Freedom

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.

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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. 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.

Enough Small Ball


POST 1153

Executive Summary

> Link through to J.B. Pritzker’s address for inspiration and direction.

> Focus on the Big Picture – they are trashing the constitution, the rule of law, democracy, freedom of the press and our individual freedoms. We need an inspirational leader to stop the bad guys.

> We the People are for the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse, but even more we want to eliminate Elon Musk. We provide the firing email to him.

Where To Start
  1. If you have not heard Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s State of the State address you need to hear it. Start at the 33 minute mark. It’s about America. His words are medicine for your heart.
  2. Trump has stomped his foot on the neck of freedom of the press. From Ron Fournier:

“The White House said Tuesday that presidential aides will dictate which news outlets regularly cover the president and presidency up close .  .  .”

That means they decide who can attend press briefings, ride in the steerage section of Air Force 1 and more. The rate of destruction is accelerating.

Leadership I

Yes, Trump intends to replace ordinary, Constitution defending workers with people loyal only to Trump. That’s what he said he’d do.

Yes, Musk is a chainsaw wielding maniac, a racist and a thief.

Yes, it’s deplorable how cruelly and illegally our civil servants are being treated.

Yes, it’s immoral and homicidal to withhold food from starving people and medical aid from the sick.

Yes, it’s a blatant abuse and a prelude to grand larceny that Musk and his juvenile delinquent flying monkeys have your personal financial and other private information and they now control when and whether you receive your tax refund or your Social Security check.

Yes, it used to be unthinkable that funding for Alzheimer’s Disease research could be cut, but that’s exactly what Trump is doing.

All that is horrible, yet it’s relatively small ball. It misses the point, the big picture, the forest unseen because of the trees. We need crystal clear focus on the forest.

Trump told us he would be a dictator. He wants to do away with Congress, the courts, the press, freedom of assembly, everything and rule as dictator. I repeat: He told us.

Hitler dismantled Germany’s democracy in just 53 days of bullying and threatening members of the Reichstag to get them to prostrate themselves. As Trump is bullying and threatening our legislators and press, don’t you think it’s time we stopped pretending Trump might work within the bounds of our government when he is right now manufacturing an American dictatorship?

Lickspittle Republicans are using cowardly silence to allow Trump to take down of our democracy. It’s time we put banana peels under their shoes like these people did at a recent town hall in Georgia.

Focus on the BIG PICTURE:

  • TRUMP IS STEALING OUR COUNTRY FROM US
  • AND HE’S DOING IT IN PLAIN SIGHT!

Enough small ball, however important those issues truly are. There is an ongoing TrumpMusk revolution to stick our Constitution, our laws and our democracy into an incinerator. It’s time for us to fight back with a real American revolution to restore what our Founders fought a mad king for, what our Union military fought for, what our dough boys and our WW II Yanks fought for. It is time to stop the bad guys.

Russell Vought is the newly confirmed Director of the Office of Management and Budget, which is frightening because he is a chief architect of Project 2025, the Republican road map to dictatorship, the plan that Trump is executing right now.

Vought said,

We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains … We want to put them in trauma.

Really? That’s the America you want, Oberführer Vought? We the People surely don’t want that.

Anne Applebaum put the actions of DOGE into perspective, writing,

DOGE has attacked at least 11 federal agencies that were embroiled in regulatory fights with Musk’s companies or were investigating them for potential violations of laws on workplace safety, workers’ rights, and consumer protection.

Does that sound like the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse? It sounds to me like Musk is trashing the legitimate agencies scrutinizing him and his companies. That’s what Chainsaw Musk can do when he controls government. That’s how Trump can get away with stealing classified documents and inciting an insurrection.

It is unacceptable to be immobile with hopelessness and frustration now. The battle call from the bugle of America is deafeningly loud and it is calling you and me. It is calling us to be in the streets with millions of patriots telling the cowardly Republicans that we demand that they find their spines, that they stand up and end this insanity. And that bugle tells them that if they fail to answer that call that we will discard them like rotting food waste.

Leadership II

We need national, inspirational leadership, so I wrote to my senators and representative:

Our democracy is in an existential moment – you know this. We need powerful, stand-out leadership, not policy wonks, and with few exceptions, we are presented with Democratic and Republican Party deafening silence. Where is that leadership? Where are you?

Feel free to copy, paste and send that message to your legislators. Find them on house.gov and senate.gov. Go there and click on the Contact button.

Leadership III

Hakeem Jeffries was on Rachel Maddow’s show on Monday and spoke with true bureaucratic zeal about policies House Democrats are pursuing. She replied by saying, in so many words, that what people want is not new policies, but inspiration and leadership. Maddow is right. Jeffries, for all of his fine qualities, doesn’t seem to be wired to provide what we need.

Who will step up in our hour of need?
.

Hey: What about Adam Kinzinger to lead our charge?

Not-So-Dear Elon:

Chainsaw Musk

It was announced by someone in the White House that you are now merely an advisor to the President. That means that you have no power or authority over anyone or any agency of our government. You have no license for your cruelty. Of course, you really never did.

Nevertheless, you sent an email to many thousands of our dedicated public servants, treating them like misbehaving school children, demanding that they justify their jobs or be fired. You required them to reply not later than last Monday night.

Turnabout is fair play, Chainsaw. Here is your requirement from America.

You will list not less that 5 actions you took in the last week that actually helped our country. You will justify your claims with actual facts, unlike the fatuous idiocy you commonly make up. You will email your information to [email protected] not later than midnight this Friday, February 28 so that your reply can be vetted and reported in the JaxPolitix Disambiguation on Sunday.

