Integrity

Wag the Dog


Reading time – 3:24; Viewing time – 4:37  .  .  .

This is from the Sunday New York Times:

“At [national security advisor John] Bolton’s direction, the National Security Council asked the Pentagon last year to provide the White House with military options to strike Iran .  .  .”

Let’s put this into perspective.

Gen. Colin Powell warned us against doing military stupid stuff in his Powell Doctrine decades ago. It’s grounded in the painful lessons of Vietnam and, while it has weathered criticism for being incomplete, it’s hard to disagree with Powell’s cautionary message. Sadly, we’ve pretty much ignored it time and again.

Not stated in the Powell Doctrine is another of his admonitions, the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it. And so we do in Iraq and Afghanistan, the longest wars in our history. Now John Bolton, always eager to flex US muscle, has asked for plans to strike Iran.

Can you imagine Donald Trump being a calming voice of reason to tether John Bolton to reality? Neither can I. If Bolton gets his way we will break yet another country where we will then be in perpetual war. And this story gets worse.

We are mired in the longest government shutdown in US history. The president is threatening to declare a national emergency in order to overpower Congress and get his useless wall. You need to understand what such a declaration can mean.

In a time of declared national emergency the president has vast powers. Here’s a partial list:

Suspend the Constitution – yes, SUSPEND THE CONSTITUTION!

Redirect money in blatant conflict with Congressional intent

Declare martial law

Deploy our military in-country

Seize control of the internet

Shut down communications (telephone, radio, television, etc.)

Freeze bank accounts – including yours

Suspend habeas corpus (i.e. imprison Americans without charge and without due process of law – Think: Guantanamo in Des Moines, IA)

Control the states’ voter databases

Sanction Americans without charge and leave them without recourse

Effectively, the president can become a monarch. Perhaps Trump will prefer autocrat or generalissimo or kommisar or general secretary or chairman. Regardless of the label, it will be the end of American democracy.

This president has repeatedly shown that he has no regard for Constitutional limits, much less respect for legislative and cultural norms. He’s given us no reason to believe that he would refrain from outrageous behavior following his declaring a national emergency. And with the help of Mitch McConnell for the past two  years, Trump has packed the courts and his cabinet with people who likely would refuse to stand up to him.

A declaration of national emergency, whether for his fantasy claims of crisis at our southern border or for a pending or hot conflict with Iran or Argentina would be just the thing for Trump to consolidate power. Beyond fulfilling Trump’s bottomless ego needs, such a declaration will completely divert attention from his conspiracies with Russia. It’s the ultimate distraction and, perhaps, the negation of any investigation into his possible criminal activity.

Did I mention that this story gets worse? It does.

We never vote leaders out of office during war time and very rarely during any other national emergency. The only contrary example I can think of is Herbert Hoover, who lost the 1932 election to Franklin Roosevelt for his mishandling of the Great Depression. Nevertheless, the point for us now is to be clear that a declaration of national emergency, regardless of the justification Trump uses, would likely ensure Trump’s reelection in 2020, if, indeed, we even have another election.

And that will make Vladimir Putin very happy. His only regret will be that he won’t have any more kompromat on Trump, because exposing Trump’s money laundering, his tax fraud, his obstruction of justice and his treason will no longer matter.

Wag the dog.

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching many people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


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

Immigration and Border Security Plan


Reading time – 5:19; Viewing time – 7:05  .  .  .

Ever since the flamboyant down escalator “look at me” event in 2015, it has been our new normal to have a minimum of a week’s worth of hair-in-fire news every day. Giving credit where it’s due, Trump is supremely good at getting attention and he does that by saying and doing outrageous things. Sadly, much of his grasping for attention has no relationship to truth or reality and that comes with consequences.

It’s no surprise that President Trump is now braying dumpster-loads of nonsense and accusations about immigration and border security. He vomits fantasy statistics, makes up cause and effect relationships that bear no resemblance to anything on planet Earth and accuses all who disagree with him of not caring about border security. That includes all Democrats who, by virtue of their refusal to fund his useless wall, clearly demonstrate that they don’t care about the rapists, murderers and drug smugglers that Trump tells us are crossing our southern border illegally. Pay no attention to the contrary facts from Customs and Border Patrol. Further, he tells us that his 7th century BC wall is an integral part of his plan for reform of immigration and border security.

Plan? Did he say “plan?” Yes, he did. Repeatedly. So what is his plan?

Click here and review the President’s in-depth reform plan, complete with the strategies and tactics needed to enhance our national security and for the fair and responsible changes needed to our immigration system.

