Accountability

The Hypothetical States of America


Reading time – 1:47  .  .  .

Many thanks to contributing author M.S.A. for this particularly appropriate post in anticipation of the March For Our Lives event on, Saturday, March 24. Click a pic, find a march near you, sign up and GO MARCH FOR OUR KIDS!

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In The Hypothetical States of America there exists a law that allows most people to own and use explosives. They can own explosives that are capable of destroying property and killing people in an area of no more than a one hundred foot radius. Larger explosives are illegal. You must be at least eighteen years of age and pass a background check to possess explosives. Mental health professionals must report you to the state and federal governments if it is deemed that you may be a danger to yourself and/or others, in which case you cannot own an explosive.

After this law was passed there was an uptick in deaths and destruction of property due to the use of explosives. The people of The Hypothetical States of America (HSA) were concerned. “Our people and buildings must be safe,” they said. Over the subsequent years a ten foot reinforced concrete wall was built around all K-12 schools and colleges as well as houses of worship, stadiums and all state and federal government buildings. The cost was in the trillions of dollars. But at least the people of the HSA felt safe.

Until . . .

Explosives owners were furious. The National Explosives Owners of America (NEOA) was furious. There was so much of the Hypothetical States that was now inaccessible to explosives that owners were being denied their constitutional right to use explosives. The NEOA recommended to its members that they purchase a catapult. This would allow owners to once again exercise their right to use explosives wherever they wanted. The largest catapults were capable of lobbing an explosive eighty feet in the air. So the President of The Hypothetical States mandated a federal program to top all ten foot reinforced concrete walls with a ninety foot chain link fence at a cost of trillions of dollars. Once it was completed the people of the HSA again felt safe.

Until . . .

Explosions start happening in shopping malls, grocery stores and at neighborhood town hall meetings where “the explosives problem” was being debated. Americans once again felt frightened. But there’s nothing that can be done.

Just so this story is clearly understood, it was written several days after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. It  is an allegory of both the gun problem in the U. S. and the NRA. There is no Hypothetical States of America and there is no National Explosives Owners of America as far as I know. I hope this story strikes you as being just as ridiculous as our inability to fix our gun problem.

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We really do have a problem, so click on either of the pictures to get to the March For Our Lives website. There are over 800 marches worldwide, so enter your zip code, find a march nearby and GO MARCH FOR OUR KIDS NEXT SATURDAY!

Because you care.

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

Stop Watching the Sideshows


Reading time – 3:21; Viewing time – 4:23  .  .  .

The discussions drone on, with the current outrage over Trump’s cowardly firing of Rex Tillerson. I say cowardly, because apparently Trump tweeted the firing to the world hours before Tillerson found out about it from a third party. In other words, once again Mr. “You’re Fired” wasn’t man enough to confront someone – this time Tillerson – with the news that his employment was terminated.

Then, of course, there is the speculation about how long Tillerson’s firing was in the works and whether his recent supportive response to Theresa May’s finding that the Russians were behind the nerve gas attacks in England was the tipping point for Tillerson.

And there is ongoing hand-wringing over the revolving door that is the White House, how Trump can’t seem to keep people in place to do what needs to be done and also have the proper security clearances. And all of that, while true, is a sideshow, so stop watching it. It’s critical that we focus on the center ring in the Big Tent of the Trump Circus.

Trump is consistent in exactly one thing: doing what serves Donald Trump. And the most important thing Donald Trump needs now is to prevent us from seeing the connections between him and the Russians and their attacks on America. That is the center ring in the Big Tent.

It’s what explains his ongoing distractions and smoke screens, like his impulsive tariffs, his impulsive agreement to meet with Kim Jung Un, his impulsive verbal attacks on NATO, his impulsive rejection of the Paris Climate Accord, his impulsive ongoing attacks on the judiciary and the press and, of course, impulsively far more.

That Trump behaves this way is no surprise. He’s been in the business of causing outrage for a very long time and pundits who are horrified over the Tillerson et.al. exits are looking in the wrong direction. We knew what this snake was before we picked him up.

