk responsibility, to avoid consequences, to confuse people about what is true, to make them stop trying to tell the difference between lies and reality.

** “Morons” refers to Americans who blindly follow and support Trump.


Countdown to November 3, 2026
Mid-Term Election

Countdown Timer

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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 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 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Dream Sequence v2.0 – For All Mothers


POST 1176


First The Big Bad News

Yes, the Army has reported that there will be parade of explosive masculine military hardware and personnel to help Trump deal with his small genital low self-esteem. But that’s not the big, bad thing I’m focusing on in this dense forest of big, bad things.

I heard yet another person, hateful of Trump, proclaim that they don’t want Trump to have any wins, so he hopes that our economy crashes. We all get the no wins intention, but wishing disaster for our country is quite a different thing. The point is that Trump and his army of treasonous, poison biting extremists have wound our national spring so tight that patriotic Americans are actually cheering for our downfall.

It’s easy to succumb to extreme emotion, but this is a time to keep our wits about us. Cheer for Trump’s downfall, not that of our country.

The Dream

At 8:00AM on March 16, 2022 I watched the broadcast of President Zelenskyy addressing the U.S. Congress, the American people and the world. His words were brilliant and compelling. His message was clear and unmistakable. And the fierce resolve of his people, even in those dark days, was reflected in his bearing, plain for all to see.

Four days later I awoke from a dream sequence and posted it here. That dream hasn’t come true and in the intervening years many lies have been told, many people have died and now great manipulation is afoot. It’s time to update the dream.

________________________________________________

The regular army of Ukraine plus many thousands of volunteer citizen soldiers have inflicted enormous damage to President Vladimir Putin’s vaunted military forces. Many thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed and at least twice as many have been wounded and sent home. Many of their tanks, troop carriers, aircraft and artillery pieces have been destroyed and the Russian army is, at times, in retreat, its myth of superior military might destroyed.

The North Koreans and Chinese have dumped thousands of their soldiers into this meat grinder of men. Iran has given Putin missiles with which to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure and to kill women and children as they sleep.

President Zelenskyy is taking to the airwaves to address President Putin and President Trump. The whole world is watching, holding its breath. First he speaks fluently in Russian from his office, with only the Ukrainian flag behind him. He is wearing an olive green tee shirt, a month of dark beard and his eyes are bloodshot, yet rock steady into the camera.

President Putin, it is time for us to end this war.

Clearly, you began it with the expectation that your military would roll over my country in just a few days; that you could eliminate our parliament and me and install a puppet regime that would be your servant; that the world would stand by and watch as you once again invade a sovereign nation and commit unspeakable crimes against humanity, including kidnapping thousands of our children. Only the kidnapping happened. Yours is a weak, blustering imitation of what the Soviet Union once was and you know that by now. We will not allow you to replicate it by destroying our country.

You did not count on the pride, the resolve and the unyielding patriotism of the Ukrainian people. You did not expect our fierce insistence upon our sovereignty, our democracy and our freedom. And you did not understand that the fire of freedom that burns in the hearts of people everywhere would cause them to reach out to support the Ukrainian people and punish Russia. Perhaps by now, after over 3 years of death and frustration, you are beginning to see the truth.

We will not bend. We will not be beaten. We will prevail. So, I am now giving you one chance to end this with some of your military still intact. If you refuse this offer we will continue to destroy your armies.

Here are my non-negotiable terms:

1. All Russian military personnel, army, navy, air forces and missile command, will immediately cease fire.

2. All Russian military personnel will immediately withdraw from all Ukrainian lands that were sovereign to Ukraine prior to the Russian invasion of Crimea on February 20, 2014, as well as all Ukrainian waters.

3. You will not interfere with any Ukrainians repatriating to our country.

4. You will return to Ukraine all Ukrainians whom you kidnapped or took as prisoners.

5. You will immediately pay for your indiscriminate bombardment of our civilians, our cities, our infrastructure and our lands the sum of $2 trillion dollars in U.S. funds as reparations for the destruction you have caused my people and my country. It grieves us that we cannot get reparations from you that could bring back our soldiers, our grand parents and our little children you have killed.

The entire world wants you to accept these terms, Mr. Putin, including over 140 million Russian people. They don’t want this horrible war any more than any freedom loving people would. That’s why you must stop the killing and suffering and end the morbid spectacle of thousands of body bags containing dead Russian boys being sent back to Russia and the awful sound of their wailing, grieving mothers.

This offer will expire in three days. Take it. Save what you can from this misbegotten adventure and Europe will once again be at peace.

The world awaits your reply.

President Zelinskyy turns to a second camera and continues in accented but clear English.

President Trump, you have sought to create a peace, but have done so by arm twisting the Ukrainian people to falsely accept responsibility for starting this awful war. You have insisted that we Ukrainians must accept defeat and give much of our beloved Ukraine to President Putin. You have curtailed U.S. shipments of munitions that would have supported our men and women of the Ukrainian army and you have shut down our access to satellite imagery. We understand that this is your standard negotiating technique – to do grave damage and then “negotiate” relief. Your cruelty, however, will not work against us.

You seek to force us to give up our mineral wealth, claiming it as repayment for past U.S. support of Ukraine. That support was given freely and with no stated or unstated demands or expectations of payment.

