Accountability

I Don’t Know It For a Fact – Plus “Shane”


POST 1151

CAUTION!

This post contains unrestrained snark. It is recommended that sensitive readers use only one eye and then, jeez, get over it.

Bill Maher has a satirical bit he does periodically entitled,

  • I Don’t Know It For A Fact.
  • I Just Know It’s True.

Here’s my offering in that format.

Click me for a better view

When he was 12 years old Trump was in a terrible car crash that damaged his brain, making him unable to think in any way but in terms of “what’s in it for me.” Also injured in that crash was his heart. Surgeons had to remove a major section of it, which made him permanently disabled, without the ability to care about others. I don’t know it for a fact. I just know it’s true.

Trump is congenitally unable to think in strategic terms, only in a tactical, transactional way, and cannot express himself in any way but in word vomit. I don’t know it for a fact. I just know it’s true.

The next Trump Towers will be built in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Riyadh, Budapest and – a long shot – Beijing, depending upon his effectiveness at sucking up to evil foreign dictators whose approval he craves. I don’t know it for a fact. I just know it’s true.

Trump contracted a nearly fatal case of Severe Asshole Disease following a high stakes poker game he lost, but which to this day he insists he won. He claims that cards were switched, a terrible fraud! That trauma left him unable to think in any terms but taking money from others. Plus, it left him always feeling unjustly treated, a victim captured in the terror of the truth, that he’s a loser. I don’t know it for a fact. I just know it’s true.

As soon as Musk’s destruction of all government agencies is complete, Trump will fire him and sic the Justice Department on him for retribution, whining on Truth Social that Musk upstaged him repeatedly in the reality show that is Trump’s life. He will also persecute Musk’s kid, X, for being in the Oval Office, stealing some attention from Trump and having what he will call, “a stupid name.” Plus, he will call Musk infantile names like Muskrat and doo-doo head. I don’t know it for a fact. I just know it’s true.

Trump read Mein Kampf and memorized Hitler’s speeches, which he kept on his nightstand. He practiced reciting them to his first wife, Ivana, believing that she would find that as erotic as he did. They had three children, but none after he began reciting those speeches to her. I don’t know it for a fact. I just know it’s true.

Elon Musk loves apartheid and wants to bring it to America to subjugate all non-Aryans and take their money. Then he will cash in his Krugerrands, gold coins made from gold mined in near-slavery conditions by Black labor. He will use that as seed money for his next venture, making soylent green, which he intends to feed to his Black laborers. I don’t know it for a fact. I just know it’s true.

Danger

In Steve Schmidt’s Presidents Day post, JD Vance is a fool on a ship of fools, he shares the words of Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert Jackson, who was the chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazis following WW II. Jackson said this in his closing argument:

Civilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.

Now we have in our president a puppet of Putin, who is a man, “in whom those [savage] forces now precariously survive.” Just ask Vladimir Zelenskyy about Putin’s savagery. Justice Jackson was right then and he’s still right. Worst of all, Trump has modeled himself after such evil despots.

Trump is fond of saying, “Only I can _____________.” You fill in the blank. Sometimes he’s right. Only Trump can lead the dismantling of the American order both at home and internationally, putting we and the world in terrible peril.

You know parts of the list of the dastardly, un-constitutional, illegal actions he’s taking and you have a bad taste in your mouth for the cruelty he’s unleashed on tens of thousands, now millions of Americans. What you must do with that is to see that it is all of a piece and not get your underwear in a bunch over just one or two issues. The point is that he is leading a coup to take sole control and ownership of all of America and pocket all our riches for himself.

Trump would be right to crow, “Only I” can do that. And he will do that unless you and I stop him. Now would be a fine time to do that stopping, because “Only we” can prevent Hitler II.

Quotes of the Week

“We’re going to lose our democracy,” said Sotomayor, unless Americans and “particularly” young people take steps to inform themselves well and combat the misinformation chaos created by the rise of the internet.

  • – Josh Sackheim FB post, Feb 12,
  • reporting on comments of
  • Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor
  • at Miami Dade College in Florida

The tumult is smoke. But don’t look away: The fire is a national takeover.

Who will stand up to Trump at high noon?

Indeed, who will do that? We’re looking for that leader.

Backbone

There is an Open Letter to Career Prosecutors, executed on Presidents Day, February 17, 2025. It is circulating now and you MUST read it. It is a cautionary message of support for our good and honorable prosecutors who are under attack from the Trump Justice Department for refusing to do wrong. It is a message of standing with and for these prosecutors as they stand with and for our Constitution and the rule of law. It is signed by over 900 former prosecutors.

The text of the letter ends,

“generations of former federal prosecutors are watching with pride and admiration and stand ready to support you in this honorable pursuit.”

Then come the names. 39 pages of the names of people with courage and integrity. People who then, now and always stand by their oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Read the letter. And in your heart, stand with them for our career prosecutors today.

Could we – you and I – do any less for our democracy? Not if we stand for something worthy.

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Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Book links to Amazon 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. 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 Worst


POST 1149

A Partial List of Executive Order Destruction
  1. They’re cutting funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), slashing support for indirect costs associated with medical research. Good luck with that break-through treatment your baby needs to survive.
  2. They’re cutting funding for the CDC, which will be forced to stop preparations to deal with the next pandemic and the one after that. They’re cutting support to deal with opioid overdose prevention, too.
  3. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is being shut down, so we will no longer have warnings about dangerous weather.
  4. Even the sign has been taken off the USAID building, making it clear that the agency is so yesterday. We don’t care if babies die, tens of thousands succumb to HIV and China replaces us globally in the hearts and minds of millions so that they gain access to the resources we need.
  5. The Department of Education is set to receive the wrecking ball. Your children are already well behind where their parents were at the same age in reading, writing, science and the rest. The destruction of the DOE will ensure that their children – your grandchildren – will be even more ignorant. Plus, some of the DOE money will be redirected from public education to private schools via vouchers. Are you okay with your tax dollars going to the school at Our Lady of Grift, or the St. White Guy Patriarchy Academy?
  6. Musk has announced the imminent demise of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Apparently, we didn’t really need the $17 billion the agency recovered for We the People who were fleeced by fraudulent and predatory practices. We can look forward to a resumption of the days of wanton financial cheating and the emptying your wallet.
  7. Christian Nationalist Russell Vought was made director of the Office of Management and Budget. He is an author of Project 2025, which is a roadmap to destroying the Constitution and our government. To be fair, that wasn’t done by executive order. It was a cowardly Republican vote in the Senate for a decidedly anti-American extremist.
  8. Newly installed director of HHS Christi Noem, the, promo actress for her dentist, made a visit to Guantanamo, where Trump plans to dump 30,000 immigrants. They are possibly undocumented people who are possibly accused criminals who were possibly convicted. Trump explained, “We don’ do no stinkin’ vetting for nobody for nuthin’. Besides, they’re brown. We don’ need no dark people to mess with our White privilege and we don’ need no stinking rule of law or habeas corpus,* either.” Note that I did not follow the events of Noem’s visit, so I don’t know if she shot and killed any cute puppies while she was at Guantanamo.