Just kidding. Trump’s “plan” is just a list of accusations, “we should” statements, and a litany of “ain’t-it-awfuls” that demonize everyone but Trump. There’s even something about supporting “nuclear families,” meaning mom, dad and the kids. His plan says we should keep them together, unlike his own “zero tolerance” policy of ripping children from the arms of their mothers. No other sponsorship should be allowed, Trump’s plan tells us. He calls it “chain migration” and that has to stop. Interestingly, had such a policy been in effect a short while ago, Melania’s Slovenian parents would have been prevented from coming to America and would not have become naturalized American citizens last year.

There is no plan. Nothing. There is only red meat thrown to Trump’s base.

To understand that you have to understand something about Donald Trump. He cares about only one thing: what’s best for Donald Trump. He has no capacity for integrity, empathy, patriotism or norms of any kind. He gleefully tears down any structure because it keeps opponents off balance. His inner talk is solely about how to grab advantage for himself and it isn’t moderated by anything you learned in kindergarten. Apparently, he was absent that year.

Trump’s government shutdown is happening for exactly the reason you think it is: so that Trump can look and feel like a tough guy and curry favor with his base because that’s good for Trump. The harm his actions does to others has no influence on his words or actions.

 

I want to be both fair and clear about Trump’s flagrant falsities. There are two possible explanations:

  1. He knows the truth and is intentionally saying things that contradict the truth. We commonly call that lying. Mom grounded you for a century when you did that. Or,
  2. He is ignorant of the truth and not only doesn’t have the sense to keep his mouth shut, but proudly makes stuff up that he thinks benefits himself. He’s gloriously pleased to declare that he’s smarter and knows more than anyone else about everything, so there’s no need for him to ever seek counsel from experts.

So, he’s either a liar or he’s too senseless to shut up and get help. Either way we are the worse for it. Indeed, he is destabilizing the world, so everyone is the worse for this imposter of a human being.

Don’t look for Trump to do what’s best for the United States or for you. If either of those should happen it will be completely accidental, like an infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of word processors for an infinite amount of time. Sooner or later the monkeys will accidentally produce the Great Books.

Similarly, sooner or later Trump might stumble upon doing the right thing, but it will be way too late for hundreds of thousands of our federal workers, their families and the diner down the road where those workers won’t be eating or tipping their waitress. And it will be too late for 44,000 furloughed Coast Guard personnel and the 6,000 forced to work without pay, all of whom should instead be focused on protecting our shores.*

Trump has no plan for national security or immigration reform. His wall is solely a desperate grab to benefit himself. So, stand strong against the $5.6 billion down payment on the (minimum) $59.8 billion wall that won’t protect us from anything. And make sure your Repubican senators and representatives stand strong, too. The Republicans will come along when there’s enough pressure, so apply some.

*In my January 2 post I detailed a metaphorical federal worker, Mike, a postman, and erroneously said that he was not being paid due to the government shutdown. Eagle eye reader JC pointed out that the Postal Service is separate from other government agencies, is self-funded and postal workers are being paid. To make the metaphor work properly, please reread the essay and substitute a worker from any of these government agencies, because none of them is being paid.

Transportation Security Administration (TSA)

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Air Traffic Control (ATC)

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Federal Corrections officers

Coast Guard

Customs & Border Patrol (CBP)

State Department

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

When you head to the airport for your flight this week, consider this: our TSA agents, who are supposed to catch the bad guys and keep them off your flight, and the Air Traffic Controllers, who keep planes from going bump in the night, are distracted while working because they can’t pay the rent or their mortgage or the car payment and will soon have trouble putting food on the table for their kids. How are you feeling about flying now? Be sure to let your legislators know.

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching many people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!

 


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

Double Standard


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Reading time – 4:56  .  .  .

It wasn’t always this way. In fact, there have been many times when it was the reverse. But this is how it is today.

Newt Gingrich was giddy in his self-righteous moralizing in pursuit of bringing down Bill Clinton following the 1994 mid-term election that put Republicans in charge of Congress. He was thrilled that Ken Starr was investigating the Clintons, looking for anything  indictable. You know – witch hunting.

Starr investigated the suicide death of Vince Foster, deputy White House counsel, and found no wrongdoing by the Clintons. He looked into the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas and found a dumb investment, but found no wrongdoing. This pattern persisted through the investigation of the White House travel office, accusations of tampering with FBI files, the Rose law firm, Paula Jones, Madison Guarantee Savings & Loan and hints they didn’t believe in the Easter bunny. No criminal wrongdoing was found. None.

Then, quite apart from Starr’s efforts, Bill Clinton’s sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky dropped into Starr’s lap. Starr managed to set Clinton up in an embarrassing way and Clinton lied to avoid embarrassment. Presto! Something indictable. The relentless, pointless, moralizing pursuit by Starr and a very aggressive Republican Congress had paid off.

