Fascism

Pictures of America


POST 1174

I’ll bet you remember those puzzles that asked you to identify what is missing from a picture. It might be a tree with a trunk that doesn’t touch the ground or a dog that’s missing a leg.  Here’s a visual example from the Way-Back machine.

What’s Missing From This Picture?

As you can see, there are an elderly lady and a pregnant lady standing in the aisle of this bus, while three young men sit in comfort, absorbed in their own worlds, oblivious to the needs of those less able. What is missing is chivalry. If you prefer less archaic terminology, what’s missing is just plain consideration for another person.

We suffer terribly from self-absorption and from a lack of empathy.* Those are drivers for cutting off Social Security and veterans’ healthcare. That’s how we are mindlessly able to turn off the supply of food and medical assistance intended for children living in desperate poverty.

Some who applaud the withholding of benefits from those in need often claim that providing assistance teaches people to be dependent. They seem to think that eliminating assistance will drive people to suddenly become independent, self-sufficient, tax paying Americans. They apparently have forgotten that some simply are not able to be independent. For those of us more fortunate, we worked and kicked into the piggy banks of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and are due their benefits. That’s the deal we all signed up for.

To be fair, food and healthcare going to non-Americans, like to starving, sick people in Africa, is different. It requires more from us. To support such programs requires that we have empathy for others, that we give more than a tiny damn for suffering fellow humans. But empathy seems to be not just in short supply, but is completely absent from those who now pull the levers of our government and in those who, with open eyes, voted for them.

So, the more encompassing answer to the “What’s Missing From This Picture?” question above is empathy. Sadly, even tragically, We The People have allowed enough of us to have been made into replicas of those three seated, self-absorbed bozos on the bus, willfully ignoring any consciousness about the weak legs of an old woman or the compromised balance and endurance of a pregnant woman.

So, for our empathy-less ones, I offer that the assistance we give to others is returned to us in the forms of good citizenship and diplomatic victories abroad. Those benefits should be easy to understand, because they’re self-serving and don’t require any empathy from us.

The picture of America doesn’t have to look like that.

Also from the Way-Back machine, we were shown pictures that had a collection of images and we were challenged to identify which image did not belong with the others. It might be a bowl of fruit that included a screwdriver or a kid in the batters box holding a broom. Here’s an example.

What Doesn’t Belong In This Picture?

We have a lot of things going on in America now that just don’t belong in the same picture as our Constitution or our sometimes squishy rules about justice. Manipulating citizen adults out of voting rights comes to mind.

In Florida in 2018 voters passed a referendum to make it possible for former offenders to vote once they had “paid their debt to society.” Then the extremists in control in Tallahassee twisted things to effectively negate the new citizen-decided rule. That’s much like gerrymandering and positioning polling places such that White voters only wait 20 minutes to vote, while Black people have to wait 8 hours. That doesn’t belong on our picture of America.

The Onion, of course.

Neither does grabbing people off the street and sending them to rendition sites without first accusing them of some wrongdoing and then giving them their day in court to contest the charges. It’s called “due process of law” and it’s owed to all “persons” (not just citizens). Denying due process of law is a violation of the 5th and 14th Amendments. We are violating them every day. That doesn’t belong on our picture of America, either.

The blanket firing of government workers, people who ensure that our food is safe, people who protect our nuclear stockpiles, people who monitor our rules and regulations to stop cheaters and more is a violation of our stated values, who we say we are, too.

The picture of America doesn’t have to look like that.

We might need those in charge to be brought to a 3rd grade classroom for a semester to show them what they were supposed to learn from those pictures they were shown long ago. What we do need for sure is for We The People to keep showing up demanding only what belongs in our picture of America and rejecting the rest.

It’s being claimed by some with very loud voices that this country is solely for Christian (although not necessarily doing what Jesus would do), straight, White men who like to tell you how to live. Were he alive now, Robert E. Lee might be one of them.

He was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Then he violated his oath, his sacred honor, to lead troops for the Confederacy against our country. Doesn’t that make him a traitor?

Doesn’t that make you wonder why the name of this traitor is on street signs all over the South and there are statues of him that are viewed with reverence by millions? Don’t you wonder at the celebration of abandoned integrity at all levels, especially at the top?

The picture of America doesn’t have to look like that.

For a frightening, maddening explanation of the hypocrisy and cruelty coming our way aimed squarely at our children,  read Catherine Rampell’s excellent piece, Donald Trump’s war on children. One more time: The picture of America doesn’t have to look like that.

Copyright Robert Reich. The chart of America doesn’t have to look this way.

From Robert Reich:

“Teaching is about getting students to reexamine whatever assumptions they carry into the classroom. It’s about provoking conversations, fostering dissent, and learning from one another even when we disagree on issues.”

Reich has been a teacher for 40 years and knows a bit about seeking to understand. Do you imagine that We The People could accept his challenge to his students to reexamine assumptioms? What if we sucked it up, took a breath and followed this teacher’s direction?

__________________________________________________

* “Empathy is the oxygen of democracy.” – Jon Meacham

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The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

Hegseth and Health


POST 1174

DUI Hegseth

Norm Ornstein hit the bulls eye with this:

Trump kakistocracy—government by the least competent

About which Joyce Vance goes on to say that the Trump kakistocracy

.  .  .  continues to harm everyday Americans and put our allies at risk. On that front, the dishonor prize again goes to Pete Hegseth, with reports revealing he shared sensitive national security information in yet another Signal chat on his personal phone—forwarding information about attacks in Yemen last month to his wife, [his] lawyer and [his] brother [none of whom has a security clearance], among others who should not have been privy to such sensitive details.

Sheila Markin comments that he did that

.  .  .  using a chat app that he had installed in his computer to get around the rule that cell phones were not allowed inside the [Defense Department] office.

Our DUI hire Sec/Def is far worse than the obvious international embarrassment that he is. He’s a threat to our immediate safety and to our long term security. We all would be far better off without this fool, but Trump doesn’t have the cojones to hire competent people or fire incompetent ones.

What About Your Health?

STAT is the excellent health and healthcare publication of The Boston Globe. Last week they posted a report of how Trump and his administration are systematically dismantling medicine and science, which will be felt acutely by We The People in the years to come. You better hope that the next pandemic skips you and that your young ones don’t get exposed to measles, polio, smallpox and the rest, because you probably won’t be able to get them vaccinated or cured.

Even if a new administration replaces Trump’s on January 20, 2029 and that it works at “warp speed” and isn’t hobbled by legacy Trumpian dystopian bureaucracy and ineptitude, it will take generations to repair the damage Trump is causing and to restore our healthcare systems. Read Day by day, how Trump is roiling science and health and pray you never need a cure or even get a diagnosis that isn’t routine, because research efforts nationwide are being cancelled. And thank your lucky stars if you never experience any form of dementia as you age, because ways to prevent and treat such decline won’t be getting developed.*

Pro-Life? Really?

I’ve written (here, here and here) about the murderous hypocrisy of self-labeled “pro-life” claimers, but let me do a short review.