The United States did not seek such payments from Germany following WW I, nor from the United Kingdom, Germany or Japan following WW II, nor from South Korea following its war for freedom. The U.S. has never sought to exploit another country in such a way, be they ally or adversary. Yet now you try to do so like a thief holding hostages. Very well. The world can see what you are doing both to my people and to the esteem of the United States.

I have recently signed an agreement with your country, although I did so with much regret. Its terms give the U.S. preferential access to new Ukrainian minerals and natural resources licenses. In return, under this agreement the U.S. will provide financial and military assistance to Ukraine to help my country rebuild after the war. One can only wonder what assistance will be forthcoming, given your mercurial nature and no specificity about your assistance, as my citizens are left in the squalor created by Mr. Putin. President Trump, what will you do for my people then?

________________________________________________

Since the original dream, little has changed except the body count and the end of U.S. military support for Ukraine.

America and the rest of the free world have given much and European nations continue to give to Ukraine to help them to succeed, even as the U.S. retreats into self-inflicted embarrassment. Perhaps one day President Zelenskyy will be able to deliver my dream speech so that Ukrainian and Russian mothers will no longer have this awful reason to grieve.

Be sure to read the post from Ukrainian journalist Illia Ponomarenko provided by Meidas+. Scroll just past the picture for insight into today’s Ukraine.

And Finally,

Da Pope, from The Onion, of course


Countdown Timer
To The November 3, 2026
Mid-Term Election

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 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Pictures of America


POST 1175


I’ll bet you remember those puzzles that asked you to identify what is missing from a picture. It might be a tree with a trunk that doesn’t touch the ground or a dog that’s missing a leg.  Here’s a visual example from the Way-Back machine.

What’s Missing From This Picture?

As you can see, there are an elderly lady and a pregnant lady standing in the aisle of this bus, while three young men sit in comfort, absorbed in their own worlds, oblivious to the needs of those less able. What is missing is chivalry. If you prefer less archaic terminology, what’s missing is just plain consideration for another person.

We suffer terribly from self-absorption and from a lack of empathy.* Those are drivers for cutting off Social Security and veterans’ healthcare. That’s how we are mindlessly able to turn off the supply of food and medical assistance intended for children living in desperate poverty.

Some who applaud the withholding of benefits from those in need often claim that providing assistance teaches people to be dependent. They seem to think that eliminating assistance will drive people to suddenly become independent, self-sufficient, tax paying Americans. They apparently have forgotten that some simply are not able to be independent. For those of us more fortunate, we worked and kicked into the piggy banks of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and are due their benefits. That’s the deal we all signed up for.

To be fair, food and healthcare going to non-Americans, like to starving, sick people in Africa, is different. It requires more from us. To support such programs requires that we have empathy for others, that we give more than a tiny damn for suffering fellow humans. But empathy seems to be not just in short supply, but is completely absent from those who now pull the levers of our government and in those who, with open eyes, voted for them.

So, the more encompassing answer to the “What’s Missing From This Picture?” question above is empathy. Sadly, even tragically, We The People have allowed enough of us to have been made into replicas of those three seated, self-absorbed bozos on the bus, willfully ignoring any consciousness about the weak legs of an old woman or the compromised balance and endurance of a pregnant woman.

So, for our empathy-less ones, I offer that the assistance we give to others is returned to us in the forms of good citizenship and diplomatic victories abroad. Those benefits should be easy to understand, because they’re self-serving and don’t require any empathy from us.

The picture of America doesn’t have to look like that.

Also from the Way-Back machine, we were shown pictures that had a collection of images and we were challenged to identify which image did not belong with the others. It might be a bowl of fruit that included a screwdriver or a kid in the batters box holding a broom. Here’s an example.

What Doesn’t Belong In This Picture?

We have a lot of things going on in America now that just don’t belong in the same picture as our Constitution or our sometimes squishy rules about justice. Manipulating citizen adults out of voting rights comes to mind.

In Florida in 2018 voters passed a referendum to make it possible for former offenders to vote once they had “paid their debt to society.” Then the extremists in control in Tallahassee twisted things to effectively negate the new citizen-decided rule. That’s much like gerrymandering and positioning polling places such that White voters only wait 20 minutes to vote, while Black people have to wait 8 hours. That doesn’t belong on our picture of America.

The Onion, of course.

Neither does grabbing people off the street and sending them to rendition sites without first accusing them of some wrongdoing and then giving them their day in court to contest the charges. It’s called “due process of law” and it’s owed to all “persons” (not just citizens). Denying due process of law is a violation of the 5th and 14th Amendments. We are violating them every day. That doesn’t belong on our picture of America, either.

The blanket firing of government workers, people who ensure that our food is safe, people who protect our nuclear stockpiles, people who monitor our rules and regulations to stop cheaters and more is a violation of our stated values, who we say we are, too.

The picture of America doesn’t have to look like that.

We might need those in charge to be brought to a 3rd grade classroom for a semester to show them what they were supposed to learn from those pictures they were shown long ago. What we do need for sure is for We The People to keep showing up demanding only what belongs in our picture of America and rejecting the rest.