Later Barack Obama was elected president and the games began anew. On the night of Obama’s electoral victory Mitch McConnell and a handful of Republican vigilantes sat in a DC restaurant scheming about what they would do to bring Obama down. Their plan was to oppose anything Obama supported, regardless of merit or value to the public or even whether the issue had previously been championed by Republicans. McConnell even went public, declaring the new Republican holy mantra that Job #1 was to ensure that Barack Obama would be a 1-term president. Jobs for Americans wasn’t number 1. Neither was the stabilizing of our economy that was cratering and in peril of free-falling into a terrible economic depression. Not even national security was number one.

When Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelled, “You lie!” at Obama during a speech to a joint session of Congress in September 2009, most Republicans were eerily silent or mealy mouthed about Wilson’s violation of Congressional decorum and his galactic stupidity. To be fair, he did get censured.

The Affordable Care Act passed on a straight party-line vote in March 2010 when Democrats controlled Congress and had just enough votes to prevent a Republican filibuster.

Then the 2010 mid-term election put control of Congress back in the hands of Republicans and the wheels of government immediately ground to a halt in accordance with the dictum of the McConnell vigilantes. That was okay for the Republicans and they took great joy in criticizing Obama for failure to accomplish anything except what was done by executive order. The Republicans loved to bray that the EOs were unconstitutional, yet it was their own obstruction that made them necessary.

And all the while the Republicans were deafeningly silent when the Birther lies began and have largely stayed that way even to the present.

Another outfall of the 2010 mid-term election was that Darrell Issa (R-CA) became chair of the House Oversight committee. He promised to hold hundreds of investigations into the Obama administration. Likely you remember his investigation into the birth control requirements of the ACA, a hearing at which he refused to allow any women – including Sandra Fluke – to testify before the all male committee. This is the same Darrell Issa who wouldn’t allow Elijah Cummings (D-MD) to make a statement – he cut off his microphone.

The Republicans held 7 investigations into the Benghazi tragedy in failed attempts to lay blame on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They didn’t hold those hearings to learn the truth – the facts were already well known. They held them to sustain a smear campaign into the 2016 election.

This is the post-truth Republican world, where accusation has the weight of fact and where Rudy Giuliani is free to tell us that, “Truth isn’t truth.”

Their Through the Looking Glass untruths, all of that brutal obstruction, the false allegations, the relentless smears and the rest were okay for the Republicans.

Now, things have changed. Democrats are in control of the House and will be able to do the investigations that should have already happened. Impeachment over obstruction of justice and repeated violations of the Emoluments Clause screams for attention. And in this environment of obvious Trump felonious activities, combined with two years of Republican led protection of Trump and their refusal to dig for truth, Republicans are now telling Democrats to play nice!

They musn’t overreach. Don’t pile on. Don’t start impeachment proceedings  because the Republicans will spray paint cable news with moralized pronouncements of Democratic excess and meanness.

Clearly, it’s okay for Republicans to thump bibles of righteousness and do any mean spirited thing in pursuit of their advantage. That’s somehow good and right. Now, if we’re to believe them, Democrats have to play nice like little girls at a make believe luncheon for their dolls.

Get ready for this moralizing double standard. It’s already started.

I’ll say it again: There have been times when party positions and practices were the reverse of this. To pretend that’s what matters now, though, is to ignore the dire reality before us.

We have entered a time when majorities of our citizenry willfully believe patently false things all the time. They have been fed a steady diet of lying propaganda for so long that they no longer question anything. It is the triumph of the Big Lie.

Our responsibility right now is to call it out – to fight the fraud. If instead we sit on our hands, we will welcome George Orwell’s dystopian future.

This time it falls to the Democrats to unmask the Big Lie. And it’s up to you and me to make certain that they do. To get started, click here.

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching many people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!). No subscriber information is ever shared with anyone, anywhere, any time.
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!

 


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

Mike


Reading time – 3:40; Viewing time – 4:51  .  .  .

When we’re presented with a large number it’s easy to fail to fully appreciate what it means, Indeed Josef Stalin said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” Sadly, Stalin was right.

There are about 800,000 federal employees who haven’t been paid since the government shutdown began. About 380,000 have been furloughed, meaning they aren’t working at all and aren’t being paid; 420,000 are being forced to work without pay. 420,000 can sound like an impersonal statistic, so let’s consider just one person, Mike, a letter carrier for the Post Office. You know, the guy who delivers your mail.