You can’t be both pro-life and also refuse to fund rural hospitals, where so many newborns die

You can’t be both pro-life and cheer the elimination of food assistance for millions of children

You can’t be both pro-life and applaud cutting USAID assistance to millions of starving people

You can’t be both pro-life and pro-death penalty

You can’t be both pro-life and applaud the ending of medical research grants

You can’t be both pro-life and support the DOGE hobbling of Social Security into an impenetrable maze that leaves seniors financially shipwrecked

You can’t be both pro-life and applaud the rendition of hundreds to extermination prisons without so much as a whiff of evidence of any wrongdoing

You can’t be both pro-life and claim that everyone should be carrying a gun to stop bad guys

You can’t be both pro-life and in favor of cutting assistance to all the poor grannies

You can’t be both pro-life and support the ending of regulating polluters

You can’t be both pro-life and terminatethe  NOAA severe weather warning system

As you can see, pro-life is actually only pro-fetus. After birth, the pro-lifers set those kids adrift and don’t give a damn about them throughout the rest of their lives. If you support these anti-human actions and still claim to be pro-life, get over yourself and get a grip on reality.

Speaking Some More of Health

We at the societal and cultural level are not too good at looking forward beyond the immediate horizon. That, however, doesn’t mean that the somewhat more distant future won’t arrive. The future just beyond that immediate horizon carries grave danger for us, our children and our grandchildren. Other than stupid, unnecessary, self-destructive wars, our deteriorating climate is the most dangerous thing facing us, regardless of whether we choose to see that danger.

Watch Al Gore’s presentation to the San Francisco Climate Week gathering or read the text of his speech here. Gore doesn’t couch our current reality in terms of myopia, but that is exactly what the current administration is peddling. The muscular calls for more and more fossil fuel extraction and burning, the disbanding of FEMA, the refusal to see the ongoing disasters as the ever-escalating result of global warming that they are keep us from seeing what we are doing to our future generations.

Seeing clearly does not require perfect vision. It only requires paying attention. – Steve Schmidt

The Price of Idiocy

Photo credit: The Onion

There is no evidence to recommend discontinuing fluoridating drinking water. There is goo gobs of evidence showing that fluoride not only protects against tooth decay, but also can prevent various bacterial infections and even death. In the face of that incontrovertible evidence, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wants us to stop fluoridating our water. Brain worm, maybe?

He is famously an anti-vaxxer of the first order, brainlessly railing against the vaccines that prevent illness and suffering and save lives.

From Magical Thinking About a Miracle Mineral, by Zeynep Tufekci,

. . . measles [is] one of the world’s most contagious – and vaccine-preventable – diseases

It has been a favorite target for Kennedy, who instead recommends quack cures, like

. . . “aerosolized budesonide,” an asthma drug that actual medical experts say is not relevant to measles, and clarithromysin, an antibiotic that experts don’t mention for this purpose.

Okay, Kennedy really does have a brain worm and a lifetime of being a special boy only because his daddy really was special. More significant are the people who give his uneducated recommendations serious consideration. Unvaccinated kids have died from measles recently and

there are now more than 700 known measles cases in at least 8 states.

Which is why you continue to thank your mom for dragging you into your pediatrician’s office when you were a kid to get the MMR vaccine. Also, the polio vaccine, the smallpox vaccine and more. Too bad the moms of those kids who died recently from measles and those on a path to die didn’t protect their kids.

The beauty of idiocy caused by listening to ignorant, celebrity know nothings is the relief from the hard work of having to think clearly and critically. But, of course, nothing is free. Sometimes the price for idiocy is the life of your kid.

Kermit, Big Bird and Miss Piggy

Trump has signed an executive order defunding PBS and NPR. They are the most recent targets of his reprehensible retributions, the unlawful tantrums of a tyrant toddler. Here’s a pic sent in by pal Jim Nathan to give you an idea of where things stand. You might want to respond to one of those email appeals from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, rather than reflexively pressing the Delete button. Or click here.

__________________________________________

* Recall that in 2020 Trump The SuperSpreader contracted Covid-19. He was rushed to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, sitting close to Secret Service guys in The Beast so as to be sure to infect them. At Walter Reed he was treated with remdesivir, dexamethasone and more, all breakthrough treatments developed with the aid of medical grants from the federal government. Now that Trump no longer has Covid he’s cancelling funding for medical research because, hey, he himself doesn’t need new miracle drugs.

 

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The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

The Lede


POST 1173

Here’s the Lede

Our Constitution’s Peril Is Not Now Nor Was It Ever About Trump.

America’s real enemy is the fascists – call them ultra-fat cats or oligarchs if you prefer. They are the home grown terrorists, the diabolical evil ones, working for over 40 years to steal our country away from us.
.

Trump is the front man, the warm-up act, the circus sideshow barker, the Distractor-in-Chief. Trump is just a tool for the fascists.

The extremists are directing Trump to cripple our government, our markets, our international relationships, our leadership of the free world and the maintenance of our values that have protected peace and international relations for 80 years. Tens of thousands of our people who make the trains run on time, who find cures for killer diseases and who protect us from unsafe food have been fired, leaving nobody to stand guard. They have kicked aside all who used to be our allies and snuggled up with bad guy dictators.

Now, in plain violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, the Trump administration has militarized our southern border from New Mexico to California, making it legal for our military to detain, arrest and imprison migrants and even our native born citizens, the ones guaranteed citizenship by the 14th Amendment. It’s essentially making the U.S. Army into a Gestapo. All the Constitutional protections and our laws shielding us from overreaching, crushing governmental power are being shredded by this cruel administration of extremists.* No Americans intentionally voted for these calamities.

“I don’t want everyone to vote.” “As a matter of fact, our [Republican] leverage in the elections quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Paul Weyrich, co-founder of The Heritage Foundation and proud proponent of voting suppression.

You can find the plan for the ruination of America in the Project 2025 handbook, painstakingly crafted by anti-American geniuses over the course of decades. They are a very talented cabal of megalomaniacs, people inspired to treachery by the likes of Paul Weyrich (link through and watch the 40 second clip). He’s the guy who told us plainly that he didn’t want all Americans to vote – only the ones who would vote his way – Republican. His political descendants are stationed all about our country now, constantly creating voter suppression everywhere. This diabolical plan was designed specifically for the destruction of your values and your freedom.**

Trump has claimed that he knows nothing about Project 2025. Given that he is reputed to be incapable of reading anything that doesn’t have pictures and that the document is 922 pages long, he probably has not read it. But he is being fed instructions from it by the billionaire fat cats and manipulators who wrote it, the people who want to rule the world, who think they are entitled to steal your power and your rights.

Trump cannot even spell “strategy” or “plan.” Creating such things is far beyond his abilities. But he is the very best at several things:

  1. Getting attention, promoting himself, grabbing the focus by being outrageous and thereby distracting you from his wrongdoing
  2. Demonizing opponents
  3. Lying instantaneously, making stuff up, like claiming that the price of eggs is down 92% – whatever fantasy or lie suits his purpose in the moment
  4. Never admitting mistakes and never backing down, even to the point of absurdity

The billionaires and the sneaky pols crafted this Project 2025 plan for domination and they have the perfect shill for their task: Donald Trump, their useful idiot. When their absolute power is firmly established, they will discard him like leftover fish gone bad.