Notice the resemblance,

especially in the dead eyes.

We’ve had 3 weeks of Trump flaunting the law. There have been lawsuits to stop him and he’s lost them all, but just as his Josef Goebbels (Stephen Miller) said about ripping babies from mothers’ arms at the border, “The cruelty is the point.”

The court system is a long, slow process. Some lawsuits may take years to conclude. Meanwhile, Trump will be getting away with lawlessness and harming people.

Trump has captured the public narrative (yet again) with his lawlessness and his unending torrent of verbal vomiting of fantasies and lies. The rule of law isn’t even a speed bump to him. As his advisor Steve Bannon advised, “Flood the zone with shit” and Trump is doing exactly that. It may be shit, but it’s a tsunami that overwhelms everything so fast that stopping him is more than a daunting task.

Saving the Worst For Last

I know that this has been a long year for you over just the past 3 weeks, but take a trip with me in the WayBack Machine. We’ll set the dials to take us to the thrilling days of yestermonth, when there was separation of powers, un-elected rich guys couldn’t stomp on your privacy, your financial well-being or the programs Congress had ordered. The rule of law, that quaint, old fashioned notion, was king and it applied to everyone, except fat, orange, mentally declining narcissists.  Even as there were people in black robes undermining the rule of law, there were guys with silver bullets enforcing it. But things have changed.

Now thousands of silver bullet guys have been fired as retribution for having enforced the rule of law. Replacements are being required to pledge themselves to the fat, orange, mentally declining narcissist, instead of to the Constitution and the rule of law. All executive department heads (or nominees) have similarly pledged their loyalty and have given away their integrity to that same fat, orange, mentally declining narcissist.

He is blatantly ignoring court orders and the separation of powers that for nearly 250 years has prevented us from being violated, dominated and sometimes terminated by a cruel despot, like mad King George III. And the stomping by an un-elected apartheid devotee and his hacker delinquents upon your privacy, your financial well-being and programs Congress ordered  continues. They are defying court orders. They even want to murder Big Bird. So do the Republicans in Congress.

In short, this president and his integrity-free operatives are daring anyone to stop them from taking sole power over the United States of America and strangling this country with fascism.

That’s the worst.

.

We cannot count on our self-neutering elected Democrats or the always-with-their-hand-out-for-contributions DNC to lead actions to stop the steal of our country, so it’s up to us – as in: you, me and the millions who recognize that injustices and wholesale attack on our nation and our people are underway.

Demonstrations are scheduled for Presidents Day, this Monday, Feb 17. That’s a really good day for millions of We The People across the country to take a stand.

Click here to find an action near you. If you don’t find something nearby, make one – there’s information for that at the same site.

Oh BTW – eggs are $10 a dozen. Didn’t Trump promise he’d make the price go down? Was that supposed to happen on day one? Did anyone tell the hens about all that?

RESIST!

Required Reading for Action

Read Robert Reich’s Feb 6 post, What You Can Do.

___________________________________________

* noun: habeas corpus

a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention. [emphasis mine – JA]
Source: OxfordLanguages

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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. 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.

Stupid Distractions and Stop The Steal


POST 1148

Ugly Highlights From Last Week

There is a cadre of Musk hacker delinquents playing larceny games within our Treasury Department in the form of making “extensive changes to the [Treasury Dept.] code base for the payment system.” To whose benefit do you suppose those “extensive changes” will accrue? Who will get slammed one way or another by the malfeasance of these flying monkeys, as directed by the dangerous crime spree mob boss, Secretary of the Treasury, Elon Musk.

Oh wait – DOGE is not a federal agency or department, Musk was never qualified by anyone for any post and he was never elected to anything. You have as much right to his phony DOGE job as he does, but he gave Trump $288 million so he’s controlling your money now.

Curiosity of the week:

Musk and his flying monkeys are eviscerating USAID as their first move. That’s happening as USAID was/is investigating Musk and his Starlink internet hardware and service, which somehow was being used by the Russians to attack Ukraine. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

Musk’s delinquents – his storm troopers – invaded the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a first action to delete the agency that analyzes, predicts and warns us of dangerous weather conditions, including tornadoes, hurricanes and damaging winds and rain, all to keep us safe. That’s significant because it was recently discovered that a Sharpie cannot redirect a hurricane.

Musk intends to privatize the agency, giving away what we paid to establish and improve for 90 years, all to absolutely no benefit to We the People. Next he’s promised to eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy. It’s all so very Project 2025 to give away our assets to rich guys.

Trump earlier indicated that he plans to: invade Panama in order to retake and own the canal; make Canada our 51st state; and somehow acquire Greenland.

Now Trump says he’s going to send our troops to Gaza, ethnically cleanse all Gazans from the area and develop Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Surely, there will be a Trump Tower there and the whole area will be renamed Gaz-a-Lago or Trump Mediterranean.*

But,

– He isn’t going to send troops, take over Gaza and build a Middle East vacation spot for rich people.

– He isn’t going to annex Canada. He isn’t even going to impose a tariff that sticks. He’s already backed down. Same for Mexico.

– He isn’t going to acquire Greenland or the Panama Canal.

It’s all nothing more than fraudulent, flapping lips of distraction so that we won’t see his traitorous coup.**

It’s about the neutering of our law enforcement, dismantling of our intelligence agencies for the outright theft (or at least control) of our Treasury Department money and Trump’s power over the entire country.

This is the biggest burglary (now in progress) in the history of the world.
.

His packed courts and hobbled FBI won’t do anything to stop him. This will continue as long as we are willing accomplices through our silence or our refusal to see what is before us.

And he’s aided and abetted by siccing techno-grifters on the nation. Read this.

Stop the Steal

Not that phony stop the steal. This one.

