Guns

Freedom and Dr. Seuss


POST 1088

Reality Check

Now that Trump was shot at, the Republicans/MAGAs are making noises about being kinder, losing the divisiveness and their cruelty. These are the people whose convention featured presenter after presenter engaging in world class divisiveness, faux masculinity, accusing Democrats of exactly the awful things righties have been doing. They had giant piles of MUGS (Made Up Gross S**t) designed for divisiveness and cruelty that had attendees foaming at the mouth.

Still, they made noise about how after the shooting Trump had torn up his speech in order to craft one designed for unity. That triggers a

POP QUIZ!
.

1. Try to remember the 2016 campaign, as Trump was making blisteringly phony accusations, taking credit for things he couldn’t even spell, much less create, telling lies and inciting hatred everywhere he went. We were assured by pundits that Trump would pivot and become presidential once in office and the gravity of presidential reality settled upon him. Check all that apply.

[  ] A. Trump kindly and fairly fixed our immigration challenges by ripping thousands of infants and children from their mothers, caging the little ones without the staffing or supplies to care for them and with absolutely no way to reunite children with their parents. He explained that the cruelty was the point.

[  ] B. Trump knew more than the generals and people in the Intelligence agencies and ignored the President’s Daily Brief, blew off allies, embraced dictators, imperiled our safety by showing our top secrets to enemies. He promised our middle class great benefits, including massive new job opportunities and increased wages. Instead, he gave away $2 trillion, 87% of which went to already rich people and corporations. No new jobs were created and middle class income remained stagnant.

[  ] C. Trump did a turnaround and grew into the job of president, becoming a promoter of the Constitution and our democracy and transitioning into a world class statesman.

[  ] D. Trump can’t be believed when he says things like “kinder and gentler” or “unity,” nor when he denounces violence. That’s because if he is breathing, he is lying. Unity? From Trump, the Retribution King? Seriously?

Answer key: A, B, D. Trump couldn’t even understand answer C.

His aggrieved followers willingly support terminating the Constitution and then call themselves patriots. They’re easy marks for sales of Trump’s snake oil.

From Adam Kinzinger, June 26, 2024:

Today, we face an election about a singular, monumental issue: the very essence of our democracy. The question before us is clear—which of the two Candidates will stand unyielding in their commitment to preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution and strengthen our Democracy?

Kinzinger is right about the essence of the election. The answer to his question is: Anyone But Trump. As boyhood pal and occasional commenter to these posts Kirk Landers said, he’d sooner vote for Biden’s dogs, either the mean one or the nice one, or even a pet rock than for Trump. Kirk is a smart fellow.

Trump must never get his hands on any power greater than the flush handle of a prison toilet.

Up and down your November ballot,

Every one of the Democratic candidates will be on the right side of gun safety.
No Republican will.
.
Every one of the Democratic candidates will be on the right side of healthcare.
No Republican will.
.
Every one of the Democratic candidates will be on the right side of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and forgiveness of crushing student debt.
No Republican will.
.
Every one of the Democratic candidates will be on the right side of supporting our allies and opposing our adversaries..
No Republican will.
.
Every one of the Democratic candidates will be on the right side of the rule of law.
No Republican will.
.

The Republicans, the ones who hurl racist slurs at Kamala Harris, the ones who spew bizarre Biblical quotations that nobody understands, the ones who criticize her over plastic soda straws as though she is killing kittens and puppies – those Republicans – come out from under the bridge where they live just to be cruel. They intend to be our overlords. That’s all they offer our country.

Yes, this election is that dangerously binary because

Freedom is Under Attack!

.

Other than strong nominees, our job is to defeat tyranny and preserve your rights, including your right to women’s healthcare; protection of things you already paid for, like Social Security and Medicare; plus the right not be be shot to death by a homicidal maniac brandishing combat weapons.

We must energize the electorate to vote for our country. I’m thinking of the 40% who don’t bother to show up on election day. Recently, I wrote about the need to light a fire under them. Insightful opinion writer Steve Sheffey agreed with me in his July 7 post. He must be very smart.

That energizing of the stay-at-homes requires our feet on the street to motivate and mobilize them. That way we get to keep our democracy and have a free and fair election in 2026. And another in 2028. Plus, we get to not get shot.

See Note #5 below.

Rhymes Of The Week

From Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss:

  • You have brains in your head
  • You have feet in your shoes.
  • You can steer yourself
  • Any direction you choose.

Steer yourself to register voters; canvas in a swing state; write post cards reminding people to vote; phone voters with wake up calls for their freedom; donate to candidates who will preserve our democracy (Democrats only, because Republicans are extremists or suck ups to extremists); invite neighbors to a discussion about what they want and how they’ll get it; post a sign on your lawn; volunteer as a poll watcher.

Steer yourself to action, because

  • You have brains in your head,
  • You have feet in your shoes.
  • You don’t want to wail
  • Lost Democracy Blues.

Passivity just won’t do if you want rights, freedom and safety. So, get going.

“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”

  • – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016

Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:

  • Fire the bastards!


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Bang-Bang


POST 1085

Sleep Prevention Causal Factor

As reported in the New York Times on July 13, 2024:

Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who has studied American attitudes toward political violence since the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, conducted a nationwide poll on the topic last month. It found that 10 percent of those surveyed said that the “use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.” A third of those who gave that answer also said they owned a gun.

Seven percent of those surveyed said they “support force to restore Trump to the presidency.” Half of them said they owned guns.

