Democracy

The Death Knell


POST 1081

The Supreme Court rang the death knell on our democracy on Monday, July 1, 2024. They announced the end of presidential accountability, something neither found nor implied anywhere in the Constitution, and declared the official start of American despotism. It was upon us instantly.

They could have easily decided the deplorable presidential immunity case months ago by not taking it, as the appellate court had rendered a masterful decision unmasking the villainy of it. Alternatively, having accepted the case, the Court could have decided in just a few days that it was trash and then dumped it into the burn pit it deserved.

Instead they put months of delay into both federal cases against Trump:

One is the classified documents case over his theft of secret documents, violations of the Espionage Act, his intent to impede, obstruct or influence federal government activity, his disclosure of secret documents to foreign nationals and illegal removal or destruction of federal government records.

The other is the case against Trump for instigating an insurrection against the United States, conspiracy to defraud the United States government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

And of course, the Court’s decision bollixed up the Georgia election interference case and made the hush money case, already decided against convict Trump, subject to review and more delay.

But the substance of Monday’s decision is far more impactful and lasting than the Supreme Court’s abuse of justice through wanton delay,

The Court has terminally wounded our country by declaring that presidents – and specifically Trump, the twice impeached, 4 times indicted and criminally convicted felon, defamer and sexual abuser – has immunity from prosecution for his official presidential acts while in office. I don’t know if that means that if Trump were to become president again that he could imprison or assassinate his political enemies as he’s promised to do, and then avoid prosecution for his crimes, but it sure sounds like that.

But wait a second: Joe Biden is president now, not Trump. It appears that the Supreme Court has just given Biden permission to commit illegal acts while he is still president and then avoid accountability. In light of that Court-created insanity, consider this.

Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to our Constitution, our democracy and all aspects of our nation. There’s no need to elaborate reasons why that’s true because you already know. President Biden carries the charge to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Given that Trump is a domestic enemy of our Constitution, President Biden should rightly use all avenues to prevent Trump from harming our nation, whether Biden uses legal means or not.

He could use rendition of Trump to Gitmo. A few months of George W. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation methods” should end the threat of Trump.

Alternatively, Biden could have SEAL Team 6 do what they did to Osama bin Laden. Or he could invite Trump’s pal Vladimir Putin to send a hit squad armed with nerve gas to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Each of those would be an illegal act – well, maybe not Gitmo, given the official opinion of Dubya’s Deputy Attorney General John Yoo and his “torture memo.” But as president and while fulfilling his oath of office in an official presidential act of protection of our nation, Biden will retain full immunity from prosecution. The Supreme Court says he can get away with it. Note that the Court is silent on consequences for those who carry out a president’s illegal orders.

Of course those ideas are outrageous. But that is exactly the kind of thing Trump is promising to do if he’s re-elected.

Worse than that:

There will be no possibility of removing a criminal president via impeachment, because all presidents will be immune from accountability for high crimes and misdemeanors.
.

We no longer have any recourse.

Questions

– Can our democracy long endure under the great burden of our distrust of our justice system?

– How long do you think our nation can tolerate decisions like this one and also for us to remain free?

– Are you still opposed to Biden packing the Court?

Gazing Into The Crystal Ball

We are suffering terribly from minority rule. We have to give credit to the extremist authoritarian schemers of the past several decades for the success of their evil manipulation of us and of our system of self-rule. They’ve done an impressive job of taking away our rights, our freedoms and our safety and of amassing great wealth for themselves at the expense of the the rest of us. Now they’ve done far worse via this spectacularly un-American, extremist Supreme Court. They have permanently damaged our future.

This isn’t just about Trump’s unhinged, self-serving cruelties. The day will come not long from now when grease from his most recent Quarter-Pounder will fully clog a coronary artery and Trump will be gone. But this Supreme Court invitation to despotism will still be here and some other tyrant, perhaps worse than Trump, will take his place. Perhaps s/he will be an Afghan warlord type or an American version of a Serbian or Sudanese ethnic cleansing maniac or a slave plantation proponent who will find new ways to destroy everything you hold dear.

The pundits and legal experts are dissecting the implications of this deranged decision, but in the end it means that Lady Justice’s imperative of equal justice – blind justice – under law and our oft-announced claim that nobody is above the law are just so much hot air. Those proud declarations mean nothing.

Six supremely partisan justices have betrayed our rule of law, our nation and We The People.

.

The bell has been rung. What do we do now? *

Do you think I’m over-heated, hyperbolic, unglued and reactionary? Then I invite you – no, I implore you – to explain why our country isn’t terribly imperiled. Put your thoughts in the Comments section below. Please.

Quote of the Century

From Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

“In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law… with fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

Clarifying Video

Watch this from Rachel Maddow.

Last Thoughts

Given that six Supreme Court justices enshrined despotism in America and that their act is patently un-American and in violation of their oath of office, shouldn’t they be impeached and removed from office?

CLICK ME! Read David Pepper’s insightful words. Absorb his clarity and wisdom and take action. Apathy just won’t do. Many thanks to JN for pointing out this excellent piece.

_____________________________________________

* Click the pick above and read David Pepper’s post.

“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”

  • – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

It’s Over


POST 1079

The presidential debate was over before the first word was uttered. Joe Biden walked in looking like a doddering old man. When he spoke his voice was strained, his enunciation was blurred and he sounded enfeebled. This country doesn’t honor age. We are about youth and vitality.

\So, Joe Biden just confirmed the worst fears of undecideds and persuadables.

That Trump did his standard lying, making up outrageous stuff on the spot and declaring monstrous idiocy was entirely predictable. So was his projecting his lies, his failings, his crimes and his incompetence onto Biden. Everyone, including undecideds and persuadables, knew he’d be doing all of that because that’s what Trump always does. And Biden let him get away with the majority of it.

Biden barely challenged Trump. He never called him the liar that he is. He never challenged the American people, asking how they like being lied to all the time. The closest he came was an “Oh, yeah? No, you’re the worst.” Like a kid saying, “Nya-nya” to a brat on the playground.

The problem isn’t doubt about whether Joe Biden can be an outstanding executive doing the job of the presidency. It’s about him doing the job of a candidate well. And he isn’t.