It’s being claimed by some with very loud voices that this country is solely for Christian (although not necessarily doing what Jesus would do), straight, White men who like to tell you how to live. Were he alive now, Robert E. Lee might be one of them.

He was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Then he violated his oath, his sacred honor, to lead troops for the Confederacy against our country. Doesn’t that make him a traitor?

Doesn’t that make you wonder why the name of this traitor is on street signs all over the South and there are statues of him that are viewed with reverence by millions? Don’t you wonder at the celebration of abandoned integrity at all levels, especially at the top?

The picture of America doesn’t have to look like that.

For a frightening, maddening explanation of the hypocrisy and cruelty coming our way aimed squarely at our children,  read Catherine Rampell’s excellent piece, Donald Trump’s war on children. One more time: The picture of America doesn’t have to look like that.

Copyright Robert Reich. The chart of America doesn’t have to look this way.

From Robert Reich:

“Teaching is about getting students to reexamine whatever assumptions they carry into the classroom. It’s about provoking conversations, fostering dissent, and learning from one another even when we disagree on issues.”

Reich has been a teacher for 40 years and knows a bit about seeking to understand. Do you imagine that We The People could accept his challenge to his students to reexamine assumptioms? What if we sucked it up, took a breath and followed this teacher’s direction?

__________________________________________________

“Empathy is the oxygen of democracy.” – Jon Meacham


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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 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 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Hegseth and Health


POST 1174


DUI Hegseth

Norm Ornstein hit the bulls eye with this:

Trump kakistocracy—government by the least competent

About which Joyce Vance goes on to say that the Trump kakistocracy

.  .  .  continues to harm everyday Americans and put our allies at risk. On that front, the dishonor prize again goes to Pete Hegseth, with reports revealing he shared sensitive national security information in yet another Signal chat on his personal phone—forwarding information about attacks in Yemen last month to his wife, [his] lawyer and [his] brother [none of whom has a security clearance], among others who should not have been privy to such sensitive details.

Sheila Markin comments that he did that

.  .  .  using a chat app that he had installed in his computer to get around the rule that cell phones were not allowed inside the [Defense Department] office.

Our DUI hire Sec/Def is far worse than the obvious international embarrassment that he is. He’s a threat to our immediate safety and to our long term security. We all would be far better off without this fool, but Trump doesn’t have the cojones to hire competent people or fire incompetent ones.

What About Your Health?

STAT is the excellent health and healthcare publication of The Boston Globe. Last week they posted a report of how Trump and his administration are systematically dismantling medicine and science, which will be felt acutely by We The People in the years to come. You better hope that the next pandemic skips you and that your young ones don’t get exposed to measles, polio, smallpox and the rest, because you probably won’t be able to get them vaccinated or cured.

Even if a new administration replaces Trump’s on January 20, 2029 and that it works at “warp speed” and isn’t hobbled by legacy Trumpian dystopian bureaucracy and ineptitude, it will take generations to repair the damage Trump is causing and to restore our healthcare systems. Read Day by day, how Trump is roiling science and health and pray you never need a cure or even get a diagnosis that isn’t routine, because research efforts nationwide are being cancelled. And thank your lucky stars if you never experience any form of dementia as you age, because ways to prevent and treat such decline won’t be getting developed.*

Pro-Life? Really?

I’ve written (here, here and here) about the murderous hypocrisy of self-labeled “pro-life” claimers, but let me do a short review.

You can’t be both pro-life and also refuse to fund rural hospitals, where so many newborns die

You can’t be both pro-life and cheer the elimination of food assistance for millions of children

You can’t be both pro-life and applaud cutting USAID assistance to millions of starving people

You can’t be both pro-life and pro-death penalty

You can’t be both pro-life and applaud the ending of medical research grants

You can’t be both pro-life and support the DOGE hobbling of Social Security into an impenetrable maze that leaves seniors financially shipwrecked

You can’t be both pro-life and applaud the rendition of hundreds to extermination prisons without so much as a whiff of evidence of any wrongdoing

You can’t be both pro-life and claim that everyone should be carrying a gun to stop bad guys

You can’t be both pro-life and in favor of cutting assistance to all the poor grannies

You can’t be both pro-life and support the ending of regulating polluters

You can’t be both pro-life and terminatethe  NOAA severe weather warning system

As you can see, pro-life is actually only pro-fetus. After birth, the pro-lifers set those kids adrift and don’t give a damn about them throughout the rest of their lives. If you support these anti-human actions and still claim to be pro-life, get over yourself and get a grip on reality.

Speaking Some More of Health

We at the societal and cultural level are not too good at looking forward beyond the immediate horizon. That, however, doesn’t mean that the somewhat more distant future won’t arrive. The future just beyond that immediate horizon carries grave danger for us, our children and our grandchildren. Other than stupid, unnecessary, self-destructive wars, our deteriorating climate is the most dangerous thing facing us, regardless of whether we choose to see that danger.

Watch Al Gore’s presentation to the San Francisco Climate Week gathering or read the text of his speech here. Gore doesn’t couch our current reality in terms of myopia, but that is exactly what the current administration is peddling. The muscular calls for more and more fossil fuel extraction and burning, the disbanding of FEMA, the refusal to see the ongoing disasters as the ever-escalating result of global warming that they are keep us from seeing what we are doing to our future generations.