There were rallies/demonstrations all over America last week The one in front of the Treasury Department in DC had about 1,000 protesters. We’ll need a lot more actions. Here’s a short list.
.

Constant protests, lots of them, likely requiring leaders of various NGAs to set aside ego and coordinate efforts (see below). The people’s power is in our numbers.

A blizzard of lawsuits filed at the federal, state and municipal levels – constant pressure. Who’s a lawyer you know who will suit up for this battle?

A blizzard of communication to every Republican coward in elected office. Tell them constituents are working hard to fire them. As well, reach out to Democrats to let them know what we expect from them and that we have their backs.

Public communication – ads, commercials, social media videos, etc. – about how American citizens have been hurt by the Trump/Musk/Republican cabal of oligarchs. Tell the stories of real people; e.g. women who couldn’t get health care and then bled to death from miscarriages; new cases of polio and other diseases for which there are proven safe, effective vaccines, but which RFK discourages, resulting in sick, paralyzed kids; people – including our FBI agents – injured or killed by pardoned Jan 6 perps. This is key to success and Democrats suck at communication.

Civil disobedience, culminating in a national labor strike to include all but necessary safety, health and national security personnel.

You and I can do all of that or, at the very least, we can appeal to people who can. Do you know a leader of an activist organization like Moms Demand Action, Indivisible, MoveOn, Our Revolution, Leaders We Deserve, Country First or any other? Call them. Text them. Email them. Tell them to join with other organizations to fight by using the power of a massive number of Americans.

My boyhood pal Frank Levy is a most impatient activist. We should all be that way now. Here’s his call to action.

What 47 and Musk are doing is a threat to many if not all Americans. As Heather Cox Richardson said in her February 5 Letters From an American, quoting Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), “It is extraordinary how much access Elon Musk and his sort of creepy 22-year-old henchmen have to all of our data.” Musk and his vigilante kid demons have no idea what damage they are causing. They now have the ability to cut off all Social Security checks and IRS refund checks and spy on the bank account information of most Americans.*** So, what can we do about it?

We can stand up, speak up and act up. How? If every individual who voted for Kamala and Tim went on strike for two days and rallied together on the steps of their state capitol it would shake cowardly 47 and let everyone in his government know that “We are mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore.” [I’ll add that millions in red states are mad as hell, too. This isn’t what they voted for. – JA]

Fighting back is simple. It does take courage, resilience and a determination to resist. But this is on us. Our future is in our hands. We cannot count on the feckless Democrats to help. We are on our own.

I’m calling for a national two-day strike to occur on Thursday and Friday, February 20 and 21, 2025. Who will join me?

In the 60s we used to chant “Power to the people!” This is a good time to renew the call.

For Anyone Who Missed the Message

Trump 2.0 is a profound, ongoing betrayal of America and everything that has made this remarkable nation the most powerful and prosperous in the world. It is why we must fight.

– Simon Rosenberg, Hopium Chronicles, Feb 6, 2025

REBEL!

____________________________________________

* Republican idiot (redundant?) Nancy Mace, in flagrante Trump suck-up form, said, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” thus securing her place with Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and a few more Republicans as the dumbest rocks at the bottom of the bucket. The rest of the Republicans aren’t dumb. Rather, they are cowardly hypocrites, bought off by a threat and for a few baubles tossed on the ground before them.

** Read Prof. Timothy Snyder’s post, Of Course It’s a Coup and Sheila Markin’s post, Trump and Musk Smash and Grab.

*** Just a guess, but I suspect that to Musk’s delinquents this diabolical rewiring of our Treasury Department is not much more than a video game played to win a pat on the head from Musk. It gets the rest of us suffering and even death.

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. 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.

Who Will Lead?


POST 1147

Who’s Behind This Debacle

It isn’t just Führer Dummkopf that’s the problem. It’s his 25 million rabid dupe-dopes who love to kill anything in their way.

the willfully and proudly ignorant

the homicidally angry and hateful

the ones who get their sense of power from hatred and harming others

the sleep walking MAGA lemmings and sheep

the spineless hypocrites

the happily propagandized

the testosterone manipulated puff-ups

the reality deniers

the vacuously self-deluded

the “I Love Cruelty” mob

the lazy couch crouchers

the couldn’t-be-bothered-to-think crowd

the “Who cares about you?” narcissists

the “true patriots” who hate Americans

the descendants of immigrants who hate immigrants, whether documented or not

the believers in a mythical “Great Again” that never was

.  .  .  because they brought us this ongoing Trump destruction of our democracy, the abandonment of the rule of law, the upcoming raid on our treasury, the vicious attacks on We the People, this Republican assault on their obviously-not-sacred-to-them oath to the Constitution of We the People.

Click me

What we’re left with is figuring out how to turn them from the St. MAGA gospel of hatred to something more in line with what Jesus would direct, although they obviously didn’t get the message from Sunday school. Clearly, they never read what the Founders had to say about Christianity as a national religion.

Historical note: They said, “Nuh-uh.” You can look it up in the Federalist Papers or in the First Amendment.

Reconciliation with these people seems nearly unachievable and there is no Mandela on the horizon. But perhaps we can reach the 50 million casual Trump voters to partner to restore our country to its 250-year order. We’re way late getting started and we’re going to need the right leader to battle and beat this existential threat.

Job Qualifications & My Nominee

We need a leader with the brilliance of mind to provide us with clarity for the actions we can and must take. We need a leader with the passion to inspire us to the full measure of our patriotism. We need a leader who is wise and compassionate, who will walk with us and who knows right from wrong,

I’ve been watching and listening for that leader. I see many good people, but most have a hole in their personal résumé, They are smart, but dry and without charisma. Or they have the passion, but not the brilliance needed.

Click me – but read Note #5 below first

This is about leading an army of patriotic Americans in opposition to the would-be fascist totalitarians. This is about giving voice and direction to We The People and doing so with no intention of personal gain. This is about who will stand and declare, “THAT WAY!” Who qualifies for that job?

My nominee is Barack Obama. He’s brilliant, charismatic, clear, inspiring and has no aspirations for political advantage for himself. He has experience as a community organizer and as the leader of our nation and he has the cred to call out the self-serving, the pompous, the liars and the hood-winkers. And he stands for hope and change – he wrote a book about it. Plus, it will be absolutely delicious to watch Trump crumble under truth delivered by the victim of his scum bag birther lies.

Maybe you have a fine nominee. Great, tell us. Let’s pick one and draft him/her. The time to start was yesterday.

