Alt-Right

Potpourri – v25.0


POST 1301
The Cure For Your Ennui

Click me – First check Note #5 below

Sure, you’re discouraged. We’re being hit by American right wing terrorists undermining our country in every way, as they cheat and scheme to take away the America we believe in. They’re taking away our rights and even our lives. But, honestly, there really is some good news, and it isn’t only Marc Elias beating the snot out of Trump in court over and over. This part is more about we Americans and our supposed polarization that so many talk about.

Ambassador Michael McFaul is fresh off a long national book tour for his new book Autocrats vs. Democrats and he wrote about the tour in his post What I Learned on My Book Tour Across America. I haven’t read his book yet and plan to so do soon. What you need to read right now is his “What I Learned” essay. It is full of optimism and reasons to believe in us. We aren’t nearly as fractured as pundits and the few loud extremists and cowardly politicians would have us believe.

Most of all, you’ll learn that we Americans really do still care. Go read his essay.

The cure for despair is action.

Fascist Red Warning Flag of the Month

Read Thom Hartmann’s post that’s scarier than it at first seems, That Sign in Front of the Smithsonian is More Dangerous Than You Think. Your freedom of speech is at risk. Again. Still.

July Jobs Report

From Jim Acosta:

CNBC anchor Rick Santelli was blown away by a disastrous July jobs report that showed Trump’s economy not just missing the expected 85,000 or so jobs gain — but actually losing 23,000 jobs — and another hundred thousand in downward revisions.

On Friday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a July jobs report that was a disaster for Trump:

And still [Trump] tells us that this is the greatest economy ever.

Trump Fantasy Post of the Month – So Far

This was a real post on Trump’s blabbing platform:

I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM…. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS! President DJT

Nah – I’m betting that the dark reality is that Trump is an embarrassing illegitimate descendant of fictional character Captain Queeg and that the whole VANDALIZED! Reflecting Pool claim is equivalent to an imaginary theft of strawberries. Blame others and twiddle those steel balls, President DJT!

It Won’t Cost Taxpayers Anything

After Trump’s Pearl Harbor-like sneak attack on the East Wing of the White House he announced his grand plan for a ballroom for his presidency-built-on-spectacle, a structure that would dwarf the actual White House. It is to be a gilded monument to himself which he claimed would cost just $200 million. He told us that funding for it would be supplied by private donations.

Now we find out that – surprise! – it will cost over $900 million and we taxpayers will pay most of that, The cost will likely to grow to well over $1 billion as construction and the Trumpian lies and overreach grow.

Construction has been partially stymied by the courts, with only “underground and security related” construction allowed to continue. You don’t suppose such a claimed purpose might be used by Trump to get around Congress and the courts, do you?

This classic dishonesty is a valuable warning siren for why we need a Democratic Congress to stifle Trump’s “I’m the president and I can do whatever I want” ongoing anti-America tantrum.

Click me

Why Does the MAGA Culture Hate Dr. Fauci?

Lucas Bean lays it out for you in this short video.

Unwitting Decoys

Imagine you’re a journalist traveling home from the NATO conference in Turkey aboard Air Force 1. It isn’t until you’re back in the U.S. that you learn that you’re been used as a decoy, a target to attack, in order to sneak the president away,

Click me

Nobody on Air Force 1 other than those riding in the presidential section, not the staff, not Secretary of State Rubio or Treasury Secretary Bessent, nor any member of the press knew that the president was not on that plane. He left you all to be a potential target of an Iranian missile.

You were put in mortal danger without your knowledge, much less your consent. You were left to be a sacrificial pawn for a president who thinks only about himself.

We all agree that presidential safety is a real issue. But is that all that your next of kin would be focused on after they learned that you were used as a disposable, your demise an acceptable cost of doing business? Perhaps there are other real issues, too.

The Best Call To Action

Yes, even better than, “Grab a bat – You’re up!“

From the closing words of Rick Wilson’s post, Trump and American Enshittification:

The [democracy] machinery only starts working again when enough people decide that being a citizen costs something, and start paying it.

Whose Voting Rights?

The President of the United States is begging the Supreme Court to allow him to kill all mail-in ballots in all states where they refused to hand over confidential and protected state voting records for Trump’s SS to purge.

Red states everywhere are in gerrymander overdrive and are purging legitimate minority voters and women from voting rolls at hypersonic speed. I say it’s time to stop pussyfooting around with these weenie methods and drop the voting rights nuclear bomb.

Congress must initiate and pass a law that allows only White (as in: northern European ancestry), Christian male citizens to vote. Enough of pesky Voting Rights and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Acts! This is a White, Christian country, dedicated to all control and power to be held by men, especially rich men, the way the Founders wrote – somewhere, I think. To Hell with the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments! It’s time for us to enshrine our well practiced voting suppression into one supreme law that will supersede whatever laws for the benefit of We The People might still exist.

For Residents of Northbrook, IL Only

There is some suspicious stuff going on that has the potential to dramatically and adversely affect our village. It’s a local matter akin to Trump’s sneaky trashing of our national historic treasures.

Watch local resident Lee Goodman’s video explanation here. Then decide that being a citizen costs something. Let’s start paying for it with our voices.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

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 (IT’S A FREEBIE!), because 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.

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. I am neither offered nor do I accept funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source material.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness, such disingenuous nonsense and you shouldn’t either. You can find “both sides” misdirection in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark sometimes excepted. I make no pretense nor allow any space for the idiocy of insisting views to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness, because doing so would be grossly unfair and of no value.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. But see Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All comments are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate or offensive solely for someone taking the opportunity to be offensive. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. We do not sell, give away, lend, share or otherwise allow the disclosure of the identity of our subscribers or of their information. Never have, never will. That should not have to be said, but the times have taught us that the words do need to be declared. At the last, all we can cling to is trust in one another.
  11. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


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

I Don’t Get It


POST 1300

Via a quick AI search I found that Trump and his brain-free and dishonestly named (it never was about efficiency) DOGE chainsaw hackers mangled America like this:

ο Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): Cut roughly 20,000 positions, slashed $4 billion in medical research funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and saw major workforce reductions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) alongside significant cuts to Administration for Children and Families programs. [1, 2]

Wait: Drastically reduced medical research means fewer cures for the things that hobble and kill us. Slashing the CDC means leaving us vulnerable to the next pandemic. Cuts to children and family programs leaves millions medically adrift. That’s efficiency?

