Freedom

Can We Drop The Pretenses and Denial Now?


POST 1205

It’s About One Thing and One Thing Only

The Trump immigration cruelty, breaking of laws and the rest have nothing to do with immigration. They have nothing to do with the economy. They are unrelated to international trade or safe borders, disease prevention, ending war or the Nobel Peace Prize.

Click me for the story.

The cruelty is about getting rid of Brown and Black people, which is why ICE locks up even legal Brown American citizens and doesn’t discriminate between immigrants with or without a criminal record. In fact, ICE doesn’t even check for criminal records. They just kidnap people, zip-tie them and send them to a hell hole prison. Make America White Again!

The cruelty is about establishing public fear of Trump so that he has all the power. Even big law firms, major universities and financial institutions are chickening out and bending the knee for what they seem to believe is their short term advantage or perhaps protection from Trump’s cruelty.

That is compounded by Trump’s incremental militarization of our cities – notably only where there are Black mayors. Trump threatens several more cities with the deployment of our military and none of them is near the top of the list of cities with the most crime. He threatened New York, Baltimore, Chicago and Oakland, all Democratic strongholds with large African-American populations. They could be next and won’t that be a fine distraction from the withheld Epstein files?

Militarization is what dictators do to suppress and control the population.

During his first administration Trump ordered Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to have his troops “shoot [protesters] in the legs.” Milley refused, but now that Trump has fired the generals most likely to refuse his illegal orders and has replaced them with Trump sycophants, what do you suppose will happen when there are peaceful protests that Trump doesn’t like and they are surrounded by our troops carrying weapons of war?

That’s essentially what happened at Kent State in 1970 when Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on unarmed peaceful protesters (full disclosure: they were saying mean things about the administration). Guardsmen killed four and injured nine kids. Who was the idiot who issued live ammunition?

Surely, Trump figures that fear will keep we rubes in line.

Again, this is what dictators do to suppress and control the population.

All of that is diabolically supported by a cowardly Republican controlled Congress and the Supreme Court that was hand picked by Trump. Whatever their beliefs, they are all receiving death threats from Trump thugs, making it most unlikely that they will stand up to him.

Every Trump outrage is about one thing and one thing only: Making Trump a king. Der Führer.

Can we drop the pretenses and denial now?

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Address of August 14*

In urging you to read her whole post, here’s an excerpt from Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s report of August 14.

Noting that “this time requires us to act anew, not just think anew,” Newsom nodded to President Abraham Lincoln’s famous call from 1862: “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

The Staples Singers

Trump bungled every aspect, every detail of his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage on Friday. The bungling began even before the two met. Trump landed first and Putin showed up late, causing Trump to have to wait for him for nearly an hour, making Trump look like a chump.

Then Trump treated Putin to red carpet treatment and gave him a ride in the presidential “Beast.” At the end they parted, saying false, hollow niceties about one another and Mr. Art of the Deal flew away with no deal and with no pathway to a deal. Trump just plain got played by Putin – again. That affects all of us and, oddly, connects to The Staples Singers.

I listened to their wonderful hit Respect Yourself the other day and heard their message a bit differently than I did in 1972 when it topped the charts. Back then it was a message to our angry and disrespectful and the violence prone people, suffering  in the midst of great and largely justified public rage in our country. Today I heard it as a message to all of us to respect ourselves and one another by proudly standing up for what we know is right.

We know the Alaska meeting was wrong for America and the world. We know this Epstein stuff stinks 16 different ways, that disappearing people is wrong and awful and unlawful, that the assaults on our healthcare, the education of our children and the security of old people who paid into a system that now owes them are all wrong. And we know that abandoning Ukraine, giving it lies instead of munitions and turning our back on those embattled people is wrong on so many levels.

So, have a listen to Respect Yourself for a message – see if it speaks to you, giving you guidance for your actions today. And do, indeed, respect yourself.

The Deconstructing Trump Corner
.
  • Truth is on
  • the march
  • and nothing
  • can stop it
  • Émile Zola, 1898
  • We must always take sides.
  • Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
  • Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
  • Elie Wiesel, in Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Dec. 10, 1986
  • _______________________________________________
  • * Watch the entire session. This is what you’ve longed to hear. It will fill your heart and stiffen your spine with resolve.
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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.

On Not Being a D*ck – v3.0


POST 1202

Ed. note: This is the last post “On Not Being a D*ck,” as you know full well who is and who isn’t.

Emergency

Decide for yourself if you should call the paramedics after watching this video.

The Trumpstein Catastrophe

After Trump whined stupidly at the end of a press briefing about his spa workers who were “stolen” by Epstein, as though they were his property stolen by a thief in the night, a reporter shouted to Trump:

What did you think Epstein was stealing those women for?!?
.

But Trump didn’t answer that key question.

And they weren’t women. They were just kids. Children. Underage girls. Not women. And they weren’t his property.

He’s a d*ck – only in the sense of cruelty. He’s always been a d*ck.

Listen to Keith Olbermann’s comments about this here.

And you need to see Ben Meiselas’ review last week.

  • The Real Reason

.Here’s a headline from the August 3 Gannett News-Press:.

    • Is there justice, along with snakes and gators, in the Everglades | Opinion
    • DeSantis and Trump are turning our country into a police state in order to round up those coming to America
    • fleeing extreme poverty, violence and brutal dictatorships
    • Howard L. Simon

Just two more points. DeSantis and Trump are turning our country into a police state:

  1. In order to cement a dictatorship in America so that they and their fellow fascists have all the power.
  2. To rid America of all people of color and, eventually, all non-Protestants. Whatever color you are, whatever religion you align with, if you aren’t White and Protestant, sooner of later they’ll be coming for you.

If I’m wrong, no matter. These guys and their fellow fascist wannabees are still d*cks.

If they don’t want to be d*cks, they should try aggressively promoting democracy and following the law.

  • About the Dems
  • I’ve been asking about who will lead us on a path back to something that looks like America and I still have no answer, but I do have more questions.

  • Justice Samuel Alito

    Justice Clarence Thomas

    At 75 and 77 years old, unconstitutional Supreme Court d*cks Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are the oldest on the Court. Their departure from the Court is quite possible, even likely, while Trump is president. Replacements will have to pass muster in the Senate and if that happens while the Senate is majority Republican, very bad things will happen.