Oddly enough, Mike has a life separate from dropping into your mail box envelopes and the flyers you immediately toss into the recycle bin. He has a car and a modest house and his bank insists that he make payments on both every month. His growing kids are like yours, in that they eat a lot and seem to always need new shoes. Their school requires them to have a laptop and every activity requires that his kids show up with a check at the first meeting.

Mike has to drive to work, so he has to buy gas for his car. The cashier at the gas station feels bad for Mike’s circumstances but still needs him to cough up that $53.70 that Mike rang up at the pump.

Mike’s problem is that he’s like most Americans, always about two weeks away from serious financial hardship. That, in part, helps to explain why roughly 50% of American personal bankruptcies are due to a serious medical issue. Most of us just don’t have much squirreled away for that rainy day.

That means that Mike’s resources are shallow and he can’t endure this no-pay shutdown for long before it starts to hurt. Neither can the rest of the hundreds of thousands of our federal workers. And if you include the families of workers, you can extrapolate to millions of Americans who are directly financially impacted by this self-inflicted government shutdown.

To shift focus not quite as much as it might seem at first, Trump rescinded the Obama executive order that created DACA using the excuse that Congress should legislate a solution. While that may be a sensible course for resolution of the problem, our Republican Senate and House have had no appetite for dealing with the situation and has sat on its hands ever since Trump wiped out DACA protections.

It was clear from the beginning that Trump intended to use the DACA young people as pawns to get his wall. That’s obscene on many levels, including the humanitarian perversion of making these people political pawns. Plus there’s the complete uselessness of a border wall itself.

The wall is only practical if all potential immigrants from Central America are ignorant of the existence and use of tunnels and ladders. That didn’t even work as well as planned for the Chinese in the 7th century BC when much of the Great Wall was originally built. It’s not clear how the technology of a wall will help us in 21st century America. Back to Mike.

It remains true that when you’re well fed it’s impossible to understand a hungry person on the sidewalk. So, too, it may be impossible for wealthy President Trump to understand all the Mikes and their families who are about to suffer, even if he actually had the capacity for empathy.

Mike is being used as a political pawn, just as the DACA kids are and Mike and his kids are at the edge of harmful impact right now. So, do a couple of things.

Offer a note to Mike with your thanks and concern for him and his family as he soldiers on without pay. Do the same for the TSA lady at the airport screening machine, because she’s another Mike. If you plan to go to Mexico or Canada, tell the Customs and Border Patrol folks you meet thanks for protecting you without their being paid. Keep the federal law enforcement and correctional officers in your heart because they’re Mikes, too. So are 5,000 forest service firefighters – you know, the folks who battled gigantic fires in California in December. Maybe you can do something to help these hard working folks. Just ask.

Then send a postcard – not an email or phone call – to your senators and representative telling them to stand strong for all the Mikes and for our DACA folks. They’re way too important than to be kicked around just to satisfy the ego needs of a narcissist.

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching many people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!). No subscriber information is ever shared with anyone, anywhere, any time.
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!

 


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

What’s Next


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Reading time – 4:45; Viewing time – 6:48  .  .  .

I’ve been wondering about the important actions we should expect from the 116th Congress.

Adam Schiff (D-CA), the incoming chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has promised a real investigation into Russian meddling in our 2016 election. That will be in stark contrast to the investigation led by committee chair Devin Nunes (R-CA and Chief Trump Weenie). Under Nunes’ chairmanship, all efforts to actually investigate were thwarted by Nunes. Perhaps this time we’ll get some truth about what happened and who’s responsible. The committee might even investigate Russia’s meddling in our 2018 election. They could generate some ideas about how to protect our nation. That would be refreshing.

There are other committees which will have to start their work anew because of Republican obstruction for the past two years. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) will be the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Do you suppose he’ll be able to find anything worthy of investigation?

Rep Elijah Cummings (D-MD)* will chair the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  Looking at the mess he’s facing, Cummings said, “The oversight job after two years of Donald Trump is like coming upon a 73-car pileup on the highway.” Read this for context. The chief issue soon to be before us, though, is impeachment.

Trump has laid his obstruction of justice and his violations of the emoluments clause in plain sight. That’s plenty of reason to start an impeachment action. It seems likely, though, that there won’t be enough courage in the Republican controlled Senate to convict our presidential perp. Finding enough starch in Republican spines may have to await the Robert Mueller report, recently predicted to arrive in February. That’s when things will become even more weird.

Trump has made Matthew Whittaker the acting attorney general, which may compromise justice. For a long time Whittaker has gone out of his way to criticize and attack the Mueller investigation. There’s no question about his prejudice. Whittaker is anything but an honest broker. Further, he has refused the direction of the Justice Department Ethics Committee to recuse himself from the Mueller inquiry. Democrats have promised to call for Whittaker’s removal from office in January, but that won’t fix this problem.