ο Department of Education: Slashing nearly $900 million through the cancellation of 89 independent research contracts under the Institute of Education Sciences. [1]

Wait: Cutting research contracts will leave us more ignorant and unready to compete in anything, anywhere.

ο Department of Defense (DOD): Civilian workforce reductions expected to impact up to 8% of personnel (roughly 61,000 employees) alongside numerous contract reviews. [1]

Wait: Aimless slashing leaves us more militarily endangered in a dangerous world.

ο Other Agencies: Widespread layoffs, contract “deobligations” [I guess that’s a word] or survey terminations also hit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Department of Homeland Security (specifically the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties), and the U.S. Census Bureau. [1, 2]

Wait: Cutting those agencies leaves us more vulnerable to storms of ever increasing violence. Slashing the agencies that protect our rights and our elections is a direct assault on our freedom.

Need more to be convinced that Trump is putting us at great risk? Read Trump has been dismantling post-9/11 counterterrorism protections, Senate report says. He’s eviscerating our protections against international bad guys. And that’s supposed to be better for us?

For a clear explanation of the full cost to us of the DOGE massacres, read Why the full cost of Elon Musk’s DOGE is still coming into focus by Hayes Brown

The point of DOGE was claimed to be something about government efficiency. Instead what we’ve done is to cut ourselves off from critical services, leaving our neighbors without healthcare and even without food and allowing over 700,000 to die in other countries. We’ve stifled learning – I guess there’s nothing left to learn, according to our MAGA DOGE-brains – and crippled  individual and national growth and stopped even trying to keep up with the rest of the world. Worse, we are disarming ourselves militarily in a very dangerous world.

About 350,000 federal workers and contractors lost their jobs through the manically celebrated DOGE ready, fire, aim idiocy. That’s a plus, they tell us, unless you were one of those workers who lost their jobs and income or you’re any of the people and businesses the now unemployed used to do business with, like the waitress at the diner who’s lost all that tip income. It’s a total minus if you’ve needed any of the things those folks used to do for us.

Somebody tell me how we’re better off for having sacrificed both our present and our future this way, because I don’t get it. Explain how even the Narcissist-in-Chief benefits (of course, his benefit is his only interest), because he’s screwed his base and knee capped the economy. How does that help him? How does it help any of us to deplete our ability to defend our nation militarily, economically and medically?

On the other hand, Trump’s knee bending buddies are doing just fine, like the oil companies who have raked in a WINDFALL OF 26.5 BILLION IN PROFITS in just the second quarter, as well as the war matériel companies who are making lots more bombs, drones, rockets and profit.

Same kind of question in foreign affairs. Trump has offended our allies, sucked up to opponents and left millions to suffer and die. He started a war from which there doesn’t seem to be even a face saving exit, much less a victory, and neutered our diplomatic corps, replacing them with incompetents. He has an evil clown running the FBI, putting us all at risk. He chopped the IRS so that his rich friends can evade taxes, thereby efficiently dumping yet more debt on us and our progeny. In short, he has vastly and possibly catastrophically weakened our nation.

What will we do when China decides to invade Taiwan? What will we do if Putin decides to nuke Ukraine and invade the Baltic states? What will we do after Saudi Arabia decides to nuke Israel once we’ve given them the ability to do that?

Mark Felt aka Deep Throat.

One more time: Somebody tell me how we’re better off for having sacrificed both our present and our future this way, because I don’t get it. In other words, the “I don’t get it” boils down to asking, “Who’s better off due to our madness of neutering our nation to our existential peril?” Plus, explain how even the Narcissist-in-Chief benefits.

Your answer should include some version of Deep Throat’s clear imperative: Follow the money. Be sure to post your answer in the Comments section below, because, like I said, I don’t get it.

Question for Senators John Cornyn, Tom Tillis and Bill Cassidy

Senators, you were on your way out, career over. You had no need to suck up, but  you sucked anyway. How does it feel to be Trump’s most recent, most public and dumbest dupes?

Best Unmasking of the Week

Perhaps you’ve heard something about David Ellison and his mass grab of Warner Brothers, CNN, et.al.  but you need perspective on the harm to us that is on the way. Some has already arrived, like Bari Weiss having gutted 60 Minutes. Read Marc Ellis’ Open Letter To David Ellison to learn what’s coming.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

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 (IT’S A FREEBIE!), because 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.

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. I am neither offered nor do I accept funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source material.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness, such disingenuous nonsense and you shouldn’t either. You can find “both sides” misdirection in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark sometimes excepted. I make no pretense nor allow any space for the idiocy of insisting views to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness, because doing so would be grossly unfair and of no value.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. But see Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All comments are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate or offensive solely for someone taking the opportunity to be offensive. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. We do not sell, give away, lend, share or otherwise allow the disclosure of the identity of our subscribers or of their information. Never have, never will. That should not have to be said, but the times have taught us that the words do need to be declared. At the last, all we can cling to is trust in one another.
  11. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


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

Policy


POST 1299

Click me

The insightful, prolific and clever singer-songwriter Jesse Welles has done it again: He’s told the truth. Listen to his song, There’s a Hole.

After you’ve heard it, remind yourself that we attacked Iran for no specific reason, fueled by no coherent strategy, we lusted after vague and wandering, inconsistent goals, all entirely without an exit plan. To be fair, there have been great clouds of presidential bluster. How could we have been suckered into that after 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan?

This sounds suspiciously like our idiocy in Vietnam, the very place President Bone Spurs avoided with five fraudulent deferments.

A key difference between then and now is that there was a draft then and kids just out of school were being vacuumed into that Southeast Asia death machine, leading to constant protests in our streets. You know, demonstrations of “.  .  . the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” that’s guaranteed to us by the First Amendment. You remember that right, right? President Bone Spurs doesn’t.

The protests weren’t only about the killing and dying: they were also about the stupidity.