The right direction to look is at Republicans in Congress, those who are supposed to be a check and balance on the Presidency. Nearly all of them are metaphorically screwing themselves into the ground in an effort to somehow make Trump’s behavior okay. They’re laying down smoke screens like, “Oh yeah? Well here’s how some Democrat is worse,” as though even if true that would make Trump’s behavior acceptable. As bad as those Republicans may be, are those who don’t have the spine to address Trump’s un-American behavior at all.

Every one of them knows that Trump is a very bad boy who has done reprehensible things, many of which are likely illegal and possibly treasonous. Every one of them can see on open display Trump’s dereliction of duty, as he refuses to take any action to inhibit Russian meddling with our election coming just 8 months from now. That includes the Republican House Intelligence Committee members who have caved and sucked up to Trump with their blatantly valueless report.

Go ahead: answer for yourself why Trump might give Putin an open lane to skew our election. It’s the same answer to the question of why Trump gave Putin veto power over the choice for Secretary of State last year. You may remember that Trump declared his options to be either Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney. Putin nixed both, but allowed Tillerson to get the job because Putin likes Tillerson. That’s because Russia’s biggest oil deal ever was made with Tillerson at the head of Exxon shortly before the 2016 election. And the Republicans know all of that, too.

We’re left with a Congress that, through its verbal gymnastics of Trump explanations, paired with cowardly silence, is allowing Putin to control Trump and this country and our allies in Europe as well. We are being sold out by a subservient President and a spineless Congress.

So, stop watching the sideshows and keep your eyes on the Big Tent.

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

White House Veracity


Reading time – 2:59; Viewing time – 4:26  .  .  .

The White House, power center of the United States, home of the leader of the free world, the influence center of global economics and source of a continuing flow of lies has done it again.

Hope Hicks, the 29 year old White House Communications Director, testified before the House Intelligence Committee on February 27, refusing to answer most questions. She based her refusal on an imaginary privilege, which roughly paralleled Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ refusal both times he testified before that committee. It is essentially an assertion that, “I don’t want to talk about it and the President doesn’t want me to, either.” There is no such privilege – that’s what makes it imaginary. Said ranking member Adam Schiff,

“That’s an overly broad claim of privilege that I don’t think any court of law would sustain. And I think the White House knows that. This is not executive privilege; it is executive stonewalling.”

Hicks did manage to say a few things to the committee. One of them was that her work for President Trump had occasionally required her to tell white lies. This requires some clarification.

When a woman asks, “Do these pants make my butt look big?” people of strict integrity might be forced to admit that, yes, they do. On the other hand, relationships can be fragile and they are likely the most important issue, so saying something more tactful might be the better course, something like, “They’re okay, but you might want to try a darker color.” Or, “No, you look great.” Those are white lies – lies told to spare someone’s feelings.

We have yet to hear such a lie from anyone in the White House. With over 2,000 documented Presidential lies in a single year, not one has been identified as a lie to avoid hurting someone. No press briefing, commonly packed with lies, distortions and misdirection has included white lies. Not a single cabinet briefing has included a white lie. It beggars belief that Hope Hicks, alone in a swamp of lies, would be the sole dispenser of white lies, this in the name of the President of prevarication.

No, she’s  just another West Wing liar and now she’s gone, like dozens before her.

And another thing  .  .  .

Jared Kushner, son-in-law to the President, unpaid handler of everything including middle-east peace, can’t get a security clearance. In fact, he will never get a top security clearance, even though for well over a year he has been privy to the most sensitive of America’s secrets. At the same time he’s held numerous meetings with top officials of other countries, many without another pair of American ears present, and he has discussed his private financial interests at the same meetings. He proposed setting up a private communications scheme with Moscow, with his base to be in the Russian embassy. And it’s been reported that the Chinese are working him in an influence operation. This too-smart-for-American-interests agent is ripe for being blackmailed and putting us all at risk.