  • What will the Dems do when Trump nominates a younger far right supplicant to himself to sit on the Court and do his bidding for decades? Stopping that nail from being driven home into democracy’s coffin will be next to impossible. That should keep you from sleeping well and, perhaps, motivate you to get out on the street to canvass for your Democratic Senate candidate.
  • Because the 2026 election could produce a Democratic majority in the Senate starting on January 3, 2027. Then the leadership question morphs a bit.
  • Mitch McConnell made “the most consequential decision I’ve made in my entire public career” by stonewalling Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Court for over 10 months. McConnell was so very proud of his thumb in the eye of the Constitution. That gave us Neil Gorsuch on the Court instead of Garland. Is there a Democratic senator with the courage to do a McConnell stonewall to a Trump nominee to the Court if given the chance?
  • The radical Rs are finding new, slimy ways to rig the system, including wiping likely D voters from voting roles, killing mail in ballots and eliminating ballot drop boxes, The new red state scum bag move is to redistrict by slicing and dicing current districts to produce extra districts that will be safe Republican House seats. Texas alone intends to create 5 of therm and other red states are looking to do the same thing.
  • Gov. Gavin Newsome is promising to fight back by doing the same kind of redistricting in blue California and governors in Illinois, New York and other blue states are looking to do the same. We either fight this Republican slime or we will be slimed and there will be no Ghostbusters to come and save us.
  • Other than Newsome, what Dem has the chutzpah to do what must be done, including stonewall Trump’s nominations?
  • That is the nitty-gritty of my “Who will lead?” question. We need people ready to claw and scratch, bite and kick – fight fire with fire, slime with slime – to stop the destruction of all we hold dear. Otherwise, we’ll be the smug virtuous ones lying prone with a fascist’s boot on our necks.
  • Forget about “When they go low, we go high.” I’m as much a fan of Michelle Obama as anyone, but her very nice declaration is a paving stone on the path to fascism.
  • So, Democrats: put on your big boy and big girl pants and don’t be such gutless wimps.

The Democrats are more interested in grasping for social virtue than improving the material and emotional well-being of Americans. When your representatives won’t represent, you become your own delegation.

– Prof. Scott Galloway, June 20, 2025

Jimmy Buffett And You
Perhaps you remember the Jimmy Buffett song Last Mango in Paris (full lyrics here). In the song, an old man tells his story to Jimmy. Here’s the chorus, now personalized for you:
.
I ate the last mango in ParisTook the last plane out of SaigonTook the first fast boat to ChinaAnd ____________________ there’s still so much to be done.
.      Write your name here
.
Our work wasn’t finished with the civil rights wins in the 60s or the Viet Nam confrontations in the 70s. The haters, the usurpers and thieves never left. Now they’re ethnically cleansing our country of Black and Brown people and either renditioning them to foreign torture gulags or stuffing them into American Koncentration Kamps. They’re cramming our courts, universities and government agencies, even our entire Department of Justice with authoritarian supplicants.
.
As brutal as were those righteous battles of the 60s and 70s; as painful and as belief destroying as were the murders of Kennedy, King and the Kent State 4; as barbaric as was the 1968 Chicago Police riot; as abhorrent as the Reagan years of “trickle down” lies and the illegal Iran-Contra scheme; as democracy destroying and sanity stupefying as was Trump’s first term; we are now at a far more dangerous precipice. We are threatened with losing everything.
.
We see it, so we know. And we cannot un-know.
As much as we’ve battled, there’s still so much to be done.
The Deconstructing Trump Corner
.
  • Office tends to confer a dreadful plausibility
  •  on even the most negligible of those who hold it.
  • Mark Lawson 1992
  • Among all the diseases of the mind
  • there is not one more epidemical
  • or more pernicious than the love of flattery.
  • Richard Steele, 1711
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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

* I propose that we fight this Republican democracy killing with something more muscular. We should leave the safe red districts as they are and then create a new blue district for every Democratic voter. Illinois would produce over 3 million new blue seats in the House and New York would supply over 4.6 million new blue seats. Continuing this nationwide will produce over 75 million new Democratic Representatives in the House. Who cares what Texas does?


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

Missing


POST 1198

What Are We Missing?

On top of the furies of indignation, betrayal and the immoralities of the bitter poison that is every day Trumpism lies the Epstein criminal conspiracy on top. It has oddly joined MAGAmites with 90% of the population to call for the release of the Epstein list of sexual predators who abused and sex trafficked underage girls and perhaps others.

The MAGAmites wanted and were promised by Trump that once President he would let it all fly and the anticipated list of degenerate Democrats, Hollywood big shots and various coastal elites would be exposed. Then Republicans could splash about in moral superiority over the decadence and depravity of woke hypocrites. There would be no more hiding the truth, no more protecting the rich and powerful. Trump would uncork the drain of the DC swamp and all the bad guys would drown on the way down.

Except that’s not what happened. Trump is hiding the facts, the evidence. He’s doing exactly what MAGAmites were furious over when they dribbled conspiracy crazy on Dems, whom they were sure were getting away with horrible stuff, but they couldn’t prove it because facts were withheld. But this isn’t about Dems. Turns out MAGAmites are a lot like you: they don’t like being betrayed, even by their cult leader.

Trump is a master of distraction, the King of Bright Shiny Objects to direct your attention away from something damaging to him. His withholding of the Epstein list is widely believed to be his effort to prevent information incriminating to Trump from becoming public, but it does far more than that. Refusing to make the information public has transfixed public attention on the sordid Epstein mess, leaving us to wonder what Trump is doing that we aren’t focusing on, terrible things that are cruel, criminal and destructive.

Like:

Hiring thousands of additional ICE agents to act as his private, masked army, his Gestapo.

Putting thousands of immigrants into inhumane cages and holding them incommunicado

Arresting and incarcerating American citizens solely because they didn’t have citizenship papers in their possession and look Hispanic (read: Brown, not White)

Renditioning thousands of prisoners to various countries around the world

Setting the stage in Los Angeles for us to accept our military being deployed in our own country.

That last may be the key to what we are missing.

“Chronic venous insufficiency is a condition where the veins in the legs have difficulty drawing attention from the fact that the Epstein Files still haven’t been released.” anonymous source. Getty image

The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act prohibits deployment of our military on U.S. soil except for the most unusual circumstances, like an invasion from another country. No invasion has happened to the U.S. since the War of 1812.

Trump’s many horribles are at least as bad as you think they are, but the Epstein distraction may be hiding something far worse. We may be missing a looming final lurch into crushing authoritarianism.

Reference my post about that very thing. The Epstein distraction may be the preparation for some terrible event which Trump will use to declare martial law and become de facto dictator. Such actions are what dictators do and Trump is clearly a megalomaniac eager to burn our Constitution and aggregate all power and gobs of money for himself alone.

Yeah, we’re missing something critically important, for sure.

Who Will Lead?

Regular readers have likely recognized my discontent with the Democratic National Committee, a supposed leader of the right values and against the wrong values, We look there and to members of that tribe’s muck-a-mucks to do valiant and effective battle against those who would violate our values and do us and our nation harm. We expect them to vigorously promote our general welfare. My discontent boils for the lack of all that.

Who will lead us out of the morass of today to avoid the far worse morass of tomorrow? I’ve asked this question many times and we see some capable people speaking out (sometimes) against the cruel and the outrageous. Nevertheless, it remains opaque as to who will stand and declare, “THAT way – Follow me!” in such a compelling way that We The People will follow with our passion, our wisdom and our patriotism.