Failure to comply with this directive will result in you being fired from your non-job and banished from America forever. That will give We the People a reason to smile.

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.

Stupid Distractions and Stop The Steal


POST 1148

Ugly Highlights From Last Week

There is a cadre of Musk hacker delinquents playing larceny games within our Treasury Department in the form of making “extensive changes to the [Treasury Dept.] code base for the payment system.” To whose benefit do you suppose those “extensive changes” will accrue? Who will get slammed one way or another by the malfeasance of these flying monkeys, as directed by the dangerous crime spree mob boss, Secretary of the Treasury, Elon Musk.

Oh wait – DOGE is not a federal agency or department, Musk was never qualified by anyone for any post and he was never elected to anything. You have as much right to his phony DOGE job as he does, but he gave Trump $288 million so he’s controlling your money now.

Curiosity of the week:

Musk and his flying monkeys are eviscerating USAID as their first move. That’s happening as USAID was/is investigating Musk and his Starlink internet hardware and service, which somehow was being used by the Russians to attack Ukraine. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

Musk’s delinquents – his storm troopers – invaded the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a first action to delete the agency that analyzes, predicts and warns us of dangerous weather conditions, including tornadoes, hurricanes and damaging winds and rain, all to keep us safe. That’s significant because it was recently discovered that a Sharpie cannot redirect a hurricane.

Musk intends to privatize the agency, giving away what we paid to establish and improve for 90 years, all to absolutely no benefit to We the People. Next he’s promised to eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy. It’s all so very Project 2025 to give away our assets to rich guys.

Trump earlier indicated that he plans to: invade Panama in order to retake and own the canal; make Canada our 51st state; and somehow acquire Greenland.

Now Trump says he’s going to send our troops to Gaza, ethnically cleanse all Gazans from the area and develop Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Surely, there will be a Trump Tower there and the whole area will be renamed Gaz-a-Lago or Trump Mediterranean.*

But,

– He isn’t going to send troops, take over Gaza and build a Middle East vacation spot for rich people.

– He isn’t going to annex Canada. He isn’t even going to impose a tariff that sticks. He’s already backed down. Same for Mexico.

– He isn’t going to acquire Greenland or the Panama Canal.

It’s all nothing more than fraudulent, flapping lips of distraction so that we won’t see his traitorous coup.**

It’s about the neutering of our law enforcement, dismantling of our intelligence agencies for the outright theft (or at least control) of our Treasury Department money and Trump’s power over the entire country.

This is the biggest burglary (now in progress) in the history of the world.
.

His packed courts and hobbled FBI won’t do anything to stop him. This will continue as long as we are willing accomplices through our silence or our refusal to see what is before us.

And he’s aided and abetted by siccing techno-grifters on the nation. Read this.

Stop the Steal

Not that phony stop the steal. This one.

There were rallies/demonstrations all over America last week The one in front of the Treasury Department in DC had about 1,000 protesters. We’ll need a lot more actions. Here’s a short list.
.

Constant protests, lots of them, likely requiring leaders of various NGAs to set aside ego and coordinate efforts (see below). The people’s power is in our numbers.

A blizzard of lawsuits filed at the federal, state and municipal levels – constant pressure. Who’s a lawyer you know who will suit up for this battle?

A blizzard of communication to every Republican coward in elected office. Tell them constituents are working hard to fire them. As well, reach out to Democrats to let them know what we expect from them and that we have their backs.

Public communication – ads, commercials, social media videos, etc. – about how American citizens have been hurt by the Trump/Musk/Republican cabal of oligarchs. Tell the stories of real people; e.g. women who couldn’t get health care and then bled to death from miscarriages; new cases of polio and other diseases for which there are proven safe, effective vaccines, but which RFK discourages, resulting in sick, paralyzed kids; people – including our FBI agents – injured or killed by pardoned Jan 6 perps. This is key to success and Democrats suck at communication.

Civil disobedience, culminating in a national labor strike to include all but necessary safety, health and national security personnel.

You and I can do all of that or, at the very least, we can appeal to people who can. Do you know a leader of an activist organization like Moms Demand Action, Indivisible, MoveOn, Our Revolution, Leaders We Deserve, Country First or any other? Call them. Text them. Email them. Tell them to join with other organizations to fight by using the power of a massive number of Americans.

My boyhood pal Frank Levy is a most impatient activist. We should all be that way now. Here’s his call to action.

What 47 and Musk are doing is a threat to many if not all Americans. As Heather Cox Richardson said in her February 5 Letters From an American, quoting Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), “It is extraordinary how much access Elon Musk and his sort of creepy 22-year-old henchmen have to all of our data.” Musk and his vigilante kid demons have no idea what damage they are causing. They now have the ability to cut off all Social Security checks and IRS refund checks and spy on the bank account information of most Americans.*** So, what can we do about it?

We can stand up, speak up and act up. How? If every individual who voted for Kamala and Tim went on strike for two days and rallied together on the steps of their state capitol it would shake cowardly 47 and let everyone in his government know that “We are mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore.” [I’ll add that millions in red states are mad as hell, too. This isn’t what they voted for. – JA]

Fighting back is simple. It does take courage, resilience and a determination to resist. But this is on us. Our future is in our hands. We cannot count on the feckless Democrats to help. We are on our own.

I’m calling for a national two-day strike to occur on Thursday and Friday, February 20 and 21, 2025. Who will join me?