At the same time Trump hasn’t allowed our intelligence services to do anything about Russian hacking of our elections and has refused to apply legally required sanctions on them. And during the transition his then national security advisor Michael Flynn, liar to the FBI and dabbler in Russian cooperation, promised to remove Obama era sanctions.

Trump unmasked an Israeli agent to the Russians. He’s had numerous contacts with Vladimir Putin without so much as an American translator present. He’s refused to appoint ambassadors to nations in key flash points around the world, including South Korea. And he has decimated our diplomatic corps.

There is far more, of course, but the key question is how many years will it take for the United States to recover from Trump compromising and even betraying of our country? Indeed, will we ever be able to recover?

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!


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

The Bullet-Head Zone


CPAC Conference, 2018

Reading time – 1:52; Viewing time – 3:03  .  .  .

In the wake of the slaughter of 17 students and teachers and the wounding of 14 others in Parkland, FL, Wayne LaPierre, the executive director of the NRA, gave a speech to the attendees of the CPAC conference. This is the association that used to be the home for conservatives, but now is primarily composed of hair-on-fire righties.

In his speech he equated gun ownership with God, claimed that having guns is the most important of our rights and reasserted the official NRA certainty that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, so let’s arm kindergarten teachers and have shoot-outs in the hallways.

Here’s what you need to know:

  1. Nearly every “fact” that LaPierre stated is untrue.
  2. His wholly unsupported accusations and opinions are based on a false and intentionally misleading interpretation of the Second Amendment. It was and is promulgated by the NRA in order to spike gun sales for the firearms industry. More on that in a future post.
  3. LaPierre’s job is to stoke righty fervor, so he gave a red meat speech to a hall of red meat eaters. That explains his tone.

These red meat eaters don’t represent American values, as 94% of Americans want universal background checks – that means for all transfers of ownership of all firearms. That includes when grandpa gives his old hunting rifle to his grandson.

Nearly all Americans, including the overwhelming majority of NRA members, want gun ownership prohibited for all convicted violent felons, mentally disturbed people, those on the terror watch list, domestic violence perps and the like. 74% of Americans want assault weapons and high capacity magazines banned. And nobody outside the NRA thinks a gun battle in the school hallway is a good idea.

Go ahead and watch LaPierre and listen to his fascism-worthy speech. Again, it’s his job to stoke gun fervor with high volume and he’s good at that. Just get that he and those like him are not just allowing, but are indirectly inviting more kids to get killed in our schools, more movie and concert attendees to be mowed down and more church, synagogue and mosque goers to be murdered.

I’ll say it again: A vote for an NRA backed candidate is a vote for dead children.

VOTE in your primary and in the general election on November 8. First check to see which candidates have taken money from the NRA (here’s a link to all NRA money recipients) and vote against these people. *

This is another chapter in the “Big Money controls Congress and you don’t count” story of the destruction of our democracy. You can shut down that story. And you can save our kids.

VOTE!

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    Click me

  • * This is actually tougher than it sounds. Have a look at this and note the distribution of NRA funds: only $1 million of the $59 million the NRA spent to warp our politics and our democracy in the 2016 election was for direct contributions. For example, the recipient list shows they gave Marco Rubio $9,900, but their total spend for him on TV ads and SuperPAC contributions was in the millions of dollars. So, when Cameron Kasky asked Rubio to promise to never take another dollar from the NRA, Rubio weaseled. Rubio is a great talker. Too bad we can’t trust him.

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

An Astonishing Ability To Do The Wrong Thing


Reading time – 75 seconds  .  .  .

Pathetic that he needed such notes. Note, too, the “45” on the cuff. Sad.

Russia invaded Ukraine so Obama put sanctions on them. Trump removed them.

17 people were murdered in Florida. Trump said congratulations to the first responders and told Jeff Sessions to look into prosecuting Hillary.

Kim Jong-Un launched a ballistic missile. Trump insulted him and indirectly dared him to do worse.