There was no specific reason for that war except for the inane, hyper-righty “domino theory,” which history has proven to be bunk. It was the “mushroom cloud” scare tactic of the day. There was no coherent strategy, the goals were vague and inconsistent and the entire thing lacked even a hint of an exit plan. Nobody wanted to kill or be killed for hollow, vaporous reasons; hence, people opposed the war and the draft.

Now there is no draft, so there are no student protests. Instead, government appeals to the patriotism and manliness of our young. Instead of forcing them into the death machine, now we trick them into it with puffery and slick slogans (“Be all that you can be.”) and signing bonuses that poor kids can’t refuse.

Click me

To extend the comparison still further, there quite obviously was no way to win the Vietnam war, so a proposed street solution was for us to declare victory and go home. Richard Nixon couldn’t abide that solution, declaring that he wasn’t going to be the first American president to lose a war. He really did think it was all about himself and his legacy, body counts be damned. That’s Trump’s policy, too.

Nixon managed to avoid signing his name on that imaginary surrender document by quitting the job and dumping the whole mess onto Gerald Ford. That led to the embarrassment of helicopters under fire evacuating our diplomatic personnel from the roof of our embassy in Saigon, now renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Click me

Arguably, the signatures of Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower and Truman belong on that imaginary surrender document. Bear in mind that our involvement in Vietnam began by bailing out President Charles de Gaulle of France, a country stripped of its military might due to WW II. We covered for him so that he could keep his colony, then part of what was called French Indochina.

Isn’t it interesting that the combatants in that war in Vietnam consisted of those wanting to remain colonials – the South Vietnamese – versus the people fighting for their liberty, for an independent nation, the North Vietnamese. How did we descendants of American revolutionaries who fought against colonialism get on the wrong side of that fight? Oh, right, de Gaulle had been an ally in WW II.

Now we are, by choice and by self-destructiveness, an ally of no one and we are once again fighting an unwinnable war. We haven’t a ghost of an exit plan and we have proudly learned no lessons that we should have learned from  20 years in Vietnam and re-learned from 20 years of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because Trump is incapable of admitting he made a mistake, the list of American dead and wounded in Iran will climb higher and higher. More on that in a moment.

Separately, we have now blown up 67 small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing 221 people. There continues to be no evidence of drugs on those boats and the cocaine supply in the U.S. hasn’t slowed. That’s likely because none of those boats was headed for the U.S. The drugs come to our shores via other paths. Still, Trump wantonly murdered those boat people for no reason other than his need to demonstrate how tough he is. And our government called our murderous actions legal. That’s policy.

The men on those boats were South Americans and they likely had brown skin, so there’s no reason for our empathy deficient, racist government geniuses to care about them, any more than they care about non-Christians in Iran. Bear in mind that had they lived, those 168 little girls we blew up in that Tehran school five months ago would have grown up and probably given birth to more non-Christians. That’s plenty of reason for our racist Trump government to refuse to even apologize for murdering them.

This is what passes for our national defense policy. It satisfies our mental incompetents in government and is good business strategy for their buddies, the war matériel contractors.

Once again, Trump is incapable of admitting he made a mistake, like killing those little girls, so this Iran bloodbath will continue at least until he’s out of office. Come to think of it, that’s a lot like the Vietnam war that killed over 58,000 of our military people and millions of Vietnamese people. But the Vietnamese were Asians and were nothing more than body counts to our government.

Perhaps the 25th Amendment will be invoked and forced upon our dementia addled president. The ugly prospect of surrender in Iran will then be left to a hapless J.D. Vance. There will be no word dance left for him to do and Trump will have skated from accountability yet again. That’s our policy.

Until then this illegal, intractable Iran war is an effective public distraction from Trump’s Epstein adventures in pedophilia. That’s policy, too.

Quote of the Week
  • “We should confiscate the billions Trump made in crypto and distribute it to Epstein survivors.”
  • Andy Borowitz
The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

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 (IT’S A FREEBIE!), because 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.

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. I am neither offered nor do I accept funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source material.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness, such disingenuous nonsense and you shouldn’t either. You can find “both sides” misdirection in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark sometimes excepted. I make no pretense nor allow any space for the idiocy of insisting views to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness, because doing so would be grossly unfair and of no value.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. But see Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All comments are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate or offensive solely for someone taking the opportunity to be offensive. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. We do not sell, give away, lend, share or otherwise allow the disclosure of the identity of our subscribers or of their information. Never have, never will. That should not have to be said, but the times have taught us that the words do need to be declared. At the last, all we can cling to is trust in one another.
  11. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


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

More Understanding


POST 1298

My post last Sunday, Now You Know-V2.0, zeroed in on Trump’s key nefarious, un-constitutional strategy: massive voter suppression of everyone who won’t vote for him and his sycophants. Here’s more, this from Marc Elias of Democracy Docket.

It was only 15 words. And it wasn’t what the legacy media focused on. But in his Friday address, following up on Donald Trump’s deranged speech the night before, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin gave away the game.

Standing behind an official podium, in front of several American flags, Mullin stated menacingly, “REAL ID does not prove citizenship and does not give you the right to vote.”

Mullin was trying to ramp up his threats against states that refuse to turn over their constitutional power to run elections to the federal government. Instead, he admitted what many of us have been saying for months: The SAVE Act would disenfranchise millions, and that is its point.

To be clear and accurate, Mullin is right: “REAL ID does not prove citizenship and does not give you the right to vote.” The Constitution does that, even as the fascists work to erase it.

Trump’s Secretary of Defense or War or Trans fighting or hormone me3ddling – check all that apply – has ordered all servicemen to submit to mandatory testosterone testing and, as needed, testosterone replacement therapy. That goes for women, too. He wants his warriors ready to – what? – rape, pillage and plunder? That’s the kind of thing dictators do to ensure maximum manly cruel masculinity and to over-compensate for their own shortcomings. We can expect similar bouts of crazy from Trump’s other unqualified sycophants.

Just be clear about what this wannabe king/dictator/Führer is trying to do.

