I was struck speechless and motionless when I saw the picture in the New York TimesNewsletter of July 16. Goose bumps ran from the back of my neck all the way down my left leg.
Click for the detail of Cpl. Williams’ action.
The awful Battle of Iwo Jima* in February 1945 killed or wounded over 27,000 Americans. Cpl. Hershel Williams’ actions there saved countless lives and later that year he was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Harry Truman.
So many of the recipients of that honor have said something similar to what Cpl. Williams said.
“I claim to be only the caretaker of the medal. There were 27 medals awarded [for heroism during that battle], but there were countless others who did as much, if not more.”
Cpl. Hershel Williams was the last living recipient of the Medal of Honor from World War II and he was among the very best of us.
The photo below is of the recent Congressional ceremony in Cpl. Williams’ honor in the Rotunda of the Capitol Building. Study it: the flag draped coffin; the Army sentinels standing guard; “The Landing of Columbus” painting; the polished brass stanchions; the ghost-like guard passing by; and the reflection of all of it on the polished marble floor. You’ll gain new perspective on why we must get to the bottom of the January 6 desecration of that place.
Hershel Williams, the last living Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, recently died at the age of 98. He was honored at the Capitol. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times (Click the pic for the full story.)
Published on the morning of the January 6 Select Committee step-by-step presentation to the nation of the actions of the former President of the United States in the insurrection. It is the story of those who insulted true patriots like Cpl. Williams and those who spawned the disgraceful and traitorous carnage.
See footnote 5 below
Click for the Wikipedia article
* I learned of James Bradley’s stunning book, Flags of Our Fathers, while sitting next to his sister on a cross country flight in 2000 as the book was being released. It is the story of the six men who raised the flag atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Their father, Navy Corpsman John Bradley, was one of those men.
If you prefer, watch the Clint Eastwood film of the same name. Either way, this is a story you need to know. You’ll appreciate Cpl. Hershel Williams and the honoring of him in the Capitol Rotunda all the more.
Click for the Wikipedia article
————————————
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!)
And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.
JA
Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
I think that it isn’t the system that needs reform. It’s the people who are undermining the system who need reform – or replacement. Click for the story – see Item #3.
Not long ago I posted a love note to Millennials and Gen-Zs. It was something of an apology for what we Boomers have done that threatens them and for the huge pile of political poo we’re piling at their feet. It isn’t pretty and it won’t be easy. But it’s critical that they grab hold of this mess, shackle it in irons and imprison it for the life of this planet.
I laid out some of the key challenges and let our Ms and Zs know that we believe in them, that they can do this. They can restore what has been stolen, they can take the critically important steps to save our planet and themselves and they have the power to replace our national dishonesty, denial and mindless rage with truth and reality.
It turns out that Thom Hartmann agrees with me and he’s laid out far more clearly the reasons that Ms and Zs are so screwed – his word. I encourage everyone to read his message and see it as a laying out of the challenges that must be met.
These challenges should not be partisan or political, but the sad truth is that they are. There is only one party that tolerates and promotes hatred. There is only one party that fights against the advancement of gun safety.* There is only one party that rejoices in taking away our rights. There is only one party that consistently takes from the poor and middle class and gives to the super rich. There is only one party taking away your vote and working to destroy our democracy and replace it with a fascist autocracy.
There is more bad stuff that they do, of course, but the point is that the Republican Party, the one that used to be conservative, standing up for the values you believe in, no longer exists. They stand solely for enhancing their own power and wealth at our expense.
See? It just doesn’t take that many words. This took 30 seconds to think of and about 15 minutes to construct.
BTW
I’ve pummeled Democrats repeatedly for their astonishingly poor communication skills. They’re nearly always way too wordy, taking what would be said by Republicans in under two dozen words and instead expanding them into unintelligible paragraphs that not even the author can remember and which put readers to sleep.
President Biden’s July 9 essay in the Washington Post explaining/defending his trip to Saudi Arabia was just such a communication disaster. It demonstrates that in 1,387 words. Yes, over 2 pages of dense text!
What are the communications people in the White House thinking?
I did muscle through it on my second attempt. It is boring. It is W-A-A-A-A-A-Y too long. And it feels like an old prize fighter recounting a win from years ago.
“Joe, I want to hear about how what you’re doing today will help me tomorrow. And I want to hear about it in a maximum of 60 seconds.”
I think Biden is doing a really good job of doing his job. But he and the Ds are so dreadfully, painfully, self-destructively lousy at communication that even Democrats can’t see the good stuff that’s happening right in front of them. Look at this from the New York Times:
That’s happening as we are in an existential battle to save democracy from the Rs who would crush it. If we’re to win that battle and succeed in saving our nation, voters will have to feel good about voting for Democrats.
Crappy communication won’t help.
NOTE: I reached out to the DNC with an offer to help. So far no reply.
Covid Corner – post-video late addition
In an interview with Politico and discussing his retirement, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the lightning rod and target of extremist right wing paranoia, said, “If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have Covid anymore,’ then I will be 105. I think we’re going to be living with this.”
A STAT report commenting on Fauci’s interview response reported, “That statement is a concession that we never flattened the curve of cases and we’re instead living with the virus and its variants.”
I’m left gobsmacked by the profound impact 22% of the U.S. population has had by refusing to be vaccinated and by having temper tantrums over masks. “Living with the virus and its variants” is the price we all pay when the fierce independents and the power and money opportunists hold sway over the common good. Read the charts.
Just a couple of weeks ago we were losing 327 Americans per day to Covid. Now it’s up to 417 per day. And 98 – 99% of those who die are unvaccinated. Have a fiercely independent day, Bubba – while you still can.
* “And I believe it is insane that Republicans in the U.S. Senate — who accept the Second Amendment as a death warrant for tens of thousands of Americans each year — will not even agree to legislation raising the minimum age to purchase such weapons of war [AR-15 style assault weapons] to 21.”
“Shame on this country for refusing to take those guns out of the shooters’ hands — or to prevent them from buying those guns in the first place.”
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!)
And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.