Note that 3% of all those surveyed both own guns and support presidential preference violence. That’s 3% on each side. That ought to keep you up at night.

The Assassination Attempt – Pop Quiz

Question No. 1 in 3 parts:

Setting aside the invitations into conspiracy theories suggesting Trump planned the shooting to gain additional victim sympathy; and ignoring the self-serving politicians saying there’s no room in our politics for violence, even as they vote against every gun safety bill; and pretending that you don’t see the politicians trying to save their own asses from the bullseye of the next pissy sniper; and ignoring Trump’s consistent championing of violence and retribution; and ignoring the Second Amendment “cold, dead hands” extremists who prove how tough they are by the size of the arsenal in their basements;

How many guns have at last been properly locked up so that wacko sons like Adam Lanza can’t get their hands on Mom & Dad’s assault rifles and pistols? Answer: zero.

Who thinks our kids will be safe when they go back to school next month or that Biden doesn’t risk a copy cat shooter between now and November? Answer: nobody.

Where is there anything in support of safety but the next round of useless thoughts and prayers and the usual Second Amendment justification blather? Answer: nowhere.

Question No. 2 in 4 parts:

Millions are horrified because a former president apparently was slightly wounded. But is his life more important than the lives of:

20 little first grade kids and six teachers? Be sure to check with the parents, as well as the first responders who had to confront that butchery and help to clean it up.

The MAGA Hypocrisy Meter

Or 10 worshipers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston?

Or 17 at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh?

Or the 17,761 killed or wounded by firearms already this year?

Answer to all: No.

Please, pundits, politicians and gun rights extremists, spare me your abhorrent hypocrisy. You may now go back to fondling your bump stock and skulking in the woods wearing your camos, pretending to be Rambo or a patriotic member of “a well regulated Militia.”

But you aren’t. And you aren’t a justified urban crusader or a victim “hitting back.” You’re just a guy puffed up by guns. Here’s what you must learn.

Everyone understands what guns do. They send slugs of lead through the air at very high speed and make often fatal holes in human bodies. That’s why people respect guns and what they can do. Here’s the “but.”

When you’re strutting around with your assault rifle or your semi-automatic pistol, people respect your guns because they know what they can do. But nobody respects you. You’re just a tough guy wannabee. A poser. A guy who thinks there is a short cut to respect.

NEWSFLASH: There isn’t.

ACTION ALERT: Lose the guns and start being respectful and you’ll begin to be worthy of respect.

If instead you kill or wound someone, even a presidential candidate, your fellow tough guy posers will high five you. The rest of the world will know that you’re just a loser and an a**hole.

“Grift! Grift! Grift!”

The Political Perversion of the Assassination Attempt

From Steve Schmidt, Next Comes The Revenge:

“Trump’s [“Fight, Fight, Fight!” is] tough and iconic in the instant of the response [to the attempted assassination], but who exactly is supposed to be fighting whom? What we are seeing is the use of a criminal act, an evil act, and an assault on our democracy as a justification for calls for more violence.”

Which surprises nobody.

Trump is a showman, so he instantly knew how to use a ding on his ear to promote himself. He has no concern for danger or harm to others.

If you are a supporter of Trump and you follow his raised fist, tough guy “Fight! Fight! Fight!” directive, you are the problem.

Gun Violence And Democracy

From reader Frank Levy:

[Saturday’s] assassination attempt on DJT will almost guarantee his election in November. He will be able to raise massive amounts of money off the attempt on his life and his previously bored and maybe unmotivated followers will want revenge for the affront to their leader and will vote in numbers we have never seen before. And all we have is sleepy Joe as our candidate. We know Joe is a true patriot. He loves America. He can prove it beyond reproach by letting someone, almost anyone but himself, carry the banner for saving our democracy in November.

That “almost guarantee his election” thing – we have to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Older Boomers may recall the pop song You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Until You Lose It. Even if you don’t remember it, most of us have experienced renewed appreciation for something or someone after they’re gone and when we’re feeling the pain of loss.

It’s going to hurt really bad when our rights and our freedoms and our democracy are gone. Trump and the MAGAs are promising to take them away and it’s extremely unsafe to ignore their treasonous words. That’s why we have to saddle up and ride to the rescue of our democracy. We have to STOP THE STEAL!

“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”

  • – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016

Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:

  • Fire the bastards!


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Somebody Has To Tell Me . . .


POST 1063

.  .  .  why we are even talking about:

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

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

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

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

.  .  .  how it’s even possible that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_____________________________________________

* This from Wikipedia:

OLC memoranda

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

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

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

Required Reading – click here

Blindfolded Lady Justice – for now

.

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

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

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

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

Today is a good day to be the light

  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Something For Nothing


Post 1,053

Late Addition

.
NBC News Hires Former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel
The GOP political veteran will become an on-air contributor to NBC News and MSNBC.
.

Yes, that Ronna Romney McDaniel. Be sure to click the headline and read the astonishing spin the networks put on this brainless move.

Here’s a piece of what Steve Schmidt said about this yesterday:

Ronna McDaniel is unfit to join any news organization because she is an inveterate liar. She is a chaos agent, who went fully along with Trump’s madness — right through the insurrection and beyond. She didn’t just show indifference towards Trump’s threats of violence, societal mayhem and revenge, she abetted them, aided them and raised money for them. A hard count of the documented lies she told during her tenure at the RNC would number in the tens of thousands.