The FBI indicted 13 Russian hackers. Trump congratulated himself.

Trump bellowed that Mexico will pay for his wall. Now Trump demands payment from Congress (i.e. you and me).

Trump promised to protect the Dreamers. Trump pulled the rug out from under the Dreamers by removing executive order protection and now uses them as pawns.

Trump promised protection and even expansion of Social Security and Medicare. Trump signed a tax bill that is the first step to privatizing and limiting both of those programs.

Congress passed a law to sanction Russia which Trump signed. Proof of Russian hacking was offered (yet again) and Trump refused to sanction Russia as required by law.

Trump repeatedly meets with Russian leaders without any American present, not even a translator.

Trump promised to isolate himself from his business interests. That never happened and he continues his self-aggrandizement by charging hundreds of millions of dollars for security and transportation to Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower. And Trump gets foreign dignitaries to stay in his hotels.

Trump held a “listening session” with survivors of mass shootings. It is astonishing that he had to bring a cheat-sheet along to know what to say (see the picture). Worse, he proposed arming teachers with guns, right in line with the NRA’s solution for increased gun sales. And what could be better than crossfire in the hallway of the school?

Of course, this list could go on and on, but the most important point is that Trump is not just completely untrustworthy; he is imperiling us. His hollow words to survivors won’t bring any safety to students or anyone else. And he is imperiling the United States by failing his primary responsibility to protect and defend our country. Tom Friedman’s article on this is mandatory reading.

Unlike Trump, I’m doing something for our safety. Mark your calendar on March 24 to join the national student protest. Then review this post and send a link to at least 10 others.

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!


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

Make This Go Viral


Reading time – 1:58; Viewing time – 3:06  .  .  .

There are few things that cause a more visceral and instantaneous reaction to protect than something that threatens our children. There are existential forces at work and you don’t need anyone to explain it to you. Somehow, though, there are some Americans who just don’t get it. They are those who line their pockets and enhance their careers using money from the NRA.

Click me and watch

Have a look at what exquisitely clear, eloquent 17 year old Cameron Kasky has to say about that. You might want to hug your kids while you watch this short video because he’s speaking for them. Go on – link through and then come back.

From “The Onion” – click me

Have a look at what The Onion has to say about this. They post a current picture with this caption after every mass murder and we’ve already had seven intentional school shootings this year – that’s one per week. Kids being shot dead. Perhaps we should change the words of Emma Lazarus’ poem from “yearning to breathe free” to “yearning just to keep breathing at all.”

Thanks and apologies to the author – can’t read your name.

Here’s the cycle —>

Does it look familiar? We kill over 33,000 Americans every year with guns – that’s nearly 4 of us killed every hour – and, no, that’s not about Islamic extremists and no, neither an unconstitutional religious ban nor a stupid wall will protect us from this.

It’s time for you and I to see this for what it is and to do something about it.

From the brilliant mind of friend Dan Wallace:

“A vote for an NRA backed candidate is a vote for dead children.”

 

That’s the brutal truth.

And there’s something we can do about it.

Link this post on your FaceBook page, your Twitter account and your Instagram page. Send a link to this post to at least 10 people you know to make this go viral. That’s something you can do to protect our kids.

There are children in the schools in your town who don’t want to have to dodge bullets or fear for their lives when they hear the fire alarm and go into the hallway, who don’t want have to hide, terrified in a locked school room, who don’t want their teacher to be ripped apart by AR-15 bullets while saving them and their friends and YOU CAN HELP TO PROTECT THESE CHILDREN.

Say it with me:

“A vote for an NRA backed candidate is a vote for dead children.”

 

Pass this along to everyone you know. Make it go viral so that the NRA money candidates get fired.

SAVE OUR KIDS!

Here’s a link to this post on YouTube.

Here’s a link to a wonderfully clear statement of the facts.

See this in case you think there’s nothing we can do.

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

The “T” Word


Reading time – 3:13; Viewing time – 4:18  .  .  .