Truth be told, we Boomers made this horrid mess. George W. Bush lied us into two “forever wars” that killed and displaced millions, leaving brutality in its wake. Now Trump is clawing and scraping away our Constitution to institute dictatorial control and eliminate our rights and our freedom.

Both of these elected ones are charter members of the Boomer generation, each wholly unfit to lead a nation. Each enlisted many other Boomers and others into their perfidy, all to create their version of destruction and abandonment of facts and reality. Many in Congress and the courts are Boomers, too.

Here’s the key:

  • We cannot find our way out of this morass
  • using the same thinking and the same tools that got us into it.

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, recently announced that they will conduct a postmortem of the 2024 election. It took them 8 months to decide to do that. His examination won’t focus on the campaign, he said, as though the Committee’s lack of relevance to over 77 million voters and 90 million who didn’t bother to vote can be explained by an arcane partial study.

But that won’t help. Not for a party that dumped David Hogg from their leadership. Hogg is an established voice of Gen Zs. They listen to him. They sure as hell don’t listen to Boomers and X-ers, the very people who have made it next to impossible for them to find a path to the American dream. And the DNC dumped the very guy who can help to enlist the people who can clean up the mess. Suicidal.

I rest my hopes on our Gen Zs. There are enough of them, they are educated, packed with energy and more accepting of others than any other generation. Plus, they don’t want to live in the mess we’ve made.

We Boomers, Xers and Millennials aren’t off the hook. We, too, must continue to fight the good fight. And we must continuously invite our Gen Zs to join and to lead.

Here’s a quotation courtesy of friend Mardy Grothe, author of Deconstructing Trump*:

  • Upon the profound discontent of the young in every country
  • do I set my faith. I beg you, the young, to be discontented.
  • I pray that you may rebel against what is wrong,
  • not with feeble negative complaining
  • but with strong positive assertion of what is right for all humanity. — Pearl S. Buck
  • Pass that along to the Zs you know.
  • Let’s be clear about missing. It seems we are missing Democratic leadership. Demand nothing less.
  • The Deconstructing Trump* Corner
    .
    • A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger
    • is prepared for a master, and deserves one.
    • Alexander Hamilton,1797
    • It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion
    • will legislate its creed into law
    • if it acquires the political power to do so.
    • Robert A. Heinlein, 1953
    • _________________________________________

    * Deconstructing Trump by Mardy Grothe explores The Trump phenomenon through the lens of quotation history.

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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 casually 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.

Potpourri v24.0


POST 1197

Car Sales And Trumponomics

Dr. Brian Beaulieu of ITR Economics is an economics and investments guru with a pretty good prognostication track record. He sees the chaos that is happening in our economy and sees the numbers. Here’s his recent report.

We did not have the June data for auto retail sales when I did my Fed Watch on Friday. Have it now. The May-to-June drop in domestically produced light duty vehicle retail sales was the worst spanning 60 years of data (including tough recessions) at -26.2%. For foreign produced light duty vehicles, the June drop was -39.6%, the most severe May-to-June decline in a history spanning 50 years.

The data is showing that:

1. Creating uncertainty is bad economic policy.

2. Playing whack-a-mole with tariffs is bad economic policy.

3. It may be possible to have a president come into office with economic policies that truly can disrupt the business cycle, at least temporarily.

You may not research what Beaulieu commonly does, but likely you know in your gut what he expertly shows us.

The Unlimited National Restoration About People’s Equity Act (UNRAPE) of 2025

Trump’s Big Barfy Betrayal Bill (BBBB) is a blatant transfer of trillions of dollars from poor and working class Americans to the very wealthiest in our very divided and economically grossly out of balance society. It is the biggest, but certainly not the first move to impoverish We The People entirely for the benefit of the very wealthy. It will leave most Americans feeling like they’ve been financially raped – yet again – because they have been. Indeed, $50 trillion (with a “T”) has gone from We the Regular People to the uber-rich over the last 40 years.

This is what oppressive governments do. The result is an impoverished populace with all power and most of the money in the hands of the insanely rich. It’s time to reverse that trend with this proposed bill.

TITLE I – WEALTH CLAWBACK

An annual 10% wealth tax is imposed on all persons having over $1 billion of net wealth. Let’s claw back, some of what they took from us.

TITLE II – FAIR SHARE

Federal personal income tax rates are hereby restored to those in effect when Ronald Reagan became President. The top tax rate then was 70% of income over $762,933 (in today’s dollars).

TITLE III – FEDERAL MINIMUM TAX

A minimum federal income tax rate of 20% is imposed on incomes over $1 million, regardless of the source of the income, whether filing individually or jointly, to ensure that very rich people who regularly use arcane tax exemption schemes not available to poor and middle class Americans pay their fair share.

TITLE IV – CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATES – BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T BUILD INFRASTRUCTURE ALONE

Corporate federal income tax rates are hereby restored to those in effect prior to the first of George W. Bush’s tax cuts. The maximum corporate tax rate of 35% will apply to corporations with taxable income over $10 million. Corporations with taxable income over $15 million will be subject to an additional tax of 3% of the excess over $15 million, or $179,000 (in today’s dollars), whichever is smaller. That was the first time in American history when taxes were cut during war time.

For reference, Donald Trump’s 2018 Tax Cut and Jobs Act created no additional jobs and added $1 to 2 trillion to the federal debt, so the restoration of the corporate tax rates to the higher former rates should have no effect on employment numbers but will be a big help with our massive debt.

Let’s put this UNRAPE bill into the hands of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to expand and improve it. Email her and tell her to be ready with her proposal on the afternoon of January 20, 2029 or 2027, whenever Democrats retake the Senate.

Say Good-Bye To Your Mind

Congress has cut funding for PBS and NPR and Trump has the go-ahead to kill the Department of Education. Robert Reich explains the why of that:

There are five facets to the authoritarian attack on our minds that I cover in the video:

1. Rewrite history
2. Gut education
3. Dismantle science
4. Suppress the media
5. Attack the arts

Trump is unleashing all of them. And added up, they render us less informed, less inspired, and easier to control. They empower Trump to divide us with hatred and fear. And they prevent us from discovering that we have more in common with one another than with the authoritarians who try to rule us.

This attack on our minds ultimately reduces our capacity for self-government, because ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.

From Thomas Jefferson:

An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight.

Given Jefferson’s clarity, it’s easy to understand why Trump would want to keep us and our children ignorant.

Worthwhile Quotations Corner

From Steve Schmidt:

The other day, Van Jones suggested that any person who believes Trump’s babble is “weapons-grade stupid.” That is an accurate statement if there ever was one, and everyone knows that stupid cannot be fixed.

Speaking of Stupid

Our Congress is composed of the geniuses we send to Washington to represent us, our interests and desires and the needs of our nation. The Republican side of it has consistently and spinelessly caved to Donald Trump’s every pathological desire.