I’m fine with MSNBC bringing former Republicans and traditional conservatives to their otherwise progressive team, people like Nicolle Wallace, Michael Steele, David Jolly, Joe Scarborough and more. I listen to what these honest Americans have to say because they are intelligent, insightful and worthy of my trust.

I’m very not fine with the total undermining of trust NBC News and MSNBC do by bringing in this Trump toady, this spineless coward. In it’s utter contempt for viewers and disdain for professional journalism, they present us this assassin of truth and reality, this election denier, this enemy of democracy and serial liar.

Can you imagine Rachel Maddow welcoming McDaniel as a guest analyst to her program, calling her a valued colleague? Neither can I.

To MSNBC and NBC News Management:
.

You just lost me.

Something For Nothing

If things are to get better, we’ll have to stop doing what makes things worse and start doing what makes things better. We’ll have to face up to the fact that there’s no such thing as something-for-nothing. We’ll have to invest in ourselves.

Here’s a starter list, in no particular order of importance. For most items there will be no immediate benefit, but we’ll have a beginning for the cultural shift needed to make things better for all of us.

  1. Teach 1 – 2 semesters of civics to every high school student (we used to do that), with a passing grade required for graduation, for entry into higher education and for the check box on job applications. In a few years, maybe a generation, most adults will be able to name the three branches of government and more than one president. We might even return to believing in a peaceful transfer of power.
  2. Teach American history in high school – including the parts that aren’t pretty. Two semesters minimum. Our kids are strong enough to deal with truth. It’s the parents who need an infusion of starch in their spines, the courage to look at reality and accept it. Maybe they should be required to take two semesters of American history, too – including the parts that aren’t pretty.
  3. Universal public service – 2 years minimum following high school graduation. That will throw people in with “others.” Maybe they’ll learn to get along. Plus, they’ll have a personally earned investment in our country.
  4. Enact strict firearms laws. I care far less for the tortured, twisted NRA version of the Second Amendment than I do for keeping people alive. So do you.
  5. Create policies that reward jobs and growth and eliminate policies that reward only narrow enrichment of the few, like supply side economics.
  6. Expel elected officials calling for what’s best for them and instead elect leaders who call for what’s best for our towns, our states and our country, like preparing for the next pandemic and standing up to tyrants. That election job is on all of us.
  7. Reverse all legislation and Supreme Court decisions that give non-sentient beings (e.g. corporations) the right to influence our elections in any way, like Citizens United. Severely limit the amount of money individuals can contribute to candidates. In short, eliminate the influence of big money on our politics so that only the voices of We The People are heard and represented. Mitt Romney was wrong: corporations are not people, my friend.

Add your notion of must-do items in the Comments section below.

The Big Long-Term Item

We have to stop pretending this is an 18th century agrarian society so that we can overhaul education. We continue to shoot ourselves in the foot with our shortsightedness, financing education primarily with property taxes. That works great in affluent areas, where tax collections are robust and provide what is necessary for a fine education for kids. But in poor towns and in poor neighborhoods the kids get a comparatively lousy education, which dramatically limits their lifelong opportunities and cheats all of us of the contributions they might have made.

Think: When you are dying of cancer, how will you feel when you realize that the kid who would have grown up and developed a cure for your disease was instead left half-educated because we refused to fund his/her education? We’ve seen this craziness happening for most of the past century, leaving kids with poor or even destructive options. We don’t have to stay on this self-defeating path.

We can’t pay teachers a poverty wage and refuse necessary educational resources and also give our children the preparation they need to succeed in this century. There is no something-for-nothing.

Our kids need up-to-date text books; secure schools where the roofs don’t leak and the walls and ceilings aren’t mold and mildew breeding grounds. Kids need engaged, motivating teachers and proper nutrition to learn. And they need books in classrooms and on library shelves that are protected from the Nazi book banning/burning censors. If we fail at this we’ll have ignorant kids, clueless citizens and world class failure. Magical thinking won’t fix this.

Do you suppose we have a need for lots of educated people? I know the Chinese believe they do. Every year they graduate five times the number of students from 4-year universities than we do. We won’t be able to compete with them over the long term if things continue that way.

We have to stop acting as if we are both ignorant and dimwitted. We are neither. Rather, we are adherents of magical, wishful thinking or even no thinking – like the comments above about education. Here are some other examples.

  1. We can’t buy cheap consumer goods made in foreign countries and also have our living wage American jobs. Ref: Any town with a Walmart.
  2. We can’t ship our jobs overseas and also have the American Dream.
  3. We can’t allow legislators to undermine our democracy and prevent solutions to our challenges and at the same time keep our values and our way of life.

If we are to continue to be a version of America we believe in, we’re simply going to have to face up to reality.

A while back George Will said that Americans want about 1/3 of a billion dollars more in services from government than we’re willing to pay for. Adjusting for inflation, population growth and a rise in the “I want” factor, that number is probably well into the billions now. If we want better, we’ll have to pay for better.

What? You don’t like this message that there’s no something-for-nothing and we’ll have to pay to get what we want?

Of course you don’t like it! None of us does. That’s the first challenge to overcome.

Oops – I think I just disqualified myself from public office.

Coda to This Post

Kristi Noem, Republican governor of South Dakota, infamous for her dental infomercial (and here) recently, advanced her campaign to be Trump’s running mate with her declaration at CPAC saying:

“There are two kinds of people in this country right now. There are people who love America, and there are those who hate America.”

I am astonished that this airhead has at last said something to which I agree. Not in the way she means it, of course, as her notion of loving America is to renounce everything that is America and make this a Christo-Fascist theocracy. Still, she’s right – there really are two kinds of people in this country. It’s just that she’s the other, the hateful kind.