Quotes Of The Week

There is a new Netflix series rebooting the Laura Ingalls stories. In A ‘Little House’ for Our Era, Writer Glynnis MacNicol references the TV series Little House on the Prairie of the 70s and makes contemporary references as well, like this one:

Defenders [of hateful views about Native Americans held during the 1870s and 80s] will say [author] Laura [Ingalls] was simply echoing the sentiments of the time, which may be true. But from the vantage point of 2026, Laura’s language feels frighteningly contemporary. The Trump administration has embarked on a concerted effort to reframe the official scope of American history from multiracial and multiethnic to one that focuses almost entirely on the achievements of white, Christian Americans. The worst language in “Little House” pales in comparison with what regularly emanates from this White House.

And we tolerate this .  .  .  why?

Try watching this short video by Lucas Bean, where he describes the MAGA crazies who have poisoned our country. There are a lot of these people. Bean’s explanation is not a rant. It is a making sense of the senseless. Watch it and you’ll begin to understand what we are up against.

Ripoff Of The Week

I needed a new set of AirPods and purchased them at an Apple store. When I arrived home I realized that they had failed to include a charging cable, so a few days later I headed back to the store where I was told that they don’t supply a charging cable with Airpods, but that I can purchase one for another $33.00.

Source unknown. Many thanks to SM for passing it along.

Something similar happened a few years ago when I purchased a new computer. I needed a second charging adapter and cable for times when I travel and found that I could not use any of the chargers I already had because Apple had changed the connector. A second charger adapter and cable would cost me something like $80.00. Looks like it’s lucrative business to change things to keep me buying more of their stuff.

And that seems a lot like Trump and his promises. He tells us that the greatest you’ve ever seen of something-or-other is on the way and he teases us with his phantom something-or-other to get us to give more of our money to rich guys like himself, like top loaded tax cuts; no-bid contracts for crap nobody but Trump wants; wars that accomplish little more than increasing our “defense” spending by half a trillion dollars to enrich his already uber-rich defense contractor buddies; to sacrifice our young by cutting food stamps and medical care; and by ceding our freedom and our country to his private Gestapo. But, hey, they mostly murder Browns, so who cares? It’s always “give more for Trump’s wealth and power ” and eliminate the non-Aryans. If people get killed by his thugs, no problem, because they have the official podiums and microphones where they can justify anything and deny video records of whatever actually happens.

Yes, it’s an imperfect metaphor, but either way I don’t like being abused by people manipulating the system for their own benefit and to our detriment. I think I know who our biggest domestic terrorist is and so do you.

Random thought: It’s been a really long time since anyone used the word “integrity” either positively or negatively (as in: absence of) to describe our politics and what is happening to our nation. We’re that far gone. We have a greatly advanced case of cowardice.

Finally

If you’re up to coming face to face with Trump’s Machiavellian grabs for power, for domination and money, watch and listen to Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s (D-MI) presentation to the Brookings Institution.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

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 (IT’S A FREEBIE!), because 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.

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. I am neither offered nor do I accept funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source material.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness, such disingenuous nonsense and you shouldn’t either. You can find “both sides” misdirection in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark sometimes excepted. I make no pretense nor allow any space for the idiocy of insisting views to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness, because doing so would be grossly unfair and of no value.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. But see Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All comments are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate or offensive solely for someone taking the opportunity to be offensive. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. We do not sell, give away, lend, share or otherwise allow the disclosure of the identity of our subscribers or of their information. Never have, never will. That should not have to be said, but the times have taught us that the words do need to be declared. At the last, all we can cling to is trust in one another.
  11. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


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

Now You Know-V2.0*


POST 1297

Trump’s speech last Thursday was a collection of lies that eclipsed all such collections ever assembled anywhere in the world – like nothing you’ve ever seen. Except .  .  . you hear his lies, idiotic claims of victimhood, fear mongering and demands for retribution every time he speaks, so it isn’t like nothing you’ve ever seen. It’s exactly what you’ve seen for 11 years, although to be fair, this rant was amped up beyond his normal cartoon bobblehead absurdity. You can be forgiven for changing channels in protection of your mental health and stability and missing the entire episode of Not So Stable Genius.

That’s what the news stations did. But I digress from the main point, which is what we now know.

After his blustering about imaginary successes, false claims about the economy, the Iran war and that we are “the hottest country in the world,” whatever that means, along with other mouth dribbles the meaning of which is totally opaque, he focused on election fraud as his justification for the SAVE America Act.

He says our voting circumstances are bad – very bad, and still he offers no evidence, much less proof of his claims. Millions of illegal immigrants, non-citizens, are voting, he says. Voting machines are switching votes to be against him, China is controlling our elections, Democrats are rigging voting and “mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt.” He urged viewers to fact check his data at WhiteHouse.gov, but all the justification he said is there is either fully redacted, missing or the opposite of what he claims.

His completely unjustified claims of voting fraud are the flaccid muscle for his demanding that Congress pass his SAVE America Act.

Trump said it in the final seconds of his tantrum (read the full text here):

To all Americans, I ask you to pick up your phone tomorrow, call your Representatives in the House and Senate and demand that they pass the SAVE America Act without delay.

Congressional bills are often named to make them palatable to the voting public, festooned with patriotic sounding names and plain language puffery. For example, George W. Bush had his Patriot Act, which we later learned was horribly anti-patriotic. Trump’s SAVE America Act is actually a voting suppression proposal designed to stop from voting everyone who might vote contrary to Trump. It is a way to activate the many decades long Republican efforts to deny the right to vote of anyone who might vote for Democrats. It doesn’t, it can’t and it won’t save America.

It would fly in the face of the Constitution, taking control of elections from the states and plopping it in the lap of the fat occupant in the White House. That is all it would take to end our democracy, effectively ending the United States of America. There would be no saving of America.

We would become something else altogether. Maybe school children would be taught to sing Trumpland Über Alles and we’d Make Slavery Great Again. Whippings and lynchings would once again feed the MAGA-brain blood thirst and ICE would fire bullets through every car window.

Without a scintilla of doubt the election this November is about just one thing:

It is a battle that pits We The People, our Constitution and our democracy
against the forces of despotic evil.
.