  • REBEL!

Follow Up to Dec. 22 POST 1132, Our Problem

In that piece I ripped Democrats for being AWOL in the midst of our existential battle and I stand by that description. One thing that post did not cover is the critical analysis of what should have been done to win hearts, minds and votes and what must be done next time we have a chance to put banana peels under the shoes of the fascist traitors. Fortunately, Ira Leavit offers us some help in his recent post, Blue Voters Need Something to Believe In – Something Big.

Voters care exclusively for what they decide for themselves is important to them. That’s a lesson that Democrats desperately need to learn and Ira gives us an idea of what that might look like. Have a read.

Next, be sure to read Thom Hartmann’s piece If Obama Had Sent a Mob to Kill a Cop, Republicans Would Never Let You Forget It – The GOP would be screaming “Cop Killer” every single day — so why aren’t Democrats holding Trump to the same standard? It’s a brilliant and clear outline of how to win hearts, minds and votes.

Sarcasm Corner

So glad that Führer Trump is gutting the FBI. Those people are a poison to our national blood for having pursued accountability for homicidal criminals, catching der Führer’s “fine people” and sending them to prison. Besides, we don’t need the FBI to pursue law breakers or terrorists or those plotting massive deaths of Americans anymore now that we have a new sheriff in town. He’ll stop ISIS with one hand tied behind his massive ass.

At last someone is eliminating USAID. We don’t care if millions of babies overseas die because, hey, they aren’t Americans. Let ’em drop. Same for people with malnutrition, malaria  or HIV. We shouldn’t have to feed them or provide life saving drugs. Let the Chinese pay the bill.

And those DEI hires at the FAA – cut ’em loose and give those air traffic controller jobs to White Christian men who made it through the 7th grade.

I’m so glad that unqualified, unelected, unhinged Elon Musk has access to and control of all government payments and has your Social Security number, too. Now all government can be shut down and eliminated and Trump will be in sole control of what’s left. It’s the greatest national security breach in U.S. history – you’ve never seen anything like this before. Take a back seat, Edward Snowden, to the Trump/Musk fascist victory! Just hoping we’ll get our Social Security checks from whatever privatized company Trump/Musk gives the agency and its money to. And we can only hope that people who are not fabulously rich can get health care somewhere, somehow. What could possibly go wrong?

And they’re about to eliminate the Department of Education. That’s good, because ignorant citizens are easier to manipulate.

There’s super labor saving now, too, because there’s no longer a need to think long term. We Americans like things simple, no matter how complex they actually are. Now RFK will bring us horrendous diseases, Bondi will bring us prosecutions of the innocent and will allow Trumpy felons to skate free. Patel will allow and encourage violent crimes by crippling our national law enforcement agency. Hegseth will threaten our friends with our military and ignore atrocities done by our not-friends. Rubio will sway whichever way the wind blows. It’s all good.

Boy, this is going really well.

For The Pardoned and Commuted Sentence Felons

My wish is for you to call or write to those you threatened with retribution and death. Apologize to them and beg for forgiveness as an act of contrition. It will be your first step back toward the world of democracy, decency and the worthiness of being called a fellow citizen. Plus, maybe you can start on the road from being just a performative Christian to becoming an actual Christian. You know, like Jesus said you should be.

Until then you’re just a criminal thug.

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. 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.

Un-American – Extra Urgent!


POST 1146

You know about the tsunami of Trump’s attacks on our government and our Constitution. His is a multi-pronged assault designed to destroy everything we care about, to “tear it all down.”

Vague policy explanations of the reasons to oppose and abhor this danger are insufficient to convey the urgency. This needs to be expressed in “This is how it affects you” terms. Heather Cox Richardson has crafted that for you  in an easy to understand, if painful to read, explanation.

So, this post is essentially hers. Read her essay. Take your time and feel the enormous drive to fascism that is advancing and taking everything away from us. You’ll see that Trump and his billionaire suck-ups are working to make this country into a monster, the likes of which we have fought against in hot wars and in a decades long cold war. This cadre of self-serving oligarchs is creating exactly what your values say are evil and un-American.

Project 2025 is the playbook Trump denied knowing about but he is following it to the letter. You can read a full, Mein Kampf-worthy version here. If instead you want a translation into truthful English of this manifesto for the destruction of our country, the ACLU has that for you.

This war on America is complex and difficult to stop. There are many brave people already fighting it, but there is no assurance that truth, justice and the American way will prevail.

Our standing on the sidelines watching others carry the fight is a losing strategy. Waiting for disaster to befall us before doing our part is nothing less than conceding defeat in advance.

Go read Richardson’s piece right now. Then get in the fight.

REBEL!

  • _______________________________
  • We’ll need a great leader for this. Coming Wednesday: Who Will Lead?

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. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

This Is Not Normal


POST 1145

It’s no surprise that Trump is making moves to erase the entire Biden presidency. It’s not just Biden’s legacy he’s after. He’s trying to erase Biden from future history books. The reason his infantile tantrum is no surprise is because that’s what he attempted to do to the Obama presidency during the first time Trump attempted führer-ship. How insecure does one have to be to need to erase everyone else?

But there’s more to it.

Take a look at the Trump lineup of demolition as described by Heather Cox Richardson on January 24. It is his standard everything, everywhere all at once sowing of chaos and suffering.

The Guardian reported today that incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered a halt to almost all foreign aid, with the exception of military assistance to Israel and Egypt. The Guardian notes that this order is likely unlawful, since Congress sets the budget and in 1974 declared it illegal for the president to impound funds. Still, a source foresaw the end of the global influence the U.S. has had since World War II, telling The Guardian: “Freezing these international investments will lead our international partners to seek other funding partners—likely US competitors and adversaries—to fill this hole and displace the United States’ influence the longer this unlawful impoundment continues.”

As Peter Baker of the New York Times notes, new president Donald Trump is trying to break NATO by demanding that members increase military spending to 5% of their nations’ economies, although the U.S. currently spends about 3% of its GDP on defense. If we were to meet that requirement, Baker points out, the U.S. would have to increase its defense budget by $567 billion a year. Isabel van Brugen of Newsweek reports that an Italian news agency says that Trump intends to pull about 20,000 U.S. troops from Europe and wants Europe to pay to maintain the rest.

Trump has undertaken to dismantle the postwar democratic government at home, too. He has stopped the funding for repairing roads, bridges, airports, and ports that passed Congress in a bipartisan vote in 2022, as well as taken away funding for new solar manufacturing plants and other new systems to address climate change.