In just 90 minutes yesterday Joe Biden gave the presidency to Donald Trump.

An Open Letter to President Biden

Dear President Biden:

Drop out of the race now. Do this for the American people, for democracy and for the safety of the entire world.

Tell the world that you’ve been honored by the opportunity given to you to restore America’s place of leadership in the world, to save hundreds of thousands of American lives from death by Covid, to have led the United States to have the best economic recovery from a worldwide pandemic, to be the arsenal to stop Vladimir Putin from recreating the despotic Soviet Union dominating eastern Europe, and thank you for so much more.

Joe, you’ve been great in so many ways. Now it’s time to leave the Oval Office. Tell everyone that the most presidential thing you can do now is to make room for a new and vigorous Democratic candidate for the presidency.

With love, great respect, gratitude and urgency,

Jack

__________________________________________________________

For Clarity

Heather Cox Richardson has a different take on this. Clearly, she is less affected by Biden’s campaign presentation than I am and seems to be okay with Biden continuing. She does a nice job of outlining the Trump Thursday night horror show, too.

To be clear, my concern is the beauty contest factor, which Biden lost dreadfully and which may well be the deciding factor for many voters in so-called “battle ground” states. That is why I want to see a statesman moment from Biden and a fresh, vigorous Democratic candidate stepping into the spotlight now, while there is still time to repair and rebuild the Democratic offering.

For a very different take, read Thomas Friedman’s piece. Spoiler: He says with great sadness that it’s time for Biden to get out of the race. Very tough love.

“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”

  • – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

Haters


POST 1078

I’m finding it ever more difficult to tolerate the haters. It went over the top long ago, when Trump first gave permission to White supremacists to  snarl and spit their real or imagined grievances; to beat up protesters; for cops to bang the heads of perps; and to vomit vitriol attacking “others.” This has often been done in ways that dare us to figure out if haters’ claims are more repugnant or more laughably stupid. Maybe both.

From 1984, by George Orwell:

“In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within 30 seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people, like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”

Sounds much like a Trump rally.

Consider the idiocy unleashed in the wake of the cargo ship destroying the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Both the mayor of Baltimore and the governor of Maryland are foolish enough to be Black, so the racist attacks began almost immediately.

From Eugene Robinson’s post of April 1 (and no, this wasn’t an April Fools Day trick):

“This is Baltimore’s DEI mayor commenting on the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge,” one such troll [on Musk’s X platform] posted, along with a clip of [Mayor Brandon] Scott’s remarks [about this “unthinkable tragedy”] to his more than 275,000 followers. “It’s going to get so, so much worse. Prepare accordingly.”

Wait – Black mayor has his job only because of DEI and he’s responsible for the bridge collapse, plus things are going to get “so, so much worse?” That’s both hateful and boundlessly stupid, but there’s more. Another troll wrote as though addressing Baltimore Mayor Scott,

“DEI: Who cares when your city is going to sh-t because of drugs, increased crime, defunding police and poor infrastructure when you have a Mayor that ‘looks like you’, WINNING!!!!!”

I hate to interject inconvenient fact into this hater’s rant, but nothing – no, really nothing – he wrote is true. Other ranters went on to attack Maryland’s Black governor and a Black woman who sits on the Port Commission:

“This is what happens when you have Governors who prioritize diversity over the well being and security of citizens,” posted Phil Lyman, a Utah legislator who is running for governor of his state. “DEI did this,” posted Anthony Sabatini, a GOP congressional candidate in Florida’s 11th District, over a video clip of the bridge’s collapse.”

Pray that the voters in Utah and Florida have enough sense to send these guys packing.

Seeing the racism is one step in understanding our national quagmire of hatred, but there’s more.

Tom Nichols’ piece in The Atlantic on April 1, originally titled Is This Who You Are?, is a must-read essay. He calls for making moral choices, just as if we Americans still have morals and convictions.

The haters claim that this was intended to be a Christian nation. If you want to know what the Founders actually intended, read this. It will disabuse you of any notion that the Founders intended this to be a Christian theocracy. Indeed, avoiding that kind of despotism drove the Pilgrims here.

The mouth foamers want to protect Confederate statues, retain the names of Confederate traitors on schools and military bases and continue the fraud that is their “lost cause” of slavery and cruelty of every sort. Read Jennifer Rubin’s take on these people.

Today’s flamers are as traitorous as their revered Confederate ancestors. They are openly disloyal to our Constitution. In fact, they are pushing for a post-Constitutional America. Lest that sound to you like just so much MAGA conspiracy idiocy to ignore, what they want to do is:

PUT THE CONSTITUTION IN A DUMPSTER AND LIGHT IT ON FIRE!

TAKE AWAY ALL YOUR RIGHTS AND ALL YOUR FREEDOM!

MAKE THIS A NATION WHERE ALL POWER IS OWNED BY WHITE CHRISTIAN MEN ONLY!

No need to take my word for this. Read the Project 2025 document and it’s there in plain language. You might have to skim past the faux patriotic blather to find it.

Meanwhile, it’s important to remember that hating makes people feel powerful. It’s a drug. It is what Orwell said: a “hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture.  .  . “

But What About You and Me?

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves .  .  .

– Julius Caesar, Scene II, Shakespeare

So, we rail over the frustration, seeing and hearing those doing harm to others and even to themselves. But rather than hating them, I confess that I’m simply without respect for those who disrespect, somehow comfortable in my double standard. And the self-defeating part is that the sociologists tell us that the haters are the way they are largely because they feel disrespected. I think I may not be helping to calm our national turbulence and devotion to insanity.

I want to be better than that, but for now I’ll settle for defeating the immediate threat.

Best Quote

Inae Oh, writing for Mother Jones about reproductive freedom (you remember that thing, right?):

When knowledge is power, what happens when information goes dark? People, especially society’s most vulnerable, needlessly suffer. And two years after the fall of Roe, this suffering has crept into nearly every crevice of health care and straight into the GOP mainstream. We’ll see if Democrats can successfully get that message across today and every day leading to November.

Perhaps we can help spread the word of what must be done. Think about that as you watch the first presidential debate tomorrow, Thursday, June 27 at 9:00PM EDT on CNN.

