Freedom

Wrong Side of the Bed


POST 1241

 

 

The Right Side of the Bed

The next Democratic (and democratic) president will spend a significant portion of his/her time reversing Trump actions.

  1. How ’bout an elegant evening at the Trump-Kennedy Center? No worries. Trump is just a mongrel dog that has to piss on every fire hydrant and tree and put his name on every building. The Trump name will be erased from the Center, the entryway to the facility will be sanitized and his hand picked, suck up Board Members will be fired, all on Day One. In fact, Trump’s name will be removed from every federal building in the nation. To get a better understanding of how ferociously, psychotically rabid Trump is, see these links from Mother Jones:
  2. We think that the rule of law is a good thing, even as it is under such relentless attack. Again, no worries. The new president will see that the perps doing illegal and un-constitutional things today will be introduced to the defendant’s table in courtrooms across the land.
  3. The new president will issue dozens of executive orders on Day One to reverse nearly everything Trump has done by executive order. The rest of his lawlessness will be challenged and reversed in court.
  4. Trump’s cheap gold glitter will be removed from every part of the White House. If the preposterous ballroom is still under construction, all the glitter will be removed and orders for more will be cancelled. A new use will be found for the building. Maybe for a Boys and Girls Clubs activity center, or housing for homeless vets, or a food bank for needy people.
  5. The snarky, whiny plaques Trump put beneath the portraits of past presidents will be replaced by the simple ones that had been beneath them – the ones that show only their names and dates of service.
  6. The portrait of Trump will be turned around so that it faces the wall.
  7. The next Democratic president will end our illegal, murderous attacks on land and sea and will visit our allies to reassert our commitment to our mutual support and partnership. If the  Russian war on Ukraine is still underway, we will ship massive armaments to Ukraine that can reach into Russia as far as necessary to force Russia to retreat in surrender.
  8. There will be renewed support for the things a large majority of us want, like: Medicare for All: sensible gun safety legislation: tax policy that serves all the people, not just the uber-wealthy; safe and legal abortion; support for fighting climate warming* and scientific research; and making higher education affordable. Our faithful federal workers will be rehired and will restart their efforts to protect us and our Constitution and much more.
  9. The new president will denounce Trump for his efforts to end birthright citizenship, a right that is articulated plainly and clearly in the 14th Amendment.** Similarly, he will excoriate the Supreme Court for having agreed to hear Trump’s case that is an effort to end run that Amendment. New Pres will recommend disbarment of all Trump lawyers who tried to end that right. They will be required to have a copy of the Constitution on their person at all times and all of them will have “XIV” tattooed on the back of each hand.
  10. Serious efforts will be made to make public the horrors of the Epstein cruelty and the criminality of his “guests,” but the new AG will find Pam Bondi’s desk and files empty and her hard drive will have been scrubbed. Have low expectations here.
  11. The Epstein cover up story will not go away. Neither will our resolve to support the victims who were so cruelly abused, some unable to even survive. The next Democratic/democratic president will stand with us to stand by these women. They will at last get the justice and a chance for relief from their suffering. Furthermore, we will not stand by and allow the perpetrators of those horrible crimes to continue to get away with their criminal cruelty. They will receive all the justice they deserve.

You get the idea. America will once again do what is right.

Finally, In This Season of Regaining Light

This is for all the big, tough bullies who beat up defenseless people.

Don’t forget:

The little people are as big as you are.

Whoever you are. – Tom Waits

For those who have at least a little understanding of the meaning of at least one end-of-year holiday (i.e. they know these celebrations aren’t about buying perfume, jewelry or a new car),

wishing you happy holidays and a request for us all to be good to one another.

_________________________________________________

* Climate warming deniers and the insatiable conspiracy mongers and the mouth frothing dark web bobble heads will be required to get a brain MRI yearly and “ace” a cognitive test. They will have to wear a GPS signaling mouth monitor at all times and we will ignore their ignorant rants claiming global warming is a hoax. Actually, they are the hoax.

** If Trump can end birthright citizenship, what’s to stop him from ending habeas corpus, free speech, protection from cruel and unusual punishment and even slavery? What’s to stop him from terminating the right to vote?

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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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 or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case blame the guest.

Click me

JA

 


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

Behavior Geek


POST 1241

A Disambiguation Science Moment

Today, the winter solstice, is not the shortest day of the year. In fact, there is no shortest day of the year. They’re all the same length: 24 hours; 86,400 seconds. What this actually is that is noteworthy is the day of this year with the shortest duration of daylight. Conversely, it’s the day with the greatest duration of dark sky.

But you knew that. Here’s another way to look at it.

Starting today, we’ll gain between 1 and 3 minutes per day until the summer solstice on June 21. Consider that we can shed more and more light on reality all next year to influence our November 3 election to create more sanity in our federal and state governments.

More light. It’s a good thing.

We Start Here

Machiavelli told us long ago, it matters far more what people think of you than what the reality is. And we are experts at manipulating our self-presentation [and] we are so good at it that we actually believe the nonsense we say to other people.

– Bill Moyers interview of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, 2012

Haidt was talking about all of us, but this was pre-Trump. The concern today is about our not-so-dear president, his sycophants and his millions of supporters. They actually believe the nonsense they say.

And the concern is also about the cavers, the ones who sell themselves out for a short term gain. The reason for our concern is the terrible effect they have on our nation and on each of us individually, including their attack on values we all claim to hold but which are sold out by so many.

We learned during Trump 1.0 that when he says outrageous, incendiary, un-American things that he’s telling us what he actually will do, including breaking the law. Oddly, many are surprised.

Click me

“We’re shocked, shocked, to find that there is crime being done in and from the White House!” It’s a Captain Renault moment in America, over and over.

To mix metaphors probably way too much, we really did know what that snake was when we picked him up, so there should be no surprise at all. Horror? Fear? Blood running cold? Sure. But not surprise.

Perhaps what is more shocking is the capitulation done by people who had no need to capitulate. The knee benders. The ring kissers. The simple greedy bastards. The ones who obey in advance.

From Wikipedia:

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (“Paul Weiss”) is the sole law firm targeted by an executive order that did not sue the administration and instead made a deal with the administration to avoid sanctions and restore access [to federal courts].

In addition to Paul Weiss, eight other firms made preemptive deals with Trump to avoid being similarly targeted by executive orders. As part of the settlements, the nine law firms have agreed to provide a total of $940 million in pro bono work to efforts supported by the president. Plus, they and many others each agreed to Trump’s extortion plan that they “donate” $16 million to Trump’s presidential library, for which there is neither a location nor architectural plans.