He has frozen all travel and communications at the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” one researcher told Dan Diamond, Lena H. Sun, Carolyn Y. Johnson, and Mark Johnson of the Washington Post. “This is like a meteor just crashed into all of our cancer centers and research areas.”

And, of course, Trump has declared a war on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. In his revoking of LBJ’s Executive Order 11246, itself based on FDR’s Executive Order 8802, he explicitly rejected the principles for which the Americans fought in World War II.

Mara Gay was on Nicolle Wallace’s program Deadline: White House in the afternoon following Trump’s inaugural address. Her comments were so striking that I transcribed them and offer them to you in this PDF – because our current reality is so very not normal. We’ve had extremists and hate mongers and un-American traitors before, but as for all things Trump, now there is no bottom.

There is far more like that to report, but for now, a useful question is, “How are Trump voters going to feel when the consequences of all these things hit them, like”

When workers fail to show up to build that new I-75 bridge over the Ohio River because Trump cut the project and eliminated their jobs, or when the roads and bridges in your town crumble and nobody shows up to fix them;

When investment in those chips plants dries up, manufacturing jobs stop coming home and we are at the mercy of the Chinese who have no mercy for us;

When FEMA funds aren’t available for victims of catastrophes that happen;

When nobody prepares for the next pandemic and it wipes out our grannies and our little kids;

When funds for research for Parkinson’s, cancer, heart disease, obesity and Alzheimers have been cut off (they already have been) and you and your loved one are left hopeless;

When NATO has been made a eunuch and Putin overruns Ukraine and then sends troops into Poland and the Baltic States;

When Xi invades and swallows Taiwan;

When your daughter doesn’t get treatment for her rare disease;

When global warming increases unchecked because we defunded renewable energy projects and encouraged “drill, baby, drill” and now the super hurricane is on the way with no presidential Sharpie to redirect it;

When Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, Oath Keepers and other hoodlum vigilantes are attacking state capitols, our election volunteers, our cops and even you because you asked a tough question at a town hall and nobody is coming to help because our law enforcement agencies have been gutted.

When Trump’s economically counterproductive tariffs and his stupid head abandonment of the fight against public health threats like bird flu are fully developed, I’m pretty sure that the price of eggs will be the least of your worries.

There are already signs of major disapproval of Trump for what he’s doing, including his sycophant, dishonest reprehensible, loyal-only-to-Trump (and who cares about the law?) cabinet picks. A key Trump horrible last week was his politicized idiocy of falsely assigning blame for the midair tragedy to DEI and making attacks on imaginary Democratic policies. His evidence for his claims is “common sense,” but of course there is nothing common or sensical to Trump’s statements. Let’s hope he continues to be this offensive to everyone and he loses yet more public approval.

Most of our last 100 years have been a bulwark of democracy against fascism. We fought wars and sacrificed our young to stop that cruelty, but oligarchs and fascist believers starting with Reagan have been chipping away at our democracy for decades. Now Trump is demolishing it in giant explosions, aided and abetted by cowardly, hypocritical Republicans in Congress.

Here’s the high, hard one:

You did this, Trump voter. You and the 6 million who voted for Biden but stayed home on election day 2024. I’m hoping that there is still time for you to wake up, to join the rest of us and

  • REBEL!

Breaking News!

.
  • Last week Jim Acosta left CNN. It was a shameful moment when the network pushed him out but it was another statement of courage and integrity for Acosta. Recall that he is the White House correspondent who withstood Trump’s false, demeaning and cowardly attacks for four years and did it with dignity and decency. Kudos to Jim Acosta.
  • Watch his announcement on Substack here.
  • His final message to us for now is a descriptor of how he works and is a timely and powerful mantra for all of us right now:
Don’t give in to the lies.
.
Don’t give in to fear.
.
Hold on to the truth
.
Hold on to hope.

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. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

How It Works – v2


POST 1144

Preface

This is an update of a piece originally posted February 7, 2021, one month after the treasonous insurrection.

In yet another attack on the rule of law, President Trump has now pardoned or commuted the sentences of 1,500 of the January 6 criminals, including the cop killers.* The Republicans in the majority of both Houses of Congress have shown themselves to be cowardly and spineless in the face of Trump’s assault on the Constitution. They are essentially dissolving Congress voluntarily.

_________________________________________

“Fear will keep the local systems in line.”

In the first Star Wars movie there is a scene with Darth Vader and the officers of the Imperial star ship.

Video Player
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That’s pretty much how Hitler did it. He didn’t actually make the Reichstag go away. He just neutered it into becoming a lap dog by means of The Enabling Act of 1933, which the council members passed due to fear for their lives. Then things became way worse, as they always do in dictatorships. Required reading: Steve Schmidt’s There Is a Thin Line Between Life and Death.

It’s pretty much the same in Putin’s Russia, Erdoğan’s Turkey, Xi’s China, Duterte’s Phillippines and now in the U.S. Eliminating legislative oversight is what authoritarians do to hoard all power for themselves. Most often it’s done with thug tactics. Just ask Putin opponent Alexei Navalny about his experience with Putin’s gulags and nerve poison. Oh, wait: you can’t ask Navalny because Putin murdered him.

The January 6 mob was a violent insurrection dispatched by Trump, a riot of Jesus-bannered, cross carrying thugs, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3 Percenters, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other unhinged hoodlums. They were there to overthrow our government – to effectively eliminate Congress – so that Trump could take over the country (see the movie clip again if you need a refresher). And to kill cops.

Does that sound so extreme as to be preposterous? If so, you need to pay closer attention, because that’s exactly what those thugs said they were there to do, all at Trump’s bidding. They were there to murder any House or Senate members they found (cue the clips of senators running for their lives). They brought a noose to lynch Mike Pence. Those aren’t things people do in order to preserve their government.

Capitol Officer Brian Sicknick

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died from cop killer mob violence while defending 535 members of Congress and the symbol of America that is the Capitol Building. He was killed by Bible-thumping, flag waving American terrorists, who most certainly weren’t promoting law and order, honoring our cops or doing what Jesus would do.

Honoring Officer Brian Sicknick

Both before and since the insurrection, non-Republican members of Congress and election volunteers have received death threats* to themselves and to their family members.

For any remaining fascism skeptics:

If not to overthrow the will of the people and our democracy, what do you think that election fraud Big Lie was about?