Best Read

Take a look at Adm. William McRaven’s (ret’d) essay, How Do We Want America to Be? He lays before us a truth we so often refuse to see and a possibility – even a hope – for something better. That’s refreshing in this time of so many doing their best to dash our hopes.

It will take all of us. As Simon Rosenberg of The Hopium Chronicles reminds us,

“The magic pill is us.”

Just For Fun

In case you missed the craziest play in baseball ever, watch this from the Chicago Cubs.

And for more fun and some fine life lessons, watch Adm. McRaven’s commencement address to the graduates of the University of Texas in 2014. Afterward, you’ll want to make your bed.

“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”

  • – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

Potpourri v22.0


POST 1080

Source unknown

Readings & Quotes

“One important decision was handed down today, so we know the justices are at work. In what seems to be the ultimate no-brainer (but this is where we are), the court upheld a federal ban on gun possession by suspected domestic abusers. Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. [In the Trump immunity case,] Trump’s claim that he is above the law seems as absurd as giving firearms to alleged abusers.”

“So why has a case of such importance taken more than 109 days to decide? The answer from a Trump-packed court is becoming obvious. Slow-walking justice is justice denied.”

– Dan Rather, Why Are They Taking So Long?, June 21, 2024

Get this critical difference: progressives, traditional Americans and believers in the rule of law are in Constitutional outrage over the idiocy of the Trump immunity motion and the Supreme Court’s obvious abuse of our justice system. MAGAs are chuckling evilly over their clever manipulation and distortion that is allowing both Trump to avoid trial and removing another brick from the foundation of our nation.

“But when Joe Biden talks about the “hostages” he is working to bring home, he’s talking about the 120 people held by Hamas in Gaza. When Donald Trump talks about “the hostages” who are treated “horrifically,” he’s talking about January 6 insurrectionists held in U.S. prisons who he plans to pardon.”

– Steve Sheffey newsletter, June 16, 2024

Pardoning insurrectionists, traitors to our country, is yet another Trump promise of destruction. Many Americans foam at the mouth repeating his threats. They want to destroy America, too. They cheer when Steve Bannon demands that we “tear it all down” and “victory or death!”* That is what we must defeat. Otherwise, the thugs actually will tear it all down.

“With his recent felony conviction, Trump can no longer legally own a gun. Should he be re-elected president come November, however, he will have the power to launch a nuclear weapon without any oversight.”

– Kathleen Kingsbury, New York Times Opinion Today, June 17, 2024

Maybe we better not allow him to have any power anywhere over anything. Besides, he’s on mental overload with the very serious task of deciding if he’d rather be electrocuted or eaten by a shark. Very presidential stuff. See the video link below.

“We protect the press because the press protects democracy.”

– Richard Stengel, former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy

Trump keeps telling us that the press is “the enemy of the people.” In truth, the legitimate press is only the enemy of cheaters, liars and traitors – people like Trump. They are the people whom we need called out by that Fifth Column. Go buy a newspaper today so that our journalists can continue to be our watchdogs protecting democracy.

“For decades, [Richard] Lynn was one of the loudest proponents of the unfounded idea that Western civilization is threatened by “inferior races” that are genetically predisposed to low intelligence, violence, and criminality. His work has been repeatedly condemned by social scientists and biologists for using flawed methodology and deceptively collated data to support racism.”

– STAT Morning Rounds, June 20, 2024

Richard Lynn died last year, still a committed racist. Plus, he was a dishonest scientist. His work is still cited by people scheming to promote White supremacy. Today’s Confederacy revisionist history, with its claims that the Civil War was a “war of northern aggression,” that the war wasn’t about slavery, that Blacks were better off under slavery and various other disgusting lies, is still malignantly alive. These people demand “states’ rights,” a miserable term for, “You can’t tell us what to do. If we want slaves, we’ll damn well have them.” You’ll find the revisionism in the calls for the restoration of Confederate monuments to traitors, calls to violence*, racial slurs in dog whistles and those bellowed out loud by haters.

Our nation continues to refuse to see the obvious, that nobody is going away and that the only way forward is to stop hoping for a better yesterday and figure that out how to make a better tomorrow, one both with-and-for all of us. That “better tomorrow” cannot include the work of Richard Lynn or those who discriminate like he did. The first critical step is to stop the extremist minority thieves.

“The choice in the election isn’t Biden vs. Trump. It is MAGA vs. America.

“Sides must be picked.

“Indifference is a side. So is hate.”

– Steve Schmidt, June 19, 2024

“For the religious right, erasing the constitutional right to abortion was just the beginning. They are coming after all our reproductive rights and freedoms, every single one of them, and the only way to stop them is with our votes.”

This tyrannical minority is coming after more than reproductive rights. They’re coming after religious freedom, equal justice under law, your right to vote and so much more. Robinson has it right:

“The only way to stop them is with our votes.”
Must Read

You better decide – while you still can.

Thom Hartmann’s post, America’s Darkest Hour: Battling the Second Great Insurrection, is a chilling explanation of the terrible consequences creeping into our lives and from which we will suffer greatly if we don’t saddle up and ride to the rescue of our nation. Here’s an excerpt:

“Democrats — and Americans more generally — must finally realize that Trump’s MAGA GOP is no longer interested in policy or politics but solely wants to seize absolute political and economic power to end our democracy and reinvent the [C]onfederacy.” [emphasis original]

Yes, the Confederacy! Click through and read his post – you’ll understand immediately.

Here’s more from Hartmann’s piece:

“The new GOP motto might as well be, “We don’t need no stinkin’ issues; we just want power and revenge for the heroes of the Old South and the New Insurrection.

“It’s why they lie so easily on the Sunday talk shows and in political campaigns: They don’t give a damn about issues. All they care about is power.”

And because all they give a damn about is power,

they don’t give a damn about you!
.

Click through and read Hartmann’s  post.

Creepy Cranial Catastrophe in 1 Minute 23 Seconds

Here is an update of a scene from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

Click me

Finally,

“There isn’t a good thing to say about Trump except he supports fast food.”

– Richard Sack

__________________________________________________

* “Victory or death!” – Convicted criminal Steve Bannon screamed this maniacally at a rally, June 15, 2024

“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”

  • – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

Hunting


P0ST 1077

No, not for game. Not for dinner. Not for sport.