BTW: Kristi – Nice teeth!

Today is a good day to be the light

  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Delusion


Post 1,050

Not Looking Too Supreme

Yes, the ballot disqualification decision was unanimous and it may well lead to further disapproval of this ethically challenged court. We don’t know if that unanimity was because every justice dug deeply into their vault of jurisprudence and agreed or because the justices feared a violent public reaction to banning Trump from ballots and office. You know: like it says in the 14th Amendment. That is to say, they chickened out, which is exactly what bullies hope for.

Here’s what CREW, the plaintiff in this 14th Amendment case, said of this decision:

The Court had the opportunity to clear Trump of the finding that he incited insurrection, and the Court chose not to. Instead it simply ruled that states do not have the power to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment unless Congress says they can. [I.e. the Court’s decision was based on a technicality.]

It’s disappointing that the Court failed to bar Trump from the ballot. This was a test for the Court, and it failed to meet the moment.

But in this ruling, there is a win for our democracy: Trump will go down in history as an insurrectionist. [emphasis original]
.

See this for a clear explanation of what this means. Sadly, the Supreme Court effectively erased Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, essentially adding a 28th Amendment. They did it without the formal process required by the Constitution. The notion of doing that should be delusional.

American Terrorists – Constant Delusion

You’ve seen the shaved head militia crazies, AR-15s strapped to their chests, fingers covering triggers, Glocks strapped to their thighs just above their cargo pockets filled with ammo clips. This look is their macho swagger, their tattoos giving messages of death and so-called patriotism. They seig heil their leader, muscles a-popping, brows furled in intensity and they promise death to the elite scum who they say are traitors to the true America.

Sure, it’s a stereotype, maybe a bit immoderate, but you’ve seen these guys in television news coverage invading the Capitol Building on January 6 and in state capitol buildings in Wisconsin and Michigan and just outside polling places (here and here) on missions of voter intimidation, as though that’s their patriotic duty. Sometimes they parade in a forest of Trump flags, American flags and Nazi flags. The mixed symbols clash in a display of confusing bravado, but the testosterone, absolutism and love of violence messages are clear. And while you didn’t see all the automatic weapons they had on January 6 (many were stashed in their hotel rooms in Virginia), these are members of the army of angry people who stormed and desecrated our Capitol Building looking to murder the Vice-President and the Speaker of the House.

These people are itching for a fight and they think they are going to retake control of America (that means control of you) and establish their notion of patriotic purity by means of their might. They have plenty of would-be Rambos standing by and over 400 million guns in their arsenals.

I’m reading an old Tom Clancy novel, Dead or Alive, and it is, of course, a good guys versus bad guys macho tale. One paragraph (p. 115) describes bad guy Islamist terrorists. See if it makes you think of anyone else.

” .  .  .  they thought of themselves as Holy Warriors and sought after their seventy-two virgins but were in fact young people with few prospects, to whom religion was the path to greatness they would otherwise never achieve. It was remarkable that they were too stupid even to see that.”

Strip that description of the seventy-two virgins and replace religion with MAGA and you have our delusional American crusaders. They believe their mission is holy and they can justify it with quotations like a Jeffersonian Tree of Liberty “spilling of blood” phrase and demonization of immigrants bringing their “poisoning blood.” These are the people who will bring Trump’s “bedlam” when things fail to go Trump’s way.

We don’t need any more standoffs, like Cliven Bundy’s chest puffing idiocy. We surely don’t need a Ruby Ridge or a Waco – Branch Dividian catastrophe. So, when these guys, these self-styled American crusaders, decide to provoke a confrontation, what are we going to do?

I hope our government people are working scenarios that will result in the security of our nation and that they have a notion of how to accomplish neutralizing these Rambo wannabees with minimal loss of life. But that’s a tough challenge when dealing with people who think their cause is holy and pure and who are willing, some eager, to die for their cause. You know enough history to recognize the delusional pattern.

Now, This Is Delusional So, Bless Her Heart!

Click the pic for the SNL version of Sen. Katie Brttt’s (R-AL) cringe-worthy rebuttal to the SOTU. Start at 2:26 or watch the Biden lead-in first.

Delusional Senator Endorses Violence

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) brought his usual cerebral fuzziness to the issue of aid to Ukraine, as reported by PBS:

MUNICH (AP) — A Republican opponent [Vance] of new U.S. funding for Ukraine argued at an international security conference Sunday that the package stuck in Congress wouldn’t “fundamentally change the reality” on the ground and that Russia has an incentive to negotiate peace.

Ukrainians are dying. Their cities are being destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery and rockets. The country is being obliterated. That’s Putin’s stated goal – to erase Ukraine and rebuild it as part of Russia.

What you need to know is that Vance has never served in combat, so he knows nothing about battlefield realities. He has never served in uniform, so he knows nothing about any nation’s military. And he knows nothing about any incentive for Russia to negotiate peace. He is an ignoramus lacking the sense to keep his ignorant mouth shut.

Many thanks to JN for the pic

That package stuck in Congress is designed to bolster Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and to drive the Russian army out of Ukraine. Without that aid, Ukraine will run out of munitions and all will be lost. And Putin has publicly stated that he will then set his sights on the Baltic countries, Romania and eastern Poland. Happily for Putin and the Russians, Trump has invited them to do “Whatever the hell they want.“

People are dying as Vance displays his boundless ignorance and cowardly fealty to Trump, who told Vance to oppose military aid for Ukraine. Decide for yourself why Trump would insist on blocking aid to Ukraine and, as a result, provide aid to Putin.