Congress voted to de-fund PBS and NPR. Republicans stupidly called it the “Defund Government-Sponsored Propaganda Act.”  Now that Trump has killed Big Bird, betcha Trump thinks that oughta distract and shut up those clamoring for the Epstein list. Won’t happen.

Who cares, Republicans seem to be saying, whether kids, especially rural kids and those with compromised early education opportunities get the obvious benefits of public broadcast programming? Or whether people in rural areas receive weather warnings before the tornado strikes? Who cares if Americans have a non-commercial, apolitical source for news, they whine?

Republicans have been saying for a long time that PBS and NPR are voices of woke lefties, a part of the “fake news.” They claim they broadcast propaganda. I challenge anyone to provide even a single example of PBS or NPR programming that even vaguely resembles those inflammatory, ignorant and stupid claims. C’mon, MAGAmites, help me out here.

All but two Republicans voted to shoot Big Bird and every Republican voted to cut Medicaid, SNAP, USAID, Voice of America, FEMA, vaccine research and the rest. Remember that when it’s time to choose in the upcoming November elections. Tell your friends. Tell your crazy Uncle Bob. Tell your Uber driver.

Click me for protest rights tips.

“The Republicans don’t care about you.”
.

It’s already established that you can’t fix stupid. And it looks like you can’t fix hypocrisy or cowardice, either.

From the John Lewis Good Trouble Demonstration
Highland Park, IL, July 17, 2025

Tens of thousands of people turned out for the Good Trouble protests at over 1,500 marches across the country, both to honor John Lewis and to staunchly, powerfully protest this felonious fascist president. Here are pics of  some signs people carried.

Sure do miss RBG

 

 

 

 

 

Our abused immigrants today are just like  your family members who immigrated here years ago. Same hopes, same dreams.

 

 

 

 

 

Be at the next demonstration, because we’re all counting on us.
The Deconstructing Trump* Corner
.
  • A bad cause will ever be supported
  • by bad means and bad men.
  • Thomas Paine, 1777
  • Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
  • Frank Leahy, 1955
  • _________________________________________

* Deconstructing Trump by Mardy Grothe explores The Trump phenomenon through the lens of quotation history.

Mid-Term Election
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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 casually 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.

Our Freedom – v2.0


POST 1195

Preface

This is the second in a series examining the state of our freedom. Link to the first installment here.

What About Our Welfare?

Not so-called entitlement programs. This is about our general welfare, like NOAA, NWS and FEMA and how they work to enhance our safety – our welfare. It’s based on what has been discussed in the press about what was done in advance of the tsunami in the Guadalupe River that swept away hundreds of people, including those kids in the summer camps along the river.

This is not the first time that such massive flooding has happened in Kerr County. The folks in charge of monitoring and warning saw the massive storms approaching and they knew what would happen in hill country, as massive amounts of rain water flowed downhill to the river. So,

Question #1:

Radio alerts were sounded, but there was no siren, no audible alert. An audible alert system was scratched in this hyper-conservative county many times, even if it were funded by the federal government and not local property taxes because, as one resident put it, “.  .  . send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House .  .  . ” Naturally, such folks don’t want to fund an emergency alert system through taxes on themselves – like for the common good. See this for details.

As of this writing at least 134 people are confirmed dead and about 97 are still missing. If it turns out that all the missing have died, that’s 231 people dead from the flood. The warning system those Texans refused would have cost about $1 million, so it appears that these hyper-conservative locals and Gov. Greg Abbott decided that those lives were worth just $4,329 each and not one cent more. Extremist ideology comes at a cost.

Question #2:

Why weren’t there people riding the road along the river, calling out a warning to all those summer camps of kids, to residents, to hikers and campers, Paul Revere-like, warning them to evacuate and get to high ground immediately?

We know that there was precious little time to accomplish the warning – perhaps just 3 hours – but people in pickup trucks or on horseback could have carried the warning to many who were not able to receive a radio or cell phone alert – assuming such alerts were sounded. Where were those guys? Why weren’t they organized for such an emergency?

Question #3:

Two of the top weather guys took early retirement due to insane pressure from DOGE. Consequently, they were unavailable during the run-up to the flood and no one took their places, so the best skills were missing from the extreme weather warning toolbox. How did that expertise gap hamper efforts to protect people along the river? That’s being examined now.

FEMA funds were already cut and no FEMA people were pre-positioned to provide quick support. I fact, it took until three days after the initial flooding for FEMA to show up. They weren’t even reliably answering their phones due to the shortage of personnel. Way to go, DOGE!

Question #4 – an aggregation:

Are Trump and Musk proud as can be for saving of the salaries of those weather and FEMA experts? Was this a major victory in their brain-free battle against largely non-existent waste, fraud and abuse? Now that they’ve significantly de-funded FEMA, will the effort to find the remaining victims of the flood be truncated, bodies left to decay in the flood debris, loved ones left in a hellish void?

Question #5:

The Preamble to the Constitution speaks to the purpose of that document and of government itself. One of the duties of government is to “promote the general Welfare.” How are we doing at that? And what does that say about our freedom?

Recall that in a time of great fear and constant want, FDR laid out the Four Freedoms:

1. Freedom of speech and expression

2. Freedom of worship

3. Freedom from want

4. Freedom from fear

So, here’s Question #6:

Given the terrifying nature of that flooded river, of our more powerful and more frequent hurricanes and tornadoes, of mass incarceration of wholly innocent people and the intimidation of our entire society, how are we doing on the Freedom from fear part?

Freedom is a demanding thing. It’s a high bar to clear and we all know that we must be vigilant to keep our freedom secure. At least, those of us who aren’t fascists and who aren’t willing to be subjugated by a dictator – we know that. And we know that our freedom is under continuous and dangerous attack.

What About Freedom From Dictatorship – as in: Freedom To be Free?

From the Heather Cox Richardson post of July 7:

As Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol pointed out in Talking Points Memo, it appears that officials in the Trump administration are using immigration as a way to establish a police state. Indeed, they are using the concept that presidents have control of foreign affairs as a way to work around the laws in place to prevent a dictatorship. [emphasis mine]

In her July 9 post she quoted Sen. Edward Kennedy in his 1987 opposition to the Robert Bork nomination to the Supreme Court.

“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, [B]lacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….”

Too much of that 1987 warning feels frighteningly like today. Indeed, we’re being Borked regularly by the ultra-right, ideologue Supreme Court six.

If Trump gets away with establishing a police state, what do you suppose will happen to our next election? What will have happened to our freedom then?

The Deconstructing Trump* Corner
.
  • A bad cause will ever be supported
  • by bad means and bad men.
  • Thomas Paine, 1777
  • Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
  • Frank Leahy, 1955
  • _________________________________________

* Deconstructing Trump by Mardy Grothe explores The Trump phenomenon through the lens of quotation history.