JA
Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
The people at the not-for-profit Citizens United were on a mission. They hated Hillary Clinton. A lot. They filmed what they called a documentary, Hillary: The Movie, and planned to release it in 2008 in an effort to submarine her candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency. They wanted to air their hit job film just prior to primary elections in the various states. But they had a problem.
One of the provisions of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (commonly called McCain-Feingold) banned the airing of corporate funded “electioneering communication” for the 30 days before a primary election and for 60 days prior to a general election. The Citizens United people wanted to blanket the airways with their electioneering communication attack piece all the way through the primaries, so in December 2007 they filed suit to challenge that provision of McCain-Feingold. If they won, they would be able to run their electioneering film in the then-upcoming campaign season of 2008.
The district court refused their application for injunctive relief. In the appeals court Citizens United claimed their 90-minute film was a documentary, not electioneering. The court easily saw through that smoke screen and refused that argument, stating what was perfectly clear to everyone, that it was not a documentary film, but a 30-minute attack ad. It was an attempt to affect the election (the very definition of electioneering). Further, the court saw that their intended use of the movie was expressly at odds with established law.
On the case went to the Supreme Court (Citizens United v. FEC), which decided in favor of Citizens United in January 2010, overturning the lower court’s ruling. The court declared that the corporate electioneering communications restrictions of McCain-Feingold were unconstitutional and Citizens United could air their film as they wished. That should have been the end of the case, but it wasn’t.
Chief Justice John Roberts directed the attorneys to return to the court and re-litigate the case, this time specifically testing the rights of corporations and speech equivalency. It’s important to note that those issues were not part of the case brought by Citizens United.
—->In other words, the court fabricated an entirely new case focused on issues that were not in contest in the Citizens United case.
That is not supposed to happen.
.
And in this fabricated case, the Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 vote that corporations have full First Amendment rights.
Let me be clear about this:
—-> The Court majority effectively declared that non-sentient, non-human corporations have all the rights of flesh and blood human beings.
Like you
.
Making things worse, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, reaffirmed that money was effectively the same as speech. He declared that the First Amendment doesn’t allow prohibitions of speech even if the speaker is a corporation.
And that started a deluge of corporate money – dark money – into our politics that persists today.
To be sure there were earlier cases that chipped away at our protection from big money influence in our politics, including Buckley v. Valeo, which effectively declared that money is the same as speech. That assertion, of course, is ridiculous.
While money used for a campaign contribution certainly enables speech, that doesn’t make it the same as speech. Indeed, if you follow the Court’s Buckley logic, they’d have you believe that if I use money to buy a car, that money is the same as a car. Utter nonsense.
Money is property that is used in exchange for other things. That doesn’t make it the same as those other things. Nevertheless, the Roberts court wasn’t able to or refused to see the difference and the Citizens United case became the back breaker of integrity in our elections.
Key Point: That decision was driven by John Roberts legislating from the bench in a case that was not even brought before the court by a plaintiff! One has to wonder if this was a predetermined decision he wanted to reach. Otherwise, where did that secondary case come from?
Put a bookmark here.
Professor Heather Cox Richardson reported this in her July 6 edition of Letters From an American:
“Both the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association, the flagship organizations of professional historians in the U.S., along with eight other U.S. historical associations (so far), yesterday issued a joint statement expressing dismay that the six Supreme Court justices in the majority in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision that overturned Roe v. Wadeignored the actual historythose organizations provided the court and instead ‘adopted a flawed interpretationof abortion criminalization . . . ‘ “
” ‘[t]hese misrepresentations are now enshrined in a text that becomes authoritative for legal reference and citation in the future, ‘an undermining of the imperative that historical evidence and argument be presented according to high standards of historical scholarship. The Court’s majority opinion…does not meet those standards.’ ” [emphasis mine]
Translation: the Supreme Court ignored evidence that was inconvenient to the decision the justices wanted to make (i.e. overturn Roe). As in the manufactured case derived from the Citizens United law suit, the court clearly had its mind made up to push the doctrines it wanted, irrespective of precedent, facts and even without having a case before it.
And that radicalization is the true danger of this gerrymandered Supreme Court. It appears these justices want to roll back rights and progress 90 – maybe 150 – years.
Are you seeing the pattern yet?
You better see it, because this Court has already invited yet more cases to give them the opportunity to end yet more rights of the people.
Special Note: According to an ongoing Gallup survey, public confidence of the Supreme Court has plummeted down to 25%. And this study update was conducted before any of the end-of-term Court decisions were announced, including Dobbs. A fresh study will almost certainly show a sharp drop from the already historically low public confidence in the Court.
A similar drop in confidence is what Justice John Paul Stevens predicted in his blistering dissenting opinion in the Citizens United decision in 2010. As you can see, that is what happened.
Click me for the story
For Nerd Readers
You must read Jeffery Toobin’s explanation of this sordid story in The New Yorker. For a sampling, here’s a section of Toobin’s comments on Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissent in the Citizens United case:
So it was especially galling that the Court converted Citizens United from a narrow dispute about the application of a single provision in McCain-Feingold to an assault on a century of federal laws and precedents. To Stevens, it was the purest kind of judicial activism.
Or, as he put it in his dissenting opinion, “Five Justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.” [emphasis mine] The case should have been resolved by simply ruling on whether McCain-Feingold applied to “Hillary: The Movie,” or at least to nonprofit corporations like Citizens United.
Stevens was just warming up. His dissent was ninety pages, the longest of his career. He questioned every premise of Kennedy’s opinion, starting with its contempt for stare decisis, the rule of precedent. He went on to refute Kennedy’s repeated invocations of “censorship” and the “banning” of free speech. The case was merely about corporate-funded commercials shortly before elections. Corporations could run as many commercials as they liked during other periods, and employees of the corporations (by forming a political-action committee) could run ads at any time.
Stevens was especially offended by Kennedy’s blithe assertion that corporations and human beings had identical rights under the First Amendment. “The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare,” Stevens wrote. “Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind.” Congress and the courts had drawn distinctions between corporations and people for decades, Stevens wrote, noting that, “at the federal level, the express distinction between corporate and individual political spending on elections stretches back to 1907, when Congress passed the Tillman Act.”