Vance is not just spineless. He is a promoter of Putin’s butchery.

Nickname Rhymes with “Tucker”

Tucker Carlson outdid himself by directly promoting Vladimir Putin and, in consequence, undermining democracy everywhere. He did so in a suck-up interview witnessed by pinheads in Red states and by some already shaky allies. That has earned Carlson a special award.

Many thanks to JN for the pic.

I wonder if MAGA Americans can remember when we were the good guys and the Russian oppressors were the bad guys, especially when they invaded another country and committed war crimes. The righties used to be good at standing up to Russian tyrants. Now they cower before Trump and his despotic pals Orbán, Erdoğan and Putin and they puff their chests as though they are brave.

Congratulations on your award, Comrade Tucker. You’re delusional.

  • Today is a good day to be the light
  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Is It Time to Surrender?


Post 1,043

CAUTION!

Contains both snark and sarcasm. Sensitive readers are advised to be holding both Teddy and blanket prior to reading further.

It’s time to give up. Wave the white flag. Throw in the towel. Nothing left to do but for Trump to kneel before Putin and surrender the ceremonial Presidential Sword.

MAGAs keep saying how they love Putin; how America is a failed state; how democracy is over; how a strongman American ruler allied with murderous international despots should be our future. They show their muscle by refusing aid to Ukraine, allowing Putin to continue his megalomaniac genocide in that country.

We know MAGAs will let him rampage through eastern Europe because Trump has already invited him to do so. Putin plans to invade and annex Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and all of Eastern Poland. Belarus is already a vassal state. Viktor Orbán in Hungary would immediately prostrate himself before Putin, as would Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey. Go look at a map and you’ll see that at that point Putin will have effectively reconstituted the Soviet Union, the long term goal of his KGB thug heart. Why shouldn’t we let him do that? Like, who cares?

The MAGAs align with brutal leaders in many ways, like by refusing aid to Taiwan, leaving those people to wonder when Xi’s communist hoard will cross the Taiwan Strait and crush them. They cheer as Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei of Iran further emboldens Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and more. He threatens to invade Iraq and he murders Iran’s citizen protesters. Not our fights – why shouldn’t we let these dictators do what they want to do?

The MAGAs in the House are once again holding up aid to Israel, just as Sen. Rand Paul likes to do in the Senate. Their delay, of course, emboldens and supports Hamas and Hezbollah, which in turn strengthens the tyrants running Iran.

So, MAGA supports what Pres. George W. Bush called the Axis of Evil and they denigrate America. So what? Even though these might-makes-right people once declared themselves to be the tough guy party, ready at a moment’s notice to stand up against what Reagan called the Evil Empire, that was so yesterday. Instead, their leader has vowed to take actions that will end NATO and the peace and economic welfare it has promoted and guarded for 75 years. Perhaps that is what we need to do. Maybe we should get out of the way. Besides, the MAGAs can more easily roll over non-MAGAs if we just sit in the stands instead of getting onto the field of play. No bloody noses that way.

Our American love affair with macho men is long standing. The toughs in our own South went to war against our nation in the 1860s, quite happy to demonstrate their love of domination of others, to the point that 620,000 soldiers died. No problem, they say. Even these 159 years later they still mourn their “lost cause” of cruelty and subjugation and they even threaten another civil war if they don’t get their way. We don’t want a war, so maybe we should hear their saber rattling and let them have their way.

Nearly 1,000 Americans in Nazi uniforms marching in New Jersey in 1937. Click me.

There were the toughs of the German American Bund of the 1930s, when red, white and blue Americans, their goose bumps a-popping, seig heiled swastikas and the likeness of Adolph Hitler. Clearly, a lot of us really like tough guys. It would be a shame if something were to happen to our nice little country, they tell us, like another Civil War, so we ought to just give in to their demands.

In fact, we have a sizable portion of Americans who long for a strongman ruler, who have little regard for the rule of law or for the lives of people they see as “others.” They love democracy only when they win. Shouldn’t we just let them have their way?

Some guys think everything is theirs to piss on. Original photo credit Pixabay.

The MAGAs suck up to Trump, Putin and absolutist, fundamentalist preachers and politicians who worship only power. Millions of sheeple are prepared to follow their every word. It seems many of us have already surrendered, so why shouldn’t the rest of us? These MAGAs are in charge with their minority rule because we don’t vote them out of office, so maybe we don’t care and should turn everything over to them.

The MAGAs in the Alabama state Supreme Court recently took a bold step toward Christian Nationalism – MAGA rule – by declaring that frozen human embryos from Invitro Fertilization efforts are children with all the rights of anyone. They declared that such embryos cannot be destroyed, as that would be murder.

Standard IVF practice is to fertilize many more eggs than necessary for one successful pregnancy in order to allow for various difficulties that might occur. The effect of the Bible-thumping ruling of the Alabama Supreme Court, with its imaginary, God-declared ruling, means that a couple who supplied the eggs and sperm for as many as 34 frozen embryos* would have to carry all 34 to term or suffer multiple counts of homicide. Clearly, our best move will be to let over-certain religious zealots dictate our every move, lest we face felony charges.

Finally, we now have the clarity we need, stated by Jack Posobiec at the 2024 CPAC convention. He said (begin at 0:50) that MAGAs are here to overthrow our democracy. More to the point, the crowd cheered his declaration.

