Discrimination

Who Will Sound the Alarm?


POST 1136

Late Addition BSO Update!

In his so-called press conference yesterday, Trump once again rattled his sabre, saying that he won’t rule out military force to take back the Panama Canal, seize Greenland and force Canada to become our 51st state.

And the reporters at the press conference and elsewhere stared fixedly into that sun, blind to what is happening around them.
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His threats are today’s BSO – bright shiny object – to distract us from whatever nefarious, criminal or unconstitutional act he doesn’t want us to see. Too many are taking the bait. We need everyone to stop reacting to his manufactured chaos. Pay attention to what actually matters, what is actually happening.

Like that his threats toward Panama, Greenland and Canada are actually threats that undermine NATO.

The Value of Idiocy

Recently Trump spoke at the Turning Point AmericaFest and said we’re going to take back the Panama Canal. That came as a big surprise to the people of Panama who own it. Should Trump attempt to grab it, that would be an illegal invasion, a violation of territorial integrity and national sovereignty, much the same as Putin grabbing the Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and the Donbas in 2022.

He also reiterated that he wants Greenland, which the Danes assure us is not for sale. Plus he wants to make Canada our 51st state. I have friends in Canada and they have assured me that they like their maple leaf flag and their relative freedom from mass shootings. They’re quite satisfied being Canadians. They don’t need Trump dealing with them as though they are pawns in a real estate deal.

Here are a few reasons Trump would say such idiotic things – check all that apply.

Ο  It gets him the constant attention that he craves, an indispensable for life to him, much like air to the rest of us. He has no need for his mouth dribblings to make sense.

Ο  It’s catnip for his over-testosteroned followers and keeps them dumbed-down so they’ll continue to cheer his every dribbling.

Ο  He’s too ignorant to realize the implications of saying such stupid things.

Ο  He keeps the chaos rolling on, which keeps opponents off balance.*

Fortunately for Trump’s galactic narcissism, he’s not shackled by the limits of reality or his promiscuity with stupid.

With his idiocies like these and more, his Cabinet pics of likely felons and will-never-be-ready-for-a-serious-post fools, he continues to live in our brains rent-free. I say, “Break the glass to ring the alarm and evict the bastard.” Let’s talk about We The People instead. Who will sound that alarm?

  • A Coming Comeuppance

    People are reacting with their feet to far right extremism.

OB/GYNs are leaving Red states so they can practice medicine, be true to their Hippocratic Oath and not be thrown into prison. They and other docs and nurses are vacating stifling Red states and leaving healthcare deserts in their wake.

Women who are miscarrying and don’t want to bleed out in a parking lot are saying good-bye to Red states to avoid preventable death.

School teachers who want to teach history, not a revisionist, pablum, self-flattery version of it, are saying good-bye to Red states, leaving teaching voids.

Parents are grabbing their kids and moving to where their young will get a good education and where there are books on the library shelves. Many are moving to states with sensible gun safety laws, hoping their kids won’t be gunned down in school.

Have a look at Sheila Markin’s exploration of this nascent migration in her recent piece, How MAGA Extremism Helps Blue States. It will take a while for Red eyes to see the reality, but Red states are going to pay a price for their assaults on freedom and reality. Besides, Trump Is About to Betray His Rural Supporters.

Do you thrill to the sight of MAGA self-destructing? Do you pulse red, white and blue when bullies get kicked in the shins? Does your sense of balance solidify when what went around, comes around? Then read Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s December 27 piece and watch Steve Schmidt’s piece exposing Musk and Ramaswamy for what they are.

If masochism is your thing, read Dan Friedman’s reveal, Hero of 2024: Richard M. Nixon. You’ll gain a fresh perspective on our massively contorted Supreme Court. It appears that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is now sounding the alarm about our extremist Supreme Court. Who’s listening?

Fighting Words
What has been said or whispered about for years is now fully in the open. People with enormous piles of money (like Musk, Thiel and more of the South Africans and so-called Christian Nationalists) are scheming to bring apartheid here. They are now blatantly demanding to control the world. Every one of them is a racist and xenophobe, believing they are superior, the ones designed to rule over all others.
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We go about our ordinary, non-oligarchic lives in blissful ignorance of the proposed destruction of our republic, even as our elected leaders either succumb to whatever trifles buy their acquiescence, or they act to promote the whims of the monied bullies because they cannot or will not see what is before their eyes.
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We have seen this picture before and we know what will happen in a Fourth Reich, the Musk-Trump Führer-ship. It will happen unless we American frogs suddenly realize that we are being boiled in what will have become a militarized state.
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Who are the American leaders who see what is happening and who have what it takes to sound the alarm so that they wake up all we boiling frogs? I don’t mean bloggers as leaders. We have plenty of flapping lips. I mean political/social/cultural people with some power and who can speak bedrock-shakingly with a thunder that wakes the sleeping? Where is the proper condemnation of the bullies. Where is the needed primal scream heard ‘round the world?
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Which brings us to a related point.
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We officially abandoned accountability when Ford pardoned Nixon for any and all crimes he may have committed. Effectively, Ford said out loud that if you’re rich enough or high enough in the power structure that you can get away with all sorts of crimes. Now the Supreme Court has formally cemented that slap in the face to the rule of law into national policy so that Trump really can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and suffer no consequences.
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Trump is escaping accountability for having incited an insurrection against the United States and for stealing highly classified documents and showing them (or selling them) to whoever he wants to suck up to or who he wants to suck up to him. His money, plus the money he’s grifted from his ignorant, easy to manipulate followers, has bought him out of accountability for his crimes – yet again.
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Thought experiment: What would have happened if Obama had incited an insurrection or stolen classified documents? Would 6 Supreme Court justices have granted him immunity and a Get Out Of Jail Free card? Would Republicans go all crickets about such obvious crimes? Bear in mind that Obama was and still is Black. And a Democrat. And he still ridicules Trump. Compare and contrast this iteration of insanity with the one that protects Trump from accountability. For extra credit, propose a world in which Elon Musk is investigated by the IRS and the SEC, the same agency which sat on its hands in the 2008-2009 financial meltdown.