Seeing clearly does not require perfect vision. It only requires paying attention. – Steve Schmidt

The Price of Idiocy

Photo credit: The Onion

There is no evidence to recommend discontinuing fluoridating drinking water. There is goo gobs of evidence showing that fluoride not only protects against tooth decay, but also can prevent various bacterial infections and even death. In the face of that incontrovertible evidence, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wants us to stop fluoridating our water. Brain worm, maybe?

He is famously an anti-vaxxer of the first order, brainlessly railing against the vaccines that prevent illness and suffering and save lives.

From Magical Thinking About a Miracle Mineral, by Zeynep Tufekci,

. . . measles [is] one of the world’s most contagious – and vaccine-preventable – diseases

It has been a favorite target for Kennedy, who instead recommends quack cures, like

. . . “aerosolized budesonide,” an asthma drug that actual medical experts say is not relevant to measles, and clarithromysin, an antibiotic that experts don’t mention for this purpose.

Okay, Kennedy really does have a brain worm and a lifetime of being a special boy only because his daddy really was special. More significant are the people who give his uneducated recommendations serious consideration. Unvaccinated kids have died from measles recently and

there are now more than 700 known measles cases in at least 8 states.

Which is why you continue to thank your mom for dragging you into your pediatrician’s office when you were a kid to get the MMR vaccine. Also, the polio vaccine, the smallpox vaccine and more. Too bad the moms of those kids who died recently from measles and those on a path to die didn’t protect their kids.

The beauty of idiocy caused by listening to ignorant, celebrity know nothings is the relief from the hard work of having to think clearly and critically. But, of course, nothing is free. Sometimes the price for idiocy is the life of your kid.

Kermit, Big Bird and Miss Piggy

Trump has signed an executive order defunding PBS and NPR. They are the most recent targets of his reprehensible retributions, the unlawful tantrums of a tyrant toddler. Here’s a pic sent in by pal Jim Nathan to give you an idea of where things stand. You might want to respond to one of those email appeals from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, rather than reflexively pressing the Delete button. Or click here.

__________________________________________

Recall that in 2020 Trump The SuperSpreader contracted Covid-19. He was rushed to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, sitting close to Secret Service guys in The Beast so as to be sure to infect them. At Walter Reed he was treated with remdesivir, dexamethasone and more, all breakthrough treatments developed with the aid of medical grants from the federal government. Now that Trump no longer has Covid he’s cancelling funding for medical research because, hey, he himself doesn’t need new miracle drugs.

 


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 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Lede


POST 1173


Here’s the Lede

Our Constitution’s Peril Is Not Now Nor Was It Ever About Trump.

America’s real enemy is the fascists – call them ultra-fat cats or oligarchs if you prefer. They are the home grown terrorists, the diabolical evil ones, working for over 40 years to steal our country away from us.
.

Trump is the front man, the warm-up act, the circus sideshow barker, the Distractor-in-Chief. Trump is just a tool for the fascists.

The extremists are directing Trump to cripple our government, our markets, our international relationships, our leadership of the free world and the maintenance of our values that have protected peace and international relations for 80 years. Tens of thousands of our people who make the trains run on time, who find cures for killer diseases and who protect us from unsafe food have been fired, leaving nobody to stand guard. They have kicked aside all who used to be our allies and snuggled up with bad guy dictators.

Now, in plain violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, the Trump administration has militarized our southern border from New Mexico to California, making it legal for our military to detain, arrest and imprison migrants and even our native born citizens, the ones guaranteed citizenship by the 14th Amendment. It’s essentially making the U.S. Army into a Gestapo. All the Constitutional protections and our laws shielding us from overreaching, crushing governmental power are being shredded by this cruel administration of extremists.* No Americans intentionally voted for these calamities.

“I don’t want everyone to vote.” “As a matter of fact, our [Republican] leverage in the elections quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Paul Weyrich, co-founder of The Heritage Foundation and proud proponent of voting suppression.

You can find the plan for the ruination of America in the Project 2025 handbook, painstakingly crafted by anti-American geniuses over the course of decades. They are a very talented cabal of megalomaniacs, people inspired to treachery by the likes of Paul Weyrich (link through and watch the 40 second clip). He’s the guy who told us plainly that he didn’t want all Americans to vote – only the ones who would vote his way – Republican. His political descendants are stationed all about our country now, constantly creating voter suppression everywhere. This diabolical plan was designed specifically for the destruction of your values and your freedom.**

Trump has claimed that he knows nothing about Project 2025. Given that he is reputed to be incapable of reading anything that doesn’t have pictures and that the document is 922 pages long, he probably has not read it. But he is being fed instructions from it by the billionaire fat cats and manipulators who wrote it, the people who want to rule the world, who think they are entitled to steal your power and your rights.

Trump cannot even spell “strategy” or “plan.” Creating such things is far beyond his abilities. But he is the very best at several things:

  1. Getting attention, promoting himself, grabbing the focus by being outrageous and thereby distracting you from his wrongdoing
  2. Demonizing opponents
  3. Lying instantaneously, making stuff up, like claiming that the price of eggs is down 92% – whatever fantasy or lie suits his purpose in the moment
  4. Never admitting mistakes and never backing down, even to the point of absurdity

The billionaires and the sneaky pols crafted this Project 2025 plan for domination and they have the perfect shill for their task: Donald Trump, their useful idiot. When their absolute power is firmly established, they will discard him like leftover fish gone bad.