In Brené Brown’s new book, Braving the Wilderness, she quotes Harry G. Frankfurt in differentiating between liars and bullshitters. The liar rejects the authority of the truth; the bullshitter pays no attention to the truth at all. She also quotes Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

The BS effrontery was plain for all to see on January 30, as the President of the United States delivered the Constitutionally required report to Congress on the state of the union. The president delivered his practiced applause lines and – horror of horrors! – the Democrats did not stand and applaud.

Now, this is the reality show president, so for him to experience an absence of fawning adulation must have been terribly painful. Indeed, the next day he put his hurt feelings on his sleeve.

This from NBC News:

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday called Democrats’ stone-faced reaction to his State of the Union address last week “treasonous” and “un-American” during a visit to a manufacturing plant in Cincinnati.

Trump described Republicans as “going totally crazy wild” during his remarks last Tuesday, while expression-less Democrats remained seated for the majority of the speech. “They were like death,” Trump lamented. “And un-American. Un-American.”

But their reaction, he said, was also something much worse.

Vaguely noting that “someone” called the Democrats’ reactions “‘treasonous,'” Trump said he agreed. “I mean, yeah, I guess. Why not? … Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”

Definition: treason – the crime of betraying one’s country.

Apparently, failing to applaud Trump is the same as betraying one’s country, at least in the mind of the Great Thought Mangler. Is it possible, though, that treason is flowing from a different source? Wouldn’t undermining the fundamentals of our country be treasonous?

Some examples:

From The Onion, of course! Consider this as a placeholder for all the betrayals of this administration

  • – Violating the separation of powers
  • – Attacking the Justice Department, the FBI and the press in order to undermine an investigation
  • – Bringing to the inner circle of the White House people who CANNOT GET A SECURITY CLEARANCE, at least one of whom has been targeted by a Chinese influence operation and several of whom put themselves in a position to be blackmailed by foreign powers – and they all had access to top secret information
  • – Refusing to be loyal to allies and sucking up to tyrants, both large and small
  • – Threatening nuclear annihilation
  • – Double-crossing Dreamers and CHIPs kids
  • – Abandoning the people of Puerto Rico
  • – Blatantly disregarding the emoluments clause, making millions for himself, and
  • – Failing to protect and defend this country against invasion by a hostile foreign power

Not one of these actions is partisan in nature or even a policy issue and none is in dispute. Each is in direct opposition to the welfare of this nation and every one is poison to democracy. They are simple questions of right versus wrong, patriotic versus treasonous. This is about betraying one’s country.

From How Democracies Die:

Click to watch the interview of former DNI James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan about the Russian invasion of America.

“An essential test for democracies is not whether such [authoritarian] figures emerge but whether political leaders, and especially political parties, work to prevent them from gaining power in the first place.”

Congress, you miserably failed the first test. Protecting the FBI and the Justice Department may be the last chance to stand up and fulfill your oath of office. The only question is whether you will wake up to your responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution and intercede to stop treason, the betrayal of our country.

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

Fable


Flag of the United States of America

Reading time – 2:10; Viewing time – 3:25  .  .  .

Once upon a time there was a democratic republic called the United States of America. It was thought of by many as the shining city on a hill. It was the best hope for millions coming there from around the world and proved to be a land of opportunity. It had many strengths and valuable resources, but the most powerful of all was its people. They had enduring values and a can-do culture that made them the envy of the world.

One day the people found that they had been frustrated and angry for a very long time. Their leaders had failed them, lied to them and stolen from them, so they looked for a new leader and chose one who roused them with words of anger and grandiose promises. He had many obvious flaws and he lied to the people repeatedly, but they didn’t care about the lies because he spoke to their decades-long frustration, so they elected him to be their leader. Then things turned very bad for the people.

They learned that this new leader had ties to an Evil Empire and he was beholden to that empire in very suspicious ways, including great sums of money. And he surrounded himself with many others who also had ties to the Evil Empire in suspicious ways. He dismissed allies and warmed up to vicious autocrats around the world, especially the leader of the Evil Empire. He had many contacts with that leader and refused to report the contacts to his own intelligence agencies or to the press of his own country, so the people had to look to the Evil Empire for the truth of what was happening in their own country.