If you are horrified, watch Steve Schmidt’s discussion with Paul Reickhoff. You’ll feel worse.
I ask again: Who will sound the alarm?
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The election of Trump and the rise of Musk tell us that we have outrun the fear of what nearly destroyed the world. We have outrun the wisdom of those who rebuilt it. We can’t remember — or at least not enough of us can.
Our democracy only functions if those who seek high office have at least a rudimentary sense of honor. Now that Trump has run his last presidential race, the nation must insist that the Republican Party relearn what honor means.

* Watch John McCain’s gracious and patriotic concession speech of 2008 (just 4:45) for the quintessential model of driving unity and community.

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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 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.

Frail Societal Memory


POST 1134

Memory, If Any

Today, the story of the Second World War stands at the edge of remembered history, as the participants of humanity’s greatest trial are at the end of long human life spans.

– Steve Schmidt, Danger Ahead

So, too, the memory of the Great Depression, driven by Robber Barons, whom today we call the 1% or the “obscenely rich.” There aren’t too many left who experienced firsthand the deprivations these enormously rich people caused the American people nearly 100 years ago, like the 25% unemployed, the houses foreclosed, the “Will work for food” signs, the Hoovervilles and all the rest.

On the other hand, there are plenty of us who should vividly remember the 2008-2009 financial debacle, wherein none of the 1% perps was held accountable. How come we let them get away with that? How come we put up with Dubya screaming that the sky was falling and that we had to bail out the banks “right now!”? That was another nail in the coffin of accountability in America, because bail outs are what we did and nobody was held accountable.

Nobody talks about that any more and reading these paragraphs may be the first time you’ve thought about this triple whammy to us in a very long time. It’s essentially a lost memory, which, as Santayana instructs, means that we are doomed to repeat it. Indeed, things are financially even more perilous now than they were in 2008 – 2009.

Here’s Heather Cox Richardson on December 11:

Biden shifted the U.S. economy from 40 years of supply-side economics that had transferred about $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 1% and hollowed out the middle class.

That legalized theft from you is what Trump promised to reinstate, so chant this out loud:

Make Robber Barons Great Again!
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That’s what a plurality of Americans voted for. Somehow, we have failed to remember our shared reality. And it’s crazier than that. Here’s more from RIchardson:

Biden listed the numbers: more than 16 million new jobs, the most in any four-year presidential term in U.S. history; low unemployment; a record 20 million applications for the establishment of new businesses; the stock market hitting record highs.

With proper acknowledgment of Biden’s and the Democrats’ inept, inconsequential, dreadful communication, even our current reality has been flushed from our memory and we blindly go about upending ourselves by electing  a candidate who promises to end all of that improvement.

Kids in Iron Lung machines due to polio. Those of us who were kids then remember scenes like this. Click the pic for the story.

Here’s more largely lost memory.

I was a young boy during the great polio pandemic of the 1940s and 50s. Mothers were afraid to let their kids swim in a pool or play with other kids for fear of the contagion. When Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine became available in 1955 doctors’ offices were mobbed by moms and kids in line to get it. The same was true of the vaccines against measles and other terrible childhood diseases.

Before I could come to my university campus I had to show proof of having been vaccinated against smallpox. There was an ongoing worldwide battle to eradicate that horrible disease and that battle was largely won. Cue the international applause for vaccines. In your face, Robert Kennedy!

All that was in an era when vaccinations weren’t just good, they were miracles. And only people who see a boogieman behind every tree made stupid and wrong claims about the vaccines. Their equally ignorant descendants are doing it again now because we have so little societal memory of the death and suffering people endured long ago, or of the blessings of vaccinations. Those who lived through those times are rapidly leaving us now and are replaced by people ignorant about what happened, leaving them susceptible to the blatant and murderous idiocies of the know nothing blabbers.

RFK, Jr. lived through the same health pandemics as many of we older boomers, but apparently that worm ate part of his brain and compromised his memory and cognitive functioning so that he lacks good sense. Now he is poised to allow our kids to be threatened by those preventable, awful diseases once again by standing in the way of the simple processes that keep kids healthy. And those in our society who have no societal memory of the horrors of the past are succumbing to their love of knee-jerk tantrums and are believing what should be unbelievable. So, let’s all sound RFK’s call:

Make Polio and Measels Great Again!
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Dirty little secret:

RFK, Jr. knows that the claim that vaccines cause autism was invented and broadcast by a British doctor (key word: “Invented”). When peer reviewers tried to replicate his findings, none was unable to do so. In reviewing his paper they found that he had copied/pasted sections multiple times to make his work look more exhaustive. In short, they determined that he and his work were frauds.

There is no connection between vaccines and autism. None. Decide for yourself why Kennedy would be proudly proclaiming what has repeatedly been debunked by experts – actual doctors and scientists. You know: qualified, reality based people.

They’re Doing It Again

On Monday, December 16 Donald Trump did a press conference. He isn’t the president, but CNN, MSNBC and Fox all gave him 40 minutes of free air time – i.e. attention. He didn’t have to pay anything to promote himself. As Heather Cox Richardson described his performance – yes, performance – she wrote that he spewed

. . . attention-grabbing threats alongside lies and very little apparent understanding of actual issues. His mix of outrageous and threatening is central to his politics, though: it keeps him central to the media, even though, as Josh Marshall pointed out in Talking Points Memo on December 13, he often claims a right to do something he knows very little about and has no power to accomplish. The uncertainty he creates is key to his power, Marshall notes. It keeps everyone off balance and focused on him in anticipation of trouble to come.