Trump doesn’t read and his only book is Mein Kampf, so there will be no need for book shelves, nor file cabinets for documents in a Trump library, were it to be built. Likely, there would only be his greatest hits album detailing his tough guy speeches and reruns of The Apprentice shown in a gold and white theater.

Columbia University went completely paws up to Trump when he pulled $400 million in federal funding from them. To get him off their back they relinquished control of their programs, their classes and even their selection of students and faculty.

What they and so many others have in common is that they have ignored Timothy Snyder’s messages from On Tyranny – 20 Lessons From The Twentieth Century. Here’s a sampling. Note that the comments below are mine, not Snyder’s.

Lesson No. 1: Do Not Obey In Advance. Don’t do what you think the bully wants you to do, perhaps hoping to curry favor. Doing so is surrendering without even an objection, much less a fight. It’s voluntarily going paws up. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damn bully in the face. Hard.

Lesson No. 2: Defend institutions. Tyrants want to smash them, disempower them so that they can control everything and everyone. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damn bully in the face. Hard.

Lesson No. 5: Remember professional ethics. Refuse to succumb to directives ordering discrimination and violation of your oaths. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damn bully in the face. Hard.

There is more, of course, but it all comes down to taking a stand protecting and defending what must be protected and defended, like the Constitution. Failure to do so is nothing but caving in, hoping you’ll quickly get out of the crosshairs of the bully and will be able to do so on the cheap. The best that can be said about that is that it is astonishingly short sighted and self-deluding.

When a little kid has a temper tantrum and you give him what he wants, hoping to shut him up, you’ve trained him to come back in full tyrant form and demand more. That’s what happens to those who are quick sell-outs to bullies. The bullies take your lunch money the next day, too. Don’t be an idiot. Put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damn bully in the face. Hard.

And that’s the message that so many should have heard and heeded. Trump’s threatened lawsuits would have been easy to defeat in court because his actions weren’t defensible. His style is to make capitulation the cheapest exit from his bullying. But there really is no exit for those who cave and ultimately it isn’t cheap.

There are many short-term thinkers, like the bullies who became ICE thugs. Trump found a cheap hook to recruit them – a $50,000 signing bonus – and then he owned them. He told them to bully, beat, gas, shoot and assault people indiscriminately – strangers, fellow citizens, neighbors – anyone even a little brown – and to pay no attention to whether they were U.S. citizens or legal residents and to essentially ignore whether they were criminals or not. Trump got his national thug army and set them a-thugging. The goal wasn’t about crime. It was and is to terrorize the country so that he could rid the country of non-Whites using illegal immigration as a cover story. Plus he’d get to cow all of us into submission.

And these ICE thugs stepped up to collect their checks and then started beating up innocent people. When Trump is gone and sane people are back in charge – like when we once again remember and invoke our common values – look for prosecutions of all the bullies.

For these and others, the day will come when they are in deep, deep trouble, maybe anguish, because they gave up, sold out on the cheap for their greed and for their lust for power until nothing was left. They will look for strength deep inside and will find an empty vacuum where their souls used to be.

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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 or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those 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.

Starting To Set Things Right


POST 1236

Cheers For Freedom Of Speech

One of the most valuable rights we Americans have is the right of free speech. What that means is that the government is prohibited from restricting our speech, stopping us from saying what we want to say, even if we are criticizing the government or any of its employees. There are some exceptions, like for slander, liable and incitement to violence. That’s how it’s been since 1789 and it’s worked pretty well for our democracy and our freedom all this time. We can say pretty much what we want to say, as did six legislators who told the truth about the prohibition of military personnel to obey illegal orders. See the Special Slime section in this post for more.

The government may not censor us just because some wrinkly, thin-skinned official cries “MEANY!” or “UNFAIR!” or “TRAITOR” on the playground at recess time and throws an infantile tantrum, then runs to his fixer, his present day Roy Cohn (his AG, Bondi) demanding prosecution of whoever dared to speak truth about him.

Having so many opportunities to right grievous presidential wrongs, we’re getting better at this.

A Mini-Summary

A court says Alina Habba, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s surrogate for unconstitutional cases, is an illegal U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. The appeals court agrees and replaced Habba with Desiree Leigh Grace. Immediately Bondi fired Grace and put Habba back into control of that office. We’ll see how long that lasts, because judges typically have the last say.

Click me for the U.S. Department of Revisionist History

Another court says beauty queen Lindsey Halligan was not properly vetted and appointed, so it dumped her cases against James Comey and Letitia James, then spanked her hand with judicial smack downs. Andy Borowitz opined that Halligan’s dream is to go to law school some day.

It seems that maybe, possibly, might be, could be Pete Hegseth has finally crossed a red line. Following 10 months of saying stupid things, he ordered our military to kill survivors of our homicidal drone strikes on boats in international waters. A lot of people have their underwear in a bunch over that, including senators and representatives. They say those acts are war crimes and murder. Ya think? At last Hegseth may get what he has coming; specifically a boot out the White House back door and perhaps prosecutions for his impressive list of illegal actions. We’ll all have lots to say about this deviant in the coming months.

AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks earned his title  of czar only because: 1. Nobody knows what someone in charge of AI and/or crypto does or should do; 2. Donald Trump likes big superlative seeming stuff that gets attention, like the title “czar.”

Hard to read. It’s a huge billboard in Chicago not far from  Broadview that reads “IMPEACH TRUMP.”

Adapted from a quotation by management expert Peter Drucker:

“We are using the word ‘czar’ only because ‘charlatan’ is too long to fit into a headline.”

That quote can be used for just about every Trump appointment. And yeah, I get to say that. It’s that freedom of speech thing.

Our reality show president has been waging a verbal war on narco-terrorism, perhaps believing he can Truth Social it into submission and randomly kill whoever someone tells him is a drug something or other. Apparently, even the dementia-addled have the right of free speech, much as that sucks in this case.

Trump is definitely a tough guy who is verbally tough on narco-terrorism and Hispanic landscapers, but now he has pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras. He was convicted in the United States of a vast drug-trafficking operation that prosecutors said dumped over 400 million tons of drugs into the U.S. Trump has pardoned this biggest narco-terrorist of them all, enraging Elmer Fudd, who oinked furiously, “I’ll get that wasco, if it’s the wast thing I eva do!” So much for Trump being the narco tough guy.

Since the power of pardons rests solely with the sitting president we can’t prosecute Trump for this affront. We are left with investigating how much money was given to Trump for that pardon. Watch for that investigation as Trump’s biggest pay-to-play bribe. It might be part of a package of bribery investigations starting in 2027, then pursued by the Department of Justice in 2029.

Click me for the transformational story.