Trump has laid it all out with his pompous demand that he never be held to account for anything, anywhere, any time and his lap dog Supreme Court has made it so. His blatant grab for authoritarian power is in plain sight for everyone to see. No more hiding the ball. No more chiseling at the edges of destruction. It’s an in-your-face dismantling and swindling of our entire country.

You know the kinds of things Trump does and he is now desperate. Don’t be surprised if he declares some phony emergency and uses that to alter, postpone or cancel the November election. Trump laid it out for you in his special brain addled way.

In case you didn’t know before now, now you know.

Our existential charge is to Stop Hateful Idiocy Today. You work out the acronym.

Quote Of The Week

“Americans Favor Work Requirements for Members of Congress.” – Andy Borowitz

___________________________________________

* Here’s a link to the original Now You Know post, from which the closing line of this post was taken.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

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 (IT’S A FREEBIE!), because 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.

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. I am neither offered nor do I accept funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source material.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness, such disingenuous nonsense and you shouldn’t either. You can find “both sides” misdirection in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark sometimes excepted. I make no pretense nor allow any space for the idiocy of insisting views to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness, because doing so would be grossly unfair and of no value.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. But see Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All comments are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate or offensive solely for someone taking the opportunity to be offensive. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. We do not sell, give away, lend, share or otherwise allow the disclosure of the identity of our subscribers or of their information. Never have, never will. That should not have to be said, but the times have taught us that the words do need to be declared. At the last, all we can cling to is trust in one another.
  11. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


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

An Open Letter to Mainers and Clarity From Our Founders


POST 1296

An Open Letter To Mainers

Oops! You got caught going brainless in public. Don’t tell me you’re practical, no nonsense people with a fine tuned BS meter now that you gave your vote to a guy with a Nazi tattoo.

Get serious. Nobody gets a Nazi tattoo because it’s Thursday. They do it because that hate-fueled ideology speaks to them deeply. The guy almost certainly is a Nazi. He’s the type your grandfather risked his life to stop. Maybe Grandpa lost his life to make sure you’d never have to bow down to a tyrant or live where fear and hatred is your reality. Violent suppression of you and your rights is what Nazis fervently want. And Graham Platner has a Nazi SS tattoo. Did I mention that you voted for him anyway?

You gave your primary vote to a guy who has been credibly accused of brutality against women and now of rape. Either you’ve put your moral compass into a drawer with magnets around it or you aren’t what you claim to be.

WAKE THE F*** UP! (emphasis added because I’m shouting.)
.

This election is about sending Sen. Susan Collins to the Home For The Spineless and Perpetually Duped. It is not about sending someone with transparently violent and duplicitous innards to speak for you.

Yes, Platner spoke to many of your concerns and did so with an edge, leading you to believe he’d fight for you, but that’s nothing but campaign black ops. If he’s violent, he’s violent everywhere. It’s his nature. You can’t trust him with your spouse, your wallet or your vote because you don’t want someone who violates your values to harm you or your dear ones. And you surely don’t want him to speak for you. There is a solution to this.

Either organize a fresh primary this week – yes, it can be done if everyone stops saying that it can’t and instead takes action – or nominate me. I will move to Maine somewhere near the L.L. Bean flagship store in Freeport. And I’ll bring my Bernese Mountain Dog. He prefers the cooler weather to the sweltering Midwest summer and is a first rate campaign mascot.

I pledge to campaign fiercely against Collins. And  when I represent you in the Senate I promise to campaign for and live by the sensible values you cherish.

So, there’s your solution. Tune out Platner who wants to have his hateful thumb on the scale. Ignore the dopes who want to endlessly debate what to do and who never take action. Pay no heed to the pols who want to use this moment to divide us. And absolutely reject the self-anointed ones who hallucinate that they are sent by God. Just take your moral compass out of that drawer, plug back into your good sense and listen to it.

This message has been brought to you by the Right to Vote, the number 51 and the Someone Has To Stand Up and Do Something Committee of the I’ve Had Quite Enough Crap Alliance. You just might qualify for membership.

Clarity From Our Founders

We all know that freedom of speech is now conditional, based solely upon whether Trump likes what you say. The traditional limits on speech, like defamation and yelling “FIRE!” in a crowded theater where there is no fire are quite secondary today.

That is not what the Founders demanded.

  • Tyrannical suppression of freedom
  • is exactly what tyrant King George III enforced on the colonists.
  • It’s a major part of why they rebelled.

So it is with great patriotic courage that I speak boldly of Trump exactly as he spoke of Iranian leaders last week. The original of this child tyrant rant was spewed by Trump. Pronouns were changed here, but the meaning, the defamation, is Trump’s. I just turned it around to rightly point the Trumpian vitriol at him. Here are the slightly modified words from the Washington Post,

He’s scum. He’s a sick person. He leads sick people, and they’re vicious, violent people . . . Far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with Trump. He’s a liar . . . there’s something wrong with him. He’s cuckoo. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.

Now that I’ve posted something Trump won’t like, the question is whether the Trump-Miller Gestapo will come for me, declaring me to be among the worst of the worst, simply because I spoke out against Trump. Maybe they’ll ram their black, unmarked Trump-Miller Gestapo SUVs into my car and shoot at me. It’s what they’ve done to countless American citizens, legal residents and more. They use your tax dollars to incarcerate innocent people, doing so in your name and they kill people who are guilty of nothing more than living in America while Brown.

Consider the words of the Declaration of Independence:

We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Re-read that last sentence.

November is coming upon us rapidly – see the countdown timer below. It’s high time for each of us to answer the call to duty to ensure the neutering of this substitute King George III tyrant, this king wannabe who is “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” That is the plain and unmistakable clarity of direction from our Founders. It remains ours to do what is necessary, as they have directed us to do.

Do it while you still can, before Trump declares freedom itself to be illegal, before Trump sabotages everything decent and before he befouls every national symbol and monument.

Quote Of The Week

Rather than an expansive vision of democratic equality, with room for ever more people to enjoy “unalienable rights,” the word citizenship has become a legal term, a cudgel to enforce the power of some over others.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

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 (IT’S A FREEBIE!), because 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.