Do you remember a time when this didn’t describe Trump every time he opened his mouth? No, you don’t. Not since the phony golden escalator and the paid phony adoring fans moment in 2015. The networks are still giving away billions of dollars of air time to Trump. All he has to do is to announce he’s going to say something and they roll over to give him the attention he wants – free. They don’t consistently do that for any other politician, not even the current President of the United States. It has been nearly 10 years of this cable news spinelessness and they haven’t learned a thing. They don’t seem to have a memory for how they were played.

It’s long past time when we should have learned to ignore Trump’s craziness, kept our balance and focused on ourselves, on We The People.

Just For Fun

Trump started back-peddling from his baseless campaign claim that he’d get food prices down.; He declared that during his Meet the Press interview on December 8. About that, Dan Rather said,

So it looks like all those people who voted for him, despite all the reasons not to, will be abandoned on aisle 6, in the hoodwink section. Because not only will Trump be unable to bring prices down from the day he “takes the oath of office,” most economists say his proposed policies, like imposing tariffs and deporting undocumented workers, would actually drive prices up — way up.

So, you with the red hat .  .  . you want fries with that SuckerBurger?

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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 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.

Her Own Best Interests


POST 1103.

Brutal Truth

Amber Thurman and her son. Say her name.

The awful day will come. There will be no avoiding it and the now 6-year-old son of Amber Nicole Thurman will hear the brutal truth.

He will be told that his mother was cut down by Donald Trump, Gov. Brian Kemp and all the self-righteous bigots who are sure they know best how Amber Thurman should have lived her life. They call themselves “pro-life” but they killed Amber Thurman with their cruel laws, just as surely as if they had used a gun to shoot her.

That little boy will hear the grisly story of how the people who could have helped his mom, who could have saved her life so that that little boy would have had his mom as he grew up, instead sat on their hands and let her die. He will hear how the Trump judges, Justices and state legislators threatened the doctors, nurses and hospital administrators with prison terms, should they help her. So, they sat idle because the self-important politicians and judges cared far more for thumping their Bibles than they did for saving the the life of the mom of that little boy, or the life of anyone else. They were certain that they should impose their opinions on her and every other woman and girl.

By the time that little boy learns the truth, an uncountable number of other women will have died from that same repugnant arrogance and self-righteousness, that putrid, primitive stench that hangs in the air in our domed state legislatures and the in vaulted halls of justice and in Congress.

Those in charge were told that many women would die and still more would be permanently damaged by their cruel certainties, but they charged ahead as though causing suffering and death were a virtue. Those Bible thumpers will have their way with these women and girls, like gods sanctimoniously holding the lightning bolt of death in their hands. How glorious and triumphant they must feel.

I want every one of them to face one raped 10-year-old girl they abandoned. I want them to attend the funeral of just one woman they condemned to death. I want them to tell their own daughters that they will turn their backs on them in their hour of need, just like they did to Amber Thurman.

Perhaps one of Amber Thurman’s sisters or her own mother will care for that little boy. We can hope, but it won’t be the same for him.

We’ll remember Amber Nicole Thurman every bit as powerfully as we remember George Floyd. We will keep their spirits alive because we will say their names. The cruel ones won’t. They will just forget her.

Here’s the Pro Publica story about this, as well as Lawrence O’Donnell’s report. It’s a hard video to watch, so have a box of tissues at hand. This story is heartbreaking, because Amber Thurman’s death was tragically and entirely unnecessary.

Amber Nicole Thurman lived. She was a real person and she knew what was in her best interests. She tried to get it, but Donald Trump, Brian Kemp, the Republican Georgia legislature and six black-robed, black-hearted Supreme Court Justices declared they knew better. They did violence to that woman. Now she’s dead and her little boy has lost his mom.

The self-certain bigots waged a 50-year war on freedom and rights. They won and brought this triumph of cruelty to all of us. How proud they must be.

Special Note to Pro-Life Zealots

You have your strongly held beliefs. Perhaps they are buttressed by your religion and your certainties about what God wants. You know what’s right. There is no balance for you to maintain and there are no complexities for you to consider. Got it. Here’s the thing.

It’s your right to believe as you do. You get to have the values you hold and to live as you choose. I will forever stand in defense of that. And I will forever stand in opposition to you imposing your beliefs, your values and your absolutism on me or anyone else.

Believe as you do. If you oppose and perhaps hate abortion, then don’t have one. Stay true to yourself. Maintain your integrity. But keep your integrity and your certainties the hell away from me and mine. Or, as our soon-to-be new Vice President instructs, “Mind your own damn business.” And I amend that with, “Keep the hell out of my business.”

Because when you meddle in the business of others, freedom disappears and people die.

And that isn’t in our own best interests.

It’s not the vibes, it’s not the polls: it’s the votes. 
Are you registered to vote? Check it out on any of these sites:
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https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/

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

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

“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”
  • – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016


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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, even if that makes them a few bucks more expensive. That will help to keep them 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.

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.

It’s Complicated


POST 1071

It’s All So Complicated

Three religions each claim sole right to own the same little chunk of dirt.* Worse, there are few things as dangerous as a religious zealot, so conflict and violence are baked in. The 3-headed religious zealotry monster is actually a subset of the human need to feel right and powerful and dominant and a holy defender of the faith. It’s chest thumping self-certainty stuff along with the joy of belonging to the self-congratulatory tribe. We’re so right and they’re so wrong! Cheers for our team!