In the 60s we used to chant “Power to the people!” This is a good time to renew the call.

For Anyone Who Missed the Message

Trump 2.0 is a profound, ongoing betrayal of America and everything that has made this remarkable nation the most powerful and prosperous in the world. It is why we must fight.

– Simon Rosenberg, Hopium Chronicles, Feb 6, 2025

REBEL!

____________________________________________

* Republican idiot (redundant?) Nancy Mace, in flagrante Trump suck-up form, said, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” thus securing her place with Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and a few more Republicans as the dumbest rocks at the bottom of the bucket. The rest of the Republicans aren’t dumb. Rather, they are cowardly hypocrites, bought off by a threat and for a few baubles tossed on the ground before them.

** Read Prof. Timothy Snyder’s post, Of Course It’s a Coup and Sheila Markin’s post, Trump and Musk Smash and Grab.

*** Just a guess, but I suspect that to Musk’s delinquents this diabolical rewiring of our Treasury Department is not much more than a video game played to win a pat on the head from Musk. It gets the rest of us suffering and even death.

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.

Who Will Lead?


POST 1147

Who’s Behind This Debacle

It isn’t just Führer Dummkopf that’s the problem. It’s his 25 million rabid dupe-dopes who love to kill anything in their way.

the willfully and proudly ignorant

the homicidally angry and hateful

the ones who get their sense of power from hatred and harming others

the sleep walking MAGA lemmings and sheep

the spineless hypocrites

the happily propagandized

the testosterone manipulated puff-ups

the reality deniers

the vacuously self-deluded

the “I Love Cruelty” mob

the lazy couch crouchers

the couldn’t-be-bothered-to-think crowd

the “Who cares about you?” narcissists

the “true patriots” who hate Americans

the descendants of immigrants who hate immigrants, whether documented or not

the believers in a mythical “Great Again” that never was

.  .  .  because they brought us this ongoing Trump destruction of our democracy, the abandonment of the rule of law, the upcoming raid on our treasury, the vicious attacks on We the People, this Republican assault on their obviously-not-sacred-to-them oath to the Constitution of We the People.

Click me

What we’re left with is figuring out how to turn them from the St. MAGA gospel of hatred to something more in line with what Jesus would direct, although they obviously didn’t get the message from Sunday school. Clearly, they never read what the Founders had to say about Christianity as a national religion.

Historical note: They said, “Nuh-uh.” You can look it up in the Federalist Papers or in the First Amendment.

Reconciliation with these people seems nearly unachievable and there is no Mandela on the horizon. But perhaps we can reach the 50 million casual Trump voters to partner to restore our country to its 250-year order. We’re way late getting started and we’re going to need the right leader to battle and beat this existential threat.

Job Qualifications & My Nominee

We need a leader with the brilliance of mind to provide us with clarity for the actions we can and must take. We need a leader with the passion to inspire us to the full measure of our patriotism. We need a leader who is wise and compassionate, who will walk with us and who knows right from wrong,

I’ve been watching and listening for that leader. I see many good people, but most have a hole in their personal résumé, They are smart, but dry and without charisma. Or they have the passion, but not the brilliance needed.

Click me – but read Note #5 below first

This is about leading an army of patriotic Americans in opposition to the would-be fascist totalitarians. This is about giving voice and direction to We The People and doing so with no intention of personal gain. This is about who will stand and declare, “THAT WAY!” Who qualifies for that job?

My nominee is Barack Obama. He’s brilliant, charismatic, clear, inspiring and has no aspirations for political advantage for himself. He has experience as a community organizer and as the leader of our nation and he has the cred to call out the self-serving, the pompous, the liars and the hood-winkers. And he stands for hope and change – he wrote a book about it. Plus, it will be absolutely delicious to watch Trump crumble under truth delivered by the victim of his scum bag birther lies.

Maybe you have a fine nominee. Great, tell us. Let’s pick one and draft him/her. The time to start was yesterday.

  • REBEL!

Follow Up to Dec. 22 POST 1132, Our Problem

In that piece I ripped Democrats for being AWOL in the midst of our existential battle and I stand by that description. One thing that post did not cover is the critical analysis of what should have been done to win hearts, minds and votes and what must be done next time we have a chance to put banana peels under the shoes of the fascist traitors. Fortunately, Ira Leavit offers us some help in his recent post, Blue Voters Need Something to Believe In – Something Big.

Voters care exclusively for what they decide for themselves is important to them. That’s a lesson that Democrats desperately need to learn and Ira gives us an idea of what that might look like. Have a read.

Next, be sure to read Thom Hartmann’s piece If Obama Had Sent a Mob to Kill a Cop, Republicans Would Never Let You Forget It – The GOP would be screaming “Cop Killer” every single day — so why aren’t Democrats holding Trump to the same standard? It’s a brilliant and clear outline of how to win hearts, minds and votes.

Sarcasm Corner

So glad that Führer Trump is gutting the FBI. Those people are a poison to our national blood for having pursued accountability for homicidal criminals, catching der Führer’s “fine people” and sending them to prison. Besides, we don’t need the FBI to pursue law breakers or terrorists or those plotting massive deaths of Americans anymore now that we have a new sheriff in town. He’ll stop ISIS with one hand tied behind his massive ass.

At last someone is eliminating USAID. We don’t care if millions of babies overseas die because, hey, they aren’t Americans. Let ’em drop. Same for people with malnutrition, malaria  or HIV. We shouldn’t have to feed them or provide life saving drugs. Let the Chinese pay the bill.