As for Kennedy’s fear that the government might regulate speech based on “the speaker’s identity,” Stevens wrote, “We have held that speech can be regulated differentially on account of the speaker’s identity, when identity is understood in categorical or institutional terms. The Government routinely places special restrictions on the speech rights of students, prisoners, members of the Armed Forces, foreigners, and its own employees.” And Stevens, a former Navy man, could not resist a generational allusion: he said that Kennedy’s opinion “would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by ‘Tokyo Rose’ during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders.” (Stevens’s law clerks didn’t like the dated reference to Tokyo Rose, who made propaganda broadcasts for the Japanese, but he insisted on keeping it.)
Stevens’s conclusion was despairing. “At bottom, the Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt,” he wrote. “It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.” It was an impressive dissent, but that was all it was. Anthony Kennedy, on the other hand, was reshaping American politics.
————————————
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 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!)
And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.
JA
Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
In the aftermath of the shooting at the 4th of July parade in Highland Park, IL the reports are that 7 people are dead and 47 have serious injuries. Please explain to me what an un-serious gunshot injury is. If the hole is in you, believe me, you’ll be certain that it’s serious.
There were more than 80 shots fired in 22 seconds, so while you’re in explaining mode, tell me why private citizens should be allowed to possess weapons capable of such carnage.
Highland Park shooter captured. Click for more.
The local fire & police, the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force, the Chicago Police aerial unit, the staties, the ATF and the FBI were all over this massacre almost instantly. They sifted through eyewitness reports, surveillance videos, every tip and every bit of information they could find and they got the 21-year-old bad guy in about 7 hours. Massive kudos to all of these professionals. My frightened family and neighbors all over the area very much appreciate the massive, instantaneous response of these dedicated folks.
We don’t know the motivation of the shooter yet. We can reasonably guess that he is angry. And we can reasonably guess that he believes he’s been victimized and thinks that lashing out at those he hates is justified. He wants to disrupt our lives, to punish us for whatever it is that he thinks is wrong. He wants to take from us our sense of safety and our trust in one another. He wants to take away our country and replace it with some macho, wild west cartoon. How else to explain his killing innocents on the 4th of July?
This shooting, while horrid, is not surprising. We are a country that quickly goes to violence when we feel wronged. Think: 9/11.
John Lewis had a lifetime of working for Americans and America and he refused to succumb to hatred for those who attacked him. He was a force for good in a world that wished him anything but. When terrible things were done by Americans to Americans he would rail, “This is not who we are. We’re better than this.”
As much as I honor and appreciate John Lewis, I disagree.
The January 6 insurrectionists and seditionists were absolutely certain that they were true patriots. They believed they had been wronged and were carrying the spirit of 1776 in their veins. They hysterically shouted The Lord’s Prayer in the Senate Chamber, letting the world know that they were certain that their Christian God was on their side as they did their violence, intending to kill yet more Americans.
Click for the Onion story
They came with spears and brass knuckles, AR-15s and Glocks, body armor and sharpened flagpoles and inspiration and intel from the Oval Office itself. There was little difference between them and Bull Connor, the Selma police and the Alabama National Guard, the people who proudly cracked open John Lewis’ head.
Something like 30% of the citizens of this country think violence like that of the insurrectionists is justified. So, it should come as no surprise that our extreme haters do things like hunkering down on a roof in a suburban town, snuggling with a high power rifle and shooting people in a 4th of July parade.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHO WE ARE.
With all of our mass murders, so many of us are feeling hopeless, frustrated, furious and even ashamed of our country. That’s understandable. We may feel like quitting and succumbing to distrusting others, but that lets the bad guys win. That lets the bad guys claim to have made more Americans give up and drop out. That hurts all of us.
That’s why we must not allow distrust of one another to creep into our lives. We must not let any bad guy take away our courage and our sense of patriotism. We must not let bad guys divide us into hate camps.
WE MUST NEVER LET THE BAD GUYS WIN
.
Our violence dates back to before we were a nation, so I have no illusion that we can make that go away any time soon. What must happen instead is to overpower the violence junkies and the haters – not with guns and brass knuckles, but with votes. Last election 110 million people didn’t vote. Never again.
Do not give up.
Do not give in.
Do not let that Highland Park son of a bitch or any other bad guy win.
This is OUR country.
Final Comment
The Highland Park shooter lived 20 minutes from my house. His killing spree happened 12 minutes from my house. And there’s more.
Trump rally, Northbrook, IL – 2020. The Highland Park shooter is in the Where’s Waldo striped shirt. Yet another angry teen preparing for violence.*
In 2020 there was a Trump rally in my town. They came from as far away as the Carolinas in oversized pickup trucks with oversized engines and oversize tires and oversized American and Trump flags. I was unable to not think the words “over-compensating” and “temper tantrums.” They circled through town over and over, honking horns, blocking traffic, being disruptive and eliciting cheers from the Trumpies on the sidewalk.
I had organized a counter protest across the street from the Trumpies. My family was there. What I learned today is that the Highland Park shooter was at that rally, too, across the street from us, spewing hate (see the pic above). Very freaky.
Our national bullying and mobocracy shootings are personal whether they’re in Uvalde or Buffalo or in Chicago’s affluent, very low crime rate North Shore. If you’re a person, this is personal.
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
This is OUR country.
.
Never, never, never, never give in.
.
———————————–
* Many thanks to super-sleuth Maureen McCabe Nowak for the pic of the shooter at the Trump rally and for the Twitter link.
————————————
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 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!)
And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.
JA
Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Pence was on the wrong side of nearly every issue, like reproductive rights, gay rights, failing to prevent an Indiana HIV outbreak from becoming far worse and more. His public religiosity didn’t extend to caring about those who got hurt by his policies. And he sucked up to Trump and his malfeasance for four years plus two campaigns.
All he did on January 6 was to obey the rules of the Constitution to do his clerical job. He could have spoken up at least a month before the insurrection and that might have saved lives, but he refused to do that.
We all know that he was under great pressure from Trump, who didn’t “want to be Pence’s friend anymore” if Pence wouldn’t lie and cheat Trump back into the White House. Pence didn’t knuckle under. That one time. I guess they aren’t friends now.