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. I am neither offered nor do I accept funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source material.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness, such disingenuous nonsense and you shouldn’t either. You can find “both sides” misdirection in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark sometimes excepted. I make no pretense nor allow any space for the idiocy of insisting views to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness, because doing so would be grossly unfair and of no value.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. But see Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All comments are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate or offensive solely for someone taking the opportunity to be offensive. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. We do not sell, give away, lend, share or otherwise allow the disclosure of the identity of our subscribers or of their information. Never have, never will. That should not have to be said, but the times have taught us that the words do need to be declared. At the last, all we can cling to is trust in one another.
  11. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


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

Who Owns the Constitution?


POST 1293

Quote Of The Week

This is from Jamelle Bouie’s essay, The Supreme Court Doesn’t Own the Constitution.

But if we hope to recover and revitalize our democracy, we must start to think as citizens with duties, obligations and the sovereign power to make our world anew.

This Supreme Court, with its black robed, black-hearted extremist majority, acts as though our Constitution is a wad of Play Doh to be used for the delight of their infantile tantrums. They use it to placate their overlord in order to seek his favor and avoid his paranoid, neurotic paroxysms. They use it to take whatever they want, flaunting all conventions of morality, ignoring the harm they do to us.

But literally, our Constitution is not their toy or their weapon or their tool of appeasement.

It’s ours. Yours and mine. It’s of We the People. You know: those folks referenced in the first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution:

You remember it from civics class in high school, right? Can you still recite it from memory? If not, click through to refresh your memory and your understanding of our Constitution and what it’s designed to do for We the People.

Because it’s ours. You could check with James Madison about that. He will explain it to you in clear, definitive terms.

A Little Snark

From Andy Borowitz’s post of June 18:

Ayatollah Names Trump Employee of the Month

It’s been a horrific week for the intermittently conscious Donald Trump aka Julius Geezer, who turned 80 but doesn’t look a day over 110. As the [Trump adulterated] Reflecting Pool continues to Make Algae Grow Again .  .  .

The real MAGA exposed!

The not-so-funny joke is in the implication of Borowitz’s title.

Trump started this war with chest pounding muscular claims and cartoon worthy fictitious goals. Now we’re faced with a laughable Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) that is largely an agreement to talk about an agreement. It hands Iran everything it wants, leaves that country stronger than before and leaves our country weaker. It provides confirmation to the internationally held belief that we are all idiots. It’s an embarrassment that shows how to lose everything all at once: respect, decency and thousands of lives.

Trump’s ride in the victorious Iranian parade.

Trump is a best friend to the radical theocrats of Iran. Watch for him waving an Iranian flag while leading a parade down Valiasr Street in Tehran. Trump will be the one with not only with an Iranian flag, but also with Russian and Chinese pins in his lapels replacing our stars and bars. He’ll be carried in a rickshaw so that he can sleep through most of the parade.

Be sure to pre-order Trump’s forthcoming book, The Art of Being a Schlemiel*.

________________________________________

* From Wikipedia:

Schlemiel (Yiddish: שלימיל, romanized: shlimil; sometimes spelled shlemiel) is a Yiddish term meaning “inept/incompetent person” or “fool.”

It’s also what you call someone who has been played. The butt of a joke. The easy-to-fool target. That is what he’s made us – We the People. Ask anyone viewing us from another country. They see us as dangerous fools.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

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 (IT’S A FREEBIE!), because 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.

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. I am neither offered nor do I accept funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness, such disingenuous nonsense and you shouldn’t either. You can find “both sides” misdirection in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark sometimes excepted. I make no pretense nor allow any space for the idiocy of insisting views to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness, because doing so would be grossly unfair.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. But see Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All comments are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate or offensive solely for the opportunity to be offensive. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. We do not sell, give away, lend, share or otherwise allow the disclosure of the identity of our subscribers or of their information. Never have, never will. That should not have to be said, but the times have taught us that the words do need to be declared. At the last, all we can cling to is trust in one another.
  11. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

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 (IT’S A FREEBIE!), because 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.

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. I am neither offered nor do I accept funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness, such disingenuous nonsense and you shouldn’t either. You can find “both sides” misdirection in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark sometimes excepted. I make no pretense nor allow any space for the idiocy of insisting views to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness, because doing so would be grossly unfair.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. But see Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All comments are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate or offensive solely for the opportunity to be offensive. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. We do not sell, give away, lend, share or otherwise allow the disclosure of the identity of our subscribers or of their information. Never have, never will. That should not have to be said, but the times have taught us that the words do need to be declared. At the last, all we can cling to is trust in one another.
  11. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


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

You Need To See This


POST 1290

See It Now

Most of us are primarily visual creatures which can lead to missing important things that we can’t put our eyeballs on, so let’s start with something that is visual.

Here’s a pair of pictures I found in Steve Schmidt’s post of June 1 of the dignified before and the dreadful now of the White House.

.

Here is how Schmidt described Trump in this context:

He has debased the People’s House with the aesthetic sensibilities of a pimp turned bankrupt casino operator and reality television performer, who confuses excess for greatness and spectacle for dignity.

The classically noble East Wing is gone. Jackie Kennedy’s beautiful rose garden is gone. Instead of the grand sweep of the White House lawn there is a slab of pavement and a structure for crude and violent cage matches that goes far beyond offensively stupid. We see all that.

There is tasteless gold leaf all over the Oval Office. There is a tasteless, useless, ostentatious ballroom being built to dwarf and debase the greatest symbol of freedom and democracy in the world. All dignity is gone.

We see all that and more. It’s visual. But what about the parts of America that are being desecrated and for which there is no specific visual that alarms us to the harm being done?

Can’t See It Quite as Well

Like the wanton cruelty of ICE thugs, those violence dispensers, rounding up our citizens and immigrants like cattle. We see that much of their savagery, but we don’t see the brutality done to people inside those hideous, for profit prisons.

Like the self-debasement of the Department of Justice.

Like the gutting of our national security agencies that have kept us safe.

Like the stripping and contamination of our public healthcare system and of our food safety system, putting every one of us in danger.

Like the incalculable brutality done to our moral compass.