We’re starting to set things right. My notion is that it’s going to take more than a generation to clean up all the terrible mess the infant tyrant has made. It will take many years to remove his bad boys and bad girls and prosecute them in accordance with the law. Let’s hope that foot dragging Merrick Garland has nothing to do with initiating those prosecutions so that we don’t get stymied by the statute of limitations.

That said, courts are largely doing what they are supposed to do, although John Roberts cannot live long enough to somehow be worthy of forgiveness for giving immunity from prosecution to Trump. Our Republican legislators are beginning to see that it may be safe for them to retrieve their spines from the Senate and House Cloak Rooms, where they checked them upon being sworn in.

It’s Partisan

President Donald Trump has told us that the Epstein thing is a partisan witch hunt being conducted by Democrats, much like his claim about Russians helping him in his elections; like “affordability” and inflation; like Hegseth’s “Kill them all” criminality; like so many issues. It’s about the other party. So, I have a question.

My party is the Constitution of the United States. What is Trump’s party?

Now is the time to come to the aid of your Constitution.
Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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 or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those 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.

Geeking Over Behavior


POST 1232

We learned during Trump 1.0 that when he says outrageous, incendiary, un-American things that he’s telling us what he actually will do. Then, oddly, when he does what he said he would do and breaks the law, so many are surprised.

“We’re shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you to find that there is crime being done in and from the White House!”

But we really did know what that snake was when we picked him up, so there should be no surprise at all. Horror? Fear? Blood running cold? Sure. But not surprise.

Perhaps what is more shocking is the capitulation done by people who had no need to capitulate. The knee benders. The ring kissers. The simple greedy bastards. The ones who obey in advance.

From Wikipedia:

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (Paul Weiss) is the sole law firm targeted by an executive order that did not sue the administration and instead made a deal with the administration to avoid sanctions and restore access.

In addition to Paul Weiss, eight other firms made preemptive deals with Trump to avoid being similarly targeted by executive orders. As part of the settlements, the nine law firms have agreed to provide a total of $940 million in pro bono work to efforts supported by the president and the firms.

Plus, they and many others each agreed to Trump’s extortion plan that they “donate” $16 million to Trump’s presidential library, for which there is neither a location nor architectural plans. Trump doesn’t read and his only book is Mein Kampf. There will be no need for book shelves. Neither will there be file cabinets for documents in a Trump library, were it to be built. Likely, there would only be his greatest hits reel showing his tough guy speeches and The Apprentice reruns in a gold and white theater.

Columbia University went completely paws up to Trump when he pulled $400 million in federal funding from them. To get him off their back they relinquished control of their programs, their classes and even their selection of faculty.

See Notes 4 & 5 below.

What they and so many others have in common is that they have ignored Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny – 20 Lessons From The Twentieth Century.

  1. Rule No. 1: Do Not Obey In Advance. Don’t do what you think the bully wants you to do, perhaps hoping to curry favor. Doing so is surrendering without even an objection, much less a fight. It’s voluntarily going paws up. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damned bully in the face. Hard.
  2. Rule No. 2: Defend institutions. Tyrants want to smash institutions, disempower them so that he can control everything and everyone. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damned bully in the face. Hard.
  3. Rule No. 5: Remember professional ethics. Refuse to succumb to directives ordering discrimination and violation of your oaths. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damned bully in the face. Hard.

There is more, of course, but it all comes down to taking a stand protecting and defending what must be protected and defended. Failure to do so is nothing but caving in, hoping you’ll quickly get out of the crosshairs of the bully and do so on the cheap. The best that can be said about that is that it is astonishingly myopic and self-deluding. When a little kid has a temper tantrum and then you give him what he wants, you’ve trained him to come back in full tyrant form and demand more later. That’s what happens to quick sell-outs. Don’t be an idiot. Take a stand.

And that’s the message that so many should have heard and heeded. Trump’s threatened lawsuits would have been easy to defeat in court because his actions and demands weren’t defensible. His style is to make capitulation the cheapest exit from his bullying. But there really is no exit for those who cave. So, take a stand.

There are yet more short-term thinkers, like the bullies who became ICE thugs. He found a cheap hook to recruit them – a $50,000 signing bonus – and then he owned them. He told them to bully, beat, gas, shoot and assault people indiscriminately – fellow citizens, neighbors – and to pay no attention to whether they were U.S. citizens, legal residents and to essentially ignore whether they were innocents or criminals.

The goal wasn’t about crime. It was and is to terrorize the country so that he could rid the country of non-Whites, using illegal immigration as a cover story, plus cow all of us into submission.

And these ICE capitulators stepped up to collect their checks and then started beating up innocents.

The question to ponder in this “greatest country in the world,” in this “indispensable nation,” in this “American exceptionalism country” is why our educated people in this land of the free and home of the brave would be so easily seduced and manipulated. How does this happen here?

The day will come when the capitulators are in deep, deep trouble, maybe existential anguish. They will look for strength deep inside and will find only an empty vacuum where their souls used to be.

They gave up. They sold out on the cheap until nothing was left.

BTW

From Bloomberg News:

The FBI Redacted Trump’s Name in the Epstein Files.

Hundreds of FBI personnel scrubbed the Epstein documents in AG Bondi’s possession. They removed or redacted Trump’s name and those of his favorite deviants.

Now connect the dots to explain Trump directing Congress to vote to release the Epstein files. He’s made sure that everything incriminating or even embarrassing to him has been redacted from the files that will be released so that there is no risk to Trump, everything sanitized for his protection and no justice to be found anywhere.

He’s ordered the DOJ to investigate Democrats who might be connected to the Epstein crimes. That way Trump can refuse to release hundreds, perhaps thousands of files, claiming that doing so would interfere with an ongoing investigation. There will be terrible obstruction games to come.

The fix is in. If you listen you can already hearing Trump falsely brag yet again that he’s been exonerated.

Given the likely tampering of evidence, consider the votes in Congress yesterday to be not an open road to justice, but the end of the beginning of that road. The real battles are just getting underway.

If you long for justice for those long suffering women who were a while back those horribly abused girls – children; if you long for justice for the sake of justice itself and for the protection and welfare of us all; If one of your fondest wishes is for a fair and just country that resembles at least a little the America you grew up believing in; then you are advised to put your hopes and expectations on low and anticipate a long, critical and brutal fight against the very worst people ever spawned by this country. And expect to be a soldier in that fight, along with the rest of us.

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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


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

Because You Wanna Know – Plus Good News!


POST 1231

The “Ya Gotta Wanna Know” Department

Watch this interview of Jennifer Moriarty by Evanston, IL Mayor Daniel Biss to know what ICE is doing to our innocents. If you wanna know.