In addition, there’s a proud and vibrant hatred of Jews that goes back somewhere between 3,500 and 6,000 years. It’s the world’s oldest bigotry and hatred. Jews are just so blame-able, absurdly, for everything. Always. So, really, who cares about the atrocities committed by Hamas on Israelis on October 7? Those victims were just Jews.

Palestinians are suffering and dying and are getting no relief from anywhere, including from their Arab and Muslim brothers, but that’s always been true. They are the world’s longest standing refugees and their Arab brothers make sure they stay that way. Various fiefdoms need them to be victims for various reasons, chief among those being that they need Israel to be seen as the victimizing devil.

Anyone with even a scintilla of empathy sees the agony of Gazans and is beset by anguish for their suffering. It seems to be both random and inevitable and screams for redress.

This is the milieu of Israel and Gaza now and our 18 – 22 year old college students have plenty to say about all that. Unfortunately, they missed the part about this situation being hideously complicated, so they demand immediate and simple solutions to this very complex problem. Worse, they’ve been fed a grossly imbalanced diet of news, so they are semi-ignorant, even in their heartfelt certainty.

That brings us to today’s .  .  .

Must Reads

That’s “must” as in “required” if you want to understand at least some what is happening and what’s driving it.

First, read my friend David Houle’s essay explaining the gross hypocrisy driving college campus demonstrations and general public opinion, Blame Mainstream Media for the Demonstrations on College Campuses. You know what death and destruction in Gaza looks like because it’s shown to you every day, regardless of where you get your news. Your empathy is pulled there as though our mainstream media is supposed to be a propaganda tool for Hamas. How come you’ve never been shown the videos that Hamas terrorists posted online of their savagery, killing, maiming and raping Israelis?

I confess that I had failed to see the grotesque hypocrisy of our media, showing the results of Israeli attacks but refusing to show the Hamas atrocities. And that lopsidedness is driving public opinion and encouraging hatred.

American students have feted their passions in this insanity with their ignorance and uniformed certainties. They have taken to the quads of their elite universities. They brought their tents and they carry signs supporting Palestine and Palestinians. They proudly chant “From the river to the sea,” as though they are Hamas in Gaza calling for the murder of all Jews on Earth and they spew various anti-Semitic slogans. They act just as though the problems were simple and that they actually understood them. Too bad they’re clueless about Hamas infiltrating and igniting their own protests in the U.S. and that these students and agitators are self-identifying with this terrorist group, these murderers.

Art Friedson is a periodic guest writer to this series. Read his take about what’s going on. Be prepared for an even-handed, sensible post that challenges your cherished certainties. And follow his links.

These essays will not give you yet more simple answers to this complex problem. They don’t reply to those demanding an immediate ceasefire. The truth is that there was a formal ceasefire in effect on October 6, 2023, the day before the Hamas pogrom, its invasion and savagery. Since “ceasefire” doesn’t seem to mean the same thing to Hamas as it does to the rest of the world, there’s far less sense to a ceasefire now than there might seem to be.

These posts don’t deal with the certainty that failing to crush Hamas now means that two years from now there will be another Hamas atrocity visited upon Israelis. Then another barbarity will come two years after that. Then another attack two years later. Hamas will hide behind civilians and con the world into demonizing Israel, using the leverage of dead Palestinian bodies. And all the while there will be ongoing rocket attacks on Israeli cities. It takes no clairvoyance to see this future because it will be a repeat of the past and of today.

These posts don’t fully address the annoying fact that there cannot be peace because that would make Hamas obsolete and they can’t have that. Hamas needs war. They don’t touch on the fact that Gazans cannot be made safe, secure and prosperous because so many need Gazans to be victims. Plus, Hamas needs civilians, grannies and children to hide behind.

See what I mean about “complicated”? And this accounting barely scratches the surface of the complications in a place that has vexed smart people searching for peace for a very long time.

Inglorious Bastards

After being Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley distanced herself from him to the point that she ran against him in the 2024 Republican primary. She said the same thing Hillary said in 2016, that he was unfit for office. Haley said Trump was “a disaster,” “too chaotic,” “too unhinged,” “too prone to temper tantrums” and “too old.” Plus, she said she felt “no need to kiss the ring.” Then last Wednesday she caved to her ambition and metaphorically kissed the ring of the grifter. She says she will vote for him.

She is in fine company with Sen. Lindsay Graham, who, following the insurrection, declared, “All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.” Then two weeks later he made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to grovel and kiss the ring. Now he says he’ll vote for Trump.

Following the insurrection, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared, “There is no question – none – that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day [January 6]. No question about it.” Click the link and listen to his full comments damning Trump – then weaseling out. He voted to acquit Trump in the second impeachment. Now he says he’ll vote for Trump this year.

Welcome, Nikki Haley, to this community of cowardice and blatant hypocrisy.

Fun Fact of the Week

Activist priest Frank Pavone said in 2022, “I can tell you that within the pro-life religious circles of pastors that I interact with, across denominational lines the awareness over recent years has greatly increased about how unbiblical contraception is.” His words are resurfacing now, as far right extremists, having now made abortion illegal in so many places, fix their sights on eliminating contraception.

Okay, Father Frank, I concede that the Bible carries no mention of contraception, so your claim that it is “unbiblical” is technically accurate. The Bible also carries no mention of penicillin, airplanes, the Chicago Cubs, the United Nations, the Taj Mahal or radio. Just guessing you think we should do away with all that, too, because all of it is “unbiblical.”

Now .  .  .

.  .  .  go. Read the Must Reads linked above.

___________________________________________________

* Israel is roughly the same size as Massachusetts.

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.