I’m hunting for powerful, consistently muscular, banner-waving, truth telling, lie smashing, propaganda pummeling communication from any Democratic organization, any Democratic candidate or politician or any Democratic operative who is sick of Republican attacks, outrageous accusations and lies.* The game I’m hunting for is Democrats who broadcast powerful, motivating communication, words that light the passion we need to win. Most don’t seem able to find such stuff even with two hands and a flashlight.

I get email solicitations from the Biden campaign and every one of them (as in: all) is only about what they – campaign staffers – need. Not a word about what you and I want, what we believe, fear or hold to be true. One email last week carried six bullet point statements, each about what they need. You and I are nowhere to be found in their appeals except for the DONATE button. As of this writing I’ve received over 1,200 of these miserable solicitations since Biden announced. That’s a lot of crappy communication.

It would be unfair of me to just criticize and complain, so I have offered my observations and I’ve extended a hand, volunteering to help. Cue the crickets.

This pattern has not been limited to the Biden campaign. It’s exactly the same with the DNC – same inept, self-centered and insulting writing, same offers from me to help, same crickets. Did these guys all attend the School For The Communication Impaired? The University of Crappy Correspondence? The College of Who Cares About You?

To be fair, Adam Schiff’s campaign has sent me 137 solicitations. At least they are written with a respect for the intelligence of recipients and a hint of what’s important to we citizens, but his are the exceptions.

Attendant to this lousy Democratic Party communication is the Democrats’ absence of communication. I’m thinking about their near-silence as Republicans claim that there is a “weaponized” Justice Department, that Judge Juan Merchan is “compromised,” that there is a Biden crime family and all the Republican bogus claims of unfairness (poor little victims!) and their vaporous claims of some un-American something-or-other done to them by Democrats. I’m thinking about Trump and his fascist sycophants corrupting the truth in defense of the indefensible (phrase from Steve Schmidt). Where’s the smack down of these guys?

Where is the counter-attack stating the truth, that all of the indictments of Trump were made before Trump announced his candidacy, making Republicans’ claims about Justice Department election interference idiotic? Where the hell is the push-back?

More to the point, where is the counter-attack that challenges Americans with the reality that Republicans are lying to us, that they hate your freedom, that they think you’re stupid and that “others” are vermin poisoning our blood? Where is the expose´ showing that Republicans are cowards and hypocrites who want to be dictators over you? Where is the question, “How do you like being lied to and played for a fool?” I’ve posted such messages here, but of course I don’t have the reach of the DNC.

Why are they keeping mum as Republicans are stealing our freedom, our rights and our Democracy? Where is the outrage at the Republicans’ Big Brother Ministry of Truth** program of lies and attacks on education, safety, health and more? Pretty much all I hear from Democrats is limp-wristed, boring messages generated by atrophied communication muscles. I’m hunting for an indication that Democrats actually want to win.

Jeez, Democrats: GET A SPINE!

Because your lack of vigorous attacks and counter-attacks is allowing Republicans to poison the American people with their anti-America propaganda. If the only ones speaking are Republicans with their lies and hypocrisy, theirs are the only messages the American people will hear. People will believe them because they don’t hear an alternative.

So, I’m hunting for the communicators and the communication that will vanquish the minority thieves of our democracy, the ones who have already stolen your rights and who promise to steal more.

I’m hunting for messages that will win.

The choices are:

  1. We can be a doormat and lose everything, or
  2. We drop the namby-pamby, go at them bare knuckled and save our rights, our freedom and our country.

Pick one.

For the rest of us, it’s time to stop relying on others to do the messaging. It’s time for us to go on the attack.
.

Need a resource? Read Hit ‘Em Where It Hurts by Rachel BItecofer and Aaron Murphy. ***

Motivational Quote of the Week

“I don’t want anybody [dying] on me. We need every vote. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.”

That outrage should motivate all Democrats, Independents and the leftover Republicans who still have courage. It’s yet another episode of Trump’s “verbal incontinence” (term: Eugene Robinson, June 10, 2024), when he blabbers and accidentally tells the truth.

Where is the fury from Democrats?

* Exception: Follow and support Ryan Bussee’s campaign to be Governor of Montana. He’s fierce and powerful, a fine model for other Democrats.

** See 1984 by George Orwell.

*** Books: See Note #5 below.

Today is a good day to be the light

  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

Liars and Cheaters and Frauds, Oh My! and a Ghastly Contrast


POST 1076

CAUTION – Contains snark, which is known to trigger bouts of doing the right thing, as well as generating an occasional smirk.

In what should be an alien, other planet move, 10 Republicans wrote in a public letter that they would no longer pass legislation, fund the government, or vote to confirm the administration’s appointees because, they said,

“[t]he White House has made a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally altered our politics in un-American ways. As a Senate Republican conference, [actually, there were only 10 of them, hardly a conference] we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart.”

Apparently, these kings and queen of mentally deranged projection are going on strike. They are betraying their constituents, their oath of office (which they clearly didn’t take freely and without mental reservation) and the entire nation in this performance of cowardice and servility to the orange convict.

Here are the on-strike, Senate Republican frauds:

Name and State             Re-election year

Mike Lee, UT                   2028 Vows to oppose raising the debt ceiling until there’s a balanced budget amendment. He doesn’t care who we cheat. Quite Trumpian of him.

J.D. Vance, OH                2028  Author of The Trump Suck-Up Elegies

Tommy Tuberville, AL      2026  Carpetbagger Alabama senator who doesn’t even live in Alabama.

Eric Schmitt, MO             2028

Marsha Blackburn, TN     2024  Bless her heart.

Rick Scott, FL                  2024  Net worth: $250 million. He says you should pay an extra $4,500 in taxes so you’ll “have skin in the game.”

Roger Marshall, KS.         2026

Marco Rubio, FL              2028  Doubts global warming, as FL is going underwater and as property insurance costs 4X the national average, if it’s even available to Floridians.

Josh Hawley, MO             2024  The model for double-crossing, traitorous insurrectionist fist pumps

Ron Johnson, WI              2028  Talks on a dead phone to avoid reporters’ questions.