In describing Trump there have been periodic references to Hitler, fascists, Nazis and other 1930s government thugs and manipulative creeps since not long after Trump first took office in 2017. “References to Hitler are overblown and not even a little useful,” cooler heads would caution. That was helpful – right until the moment when fascism was in our faces.

Fascism is Trump V2.0, guided by the Republican plan for domination, Project 2025, with Gestapo-like thugs on our streets abusing and illegally arresting largely random people; our military on our streets; 2.5 branches of the federal government* in the control of one megalomaniac; U.S. citizens being “disappeared” and legal immigrants being sent to foreign and domestic gulags/concentration camps. That’s excused by the cover claim of getting rid of “the worst of the worst” criminals. Great idea, except more than 70% of those attacked by ICE aren’t criminals. They have not been charged with any crime. They have not been convicted of anything. Their most common offenses are:

  1. Landscaping while Hispanic
  2. Looking Hispanic while on a sidewalk
  3. Peacefully protesting injustice
  4. Throwing a partially eaten sandwich at an abusive ICE thug

Meanwhile, der Führer threatens and bullies members of Congress to get his way, pressures his weak followers to rig elections to his benefit and suggests that he will run for president again in 2028 in obvious violation of the 22nd Amendment. Should he be successful, Trump would effectively cement his dictatorship, which would have been accomplished through blatantly illegal voting “irregularities,” like preventing millions from voting.

Okay, Hitler was different. He won the position of prime minister with a miserable plurality of the votes. Wait: Trump barely got a plurality. Then Hitler bullied and then dissolved the Reichstag (parliament) and began his destruction of the world.

Wait again: Trump has bullied law firms, universities, whole cities, news organizations and many others to bend to his will and threatened every Republican in Congress to get them to vote his way, effectively neutering Congress.

Tell me you can see what’s happening. Regardless, read this post from Clark Kissinger.

The key is that ya gotta wanna be informed, ready to do a little digging to open your eyes. So, click the link. Many thanks to JB for providing it.

Wait once again: Do you really wanna know? Then watch this interview conducted by Evanston, IL Mayor Daniel Biss. He’ll help you learn from a firsthand account what is really going on. Go ahead – click the link. Because if you’re going to be in the know, ya gotta wanna.

Speaking of Being In The Know

From Heather Cox Richardson, November 13:

Credit: Click me

“The administration has justified its violence against undocumented immigrants by insisting those they round up are violent criminals, “the worst of the worst.” That claim is increasingly exposed as a lie, and Americans are pushing back.”

” .  .  .  on the September 30 raid on an apartment complex in Chicago in which federal agents stormed the complex in a helicopter and military-style vehicles, broke into apartments, and marched individuals outside, claiming they were Tren de Aragua gang members

“Government agents arrested 37 people in the raid but ultimately claimed that only two of them were gang members. The journalists spoke to one and found he had no criminal record.”

“Venezuelans the Trump administration sent to the infamous CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador endured systematic torture, including beatings and sexual violence. Only 3% of those the U.S. rendered to El Salvador had been convicted of a violent crime in the U.S.”

“Dreamers by the hundreds of thousands gave the U.S. government their personal information in exchange for a promise they would not be deported. But Congress never acted, and now, in its quest to reach 3,000 deportations a day, the administration is targeting the DACA recipients, whose adherence to the rules the government established makes them easy to find and target.”

Can you say “betrayal” boys and girls?

Now you know what your government is doing – in your name.

And just to be clear about this once again, Trump and his lying lackeys have told us over and over that they are going first and foremost for “the worst of the worst” criminals to deport them. But the the reality is plain and painful to see, because

MORE THAN  7 OUT OF EVERY 10 HELD IN DETENTION HAVE NO CRIMINAL CONVICTION
.

In case that doesn’t get your indignation motor revving, try this:

HUNDREDS OF THOSE CALLED VENEZUELANS AND TREN DE ARAGUA MEMBERS WERE SENT TO THE
EL SALVADOR GULAG AND TORTURED
.

But,

NONE – ZERO – NADA – OF THOSE PEOPLE
WAS  AFFORDED  DUE PROCESS OF LAW
.

You know: like the Constitution requires.

Of course, the 83 people killed on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific by Trump’s Luftwaffe drones got no due process either. The big, tough bully just murdered them.

All done in our name.

Now you’re in the know.

Some Good News

Start with the obvious: likely on the way is the unmasking of Trump as a violator of little girls, enraging even his adoring, unthinking MAGA followers. That being made public is just a guess now, but clearly bad juju is on the way to the gold and marble latrine.

The key good news is the clarity delivered by Patti Vasquez about how to vanquish the pestilence that poisons us. She challenges us to choose between our momentary comfort and what we really want.

“The billionaires are betting we love our stuff more than our freedom. They’re betting we’ll sell out our neighbors to keep our parking spots. They’re betting we’ll surrender the country to save the couch.”

“Comfort is the enemy of courage. Every revolution started with people who chose discomfort over compliance. Every freedom we have came from someone who decided that being uncomfortable was better than being enslaved.”

“The authoritarians are counting on our addiction to comfort. They know we’ll tolerate almost anything – raids, camps, chemical weapons against protesters – as long as we can still make our car payments. They know we’ll watch democracy die from our couches, angry but motionless, tweeting our rage between Netflix episodes.”

It isn’t enough for a few million of us to get up and protest, waving our clever and angry signs. The change we need requires far more from us and from far more of us.

It might require us to create massive labor strikes.

It might require us to refuse to pay our taxes.

It might require us to post the home addresses and family member names of every Republican toady, making clear that we intend no harm to them; only that they viscerally understand what the toadies are doing to the rest of us.

It WILL REQUIRE that the couch dwelling 90 million of us who haven’t voted, haven’t protested, haven’t canvassed for worthwhile candidates, who haven’t registered citizens to vote and who haven’t spoken up at town halls to GET UP! It will require those who have not done a damned thing but hypnotize themselves in front of streaming pablum for their brains, clutching their ignorance, to

GET UP OFF THEIR ASSES WHILE THEY STILL CAN AND
JOIN THE FIGHT
.
FOR THEIR FREEDOM
.
FOR THEIR CHILDREN’S FREEDOM
.
FOR TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY
.
FOR THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE
.
FOR THEIR RIGHT TO GLUE THEIR ASSES TO THEIR COUCHES IN TIMES THAT ARE NOT PERILOUS
.
FOR THE HONORING OF ALL WHO CAME BEFORE US WHO ARE NOW IN ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY, THE AMERICAN CEMETERY AT NORMANDY, THE GRAVES ON IWO JIMA AND PRIVATE GRAVES STRETCHING FROM 1776 TO TODAY. THAT INCLUDES THE 1.3 MILLION WHO STAND GUARD OVER US RIGHT NOW, COMMITTED TO ENSURING THAT NOTHING BAD WILL HAPPEN TO US ON THEIR WATCH. WE OWE THEM AND WILL NEVER STOP OWING THEM. WE HAVE A DEBT THAT CANNOT EVER BE REPAID, BUT IT CAN BE HONORED BY KEEPING THE FAITH WITH OUR ACTIONS.