That is the plan behind the seemingly self-destructive stuff of the past 100 days. The destruction makes perfect sense in the context of the grandest larceny ever committed.

If the fat cat dictator wannabes get their way, the complete loss of your freedom will be the result.

Once More: Here’s the Lede
.

Our Constitution’s Peril Is Not Now Nor Was It Ever About Trump

America’s real enemy is the fascists – call them ultra-fat cats or oligarchs if you prefer. They are the home grown terrorists, the diabolical evil ones, working for over 40 years to steal our country away from us.
.
Action

You know what to do to fight this. Here it is spelled out for you by Adam Kinzinger’s Country First in just 1 minute, 38 seconds.

And listen to Gov. Tim Walz’s State of the State address on April 23 (start at 2:17, unless you want to listen to the complete list of attendees).

Perhaps you’re both discouraged over the spinelessness and hypocrisy of Republicans and dismayed over the apparent lack of strength and direction – the wimpiness – of Democrats. Walz has clarity about all that and you need to hear it now. The only disappointment in watching this presentation is seeing the Minnesota Republican legislators refusing to applaud, even when Walz announced things that everyone likes, like that crime is down. That brain-free, hyper-partisan behavior is part of the Project 2025 scheme.

There was a time in America when Democrats stood tall for We The People, when they were bold in demanding fairness and they continuously banged the drum of decency for and from everyone. But their strength has been diluted into watery pablum and they insist upon refusing to come together for what they all know is right. They’ve made themselves into a force that can be knocked down by a simple tap on the forehead.

There was a time in America when Republicans were the big flag wavers, the most muscular defenders of liberty, the thumpiest of Constitution thumpers. They had the courage to stand strong against what was un-American. But those people are long gone, replaced by others who cannot even recognize an elephant. No matter how much lipstick you use and regardless of how you dress up today’s Republican pig, it’s still a pig.

America’s real enemy is the fascist terrorist thieves and those Americans too chicken to stand up to them.

____________________________________________

* Long time friend Jim Nathan is the co-founder of Floridians for Democracy, an organization dedicated to protection of our democracy. Read his clear message about the destruction of rights and the norms you count on here.

** Read David A. Graham’s The Project 2025 Presidency in The Atlantic.

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Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

The Constitution Train


POST 1172

First Stop: Your First Amendment

What if that foundational list of 5 protections were vanished by the flick of a Sharpie? What if a morally compromised, legally powerful Trump toady took aim at you and hauled you into court for not being nice enough to Trump? Or for voicing a contrary opinion? Or for walking the streets wearing a tattoo? Or for writing a book – any book – that Trump doesn’t like? Or for gathering with others in peaceful protest? Or for you having come from another country and not being sufficiently White? Or just because Trump doesn’t like you?

This is not hyperbole, nor is it fantasy. The undermining of our First Amendment protections – guarantees, really – is happening every day in America.

Your first stop on the The Constitution Train is Michael Cohen’s post, Democracy Dies With the First Amendment.

Second Stop: The North Carolina Canary

North Carolina has a proud hypocritical history of using law and the state constitution to undermine democracy and steal people’s rights. The case in question is special in the same way that Kari Lake refuses to honor the will of the voters in Arizona is special. Everything is, of course, all about her. In these cases they are trying to change the rules of the game after the game is over by suppressing the votes of a targeted group in much the same way as in Bush v. Gore.

There was an election last November for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court contested by sitting Justice Allison Riggs and Court of Appeals judge Jefferson Griffin. Riggs won by a very slim margin and that should have been that, but, of course, it wasn’t – not in this age of alternative realities, dishonest manipulation and the happy theft of people’s rights. Griffin refused to concede and instead challenged about 60,000 votes in mainly Democrat voting areas. Funny how he didn’t challenge votes in mainly Republican areas.

There was a recount. Then there was another recount. Griffin lost all three times.

Now the contest is down to his challenging 1,700 military and overseas ballots for no justifiable reason. In fact, he wants to apply new requirements for voting – after the election! – in order to invalidate the 1,700. He only wants to invalidate enough votes to take that seat on the Supreme Court and dispense MAGA non-justice in a proud un-American destruction of our democracy,

It’s been 178 days – six months – since the election and it still isn’t settled because of Griffin’s post hoc attempted manipulations.

There are loser candidates like them all around our country – all Republicans – claiming stolen elections and doing everything they can, legal or illegal, to disenfranchise voters, to steal freedom and rights from voters. In other words, Riggs’ fight is your fight, because the MAGA thieves are planning to take away your Constitutional right to vote, too. That’s why North Carolina is the canary in a democracy mine.

Curiosity: Is Jefferson Griffin named for the treasonous president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis? Just wondering.

Third Stop: From STAT, April 22:

The Trump administration is stepping up its efforts to wield the federal government’s scientific purse strings as leverage in a broader policy war . . . the National Institutes of Health will soon prohibit new grants from being awarded to institutions that . . .  maintain programs dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The news follows the cancellation of numerous grants and funding opportunities targeted toward researchers of historically marginalized backgrounds, as well billions of dollars in research grants previously awarded to Ivy League schools including Harvard and Columbia.

This is what happens when political schemes and agendas dominate healthcare. It’s like brainlessly and without any evidence declaring vaccines do harm and don’t work or making galacticly stupid claims about autism, like curing it by June. Stupid stuff. Just put a sensationalist moron in charge and watch people die, like those Texas kids who died from measles.

Fourth Stop: Remedies

From Thom Hartmann on April 21:

Senator [Chris] Murphy’s warning carries particular weight: “I still believe we can stop [the Trump madness],” he says. His prescription includes institutional solidarity, mass mobilization, and political courage. These steps aren’t just wishful thinking: history shows they work when deployed with determination.

Definitions:

Institutional integrity – think: law firms joining in a mutual protection pact – same with universities,

Mass mobilization – that’s us taking to the streets and supporting the righteous ones battling those who are working to destroy our democracy,.

Political Courage – that’s legislators like Chris Murphy, AOC, Bernie, Cory Booker, Seth Moulton, Eric Swalwell, Jasmine Crockett, Elizabeth Warren and more. It’s our job to have their backs.

Fifth Stop: The Plan*

From MeidasTouch, April 22:

. . . yesterday I interviewed former President Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who shared with me his thoughts on Trump’s failures.

Jake’s take—and I agree—is that Trump and his regime don’t ever have a plan.

They wake up each day with the sole goal of winning the news cycle, with no long-term plan or even a plan at all about winning on the issue. It’s about rage-baiting and getting attention.

Recall that this is a president who hosted a fake, fixed “reality” TV show as though it was actual reality. He’s a master only of rage-baiting and getting attention. He has no plan beyond the current moment of “Look at me!”

Okay, he does have a plan: to be King Donald, a supplicant of Vladimir Putin.

Last Stop: Pray It Isn’t The End Of The Line

Last week we learned of yet more national security failures by our incompetent, TUI (“Texting Under the Influence”) hire, SecDef Pete Hegseth.

If an employee of Kentucky Fried Chicken were to leak their secret fried chicken formula, that person would immediately be fired. What Hegseth does is far more consequential, in that he compromises our national security by leaking confidential information – top secret information – with people who do not even have a security clearance. He does so over an insecure medium where adversaries can pick it up easily.