MAGAs are a mutually reinforcing, self-generating engine of anger and destruction – and there are so many millions of them. Besides, there really is no need for us to stand up for what we know is right because there are no principles worth fighting for anymore. America is done. It’s over. it’s time to get on our knees and surrender.

Unless .  .  .

Unless we are willing to listen to our Founders, who knew so much about the cruelty of living under the thumb of a totalitarian.

Unless we still believe in liberty and justice for all.

Unless we know in our bones that once again Thomas Paine is right, that these are the times that try men’s souls and we hear his call to service.

Unless we are willing to give America what it needs – what it always needs – us.

If we make the decision, we can stand strong to make sure that we are and continue to be the shining city on a hill, the beacon of hope to the world. To keep our light shining will take all of us – all of we freedom and democracy loving people. Nobody left behind.

Do we still have the right stuff for the continuing battle? Does it still burn within us?

—————————————-

* From The average number of eggs retrieved during IVF:

“Generally, retrieving between five and 14 eggs is considered adequate for women under 35. For a woman who is 38, this number increases to between 10 and 34.”

I’m not at all clear how a 38 year old woman would deal with 34 pregnancies.

  • Today is a good day to be the light
  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Joe Biden Has To Be Better Than Super Bowl Commercials


Post 1,042

However odd it might be, we love our Super Bowl commercials as a form of entertainment. Millions tune in just for them, not so much for the football game. And with the cost for just 30 seconds of ad time at $7 million, the ad agencies and the companies they create ads for better make you want to buy their product.

So, here’s a test: Name all the brands or products you remember seeing in the 59 commercials you watched on February 11. I’m guessing you won’t remember many of them, so let’s try this another way.

There were roughly 101 celebrities in the ads. How many can you name and what is their connection to the product they hawked? (Answer: none)

Far more to the point, having seen the Super Bowl commercials and had your arm twisted by celebrities, are you likely to buy any of the advertised products? Betcha you’re not. And there is a point to this that goes well past your product buying habits and Super Bowl commercials.

While we might have been entertained by some of these ads (whether or not we could figure out what they were for), our behavior will be largely unchanged. The reason for that is the same as for poor political messages.

For a message to cause us to take action, it has to move us. We have to feel something that lights our fire or brings tears to our eyes. It doesn’t matter if there are celebrity endorsements unless the message speaks to us deeply.

So, here’s the deal for Joe Biden. He has to stop doing whatever it is he’s doing now and speak to us from his gut to ours. He has to make us feel why we should care.

We know that the other guy is entirely bad for our country and bad for us personally. We get it and it’s okay for Joe to tell us about that. But nobody wants to vote for Joe Biden only because he isn’t as bad as the other guy.

Joe, ya gotta make us want you bad. You have to reach into us and touch our hearts and our guts. Then your gaffs and your verbal and physical stumbles won’t matter to us and we’ll vote for you.

When the message digs into our innards we remember it and we just might be moved to give the product – Joe Biden – another try, as did the best Super Bowl ad ever, the 1984 Macintosh ad.

You clicked through to watch that Macintosh ad, didn’t you? If you hadn’t seen it already you were curious and if you saw it back then, you remember it because it did more than entertain you. it moved you. It shook your world and made you think differently about what is possible. Maybe it changed you. You were hungry to see whatever that Macintosh thing was going to be and how it was going to leave behind the boring stuff the big boys had and how it would make your world not just better, but really cool, too. That feels really good and motivates us to take action.

Click me – and then see point #5 below

Simon Sinek has a wonderful TED talk and a book called Start With Why. He points out that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t tell us that he had a plan. King told us, “I have a dream today” and we were grabbed down deep by that dream. We were captivated and motivated and had tears of passion in our eyes. His message was moving and memorable through the great magic of hope and that’s just what we need right now in order to restore our democracy, revive America and heal our deep, self-inflicted wounds.

Biden has a plan to do that, and nobody wants to hear about it.

In other words, Joe, you have to be what the Superbowl LVIII commercials were not: moving and memorable. Tell us about your dream for us, Joe.

What if the people running Biden’s campaign were that good? What if his messages truly spoke to us and were more powerful than the largely ineffective Super Bowl LVIII commercials? What if Joe Biden told us about his dream?

Super Bowl Ad Clunker

Boyhood pal Frank Levy reacted in a FaceBook post to the Jesus “He gets us” Superbowl ad:

“I always thought the point of Christianity and Christians was that they are supposed to get Jesus, not the other way around.“

He’s right.

Who’s Counting?

$5M + $83.5M + $453.5M .  .  .

and the interest meters keep on running.  Plus. the threat of prison time is looming.

Accountability: It’s a good thing.

Have I ever mentioned that I love it when a bully gets punched in the nose?

Finally

There was a campus shooting resulting in murders last week. I know someone living nearby the scene. That it was nearby makes our ongoing mass murders more than horrible. It makes them very personal.

I wasn’t having an empathy outage during the Kansas City and Atlanta and Fayetteville and Claxton and Baltimore and Bronx and Jackson and Huntington Park and Chicago and Birmingham and Carson and Montgomery and Burnsville and Middleton and Indianapolis mass shootings (those are just since Super Bowl Sunday). It’s just that this campus shooting, being close to home (as in: heart) brings it into stark reality for me. It’s funny how sometimes we don’t fully “get it” until it’s personal.