Credit: Click me

.

So how come that’s good news?

Because all each of us has to do is to convince one of that 90 million to get up and speak out. Just one. Then everything gets better for all of us and Lady Liberty will stop crying.

_______________________________________________

* Every now and then the Supreme Court makes a slight nod to independence.

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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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.

Two Cruelties


POST 1228

Keeping Score

Trump’s Reichsführer, Stephen Miller, White House Nazi-in-residence, has an important goal. He says that we must deport (not incarcerate; deport) 1 million people per year, regardless of anyone’s absence of criminality, lawful U.S. residency or even citizenship. That may have to do with something primitive about blood and  soil.

Here’s the math.

1 million people removed in a year will require 2,739 people to be disappeared every day. ICE reports that they’ve disappeared 527,000 – about 1,370 per day. Clearly, Trump’s Thug Corps. is not on pace to brutalize people to match up with Miller’s nutso number. And there is nobody checking ICE’s number – could be worse – any more than there is anyone stopping their cruelty, so there is no particular credibility to their body count.

Now you see the reason for the Jonathan Swift solution proposed in POST 1227. It should appeal to psycho Stephen Miller as a serious recommendation cruel enough even for Trump, especially as a distraction from the Epstein files and rumored pedophilia and sex trafficking of little girls. And that perpetuates the cruelty to all of the victims of Epstein and his clients.

They messed up. They let us know there’s an Epstein black book and a gazillion documents of his crimes and those of his allegedly wicked “clients.” Trump can dance, deny, and distract, but he and his bootlickers can’t make us forget that the incriminating evidence exists. I just hope that someone is retaining unaltered copies of the evidence so that suck up sycophant Pam Bondi can’t redact all of it into a black blob.

Congressman Brad Schneider (D-IL 10) and the Republicans

From Rep. Schneider’s October 31 newsletter:

On Monday [October 27], as chair of the New Democrat Coalition (New Dems), I reached out to my counterparts in the Republican Main Street Caucus and the Republican Governance Group (RG2), proposing we sit down to look for common ground and shared ideas for breaking the impasse between Republicans and Democrats  I was hopeful they would agree to join me in bipartisan conversations. Unfortunately, neither one was willing to engage. [I]nstead they leaked my outreach to the press and told us to effectively “pound sand.” Click here for [the] MSNBC story on my letter.

That’s what we can count on for help to get justice for Epstein’s victims and ICE’s victims. And that should tell you all you need to know about how desperate Trump and Speaker Johnson are to maintain distractions to prevent the Epstein files from being made public and how desperate Republicans are to avoid displeasing Trump. No amount of food shortages, economic woes and healthcare suffering by the public will dissuade them and fellow Republicans from stalling and covering up the horrific crimes likely to be found in those Epstein documents or stop the ICE unlawful cruelty.

From Steve Schmidt, November 3

The American people are besieged by malice, indifference, corruption, incompetence, venal leaders and a boiling hot lava of stupidity, which truly appears to be bottomless. It seems that a corrosive awfulness has saturated everything, everywhere, and that nothing decent remains.

Of course, that is the hope of the architects of our shared misery. Hopelessness is their greatest weapon. Fear is the poisoned tip of their arrow.

We’ve seen the poison tipped arrow up close in Chicago and now in Mt. Prospect, IL at the Randhurst Mall, in quiet residential neighborhoods in Northbrook and in Evanston. Rachel Maddow covered the ICE-hole* brutality on Monday, including an interview with Mayor Daniel Biss. Click here and then on the right for the Chicagoland Sets The Example segment. And click here for an ICE deportation tracker.

There are no riots, there is no vandalism, there are no attacks on people or property in our cities by We The People who are protesting ICE cruelty and Epstein victim cruelty. No one in the streets is rioting, regardless of the phantasmagoria spouted by the Liar In Chief.

Our police cannot fight ICE because doing so would be a violation of the law. The Republicans in Congress could fight the ICE cruelty as well as the cruelty to Epstein victims, but they are spineless cowards. That leaves the opposition to the fascists to you and me.

And that calls on us for our courage.

As your blood boils seeing the cruelty done to the survivors of Epstein and his clients and the cruelty to our neighbors in our streets, remember that any violence by We The People in the streets will give Trump his unwarranted excuse to send the Marines to permanently occupy our country and our freedom will be lost. That is what the domestic terrorists headquartered in Washington want. So .  .  .

Speak up. Show up. Take a stand. And remain non-violent. Always.

__________________________________________

* “ICE-hole” – kudos for the creativity and thanks to MHA for use of the term.

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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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.

Why We March


POST 1224

We had a fine NO KINGS! day. We danced in our disgust over everything Trump. We wallowed in the warmth of Trump vilification with our compatriots. We reveled in our righteousness. We marinaded in our mighty morality. We stood in strength and we cheered We The People in a thrilling moment of feeling like we were doing something important and valuable.

Then we went home, realizing the (as many as) 8.2 million of us marching for democracy in a feel good phalanx equaling 4.7% of all registered voters changed nothing. No bad laws were changed to become good laws. No stop-the-steal election claims were dropped. No immigrants, people who look like they might be immigrants, citizens who are foolish enough to maybe look Hispanic and no grannies out for groceries were suddenly not subject to Trump/Stephen Miller cruelty You get the idea. Nothing changed last Saturday.

Except maybe some things did change.

Like that a lot of people found they weren’t alone, that there are millions of kindred spirits all over America.

Like that perhaps some people who might otherwise sit on their butts on November 4, 2026 are now energized to vote in the mid-term elections in order to own a piece of the joy of punching the bully in the nose.

Like that we all know that son of a bitch can’t have our country,

Here’s why all of that is so enormously important.

Marc Elias, head of Democracy Docket laid it out for us on Monday. Rather than quoting just a few of his words of warning, here is his entire post.
Democracy Docket

October 20, 2025

While millions of Americans peacefully protested for “No Kings Day” this weekend, Donald Trump’s administration was busy working to undermine the upcoming midterm elections. Late Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that prominent election denier Kurt Olsen has joined the White House to focus on investigating the 2020 election and voting machines. This is just the latest step in the administration’s ongoing war on free and fair elections.