Sorry, Mr. Last, but this guy’s no hero. His tombstone might read, “At long least I got one right – in the last minute.” The sub-text will be all the things he got so terribly wrong for such a very long time.
Similarly, we learned from the June 23 public hearing of the January 6 House Select Committee proceedings that DOJ men of integrity had prevented Trump from invoking the Department in his efforts to steal the 2020 election. But, like Pence, they didn’t speak up when it could have prevented the injury, death and destruction of the January 6 insurrection.
What If . . .
. . . the January 6 insurrectionists and seditionists had started a large bonfire just a short way from the gallows intended to be used to hang Mike Pence? What if they had brought with them a poster size version of the United States Constitution? What if they had ripped one page at a time from it and fed it into the flames of that bonfire? Would that have been worse than what they actually did?
They were bashing the Capitol Building, defecating on its marble floor, ransacking offices, bear spraying cops and viciously mauling every person and every thing that stood for our Constitution and our country. They tried to overturn the democratically determined will of We The People. They tried to paralyze the very government that is outlined in the Constitution. They sought to establish authoritarianism in place of democracy. They wanted and still want government by vigilante.
So, what if the insurrectionists, the seditionists, had lit a bonfire and burned the Constitution? They as much as did that, as they tried their best to end America. And vacuously, ignorantly, they claimed they are the patriots. That was no 1776 event. It was a Benedict Arnold betrayal.
One More Time
We’ve known all along that Trump knew he lost the election fairly and we’ve learned through testimony to the January 6 House Select Committee that he was told that by an army of his own people. They begged him to tell the insurrectionists to stand down, but he didn’t listen to any of them, not even his own daughter. He sat watching and enjoying the destruction. And there is exactly one reason why.
Trump was desperate to remain president because he knew that as soon as he was an ordinary citizen once again that he would no longer have the protection against prosecution that accompanies that office. He knew that prosecutions for election tampering, money laundering, conspiracy to commit a dozen crimes and so much more would come down on his head and he would spend the rest of his life in prison. That’s why he was and is willing to do anything, bray any unpatriotic lie and more just to stay in office.
Plus, of course, he would have to admit publicly that he’s a loser.
“Desperate people do desperate things.” – Rachel Caine
. . . delegates to a convention of the Texas Republican Party today approved platform planks rejecting “the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and [holding] that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States”; requiring students “to learn about the dignity of the preborn human,” including that life begins at fertilization; treating homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice”; locking the number of Supreme Court justices at 9; getting rid of the constitutional power to levy income taxes; abolishing the Federal Reserve; rejecting the Equal Rights Amendment; returning Christianity to schools and government; ending all gun safety measures; abolishing the Department of Education; arming teachers; requiring colleges to teach “free-market liberty principles”; defending capital punishment; dictating the ways in which the events at the Alamo are remembered; protecting Confederate monuments; ending gay marriage; withdrawing from the United Nations and the World Health Organization; and calling for a vote “for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”
That’s pretty much the horrific bleeding edge of the GOP today and what they want to do to America. So, right now, this minute, mark your calendar to vote – November 8, 2022 and November 5, 2024 – unless you want what’s in that paragraph above.
Democracy is not a friend of Republicans, and instead of changing their policies to win votes, they are fighting democracy so that they don’t have to change their policies.
A Republican Song Of Today
To the Tune of This Land Is Your Land
Chorus
This land is my land,
I don’t mean thy land.
It’s just for my clan,
Not for those we can’t stand.
So if you’re all woke
You’re sure not our folk.
This land was made for me and mine.
Verse 1
I schemed and hated
And I agitated.
And scammed and ripped-off
And l lied my ass off.
We won’t be lonely
‘Cause it’s White’s only.
This land was made for me and mine.
Chorus
Verse 2
We band together
To hate forever.
Stick it where it don’t shine,
‘Cus you just aren’t me’n mine.
We are the patriots,
Unlike you idiots.
This land was made for me and mine.
Chorus
Verse 3
So, send the Blacks back
To where they came from.
We don’t need Asians
Making us all feel dumb.
And adios to
Hispanics, all of you.
This land was made for me and mine.
Chorus
————————————
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 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!)
And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.
JA
Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
You already know about the Supreme Court decision striking down Roe and it’s important to put that decision into context.
Be clear that this decision will result in Daisy, raped at age 13 by her father, having to take that incest-caused pregnancy to term. It means that Maryanne, raped in a laundromat by an unknown thug, will have to carry that baby, too. And 53 year old, diabetic Lucy will have to carry her surprise pregnancy all the way to the point that it kills her. None of these women or any other woman is in charge of her own body any longer. The Supreme Court has established government mandated pregnancy, putting politicians in control women’s bodies.
Clearly, women no longer have autonomy of themselves or full citizenship.
At least since John Roberts was being vetted by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2003, he and all subsequent candidates have been questioned about their views regarding Supreme Court precedent. Every candidate has declared their belief in stare decisis – “to stand by things decided” – which directs that settled law should not be re-litigated. And every candidate has given clear enough indication that they believed that Roe is settled law. But it turns out that their most serious declarations of fidelity to settled Supreme Court decisions just weren’t true.
And the Republican controlled Senate has consistently allowed that dishonesty.
Roe was decided in 1973 by a 7-2 vote and was unsuccessfully challenged many times (see this ACLU Timeline). The Court repeatedly upheld Roe. That’s a lot of settled law, a lot of precedent, but that was of no consequence to the liars now on the court. Roe is gone.
Also this week, the Supreme Court overturned a 109 year old law that prohibits carrying guns in public in the State of New York. It’s yet another example of extremist Justices ignoring precedent – violating stare decisis, which they claimed they adhered to – and moving us backward to a far more dangerous time.
Keep monitoring your shock response, as more decisions come down criminalizing all aspects of abortion. That includes criminal penalties for an Uber driver who brings a woman to a clinic; against friends who lend her money for an abortion; and against supportive husbands and boyfriends. Expect criminal penalties heaped upon women who live in states banning abortion and who travel to a state that allows abortion. Bear in mind that Texas has already empowered vigilantes to spy on neighbors – really, on anyone – and report them to the Texas Gestapo to collect bounties and for the state to levy fines and pile on criminal prosecution.