And those DEI hires at the FAA – cut ’em loose and give those air traffic controller jobs to White Christian men who made it through the 7th grade.

I’m so glad that unqualified, unelected, unhinged Elon Musk has access to and control of all government payments and has your Social Security number, too. Now all government can be shut down and eliminated and Trump will be in sole control of what’s left. It’s the greatest national security breach in U.S. history – you’ve never seen anything like this before. Take a back seat, Edward Snowden, to the Trump/Musk fascist victory! Just hoping we’ll get our Social Security checks from whatever privatized company Trump/Musk gives the agency and its money to. And we can only hope that people who are not fabulously rich can get health care somewhere, somehow. What could possibly go wrong?

And they’re about to eliminate the Department of Education. That’s good, because ignorant citizens are easier to manipulate.

There’s super labor saving now, too, because there’s no longer a need to think long term. We Americans like things simple, no matter how complex they actually are. Now RFK will bring us horrendous diseases, Bondi will bring us prosecutions of the innocent and will allow Trumpy felons to skate free. Patel will allow and encourage violent crimes by crippling our national law enforcement agency. Hegseth will threaten our friends with our military and ignore atrocities done by our not-friends. Rubio will sway whichever way the wind blows. It’s all good.

Boy, this is going really well.

For The Pardoned and Commuted Sentence Felons

My wish is for you to call or write to those you threatened with retribution and death. Apologize to them and beg for forgiveness as an act of contrition. It will be your first step back toward the world of democracy, decency and the worthiness of being called a fellow citizen. Plus, maybe you can start on the road from being just a performative Christian to becoming an actual Christian. You know, like Jesus said you should be.

Until then you’re just a criminal thug.

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.

How It Works – v2


POST 1144

Preface

This is an update of a piece originally posted February 7, 2021, one month after the treasonous insurrection.

In yet another attack on the rule of law, President Trump has now pardoned or commuted the sentences of 1,500 of the January 6 criminals, including the cop killers.* The Republicans in the majority of both Houses of Congress have shown themselves to be cowardly and spineless in the face of Trump’s assault on the Constitution. They are essentially dissolving Congress voluntarily.

_________________________________________

“Fear will keep the local systems in line.”

In the first Star Wars movie there is a scene with Darth Vader and the officers of the Imperial star ship.

.

That’s pretty much how Hitler did it. He didn’t actually make the Reichstag go away. He just neutered it into becoming a lap dog by means of The Enabling Act of 1933, which the council members passed due to fear for their lives. Then things became way worse, as they always do in dictatorships. Required reading: Steve Schmidt’s There Is a Thin Line Between Life and Death.

It’s pretty much the same in Putin’s Russia, Erdoğan’s Turkey, Xi’s China, Duterte’s Phillippines and now in the U.S. Eliminating legislative oversight is what authoritarians do to hoard all power for themselves. Most often it’s done with thug tactics. Just ask Putin opponent Alexei Navalny about his experience with Putin’s gulags and nerve poison. Oh, wait: you can’t ask Navalny because Putin murdered him.

The January 6 mob was a violent insurrection dispatched by Trump, a riot of Jesus-bannered, cross carrying thugs, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3 Percenters, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other unhinged hoodlums. They were there to overthrow our government – to effectively eliminate Congress – so that Trump could take over the country (see the movie clip again if you need a refresher). And to kill cops.

Does that sound so extreme as to be preposterous? If so, you need to pay closer attention, because that’s exactly what those thugs said they were there to do, all at Trump’s bidding. They were there to murder any House or Senate members they found (cue the clips of senators running for their lives). They brought a noose to lynch Mike Pence. Those aren’t things people do in order to preserve their government.

Capitol Officer Brian Sicknick

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died from cop killer mob violence while defending 535 members of Congress and the symbol of America that is the Capitol Building. He was killed by Bible-thumping, flag waving American terrorists, who most certainly weren’t promoting law and order, honoring our cops or doing what Jesus would do.

Honoring Officer Brian Sicknick

Both before and since the insurrection, non-Republican members of Congress and election volunteers have received death threats* to themselves and to their family members.

For any remaining fascism skeptics:

If not to overthrow the will of the people and our democracy, what do you think that election fraud Big Lie was about?

Surely, you don’t think those rioters were play acting when they attempted to kill those in Congress.

Surely, you don’t think they believed in democracy when they attempted to trash the votes of tens 81 million Americans.

Surely, you don’t think the currently seated members of Congress who attempted to stop the Electoral College vote counting and whose knees buckle upon hearing of Trump’s every whim actually believe in and honor their oath of office.

Surely, you don’t think the pardoned traitors don’t mean it when they vomit their vitriol of retribution.

Click me – but read Note #5 below first

This is how democracies die. A cult leader exhorts fanatics, the thugs terrorize all opposition and incrementally people surrender to death threats and violence. And that’s advanced when hundreds of our legislators give a standing ovation to the hateful nut cases spewing fascist hatred. That’s advanced when Trump puts forth a slate of entirely unqualified suck ups to be heads of cabinets and it’s advanced when spineless Republicans put those Trump sycophants in power. Yes, fascism can happen here in America. It’s happening right before your eyes.

I’ve exhorted readers to learn what FDR’s Vice President Wallace had to say about fascism in America. If you believe in democracy and have not yet read his essay, please read it now.