Not That Giuliani


POST 1065

Giuliani Can Wait. First Crime, Anti-Social Behavior and Cookies

All the statistics tell us that our rate of crime is decreasing. Nevertheless, we rage at one another as though it’s a holy exercise against crime, as some may well feel that it is. What could better demonstrate our goodness and integrity than frothing at the mouth our declarations that we are right and those who disagree are agents of the devil? More important, what is it that drives us to distrust one another so vehemently?

Thom Hartmann explored this once again in a recent post. Here are some snippets to give you a clue.

Poverty doesn’t cause the societal disintegration that leads to most crime, it turns out: inequality does. And America is now, far and away, the most unequal developed country in the entire world.

So how does inequality provoke criminality? The research on the topic is pretty exhaustive, albeit poorly publicized, and the simplest explanation is among the most easily understood: humans are wired to rebel against unfairness. Unfairness thus destroys social trust.

Walk into a preschool class and give one child a pile of cookies while giving everybody else only one each and see what happens. In fact, it’s not just humans; this holds true across all mammalian species from rats to dogs to apes.

In just reading those words about cookies I bet you can feel the words forming on your lips: “THAT’S NOT FAIR!” You’ve rebelled against unfairness all your life because, well, unfairness is unfair. It’s offensive. It’s cruel. And you’ve seen a lot of unfairness.

As research across 33 nations published in Oxford’s European Journal of Public Health found, inequality devastates social trust among people, opening the door to antisocial crime, including violent crime .  .  .

While billionaires who pay less in federal income tax rates than you do blast themselves into space on giant penis-shaped rockets, the majority of Americans are struggling to get by. I say “the majority” because a decade ago the number of Americans who could call themselves “middle class” slipped below 50% for the first time since the Eisenhower era. [all emphasis original]

Billionaires now pay a lower rate than the bottom half of income earners. Click the pic for the story and  read Thom Hartmann’s comments here.

Little wonder that we are a nation of pissy people, some violently pissy, looking for others to blame. Just listen to the victim raging at Trump rallies and at White supremacist demonstrations, the bullying at school board meetings and the intimidation of voters. The ragers are brainlessly claiming voter fraud in the presence of exactly zero evidence of it, but they are disenfranchising millions nevertheless, leading to more power and wealth transferred to the rich and more dis-empowerment and impoverishing of everyone else.

We are four decades into the very intentional program of the transfer of massive wealth from our poor and middle class to our wealthy and ultra-wealthy. This has been incrementally baked into our economy and our psyches and we haven’t even noticed the shift because generally the individual changes have been small, except for the trillions of dollars of tax reductions for the rich, engineered by Bush II and Trump. Those led to $ trillions more national debt that you and I are paying for. Collectively they have undermined your prospects and your wallet massively. Somewhere in our innards is our scream, “THAT ISN’T FAIR!” And we are right.

Worse, we are wrongly taking it out on one another. The fair target of our anger over loss of trust in ourselves lies with self-serving politicians and ultra-wealthy manipulators. For a current view of how these people intend to take all the rest from you, see this. Don’t be bamboozled by the apparently patriotic claims in that document. It is a blatantly anti-American plan to destroy our country and hoard all the wealth and power for the already massively rich.

It’s no longer about cookies. But it’s still about unfairness. And, like Justice Potter Stewart commenting about pornography, you know unfairness when you see it.

Yeah, He’s a Creep, But .  .  .

.  .  .  for a moment, set aside the bad taste in your mouth caused by Rudy Giuliani’s behavior over the past two decades and try to remember this.

Click me – watch all 8 minutes of this video – and remember

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attack Rudy Giuliani, then Mayor of New York City, attended every funeral for the 343 first responders who died on that awful day. He spoke words of empathy and encouragement that the people of the city and across the nation, wounded as we were, needed to hear. They called him “America’s mayor.” He was what the nation needed in that moment, especially since Dubya had failed us so terribly and allowed that attack to happen.

Giuiliani went on SNL just 18 days after the catastrophe. With him and filling the stage were the fire chief, the police chief and as many NYFD and NYPD personnel as they could fit. Standing in the long and strong applause, he took no credit for himself, telling us that the first responders behind him and those not there that Saturday night were the heroes. His message was strong. He threw a humorous jibe at Lorne Michaels when he was asked if it was okay for the SNL cast to be funny. He told us that New York was open for business. We got the message. It was okay to smile again.

That clip brought to mind our present troubles. We are under attack from a large and sometimes violent portion of our countrymen, now properly labeled domestic terrorists. We have thousands of public servants who refuse to do the will of the people, making them a threat to our democracy, a roadblock to solving our problems and to forming a more perfect union. Indeed, these people are working to create a system of permanent minority rule, the very antithesis of democracy. Even our Supreme Court, once the most honored and trusted institution in the nation, is now distrusted by nearly 2 of every 3  of our citizens. Around 45% of voters intend to vote for a sexual attacker, defamer and likely to be convicted felon. These are very dark times indeed.

When the time is right, who will stand in leadership and tell us that we remain the most important democracy in the world, the place of We The People, the shining city on the hill?

Who will declare that we are the keepers of the flame of freedom and justice?

Who will tell us that we can once again talk with our neighbors and even strangers and that we are still America?

Who will tell us that it is okay to smile again?

We need to be thinking about that and deciding who we want to stand in that place of trust and of leadership on January 20, 2025. Our military professionals are taught “Mission first. People always.” What about the rest of us – what are our marching orders?

Our mission is clear. We need to be doing whatever it takes so that the right person is standing before us and announcing to the world and to ourselves, “We The People are America.”

And that it’s okay to smile again.

Remembrance

Tonight starts Yom HaShoah, the day we remember those caught in the betrayals, the cruelty and the death of the Holocaust. We remember for many reasons, including that genocides continue to occur. But mostly we remember the innocents who suffered and the ones who died – were murdered – then.