Though less well-known than some of the more high-profile election deniers, Olsen is no less committed to spreading false conspiracy theories about voting equipment and election results. His emergence as a government employee is just more evidence of Trump’s planned assault on the midterms.

Olsen has a rich election denier backstory. He was part of the 2020 post-election legal effort that asked the Supreme Court to throw out the election results in four states. When that failed, he tried to convince the Department of Justice to file its own lawsuit — an effort that even Trump’s DOJ refused.

His work since then has been no less dangerous.

Just like millions of Americans fighting back this weekend, Marc and Democracy Docket aren’t afraid to stand up, speak truth to power and defend our democracy.

In 2022, he represented Arizona’s Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, in a series of cases surrounding her failed election. In one case, the Arizona Supreme Court sanctioned Olsen and Lake’s other lawyers for making claims that were “unequivocally false.” In another case, a federal court sanctioned Olsen and another attorney for making “false, misleading, and unsupported factual assertions” and acting “in bad faith.”

In the run-up to 2024, Olsen was once again in Trump’s orbit, reportedly laying the groundwork to challenge the results if Trump lost. Despite being considered a “fringe figure” in the past, he is now a federal government employee seeking access to sensitive information about voting equipment and the 2020 election.

Olsen’s latest gig in Trump’s White House isn’t surprising. The president loves to surround himself with election denialists who are sure to be loyal soldiers for his cause. Recall that after losing in 2020, Stephen Miller — now Trump’s top aide — founded a legal organization deeply involved in efforts to alter voting rules and curtail voting rights in 2022 and 2024.

Now-Attorney General Pam Bondi likely caught Trump’s eye when she was promoting election denialism in the aftermath of the 2020 election. And, of course, it’s hard to imagine Kash Patel would be in his current position as head of the FBI if he had not been such a vocal proponent of the Big Lie.

From top to bottom, this administration is staffed with vocal election deniers and committed vote suppressors eager to help Trump cling to power — no matter how illegal or unethical.

And now, with election conspiracists taking center stage, Trump is slowly but surely desensitizing the public to a brand of authoritarianism aimed at subverting the will of the electorate.

His election-related executive order is designed to make voter registration more difficult and mail-in voting more restrictive. The administration is trying to decertify voting equipment and take control of key federal agencies. Most troublingly, Trump is asserting a presidential power over election administration that does not exist.

And just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. Trump is defunding and firing key parts of the government that ensure elections are free of foreign interference — while deploying the National Guard and masked federal law enforcement in major U.S. cities with large Democratic-leaning populations. He has promised to expand those efforts.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has been turned into a weapon of war against Trump’s perceived opponents. He is normalizing direct presidential control over hiring and firing decisions within the DOJ, including who gets investigated and prosecuted.

Just as he is using the threat of criminal prosecution as a hammer against his foes, he is also using the pardon power to reward his political allies. The combined effect is to force Democrats and their supporters to act with excessive caution while emboldening Republicans to behave with reckless aggression.

And that’s only what Trump has done so far. The midterms are still more than a year away — it’s going to get worse.

He is already threatening to go after funders of Democratic candidates and causes. We should expect those efforts to expand and intensify as the midterms approach. He aims to target the critical infrastructure that allows Democrats and progressives to raise funds to oppose him. He will undoubtedly continue to pressure private companies — including media organizations — to tilt the playing field in Republicans’ favor.

He has claimed that additional executive orders are in the works. He says he plans to ban most mail-in voting, impose strict photo ID requirements, and mandate only using paper ballots. Most ominously, he wants to usurp the power to count and tabulate election results by turning states into his vassals.

Then there are the voting laws being enacted by the states. Trump has demonstrated his dominance over Republican-controlled legislatures as they enact grotesque new gerrymanders at his direction. When the architect behind Texas’s new map testified in court, he confirmed that he took his direction from the White House — not the Texas legislature.

This will not end with Texas, nor will it stop at redistricting. As we approach 2026, Trump will begin dictating specific voter registration, voting, counting, and certification laws, policies, and actions to compliant state Republicans.

To help him, the DOJ is already seeking to collect sensitive voter data on every single American. States that refuse to turn this information over willingly are being sued. I predict that those who cooperate will be rewarded.

In short, the Republican voter suppression and election subversion machine will have both state and federal components. It will have civil, criminal, and administrative tools at its disposal. It will have masked federal agents and the military. It will be ruthless and act as if it is above the law.

I am laying this out today — immediately following No Kings Day — because I want us to understand what the fight against authoritarianism means for the future of free and fair elections. When we marched, we were not only protesting Trump’s assaults on civil liberties and the rule of law; we were standing up for the right of citizens to choose their own leaders.

That is what it means to stand against a king. That is what it means to be an American. And that is what we must continue to fight for — not just on one weekend, but every day until this wannabe king leaves his castle.

And that is why we march in ever increasing numbers.

Marc and his team are the legal guys who can fight this anti-Constitution, anti-American crap in the courts. It’s why we link to their websight and kick in some bucks to lubricate the machine that fights for what we believe in.

Because that orange son of a bitch can’t have our country and he and all his fascists can all go to prison for the crimes they have committed.
Mid-Term Election
Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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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 length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


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

WAR!


POST 1221

Reporting From War-Torn Chicago .  .  .
.

Adapted from Edward R. Murrow’s March 9, 1941 broadcast from London.

Edward R. Murrow

This is Chicago.

Soon it will be winter in America. Already the flowers in the parks are browning and wilting as though there will be no renewal next year. There’s good fighting and invading weather ahead for Trump’s shock troops. In a few days’ time the moon will be full again and there’s a feeling in the air that big, dangerous things will happen soon.

Don’t believe it’s war? Go to Broadview, IL and ask anyone about masked gunmen, smash and trash, people thrown to the ground, pepper spray blasted in the face of innocents, children zip-tied and jammed into an unmarked, blackened U-Haul. Ask about camouflaged masked gunmen rappelling from a Black Hawk attack helicopter to invade and vandalize a peaceful apartment building. Ask about people shot by masked thugs and  a priest shot in the head while praying for peace.  Ask them if at first it felt like an invasion of criminals and now it feels more like a Civil War battlefield. So much for better angels.