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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.
  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.

Our Freedom – v1.0


POST 1194

Preface

This is an initial check on the shaky boat that is our freedoms. More will follow.

Short Term Greed Disease

From Harry Litman in his post, Paramount Caves – And We All Lose:

When Donald Trump sued CBS and Paramount for $10 billion in October of 2024 for supposedly deceptive editing of Kamala Harris’s response to a question about Middle East policy, the case was roundly ridiculed. Multiple commentators noted that the First Amendment barred Trump’s claims, which they dismissed as an abusive “political stunt.” Reason Magazine dismissed it as a “laughable lawsuit.”

Thanks to Paramount, however, Trump now gets the last laugh — and at the expense of essential First Amendment values. In other words, all of us.

Paramount announced Tuesday that it was settling this joke of a lawsuit for $16 million — to go toward Trump’s future presidential library.*

The widespread perception is that Paramount, the parent company of CBS and 60 Minutes, which ran the clips of Harris, ponied up what is in effect ransom money to ensure that a proposed $8 billion merger with Skydance Media would go through. To put a finer point on it, Shari Redstone, who owns the controlling stake in Paramount Global, stands to reap over $2 billion — possibly much more — from the merger.

This is essentially the same story some major law firms, Disney, ABC and some universities played out. They caved to Trump, too. It’s the same $16 million extortion (ransom? bribe?) figure that gets people to surrender in advance, to give up without a fight. The cavers caved for short term gain or minimization of loss. In other words, for short sighted greed and cowardice.

Every instance of chickening out of the necessary fight involved bogus claims by Trump that could easily be dismissed in court. The failure of these corporations to put up their dukes paved a path of surrender of the rights of every one of us.

For Trump to have total control he doesn’t have to fight and defeat everyone. He just has to intimidate us by picking off a few, like, it seems, Shari Redstone. To be fair, I don’t know her or really anything about her. What I do know is that she could have stood tall and called BS on Trump, because his claims are BS. They are an attack on the Constitutional freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the laws of our nation, but she didn’t do that. Her play is to get her merger done and pocket a wad of cash, something that likely would be prevented were she to piss off Trump.

That’s how dictators and usurpers do it. They threaten individuals with harm and get them to fold without a fight as the rest of us are watching and being cowed. Read Jim Acosta’s dire warning here about where this takes you and me.

When this happens, as Litman writes, “We all lose.” Our freedom is gone.

And What About Our Health?

Likely, you’ve heard about the ongoing explosion of cases of measles, a disease we thought we had eliminated over 30 years ago, but it’s back, thanks to our anti-vaxxers. See what STAT has to say about that and what it means to you and your freedom at

BREAKING NEWS  

By Helen Branswell
Special Note To The “Adults In The Room” Curbing Trump’s Worst

Get this: You’re not.

You may think you’re standing guard against the worst, but in reality (you remember that stuff, right?) you’re enabling it. It’s time for you to have a piercingly serious talk with your reflection in the mirror. That only works if the compromises you’ve made against your soul aren’t already so terrible that they prevent you from seeing your reflection. Pray that they aren’t and that there is still something of value to salvage.

Read Rick Wilson’s post, Your Silence Isn’t Strategy. It’s Surrender. You won’t like it, “adult in the room.” In fact, if you squint one eye you just might see how you are contributing to all of us losing our freedom.

Parting Shot

What with our Republicans having passed the Big Barfy Betrayal Bill that de-funds or under-funds so much of what protects us, like FEMA, the National Weather Service, medical research, the FDA, the National Institutes of Health, all programs that promote reduction of the burning of fossil fuels, education and so much more, read Nancy Kohn and Art Friedson’s take on that and more in We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Science. Here’s a sampling.

Why on earth would the ruling party in the United States of America actively and aggressively oppose the pursuit of science in 2025? The answer is as sad as it is scary. Because science is the pursuit of truth, and the truth is often diametrically opposed to the MAGA agenda. Climate science is only one example of many.

If we lose science, we lose our freedom. – and perhaps much more.

The “Deconstructing Trump”** Corner
.
  • Patriotism is when love of
  • your own people comes first;
  • nationalism, when hate for people
  • other than your own comes first.
  • Charles de Gaulle, 1969
  • In every age it has been the tyrant,
  • the oppressor, and the exploiter
  • who has wrapped himself in the cloak
  • of patriotism, or religion, or both
  • to deceive and overawe the People.
  • Eugene V. Debs, 1918
  • _________________________________________

* Raise your hand if you believe each those $16 million extortion settlements will fund a presidential library and not instead go into Trump’s pocket. Oh, wow – no hands.

** Deconstructing Trump by Mardy Grothe explores The Trump phenomenon through the lens of quotation history.

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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.
  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.

In America


POST 1193

Are You Among The Disfavored People?

university student, professor or administrator

scientific or medical researcher

farmer

non-White person

LGBTQ person

veteran

woman

any form of non-Christian

child

protector of the planet.

any Democrat (Trump hates you) or a current or former government employee

any person not accused or convicted of any crime and in this country legally – easy ICE targets

Bummer for you, because this country is solely for Christian-claiming (although not doing what Jesus would do), straight White men who insist on telling you how to live, establishing limits to your freedom and deciding your restricted fate, which may include warrantless deportation.

And all that gets far scarier when you consider that Trump is declining into dementia and JD Vance is next in line. He might be smarmy, disingenuous and heartless (I guess he forgot about his hillbilly roots), but he’s smart, diabolical and under the thumb of Peter Thiel, his sugar daddy, the private information thief.

Speaking of Disfavored

Let’s declare out loud what this deportation lunacy is actually about. The goals are:

  1. To get rid of Brown and Black people because they aren’t European White. Those immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
  2. Expand White privilege
  3. Feed raw meat to Trump’s base
  4. Suppress votes of Democrats

Those goals are well met by snatching Brown people, especially those who look Hispanic, off streets, from farm fields, from Home Depot parking lots, from a public park in Los Angeles and more. No need to check their papers, because we no longer care if the snatchees are here legally or even if they are U.S. citizens.

Nobody has a right to due process under the Trump administration. We just snatch ’em, shove ’em in a bus or van, cram them handcuffed onto an airplane and into rendition to be abused and held incommunicado. That’s the new American Dream Nightmare.

Here’s what our populist speaking but not practicing President and Republican Congress have done to make sure we’re number one in inflicting cruelty on immigrants.

Click the chart for Steve Schmidt’s comments.

This chart shows our Big Barfy Betrayal Bill carve out for ICE and compares it to the defense budgets of 20 countries. We are now poised to spend more on anti-immigrant actions than the total the next 10 countries spend on their national defense. That’s probably good, since those immigrants are drug dealers, rapists and murderers. So said the man with the golden escalator, the golden toilet, 34 felony convictions, boundless ignorance and a mania for cruelty, but not for reality.