Click the pic for a more readable view

As you can see, for most of these grand-standers there is plenty of time between now and their next election for the public to forget their infantile, performative temper tantrum. Regrets go to the folks in Florida and Missouri who now have no representation in the Senate. And don’t forget that several of these posers were key traitors in the attempt to steal the votes from 80 million Americans in 2020.

From Harlan Coben’s I Will Find You, in the context of making moral choices:

“She could have done the ‘right’ thing that night, but we only do the right thing when it doesn’t cost us.”

“We pay lip service to a vague greater good, but only when it serves our interest.”

That’s harsh, of course, but before you take umbrage, think of those statements in the context of Republican senators and representatives who know better but cave in to Trump and then say and do abhorrent fascist things. Here’s some of what that gets you.

– You get idiots in dark blue suits, white shirts and red ties showing up at the trial of the orange menace in Manhattan and saying patently stupid and flamingly false things attacking America. That’s very fascist of them.

– You get valueless, anti-American, fraudulent congressional hearings about “the Biden crime family,” a non-existent cabal fantasized by Rep, Jim Jordan (R – Alpha Centauri). “Mmm .  .  .  There is much dishonesty in this one.” – Yoda. This, too, is very fascist.

– You get the list of buffoon senators above and more, fully embracing the Republican “mass psychosis,” as Adam Kinzinger calls it. BTW: After reading this post, link through and listen to Kinzinger’s comments.

All of these Republican blabbers, these fascism promoters, these democracy killer authoritarians know what the “right” thing to do is. They all know about the greater good. But doing those “right” things would cost them just a bit of their immediate self-interest. They aren’t willing to pay the price for their integrity, much less do anything for the greater good, so they cave and they burnish their cowardice and hypocrisy skills. Very fascist – even brown shirt – of them.

Liars and cheaters and frauds, oh my!

What a ghastly contrast that is to those whom we honored last week.

D-Day

Lt. Richard L. Altschuler, 62nd & 61st Fighter Squadrons, 56th Fighter Group, 8th Army, USAAF. 69 combat missions. Photo: Boxted England, 1943

My father was in a lot of dogfights as he flew his fighter plane “escorting” our bombers over Europe to push back the Nazi terror in WW II and he flew sorties to provide cover for our ground troops, too. A lot of bad guys shot bullets, canon and anti-aircraft flak at him, but he, like 16 million fellow Americans, soldiered on, doing his duty.

156,000 soldiers and Marines stormed the beaches of Normandy 80 years ago doing their duty. 4,400 died just on D-Day. President Biden was at Normandy last week to honor all of those brave men and he did that in our name.

Click the pic for the original. Many thanks to Sheila Markin for sharing this tweet.

In ghastly contrast, during a November 2018 trip to France to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, President Trump refused to go the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris to honor the thousands of our troops from both World Wars who are buried there. Dad would have been horrified by Trump’s insult.

Trump said our military dead were “losers” and “suckers.” Those words would have made Dad and all who fought alongside him furious. We all should be furious at Trump’s disrespect for those men and his dishonoring of America.

So, it was gratifying – a reset of honor – when President Biden made the trip to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery last week to salute our fallen.

About 420,000 Americans paid for World War II with their lives. They were driven by their oath, by their love of their country and by their sense of duty.

  •                    “We must make the solemn vow to never let them down.”
  • – President Joe Biden, Point du Hoc, Normandy France, June 7, 2024

We honor all our veterans on Veterans Day. When you do that later this year, say thanks to Dad and the over 16 million Americans of the Greatest Generation who did what it took to defeat fascism so that you could live in a democracy and sleep safely in the arms of freedom.

Don’t make us have to fight that fight again.
.

You know what to do. Take Dad’s picture with you as a reminder when you vote on November 5th or bring a picture of one of our military in your direct line. They would rest easy knowing that we are preserving their American values. They’d thank you if they could, knowing that we continue to honor them, what they fought for and what so many died for.

This message isn’t about the past, however brave, honorable and praiseworthy those heroes were. It is about our present and our future. It is about honor and duty to freedom and our absolute rejection of tyranny and authoritarianism. It is a dedication to democracy in our time and for our children and grandchildren and those who will come after them.

That is why we will never, never, never betray our heroes or their sacrifice or the democracy that they fought for.
Quote of the Week

“In their generation, in their hour of trial, the Allied forces of D-Day did their duty. Now the question for us is: In our hour of trial, will we do ours?” [emphasis mine-JA]

– President Joe Biden at Normandy American Cemetery, June 6, 2024

Click the pic for the video.

Today is a good day to be the light

  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

Cherry Picking


POST 1075

Under Attack

There is a cynical and dangerous checklist that is a playbook for the destruction of America. It has been festering for decades in plain sight and has somehow been tolerated, this to our peril. Here’s a piece of Sheila Markin’s post of May 19 detailing some of that checklist.

CAN OUR LEGAL SYSTEM SURVIVE TRUMP and the MAGA MOVEMENT?

Since he came on to the political scene, Trump has attacked every system in America: the press, our FBI, CIA, government institutions, the electoral system, checks and balances, the peaceful transfer of power, and now the judicial system is being tested and attacked. When you understand how autocrats (dictators) get into power, you understand what Trump is up to. The way it works is that you take over a political party (check), create ever greater cynicism in the voting public for institutions that uphold democracy (check), get your state party members to suppress the vote, limit vote by mail and drop boxes, purge voter rolls to get an advantage for your party (check), use propaganda networks like conservative media to create and sustain the alternate universe in which you are the only trustworthy person left (check). Once in power you never leave. The next election will tell us if Americans can see what Trump is up to and reject it. [emphasis mine]

This check list was obvious as far back as the Reagan administration, when they largely defunded higher education, putting millions of students into lifelong debt, at the same time beginning the destruction of our labor unions that are so expensive for our suffering Big Biz and Billionaires.

From Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s post of May 21:

Trump’s refusal to take the stand [in his hush money trial] encapsulates the MAGA approach to politics. Since the 2020 presidential election, he and his surrogates have made repeated accusations and statements about how the system is rigged against them and alleged there is evidence that proves them right.

Crucially, they make those arguments only in front of television cameras or on podcasts and radio. They refuse to make them under oath in a court of law, where there are penalties for lying.