Now that Trump has pardoned these violent criminals – cop killers – you can expect acts of terrorism, including sniper and mass shootings, bombings (think: Timothy McVeigh and the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City) and perhaps political assassinations over the coming years. These are highly armed, angry, hateful, bigoted, self-righteous thugs who expect to continue their self-righteous war against America. That’s exactly what they’ve promised. And Trump loves and protects them.

I’m all for our learning to talk with one another constructively, to make peace, perhaps to have a truth and reconciliation commission. But that can only happen after violence is no longer a threat and democracy is secure. Reference: South Africa.

Now it’s time for all of us to stand and be counted in support of the FBI, our state justice departments and law enforcement agencies to stop the barbarians. It’s imperative that we eliminate the clear and present danger that these home grown killers and desecrators are.

The cop killer terrorists have already breached the gates of democracy and are buoyed in their treasonous actions by Trump and because they see January 6 as a victory for themselves. If we are to continue our bold experiment in self-rule, we better get some victories notched against the barbarians damned fast.

Oh, and Trump fired 18 inspectors general in violation of the law requiring 30 days advance notice,

  1. Trump don’ wan’ no stinking people who can hold him accountable, so he’s getting rid of the watch dogs. He’s lived a lifetime of doing whatever allowed him to skate from responsibility for his actions, including packing the Supreme Court with his extremist picks to give him a license to lie, cheat, steal and kill from the Oval Office.
  2. The real deal, the giggly, bubbly part for Trump, is that this, along with the pardons, is a stake in the ground saying that he doesn’t have to obey our laws. He’s making it clear that he is above the law and is daring anyone to stand up to him. The question is whether Congress will let him get away with that, just as the Reichstag let Hitler get away with everything. You are advised to have low expectations of our Republicans.
This Just In: Fired for Cause

Jeff Bezos’ termination of faithfulness to the Washington Post’s masthead slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” has led to spineless reporting, suck up editorials and shameful toadying. It is worse than just embarrassing. It is the dying of a light that protects and defends our democracy, all for a few coins in Bezos’ pocket and a pat on his slick scalp by the Führer-in Chief.

I just cancelled my subscription.

Let me know when that coward is gone and there is new leadership at the paper worthy of the legacy of Kathryn Graham and Ben Bradlee.

__________________________________

* Refer to Thom Hartmann’s post, If Obama Had Sent a Mob to Kill a Cop, Republicans Would Never Let You Forget It – The GOP would be screaming “Cop Killer” every single day — so why aren’t Democrats holding Trump to the same standard?

Coming Sunday: This Is Not Normal

Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so,

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The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Said John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” So, educate me and all of us. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


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

Stand a Post – 2


POST 1141

Preface to This Guest Essay – It Could Be Entitled, “Stand a Post-2.”

On December 22 I published Our Problem, a flaming declaration of the obvious and dangerous truth, that most Democrats have shown themselves to be toothless tigers and are completely unready to battle the horrors that face us. Lifelong pal Frank Levy had something to say about that and he posted an insightful comment. You need to see it, so it’s here as a Guest Essay.

Frank has been an activist forever. He was a Freedom Rider in the 1960s when registering Black people to vote in the deep south was a death defying act. He does more than give lip service to doing what is right and good. He tells us that it’s time to get up off our butts and take action. He tells us that we cannot count on Democratic elected officials to fight this war to preserve our rights, the Constitution and our democracy. He’s right.

For context, review my post first and then come back to read Frank’s wise words.

Jack – You are right. The Dems are MIA. They are not going to save us. They are not even going to lead us. So, what? They have been MIA for a long, long time. The only thing that will save us and our on-life-support democracy is what has always saved us – WE THE PEOPLE!

With no disrespect, my longtime friend, you are suffering from a serious case of useless pundit syndrome. We all know what the problem is. We know it all too well. There is no shortage of media pundits (all of whom incorrectly predicted the election), scholars, and the like explaining ad nauseam what went and is wrong. There is no shortage of useless verbiage telling us how bad things will be. We know all of that.

What we need are people willing to offer some solutions, a defensive or even offensive strategy or tactical plan so We The People can survive the coming catastrophe and maybe even restore liberal democracy to America sometime in the future.

So with no lack of arrogance I am offering my own save yourself and democracy to-do list:

  1. Never miss an opportunity to inform elected officials – Republican and Democrat, local and national – about your position on every issue. Write them, Call them. Make them hear you!
  2. Get together with like minded people to form a local resilience and resistance force. Meet regularly. Make plans to do meaningful acts of resistance. There really is strength in numbers. This is our John Lewis moment!
  3. Make a plan to protect your job, your savings, your retirement funds, your healthcare plan, your health, your home.
  4. If you live in a red state, make plans to create an underground railroad, to help women needing an abortion or healthcare get what they need.
  5. Create or work with a local food bank so when food prices skyrocket and there are food shortages people in need can get affordable food.
  6. Raise your own livestock (cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys) or find a farmer to raise it for you – there will be food shortages. Be prepared.
  7. Again, if your live in a red state create an underground railroad to help LGBTQIA+ individuals get to states where it is safe to live, be married, and get gender affirming health care.
  8. Find new, reliable, courageous news sources. The media for the most part has surrendered to MAGA and Trump’s threats.
  9. Stop trying to make nice with MAGA people. They do not share your values. They will not agree to the same set of facts. Without agreement of those two things there is nothing to talk about.
  10. Buy a copy of Timothy Snyder’s book, “On Tyranny – Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” Read it. It is your new Bible. Do not leave home without it.
  11. If you think you will need to leave this country to go somewhere safe – get or renew your passport now.
  12. Decide whether or not you have the means and are willing to provide sanctuary for those immigrants Trump and his evil henchmen want to deport or incarcerate.
  13. Join a group like Indivisible. They have great information and resources to help us in this fight. (www.Indivisible.org)
  14. Contact me one on one. I will be happy to share what I know, and what my friends and I in Alabama are doing. ([email protected])

I am sure there are other things we can and should be doing in this terrifying time, but this is a start. This is what my friends and I are doing now.