From pal Frank Levy:

It isn’t bad enough that 47 is sending storm troopers (ICE and CBP) to northern cities with Democratic and Black mayors to quell an insurrection that does not exist.
.
Now he is sending federalized National Guard troops from Texas to Chicago. Said another way, 47 is sending north hundreds of “sons of the south,” descendants of fighters for the “lost cause,” to quell violence, to stop an insurrection that does not exist, and control all those uppity people of color and put them back in their place. This sounds an awful lot like the making of an attack on Fort Sumter. I mean Fort Chicago.
.
Can you imagine how excited all those Texas NG troops are to be going to Chicago to stomp on those Yankees? Can you imagine how over the top Greg Abbott is to be the first southern governor to send troops from his little army to control or attack the abolitionists in Chicago?
.
We all know 47 wants to instigate violence so he can justify sending in the big guns. And we have known for some time that the MAGA cult has wanted a true Civil War. It looks like 47 is setting the stage for the outbreak of real violence and America’s 2nd Civil War.
.

Click me for the story

MAGA-types have been calling for a shooting civil war in and on America for a long time. I confess that I find a certain appeal to most of the federal tax sucking red states (dark colored states in the pic) seceding from our present disunion and having to go it alone without the hundreds of billions of dollars from blue states to support their bullying conceits every year. These are the people who decry welfare for desperately poor people but are quite happy to suck money from blue states for themselves..

At least since 2016 dementia addled Trump has been calling for martial law to be led by his bone spur self. He’ll command the bloody, treasonous travesty while sitting safely on his gold toilet. He is enacting a Constitution eviscerating war on America right now, making the have-not dupes do the fighting, leaving the rich guys safely on their yachts and in their mansions, protected by their security forces.
.
Still don’t believe this is war? Read Jonathan Last’s essay in TheBulwark from October 7, Emergency Triad: The Chicago Rubicon and What Comes Next. If the facts Last presents don’t convince you and make you want to scream and do something to right this foundering ship of democracy, this last, best hope, you have a world class case of denial.
.
Didn’t the Republicans used to be the tough-on-crime guys? Weren’t they absolutist believers in bedrock American values like those made clear by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, at least for themselves? Weren’t they the bible thumping, Jesus everything, black-and-white, obey-the-law unquestion-alists? Where’s their fury over Trump violating the Constitution, the law and the courts multiple times every day?
.
Actually, the Republicans have always been bible thumpers. It bolsters their certainties and justifies everything they want to do, including violently attacking people for an insurrection that doesn’t exist and locking up innocents who don’t pass the racial profiling test. Bible thumping is what the boundlessly manhood deficient KKK used to use to justify lynchings. All the official strongman, tough guy posturing today is the current version of manhood deficiencies. And it actually is as deranged as it sounds.
.
To be fair, this has been ongoing insanity at least since the Rutherford B. Hayes administration. He’s the selfish bastard who killed Reconstruction to sell out southern Blacks (yet again) in order to get the presidency for himself. Republicans have constantly and aggressively been blasting away at everyone and everything that isn’t White and identifies as whatever their current distortion of Christianity might be. Oppression and hypocrisy aren’t new here.
.
We Don’t Have a Trump Problem
We have a cowardice, hypocrisy and greed problem. All of this war on America could be stopped almost instantly if Republicans in Congress would actually find their spines and honor their oath to protect and defend the Constitution.
.

Instructions for being a Republican

But there’s no chance of that happening. These people sold out a long time ago. They sold their integrity and they sold their honor. Likely, they don’t even remember a time when they had clarity on what is right and what is wrong. Their clarity now is limited to what serves themselves best in the short term, which consists solely of sucking up to Trump..

This war is no fiction, no movie. Harm is being inflicted on real people and death has already come to some.
.
It takes a certain trust and a stretch of empathy to see this violent lawlessness from my peaceful North Shore neighborhood. But that’s what they thought in Highland Park, IL in the morning of July 4, 2022. Everything seemed peaceful. Then suddenly it wasn’t.
.
Maybe there’s no war to see where you live. But there is a shooting war in America right now, with bullets flying in only one direction – at We The People – regardless of whether you can see the violence from your door step.
.

From Project 2025 in Action: Sounding the Alarm for Democracy:

Each of us can take steps to support – and perfect – our democracy, whether through talking with friends, family, and neighbors, contacting elected representatives, or exercising our right to protest. The value of the right to speak freely, to celebrate dissent even when uncomfortable, to have a say in our government, to live free from surveillance and the threat of unwarranted punishment, demands no less.

– Julie Goldscheid, Professor of Law Emeritus at CUNY School of Law

What Would They Say or Do Today?

Looking towards the Paul Revere statue and the rear of the historic Old North Church in Boston, MA. Photo Credit : Aimee Seavey

Paul Revere made his famous ride because of the immediate threat posed by the tyrannical British overlords and their soldiers advancing on the colonists. One lantern was hung in the belfry of the Old North Church in Boston and that sent Revere speeding on his horse to sound the alarm.

We are no less threatened today by the advancing tyranny of the Trump administration. Today Revere’s call would be:.

The fascists are coming! The fascists are coming!
.

What would Paul Revere do today? What will you do today?

Thomas Paine told us:

Thomas Paine

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered;

What would Paine say of our American Crisis today? What would he implore us to do?

What will you do today? Click here for guidance. And read this.

  • NO KINGS!
  • Be there on October 18 – in just 6 days – to join millions of our fellow democracy loving Americans and make your voice heard. Insist that there will be no fascism and NO KING in the United States of America!
  • Click the map below to find a demonstration near you. There are over 2,500 of them ready to go in blue states and red states – in every state.

Be there!

Click me

Final Words

“The fundamental reason for all our evil is our desperate attempt to prove our preferred illusion true by slaughtering everyone who clings to a different illusion.”

Who is it who wants to do the slaughtering?

Still Standing

Three years ago Rep,Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Some Other Reality) ranted idiotically,

“Not only do we have the DC jail which is the DC gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff and spying on American citizens,”

It stands yet today as a supreme MAGA totem against intelligence – and gazpacho soup. Take no comfort in her now demanding that Trump’s Big Ugly Bill be neutered of its attack on healthcare because the cost of healthcare insurance for her adult sons will double. The rest of you . . . oh wait: she doesn’t even see you.

Click me

“Reporting from Chicago, Good night and good luck.”

Mid-Term Election
Goes fast, doesn’t it?

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe at no charge – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too, because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get this 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 length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


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

Making a Difference


POST 1216

What If You Could?

Many people have doubts.

“I’m just one tiny voice.”

“I don’t have any special skills or power.”

“This is too big for me.”

“I don’t even know what to do.”

“I hate what’s happening to our country, but I’m no billionaire.”

“What good would it do?”

My friend MG of The Deconstructing Trump Corner posted the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem recently. I think it’s for all the perfectionists, those of us who hold back because they fear their efforts will be imperfect or of little value. If you’re one of those, pay attention to these lyrics. They give you permission to be human.

  • “Ring the bells that still can ring.
  • Forget your perfect offering.
  • There is a crack in everything.
  • That’s how the light gets in.”