And he still has his job. Your KFC is secure, but your nation is not. Sleep well, knowing that Pete Hegseth is standing guard.

All Along The Track: The Cruelty Is The Point

To put all this and more into clear perspective, you must watch Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles interview with Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE). As you listen to his factual account of what is actually happening to our people and to our country, compare what you hear to your own values and to your notion of the America you believe in. Think about what the cruelty is leading us to.

Example: Encouraged by our violence and cruelty inciting president, there was a new record of antisemitic acts in 2024, with one happening every hour, 24/7, 365. We’re number 1. Thanks, Mr. President.

________________________________________

*  See my post this Wednesday, April 30 for an explanation of what the bad guys are planning for us.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


Lessons


POST 1170

Good News First

I subscribe to the posts of some very insightful people and I’ve noticed something recently: their posts are getting longer. They have a lot to say, now that the shock of the last election has worn off and there is some good news happening.

Two weeks ago we had the April 5 demonstrations and over 5 million people showed up loud, strong, demanding and defiant. Roughly 1.5% of all Americans were in the streets that day. And yesterday a whole lot of people clogged the streets and sidewalks again in 700 “No Kings” rallies across the country.

After the election most heads were hung in despair and the question being asked was, “What can we do?” No answers were offered, other than pleadings from politicians to send them money. Now people are up and out and even some Republicans are making noises as though they have re-discovered that they have spines (gasp!).

Bernie and AOC are all over America with their “Fighting Oligarchy!” tour and drawing huge crowds – 12,000 in shocking red Idaho! 30,000 in ruby red Folsom, CA! 36,000 in LA! Tens of thousands in Utah – UTAH! Thousands stood in the rain to get into the venue in 95% White Iowa. 34,000 showed up in Detroit. It turns out that Bernie is right:

People are sick and tired of being sick and tired!
.

Change for the better is in the air, even in the presence of the stink of Trump’s grab for a crown.

Trump is doing us all a favor by being the very worst version of himself, lying, breaking laws, violating the Constitution and, most helpfully, doing things that impact We The People negatively so that even his voters are starting to feel the pain. Stealing money from granny and our veterans is enough to enrage anyone, so pray that he does ever-worse things. Then it won’t be 5 million people in the streets. It will be 50 million of us declaring that there is no American king, that America keeps its promises to its citizens and to the world and that the rule of law is supreme.

So, get out and do your part so that you’ll never be ruled by a brainless, Trump appointed, ass kissing tyrant; never be renditioned by Trump’s Brown Shirts wearing ski masks and sending you to a “shit-hole country;” so that you’ll never be smeared by his Eichmann, Stephen Miller; and never be attacked by his IRS.

Even President Obama is speaking out. Have a look/listen to his presentation at Hamilton College via Meidastouch network. For the full 1:14 conversation, click here. I so very much miss that man.

Lessons

From Hold Tight by Harlan Coben:

Why do humans never really learn the lessons we are supposed to? What is in our makeup, in fact, that draws us to that which should sicken us?

From Ron Fournier’s Substack post, Yes, Senator: In Trump’s America, We Are All Afraid

We feel for you, Senator Murkowski.

It must be scary to serve under a party leader capable of turning the full power of the presidency against you and unleashing waves of angry, potentially violent, supporters upon you.

“We are all afraid,” you told a conference in Anchorage. “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

You’re right, senator. It’s not right. If you are scared — a member of President Trump’s own party with a family legacy in Alaska politics — can you imagine what it’s like to be a Democrat?

Or a reporter?

Or an immigrant?

Or a child of an immigrant?

Or a non-white person?

Or a woman?

Or a married gay couple?

Or a transgender man or woman?

Or a person on the autism spectrum?

Or a small business person dependent on imports?

Or a starving child dependent on U.S. assistance?

Or a Ukrainian?

Or a federal employee?

Or a college president?

Or a judge?

Or a lawyer?

Or anybody else whose lives and livelihoods our president threatens at a whim?

Yes, Senator. We should all be afraid.

Senator, you signed up for the brainless, violent threats you’re receiving and your failure to stand firm against the evil of extremists for so many years has allowed and encouraged the very threats you fear. You know right from wrong. Try doing right more often. That’s a lesson you should have learned a long time ago.

From my Jeez Puleeze! Journal:

 As Harry Truman (sort of) said, “If you can’t stand the heat, Senator Murkowski, get out of the kitchen.”

From Steve Schmidt, also singling out Murkowski:

[America’s Republican elites] are worthless in a fight over principle because the only principle that they truly care about is self-interest.

The thing is, we’ve seen this before in Stalin’s and Putin’s Russia, in Hitler’s Germany, in Orban’s Hungary and in so many more places where people failed to stand up to bad guys. Then the bad guys, the homegrown terrorists, turned their violence on We The People.

We’ve seen the hatred and violence in our own country in the Civil War, the American Bund, the KKK, in today’s White supremacists and the creeps who have threatened Sen. Murkowski and Georgia poll worker Ruby Freeman. And don’t forget the American Nazis, who are proclaiming that Hitler should have finished the job. That’s the kind of people we’ll get if we fail to stand up to the bad guys today.

We must remember the lessons.

Trump is building his authoritarianism one airplane renditioning of legal – legal! – immigrants at a time. So far most of the courts (but not those in Texas) are following the law. The Supreme Court, except for (guess who?) Thomas and Alito, seems to be able to locate the Constitution on a clear day.* We knew this hateful attack on our values (the ones we proclaim but sometimes ignore) was coming because Trump slimed us with his promises of cruelty. We were shown the lessons repeatedly and, as Coben said, “humans never really learn the lessons we are supposed to .  .  . “

.  .  .  until it’s so late that the price to restore our country is enormous. Trump told us what he was going to do, the cruelty, the meanness, the lawlessness, the violations of our Constitution, and still nearly half the voters, the people Trump fools some of the time and those he fools all of the time, voluntarily forgot the lessons. And now he’s SOLD Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia and about 230 more legal immigrants to an El Salvador tyrant who stuffed them into his concentration and extermination camp.

We are all afraid. We’re monstrously pissed off, too. We know what to do to solve the problem. There are millions of us in the streets, almost ready to bring pitchforks and torches.

Yet again.

There is a major election coming up in 564 days. If you aren’t working on the solution, you’re part of the problem.

Courage – It’s Contagious!

____________________________________________

* And yet the Court recently agreed to hear a Trump case seeking to end birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment begins,

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Is there anything unclear about that?

Yet the Court is willing to hear arguments against it!

Do you remember your civics class where you were taught that the only way to change the Constitution is through a new amendment? Yet these justices are willing to hear a case based on just an executive order that would change the Constitution with only a cockamamie extremist law, not an amendment. What lesson have these justices forgotten?

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The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

How Does Trump Hate You? Let Me Count The Ways*


POST 1169

Crushing Us With Hatred

It isn’t just Trump. He’s assembled a gang of fascist tool-boys and -girls into a hit mob, abhorrents like Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, Kash Patel, Hillbilly Vance, Steve Bannon and so many more.