_____________________________________________________

Okay, maybe you won’t be raising your own livestock. At the very least you need to see Frank’s comment as making the point that your circumstances are likely to become extremely bad. With what you see and hear every day you shouldn’t require clarification of this.

  1. You see the billionaire tech-toadies buying their way into power and the monied supplicant suck-ups (oh, wait: that’s redundant) bending a knee instead of standing in integrity.
  2. You see the cabinet appointments chosen not for their qualifications or their excellence, but for their loyalty to Trump so that they protect our Felon-in Chief.
  3. You see the guardrails coming down, so you know our democracy is in trouble.

Frank mentioned Indivisible.org. There are other ways to stand that post, including The Union, MoveOn.org, Country First, Focus4Democracy, The States Project, Indivisible Illinois and more. Go stand a post with at least one of those organizations working to protect our democracy.

We are in for a long, achingly hard battle, so put your ideas for action in the Comments section below to help us all.

REBEL!

.  .  .  against the billionaire tyranny.

From The Union

Tomorrow is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. day. You know the stories of how right wing haters tried to stop the creation of a day of remembrance for this (gasp!) Black man, this non-violent icon of peaceful change for the betterment of all. Tomorrow is also the inauguration of a man dedicated to hatred, selfishness and repression. The contrast would be comical if it weren’t so damaging.

The folks at The Union have some ideas about how you can help peaceful change come about.

Register Voters: Help your community by assisting people in registering to vote or becoming election workers. (If you’re interested in learning how to get involved with voter registration in your area, please reach out to The Union for more information.)

Volunteer at a local food bank: Help provide meals for people in need.

Community Cleanups: Lead efforts to clean up parks, streets, or public spaces, promoting community pride and solidarity.

Reach out to a friend or relative to see how they’re doing and encourage them to get involved in local volunteer opportunities or pro-democracy initiatives.

Sign up for a volunteer event at our Action Center! Key races are happening this year in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Virginia. Get involved and mark your calendar today!

As The Union wrote in its recent post,

“Thank you for your dedication to justice, community, and democracy.”

TikTok

You would compromise our national security so that you can post and view inane videos for free? Really? Or so that you can make a few bucks on that platform, as though that’s the only place you can make a buck? Seriously?!

Seriously!?!!
.

We can be bought – we sell out – so cheaply. But you don’t have to do that. Reach down and grab your ass. That is what’s at stake.

Fun – Yes, Really

Click me

Did you make it this far in this long post? Good for you, because here’s a gift courtesy of Dan Rather at Steady. Fleetwood Mack tells us “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.” It’s a message of hope – “It’ll be here better than before” – and we surely need hope right now, because tomorrow – as in: Monday – won’t be better than today. But we are going to make our tomorrows better than before – if we work at it. Let’s go.

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.

Frail Societal Memory


POST 1134

Memory, If Any

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

– Steve Schmidt, Danger Ahead

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

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

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

Here’s Heather Cox Richardson on December 11:

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

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

Make Robber Barons Great Again!
.

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

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

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

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

Here’s more largely lost memory.

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

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

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

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

Make Polio and Measels Great Again!
.

Dirty little secret:

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

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

They’re Doing It Again

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

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

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

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

Just For Fun

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

The Light


POST 1133

Tree of Life Synagogue

Joe Biden wrote two months ago, on the sixth anniversary of that awful mass murder,

“.  .  . a gunman armed with an AR-15, multiple handguns, and hate in his heart, opened fire and killed 11 Jewish worshippers [sic] and wounded six more, in the deadliest act of Antisemitism in our history. It shattered families, pierced the heart of the Jewish community, and struck the soul of our nation.”

There wasn’t much light to be seen on that terrible October day in 2018.

Four days ago on Christmas morning, just hours prior to lighting the first candle of Hanukkah, Tree of Life sent this:

This week, our community will recount a powerful story: a story of courage, unity and the triumph of hope over adversity, of light over darkness.

Each night, as we light another candle, we honor the miracle of the oil that lasted eight days. We tell the story of the Maccabees’ unwavering bravery in the face of insurmountable odds. Their strength to stand up, rebuild and protect what was sacred has inspired generations—that same courage fuels our work at The Tree of Life as we envision a world where hope, kindness and resilience prevail.

With each candle, may we all remember that Hanukkah calls us not only to be the light but to spread it. By coming together, we amplify the brightness of hope, illuminating a future where all can thrive in safety and peace.

One of our challenges today is not just that we don’t agree on much; it’s that we all think we’re right. So, intransigent, inflammable, indignant and ignorant ways are often the norm. Facts need not intrude on this spectacle of craziness and sometimes self-justified cruelty. Welcome to 21st century America, land of victims who are victimizing.

That makes the job of each American – to be and to spread the light – much more difficult. And I am certain that you see clearly the enormous need for light in this democracy threatened by powerful, corrupt people intent on tearing down all we hold dear. That means that each of us has to go beyond our feelings of shock, hopelessness and fear and get up, find our own way to the light, likely alongside others, and do what needs to be done.