Are you feeling safer now with our huge expansion of ICE, the American Gestapo? Read this from Jennifer Rubin for more.

The Lies and Cheating Didn’t Start With Trump

In 2010 the Supreme Court decided the Citizens United case. The lawsuit was about a movie trashing Hillary Clinton, intended by its producers to be aired during the 2008 presidential campaign. The Court struck down a provision of the McCain-Feingold Act (properly, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002) and told the Citizens United group they could show their movie. That should have been the end of that case, but it wasn’t.

Chief Justice John Roberts did something almost unheard of. He called the litigants back and ordered them to argue the rights of corporations, something not even remotely part of the original lawsuit. The Court then made a second ruling, deciding that corporations have all the rights of flesh and blood humans.

That unleashed the furies of fabulous wealth, which allowed those corporations and insanely rich people (plus foreign influencers) to donate fabulous amounts of money to political campaigns and overwhelm the wishes of we small folk. Roberts had made up a whole new case to serve his agenda and it worked.

As a result, the gun lobby, the pharmaceutical lobby and more lobbies control the votes of Congress and you have almost no influence. So, we don’t get the gun safety legislation 80% of us want, the healthcare-for-all that 67% of us want and far more. These legislators don’t care what you want because they don’t have to. They’re funded by corporations and super rich guys.

This Court that can’t seem to tell the difference between a corporation (a fictional “entity”) and human beings. The Court is composed of strict originalists, they tell us, but they don’t recognize the Founders’ abhorrence of undue influence exerted by the wealthy.

Like I said, it didn’t start with Trump. Before he showed up the Court had already greased the gears of the fascism express. The Court further cleared the way with it’s ruling in Trump v. United States, allowing the President to break any laws he wants and get away with it. Does that sound originalist to you?

In America

Likely you’re feeling disheartened, as are most of us, because of the blatantly illegal, immoral and cruel actions of this administration. But here’s the thing: we don’t get to wallow in our despair because there’s so much that must be done and we’re the only ones who can do it.

The Charlie Daniels Band song In America was released in 1980 as

“.  .  .  a reaction to the varying difficult issues facing America in the late 1970s – the fallout from the Watergate scandal [etc.]. [Wikipedia]

We have “difficult issues facing America” now, too.

The fascists have come back to divide us and steal America from us.
.

The CDB’s message tells us about Lady America, that “We’re gonna put her feet back on the path.” The fascists, the oligarchs, the selfish rich guys “can all go straight to hell.” That’s not exactly what Charlie sang, but I like the sound of it.

You’ll see Lady America back on the path when the pain hits – from tariffs and the resultant higher prices and empty shelves, stolen healthcare, stolen food assistance, scarcities, babies beginning to suffer and die, neighbors being sent to concentration camps, jobs being lost and more. As Thom Hartmann puts it, Trump’s Tax Cuts Come with a Body Count — Starting with Grandma. That’s when we’ll all come together, “feet back on the path.”

Click this link and listen to the song. While our fight and our battle victories may not be happening at the pace we’d prefer, they’re happening – because of us.

The “Deconstructing Trump”* Corner

For the week following the Fourth of July and Trump’s failed narcissism parade, at which both he and Melania fell asleep, this is about Trump:

  • Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.
  • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
  • Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater?
  • It’s resentment of another man’s achievement.
  • Ayn Rand – that’s for our Libertarian friends
  • _________________________________________

* Deconstructing Trump by Mardy Grothe explores The Trump phenomenon through the lens of quotation history. As such, we explore his volume and add its applicable wisdom to these posts.

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Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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


Trump Derangement


POST 1188

War!

With no authority to do so, the Derangement In Chief has sent our military to war against Iran. First he ordered Iran to give him “unconditional surrender” and did so very strongly, in a strong way like nothing anyone has ever seen. He has no need for strategy because, he figures, Iran will bend the knee to him like so many others have done and he will skate from accountability just as he has all his life.

Iran is yet another country we have attacked that has done us no harm, like Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. How will we get out of this? What comes next? What will Congress do? Oh wait: they won’t do a thing.

We learn nothing. Not from Vietnam, not from Iraq, not from Afghanistan, not from Libya, not from the repeated economic failure of trickle down economics, not from years of lies about Reagan’s mental degeneration, not from the sale of the U.S. invited by Citizens United, not from 2 mass shootings every 3 days, not from whatever is promised and never arrives, not from a thousand phony declarations that up is down, not from strong bombings that never bring what is promised, not from regime change that brings little more than chaos – nothing. We learn nothing.

From Rep. Ro Khana (D-CA):

Are you with the neocons who led us into [war in] Iraq or do you stand with the American people?

Trump derangement may well get our our military people and Iranians killed and make countless numbers of people refugees.

The Syndrome

It is that, because he really is deranged. We’re paying a price for that and it’s going to become way more expensive. The cost will be in the transfer of your money to the piles of wealth of the already absurdly rich, of course. But far more expensive will be the cost to our bedrock values and our freedom.

Steve Schmidt described Trump as

.  .  .  an American fascist who sits in the White House with a 49.8 percent mandate, and believes that he is Caesar, when in fact he is Nero.

Gotta take issue with Schmidt.

First, 49.8% is no mandate. It’s barely a plurality.

Second, the Nero thing. “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” is a cute sentence, but perhaps a bit misleading. The violin wasn’t invented until about 1,500 years after Nero died, so “fiddled” doesn’t mean he played a musical instrument.

Nero was fond of cruelty and perhaps was less attentive to affairs of state than was needed (hence: fiddling). In 64 AD the Great Fire of Rome engulfed most of the city. It burned for 6 days and 7 nights and destroyed much of Rome. Needing a scapegoat to avoid accountability, Nero is alleged to have blamed that great destruction on the early Christians – might have called them home grown terrorists – who were subsequently persecuted. In effect, Nero declared war on his own country, casting Christians as enemies of the state. Does any of this sound at all similar to events today?

Schmidt seeing Trump as a Nero, what with his attack on our norms and structures and scapegoating of immigrants, is accurate. Same for his anti-Semitic dog whistles. He always has someone to blame in order to dance away from his own accountability, like blaming Dr. Anthony Fauci and China for the “China virus.”

Trump ranted just after NO KINGS day and Schmidt pasted that rant into his post. Read it yourself and see if you can beat my performance. I counted 14 outright lies in those roughly 450 words. That’s one lie every 32 words, although my tally may be low due to my being distracted by Trump’s head spinning idiocy, his extraneous, unrelated inanities, his pandering to extremists and, worst of all, his incitement to violence.*

Tyrants always need a scapegoat, someone for the public to hate, demonize, persecute and blame. For Nero it was the Christians. For Trump, it’s immigrants and the Jews. Are you next?

Trump derangement is now looking to blame others and cause them suffering, kidnapping, torture and death. That’s real.

The Minnesota Murders

They got the bad guy – you know that. But ultimately that won’t be the big story.