He’s doing everything he can to tear down our country, to trash the things that make us strong, our safety in a very dangerous world, our belief in ourselves, our health, our economic resilience, the rule of law, truth, justice and the American way.

“You can’t love your country if you hate half the people in it,” Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) said recently. A version of that – Aaron Sorkin’s words – was said by fictional character Sydney Ellen Wade in the 1995 film The American President:

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

Do you have that patience? Neither do I. But these haters are using their power to do hateful things to millions of Americans. Trump makes his hatred plain to see. His insane need for retribution drives the meanness and destruction that he visits upon Americans, done under the flimsiest claim of patriotism with the flourish of a slimy circus sideshow barker. But his reality show isn’t reality. It’s just a cruelty show of gladiatorial murders.

What he does isn’t patriotism, because nobody can both love America and hate Americans.

Boiling Blood

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was in the U.S. legally for many years. He is a sheet metal apprentice, is married to a U.S. citizen and has 3 children. He has never been accused of any crime, much less convicted. He was working to build his American dream. Then the Trump thugs swooped in, snatched him up, threw him in a white van and

SOLD HIM

to an El Salvador dictator.

Our courts, including the Supreme Court, have ordered that Garcia be returned for various reasons, like due process, like that the Trumpies have admitted that it was an error to grab him, like that everything about this stinks, including Trump’s claim that he can disappear American citizens the same way.

Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers are making America a joke before the world with their idiotic claims that they can’t bring Garcia back to this country. Read Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s report of this Trump-caused American tragedy. It will make your blood boil  because of the hatred Trump has for America and for Americans.

Transcript of phone call between President Trump and Abrego Garcia’s children **
.

Trump: The only reason I’m on this call is because the failing New York Times leaked a story that it would happen. So, what’s your question for your president?

Garcia children (heard sniffling): We’re so sad. We miss our daddy. Why did you take him away from us?

Trump: Look, your daddy is a very dangerous man and I as your president must protect the American people.

Garcia children: But you said you made a mistake, that he shouldn’t have been taken away.

Trump: That doesn’t matter. He’s in a place where he can’t hurt anyone now and they are very tough there. Very tough. They will deal with him toughly and he’ll stay there because no prisoner ever gets out. Plus, I negotiated a great deal with President whatshisname to make those immigrants disappear. Forget about your daddy. He’s never coming back.

Garcia children (wailing in sorrow): That’s not fair. You’re so mean to him. Bring our daddy back to us.

Trump: I have tariffs to announce, plus I’ve been told that a love letter from Kim Jung Un just arrived for me and it’s very complimentary. He likes me a lot, so this call is over.

The Ultimate Cheat

Trump is and will continue to use defiance of the courts over the Garcia case and others to distract us from his tariffs and the destruction of our economy. It’s his current bright, shiny object deployed so that we don’t see the full truth of his law breaking.

He’s neutered Congress***, so now it’s full speed ahead to

DEFY THE COURTS AND DECLARE HIS KINGSHIP!

.

From Meidas+ Touch, April 14:

Donald Trump met with El Salvador’s autocratic president, Nayib Bukele, and used the occasion not to promote diplomacy or human rights—but to spread Russian propaganda, mock the Supreme Court, and flirt with the idea of sending American citizens to prison camps in El Salvador. Yes, you read that right.

Trump openly said he would defy a Supreme Court ruling ordering the return of Kilmer Abrego Garcia—an innocent man the Trump regime deported by “mistake” to a gulag in El Salvador. When asked whether he’d help bring Abrego Garcia home, Trump sneered, attacked the press, and had Pam Bondi peddle blatant lies about Abrego Garcia’s legal status.

Like I said: blood boiling. Yours, mine and everyone’s, as Trump wipes his muddy Gucci loafers on our Constitution.

Winning

“We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning.” So said the reality show huckster.

Are you sick of winning yet? Here’s a short list of what you’ve lost:

– money – gobs of it, and you’ll lose way more as tariffs ramp up to spike the price of everything you buy and the sinking stock and bond markets trash your investments

– the privacy of your IRS information – all of it. Privacy is required by law, but Trump don’ obey no stinking laws.

– access to Social Security

– the rule of law

– world class healthcare – poof, gone!

– safety for our judges, legislators, administrators, commenters – anyone who Trump decides he doesn’t like. He wants us to live in fear.

– preparedness and protection from pandemics and severe weather

– the trust of the world

So, no, you’re not sick of winning.

There is no hyperbole in saying that we are a voluntarily failing nation. Led by Trump and his fascist goons, this country is bringing down the world, leading our former allies to circle the drain with us.

All that and more are why millions of us have taken to the streets and are looking for a political Moses to lead us out of Pharaoh Trump bondage. Perhaps one day the word “winning” will justly apply to us.

Stupid Spend

They won’t say exactly how much they charge for a sub-orbital flight in Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin spacecraft, but it’s rumored to be in the millions of dollars. It costs $150,000 just to apply. On its first passenger flight someone paid $28 million in an online auction for the 10 – 11 minute flight. Let’s do some math.

There have been roughly 52 passengers on Blue Origin spacecraft. Let’s guess that an average price paid for the flights is $2 million. That brings us to a very conservative total of $104,000,000 that has been shelled out for 11 minutes on a rocket. What else might have been done with that $104,000,000 had the passengers been more philanthropically inclined?

– 962 students could have gone to a 4-year, in-state public university and left with a diploma and no student debt.

– 104,000,000 children could have been vaccinated against polio.

– 47 military field hospitals could have been set up in Ukraine.

– 104,000 desperately poor children in Mississippi, Louisiana and West Virginia (our poorest states) could have gone to summer camp for 2 weeks.

– 693 Habitat for Humanity houses could have been built.

Instead, a bunch of very rich people went for an over-the-top carnival ride for 11 minutes.

_____________________________________________________

* Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning for abusing the title of her beautiful love poem, How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) for the purpose of exposing today’s ugly reality.

** My fabrication. It means nothing, but it felt good to write that.

*** It would be kind of cool if a bunch of Republicans in Congress suddenly discovered they each has a spine and together they can stand up to Trump.

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The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

Clueless In DC


POST 1168

Tariffs

Click for credits

Start with what we know.

Tariffs are a tax on goods imported to this country. They are paid by the importers. That money goes to the U.S. government. The importers raise prices to their customers, like retailers, to cover their extra costs. Those retailers then raise the selling price of the imported goods to cover their increased cost. When we consumers buy the imported goods we do so at significantly inflated prices.

Turning that explanation around, we consumers pay a higher price to the retailer, who passes that along to the importer who pays it to the government. The only thing needed to complete the explanation is what government does with that extra money that came from you and me.

What we know is that Trump intends to extend his massive tax cut program for rich people that began in his first administration. He may tack on even more tax reductions, almost exclusively to the benefit of very rich people and corporations. The money they no longer will pay to fund the government has to come from somewhere and we are that somewhere.

In other words, it is yet another massive transfer of wealth – in the trillions of dollars – from us to rich people. Trump is crashing our government and fleecing you and me.