That is the plan behind the seemingly self-destructive stuff of the past 100 days. The destruction makes perfect sense in the context of the grandest larceny ever committed.

If the fat cat dictator wannabes get their way, the complete loss of your freedom will be the result.

Once More: Here’s the Lede
.

Our Constitution’s Peril Is Not Now Nor Was It Ever About Trump

America’s real enemy is the fascists – call them ultra-fat cats or oligarchs if you prefer. They are the home grown terrorists, the diabolical evil ones, working for over 40 years to steal our country away from us.
.
Action

You know what to do to fight this. Here it is spelled out for you by Adam Kinzinger’s Country First in just 1 minute, 38 seconds.

And listen to Gov. Tim Walz’s State of the State address on April 23 (start at 2:17, unless you want to listen to the complete list of attendees).

Perhaps you’re both discouraged over the spinelessness and hypocrisy of Republicans and dismayed over the apparent lack of strength and direction – the wimpiness – of Democrats. Walz has clarity about all that and you need to hear it now. The only disappointment in watching this presentation is seeing the Minnesota Republican legislators refusing to applaud, even when Walz announced things that everyone likes, like that crime is down. That brain-free, hyper-partisan behavior is part of the Project 2025 scheme.

There was a time in America when Democrats stood tall for We The People, when they were bold in demanding fairness and they continuously banged the drum of decency for and from everyone. But their strength has been diluted into watery pablum and they insist upon refusing to come together for what they all know is right. They’ve made themselves into a force that can be knocked down by a simple tap on the forehead.

There was a time in America when Republicans were the big flag wavers, the most muscular defenders of liberty, the thumpiest of Constitution thumpers. They had the courage to stand strong against what was un-American. But those people are long gone, replaced by others who cannot even recognize an elephant. No matter how much lipstick you use and regardless of how you dress up today’s Republican pig, it’s still a pig.

America’s real enemy is the fascist terrorist thieves and those Americans too chicken to stand up to them.

____________________________________________

* Long time friend Jim Nathan is the co-founder of Floridians for Democracy, an organization dedicated to protection of our democracy. Read his clear message about the destruction of rights and the norms you count on here.

** Read David A. Graham’s The Project 2025 Presidency in The Atlantic.


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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.
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Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Courage


POST 1171


The 18th of April – last Friday – was the 250th anniversary of the ride of Paul Revere to alarm the farmers and townsfolk of Lexington and Concord, Mass that British troops – 13,000 of them – were on the way to subdue and dominate them. Revere’s was a swift ride on a fast horse on a dark night, nothing more, but his small, brave deed lit a fire of freedom.

You didn’t hear the compete story in your American History class, so I offer it to you from history Professor Heather Cox Richardson. Your assignment is to read her excellent report, to take in the true depth and gravity of what happened and to feel the courage of those men who stood tall against the tyrant, challenging the most fearsome empire on Earth.

After taking in her message, link through and read the story poem of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Paul Revere’s Ride. You know how it begins:

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

He composed the poem in 1860, fully 85 years after the events he recounts, but he preserved the memory of those events for us.

It would be enough just to learn of those critical events in our history, but there is much more for us. There are lessons that apply to our circumstances today, most notably lessons about courage.

These times call on every one of us to stiffen our backbones, to stand tall, willing to accept the consequences of speaking truth to power; to stand up when we or others are cruelly pushed down; to have the backs of those abused by those who would steal everything from us; to stop the evil ones who oppose liberty and justice for all so that we truly can be the land of the free, the home of the brave.

These times call for courage. And the beauty of you showing your courage is that it is contagious. Just by standing up for what is right you will inspire others to call on their courage and they will inspire still others. Stand strong. You are in courageous company.

Richardson’s post is pasted below. Here’s a link to it on her Substack page if you prefer to read it there. It’s long and it’s a page turner. I promise you that it’s worth your time and attention. Read it and then link to Longfellow’s poem.

And enjoy the goosebumps.

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Tonight [April 19, 2025] I had the extraordinary privilege of speaking at the anniversary of the lighting of the lanterns in Boston’s Old North Church, which happened 250 years ago tonight. Here’s what I said:

Two hundred and fifty years ago, in April 1775, Boston was on edge. Seven thousand residents of the town shared these streets with more than 13,000 British soldiers and their families. The two groups coexisted uneasily.

Two years before, the British government had closed the port of Boston and flooded the town with soldiers to try to put down what they saw as a rebellion amongst the townspeople. Ocean trade stopped, businesses failed, and work in the city got harder and harder to find. As soldiers stepped off ships from England onto the wharves, half of the civilian population moved away. Those who stayed resented the soldiers, some of whom quit the army and took badly needed jobs away from locals.