He began to dismantle the country’s foreign service infrastructure and weakened the Justice Department with an ineffectual leader. He demeaned key government people and agencies, especially those looking into his affairs and who could unmask him. He fired many long time public servants and pressured still more to resign their posts. He constantly demeaned the press, those who could hold him accountable publicly. He bullied legislators and they knuckled under, refusing to challenge him.

Flag of the Russian Federation

He created great sideshows, including threatening nuclear war with a petty tyrant in order to distract the people from his wrongdoing. He packed government with those he could control and demanded loyalty to himself, instead of loyalty to the people and the country, as they had pledged. He caused his top intelligence people to meet with the top intelligence people of the Evil Empire. Then suddenly the people found that their flag had been changed to a very different red, white and blue.

*  *  *

Once upon a time there was a democratic republic called the United States of America. You can read about it in the history books.

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Click me to find the event in your area. Then sign up and show up when Trump fires Mueller.

Want to do something to change the end of this fable into something more to your liking? Register for a Rapid Response event in your area by clicking on the logo to the right  .  .  .

.  .  .  because you need to stand up and be counted if you’re to get a “lived happily ever after” ending to this fable.

Want more on this? Have a look here.

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

Invertebrates


Not so long ago the Republican Party proudly boasted of being the party that stood for law and order. They let us know in no uncertain terms that they were the guys who would defend against international threats. They were the tough guys who were best suited to ensure our national security.

Apply Trump’s words about voters to the majority of Republican members of Congress.

Now, though, they cower before the Mad Goon-in-Chief, doing his bidding and refusing to challenge his dishonesty and his devotion solely to himself, rather than to our nation. He’s callously made 1.8 million DACA kids (his number) mere pawns in his game of chicken to get his stupid, unnecessary wall, the security tool that assumes that Mexicans don’t know about ladders or tunnels. That’s the wall he told us time and again that Mexico will pay for, but now he wants each of us to pay hundreds of dollars for it. Today’s Republicans are sucking up to this scoundrel by playing his game and have abdicated their responsibility and their oath of office to protect and defend. They’re no longer the fierce guardians of our Republic; they’re the cowering lapdogs.

It took just 96 years for H.L. Mencken’s prophesy to come true.

Trump leads them in taunts to diminish our  institutions, like the press, the FBI, the CIA, the entire Justice Department and specific people in those agencies. He has Senators Ron Johnson (R-MN), Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and others making flagrantly idiotic, scary sounding accusations about the FBI, substantiated solely by hot air, demeaning the very people who make sure we’re safe. That doesn’t sound much like the party that used to stand for law and order. That sounds more like self-serving people being manipulated by moneyed interests and lacking a spine to stand against what they know to be wrong.

Rep. Devin Nunez (R-CA) is cavorting about DC right now with a memo he wrote, claiming McCarthy-like that his memo contains a smoking gun that has the fingerprints of the evil FBI on it. The memo contains classified information that he carelessly didn’t review. And he carelessly has shown that classified information to most of the Republican members of Congress and is threatening to carelessly release it to the public. That whooshing sound you hear is Devin Nunez sucking up to Donald Trump.

The Justice Department has pushed back, making clear that Nunez will do damage to our national security should he release the memo. To understand the full importance of that, you need to know that at the same time that Nunez is doing his Trump suck-up dance, a tsunami of Russian bots is inundating our social media, calling for the release of his memo. Did I mention that the memo contains classified information? In other words, Republican Nunez is brainlessly playing directly into the hands of the Russians.