From Michael de Adder:

3-D Chess

As we watch the most clueless man ever to occupy the Oval Office — and that’s really saying something — his supporters still insist that, when it comes to tariffs, Donald J. Trump is playing 3-D chess. The phrase “playing three-dimensional chess” implies a level of strategic genius so advanced that the rest of us, mere mortals stuck on the regular chessboard, just can’t grasp it. But Trump doesn’t even seem to know that a tariff is a tax — something most people learn in ninth-grade social studies. It’s a fee on goods entering the country, paid by the citizen, not the government. How can someone be playing upper-level trade strategy when they don’t even know what a tariff is?

 

From Lawrence O’Donnell, April 9, 2025, referring to the Trump administration’s boundless idiocies, cruelties and cluelessness:

It’s the bonfires of the stupidities.

Stock Prediction of the Week

Tesla stock price has been hammered by Trump’s tariffpocolypse, slipping from $428 per share to as low as $222. UBS cut its TSLA price target to $190 and has a sell rating on the shares. In other words, in just 2 months the value of Elon Musk’s Tesla stock has been cut in half. But that isn’t the big story.

If/when the stock drops as predicted by UBS to $190 Musk will have an enormous opportunity to regain ownership of an even greater percentage of the company and do so on the cheap. And when Trump further plotz-potchkies with market forces, the price may drop still further. Plus, as Musk continues to rampage through the government, ruining the lives of workers and abandoning all Americans, he’s sure to become even more reviled, killing sales of his vehicles, with a resultant further drop in stock price. Then he can buy back his company – how is it said? – on the really cheap.

And that’s the basic mechanics of last week’s market manipulation and likely insider trading stimulated by Trump’ post. From CNBC:

At 9:37 a.m. ET [April 9], just minutes after the opening bell, Trump posted on Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” That post ended with the letters “DJT,” which is both the president’s initials and the ticker symbol for Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology, in which he holds a majority stake.

Theoretically, anyone who bought into the market that minute on Trump’s urging netted a big return. Stocks shot up in a historic reversal in afternoon trading after Trump announced a walkback on some tariffs, a stark turn after his April 2 announcement of new import taxes torpedoed the market.

Too bad you didn’t have billions of dollars to gamble like that, courtesy of Trump’s market manipulation.

Dumbass Comment of the Week

(Tip of the hat to David Corn of Mother Jones for the borrowed title.)

So many contestants, so few awards .  .  .

This week’s winner is King Dumbass himself from his spewing on April 11, insisting that his trade war with much of the world is great – like nothing anybody has ever seen.

“We are doing really well on our TARIFF POLICY. Very exciting for America, and the World!!! It is moving along quickly. DJT.” *

Policy? Seriously?

Righteous Deportations – At Last You’re Safe From Frogs

From Masha Gessen, New York Times, April 6 in America’s Police State Has Arrived:

The Russian scientist was bringing in frog embryos that the Department of Homeland Security says she did not declare properly.

She was arrested and perhaps deported. Gessen went on to say,

.  .  .  we are in territory described by the Russian saying, “Give us a person and [ICE will] find the infraction.”

This was not just another ICE raid by masked, unidentified thugs, aimed at people holding valid visas.

Said Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, just back from playing dress-up for a photo-op of her brandishing an automatic rifle pointed at an ICE agent’s head, “This was the righteous protection of the homeland from an invasion by a stealthy Venezuelan gang of frogs trying to bring this great nation to its knees. Our excellent ICE Swamp Stingers caught ’em in the embryo stage, immediately revoked their work permits and put them on the next C-130 rendition plane bound for El Salvador. They were lucky they weren’t treated like I treated my puppy.” Then she flashed a smile, showing her excellent new teeth and once again thanked her dentists by name.

She went on to say that the frogs have now hatched and have been incarcerated in El Salvador’s maximum security gulag. It was unnecessary to shave their heads, because, she said, “Neither tadpoles nor frogs have hair, but we confirmed that President Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez of El Salvador made sure that every one of those undocumented amphibians was perp-hopped, heads down, into the darkest, dampest corner of the basement of that torture prison.”

Then Noem squinted menacingly, saying, “Now let’s see if some activist, woke, frog hugging judge tries to return them to our homeland. We’ll just ignore him. He can croak, for all we care.”

Meanwhile, reports Gessen,

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has bragged to reporters about revoking the legal status of upward of 300 people [and an unknown number of frogs] and promised there would be more: “We’re looking every day for these lunatics,” said Rubio.

Rubio proudly announced that the visa revocations of students, biomedical scientists, Canadians in Canada, amphibians and other “lunatics” were not announced in advance of incarcerations and that he didn’t know if the frogs were Venezuelan gang frogs. “But it doesn’t matter,” he said, “because they had gang tattoos. and none of them was wearing a MAGA hat.”

When asked for a comment on these deportations without due process, Kermit the frog merely ribbited sadly, saying, “This isn’t the American pond I grew up in.”

_____________________________________________

* Actually, there was more dumbass to Trump’s dumbass quote, but you get the picture.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

Dumb


POST 1167

Having To Admit: It’s The Reality, Stupid

Here is the opening stanza of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’.

Come gather ’round people wherever you roam And admit that the waters around you have grown. And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin’, And you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone, For the times they are a-changin’.

When that song was written, most believed it was a message to the establishment that had us caught up in the Viet Nam War. We wanted them to know that the new generation wasn’t just like them, that we wouldn’t blindly follow their orders, that the times had changed. Now times have changed far more.
.
Now it’s the establishment that has changed, this time into a bullet train speeding to the end of the America we know and want. That’s why we, you and I, better start swimmin’ or we’ll sink like a stone. That’s what we did last Saturday all across the nation – HANDS OFF!
.
Dumb – Chapter 1: It’s Their Fault; It’s Ours To Fix
  • I wax and wane in my fury at Trump voters. Sometimes I’m more placid, understanding and patient. Other times I want to saw heads off bodies. Here’s a link to a fine explainer for why fury is so often at maximum wax.
  • What explains that okay-ness for so many with Trump’s awful? How come they have crushed our decency and our values, leaving room for hatred and mouth foaming rage to grow and flourish in a dystopian swamp fountain of hypocrisy, lies and cruelty?

Trump’s behavior, his bullying and vomiting of vitriol, has unleashed the anger and frustrations built over years within a lot of Americans, the feelings of resentment and betrayal. He’s tacitly given permission for people to leave their decency behind them and to mimic his bullying, his cruelty and his constant lying. He’s told people that it’s good to be bad. He’s shown that it’s okay and even powerful to obey their worst angels in a constant orgy of brutality.

So sorry they feel that way, but frankly, my dear, most of the time I don’t give a damn about them. Nevertheless, it’s reality and only we can fix it.

Dumb – Chapter 2: Gargantuan Dumb
If you need a thorough explanation of our dumb, watch Richard Wolff’s explainer here. He speaks quite slowly, so you may want to click on the Settings button and speed up the playback. Regardless, you’ll come away with better clarity about our dumb.
.
And read what Hillary Clinton has to say in her essay, How Much Dumber Will This Get? about our gargantuan national dumb, the inept leadership that is incrementally making our nation sink like a stone – things like the national security disaster that is Signal Gate. That, in part, is what the national rallies on Saturday were about and it’s why you showed up.
.