Boston became increasingly cut off from the surrounding towns, for it was almost an island, lying between the Charles River and Boston Harbor. And the townspeople were under occupation. Soldiers, dressed in the red coats that inspired locals to insult them by calling them “lobsterbacks,” monitored their movements and controlled traffic in and out of the town over Boston Neck, which was the only land bridge from Boston to the mainland and so narrow at high tide it could accommodate only four horses abreast.

Boston was a small town of wooden buildings crowded together under at least eight towering church steeples, for Boston was still a religious town. Most of the people who lived there knew each other at least by sight, and many had grown up together. And yet, in April 1775, tensions were high.

Boston was the heart of colonial resistance to the policies of the British government, but it was not united in that opposition. While the town had more of the people who called themselves Patriots than other colonies did—maybe 30 to 40 percent—at least 15% of the people in town were still fiercely loyal to the King and his government. Those who were neither Patriots nor Loyalists just kept their heads down, hoping the growing political crisis would go away and leave them unscathed.

It was hard for people to fathom that the country had come to such division. Only a dozen years before, at the end of the French and Indian War, Bostonians looked forward to a happy future in the British empire. British authorities had spent time and money protecting the colonies, and colonists saw themselves as valued members of the empire. They expected to prosper as they moved to the rich lands on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains and their ships plied the oceans to expand the colonies’ trade with other countries.

That euphoria faded fast.

Almost as soon as the French and Indian War was over, to prevent colonists from stirring up another expensive struggle with Indigenous Americans, King George III prohibited the colonists from crossing the Appalachian Mountains. Then, to pay for the war just past, the king’s ministers pushed through Parliament a number of revenue laws.

In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, requiring the payment of a tax on all printed material—from newspapers and legal documents to playing cards. It would hit virtually everyone in the North American colonies. Knowing that local juries would acquit their fellow colonists who violated the revenue acts, Parliament took away the right to civil trials and declared that suspects would be tried before admiralty courts overseen by British military officers. Then Parliament required colonials to pay the expenses for the room and board of British troops who would be stationed in the colonies, a law known as the Quartering Act.

But what Parliament saw as a way to raise money to pay for an expensive war—one that had benefited the colonists, after all—colonial leaders saw as an abuse of power. The British government had regulated trade in the empire for more than a century. But now, for the first time, the British government had placed a direct tax on the colonists without their consent. Then it had taken away the right to a trial by jury, and now it was forcing colonists to pay for a military to police them.

Far more than money was at stake. The fight over the Stamp Act tapped into a struggle that had been going on in England for more than a century over a profound question of human governance: Could the king be checked by the people?

This was a question the colonists were perhaps uniquely qualified to answer. While the North American colonies were governed officially by the British crown, the distance between England and the colonies meant that colonial assemblies often had to make rules on the ground. Those assemblies controlled the power of the purse, which gave them the upper hand over royal officials, who had to await orders from England that often took months to arrive. This chaotic system enabled the colonists to carve out a new approach to politics even while they were living in the British empire.

Colonists naturally began to grasp that the exercise of power was not the province of a divinely ordained leader, but something temporary that depended on local residents’ willingness to support the men who were exercising that power.

The Stamp Act threatened to overturn that longstanding system, replacing it with tyranny.

When news of the Stamp Act arrived in Boston, a group of dock hands, sailors, and workers took to the streets, calling themselves the Sons of Liberty. They warned colonists that their rights as Englishmen were under attack. One of the Sons of Liberty was a talented silversmith named Paul Revere. He turned the story of the colonists’ loss of their liberty into engravings. Distributed as posters, Revere’s images would help spread the idea that colonists were losing their liberties.

The Sons of Liberty was generally a catch-all title for those causing trouble over the new taxes, so that protesters could remain anonymous, but prominent colonists joined them and at least partly directed their actions. Lawyer John Adams recognized that the Sons of Liberty were changing the political equation. He wrote that gatherings of the Sons of Liberty “tinge the Minds of the People, they impregnate them with the sentiments of Liberty. They render the People fond of their Leaders in the Cause, and averse and bitter against all opposers.”

John Adams’s cousin Samuel Adams, who was deeply involved with the Sons of Liberty, recognized that building a coalition in defense of liberty within the British system required conversation and cooperation. As clerk of the Massachusetts legislature, he was responsible for corresponding with other colonial legislatures. Across the colonies, the Sons of Liberty began writing to like-minded friends, informing them about local events, asking after their circumstances, organizing.

They spurred people to action. By 1766, the Stamp Act was costing more to enforce than it was producing in revenue, and Parliament agreed to end it. But it explicitly claimed “full power and authority to make laws and statutes…to bind the colonies and people of America…in all cases whatsoever.” It imposed new revenue measures.

News of new taxes reached Boston in late 1767. The Massachusetts legislature promptly circulated a letter to the other colonies opposing taxation without representation and standing firm on the colonists’ right to equality in the British empire. The Sons of Liberty and their associates called for boycotts on taxed goods and broke into the warehouses of those they suspected weren’t complying, while women demonstrated their sympathy for the rights of colonists by producing their own cloth and drinking coffee rather than relying on tea.

British officials worried that colonists in Boston were on the edge of revolt, and they sent troops to restore order. But the troops’ presence did not calm the town. Instead, fights erupted between locals and the British regulars.