Well, I don’t need that up close and personal wake up call to feel the pain and awfulness of these murders. Nevertheless, these shootings do carry more voltage for most of us when they are personal. And every one of them is personal to real live people, like you, me, our families, our friends and our neighbors, whether across the street or across the country. Now two more are dead and more families wail and grieve.

See my post about this here.

  • Today is a good day to be the light
  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

You’re Not Going To Like This


Post 1,039

There was a glorious victory parade yesterday in Kansas City in celebration of the Chiefs’ Superbowl LVIII win. The crowd was estimated at a million people, twice the population of the city. There were waves and smiles and cheers and then people began to be shot and they dropped to the ground. As of the time of this writing there were at least 22 reported injured and one dead. Three people have been arrested. All this happened in the presence of over 800 law enforcement people.

Another day in America, another mass shooting. It’s 45 days into the year, we’ve already had 49 mass shootings and a total of 4,925 people are dead from gun violence. We commonly know who the bad guys are soon after a mass shooting, but I think we need to expand our definition.

I wrote here (in the “Innocents” section) about non-Hamas Gazans, commonly referred to as innocent Palestinian civilians. Since Hamas took over government in Gaza in 2006 the innocent Palestinians have stood by watching those hundreds of miles of tunnels be excavated and production equipment, computers and war matériel be loaded into those subterranean factories of death. Out of them have come tens of thousands of rockets that have been unleashed on Israeli civilians. While that carnage has been ongoing, what did those innocent Palestinian civilians do to prevent or stop the killing?

If, as it seems obvious, they did nothing, then they simply cannot be called innocent civilians. At very least they are complicit in those murders, those rapes, those atrocities because of their passivity. Now, here comes the part you’re not going to like.

If that logic holds, then we are not innocent in the shooting of those people in Kansas City, nor of the murders at Sandy Hook or Parkland or Uvalde or Tree of Life or anywhere else. We have allowed our system to be compromised, bastardized, politicized, weaponized and monetized so that any fool, any angry dirt bag, any paranoid or any Rambo wannabee can get his hands on combat weapons and ammunition. He can pick any day when the spirit of murder moves him and then blast away until he runs out of ammunition or the police shoot him down.

WE INNOCENT AMERICANS ALLOWED OUR SYSTEM TO DEVOLVE INTO THIS.

I foolishly thought that 20 little first graders and 7 teachers blasted and butchered into bloody puddles on the floor of Sandy Hook Elementary School would be the event that would bring us to our senses. That shows how naive I am, because as our nation wept and we held our little ones closer, the next mass murderer was on his way, locked and loaded and looking for blood.

AND WE DID NOTHING TO PREVENT HIM FROM MURDERING INNOCENTS.

Yesterday Everytown for Gun Safety opened their email this way:

Six years ago today at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, 17 students and school staff were shot and killed, and 17 more were wounded.

And yesterday marks one year since the deadly mass shooting at Michigan State University, where three students were shot and killed and five others wounded.

And today in Atlanta, four students were shot and wounded after school in the parking lot.

And just hours ago, another community was terrorized by gun violence: At the Super Bowl Championship parade in Kansas City, where at least one person was killed and many wounded.

Once again, everyday moments and celebrations have turned into tragedy.

And once again, entire communities are picking up the pieces from preventable acts of gun violence.

We sit in stupefied silence as the gun lobby threatens, cajoles and bribes our lawmakers and these politicians cower before them. They tell us about the Constitutional right of red blooded Americans to have guns and no tree hugging liberal weenie is going to take their guns from them. And then we reelect those cowardly lawmakers and afterward wring our hands at each of the next massacres, wondering how that could have happened. “Nothing anyone could have done about that,” they tell us with phony, mopey faces.

And they’re right about that because we let it happen. You and I. We sit motionless and inertia wins. That murderous body in motion stays in motion because it isn’t acted upon by an outside force, which should be us.

If we haven’t done anything to make things better to protect our people, if we haven’t put our right to stay alive over the right of gun ownership, then we are about as innocent as those Palestinian civilians who stand by and let Hamas do its murdering.

We seem to have shamed politicians enough that they have abandoned their despicable thoughts and prayers nonsense, but our efforts to make things better have been pitiful. Life isn’t safer for our little kids at their desks in school, wondering if they’re next, or for high schoolers in the halls between classes or for partiers dancing in Las Vegas, or for worshipers in churches and synagogues or for grannies in supermarkets buying milk and bread.

Go ahead – push back if you like – but I think we’re complicit in these murders because, like the Palestinian civilians, we’ve allowed the murders to happen. Those “preventable acts of gun violence,” as Everytown calls them, weren’t prevented because we didn’t prevent them from happening.

Of course, my accusation does not go to the Moms Demand Action folks, the Every Town for Gun Safety people, the March For Our Lives kids from Parkland and the others who are speaking up and demanding the reform that the rest of us are allowing to not happen. We keep voting for those who will not make the laws we all know we need in order to protect little kids sitting at their desks and parade attendees in Kansas City. That’s on us.

  • Today is a good day to be the light
  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Violence


Post 1,034

Violence – Part 1

From David French’s piece Political Christianity Has Claws:

” .  .  .  when you combine theology and ideology but subtract virtue, you’ve created a formula for viciousness and strife. Raise the stakes to an existential or eternal level, remove the restraints of kindness and self-control, and watch the worst of humanity emerge.”

We are possibly facing a worst-of-humanity episode, a Ruby Ridge style catastrophe, fomented by the ideological, falsely theological, angry ones.