Here’s an excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson’s March 30 comments:

Both Trump and Hegseth have made it their goal to purge the United States of what they call “Marxism” and what Hegseth calls “woke sh*t.” [They rail] against the racial, gender, and religious diversity that Americans have embraced since World War II. That means taking the government the country has built over the past 80 years down to the ground and rebuilding it as they imagine it was before, with men like them in charge.

The Trump regime is the result of at least 45 years of Republican rhetoric that undermined the idea of a government that worked for the good of everyone by claiming that such a government was “socialism” or “Marxism.”

Dumb – Chapter 3: Impact On You
Pick your favorite words: dumb, evil, destructive, un-American, cruel, delusional, deceitful, treasonous, criminal – there are lots of accurate descriptors for what these tyrants are doing. What would be epically dumb, though, would be for us to tolerate that destruction of the United States of America. Here are some examples of that dumb.
.
There is the dumbing down of our public health, even as measles infects its way across the nation and Ebola does the same in Africa. Good thing pandemics can’t cross oceans, right? So let’s shut down our public health expertise.
.

We have things like stupid, counter-productive tariffs making life unaffordable for millions. And soon everything will cost much more and small businesses will go bankrupt.

There is the betrayal of giving away your private, personal information to Musk and his evil flying tech monkeys.

There is the giving of tax cuts to people who are so rich that generations into the future their families can’t ever run out of money, even as millions of We The People suffer.

We proudly have a Russia suck-up useful idiot in charge of our national security. What could possibly go wrong?

There’s the undermining of the education of our children at a time when they are quickly slipping behind their peers in other countries.

Fewer than half of our adults can name the three branches of government and only about a quarter can name our First Amendment rights. Read the Annenberg School’s report. One in eight Americans can’t name our first president (hint: cherry tree). Whatever happened to our civics education? Perhaps we can teach it in the streets.

Dumb – Chapter 4

From Adam Kinzinger’s Country First post of April 3, the day after Trump’s fantasy “liberation day:”

    • In 2018, during the first Trump administration, a steep tariff was imposed on foreign-made washing machines. The result?
    • The price of laundry equipment in the U.S. jumped by 34%, far outpacing inflation. Why?.
    • Because when tariffs reduce competition, American manufacturers often raise prices too — and consumers pay the price.
    • Now, this administration is claiming that tariffs will bring back American manufacturing. But we’ve run that experiment, too. During the first Trump Administration, when tariffs were introduced (at a smaller level than now), the U.S. lost manufacturing jobs and businesses. [all emphasis original)
    • How much more will we tolerate?

Actually, it’s more than dumb; it’s sinister. It’s catastrophic. It’s willfully ignorant, cruel and voluntarily self-defeating; hence we employ the graphic to the right once again.

The shoe represents the United States of America and the hand represents those we elected or who were appointed to administer our government. They are working day and night to destroy our government, our culture, our values, our nation – everything – and replace them with a dictatorship run by people who are not you. If they succeed, you will forevermore be a nothing in the country that once was yours.

If we continue down this dumb path, sick people who could have been saved will die. People who could have been whole will be permanently debilitated. People who could have been financially comfortable will barely eek out subsistence. People for whom the future could have been bright will instead live in hopelessness. And We The People will exist only at the pleasure of a dictator and his thugs, at all times under threat of rendition for no wrongdoing. And we’ll have a nation only as long as foreign powers allow us to exist.

All of that dumb and more are what is growing our personal and national anxiety into active resistance, as well as our impatience for Democrats to at last push back.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

We Want


POST 1163

How Can Democrats Not Get This?

Reported by history Professor Heather Cox Richardson in her post of March 22, quoting Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME) in 1950, speaking in opposition to the fascist smear campaign being conducted by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI):

“I do not want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear,” she said. “As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist. They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.”

Senator Smith ended with a warning: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”

Read Sen. Smith’s words again, now imagining a traditional Republican (if any are left) standing in the well of the Senate today speaking those words.

It feels good to hear of someone standing up to the fascist bully, right? What follows is in stark contrast to the courage of Sen. Smith.

From Jennifer Rubin in her Contrarian post of March 24, Cowardice and Capitulation Stain the Legacy of Once-Esteemed Mega Law Firm

[Law firm] Paul Weiss joins the list of institutions and individuals with ample resources to defend themselves, who nevertheless have refused to stand up for justice in the face of MAGA intimidation.

Chuck Schumer caved in to MAGA, too. He claimed that agreeing to the abhorrent Continuing Resolution that gave Trump everything he wants to destroy our democracy was better than voting it down. He said that if the CR were voted down, Trump could claim all the same things by fiat.

All together: “HUH?“

When courage for the fight was needed, Schumer caved.

And check out this AP headline:

ABC agrees to give $15 million to Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle defamation lawsuit

NEW YORK (AP) — ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.

ABC could have won that idiot lawsuit, but they decided not to even fight. They caved. Capitulation as strategy.

What Paul Weiss, Schumer and ABC and so many others are doing is exactly what We The People don’t want them to do. Let’s focus now not on wimpy corporations, but on wimpy Democrats.

Democrats make reasoned choices and take sensible actions. They chant awkwardly to lead a crowd that ignores them. They call for bi-partisanship and make brave predictions that the sun will come up some day. They are everything their fathers feared they would become.

Brace yourself now, as I grab turf to speak to Democrats on behalf of We The People.

Democrats:
We Don’t Want
Your reasoned choices or your useless sunny weather predictions. The time for those politics ended 40 years ago. It was quite violently demolished 9 years ago. Those days are gone and so will you be if you keep acting like it’s yesterday.
.
Your pathetic, passionless talking points or your “We must” powerless verbal dribblings.
.
Your campaign platform of “Send me money and vote for me because I’m not Trump.”
.
Your lofty list of esoteric concepts that disrespect us by treating us like you think we’re stupid and which display your ignorance of what our lives really are like right now.
.
We Do Want
To know what you are doing – and what you will do – to restore our lives to something livable and to reclaim our America.
.
To know what you’ll do to make a middle class income sufficient for a family to live.
.
To know what you’ll do to ensure our safety in a world where competitors want to crush us and our way of life and replace us on the world stage.
.
And Most Of All

WE WANT YOU TO HAVE A SPINE!

.

WE WANT YOU TO PUNCH THE BULLY IN THE NOSE!

.

WE WANT YOU TO CRUSH HIS ARMY OF CRUELTY!

.

Is any of this unclear, Democrats? We want you to be strong, to stand up and to fight. We want you to stop hiding behind policy positions and talking points. We want you to charge into this street fight and win – not for your career –

FOR US – FOR WE THE PEOPLE!

.

You cannot win a street fight with reasoned policies or by talking the enemy bully into a coma. You have to punch him in the nose!

Let’s try this another way.

David Brooks recently wrote about Trump destroying our international relations and making us a pariah state. His paragraph below captures his point.

President Trump does not seem to notice or care that if you betray people, or jerk them around, they will revile you. Over the last few weeks, the Europeans have gone from shock to bewilderment to revulsion. This period was for them what 9/11 was for us — the stripping away of illusions, the exposure of an existential threat. The Europeans have realized that America, the nation they thought was their friend, is actually a rogue superpower.

Click me for the story

Now read Brooks’ first sentence again, slightly modified:

Democrats don’t seem to notice or care that if you betray people, or jerk them around, they will revile you.