They were just like you. They worked hard, they loved their children and their children loved to play. Until they no longer could. Light a candle today in their honor.

We remember, lest they be forgotten. May their memory be for a blessing.

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.

    Click me

    JA


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

Somebody Has To Tell Me . . .


POST 1063

.  .  .  why we are even talking about:

– whether doctors can be criminally prosecuted in Idaho for having made efforts to save the life of a pregnant woman in distress or if they have to wait until death is imminent before proceeding with life saving treatment and by then the woman might never again be able to carry a baby?

– Trump claiming that a president cannot be prosecuted for “official” criminal acts and that a former president cannot be prosecuted unless the House of Representatives has impeached him and the Senate convicted him. Clearly, “Equal justice under law” will no longer have any meaning.*

– that the Supreme Court of the United States has taken this immunity case, this violation of reason, this affront to the Constitution, this kick in the teeth of justice seriously? And they may well grant Trump such god-like power!** Read this excellent explainer.

– whether Texas women can travel to another state for an abortion or whether she can be given consult from others without any of them going to jail? That is to say, why is it necessary to question whether Texans have freedom of speech or freedom to travel? Or Floridians? Or Mississippians?

.  .  .  how it’s even possible that:

– the state of Tennessee has authorized school teachers to carry firearms, when everyone has known for a very long time that the real problem is not unarmed teachers, but over-armed citizens with a vigilante mania or some other mental derangement, like, “I feel like a weenie, and I know I’ll feel powerful if I kill a bunch of people.”

– Fuhrer Greg Abbot of Texas has his police and National Guard in riot gear on the campus of the University of Texas – Austin and they are arresting and are prepared to beat up kids who are in peaceful protest over suffering Palestinians? This looks like it can become like the 1968 police riot in Chicago all over again, with kids beaten, arrested and shot.

– hateful idiots on college campuses across the country are screaming pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic vitriol, hurling threats at and committing physical assaults on Jewish students? Someone taught them to hate. Someone taught them that they could beat up those who are somehow different from them. I wonder who that might be.

– we tolerate the cruelty heaped on Asians, Muslims, Blacks, Browns and Jews? Oh yeah: it’s that “Someone taught them” thing again.

– a large segment of the Republican Party favors Vladimir Putin and Russia over a democratic ally in Europe and even favors Russia over our own country?

– the majority of Republicans (about 70%) believe Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election? Didn’t these people receive an education? Do they understand concepts like evidence, reality and the rule of law? How is it that a jury of his peers found Trump liable for sexual abuse and for defamation – twice! – and they still plan to vote for him? And they’ll vote for him even if he is convicted of felonies – crimes – before the election?

– sitting senators (Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley) are calling for National Guard deployment against peaceful protesters? Cotton posted, “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands.”

– that Speaker Mike Johnson bellowed from the steps of Low Memorial Library, “Columbia has allowed these lawless agitators and radicals to take over. Anti-Israel encampments are popping up in universities all across this country. The madness has to stop.” Mother Jones How come today’s Republicans sound an awful lot like hateful, anti-civil rights creeps of the 1960s? Perhaps Johnson and his snarling Buddies On Repression Extremism Society (“BORES”) will bring Iranian Revolutionary Guards to shoot college campus protesters, just like they do in Tehran.

_____________________________________________

* This from Wikipedia:

OLC memoranda

In 1973, amid the Watergate scandal, the Department of Justice‘s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued a memorandum concluding that it is unconstitutional to prosecute a sitting president.[23] Its arguments include that the president “is the symbolic head of the Nation. To wound him by a criminal proceeding is to hamstring the operation of the whole governmental apparatus in both foreign and domestic affairs.”[24] It says that the statute of limitations should not be tolled while the president is in office, but suggests that Congress could extend the statute of limitations specifically for presidents.[25] After the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Clinton, the OLC issued a second memorandum in 2000, distinguishing civil and criminal presidential immunity and determining that it was still improper to prosecute a president due to the adverse affect it might have on his ability to govern.[26]

That is the rationale for the recommended prohibition against prosecuting a sitting president – but only while he or she is still president. My understanding is that there is nothing in either memorandum to indicate that there is a prohibition against prosecuting a president for crimes committed while in office once that president has left office.

More to the point, nowhere is it written that a president enjoys permanent protection from prosecution for criminal activity when no longer in office, as when Trump stole classified documents, brought them to Mar-a-Lago and then lied to the FBI and defied a subpoena. But, of course, Trump’s lawyers have claimed just such protection at the Supreme Court.

Required Reading – click here

Blindfolded Lady Justice – for now

.

The Court heard this case with Justice Clarence Thomas present. He did not recuse himself – again – in his obvious temper tantrum ignoring of his conflict of interest, as his wife Ginni participated in the insurrection at the heart of this case.

Someone has to tell me why the Supreme Court accepted this farcical and cruel excuse of a case. These Justices make it look like Lady Justice is peeking out from behind her blindfold, telling them that it’s okay for them to be political hacks and to undermine our justice system.

If you wish to dig into this further, here’s a link to the full OLC memos, along with pertinent commentary.

** If Trump succeeds with his case in the Supreme Court, President Biden could immediately have Trump assassinated by Seal Team 6, claiming him to be a clear and present danger to the United States. If Seal Team 6 were to refuse such an order, Biden could bring a pistol the the first presidential debate and kill Trump himself. Either way, Biden could never be prosecuted for the murder because the Supreme Court would have made it legal to be a presidential murderer.

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.

    Click me

    JA


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

The Ultimate Con


POST 1056

CAUTION! Contains snark!