Those aren’t as visual but they are here and abasing us and our nation nonetheless. They are as real as Trump’s galactically stupid war, which, again, we don’t see but is as damaging to us as anything we do see. It’s up to us to keep them in focus and to be actively on the right side of all those issues.

We are easily distracted from what’s important by spectacle, but there are still over a thousand women who were once little girls who were raped and trafficked and scarred for life and for whom there is scant justice. Trump was in the thick of the criminality, but there are few visuals and scant attention given to that sordid, illegal pit of wanton brutality. So far Trump’s cover up and his manipulated, spineless sycophantic Department of Justice has protected him and his distracting spectacles have blinded the eyes of most of us.

Trump has done over 3,700 insider stock trades just this year (about 25 per day) and has made billions from his soon-to-be-worthless crypto coin scams and his influence peddling grift. He’s caused major companies to cower and obey and has done permanent damage to the right of free speech. The only visual we have of that is the absence of Steven Colbert from late night television. But the harm is as debilitating as anything we can lay our eyes on.

The point is that there is an endless supply of harm being done to America, to our place of leadership in the world, to We The People and and to this “last, best hope of Earth.” Some is easy to see and some is much more difficult to eyeball and comprehend, but it’s no less awful than a deeply offensive gladiatorial cage match on the White House lawn.

What We Must See

You and I need to see all of it, because this violence to our values and our to our trust is systematically under assault. And at root, all we have to keep us strong, what we can cling to in this dangerous and threatening sea, is our invisible trust in one another.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

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 (IT’S A FREEBIE!), because 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.

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. I am neither offered nor do I accept funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness, such disingenuous nonsense and you shouldn’t either. You can find “both sides” misdirection in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark sometimes excepted. I make no pretense nor allow any space for the idiocy of insisting views to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness, because doing so would be grossly unfair.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. But see Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All comments are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate or offensive solely for the opportunity to be offensive. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. We do not sell, give away, lend, share or otherwise allow the disclosure of the identity of our subscribers or of their information. Never have, never will. That should not have to be said, but the times have taught us that the words do need to be declared. At the last, all we can cling to is trust in one another.
  11. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


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

American Insanity


POST 1287

From the “Yet Another Insanity” Department

There is a lot of crazy and it’s all around us. We’re dealing with:

an unprovoked, brainlessly started and conducted war where there is no off-ramp

the ongoing destruction of American hegemony

ugly, ugly gerrymandering by White supremacists that is driving us into Jim Crow 2.0 and is condoned by the not-so-Supreme Court

the no-wrongdoing imprisonment of American citizens, legal visitors and more, all to the benefit of for-profit prisons and of hastily recruited, scarcely trained ICE agents

the hollowing out of Americans’ financial security

the Epstein pedophilia, trafficking and the potential Trump involvement in that scandal

a scandalous Justice Department cover up, plus its misuse for Trump’s retributions and more

a deeply compromised FBI and national security system

the ongoing Trump support for Putin, this to the detriment of our allies, especially Ukraine, as its people fight a war for freedom, in which we should be aiding them

the surrendering of this century to Xi and China

the destruction of the post-war compact that has kept the peace for nearly 80 years

The hits just keep on coming because there is an endless, Trump concocted supply of insanity that’s powered by his dementia and his toxic narcissism.

Then There’s The Sneaky Stuff That Slips Below The Radar

From STAT:

An inconspicuous amendment to the 2026 farm bill working its way through Congress would make tobacco farmers eligible for funding from a certain federal aid program that they’ve been excluded from since the federal tobacco program ended more than 20 years ago. It’s not exactly in line with the MAHA goal to lower chronic disease rates in the U.S.

The overall impact of the amendment would be relatively small, “but it amounts to subsidizing a product that kills half a million Americans every year,” according to Kelsey Romeo-Stuppy, a nonprofit attorney.

Wait: we’re subsidizing a crop that kills us and we subsidize the coal industry $3 – 4 BILLION per year, too, but we don’t have money to feed poor kids?

Indeed, FracTracker reports,

Despite claims of free-market competition, the U.S. fossil fuel industry benefits from an estimated $760 BILLION annually through subsidies, tax breaks, and unpriced externalities .  .  . [emphasis added]

Right: We cut off support for renewable energy innovation and production to subsidize the fossil fuel companies of Trump’s buddies, allowing them to clog and overheat our atmosphere to the expanding peril of us all. Theirs is short term thinking that never gets past the limits of a transaction to make a quick buck.

Trump is almost 80. Given that he cares only for his own welfare – he told us that plainly last week – why would he think longer term? Why would he care that storms continue to become more violent, destructive and deadly? He’ll never have to face them.

And so, we bravely charge into the 15th century. Make America Backward Again – MABA!

Hmmm  .  .  .  why don’t our elected officials care enough to stop the insanity and instead take action for We The People?

Just in case this isn’t clear, we are giving three quarters of a trillion dollars every year to support industries that are causing ever-worsening changes that are killing us. We are willfully doing that to ourselves by electing representatives to our representative government to represent us, but who instead are representing themselves and their own short term welfare.

Learned While Researching Something Else

If you don’t subscribe to and support the writings of Steve Sheffey, take a look at his post last Sunday (then subscribe) about the Senate race in Maine. Yes, you should care a lot about it – Steve explains why. I linked through to his “Fine Print.” I like that kind of stuff – have a look at my own below.  In his fine print is a link to Brandolini’s Law: The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. It is:

Brandolini’s law (also called the bullshit asymmetry principle) states that the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. This denotes that it’s usually much easier to speak without regard for the truth, than to prove that what was said is false.

You’ve experienced this often over the past 11 years, as Trump/MAGA/Republican bullshit was sprayed in your face in brain-free bumper sticker format. Then it was refuted by a knowledgeable person in a clear, straightforward explanation. Unfortunately, that refutation was two pages long and nobody ever reads that stuff. And so bullshit hangs in the air. No breeze can waft it away. No plug-in odor eliminator can make it safe to breathe. This is what passes for Republican erudition.

RFK, Jr. Is Protecting Us

The World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern: Ebola. But don’t worry. Even though our brain worm addled director of HHS has slashed to the bone agencies that used to protect us and minimize the effects of such things, those guys gotcha covered.