Surely, you don’t think those rioters were play acting when they attempted to kill those in Congress.

Surely, you don’t think they believed in democracy when they attempted to trash the votes of tens 81 million Americans.

Surely, you don’t think the currently seated members of Congress who attempted to stop the Electoral College vote counting and whose knees buckle upon hearing of Trump’s every whim actually believe in and honor their oath of office.

Surely, you don’t think the pardoned traitors don’t mean it when they vomit their vitriol of retribution.

Click me – but read Note #5 below first

This is how democracies die. A cult leader exhorts fanatics, the thugs terrorize all opposition and incrementally people surrender to death threats and violence. And that’s advanced when hundreds of our legislators give a standing ovation to the hateful nut cases spewing fascist hatred. That’s advanced when Trump puts forth a slate of entirely unqualified suck ups to be heads of cabinets and it’s advanced when spineless Republicans put those Trump sycophants in power. Yes, fascism can happen here in America. It’s happening right before your eyes.

I’ve exhorted readers to learn what FDR’s Vice President Wallace had to say about fascism in America. If you believe in democracy and have not yet read his essay, please read it now.

Now that Trump has pardoned these violent criminals – cop killers – you can expect acts of terrorism, including sniper and mass shootings, bombings (think: Timothy McVeigh and the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City) and perhaps political assassinations over the coming years. These are highly armed, angry, hateful, bigoted, self-righteous thugs who expect to continue their self-righteous war against America. That’s exactly what they’ve promised. And Trump loves and protects them.

I’m all for our learning to talk with one another constructively, to make peace, perhaps to have a truth and reconciliation commission. But that can only happen after violence is no longer a threat and democracy is secure. Reference: South Africa.

Now it’s time for all of us to stand and be counted in support of the FBI, our state justice departments and law enforcement agencies to stop the barbarians. It’s imperative that we eliminate the clear and present danger that these home grown killers and desecrators are.

The cop killer terrorists have already breached the gates of democracy and are buoyed in their treasonous actions by Trump and because they see January 6 as a victory for themselves. If we are to continue our bold experiment in self-rule, we better get some victories notched against the barbarians damned fast.

Oh, and Trump fired 18 inspectors general in violation of the law requiring 30 days advance notice,

  1. Trump don’ wan’ no stinking people who can hold him accountable, so he’s getting rid of the watch dogs. He’s lived a lifetime of doing whatever allowed him to skate from responsibility for his actions, including packing the Supreme Court with his extremist picks to give him a license to lie, cheat, steal and kill from the Oval Office.
  2. The real deal, the giggly, bubbly part for Trump, is that this, along with the pardons, is a stake in the ground saying that he doesn’t have to obey our laws. He’s making it clear that he is above the law and is daring anyone to stand up to him. The question is whether Congress will let him get away with that, just as the Reichstag let Hitler get away with everything. You are advised to have low expectations of our Republicans.
This Just In: Fired for Cause

Jeff Bezos’ termination of faithfulness to the Washington Post’s masthead slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” has led to spineless reporting, suck up editorials and shameful toadying. It is worse than just embarrassing. It is the dying of a light that protects and defends our democracy, all for a few coins in Bezos’ pocket and a pat on his slick scalp by the Führer-in Chief.

I just cancelled my subscription.

Let me know when that coward is gone and there is new leadership at the paper worthy of the legacy of Kathryn Graham and Ben Bradlee.

__________________________________

* Refer to Thom Hartmann’s post, If Obama Had Sent a Mob to Kill a Cop, Republicans Would Never Let You Forget It – The GOP would be screaming “Cop Killer” every single day — so why aren’t Democrats holding Trump to the same standard?

Coming Sunday: This Is Not Normal

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

  1. Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe and pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Use the simple form above on the right.
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Said John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” So, educate me and all of us. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

Stand a Post – 2


POST 1141

Preface to This Guest Essay – It Could Be Entitled, “Stand a Post-2.”

On December 22 I published Our Problem, a flaming declaration of the obvious and dangerous truth, that most Democrats have shown themselves to be toothless tigers and are completely unready to battle the horrors that face us. Lifelong pal Frank Levy had something to say about that and he posted an insightful comment. You need to see it, so it’s here as a Guest Essay.

Frank has been an activist forever. He was a Freedom Rider in the 1960s when registering Black people to vote in the deep south was a death defying act. He does more than give lip service to doing what is right and good. He tells us that it’s time to get up off our butts and take action. He tells us that we cannot count on Democratic elected officials to fight this war to preserve our rights, the Constitution and our democracy. He’s right.

For context, review my post first and then come back to read Frank’s wise words.

Jack – You are right. The Dems are MIA. They are not going to save us. They are not even going to lead us. So, what? They have been MIA for a long, long time. The only thing that will save us and our on-life-support democracy is what has always saved us – WE THE PEOPLE!

With no disrespect, my longtime friend, you are suffering from a serious case of useless pundit syndrome. We all know what the problem is. We know it all too well. There is no shortage of media pundits (all of whom incorrectly predicted the election), scholars, and the like explaining ad nauseam what went and is wrong. There is no shortage of useless verbiage telling us how bad things will be. We know all of that.

What we need are people willing to offer some solutions, a defensive or even offensive strategy or tactical plan so We The People can survive the coming catastrophe and maybe even restore liberal democracy to America sometime in the future.

So with no lack of arrogance I am offering my own save yourself and democracy to-do list:

  1. Never miss an opportunity to inform elected officials – Republican and Democrat, local and national – about your position on every issue. Write them, Call them. Make them hear you!
  2. Get together with like minded people to form a local resilience and resistance force. Meet regularly. Make plans to do meaningful acts of resistance. There really is strength in numbers. This is our John Lewis moment!
  3. Make a plan to protect your job, your savings, your retirement funds, your healthcare plan, your health, your home.
  4. If you live in a red state, make plans to create an underground railroad, to help women needing an abortion or healthcare get what they need.
  5. Create or work with a local food bank so when food prices skyrocket and there are food shortages people in need can get affordable food.
  6. Raise your own livestock (cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys) or find a farmer to raise it for you – there will be food shortages. Be prepared.
  7. Again, if your live in a red state create an underground railroad to help LGBTQIA+ individuals get to states where it is safe to live, be married, and get gender affirming health care.
  8. Find new, reliable, courageous news sources. The media for the most part has surrendered to MAGA and Trump’s threats.
  9. Stop trying to make nice with MAGA people. They do not share your values. They will not agree to the same set of facts. Without agreement of those two things there is nothing to talk about.
  10. Buy a copy of Timothy Snyder’s book, “On Tyranny – Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” Read it. It is your new Bible. Do not leave home without it.
  11. If you think you will need to leave this country to go somewhere safe – get or renew your passport now.
  12. Decide whether or not you have the means and are willing to provide sanctuary for those immigrants Trump and his evil henchmen want to deport or incarcerate.
  13. Join a group like Indivisible. They have great information and resources to help us in this fight. (www.Indivisible.org)
  14. Contact me one on one. I will be happy to share what I know, and what my friends and I in Alabama are doing. (prepare.respond@gmail.com)

I am sure there are other things we can and should be doing in this terrifying time, but this is a start. This is what my friends and I are doing now.