The content below touches on sensitive issues, willful ignorance and deeply held hypocrisies. It implies widespread gullibility and faith-free faith. Proceed if you dare, but follow the Surgeon General’s recommendation to wear an N95 mask while reading and to squint your eyes against the glare of nearly believable satire. Note that injections of bleach following reading are not recommended, but hydroxychloroquine injections are recommended, but only on a doctor’s orders and if you have malaria. Also recommended are to brush and floss daily and to hold hands when crossing the street.

The King Grifter Version – Click me

Donald, you’ve been a con all your life, including conning your father out of hundreds of millions of dollars and your relatives out of their inheritances. You’ve conned contractors and lawyers and even 1/3 of the American public. You’ve conned people by promising a university education and delivering nothing and by assuring them of vast riches by following your get-rich-quick scam. You’ve conned people with steaks and bottled water, vodka, a fraudulent charitable foundation, gold painted sneakers, perfume and now a Bible. Poor, easily influenced people have already been conned into buying a copy, as well as sending you donations for your ever-mounting legal bills to defend your felonies.

About that Bible. There is no American Bible. While we revere the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and the Bill of Rights, they are not holy documents and they were not inscribed by the finger of God – or even Lee Greenwood’s. Indeed, nowhere in any Bible other than your King Grifter Version is America mentioned. For effectiveness moving forward, we recommend that you not mention that you’ve broken most of the 10 Commandments repeatedly (Think: Access Hollywood tape), or that you don’t know anything that is between the covers of that book. And while most people don’t mind that you hoisted a Bible upside down in front of St. John’s Church after tear gassing peaceful protesters, it’s still not a good idea to mention that.

You have used The Big Lie repeatedly, even before the 2016 election, then claiming that if you were to lose that election that it would only be because of Democratic fraud that stole victory from you. That was a fine con, Donald, and through diligent practice over the years you’ve perfected The Big Lie, making claims not just of stolen elections, but Big Lies about judicial decisions you didn’t like and fantabulous lies about people, even about the daughter of the judge presiding in one of your cases. Because you adhere to the Big Lie principles so well, you’ve conned millions.*

But facing the facts of actuarial tables, Donald, you’re near the end of your run. Given your sedentary lifestyle and your diet of fast food junk, it’s probable that the only thing holding your body together is a massive clod of cholesterol glue. You’ve always been certifiably crazy, but now you babble incoherently, so dementia is right around the corner. While you still have the capacity to con on a grand scale, Donald, it’s time for supreme action.

You’ve tickled around the edges of claiming to be sent by God, saying things to your followers like, “I am being indicted for you,” and talking about your “divine purpose,” hinting not very delicately that you are Jesus himself, but that isn’t enough. You have to boldly transcend to The Ultimate Con.

You must take to the stage at your next big rally, with thousands of adoring dupes carrying Trump signs and Trump flags, wearing red, white and blue shirts and MAGA hats. You will speak (even to “my Negro”) and you’ll raise your hands pontifically. You’ll strongly – because you are a strong man – and with absolute conviction declare that you are not just a god, but the God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit – all of them. You’ll tell your faithful that you sent yourself to save America, to make it a Christian Nationalist place the way it was intended to be.** You’ll say that you are God, which means you can smite your godless opponents. You are The Law and all power and vengeance are yours, thus sayeth The Donald.

The Via Delarosa – Jerusalem

They will play deep, moving organ music and a great chorus of angelic voices will rise to the heavens strongly, as you solemnly labor from one side of the stage to the other, your hands grasping for purchase, your face in self-reverence, as though you’re struggling painfully and victimly along the Via Dolarosa. You will absorb the adoration of your people and all will bow their heads in maximus supplicationus. Many will weep.

The pundits will declare that to be against you is blasphemy. Pastors will pound pulpits in theocratic fervor and no Republican elected official will dare to utter even a single discouraging word, although that’s nothing new.

Yours will be the kingdom, the power and the glory of the Ultimate Con.***

This Ultimate Con hasn’t been tried since the first century AD/BCE when the incestuous Roman emperor Caligula grabbed that turf. He was a deviant, but that might appeal to you. Note, though, that his grab for god status didn’t work well for him, as he was assassinated not long after making that claim. Still, it was a great con.

Who knows? You might get away with it. If you can make this work and get yourself elected, your self-serving truth may be known and it will set you free (from prison).***  As your truth is said in the Book of Donald, “I say unto you, and this is true, it’s a witch hunt, a hoax. I won bigly and strongly. Stop the steal!” These moving words are for monks to ponder by candlelight in dark, damp monasteries for centuries.

Donald, this will be your greatest con ever.****

This Next Is No Con

Many thanks to Sheila Markin for this:

Below is a [link to a] letter written by a concerned American who wants to pressure Justice Roberts to ask Justice Thomas to recuse himself in the upcoming case United States v Trump. Take a look and see if you want to sign on. You do not have to be a lawyer to sign it. Pressure on Roberts to try to get Thomas to do the right things is probably worthwhile even if it doesn’t keep Thomas from doing the wrong thing.
.

https://ldad.org/letters-briefs/justice-thomas

I signed the letter and urge you to sign it, too.

________________________________________

* In a fine post by Thom Hartmann, he offers an audio clip of President Roosevelt during the 1944 presidential campaign, with FDR explaining The Big Lie masterfully. Scan down to the bottom of Hartmann’s post to hear the short clip. Important for your understanding is that Republican Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover had been in charge for the 12 years before Roosevelt won the 1932 election. Those Republican men brought us the Great Depression. So, it isn’t just today’s Republicans howling The Big Lie. There were Republican Big Liars in 1944, too.

** Regardless of the somewhat vague references to God in our founding documents, the Founding Fathers were adamant that this is not a theocracy, that this is not a Christian nation. CNN published a most accessible review of this. Better, albeit far more ambitious, would be a review of the Federalist Papers.