And on May 22 Richardson wrote,

There is indeed a sense of power and entitlement coming from MAGA Republicans as they impose new limits on their fellow Americans and call those constraints freedom.

Exactly so. That is what minority rule does.

Well, actually, most do know – just not what you think, T-Shirt guy.

Whether it’s a politician, an ordinary citizen or a podcast/talk radio/TV/cable blabber, when they declare that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, that the justice system is rigged, that non-citizens are voting, that the rights and freedoms of true Americans have been stripped from them by Democrats. leftists, the elite, space lasers or some imaginary cabal, they haven’t even a shred of evidence for their claims. None.

The best they can offer is a wimpy “everybody knows” or a promise of retribution, as they thump their chests. They conveniently fail to mention that they’ve lost all of the lawsuits they filed trying to prove their phony claims. Still, they try to take your freedom and rights.

There are lawsuits in the pipeline now waiting to prosecute the liars and cheaters. Be sure to have a BS cancelling headset so you won’t hear them declare how unfair our justice system is to them, like the sociopaths wailing now over convict Trump’s conviction.

From David Corn’s Our Land of May 21:

.  .  .  Trump spoke in Dallas at the annual convention of the beleaguered National Rifle Association—which in February was found liable in a civil corruption case—and accepted its endorsement. He said many idiotic things. As music tied to the bonkers QAnon movement played, Trump wailed that the United States was a “failing nation” with an economy that’s becoming a “cesspool of ruin.” He called the insurrectionist rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 “hostages” who have been “unfairly imprisoned” for merely mounting a “protest.” He pledged to withhold federal funds from any school in the nation with a vaccine or mask mandate. (Make Measles Great Again!) He claimed he was a “better physical specimen” as president than Barack Obama. He referred to himself as “a freakin’ genius.”

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). Donald Trump’s “Black Individual”

Yeah, it was the usual megalomaniacal and dishonest crap from Trump. What caught my attention was this comment, which drew applause from the audience.

And honestly, there’s been no president since Abraham Lincoln—and perhaps, in a certain way, including Abraham Lincoln—but there’s been no president since Abraham Lincoln that has done more for the Black individual in this country than President Donald J. Trump. There’s been nobody. Not even close. [emphasis original]

Of course, the most curious thing about all of that is that so many Americans swallow that evidence-free poison. How does that happen?

From Why do so many Americans support a neofascist? | The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich:

When people feel like the game is rigged against them and they feel like there’s nothing really to lose, and they’re angry and frustrated and anxious, they will be fodder, exploited by a demagogue.

That’s how it’s done. You get ordinary people with “issues” to fall for an orange, comb-over con man, a liar, cheat and philanderer, a supermarket tabloid bombast phony and, as Robert Reich says, a demagogue, one who will steal the rights of those ordinary, chest pounding people to make himself a tyrant dictator.

From Ed Gurowitz’s post of May 20:

Here’s my question: if you knew that by withholding your support for Biden, by supporting the Kennedy headcase or Jill Stein, or Marianne Williamson, or “none of the above,” you were guaranteeing a Trump victory AND emboldening Trump in his authoritarian agenda, would you feel the same?

In the next six months, whether you’re pro-Biden or anti-Trump, or just pro-democracy in America, I’m asking you to get your head out of whatever dark place it is in and stand with and for Biden. He’s not perfect, but right now, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, he’s our only hope.

That’s because we really are under attack. We are being pummeled by cowards posing as tough guys who care about only what is in their own interests and who have wholly abandoned their oath of office and obligation to you and to our country. Almost as bad, they don’t even try to disguise their hypocrisy. They parade it in public like they’re wearing a Joker costume on Halloween, confident that we are too stupid to see these very worst criminals, the ones right in front of us. More on this on Sunday.

America stands with a gun to its head and about a third of our citizens are pulling on that trigger with all their suicidal might.
.

So, heed what Master Yoda teaches us:

“Always the opposite of truth the Trump and his Storm Troopers say. Always the way of the Dark Side they pursue.

“Arm yourself you must against this danger, young Jedi. Use the Vote. Reach out with your finger and feel the force bringing you to your ballot on November 5. If this path you do not follow, the vote will not be with you always.”

Today’s Quotes
  • From Aaron Sorkin’s wonderful movie The American President, but now in the context of MAGA:

“How do you have patience for people who claim they love America, but clearly can’t stand Americans?”

From Simon Rosenberg of The Hopium Chronicles on how we can prevent a Republican destruction of America:

“The magic pill is us.”

Use the vote!

Today is a good day to be the light

  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

A Great America


POST 1074

The Two Greatest Days in Politics in the 2000s
  1. November 4, 2008: Barack Obama won the presidential election. We were with him in Grant Park. It was beyond glorious.
  2. May 30, 2024: Donald Trump was convicted of 34 criminal counts. Accountability is at last sinking its righteous claws into him. It is beyond glorious.
Camelot

Experts estimate that between 100,000 and 150,000 people were crucified by the Romans. Along a lovely 120 mile length of the highway between Rome and Capua, the Romans crucified 6,000 people in a single day. So, it wasn’t just Jesus and the two robbers hanging on crosses nearby. Crucifixion was the blood sport of the Romans for centuries. There is no point in denying this. It was chronicled and it happened just that way.

We could reasonably consider the Romans the inventors of industrialized murder and we know that such brutality became more efficient through the centuries. Those who have a need to refuse reality might not consider that at all. I’m looking at you, White Supremacist, and your boundless fears and cruelty and your joy of hatred. I have no notion that you will ever open your eyes and consider the reality of the brutality of humankind or your part in enabling it today.

See Note #5 below.

As long as we’re doing some considering, let’s consider the final paragraph of the introduction to political theorist and philosopher Hanna Arendt’s superb work, The Origins of Totalitarianism.

“We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are in vain.”

Arendt wrote those words in the summer of 1950 amid the overwhelming deluge of the hideous truth, the soul shattering reality of the Holocaust, as the world was fighting for even just a foothold on a path to sanity.

Historical note to the hateful and intentionally ignorant

Like the Roman crucifixions, the Holocaust was chronicled, even by its perpetrators. It happened.