_____________________________________________________

Okay, maybe you won’t be raising your own livestock. At the very least you need to see Frank’s comment as making the point that your circumstances are likely to become extremely bad. With what you see and hear every day you shouldn’t require clarification of this.

  1. You see the billionaire tech-toadies buying their way into power and the monied supplicant suck-ups (oh, wait: that’s redundant) bending a knee instead of standing in integrity.
  2. You see the cabinet appointments chosen not for their qualifications or their excellence, but for their loyalty to Trump so that they protect our Felon-in Chief.
  3. You see the guardrails coming down, so you know our democracy is in trouble.

Frank mentioned Indivisible.org. There are other ways to stand that post, including The Union, MoveOn.org, Country First, Focus4Democracy, The States Project, Indivisible Illinois and more. Go stand a post with at least one of those organizations working to protect our democracy.

We are in for a long, achingly hard battle, so put your ideas for action in the Comments section below to help us all.

REBEL!

.  .  .  against the billionaire tyranny.

From The Union

Tomorrow is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. day. You know the stories of how right wing haters tried to stop the creation of a day of remembrance for this (gasp!) Black man, this non-violent icon of peaceful change for the betterment of all. Tomorrow is also the inauguration of a man dedicated to hatred, selfishness and repression. The contrast would be comical if it weren’t so damaging.

The folks at The Union have some ideas about how you can help peaceful change come about.

Register Voters: Help your community by assisting people in registering to vote or becoming election workers. (If you’re interested in learning how to get involved with voter registration in your area, please reach out to The Union for more information.)

Volunteer at a local food bank: Help provide meals for people in need.

Community Cleanups: Lead efforts to clean up parks, streets, or public spaces, promoting community pride and solidarity.

Reach out to a friend or relative to see how they’re doing and encourage them to get involved in local volunteer opportunities or pro-democracy initiatives.

Sign up for a volunteer event at our Action Center! Key races are happening this year in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Virginia. Get involved and mark your calendar today!

As The Union wrote in its recent post,

“Thank you for your dedication to justice, community, and democracy.”

TikTok

You would compromise our national security so that you can post and view inane videos for free? Really? Or so that you can make a few bucks on that platform, as though that’s the only place you can make a buck? Seriously?!

Seriously!?!!
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We can be bought – we sell out – so cheaply. But you don’t have to do that. Reach down and grab your ass. That is what’s at stake.

Fun – Yes, Really

Click me

Did you make it this far in this long post? Good for you, because here’s a gift courtesy of Dan Rather at Steady. Fleetwood Mack tells us “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.” It’s a message of hope – “It’ll be here better than before” – and we surely need hope right now, because tomorrow – as in: Monday – won’t be better than today. But we are going to make our tomorrows better than before – if we work at it. Let’s go.

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. 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.

We In A Heap O’ Trouble


POST 1139

Fires and Little Minds

We can be calmed and grateful that two Kardashian sisters have at last spoken, bringing their public safety expertise to the Los Angeles fires disaster. We’ll ignore their useless finger pointing and that of most everyone else and instead focus on people’s need to blame.

Trump is blaming because he sees political advantage in attacking Gov. Gavin Newsome. He’s also blaming because he loves to and needs to demonize and hate what he cannot – as in: not able to – understand. Plus, he hasn’t even a single constructive idea about even the most obvious challenges to our nation. That is what ignorance can do for the enthusiastically clueless. Nevertheless, blaming is taking center stage. It is dribbling from Trump and coming from other points of ignorance.*

If you want to blame someone for the fires, blame the millions of Americans who bought into the California dream and demanded to live in that area. That produced housing that was far too dense, with too many houses on every block, jammed together, making it easy for flames to jump from house to house and far too difficult for fire fighters to stop the progression of a fire.

Or blame all the municipalities for failing to realize that there is an entire ocean immediately next to them, but they have never installed pumps and pipes to supply ocean water into the fire hydrant piping system.

Or blame the tax payers for their blissful ignorance, demanding excellent services but refusing to pay for them, so they don’t have them. Turns out there is no free lunch. You don’t pay, you don’t get.

Or blame the politicians we elect who prostrate themselves before the money of Big Fossil Fuels and who then repeat the mantra that there is no global warming or, if there is, that burning hydrocarbons has nothing to do with it. Who could forget that 97% of world climate scientists told us decades ago and ever since then that the Earth is warming and that human burning of hydrocarbons was accelerating the danger? Worse, who could forget the politicians denying that and siding with the miserable 3% of scientists who conducted “research” that was funded by fossil fuel companies?

Or blame us for electing those cowardly politicians.

The Best Blaming Award, though, goes to Trump for his fantasy, gibberish criticism.

From NBC News, Trump blames Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom for deadly wildfires:

“’Governor Gavin Newscum [sic – kudos to Trump for extending his infantile, bratty string of name calling] refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,’ Trump wrote in one of several posts on his social media platform, Truth Social.
.

“Newsom’s Director of Communications, Izzy Gardon, accused the president-elect of ‘playing politics’ while the wildfires continued to wreak havoc in southern California.

“‘There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction. The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need,’ Gardon said.”

Someone please explain to the rest of us how a felonious president-elect ignorantly pointing his finger helps the victims of these fires.

To be even-handed, talent-less, pretty Kardashian women who spend their days primping are leveling blame with all the authority of ignorant playground brats. Somebody please explain to the rest of us how that helps the victims of these fires or makes things better in any way.

I don’t know if it is universal in human nature, but it certainly is universal in American culture to shift at light speed from terrible events to blaming. What is that, a fear response? A self-protective avoidance of accountability? A venting of anger? Something else? One thing it is not is helpful to making things better.