Expect challenges to Griswold, which will result in the outlawing of birth control. Justice Clarence Thomas, he of the “high-tech lynching,” has already invited such challenges. And don’t be the least bit surprised as this extremist Supreme Court attacks same-sex marriage by overturning Obergefell; or bans inter-racial marriage by overturning Loving; or even bans private consensual sexual activities; encourages more gun violence; and incrementally inserts religion into yet more government arenas.
One exception to that: Loving probably won’t be overturned, because Thomas is in an inter-racial marriage. He wouldn’t want to penalize himself. Penalties are for other people, so expect to hear a proud shout out for stare decisis on that one, as that expected primitive attack on freedom is defeated. Just that one shout out to precedent. It’s personal to Clarence.
Bear in mind that roughly 80% of Americans did not want Roe reversed. This Court is all about minority-enabled bullying of the rest of us, so don’t be surprised at the loss of yet more rights.
The true context and diabolical meaning of the overturning of Roe is the elimination of stare decisis, which opens the floodgates to Republican Party extremist and Supreme Court attack on our freedoms, protections and traditions. Credit for that goes to the decades-long efforts of Republicans to return us to the very worst of American Puritanical, “insecure male” tyranny, accompanied by the continuous drone of self-righteous Bible thumping and the strutting of loud, little men.
The Chicago Protest
Rage was in the air. The fury driven by the theft of rights and a very personal betrayal dominated the Federal Plaza in Chicago on Friday, June 24. It was a day that will be remembered for a very long time, with a permanent distrust of the Supreme Court its lasting legacy. The perfidy of the Republican Party, the cheats who crafted this vehicle for betrayal, will be long remembered as well.
Here are pics of some of the signs from that demonstration. The more foul messages have been excluded, but don’t imagine even for a moment that anger didn’t dominate the event. So did the commitment to vote and to support others in abortion ban states.
This isn’t over.
————————————
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 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!)
And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.
JA
Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Ed. note: If this post describes you, this is going to hurt. If it doesn’t describe you, it still applies to a minimum of 36% – 60% of eligible voters. What will we do about that?
We were staggering in our rage and sorrow over 10 grannies, 2 teachers and 19 little kids having been murdered. For most of us it was primarily about the kids. Evolution has hard wired us to protect children, so the wanton slaughter of 9- and 10-year-olds more than rankled us.
And it rankled Christine Emba, too. She’s an opinion writer for The Washington Post and she accurately aimed her blame finger directly at those most responsible for the ongoing American massacre, this in her brilliant piece, You. This Is Your Fault.
For example,
“You, the gun-obsessed minority who lord over our politics and prevent change from being made. You, who mumble “thoughts and prayers” but balk at action.
“You, the “shooting hobbyist” or “gun enthusiast” who advocates against gun control because you think anything that makes your weekend amusement even the slightest bit more difficult to participate in is not to be borne.
“You, the performative patriot who believes that background checks, age limitations, training requirements — any reasonable regulations that could help keep people safe — are insufferable limitations on your freedom.
“You, the sophist who says “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” as if those people aren’t killing others using guns, as if it isn’t obvious that the havoc they wreak would be much reduced had they not been given easy access to weapons of mass murder.”
She goes on unsparingly and correctly, but I think there’s a missing step in her logic. You can see it clearly by recognizing that We The People want serious steps to be taken to protect us. For example, 80 – 90% of Americans want universal background checks on the sale or transfer of all firearms and it’s been in that range at least since Sandy Hook. How is it, then, that nothing has happened to deliver what we want?
Note: As this is being written a watered down gun safety bill that will accomplish very little is slow-poking its way through Congress. It is legislation that is carefully crafted not to offend gun “enthusiasts” and will protect almost nobody. Still, it’s a first step. Who knows? Maybe our school kids will live long enough to see a second step.
The answer to why We The People don’t get what we want is that we keep electing toadies who make sure that nothing happens that might upset their “base”. But that begs the question of why we elect those people, which gets to the core or our national problem.
Angry people and extremists take action – they vote. The not-so-angry people are less motivated. They vote in pathetically low numbers. Roughly 36% of eligible voters don’t vote in presidential elections and it’s often much worse than that. About 60% of voters blow off mid-term elections and very few bother with primary elections. That puts a lot of power into the hands of angry extremists who show up and vote.
They show up in big numbers relative to their overall size. They overwhelm the votes of the lazies and thereby get their way.
.
That’s how the extremist, Trump sucking candidates win elections.
.
Translation: the voices of the extremists drown out the rest of us because the rest of us couldn’t be bothered to get up off our butts and vote.
So, to use Emba’s introductory words and mimic her style,
” . . . someone is to blame.
“But who?
“You. It’s your fault.”
You, the self-focused, who are unwilling to look beyond yourself to the grave harm being done all around you.
You, who can’t be bothered to register to vote because it’s a nuisance and, besides, there are millions of others taking care of that voting thing.
You, for whom Roe isn’t a big deal, so you don’t make your voice heard about the outright assault on all women.
You, who think voting rights are important, but you sit mute, as tens of thousands of our fellow citizens are having their right to vote stripped from them in Republican controlled states, resulting in stolen elections.
You, who think global warming is going to be a problem for our children and grandchildren. You worry, too, about our fellow citizens today who suffer and die from monster tornadoes and from once-in-a-century hurricanes that now happen every year, and from our forest fire “season” that lasts all year. But you sit in silence on election day.
You, who hear the horrid lies mouthed by self-serving, self-justifying traitors to democracy and all you can muster is a shake of your head and a click on the TV remote.
You, who sit immobilized as Otero County in New Mexico has become first in the nation to officially overturn the will of We The People, using bogus claims, lies and fraud. And you know that more counties and states will follow the fraudulent pretense, “If we didn’t win, then somebody cheated, so we’re officially claiming victory for our side.” And still you stay home on election day.