We have an owners manual that gives us direction. It is the Constitution. We have reference materials, like the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and 248 years of the writings of many wise people. To be fair, we also have writings from some wretched fools, so be careful in your selection. Pull up a wooden chair at the library table. Read, learn and follow the instructions.

And recognize that the incoming administration has pledged to burn our owners manual and reference materials. In years past labels like “traitor” would have been pasted on such people with Republicans doing most of the labeling and pasting. Republicans, please explain to all of us why burning down our republic is now somehow acceptable.

Sadly, many no longer seem to have what used to be called common sense or the humility to be ashamed of themselves. Bluster and lack of accountability have taken their places and they have a sky high opinion of their opinions.

Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing,
once all other possibilities have been exhausted.
  • – commonly attributed to Winston Churchill, but he never said that.
  • Sometimes Israeli Ambassador Abba Eban gets credit for some
  • variation of this statement. Had either of them
  • said this, he would have been right.

We have promoted so many other possibilities, most notably now the attempts to strong arm our democracy toward fascism by rich, cruel usurpers supported by angry, heavily armed citizens who fear their special place in our society is slipping away. So many practice various forms of discrimination and repression and more harm is promised. They’ll try any self-serving thing that crosses their corruptible minds.

Citizen screamers will always cling to their pompous anger and grievance. They honestly believe that there are those who are naturally superior to others (e.g. book banners/burners, immigrant haters, replacement theory whiners, patriarchy promoters, etc.) and that it is self-evident that those holding such a view are the superior ones. In reply, let us read together from page one our founding documents: “Nuh-uh.”

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

– Mark Twain

We can wish for the lessons for doing right to be simpler, obvious to everyone and easier, but they are not and they won’t be. We’ve built an impassioned barrier, a self-constructed divide that makes us distrust one another and which dims the light from the shining city on the hill. Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan,

Mr./Mrs./Ms. America, tear down these walls!

When we do that we will have begun to end our violence toward one another. Until then, our primary job will have to be to counter our angry, violent fellow citizens, whether they’re the elected officials attacking our republic or others attacking Americans with threats and physical violence. We must do this before they hurt someone, like our immigrants now being threatened with family separation cruelty – again. There is enormous stubbornness in this violent country, so becoming the light will be difficult and will take a long time.

Be clear: We are at terrible risk right now and it’s going to take all of us to set things right, to turn up the light of the shining city on the hill.

There are glimmerings. The darkest day of the year is behind us and ever more daylight shines, a little more each day. And so our charge is not only “to be the light but to spread it.” That means stepping up and fighting the darkness that is trying to smother our nation. We must make incremental improvements every day.

It’s about the light. It’s always about the light.

_____________________________________

NOTE: No post this Wednesday

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA

 


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

What It Looks Like


POST 1129

Rebels in Damascus celebrate the downfall of Bashar al-Assad. Click me

We begin with a quotation from Anne Applebaum, writing in The Atlantic about the conditions that precipitated the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

“There is nothing worse than hopelessness, nothing more soul-destroying than pessimism, grief, and despair.”

We shed no tears for this brutal dictator and murderer, but don’t imagine that because this is not Syria, but is the democracy that is the United States of America, that we are somehow immune. We are just as vulnerable to the cruelty and brutality that arrive on the same train as lofty nationalist, chest-pounding rhetoric, exactly as happened in Syria, Russia, Germany, Italy and many more countries. Indeed, the soul crushing hopelessness always starts with the arrival of that jingo train.

Steve Schmidt describes what’s coming to us as the new administration rams its train of destruction into America.

” .  .  . the furies will be let loose by wicked and arrogant people who think they have been picked by the hand of god to lead their people into a storm of their own making.”

That is what has been promised to millions of ears that insisted upon remaining deaf to the real danger. That is what we’ll get unless we put the brakes to the locomotive of our political and cultural destruction.

That is the reason we must rebel, but most of us don’t know what that can look like or how to go about it. Several action opportunities can be found at the end of some of my recent posts (here and here), and now there is a wonderful overview available to you from a source from which you would not expect to find the action items for the rebelling we need right now.

President Barack Obama delivered his remarks at the 2024 Obama Foundation Democracy Forum a few days ago. This is a must read for clarity, context and specifics about what we must do.

Don’t look for an angry diatribe about the horrid, anti-Constitutional fascist poison sprayed maniacally from the inbound train of the incoming administration. Although that’s an accurate descriptor of what is facing us, look instead for what needs to be done to save our democracy, actions for both the short term (2026 and 2028) and for the long term.

We are at an inflection point only hinted at since the Civil War and it is going to take us generations – the long term – to make the changes necessary for us to have a country that includes all of us – like the Pledge of Allegiance, “with liberty and justice for all.” But the thing about the long term is that it’s made up of tens of thousands of short term actions.

The rebelling we need to do doesn’t include demonizing those with whom we’re sure we have nothing in common. Indeed, a slight scratch beneath the surface of most of us will most certainly reveal things about which we agree – like the thing that moves strangers to help tornado and hurricane victims without first checking their political, racial or religious credentials. That’s where we must focus.

Your assignment today is to read President Obama’s remarks. It’s a long piece, but even in this age that trains us to have a short attention span, I believe you’re up to the challenge. Read it, then sit back and think about how his message applies to you.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

How We Fell Off the Sled – v 2.0


POST 1128

A short while back I wrote that We’ve Fallen Off The Sled because we really have been dumped from our metaphorical transportation to a more perfect union. I had a perfectly serviceable 9-point post detailing how we did that, but I’m quite sick of election postmortems (likely, you are, too), especially when all they do is point fingers and wring hands. So, I did the humane thing and shredded that post.