Something Has Been Lost

From Thom Hartman, Why Do Republicans Hate a Prosperous Middle Class? (hint: it’s about greed):

At the end of the day, all Republican politicians care about is money. Greed is their principle animating force, and what binds them to their morbidly rich donors. [emphasis original]

I encourage you to read Hartmann’s post. It is shockingly accurate.

From Steve Schmidt, America: where kings were once toppled:

Elon Musk has embraced his white South African pedigree with a zeal that would have made even the most vicious Afrikaner beating in a black skull with a club smile in delight. Whether cheer leading for the British racist Tommy Robinson or the German AFD, which holds that the SS was not a criminal organization, Elon Musk is dropping the curtain. Following the connective thread is not difficult— or rather should not be — but for much of America’s media it is a bridge too far. For them, it is better to pretend that it isn’t happening. The news these days is often what can be seen and heard, but is not allowed to be spoken. That’s too bad because the danger is coming closer.

Our press – now referred to as the mainstream media, or worse – used to be called the Fourth Estate, a bulwark against tyranny and official wrongdoing. These folks held up a light so that all of us could see what is really going on and then hold perps accountable. A great many outlets have gone out of business – it’s expensive to field investigative reporters – and many more seem to have lost their spines. That’s an invitation to the destruction of all that is good about this nation. In Steve Schmidt’s words, the danger is coming closer. It’s a good time to subscribe to your local newspaper while you still have one.

The Worst News and the Best News

Click me – refer to Note #5 below.

From Marc Elias’ post on Democracy Docket, January 14:

    • It was predictable that the legacy media would fail to stand up to Trump and his barrage of lies.

    • It was predictable that the corporate leaders would jettison any principle to suck up to Trump.

A large number of publications that used to have the courage to speak truth to power have caved in to Trump. The Washington Post is owned by Amazon gazillionaire Jeff Bezos. He refused to publish the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the election. So did the owner of the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong. Now each of them has pledged to give Trump $1 million for his inaugural events. Surely that’s coincidence.

You. might recall what happened after January 20, 2017, when millions of dollars donated for Trump’s inaugural could not be accounted for. Recall that he is the same perp who had a charity whose main beneficiary was Donald Trump.

More and more companies are doing what Prof. Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny,** calls “obeying in advance.” It’s a capitulation driven by greed and spinelessness and it threatens our republic.

That is the worst news.

The best news is that some people are doing something about that.

Jennifer Rubin resigned from the Post and she and Norm Eisen have started an online news and opinion publication they call The Contrarian. I just subscribed and recommend that you do, too. Click through and have a look.

If we are to keep this republic and fend off the haters, the fascists, the oligarchs, the White supremacists and the rest who want to burn our Constitution, destroy our democracy and subjugate all of us, we need smart, brave people to speak truth to power, to call out the lies and the liars and to rally us in defense and protection of our Constitution and all that we hold dear.

Your part is to support the people doing that. Subscribe. Do it for your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren. Do it for your crazy Uncle Bob and for your totally lawn obsessive neighbor. Do it for your librarian and the teachers in your schools, for the bewildered kids who need mental healthcare and for our millions of hard working, law abiding immigrants who make your life easier and less expensive. Do it because just a picture of the Statue of Liberty gives you chills.

Do it because you still believe.

___________________________________________

* Following the release of the Special Counsel’s report, Trump called Jack Smith, “a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election [sic].” He was right about the last part and stupid about the first, but he did get in a typical schoolyard brat derogatory.

** Also available in a graphic format for those who miss their comic books.

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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. 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.

What We Wish Judge Juan Merchan Had Said


POST 1137

Preface:

The following is solely wishful thinking. Much to our disappointment, Judge Merchan did not say these words. On the other hand, Trump will, in fact, spend the rest of his life with the word “felon” attached to him and to his name everywhere, including in U.S. history books and in all of his presidential records.

  • _____________________________________________
  • January 10, 2025
  • Courtroom: Part 59
  • State of New York Criminal Courts Building
  • New York, New York
  • Judge Juan Merchan presiding
  • ======================================

Judge Merchan:

“The defendant will rise.

“Mr. Trump, you have received all the benefits of the presumption of innocence, the due process of law and the other protections provided by the Constitution of the United States. You have abused them and the legal system in multiple ways.

“You sought and gained delays of every sort, many frivolous, including abuse of the court system itself.

“You have been verbally abusive and threatening to this court, including to the jurors, and then, when cautioned about your conduct, you continued your verbal abuse.

“You were put under a gag order and then, after many reminders of what is required by this court, you both complained about how unfairly you had been treated and then you violated the gag order yet again.

“You have made a mockery of the rule of law, insisting upon special treatment not available to any other citizen of this state or of this nation. You complained of not being treated even more specially. You have, in short, demonstrated your complete lack of respect for our nation.

“In a unanimous verdict, you have been adjudged guilty of 34 felony counts of fraud, not by a court, but by a jury of your peers. Your guilt will stand and be attached to your name forever. There is no escaping this accountability for your criminal acts.

“Because of the proximity of this sentencing hearing to the upcoming inauguration it is impossible to impose incarceration upon you presently or for the duration of your presidency. However, the law allows for a sentence to be suspended for a period of time.

“Therefore, Donald John Trump, this court sentences you be incarcerated for a period of 1 year for each felony count to which you have been found guilty, for a total of 34 years. These 1-year periods of incarceration shall be served sequentially and with no opportunity for parole.

“This judgment is to be suspended for the duration of your presidency. Upon leaving that office you will immediately be remanded to the State of New York to begin serving your term of incarceration.

“In addition, you are hereby fined the sum of $10,000 for each felony count to which you have been found guilty. You are required to pay this fine before Inauguration Day this year.

“Understand this, Mr. Trump: While the execution of your sentence is necessarily postponed, you have not been exonerated and your guilt stands, effective immediately. You are irrevocably a criminal, as much as a common thief or a murderer is a criminal. Your money, your notoriety and your position have no influence on that. You are a criminal fraud.

“You have famously said that you could shoot someone and never lose any voters. That may be true, but you would wind up in my courtroom and you would get away with nothing. In my courtroom you will be held accountable.

“Mr. Trump, you will be the first United States president to have entered office as a felon, putting a stain upon that office. You have embarrassed and debased yourself with your behavior before this court. The most disappointing thing is that you obviously haven’t the ability to understand any of that.

“Dismissed.”

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 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. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. 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.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

Click me

JA


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

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