They are creating a trucker convoy to descend on points of entry at our southern border, specifically including Eagle Pass, TX, where there has been so much confrontation already. They are calling themselves the Army of God, which should send chills down your spine, because you know what has happened throughout history when people bathe themselves in the religious justification of representing God. They see themselves as holy and they justify all their violations of law, of religion, of morality and of good sense by declaring that they are doing God’s work. That often becomes lethal.

Here’s how one FB post reported this:

“This is a biblical, monumental moment that’s been put together by God,” one convoy organizer said on a recent planning call. “We are besieged on all sides by dark forces of evil,” said another. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. It is time for the remnant to rise.”

Clearly, these guys aren’t just itching for a fight; they are trying to provoke one with the imagined self-justification of doing so in the name of God. They’re puffed-up truckers, so call it a diesel crusade.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has clashed with the federal government over policing the border. He was shot down by the U.S. Supreme Court but vows to defy its ruling. That has been the spark for far right, hard-headed indignation and likely ignited the, “You can’t tell us what to do – we’ll show you!” trucker convoy. It smacks of the Cliven Bundy confrontation during the Obama administration. And it smacks of a far right test drive and even a flash to ignite a civil war.

President Biden is going to have to deal with these provocateurs. An armed confrontation will have disastrous consequences, yet he can’t let the armed mob rule or wantonly break the law. This is going to be a rule-of-law showdown and a really difficult situation to defuse. It has the potential for national disaster.

Violence – Part 2

The angry guys with guns (you know who they are) regularly eliminate peace makers, people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, Rabin, Sadat and Gandhi. The thugs consistently live in their rationalized, religious zealotry belief that might-makes-right and that they have the black-and-white, universal ownership of truth and righteousness, like the extremists heading to the border in trucks right now.

Re-read the quote above from David French. With Trump leading his mob of millions and specifically calling for violence, we have let the anger and hatred genie out of the bottle and have truly removed the restraints of kindness and self-control.

On a different scale, read this from Everytown For Gun Safety:

“[the week of January 28] marks a devastating milestone: By early February, more people are killed with guns in the U.S. than during an entire calendar year in ANY OTHER high-income country.”

Please don’t say or tolerate anyone else saying that we are a peaceful country. Violence and murder are woven into the fabric of what it means to be Americans. Reference: our daily mass murders and the Army of God truckers swaggering with their AR-15s – you’ll see that soon.

The behavior we tolerate is the behavior we get (see: Trump, Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes). The longer it takes for us to take a stand, the harder it will be to end the craziness.

Have we become so distracted (see this) or so “nice” that we won’t stand up for ourselves and what we know to be right? There are lawsuits against Trump now, so we’re attempting to enforce accountability, but most Americans are silent and too many think he’s a hapless victim. Only the angry mob is speaking up.

Each of us has full freedom of choice about this. Violence and cruelty in the name of freedom of speech or worse, with the excuse of religion, is never okay. Nevertheless, it happens regularly and it’s happening right now. So, we better exercise our freedom of speech to stand against the haters and the violent ones.*

Reading Assignment

In Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters From an American on January 27 she writes about what became known as the Lyceum Address, delivered in 1838:

“[Abraham Lincoln} called for Americans to exercise ‘general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws.’”

We are in every bit as existential a crisis today as was our nation when Lincoln warned us. I urge you to read her post.

______________________________

* Watch this space next Wednesday, February 7 for The Moronica Awards, which will include directions for what to do about our national craziness.

  • Today is a good day to be the light
  • _____________________________
  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

EXTRA! EXTRA! – v2.0


Post 1,017

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Yesterday there was a mass shooting at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV). It is reported that a lone gunman shot and killed 3 people and wounded 1. The police and FBI killed the perp are working to find accomplices (if any), where the weapon(s) used were obtained, whether they were purchased legally and, most important, the shooter’s motives.

There are two pieces of recurring news that accompany this shooting.

  1. Children of school age have lived with a looming sense of danger all their lives. They are accustomed to active shooter drills to the point that the mass shooting at a school yesterday produces just another shoulder shrug by them, although some wonder if they’re next. They don’t want to talk about it and they go on with their lives with yet another wound to their mental health and to their hearts. Nobody knows what the long term effect of such ongoing trauma will be.
  2. Congress will likely offer nothing at all. The members were called out by the Parkland kids for their “thoughts and prayers” hypocrisy a few years ago, so what can they say? A few well meaning legislators will stand and call for reform and exactly nothing will change to create better safety for our citizens. The good news is that neither anyone in Congress nor anyone in any state legislature will have to find his or her spine. None will have to stand up to the gun lobby or understand the Second Amendment for what it actually says, instead of believing the perverse story told by the gun lobby.

Be clear that it takes courage to face reality and stand up for what’s right. Sadly, that commodity – courage – is in very short supply in the ranks of our lawmakers.

Doing the Math
  1. This was the 631st mass shooting this year on the 340th day of the year. The math says that we’ve averaged 1.85 mass shootings per day since the first of the year.
  2. There were 2,408 people killed in the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor 82 years ago today. In 2023 we lose that number of our people to mass shootings every 16.6 days.* In 1941 we went to war over those deaths. Today we do nothing.

So, no big deal about this shooting at UNLV.

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* For the purists, there have been 40,086 gun deaths since the first of the year. That includes homicides, suicides, accidents and mass shootings. Our world leading average is 118 gun deaths per day. Every day.

We’re number 1 in this shame game and we intend to stay number 1. You can’t stop us because, hey, we got guns.

Today is a good day to be the light

_____________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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