Again, if that’s not you, that’s great. But our problem is the passivity of at least36% of eligible voters in some presidential elections and about 10% more than that in most. That skews outcomes in a self-destructive direction. Roughly 60% don’t show up for mid-term elections and it’s worse for primaries. These people remain idle as our rights and our very way of life are being stolen from all of us. It’s like sitting meekly on a lawn chair watching burglars empty your house and load your stuff into a moving van.
Those voices calling you to register, to vote, to contribute, to rally and more are telling you to take action now, because if you don’t, the angry extremists will not only empty your house of all you hold dear; they will take your entire house and your lawn chair, too.
We are in this terrible fix, where millions believe huge volumes of stupid stuff, including “1776 Returns,” where violence is declared to be okay in pursuit of what they individually and delusionally want, this at the expense of all the rest of us. The angry extremists are doing to our country the kinds of cruelties and injustices that King George III did and against which our Founders rebelled. Worse, our criminal faux-patriot wannabees are going to have their way, taking all your stuff and your house, unless you get off that damn lawn chair.
Thomas Paine spoke to his contemporaries, imploring them to patriotism for their birthing nation. His words live on today, but be clear that they are not for the January 6 criminals or their millions of sympathizers, who try to usurp them. Paine’s words are for you and me.
Click me for the GoodReads page
————————————
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 to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right (IT’S A FREEBIE!). And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. Be sure to add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.
JA
Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
I was talking with my long time friend David Ellman the other day. Actually, we were venting our rage over 19 more kids and two more teachers being massacred. We were livid.
We, like most of the American people, are sick of the constant stream of innocent dead people, the hypocritical thoughts and prayers, the stupid non-solutions (only one school door and it’s locked all day, Sen. Cruz? Really?) and the intransigence of the suck up wing of the Republican Party (that’s roughly all of them). More on that coming in DO SOMETHING!– Part 2.
Anyway, Dave had an interesting solution – actually a few solutions – to help cops to intervene to stop murderers. You know: like, DO SOMETHING!
Install small, inexpensive cameras in classrooms and hallways that can be streamed to dispatchers and cops so that the cops know where the bad guys are. That way they’re not breaching a door without knowing which way to shoot to stop the bad guys.
Install peep holes between rooms. This solution has a couple of extra benefits, like being super cheap, plus cops can stop the threat without actually entering the room by shooting through the wall.
Same idea as #2, but with schoolroom false ceilings.
He went on to say,
“I bet there are hundreds of retired men and women in every community who have mechanical skills (basic construction), and who would gladly donate some time to assist in the installation of peep holes, cameras, etc. in local classrooms. All it would take is one knowledgeable (and properly licensed) person to lead a team of workers. Labor would be donated by everyone. I’m sure that teams in every town could be created in days, not years.”
None of Dave’s ideas requires battling the NRA or its bought and paid for politicians. And yes, I agree that there will be privacy issues to contend with over cameras and peep holes, but Dave continued,
“In a country that allows an unhinged 18 year old boy to buy an AR-15 with a thousand bullets, and Donald Trump to have total control over a button that could initiate a nuclear war, I don’t think it’s a stretch that a school principal should be able to turn on a camera in a grade school classroom that has just been taken over by an armed shooter.”
The point is that there can be simple and inexpensive solutions that don’t get stymied by self-serving, disingenuous, mealy-mouth politicians. Of course, such measures won’t stop every attack, but they’ll stop or at least limit some. What if we can come up with additional simple and inexpensive solutions? Do you think that we just might gradually reduce the body counts in America? So do I.
The people of Uvalde and Buffalo have spoken, telling us what to do and they are right: DO SOMETHING!That’s what they told President Biden. That’s what they’re telling us: DO SOMETHING!
I haven’t faith that 10 Republican senators can be found who will vote for whatever compromised-to-near-nothingness bill is negotiated and presented to them. It comes down to us – you and I – to take whatever steps We The People can take right now. Later, as the magenta below makes clear, we’ll Fire the bastards!
Here’s the action summary of this One-Two DO SOMETHING!
One
This is going to take everybody’s hands on the rope to pull this wagon to get it to where we want it to be. You’ve heard Dave’s ideas. What creative ideas do you have? Scroll down and you’ll find the Comments section where you can contribute your ideas to stop or limit our ongoing national death march. My commitment is to compile a list and forward it to all members of Congress.
Two
What creative ideas do you have to get candidates elected who are bold enough to pass meaningful, sensible laws to protect our children and grannies and church goers and concert and movie attendees and . . . wait . . . that’s all of us.
Which candidates will you phone bank for? Will you send out election reminder post cards? How about kicking in a few bucks to a congressional candidate in a swing state? And you can do something to elect state legislature candidates who think my little granddaughter and other school kids shouldn’t have to do active shooter drills. Here’s a link to The States Project – these folks are all about that and you can make a difference that just might keep people from getting killed.
Remember: To Fire the bastards! (see below) we have to replace them with good guys. That’s about promoting the right people and voting. That’s on us.
The Onion provides context. Click the pic and watch the slide show.
All of our noodling over solutions that can do something about our national carnage is way less of a problem than our being perpetually livid – most of the country is livid right now. We’re livid over 19 little kids and 2 teachers, plus shopping grannies and church goers being killed and with 25 being injured, too, all in the space of just 10 days. And during those same 10 days there were 15 other mass shootings in America. Those tallied 11 more dead and 61 more injured and that count doesn’t include Tulsa. See for yourself here.
“It goes up to 11. That’a louder, i’nit?” From This Is Spinal Tap
The Uvalde and Buffalo survivors are right when they say, “DO SOMETHING!” We can’t count on Congress now, so it really is up to us. Crank up your creative ideas machine and set it to 11.
Many thanks to Dave for his ideas and for stimulating this post.
Must Reads
Yolanda Renee King is a 14-year-old granddaughter of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She has a message for her peers that you need to both read and then distribute to the teens and 20-somethings in your life. She has the spirit of her grandfather and we surely need that spirit right now. Many thanks to JN for pointing out this remarkable piece.
Finally, read this if you want to know why 18 – 23 year olds commit mass murders. Then, DO SOMETHING!