The Trump rant you read in Schmidt’s piece was after most of America ignored Trump’s Parade of Narcissism down Pennsylvania Avenue. Instead, over 13 million Americans dissed him and marched in streets all over this nation to oppose his cruelty, his dumb-headedness, his attack on all we hold dear. Go read Trump’s rant again, this time pretending you’re a Trump supporter. I’m guessing you’ll hear the call to division and violence loud and clear, just as do Trump’s supporters, like the Minnesota murderer.

That’s the lede of the Minnesota murderer story and the ongoing Trump insane reality show.

Trump’s calls, largely by dog whistle but sometimes done overtly, is for more killers like the Minnesota murderer. It’s a call to kill Democrats, progressives, liberals, non-suck-up judges, all Trump detractors and, of course, immigrants, all non-Whites and Jews.

If you want to know why there are so many murders and attacks
and death threats done by people on the right,
it’s because the leader of that cult of hatred is calling for them.
.

Trump began demonizing immigrants just after his golden descent on his golden escalator to announce that he was running to be President. His audience was paid actors in his reality show. He proudly vomited to them and his TV cameras that Hispanics are rapists, drug dealers and murderers.

He began calling for violence at his rallies, telling his thug attendees to beat up protesters. He told police not to be “too nice” to perps they loaded into their cruisers. He said to bash them up a bit.

We have right wing violence
because the right wing leader calls for it, eggs on his loyalists
and they feel puffed up by their hatred
and their power to cause death.
.

This isn’t a “both sides” thing.**

From Simon Rosenberg of the Hopium Chronicles:

“The G7 – Trump went to the G7, arrived late for his first meeting, bent the Trumpian knee to Putin, tweeted that Tehran, a city of 10m, needed to evacuate, left a day early blowing off a meeting with Zelensky [sic], refused to sign a joint statement on Iran and Israel, then signed it late last night. In an impromptu press event with UK PM Keir Starmer he dropped papers all over the place.”

“Despite him having all this “strength” the world is not bending the knee to Trump, something all can see; while the world also [sees] him repeatedly, pathetically, urgently, bending the knee and all of his other ugly parts to Putin, again and again and again.”

Trump derangement.

Your Health

From STAT:

.  .  .  the current administration is undermining confidence in vaccines: by canceling or stalling NIH grants focused on vaccine development, especially mRNA vaccines; undermining a separate FDA committee and laying off agency staff; firing the full ACIP*** roster; and putting resources into investigating the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism instead of focusing on more valuable post-licensure monitoring. Read more here.

Trump derangement. It’s not a joke. It’s an actual syndrome and it has already killed Americans.

Message From Sen. Joni “Pig Castrator” Ernst

Click me

_____________________________________________

* David Korn of Mother Jones explains our political violence in this video. Get this: there is no “both sides” in American political violence. When you come across any report that is treating our national insanity of violence as though it is somehow balanced left and right, recognize it for the brain-free substitute for actual journalism that it is.

** Read Marc Elias’ short comments about both-sides in our news media.

*** The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices

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Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Rich Guys Are Coming To Fleece You


POST 1186

Glossary

They – the president, the Republicans in Congress and Trump administration sycophants.

Rich guys – the president, the Republicans in Congress, plus the un-elected, all-for-themselves, who cares about you? rich guys sucking tax cuts.

Bullies – all of the above who are dedicated to cruelty, selfishness and think they’re above the law.

Money

It’s your lunch money the bullies are after. Plus your dinner money and the tax refund money you were going to use to buy a big screen TV. They want it all.

They’re taking away your doctor, your hospital and the nurses who help you when you’re sick or injured. They’re doing that by starving them of cash. And they’re taking away your medical insurance so that you have to pay out of pocket, even if the cost drives you into bankruptcy. There goes that money, too.

You’ll only get medical care if you can find it somewhere, if you can afford it. Before you get treatment they’ll check if you’re able to pay them. That only happens if you can get there in time. Think: when you or someone you know goes into labor. Or miscarries. Or when something heavy falls on you, you’re bleeding out in your garage and the nearest EMT is a long way off because all the close-by services went belly up when Trump’s cruelty flunkys cut them off.

Taxes

They’re fleecing you by increasing your state and local taxes so that they can lower their own taxes and get a huge pile of cash for themselves – almost $400,000 per year extra for every rich guy.

THEY’RE BORROWING TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS
IN YOUR NAME
TO GIVE MORE TO THEMSELVES.
.

They’re doing it, too, by taxing you for the school your kids go to and then taking that money and giving it to private schools for their own kids.

Maybe that isn’t outrageous enough to get your attention. Try this:

THEY’RE DUMPING THAT ENTIRE LIFE-STIFLING
MOUNTAIN OF DEBT
ON YOU, YOUR KIDS AND AND YOUR GRANDKIDS.
AND YOUR GREAT-GRANDKIDS.
.

All that is just so that mega-maga-rich guys can have more of your money right now.

Power

They’re eating your lunch by taking away your right to speak up.

They’re doing that by calling every gathering to protest government cruelty a riot and then using grossly excessive force to stop you.

They’re doing it by ordering our National Guardsmen and Marines to point their rifles at you, in case you’re dumb enough to object.

They’re doing it by grossly contorting our Constitution and our laws in order to justify what is unjustifiable.

They’re doing it by incrementally making it more difficult to vote and then by ignoring your vote altogether.

They’re doing it by defying court orders and by threatening members of Congress so that they will never push back. These are the people – mostly Republicans – you sent to DC and to your state capitol to represent you. Most have been reduced to sniveling, mute cowards, leaving you voiceless, powerless.

Rights

The rich guys have them. You don’t. They can squeeze the system to squash you. You’re just a bug on the windshield of their fancy cars.

You don’t like that? Too bad for you.

Much of what’s above is already true. The rest will be on the way to fleece you if our cowardly Republican Congress passes Trump’s abhorrent, anti-American, anti-Constitution budget bill, which will take from you everything you value.

It’s Crunch Time

You have to make a decision and there are only two choices.

  1. You can go about your everyday life paying attention only to things in your immediate orbit, You can continue to do your job, care for your family and enjoy whatever things you like to do for entertainment. In short, you can live your life as usual – right up to the day when everything listed above and yet worse things arrive and you realize that you have been made into nothing but a peasant serving some bastard feudal king.
  2. You can stand up and fight to stop the rich guys from taking your lunch money and everything else you care about. You can get in the streets with millions of other red, white and blue Americans who damn well won’t stand by and be fleeced. You can make it impossible for the bullies to take your lunch money. You can speak up and get good people elected, people who have values like yours. You can vote them into office in DC, in your state capitol, onto your town board and your school board – everywhere there is a political contest. Kick out the spineless, corrupt bums and keep the good guys. You know who they are.