Oh, and how we need that light right now!

Your imperfect efforts will be good enough. They will join with tens of millions of other imperfect offerings to crash through the crass dishonesty and the cruelty and the light will once again get in.

All because you rang the bell that still can ring.

RING THAT BELL!

Perhaps you’re a biblical type and would like the message in that context. Try this.

Imagine Moses, Miriam and Aaron leading the Hebrews from Egypt. They have arrived at the shores of the Red (“Reed”) Sea. They have no boats, so they have stayed there a long time, but the Egyptian army is not far behind them.

Try this adaptation of Deuteronomy 1:6-7:*

You have stayed long enough in this place, God said.

Time to go forward.

Turn your face to the future.

Believe that you can cross this sea and survive.

Inside you is a Moses; within you Miriam dances, unafraid.

Lift up your voice and sing a new song.

If today “this place” is where you’ve stayed as an observer, then it’s time to go forward, to turn your face to the future. It’s time to believe that you can do what seems impossible, because it is not impossible.

It is possible because of what is inside you.

Lift up your voice and sing a new song.

Sing it loud.

Sing it so everyone can see the future that you see.

Sing it with your integrity and your imperfect voice.

That’s how the light gets in!

____________________________________________

* from Mishkan Hanefesh, Machzor (prayer book) for the Days of Awe, Rosh Hashanah, page 33.

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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 length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


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

Today’s American Crisis


POST 1210

I wrote recently asking, Can We Drop The Pretenses and Denial Now? Clearly, I’m not the only one sounding the reality alarm, the point of which is to make clear that we are not in danger of some advancing fascism: we’re in it.

It’s poisoning us, our country, our children and the world with lies and cruelty and the theft of all we hold dear. “The cruelty is the point,” we’ve been told, and we’re too late to prevent that. But we aren’t powerless. We can take action to create the America we believe in, the one where you have full rights, where nobody can snatch you off the street and disappear you, where your children can see a good future for themselves and their children.

Chris Armitage wrote the playbook for what we know in our bones is right and good and actionable in his piece, I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%.

That’s right: zero percent. Once entrenched, fascism lasts for miserable generation after miserable generation. Armitage documents that clearly and when you read his post you’ll know he’s right. This is one of the most frightening and realistic things I’ve read about our plight. It is oddly also one of the most hopeful.

Thomas Paine

His message is today’s version of Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis*. You’ve known Paine’s clarion call to action since you were in high school. The first pamphlet in his series urging that we become an independent America, free from the whims of a mad king, begins, “THESE [sic] are the times that try men’s souls.”

Paine was right then and, indeed, our souls are severely tried again today. We are threatened every minute of every day by a king wannabee who is mad and cruel and who has surrounded himself with sycophants to rule over you for only their own benefit.

This is not a time for “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot,” but a time for We The People to take bold and courageous action. It is time for us to break free from the mesmerizing of baseball and football games, from the vapidity of unreal TV reality shows and from the rest of the escapes from our actual reality. It’s time for us to stand strong with new, powerful and deeply American action.

You need to read Armitage’s post. He’ll make clear what We The People can do. His paper is longer than most things you read and it is vital throughout. Read it. We The People need every member of your family to read it, too, including your crazy Uncle Bubba and Aunt Shoo-Shoo. We need your neighbors, your senators and your representative to read it.

Or we can wallow in the swamp of permanent powerlessness, subjected to the cruelty of mad despots. But we don’t want that. And we know that preventing that perversion of America won’t happen by wishing it away.

We are the people Emma Lazarus wrote about, the ones welcomed by the Statue of Liberty and by Lazarus’ words emblazoned on that bronze lady. We’re the people “yearning to breathe free.” It is up to us to ensure that we and all who count on us will, indeed, breathe free.

Read Armitage’s clarion call. Now.

Reality Quotes
    • Trump has murdered the concept of facts and truth. He has replaced both with a sick dogma, which has, at its core, a terrible truth: what is true is what Trump and his minions declare it to be.
    • Steve Schmidt, Clarity and Conviction, September 1, 2025

Reading together from page 1 of our Citizen Manual, “Nuh-uh. Not okay with us.”

    • Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
  • John F. Kennedy
  • And that is why we must wake up to the possibilities that Chris Armitage details.

Full disclosure: I don’t know Chris Armitage. Until reading this essay I had never heard of him. I receive no value whatsoever for promoting his essay to you except the pleasure of perhaps making a smidgen of a difference for the betterment of us all.

Anticipatory Regret

What with the obvious physical and mental decline of Trump, my mind wandered to the national tradition of the honoring of dead presidents with a funeral procession. In my mind’s eye I can see the rolling caisson carrying the flag-draped casket of the deceased and the beautiful black stallion, riderless, with polished boots backward in the stirrups. I can see the military in their dress uniforms standing rigidly at attention and the flag hanging sadly at half staff. I can see a black clad widow standing forlornly as the procession passes.

I want none of that for Trump. He deserves none of the tradition and honoring. Plus, I don’t believe that Melania would shed a tear for this faithless man. But it will happen that Trump will be honored in this traditional way because that is what we do, regardless of his incompetence, malfeasance and treachery.

Perhaps it will be a positive thing for us, as we revive a cherished tradition for We The People. This is a time when most of our cherished traditions have been thrown to the dirt and awful people with dirty hearts have wiped their dirty shoes on them.

Perhaps Trump will die in his prison cell where he’s incarcerated for his conviction on 34 felony counts, where his sentence for theft of top secret materials and another sentence for his role in the January 6 insurrection will run concurrently for the next 30 years. If so, it will be bizarre to honor him with our tradition for presidents. I will regret that parade.

There was no traditional funeral procession upon the death of Richard Nixon; just a private ceremony. Perhaps Trump, yet another criminal president, will have the decency to do the same.

Nah. What was I thinking? That kind of decency could never come from Trump.

The Deconstructing Trump Corner
.
  • Those who cannot remember the past
  • are condemned to repeat it.
  • George Santayana, 1905
  • Keep Santayana’s words in mind
  • as you consider
  • the horrors of past fascisms.
  • Nothing so soon destroys freedom
  • as cowardly and servile acquiescence.
  • Clarence Darrow, 1941

    _________________________________________________

    * Paine’s essay was written in a day when people’s attention span had not yet been truncated by both an avalanche of information and the enslavement of us by electronic devices. He got away with publishing an essay that is several times the length of these Disambiguation posts. And the people read them.

  • I urge you to read The American Crisis to reconnect yourself in a most visceral way to the real America that you long for.

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  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe at no charge – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too, because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get this 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 length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


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

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