Who needs experts in public health when we have loads of Ivermectin, a horse treatment recommended by our president. It treats infections caused by parasitic worms. But the Ebola threat has nothing to do with parasites – it’s a virus.

Still, we have Lysol and Clorox bleach that Trump says we can inject. And we can put ultraviolet lights in our bodies. That’s what he said during Covid. Do you suppose those will work against Ebola?

That’s Trump’s America. Sadly, we voted for it.

On the other hand, we can vote for something quite different this November.

As they say in the dugout, “Grab a bat; you’re up!”

A View From Elsewhere

Just in case you’ve wondered whether people in other countries notice the depth of the destruction of our values, our integrity and our national mental health, friend David Houle was vacationing in Europe and sent this pic from Paris. He says these signs are all over places where tourists go.

Kinda cute that even when they’re crude, Parisians are polite.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

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!), because 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.

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. I am neither offered nor do I accept or receive funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness. such disingenuous nonsense. You can find that in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe and what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark excepted, and make no pretense of idiocy requiring to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. See Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


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

Who Cares?


POST 1286

Cheating The Vote – One More Time
  1. Why is it that only Republicans continue to wage a multi-decade effort to prevent women, poor people and people of color from voting?
  2. Why is it that only Republicans want to deploy weapons-carrying thugs to polling places to intimidate voters?
  3. Why is it that only Republicans make up lies about non-citizens voting?
  4. Why is it that only Republicans want to make it next to impossible for poor people and married women to obtain satisfactory ID to vote?
  5. Why is it that only Republicans close polling places that were convenient to people of color and poor people?
  6. Why is it that only Republicans eliminate drop boxes for ballots, making it especially hard for millions of poor people and people of color to vote?
  7. Why is it that only Republicans change polling places but don’t tell Democrats about it?
  8. Why is it that only Republicans change the postal service so that mailed ballots don’t get counted in time?
  9. Why is it that our Republican controlled SCOTUS emboldens our Republican democracy turncoats?

The answer to each question is the same, simple, dreadful truth: they do all this and more because they’ve known for decades that they cannot win unless they cheat. They make it pretty clear who they care about. And who they don’t care about.

Jeez, Republicans, you guys stink.

Speaking of the Truth, You Know It When You Hear It

In a 1954 case about obscenity and the first amendment, rather than defining it, Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart famously said, “I know it when I see it.” When Trump was asked about his focus on the plight of Americans as he wages unnecessary war on Iran, our president said this:

I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation, I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.

That isn’t an out-of-context distortion. It’s what he said and, from his actions and from many of his other blabberings, it’s plain to see that it’s the truth of what he mean. Trump doesn’t care about your financial situation. He really doesn’t think about you. He only cares about eliminating an existential threat that does not exist for whatever illegitimate reason serves him, like distracting us from the Epstein scandal.

Like Potter Stewart (who names their kid Potter?), you knew truth when you heard it. That was a most rare moment hearing Donald Trump tell the truth. Savor it.

STAT Report

.  .  .  Vice President JD Vance announced that $1.3 billion in Medicaid funds to California will be deferred over suspicions of fraud. Earlier this year, the administration threatened a two-year licensing freeze for new providers of home and community-based services in Minnesota and instituted a similar nationwide halt on durable medical equipment suppliers.

Odd how Federal cuts to programs that benefit We The People get cut mostly in Blue states. Maybe that’s because there’s rampant waste, fraud or abuse in blue states and none in Trump supporting MAGA red states. Yeah, that must be it.

The sarcasm sizzles.

Must Read

Morgan Freeman (yes, that Morgan Freeman) does a Substack column and you are required to read his brilliant piece,

TRUMP IS HAVING A PUBLIC NERVOUS BREAKDOWN AT EXACTLY THE WRONG TIME

His title is, indeed, in all caps. Read the piece and you’ll understand. Actually, you already know why.

Freeman’s message is stunningly clear and stunningly foreboding. Read it and pass it along to everyone you know and to three people you don’t know.

Melania really doesn’t care. Do U?

Many thanks to futurist and friend David Houle for showing me Freeman’s piece.

Speaking Of Caring

Here’s Melania on her way to visit children who had been ripped from their mothers, now jammed into ICE/CBP detention cages without so much as ordinary hygiene for them. Did they teach her to be cruel and uncaring back in Slovenia, or did she learn it from Trump?

Inadvertently Speaking Truthfully About Not Caring

Check this from College Democrats of America, reporting on Republican Louisiana State Sen. Jay Morris:

On Friday, during a redistricting session, White GOP State Sen. Jay Morris yelled “Shut up, boy” at our Executive Director Dadrius Lanus who, in Morris’s words, was “commenting and talking” too loudly for him to concentrate.

Sen. Morris says we misheard. That the audio proves it. That he said “you all need to shut up” to Black constituents behind him outraged that their votes won’t be counted.

Sen, Morris, an elected member of our legislature, thinks if he had yelled “you all need to shut up” it would be better.

It wouldn’t.

What Sen. Morris doesn’t understand is that White people have been telling Black folk to “shut up” for over 250 years.

What Sen. Morris doesn’t understand is that we remember being told we were 3/5ths of a person. That even when we won personhood in the eyes of the law, they instituted poll taxes and “reading” tests. That when we marched and dreamed and cried and buried loved ones who had hung as strange fruit from tall trees because they raised their voices too loud that what Black people have always wanted is equality.

Or maybe Senator Morris does understand all that.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I am a 70 year old Black man. And I don’t let anyone call me or my brothers “Boy.”

Any questions about what Sen. Morris cares about? Or about what any of the Republicans working so very hard to bring back Jim Crow care about?

The only question is .  .  .

What We’re Going To Do To Stop Them and Their Thievery.
.
It’s not the vibes and it’s not the polls: IT’S THE VOTES!
Are you registered to vote? Check it out on any of these websites:
.

https://www.vote.org/am-i-registerilled-to-vote/

https://www.usa.gov/confirm-voter-registration

https://www.rockthevote.org/how-to-vote/am-i-registered-to-vote/

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

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!), because 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.

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA

 


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

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