But Arendt’s words weren’t just for that day, There are millions in America right now wearing MAGA hats and tee shirts, chanting epithets in the perplexing notion that there was once some longed for American Camelot. They demand that we “Make America Great Again.” Of course, it’s the “Again” part that is a vaporous Camelotian myth and a deeply troubling threat for the rest of us.

It seems that these MAGA folks think there really was a Camelot in America somewhere around the same time when Arendt wrote the paragraph above. O’ those were the days, when Whites, no matter their ignorance or poverty, towered over Blacks, no matter their education or financial station. It was a time when in their hearts, millions of White Americans felt they were like Bull Connor, free to dispense hatred, discrimination and brutality. That’s when America was great, they tell us. And that might have been true, if you were White and the word “great” meant power over others.

But then someone realized that segregation in our schools was inherently unequal and, therefore, unconstitutional, this in the face of the earlier, segregationist Plessy v. Ferguson decision. School integration was the end of American greatness for many, of course, and other laws and norms further distanced that Camelot dream. Backlash has been constant ever since.

Now the calls for White supremacy and Christian nationalism are mainstream. What a time it is for them to proclaim their hatreds and grievances because Camelot for haters and discriminators has largely slipped away, so they’re angry and they nurse their venom glands.

But the thing is that it isn’t Camelot if it isn’t Camelot for everyone. That is the key Constitutional point that MAGAs just don’t get – that they refuse to get. They are entirely about domination. Not too oddly, “others” don’t care to be dominated.

Arendt was and still is right. “We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself will bury in oblivion.” There was plenty of good in 1950, but it was in no way guaranteed for all, nor was it the full story. The bad wasn’t and isn’t a dead load and it has not and will not be buried in oblivion, unless we insist on forgetting the past. If we do that we will then repeat the horrors.

Perhaps the most virulent of the White Supremacists really mean it when they call for death to all Jews and, effectively, slavery or expulsion of Blacks, Asians and Hispanics. Maybe the less violent ones just want all of them put on transports and returned to wherever the exporters think they came from. Maybe we should scrub all the non-European names from the records at Ellis and Angel Islands.

Insanity like that is key to the totalitarian’s playbook. In fact, the rounding up like cattle of over 11 million people into concentration camps, then transporting them to who-knows-where is exactly what Trump has said he will do if he’s re-elected. And, like every totalitarian before him, he won’t stop there. The dissolving of freedom and rights won’t end until there are no more freedom and rights to eliminate. Should you have any doubts about that, take a quick look at today’s Russia, Hungary and so many other totalitarian states and even ancient Rome. The expansion of oppression is continuous.

“But Trump won’t do all that,” some say. During the 2016 campaign he vowed to prevent anyone from a Muslim majority country from entering the U.S. and, once elected, he tried to do just that in 3 failed attempts. Finally, a slightly watered down version went into effect. Get over your notion that Trump won’t do the abhorrent things he says he’ll do. He’s proven that he will and he’s sufficiently diabolical to try to do all of them. Ref: The 2025 Project of discrimination, cruelty and subjugation.

Some of the past surely was great. Some was miserable and cruel. What the future will be depends upon our insistence on recognizing the full reality of both the great and the grotesque and deciding to live into the great.

Best Phrase of the Week

Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic, wrote about the enormous backlash against the abortion bans triggered by the Dobbs decision. It has put reproductive healthcare out of the reach of one-third of American women. She called this backlash,

a revolt of the reasonable.

Gotta love that.

Fact Check of the Week

On Friday, May 31, Trump delivered his post-conviction comments to a Trump Tower lobby full of his employees and sycophants, this following his becoming a convict the day before. It was a reprise of his 2015 golden escalator announcement.

I say reprise because, like the 2015 event, not one accusation, not one statement about others, not one characterization was true. Not one. It was all abhorrent lies.

This is the standard extremist, authoritarian tactic, now used by most Republicans, of sweeping, grotesque accusations without even a hint of evidence or justification. These defamatory statements are not false facts or alternative facts. They are lies. And they come in a torrent, making fact checking almost impossible.

There are two true things to say about the lies and about Trump and his followers.

  1. Lying is almost the same as breathing for Trump and his acolytes.
  2. MAGA supporters believe all of it, unable to think critically about their leader. They will send money.

Today is a good day to be the light

  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

Memorial Day


POST 1072

This essay was originally posted on Memorial Day, 2012, with wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan and is offered today (with some updating) as a reminder of what this holiday is about. You can also have a look at another Memorial Day post here.

Arlington CemetaryOur War Dead

It was originally called Decoration Day (see below), a formal day of remembrance of the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War. The refreshing of their graves was the order of the day and it was later extended to all Civil War dead.  It became known as Memorial Day in 1967 and was declared to be in honor of the American dead from all of our wars. That federal re-naming packaged all of the various honoring ceremonies for our war dead and all the individual traditions practiced around the country into a neater package, something that apparently was important in 1967. In addition, the date of remembrance was shifted from May 30 to the last Monday in May so that there would be a 3-day weekend and time for mattress sales.

We no longer conscript our young into military service and instead rely upon a voluntary corps of warriors, leaving the rest of us to follow the imperative of former President Bush in time of war, that we go shopping. That’s handy, as shopping is more pleasant than thinking about our young crawling through a jungle or a desert and being shot at.

Then we see a soldier in desert fatigues walking through the airport, wearing his boots, the color of desert sand, his camouflage backpack hung from his shoulders, and we know he’s either on his way to or from trouble and war becomes real to us. It’s already quite real to that GI in his desert fatigues.

Study this picture and you’ll understand. Source unknown

Memorial Day is not for that soldier. It is for those who have died. What is poignant is that the soldier in the airport might be one of those whom we remember next year.

Memorial Day is intended to be a somber event, a Decoration Day for refreshing graves. It is not about parades with circus clowns to entertain us or political clowns to promote themselves. It is about the renewal of our individual and collective memory of those who can no longer march, lest we forget them. And it is to honor those who loved them, to understand their pain, even for just a few sacred moments.

Duty, Honor, Country

Go to your local Memorial Day ceremonies today, be they in person or virtual. Remember and honor our fallen ones and say “Thank you.”

Before you go, watch this short video from Adam Kinzinger. I know you’ll understand his message.