That’s what a 29% approval rating (or less) says about how people feel about Democrats.

Somebody has to tell me why this is hard for Democrats to understand and why they don’t even show up for the fight.

Click me

Someone has to tell me why they violate Prof. Timothy Snyder’s lessons about tyranny:

Rule #1: DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE. Obeying in advance is exactly what Paul Weiss and ABC did, when instead of fighting, they just turned over millions of dollars to Trump; then Schumer gave Trump his CR.

Rule #8: STAND OUT. Speak up. Take a stand. Take action. Democrats where are you and what are you doing?

We’re not at grandma’s birthday party. We are in an existential fight for our national life. Where are the Democrats with their knuckles bare, charging at our domestic terrorists and punching them in the nose?

WHO WILL LEAD?

  • TAKE ACTION

  • There will be a huge demonstration in DC on April 5 organized by Indivisible, 50-50-1, mobilize.us, Women’s March and many more organizations, all demanding of TrumpMusk, “HANDS OFF!“

    The beauty is that you don’t have to be in DC to stand and be counted. There will be rallies that day all across the nation. Stand tall. Make your voice heard. Being passive is the same as making yourself a victim and losing everything. You don’t want that to happen.

Click here or on the map to the right to find a rally near you. Then SHOW UP on April 5!

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

Administration Deportations


POST 1162

CAUTION!

This post contains well-placed snark likely to displease Constitution violators.

The Correct Renditions

You know that last week our brave president and his brown shirt action figures rounded up over 230 migrants, claiming without any evidence that they are Venezuelan gang member terrorists. Note that I claim, similarly without evidence, that they are Norwegian flower salesmen.

They were put on airplanes bound for El Salvador where they were accosted by guards, who dragged them to an overcrowded super-max concentration camp. The administration claimed that they are the worst of our immigrants and that the American people are now safer. Trump agreed to pay the El Salvadorans $6 billion to incarcerate those deported, an inventive international extension of our prison-industrial complex.

WAIT: Wasn’t El Salvador one of those “shit hole countries?”

All of that was done without probable cause, without accusation or evidence of any specific crimes, without charging, without trial and without conviction of any crime. The name for what was missing is DUE PROCESS OF LAW, as required by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which apply to all “persons,” not just “citizens.” Look that up via the links.

While those airplanes were flying south a federal judge heard arguments and ruled that the disappearing of those men was both illegal and unconstitutional. He ordered the administration to cause the planes in the air to turn around and come back to the U.S. and that a deportation plane that had not yet departed remain on the ground. Our bold, chest-thumping administration then did what no administration had ever done before: they ignored the judge’s ruling. The 230 remain locked up in El Salvador.

“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” – Vice-President of the United States, JD Vance

Yeah, they are. It’s in the Constitution. You could look it up, you fauxbilly.

“We are not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think” – Border Czar Tom Homan

It’s great for Homan that he’s in America where he can believe and say stupid things. In an authoritarian country like Hungary, Turkey or Singapore, he’d be locked up and forgotten for saying such manly man strength and idiocy. That’s the America Trump is working to create.

BTW: How did we end up with czars? It started with Dubya.

“What we are expecting is the Supreme Court to say what has always been the case, which is, when the president is using his powers as commander-in-chief, those determinations are not subject to judicial review .  .  .”   – Homeland Security Advisor and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

Oops. Once again Stephen “The cruelty is the point.” Miller got it wrong.

All of that flies in the face of 248 years of precedent, established law, the separation of powers, the Constitution and more. Plus, it’s factually wrong, as all but the angry chest thumpers know quite well. Note that it not known if these Administration officials themselves are Venezuelans or even Americans, but they are known Trump gang members.

These are the first administration officials to be accused of un-American acts by your Disambiguation Agency (“DA”), which so far is still not invaded and violated by Musk and his abhorrent flying monkey tech criminals.

The DA will order them to be shackled, hooded and jammed into an airplane bound for rendition, as were the 230. They will remain ineligible for recourse or a pubic hearing, this by virtue of the Habeas Stupidus Act proscribed by Project 2025.

It Isn’t Just Federal Perps

Here’s another flamer. From Daily Docket, March 20, 2025:

[North Carolina] GOP challenger Judge Jefferson Griffin is refusing to concede [the election to the state’s Supreme Court, which he lost].

Griffin sits on the Court of Appeals [where his case now sits], and he wants his colleagues to retroactively change election rules, throw out tens of thousands of votes in Democratic counties and declare him the winner.

  • North Carolina has a long standing and proud tradition of Republican malfeasance and dirty tricks. Stand by to see if they get away with this one, Meanwhile, Griffin has a reservation on that rendition airplane. So does Arizona loser Kari Lake, and for much the same reasons.
  • We cannot end this section without considering Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He went to Samoa and trumpeted his groundless poo-poo indictments of vaccines, convincing many people to forego vaccinations, resulting in thousands of confirmed cases of Covid-19 and dozens of deaths. A similar situation is playing out in the U.S. on children whose parents were persuaded by Kennedy to refuse their kids the measles vaccine. At least 2 children are now dead. with third death under investigation. Prior to Kennedy’s baseless attacks on vaccines it had been 20 years since the last U.S. death from measles.  That’s plenty of evidence to cause Kennedy to be shackled. muzzled and perp-walked onto that rendition airplane.
  • Expect regular additions to the manifest for these flights.
  • ACTION

  • There will be a huge demonstration in DC on April 5 organized by Indivisible, 50-50-1, mobilize.us, Women’s March and many more organizations, all demanding of TrumpMusk, “HANDS OFF!“

    The beauty is that you don’t have to be in DC to stand and be counted. There will be rallies that day all across the nation. Stand tall. Make your voice heard. Being passive is the same as making yourself a victim and losing everything. You don’t want that to happen.

  • Click here or on the map to the right to find a rally near you. Then SHOW UP on April 5!

  • REBEL!

Continuing Quote for This Century

From Mark Elias’10 Things We Can All Do to Protect Democracy:

10. Don’t give up hope

Our best political movements were hopeful. John Kennedy insisted that “we should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.” Bill Clinton was the man from Hope. Barack Obama ran a campaign based on hope and change. Donald Trump and the Republicans want you to give up hope. Despair and cynicism fuel their movement. We must always, in the words of Jesse Jackson, “keep hope alive.”

Best Headline of the Week

From the NKC Occasional Update of March 21:

Hakeem! Chuck! Don’t make me stop this car!

Who will lead?

Late Addition Sunday Dark Cloud

From David Corn of Mother Jones’ Our Land of March 22:

And Tulsi Gabbard, [Trump’s] director of national intelligence, not only cheered on this decision [to silence the Voice of America, VOA]; she boosted the Russian critique of VOA. When Ian Miles Cheong, a Malaysia-based right-wing podcaster who has written for RT, the Russian propaganda outfit, hailed Trump’s demolition of VOA and echoed the Russian line by claiming it had “perpetuated pro-war narratives against Russia,” Gabbard shared his post. Here was the top intelligence official in Trump’s administration accepting and spreading Vladimir Putin’s take on VOA.

What could possibly go wrong?

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

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