Still, having read analyses from pundits proved useful because it brought me to a blinding flash of the obvious:

The Democrats have been resting on their laurels for over 80 years!
.

There have been a few bright flashes during that long interregnum of idea famine, like Medicare and Medicaid, but those happened nearly 60 years ago. Biden did some FDR-worthy things with infrastructure, bringing back manufacturing and more. Then he proceeded to allow fellow Democrats to fail to wave their Party flag. They sat on their hands and let Republicans beat the snot out of them and their policies.

Where the hell is the Democrats’ fight? Where the hell are the Democrats at all? I believe you can find them with their butts on their laurels, basking in the glow of how right and good they are. But,

“Some American men feel the sun setting on them while reckoning others enjoy the warmth on their faces. And Democrats have left those people alone in the darkening shadows for a very long time.” Ira Leavitt, The Sound and Fury of American Antipathy

Why should those folks vote for Democrats?

The Republicans have been fighting against all of FDR’s programs and all other programs designed for the welfare of the American people for all this time. They’ve had a 50-year plan to eliminate all these policies at least since Saint Ronnie. The Democrats have no plan, not a 50-year plan nor a 50-state plan. They are nowhere. The Democrats quit trying 80 years ago. That is how we got Trump and his billionaire fascists and

That is how we fell off the sled!
.

We dumped ourselves off it.

What We’re Facing

A few years ago I was riding in the back seat of my favorite Uber driver’s car, engaged in a lively conversation, when he made a most stunning statement. I don’t remember his precise wording, but he invoked conspiracy craziness, saying that the Earth is flat, not round.  I asked where that came from, to which he replied that there was no proof that the Earth is round, or some such gibberish, and besides, it looked flat to him.

I casually mentioned orbital space flights, during which humans and machines have traveled around Earth in a circular pattern, not in a straight line or in a tight rectangular trajectory. He challenged that by saying that those flights could have been faked or that the astronauts were lying.

Let’s think for a moment about some the things that our science and reality deniers claim didn’t happen/were faked:

The moon landings

The assassination of President Kennedy

Elvis lives!

The Holocaust

The Sandy Hook murders

And, of course, there are the things that the deniers claim happened but actually didn’t, like the Pizzagate non-event. You may recall that in 2016 conspiracy loonies claimed that high level Democratic officials associated with the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign were running a sex trafficking operation from the basement beneath a pizza shop in DC. An especially excitable idiot came from North Carolina with his firearms to put an end to that operation. He fired several bullets through the floor of the pizza shop. The only problems were:

  1. That building has no basement, so there never was a pedophilia operation or anything else going on below the pizza shop.
  2. Had there been a basement occupied by young girls, the North Carolina vigilante idiot likely would have wounded or killed some of them.

Some conspiracy zealots still hold that there was a sex trafficking operation there. It’s the same perversion of reality – belief in what has been shown to be false – as my Uber guy who, when confronted with the observed fact of a round Earth, simply claims that the observations are lies. That is the perversion such people believe. Think: space lasers.

All of which brings us to the main questions (really just one stated in two ways):

  1. How did we get to the point of denying facts, science, learning and intelligence?
  2. How did we get to the point where it’s okay to defend absurdities with reality-free claims – sometimes called “alternative facts” – and insist that actual evidence is a pack of lies? (No, Trump did not have the largest inauguration crowd ever. PERIOD!)

John Kennedy declared that “College is America’s best friend,” which you can reasonably interpret to mean that education is a good thing. It appears that we’ve slipped away from that best friend and now seem to be embracing vacuous ignorance as a virtue. Some of us have decided to refuse to learn what has been known for hundreds of years, that the Earth is round.

That is what we’re facing: Denial of reality. And it shoves us off the sled time and again.

Such people are obstacles on the path to a better America. Democrats, often their favorite targets, are going to have to get their butts off their laurels and get in the game, the one challenging the notion of America, if things are to get better.

Finally

We’ve had a few weeks since the election of continuing shock, battling dizziness, hand-wringing, hopelessness, confusion, thinking about where to emigrate to, and collective self-pity. It’s time to do as the low cost psychotherapists advise: GET OVER IT!

In fact, it’s time to pick a path to support truth, justice and the American way. Being self-congratulatory nice guys will not help in the battle to overcome the manipulation, hatred and cruelty of the MAGAs. Patting ourselves on our purity-infused backs won’t defeat the cowardly Republicans peddling the destruction of our Constitution and our democracy.

Right now Trump and his band of marauding Mongols are planning the destruction of our republic (see: Project 2025), but thus far don’t have any power, so their only marching orders are (to paraphrase segregationist George Wallace), “Chaos today, chaos tomorrow, chaos forever.”

Once in office, if Trump can go after those he thinks said mean things about him, how long do you think it will be before he muzzles Dorothy, the small and meek – or you?

Now we’re facing a possible Secretary of Defense – i.e., the person in charge of keeping us safe in a very dangerous world – who, according to multiple reports, can’t keep his d**k in his pants, can’t keep a drink out of his mouth and can’t keep his hand out of the cash box.  That such a person is a serious candidate tells us plainly that we’ve fallen very, very far from the sled.

Right now is the time to show America a better path. Roll up your shirtsleeves and get to work, because the battle to save America is underway. Get back on the sled and

Rebel!

In fact, step up, like Messman Doris Miller.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

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