Finally, in March 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd of angry men and boys harassing them. They wounded six and killed five, including Crispus Attucks, a Black man who became the first to die in the attack. Paul Revere turned the altercation into the “Boston Massacre.” His instantly famous engraving showed soldiers in red coats smiling as they shot at colonists, “Like fierce Barbarians grinning o’er their Prey; Approve the Carnage, and enjoy the Day.”

Parliament promptly removed the British troops to an island in Boston Harbor and got rid of all but one of the new taxes. They left the one on tea, keeping the issue of taxation without representation on the table. Then, in May 1773, Parliament gave the East India Tea Company a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies. By lowering the cost of tea in the colonies, it meant to convince people to buy the taxed tea, thus establishing Parliament’s right to impose a tax on the colonies.

In Boston, local leaders posted a citizen guard on Griffin’s Wharf at the harbor to make sure tea could not be unloaded. On December 16, 1773, men dressed as Indigenous Americans boarded three merchant ships. They broke open 342 chests of tea and dumped the valuable leaves overboard.

Parliament closed the port of Boston, stripped the colony of its charter, flooded soldiers back into the town, and demanded payment for the tea. Colonists promptly organized the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and took control of the colony. The provincial congress met in Concord, where it stockpiled supplies and weapons, and called for towns to create “minute men” who could fight at a moment’s notice.

British officials were determined to end what they saw as a rebellion. In April, they ordered military governor General Thomas Gage to arrest colonial leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who had left Boston to take shelter with one of Hancock’s relatives in the nearby town of Lexington. From there, they could seize the military supplies at Concord. British officials hoped that seizing both the men and the munitions would end the crisis.

But about 30 of the Sons of Liberty, including Paul Revere, had been watching the soldiers and gathering intelligence. They met in secret at the Green Dragon Tavern to share what they knew, each of them swearing on the Bible that they would not give away the group’s secrets. They had been patrolling the streets at night and saw at midnight on Saturday night, April 15, the day before Easter Sunday, that the general was shifting his troops. They knew the soldiers were going to move. But they didn’t know if the soldiers would leave Boston by way of the narrow Boston Neck or row across the harbor to Charlestown. That mattered because if the townspeople in Lexington and Concord were going to be warned that the troops were on their way, messengers from Boston would have to be able to avoid the columns of soldiers.

The Sons of Liberty had a plan. Paul Revere knew Boston well—he had been born there. As a teenager, he had been among the first young men who had signed up to ring the bells in the steeple of the Old North Church. The team of bell-ringers operated from a small room in the tower, and from there, a person could climb sets of narrow stairs and then ladders into the steeple. Anyone who lived in Boston or the surrounding area knew well that the steeple towered over every other building in Boston.

On Easter Sunday, after the secret watchers had noticed the troop movement, Revere traveled to Lexington to visit Adams and Hancock. On the way home through Charlestown, he had told friends “that if the British went out by Water, we would shew two Lanthorns in the North Church Steeple; & if by Land, one, as a Signal.” Armed with that knowledge, messengers could avoid the troops and raise the alarm along the roads to Lexington and Concord.

The plan was dangerous. The Old North Church was Anglican, Church of England, and about a third of the people who worshipped there were Loyalists. General Thomas Gage himself worshiped there. But so did Revere’s childhood friend John Pulling Jr., who had become a wealthy sea captain and was a vestryman, responsible for the church’s finances. Like Revere, Pulling was a Son of Liberty. So was the church’s relatively poor caretaker, or sexton, Robert Newman. They would help.

Dr. Joseph Warren lived just up the hill from Revere. He was a Son of Liberty and a leader in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. On the night of April 18, he dashed off a quick note to Revere urging him to set off for Lexington to warn Adams and Hancock that the troops were on the way. By the time Revere got Warren’s house, the doctor had already sent another man, William Dawes, to Lexington by way of Boston Neck. Warren told Revere the troops were leaving Boston by water. Revere left Warren’s house, found his friend John Pulling, and gave him the information that would enable him to raise the signal for those waiting in Charlestown. Then Revere rowed across the harbor to Charleston to ride to Lexington himself. The night was clear with a rising moon, and Revere muffled his oars and swung out of his way to avoid the British ship standing guard.

Back in Boston, Pulling made his way past the soldiers on the streets to find Newman. Newman lived in his family home, where the tightening economy after the British occupation had forced his mother to board British officers. Newman was waiting for Pulling, and quietly slipped out of the house to meet him.

The two men walked past the soldiers to the church. As caretaker, Newman had a key.

The two men crept through the dark church, climbed the stairs and then the ladders to the steeple holding lanterns—a tricky business, but one that a caretaker and a mariner could manage—very briefly flashed the lanterns they carried to send the signal, and then climbed back down.

Messengers in Charlestown saw the signal, but so did British soldiers. Legend has it that Newman escaped from the church by climbing out a window. He made his way back home, but since he was one of the few people in town who had keys to the church, soldiers arrested him the next day for participating in rebellious activities. He told them that he had given his keys to Pulling, who as a vestryman could give him orders. When soldiers went to find Pulling, he had skipped town, likely heading to Nantucket.