So, let’s be clear about what’s important:

Think: Congress

  • What is important is that unlike Nunez and the rest of the suck-ups, you and I see this for what it is: the next self-serving, transparent attempt at misdirection from what is important, the Russian hack of our election.
  • What is important is Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible conspiracy – not collusion: conspiracy – by Trump and his organization to get the Russians to help him win the election.
  • What is important is the investigation into possible obstruction of justice by Trump.
  • What is important is to discover if Trump – the President of the United States – has been part of a massive money laundering scheme and whether that has made him vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.

The good news is that Mueller doesn’t care about Nunez’s dingbat grandstanding or Trump’s demonizing attacks or the spinelessness of what passes for Republicans in Congress today. He cares about justice. So do we.

We care about the abdication of duty to country by the jellyfish in Congress.

We care about the baseless attacks on the very people we count on to keep us safe.

We care that the people who thump their jellyfish chests about how strong they are for America are the very people who have abandoned their integrity and, through their obstruction, are enabling Russia to hack our next election.

These Republicans, the ones who are making fatuous accusations about the FBI, as well as all those in Congress who stand silently by and won’t call out Nunez or the president – and that especially includes Spineless Speaker Paul Ryan – have sold out their country to appease the infant tyrant, Trump.

The late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan summed up the aspiration of everyone in this country: “What the people want is very simple – they want an America as good as its promise.”

We aren’t getting that America from either the Executive Branch or the Legislative Branch of our government. And we’re going to remember that this coming November and in 2020.

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

MLK, Jr. Day – Special Report


Reading time – 2:29  .  .  .

The Bigot-In-Chief

The President made it clear that we don’t want immigrants from any of those s***hole African countries. No Nigerians coming from their huts. No Salvadorans, either, even if they’re trying to avoid certain death. He postulated that it would be good to have more immigrants from “Normay”. Yes, that’s how the Bigot-in-Chief spelled it. He loves those white Europeans. As long as they aren’t from the southern parts of the continent, because those people can be pretty dark. More immigrants from Normay works for Trump.

DACA and The Wall

Trump cancelled President Obama’s Executive Order protecting our Dreamers, saying that it’s a good thing but should be made into law by Congress. At the time that sounded as though there was a remote possibility of a little sense in his action, even in the face of the obvious cruelty it would cause 800,000 people. Now, though, it’s clear that the only reason Trump had for taking protection from the Dreamers was to create a bargaining chip that Trump can use to get Congress to authorize money for the wall between us and Mexico. Bear in mind that Trump has made it clear that the Mexicans are rapists and murderers, the dregs of society (implied: they’re not as good as we of European stock), so we need that wall, he tells us.

Mr. Trump, this situation is easily solved. Let Congress send you a clean DACA bill. You sign it then send an invoice to President Peña Nieto of Mexico for $30 billion to pay for the wall. Don’t worry about his already having laughed at you and rejected your stupid idea. Just get payment in advance of construction. That’s what you promised your base, right?

If you can’t get President Peña Nieto to pay your invoice, just tweet to all of your base, telling them they each have to send you $750, because Mexico isn’t going to pay for the wall. I’m sure they won’t mind your having lied to them. After all, that will keep all those rapists and murderers south of the Rio Grande.

You already know  .  .  .

.  .  .  that these examples of continuing bigotry connect with Trump’s claim that people on the streets in Charlottesville, were “very good people on both sides,”

.  .  .  and Trump’s glacially slow rejection of David Duke.

.  .  .  and long before that the racial discrimination Trump and his father were convicted of.

Four decades of bigotry and discrimination. All that and more is why John Pavlovitz got it right in his piece about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: He Had a Dream. This Wasn’t It.

Here’s what it means

We cannot count on the President for leadership to a better place, to the realization of a more perfect union with liberty and justice for all. We cannot count on our spineless Congress, those who couldn’t seem to recall the crude, hateful things Trump said and who then morphed into dishonest denial. They can’t be counted on to lead us any place that’s good, either.

That means that you have to have a dream today. You have to hold it close and march steadfastly into that more just future. You have to be the leader of you.

Do it at the Women’s March – 2018. Here’s a link to find a march near you. Show up on January 20 – because you have a dream today!

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

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

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