In Closing
.
Decoration Day, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, pub. 1882
.
Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
Nor sentry’s shot alarms!
.
Ye have slept on the ground before,
And started to your feet
At the cannon’s sudden roar,
Or the drum’s redoubling beat.
.
But in this camp of Death
No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
No wound that bleeds and aches.
.
All is repose and peace,
Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
It is the Truce of God!
.
Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
Your rest from danger free.
.
Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
.
The Statistics

Today is a good day to be the light

  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

Finding Optimism


POST 1069

Third in a series (see Ignorance and Lies and The Underlying Disease)

Stand Up
I asked [my friend] what we would do if 150 crazy people — a mix of deranged narcissists, political extremists, weirdos, conspiracy theorists and other assorted friends of theirs — showed up suddenly on the perfect deck [where we sat overlooking the ocean]. I wanted to know if he thought we’d fight with them or leave.
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“Obviously,” I told him, “we would leave.” He agreed. Crazy people make normal people want to leave.

That’s exactly what we must not do if we hope to provide a cure for our terrible national disease and exit the craziness. Leaving would guarantee a ramping up of the crazy, the vitriol and the siege against the design of the Founders. They had lived under the thumb of despotic King George III and they knew the perils and the pain of autocracy. Our leaving would be capitulation to the forces seeking to undermine the very strength of our nation, our democracy.

So, don’t leave. Stand and fight back. Fight forward. Fight in every direction for your freedom, your rights and for everyone and everything you hold dear. That means standing up to the ignorants and the liars, like Ron Johnson, Jim Jordan, J.D. Vance, MTG, and all the rest of the extremist crazies. Stand up for equity and justice. Stand up to the 50-year-long war to disempower you, make rich guys richer and impoverish the rest of us. Stand up.

A Parallel

Today’s shrill voices and the violence, the threats and the chaos, the crazy and the stupid are all around us with propaganda and lies and visions of doom. Those voices aim to scare good people into capitulation. Those who give up – who leave, to use Steve Schmidt’s term – are today’s version of Neville Chamberlain and his capitulation to Hitler and tyranny.

Click me

Having given away the Sudetenland (then part of Czechoslovakia) to Hitler, Chamberlain came back to England from Munich in 1938 claiming, “Peace for our time.” Less than one year later Germany invaded and overran Poland and a year later began bombing London in the Battle of Britain. Here is the message, the learning:

  • Capitulation never works. It never brings peace. Never.
  • It only emboldens the bullies to do yet worse.

On October 29, 1941 things looked overwhelmingly dark for Britain. Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited The Harrow School, which he had attended years before. Here, in part, is what he told the boys that day:

.

” .  .  .  this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

Steve Schmidt is right: “Crazy people make normal people want to leave.”

But we aren’t going to do that. We’re going to stay and stand up to protect our democracy and our self-rule. We’re going to stay and stand up to the hatred and thwart the cruelty. We’re going to stay and stand and fight. We must not – we will not – leave.

We will never, never, never, never give in.

Optimism

I received a private reply from very long time friend Frank Levy to a recent Disambiguation, Ignorance and Lies. He’s given his permission to post some of his comment – many thanks to him for that..

My experience living among these American ethno-fascists [he lives in a deeply RED state], seeing their racism, watching them legislate for destructive and terrible policies for anyone that does not look, vote, pray, or love the way they do, watching them commit crimes of violence and hate against those very same people, watching them live out their misogyny and need to subjugate and humiliate women, and experiencing their virulent anti-Semitism leads me to two truths.
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One, these people are who they are and they do what they do because they have been taught by their mommies and daddies to hate all the people their relatives hate (thank you South Pacific), and who [they believe] their religion teaches them to hate (thank you Christian Bible and Quran).
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Two, they are who they are and they do what they do because they fear losing their privilege and power to the very people they despise and hate. And they hate democracy, while at the same time proclaiming themselves true patriots, because they know that they are a minority and that in a fair election they and their ideas are losers.
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So, here is why I think your optimism is misplaced: you can’t undo this kind of hate and fear through conversation and education.
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I believe Frank is right, that conversation and education won’t make a dent in the certainties of the fearful, the haters and the dispensers of cruelty, so I replied,
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Our national salvation doesn’t lie in conversions of the BillyBobs and the vitriol droolers – as you put it, the ethno-fascists. Rather, it lies in activating everyone else.
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We cannot wipe out the hatred and thuggishness in those who feel the imperative to hate and to be thugs. Their identities are wrapped up in that cruel package, making change for them impossible. What we can do is to overpower them at the ballot box and in legislatures, making their institutionalized bigotry and mania for domination of others a powerless thing, perhaps no more than an artifact.
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Maybe the more remote polling places and mail-in ballot drop boxes will be returned to North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Kentucky. Maybe millions will have their names restored to the voting roles in Georgia, Virginia, Arizona and Texas. Perhaps an overwhelming defeat will make Kari Lake shut up.
.

It’s entirely up to us to make that happen. That’s the reason for optimism.

Obstacles to Optimism

Last Thursday a chunk of the MAGA extremism cult (please forgive the redundancy) came to Manhattan to parade themselves as brainless suck ups to Trump. They violated the gag order that

Judge Merchan placed on Trump and, in effect declared that they renounce justice.

Matt Gaetz (R-Young Girls) announced that he’s with the Proud Boy felons, saying, “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President.” Having already created chaos, these cheaters are attacking our justice system for being chaotic and broken. That’s what the extremists do: they break government, then blame Democrats for the ensuing chaos.

Also on Thursday, the news of Justice Sam “The Insurrection Man” Alito and his upside-down distress flag crashed into our Constitution. Is there nothing that is below him and Justice Clarence “Free Vacations Man” Thomas? Oh wait .  .  .  never mind.

The Republican pollution of the Supreme Court by insurrectionist sympathizers has driven disapproval of the Court to well over half of Americans. A few decades ago being a Supreme Court justice was the most highly respected profession. Now it doesn’t even make the top 20. It’s pretty hard to be optimistic about that.

Since impeachment isn’t going to happen and the Court’s newly drafted ethics guidelines have no teeth, perhaps now it’s time for Biden to pack the court with four additional justices, each of whom, refreshingly, has a moral compass. That would give us something to be optimistic about.

Today is a good day to be the light

  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

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