While Newman and Pulling made their way through the streets back to their homes, the race to beat the soldiers to Lexington and Concord was on. Dawes crossed the Boston Neck just before soldiers closed the city. Revere rowed to Charlestown, borrowed a horse, and headed out. Eluding waiting officers, he headed on the road through Medford and what is now Arlington.

Dawes and Revere, as well as the men from Charleston making the same ride after seeing the signal lanterns, told the houses along their different routes that the Regulars were coming. They converged in Lexington, warned Adams and Hancock, and then set out for Concord. As they rode, young doctor Samuel Prescott came up behind them. Prescott was courting a girl from Lexington and was headed back to his home in Concord. Like Dawes and Revere, he was a Son of Liberty, and joined them to alert the town, pointing out that his neighbors would pay more attention to a local man.

About halfway to Concord, British soldiers caught the men. They ordered Revere to dismount and, after questioning him, took his horse and turned him loose to walk back to Lexington. Dawes escaped, but his horse bucked him off and he, too, headed back to Lexington on foot. But Prescott jumped his horse over a stone wall and got away to Concord.

The riders from Boston had done their work. As they brought word the Regulars were coming, scores of other men spread the news through a system of “alarm and muster” the colonists had developed months before for just such an occasion. Rather than using signal fires, the colonists used sound, ringing bells and banging drums to alert the next house that there was an emergency. By the time Revere made it back to the house where Adams and Hancock were hiding, just before dawn on that chilly, dark April morning, militiamen had heard the news and were converging on Lexington Green.

So were the British soldiers.

When they marched onto the Lexington town green in the darkness just before dawn, the soldiers found several dozen minute men waiting for them. An officer ordered the men to leave, and they began to mill around, some of them leaving, others staying. And then, just as the sun was coming up, a gun went off. The soldiers opened fire. When the locals realized the soldiers were firing not just powder, but also lead musket balls, most ran. Eight locals were killed, and another dozen wounded.

The outnumbered militiamen fell back to tend their wounded, and about 300 Regulars marched on Concord to destroy the guns and powder there. But news of the arriving soldiers and the shooting on Lexington town green had spread through the colonists’ communication network, and militiamen from as far away as Worcester were either in Concord or on their way. By midmorning the Regulars were outnumbered and in battle with about 400 militiamen. They pulled back to the main body of British troops still in Lexington.

The Regulars headed back to Boston, but by then militiamen had converged on their route. The Regulars had been awake for almost two days with only a short rest, and they were tired. Militiamen fired at them not in organized lines, as soldiers were accustomed to, but in the style they had learned from Indigenous Americans, shooting from behind trees, houses, and the glacial boulders littered along the road. This way of war used the North American landscape to their advantage. They picked off British officers, dressed in distinct uniforms, first. By that evening, more than three hundred British soldiers and colonists lay dead or wounded.

By the next morning, more than 15,000 militiamen surrounded the town of Boston. The Revolutionary War had begun. Just over a year later, the fight that had started over the question of whether the king could be checked by the people would give the colonists an entirely new, radical answer to that question. On July 4, 1776, they declared the people had the right to be treated equally before the law, and they had the right to govern themselves.

Someone asked me once if the men who hung the lanterns in the tower knew what they were doing. She meant, did they know that by that act they would begin the steps to a war that would create a new nation and change the world.

The answer is no. None of us knows what the future will deliver.

Paul Revere and Robert Newman and John Pulling and William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, and all the other riders from Charlestown who set out for Lexington after they saw the signal lanterns in the steeple of Old North Church, were men from all walks of life who had families to support, businesses to manage. Some had been orphaned young, some lived with their parents. Some were wealthy, others would scrabble through life. Some, like Paul Revere, had recently buried one wife and married another. Samuel Prescott was looking to find just one.

But despite their differences and the hectic routine of their lives, they recognized the vital importance of the right to consent to the government under which they lived. They took time out of their daily lives to resist the new policies of the British government that would establish the right of a king to act without check by the people. They recognized that giving that sort of power to any man would open the way for a tyrant.

Paul Revere didn’t wake up on the morning of April 18, 1775, and decide to change the world. That morning began like many of the other tense days of the past year, and there was little reason to think the next two days would end as they did. Like his neighbors, Revere simply offered what he could to the cause: engraving skills, information, knowledge of a church steeple, longstanding friendships that helped to create a network. And on April 18, he and his friends set out to protect the men who were leading the fight to establish a representative government.

The work of Newman and Pulling to light the lanterns exactly 250 years ago tonight sounds even less heroic. They agreed to cross through town to light two lanterns in a church steeple. It sounds like such a very little thing to do, and yet by doing it, they risked imprisonment or even death. It was such a little thing…but it was everything. And what they did, as with so many of the little steps that lead to profound change, was largely forgotten until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used their story to inspire a later generation to work to stop tyranny in his own time.

What Newman and Pulling did was simply to honor their friendships and their principles and to do the next right thing, even if it risked their lives, even if no one ever knew. And that is all anyone can do as we work to preserve the concept of human self-determination. In that heroic struggle, most of us will be lost to history, but we will, nonetheless, move the story forward, even if just a little bit.

And once in a great while, someone will light a lantern—or even two—that will shine forth for democratic principles that are under siege, and set the world ablaze.

________________________________________

Here’s a link to Longfellow’s poem.


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 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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