The choices are stark and they are very real. Failure to assertively select choice #2 – to stand strong and fight – is a tacit selection of impotent choice #1.

Pick one.

The Incompetence Report

Kristi “I Shoot Puppies” Noem, our incompetent Secretary of Homeland Security, made it to the top of our list last week.

The LA demonstrations before NO KINGS day were primarily triggered by Trump’s vile, cruel abuses of immigrants. Trump and Noem sicced the National Guard and the United States Marines on those demonstrators. Then Ms. Stupida went on Fox to flex her muscles and make sure everyone knows how tough and powerful she is.

Click me

Memo to Kristi: Nobody – no demonstrator or bystander conducted violence against law enforcement officers in LA last week, you lying sack of .  .  .  dead puppies.

BTW

Where were those federalized National Guardsmen and Marines on January 6, 2021 when they were desperately needed in DC to stop the thousands of treasonous insurrectionists from killing our elected leaders, beating and killing cops and trying to overthrow our government?

Oh right: Trump prevented them from being called in to oppose the hoodlums. He even refused Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s pleading to let him send in the Maryland Guard. He just sat back and watched the violence show on TV, as he shoved his Big Mac and fries into his big mouth and threw ketchup onto the wall.

PS

There was an incident last week that resulted in a night time visit from 3 police officers ringing my door bell. They weren’t wearing masks, they wore badges and had name tags and were polite and respectful. Observing that, I knew they weren’t ICE thugs.

Isn’t it truly awful that to assure our safety I had to make that distinction?

Re: the incident last week – just a misunderstanding and all is well. Nevertheless, if there is a next time, I’ll insist that they show me identification.

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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.
  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.

IMMIGRANTS UNITE!


POST 1185

First, Minnesota

A thug murdered three Minnesotans, two of them Democratic state legislators. This should come as no surprise, since Trump has been calling since 2015 for violence against Democrats, progressives, protesters and anyone who disagrees with him about anything. He claims to be “your retribution” against “those others.” So of course some wing nut listened to him and took action, perhaps expecting to be pardoned by Trump.

This is just today’s chapter in Trump’s program of I Don’t Care, So Death To You.

To The National Brother/Sisterhood/Childhood of Immigrant Workers
.

Yesterday there was a massive national demonstration, an opposition, a revulsion, the rejection of the tyrant’s attack and his anti-America corruption of the values we hold dear. Indeed, our immigrants, whether documented or not, came here to live by those values and they and we won’t stand for this vile little man’s evil.

This President has unleashed his attack thugs, masked gunmen bearing no identification, no badge of any kind, carrying no arrest warrants and exercising no concern for innocent people. He dispatched them with instructions to kidnap anyone who they think looks like they might be in America without documentation – that means Black and Brown people. They select kidnap victims based on their ignorance.

They have arbitrarily claimed thousands of people to be criminals. They have arrested citizens of the United States with the same right to be here as any of us. They possess no evidence of anyone’s wrongdoing and act in the total absence of due process rights. In short, they are thugs acting illegally at the order of a lawless president and you, immigrants, are their primary target.

Demonstrations against this lawlessness are powerful and good, but it will take more for the American public to become fully aware of what these illegal actions mean to Americans. They don’t realize that they themselves will feel the effects of this. They don’t realize that one day the tyrants will run out of Black and Brown people to abuse and others will be next to be labeled enemies. That’s what tyrants always do.

That is why I’m calling for an ad hoc action, a labor strike, to make clear how Trump’s White, Non-At-All-Christian actions will impact everyone. Specifically, I’m calling on:

hotel and restaurant workers

construction laborers

domestic workers

garment workers

farm workers

landscapers

day laborers, like the folks who hang out early in the morning at Home Depots and 7-11s hoping to earn a day’s pay

It’s time to take a stand, so immigrant workers:

DO NOT SHOW UP FOR WORK THIS THURSDAY OR ANY THURSDAY UNTIL THIS CRUELTY STOPS.

.

Maybe some of the White privilege people who whine and moan their “Replacement Theory” lunacy will show up in California’s Central Valley to do stoop labor, like picking strawberries and lettuce. Maybe they’ll do the work of moving heavy wheel barrows full of cement or removing debris from construction sites. Maybe they’ll scrub the pots and pans in a hot commercial kitchen 14 hours a day, or clean befouled hotel rooms left by hotel guest slobs. Maybe they’ll scrub the floors of rich people’s homes.

But none of that is ever going to happen. Here’s what will happen.

None of those angry, privileged White guys will show up to do the hard work our immigrants do every day. Housing construction will slow to a halt, restaurants will close their doors and produce bins in grocery stores will be empty. And there will be a lot of hotel rooms that don’t get cleaned and landscaping around rich guys’ houses will become nothing but weeds.

It’s time to make the point to all American citizens that their way of life is dependent upon the hard working immigrants to this country and that those tax paying immigrants are a major part of the reason for hope for this nation.

Immigrants to America Unite!

You have nothing to lose but the threat of deportation to a torture concentration camp, never to see your family again.

.
Memo To Silent Americans

.

Turn off the ignorant and the stupid.

.

Treasonous Americans are trying to steal your country, your values, your freedom, your future and your hopes for your children.

They tried an insurrection to murder leaders and take over your government, killing and maiming cops and befouling our Capitol Building.

Trump pardoned the convicted criminals, enabling them to continue to conspire to overthrow us.

The Supreme Court gave the president the right to break our laws with impunity.

Trump and his criminal suck-ups are moving every day to use our military to take action against you and make this a police state.

THAT WILL BE THE END OF YOUR FREEDOM!
.

DO NOT sleepwalk through reality. DO NO be an existential threat to the United States of America through passivity. DO NOT tolerate the murderous Oath Keeper criminals, the DOGE flying monkeys who stole your personal information and the lying Trump bastards violating your Constitution and your rights every day.

Wake up!

.

America isn’t about any king.

It is about We The People.

We declare that in no uncertain terms right here.

.
Pics From The Highland Park NO KINGS Event

Yes that Highland Park. July 4, 2022. 7 killed, 48 wounded. Still this little village turned out over 3,000 yesterday to tell everyone that we will not have a king. We will not tolerate cruelty to anyone. The Law is the law and nobody is above it. Those sentiments were on display in over 2,160 locations nationwide with attendance in the millions.

Paraphrasing Winston Churchill’s address to the House of Commons in the darkest days of the blitzkrieg of the Battle of Britain, June 4, 1940:

We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight them in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight them in our town squares, we shall fight them in the hills. We shall never surrender. We shall fight them in our state houses, we shall fight them in our Congress. We shall fight them in our courts and we shall fight them in our voting booths. We shall rescue and liberate ourselves from their cruelty to carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, we restore our promise of America.

 

kakistocracy | kakəˈstäkrəsē | government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state

 

 

 

Credit to MG for this one

Countdown to November 3, 2026
Mid-Term Election
Countdown Timer
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 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.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


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