————————————
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 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!)
And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.
JA
Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Click me to watch & listen to President Biden’s complete presentation.
“Silence is complicity.”
“We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit.”
“We must all enlist in this great cause of America.”
“This is work that requires all of us—presidents and politicians, commentators, citizens. None of us can stay on the sidelines. We have to resolve here in Buffalo that from . . . this tragedy . . . will come hope and light and life. It has to. And on our watch, the sacred cause of America will never bow, never break, never bend. And the America we love—the one we love—will endure.”
”President Joe Biden, May 17, 2022, Buffalo, NY
That’s all about countering the purveyors of and the bad actors for White Supremacy, and Replacement Theory in particular. It’s the old, hate filled notion that “others” are coming to replace the deserving ones, the White, European ancestry Christians, especially the males. Those “others” include Blacks, Browns, Muslims, Asians, Native Americans and more, all of this orchestrated by Jews, they proclaim. The haters are motivated by their fear and rage and that leads to violence. These are the people against whom the rest of us must enlist in this “great cause of America.”
Whites in America will soon be in the minority due primarily to a differential in birth rates, plus some (but not much) immigration. So, it might be understandable for White Supremacists to be afraid and to hold their hateful views, because they know how shabbily we treat minorities in this country. It makes sense that they might fear how they will be treated once they are in the minority.
Just imagine if Black police hassled, beat and killed unarmed Whites at the rate of about 1,000 per year, 3 killed per day. It would be terrible for Whites to be removed from a place of power and be replaced by “others” and treated as Whites have treated those “others” for over 400 years. That just wouldn’t be right, right?
So, they’re chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “You will not replace us.” How very testosterony of them. These people, their leaders and their elected officials are who my friend Sheila Markin calls the Rabid, Religious, Right-wing Republicans.
There is nothing at all about today’s Republicans that resembles traditional Republicans. They are fear and anger stoked tribalists after only two things: power and money. And they are pleased to stomp on anyone and anything that stands in their way, including democracy, the rule of law and food shoppers in Buffalo.
So, we’ll replace them. Here’s a feet-on-the-ground example of why we must.
On May 18 the House voted on a bill to provide emergency funds to deal with the infant formula crisis. If you don’t believe there’s a crisis, check with any parent of an infant whose mom isn’t breastfeeding her child or a parent of an infant with medical issues who cannot tolerate any form of milk. Those kids need to eat; otherwise they go hungry, and that’s very bad for infants.
Note that these babies are the same individuals that Republicans and Replacement Theorists and White Supremacists and Bible thumpers were vehement to protect when they were fetuses. Now that they’re born, these people just don’t seem to care too much about these kids any more.
So, 192 Republicans (and 1 Democrat) voted against the bill to keep these kids fed and alive. So much for their being pro-life.
It isn’t so much that the 192 Republicans hate babies, although that’s possible. It’s that they are slaves to the most hateful, extremist voters – like the ones who spew Replacement Theory and stolen election lies – and these legislators don’t have the spine to be a leader and stand up for what’s right. Welcome to HypocrisyLand.
But wait! There’s more!
The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022 was brought to the floor of the House on the same day as Republicans voted to starve babies. This is an act which is designed to combat domestic terrorism. Every Republican voted against it.
So, have a relaxed shopping experience, fellow citizen, at the mall or at Walmart or at the supermarket, knowing there may be a domestic terrorist waiting for you because 203 Republicans voted to do nothing to ensure your safety.
Republicans will not replace us. We’ll replace them. We must replace them. Our democracy cannot stand unless we replace them.
So, we end this piece where we began: “Silence is complicity.”
The Lies Have Been Here a Long While
Watch George W. Bush momentarily tell the truth here.
From Inae Oh of Mother Jones:
“George W. Bush—whose administration, lie by lie, sold a deeply fraudulent and immoral case for invasion—apparently sees a bit of himself in Vladimir Putin. I wonder why:
“Former President George W. Bush: ‘The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.’pic.twitter.com/UMwNMwMnmX
“I’m 75,’ Bush quickly offered, prompting laughter from the crowd.
“The gaffe, which came during a speech in Dallas on Wednesday, is sure to launch a bunch of thought pieces this morning. For some, it was cute, another Bush giving Michelle Obama candy moment. Others, like me, will recall his historic bait and switch that killed upwards of 200,000 civilians. Well, wherever you land, here’s your ever-relevant reminder that George W. Bush is still bad; please don’t let his never ending supply of dumb endear you. Now watch this drive.“
DO NOT give this guy a pass because he’s a cute old man or because you’ve forgotten most of his horribles, like failing to heed the warnings about 9/11 and ordering torture. This guy lied when he inhaled and he lied when he exhaled and hundreds of thousands died because of him.
Trump and his supplicants roll the same way and 40% of our citizens want to follow him to oblivion.
So, one more time: “Silence is complicity.”
Quote of the Week
“The racist, antisemitic Replacement Theory espoused by a right-wing extremist who murdered ten people in Buffalo might as well be the Republican Party platform.”
The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.
Did someone forward this 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!)
And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.
Thanks!
The Fine Print:
Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.
JA
Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
I know that this isn’t the time, because after each horrific mass shooting in America Mitch McConnell tells us that yet again. He said that after Sandy Hook. He said that after Parkland. He said that after the Pulse Nightclub and Sugar Land and Mother Emanuel AME Church and Aurora and Poway and Tree of Life Synagogue and El Paso and I’m pretty sure he’s going to say it now, after the Buffalo and Laguna Woods church shootings last weekend.
Yesterday, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), third-ranking Republican in the House, said, “It is not the time to politicize this tragedy,” yet she paid for ads pushing the replacement lie. Just another day in HypocrisyLand.
It seems that it’s never time to talk about doing anything to stop our American massacres. And it’s not because they happen infrequently. In fact, there have been 27 mass shootings this month alone and it’s only the 18th. Actually, we’re pretty good at murdering one another and we’re steadfast in doing nothing to make us safer.