*** With apologies to The Lord’s Prayer and John 8:32.

**** Donald sent out a blizzard of 77 Truth Social ALL CAPS messages on Easter. His messages were about himself, attacking his opponents, attacks on judges and members of their families and comparing himself to Jesus. More specifically, his primary Easter message contained 7 words about Easter and 161 words attacking his enemies and whining about the legal system. Likely, his White Christian (in name only) minions ate it up. Great lead-in to The Ultimate Con.

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.

    Click me

    JA


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

Fear Is A Terrible Thing


POST 1055

People Are Saying

There is frightful peril, we’re told by those with their eyeballs bulging, and they say there is great suffering to come. They  swear on oath that their terrible prognostications of grave danger and ghastly harm, of apocalyptic doom and deeply intense pain and suffering are before us. People are saying.

Except for the heinous acts of the godless elites, all of our problems are caused by those dark skinned immigrants, the non-Anglos, the non-Aryans who have slithered into our Christian nation to defile us, people are saying.

Our blood is being poisoned, they tell us. We are infested with vermin and the diseases that everyone knows these invaders carry and spread to we legitimate Americans. It’s time we rid ourselves of this threat to our pure America, people are saying.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed on March 26 when a Singapore flagged ship crashed into a pylon supporting the bridge. The entire crew is foreign – Indians! Little wonder that happened, people are saying.

Similarly, the only deaths and injuries from this disaster were of workers fixing potholes. They were all foreign born and some were here illegally. Too bad – they shouldn’t have been here at all, people are saying.

Worse, it’s obvious that those injured or dead had taken jobs from good White Americans. They replaced our countrymen, taking food from the mouths of our children. This is yet another example of why we have to close our borders to seal out the vermin who would come here and steal from us, people are saying.

Okay, enough of the insane far right hysteria over immigration. The point is that such things really are being said, and said with great passion, with flashing angry eyes and with great spraying of spit. I can’t let this vicious stuff stand without a rebuttal of truth.

First, I haven’t a clue how anyone can poison our blood. Nobody else does, either. It’s just another vitriolic Trumpy hateful dog whistle to which the haters come running.

Getting past the absurdity of that, we’ve had waves of anti-immigrant lunacy over our history. Oddly, much of it has been aimed at various groups eventually identified as White and therefore welcome, like the Irish and the Italians. We’ve somehow managed to remain intact and haven’t suffered poisoning, making me wonder if the hate and rejection are actually based on Whiteness or even on Christianity.

It’s true that the Dali is a Singapore flagged ship and none of its crew is American. But suggesting that foreign incompetence was the cause of the disaster infuses an extra dose of stupid into the inquiry, because the ship was being piloted by a licensed American Pilot, a White American.

The six men who died and the two who were injured, whether here legally or not, were doing jobs that Americans won’t do. Seriously, would you work all that long, cold night filling potholes on the roadway of that bridge? Do you know of any native born American who would do that? No, you don’t, and neither do I.

Those bridge worker immigrants didn’t take jobs from Americans. Neither do agricultural field workers or any immigrants doing hard manual labor at subsistence wages. They do work Americans won’t do but which must be done. So much for the hateful, cruel and idiotic replacement theory and fie on the fools who spread it. Substitute your own word for “fie,” if you’d like.

Today’s immigrants are here for the same reason your ancestors left “the old country,” leaving behind everyone and everything known to them. They departed on the fragile hope of making a better life in America. It’s captured by the comments of a Honduran nephew of one of those killed on the Key Bridge, as recorded by an Associated Press reporter:

“The kind of work he did is what people born in the U.S. won’t do. People like him travel there with a dream. They don’t want to break anything or take anything.”

Our immigrants, including the abused and suffering but still hopeful people at the Rio Grande River, the people sliced by Gov. Gregg Abbott’s razor wire, want what our great-grandparents wanted: a better life. Immigrants who come here aren’t looking for a handout; they’re ready to work for that better life. You know this story and you know it’s true. So do the hystericals who wail those awful and untrue things about immigrants. Why do they do that hateful demonizing?

Some measure of that is a crass and cruel grab for power accomplished by appealing to the fear in others.

Some measure of it, though, may be because people really do fear others, those not known to them, those who are in some way different from them. Fear of the unknown is a staple of human beings, whether it’s a child’s fear of dragons in the basement or fear of being on a dark street or fear of people with unfamiliar cultural ways.

The truth is that our fears about immigration are self-imposed barriers to our own growth and prosperity. Read Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s piece about this – it’s where I got that quote from the nephew of the Key Bridge worker who died.

Two Key Points

First, there is a sensible middle ground between allowing completely open, un-monitored borders and completely closing our borders. It should not be required to say that, but this is an age of extremism, cowardice and unfettered idiocy, making it necessary to state the obvious.

Second, there are two kinds of fear. One is rational fear. The people of Ukraine live with that every day. Their fear is well founded, because Vladimir Putin’s army is trying to kill them.

The other is irrational fear. It is based on nothing tangible or real, like the fear of dragons in the basement or a fear of immigrants coming to take your job.

Our country is filled to overflowing with fear. The odd thing is that we are not threatened by any war or famine or anything tangible. The only threat we face, the only fear that hangs in the air is the one we ourselves create and it is driven solely by our diabolical, irrational fears stoked by those who profit from stoking them. It drives us to hate our neighbors, to do violence against our country and our countrymen and to look for a new but false god to hold back the imaginary dragons we fear.

That kind of fear – irrational fear – is a terrible thing.

Finally, A Note From AOC to Elon Musk .  .  .

.  .  .  after Musk shared a right-wing, anti-immigration article and accused Dems of ‘importing voters’ to influence elections:

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.

    Click me

    JA


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

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