For decades over 80% of Americans – that includes over 72% of NRA members – have wanted strict, universal background checks prior to the sale of any firearm. The vast majority of us want assault weapons to be prohibited. Same for large capacity magazines, bump stocks and both concealed and open carry. How’s that working out for We The Majority?
It was just a short time after those twenty little 6- and 7-year-old kids and their six teachers and staff were slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary School that Wayne LaPierre of the NRA began to insult this country with, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” I have to admit that was a most excellent, chest-thumping marketing ploy for selling more guns.
There are way more guns in this country than people, so there must be a lot of good guys with guns. But how many bad guy murderous rampages have been stopped by a good guy with a gun? Can you think of even one? Neither can I.
Can you imagine a good guy with a gun at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in a shoot out with the bad guy as the halls were full of kids between class periods?
I’m not running for office and I don’t care who I upset by saying this:
I want universal background checks before the sale or transfer of any firearm. That includes Grandpa giving his favorite hunting rifle to his grandson. That grandson just might be named Dylann Roof or Nicholas Cruz or Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold or Omar Mateen or Robert Gregory Bowers or Adam Lonza. He might be mentally ill or he might be a White Supremacist, hate-filled homicidal maniac like the Buffalo murderer. I don’t want that grandson to get his hands on any firearm.
I want assault weapons to be illegal. These are so-called “man guns” with which our over-testosteroned, angry, under-educated, morally deficient people get their “man card reissued.” Yes, that was the advertising for the Bushmaster assault rifle, the murder machine used at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
I want absolutely no large capacity magazines or bump stocks or automatic firearms of any kind to be allowed anywhere. Alternatively, Americans to have the right to own as many muskets and musket balls as they want, just as the Founders intended when they wrote the Second Amendment.
I want all new firearms sold to have an interlock so that only the owner can fire it. That will help to stop the theft of guns and their subsequent use to kill you and me. If technology makes it possible, I want all existing firearms to be retrofitted with that same technology.
I don’t want any civilian walking my streets carrying a firearm, whether concealed or open carried. And I don’t want anyone to have a gun in the passenger compartment of their vehicle, just like we don’t allow open containers of alcoholic beverages in cars. We don’t need homicidal road rage any more than we need drunk drivers.
I want a full semester of civics taught to every 8th grade school kid, whether in public or private school. Then I want every high school senior to take two semesters of civics classes. Graduation should be contingent upon successfully completing those classes. Maybe that will help to establish a sense of responsibility in our young citizens. They might even grow up to be responsible older citizens. That would be a refreshing change for our country.
Until I’m in charge you better make your voice heard. Otherwise, you’ll once again hear McConnell tell us this is not the time to talk about ways to stop the bleeding and the dying. You’ll have to endure chorus after chorus of “thoughts and prayers” from our jellyfish elected officials. You can identify them as those occasionally somber looking people with special lapel pins and who haven’t the courage to sneeze without first getting permission from their Party leaders, from the hate spewers and from the gun crazies.
If you and I don’t stand up and speak up there will be lots more dead fellow citizens who did nothing worse than go to school or go to an outdoor concert or go to church or have the audacity to go grocery shopping while Black.
Test
Answer each question to the best of your ability. If you find yourself stuck on any question, go on to the next one. When you circle back to the unanswered questions, if you find you still need help, you may use the Hint and the Explainers below.
Questions
Why isn’t this already fixed?
How is it possible that our circumstances have become far worse?
What have we become?
Click for the video – but be prepared with some tissues.
Story Problem:
On Monday Victor Blackwell of CNN interviewed survivors of the slaughter rampage in Buffalo last weekend. Two women he talked with had been on their way to the Tops supermarket. Their aunt was already there and was killed by that White supremacist gunman. One of the women was entirely distraught and the other was, as she described herself, devastated. Their pain was so palpable that Blackwell could barely keep himself together.
At last he turned to the camera and to his anchor in the studio and said,
“I was counting in the car, talking with my producer . . . I’ve done 15 of these – at least the ones I can count. And we keep having the conversation about Democrats will say guns, Republicans will say mental health, and nothing will change.
“And I’ll probably do another one this year. Family after family, having nowhere to go with their grief.
“We’ll get into a political conversation later, but is this the way we’re supposed to live? Are we destined to just keep doing this, city after city? Have we just resigned that this is what we’re going to be?”
Q. What are your answers for Victor Blackwell?
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Hint
The answer to questions 1 – 3 (and maybe #4) can be found in one word: Apathy.
Explainers
The behavior we tolerate is the behavior we get.
If we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we always got.
Unless something changes, nothing will change.
Joke of the Week
This is humorous, but it’s sadly related in style to our present reality, including our domestic terrorism.
Fox News anchors stole engines #3 & 4 from the right wing of several large airplanes, then blamed it on a left wing conspiracy.
Many thanks to MA for this.
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Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
With 25 years of hands-on executive experience as CEO of the commercial and industrial water treatment company I founded, I now use every bit of what I learned there in delivering workshops and keynote speeches on leadership. And it seems our national political leaders need a bit of that training, too. Let's talk about it here.
These challenges should not be partisan or political, but the sad truth is that they are. There is only one party that tolerates and promotes hatred. There is only one party that fights against the advancement of gun safety.* There is only one party that rejoices in taking away our rights. There is only one party that consistently takes from the poor and middle class and gives to the super rich. There is only one party taking away your vote and working to destroy our democracy and replace it with a fascist autocracy.
Citizens United were on a mission. They hated Hillary Clinton. A lot. They filmed what they called a documentary, Hillary: The Movie, and planned to release it in 2008 in an effort to submarine her candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency. They wanted to air their hit job film just prior to primary elections in the various states. But they had a problem.
In the aftermath of the shooting at the 4th of July parade in Highland Park, IL the reports are that 7 people are dead and 47 have serious injuries. Please explain to me what an un-serious gunshot injury is. If the hole is in you, believe me, you’ll be certain that it’s serious.
for Americans and America and he refused to succumb to hatred for those who attacked him. He was a force for good in a world that wished him anything but. When terrible things were done by Americans to Americans he would rail, “This is not who we are. We’re better than this.”
Again, if that’s not you, that’s great. But our problem is the passivity of at least 