That’s because Trump has nominated William Barr to be attorney general and Barr is similarly negative toward the Mueller investigation. He is another less than honest broker. Clearly, Trump is stacking the deck to avoid justice. He’s making it questionable whether Mueller’s report will ever see the light of day or whether our government will take action. If you believe in a nation of laws and not of men, this situation should send shivers up your spine.

Democratic leadership has determined that keeping Trump’s malfeasance in the news, death by a thousand cuts over the next two years, will help Democrats in the 2020 elections. The problem with that is that it means that no impeachment efforts will be made and Trump will remain in office for another two years. Decide for yourself what two more years of Trump’s self-serving, ignorance-based chaos will do to our country and to the world.

Decide, too, what it would mean for our country if Trump is removed from office and Mike Pence becomes President. This is the same guy who Indianans were turning out of office in 2016 because of his radical beliefs and complete disregard for the truth. Picture him as president, recommending “pray away the gay” treatment for our LGBTQ citizens. He did that when he was governor of Indiana. That ought to send shivers up your spine, too.

That leaves us with no good option for our next two years, so we have to choose the least bad solution. Here’s how to do that.

There is room for debate about the proper role of the federal government, but everybody believes that ensuring the safety and security of our nation is its primary job. For guidance on this, read Gen. Jim Mattis’ resignation letter. Note his clarity about standing with our allies and opposing those who would do harm to us or our allies and how important that is for our national security.

Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice wrote:

“.  .  .  Mr. Trump himself — has dealt the death blow to effective policy making. The president couldn’t care less about facts, intelligence, military analysis or the national interest. He refuses to take seriously the views of his advisers, announces decisions on impulse and disregards the consequences of his actions. In abandoning the role of a responsible commander in chief, Mr. Trump today does more to undermine American national security than any foreign adversary.”

We are substantively less secure now than we were two years ago. So, too, are our allies, the nations Trump has effectively told we will not stand with in case of trouble. These are the same nations who stood with us following 9/11, the only time in the history of NATO that Article 5 has been invoked. That’s the “collective defense” section of the NATO charter.

Which leads back to the question of impeachment and whether we can tolerate two more years of Trump’s hands on the reins. He’s a suck up to Putin, who is nuclear sabre rattling and rapidly expanding Russia’s military capabilities right now. He’s invading neighboring countries with impunity. Trump refuses to speak against that or take any action. At the same time, Trump is abandoning our friends like it’s just another of his divorces. He makes decisions based solely on what’s good for himself, not what’s best for our country.

I’m much less interested in what’s good for Democrats in 2020 than I am for what is best for our country. As bad as Pence may be, we need to get rid of Trump before he can do yet more damage. Besides, Pence may get caught up in the Mueller sting along with Trump and his family. That would bring about the very worst nightmare for members of the Republican Freedom Caucus: President Pelosi.

I’m thinking of running for president and will make the highlighted text my campaign slogan. Think it’ll work? Click the pic for a larger version.

For more on this read Sheila Markin’s report, How Trump Ends.

  • *Rep. Elijah Cummings was erroneously listed as representing South Carolina in the video post. He represents the 7th District of Maryland and I extend my apology for the error. JA

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching many people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!). No subscriber information is ever shared with anyone, anywhere, any time.
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


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

Why So Many Are Angry


Reading time – 3:59; Viewing time – 5:42  .  .  .

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was promoted as a surefire way to increase the wages of working Americans and promote the hiring of additional workers. “More than 70% of this [tax cut] will be returned to workers,” said White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, reading from official White House notes. It didn’t work out quite that way.

Corporations used far more of their tax savings on stock buy-backs than on anything that would directly benefit workers. The total used for stock buy-backs has surpassed $1,100,000,000,000 and the primary beneficiaries of that are people who are already wealthy.

Let’s try one more example.

After filing for bankruptcy, Sears closed many of its stores and the pink slips they put into workers’ pay envelopes told them that there would be no severance pay for them due to the bankruptcy. Now they’re giving out $25 million in bonuses to top executives. These are atta-boys for the very geniuses who drove the company into bankruptcy.

Want another example?

Wisconsin voters elected to boot Republican Gov. Scott Walker out of office and replace him with a Democrat. The lame duck session of the Republican state legislature then passed a series of bills designed to dramatically limit the power of the incoming Democratic governor and Walker has signed those bills into law. That keeps power in the hands of the people who lost the election and effectively thwarts the will of the people.

This post isn’t about railing against fat cats or Republicans. Rather, it’s about why we citizens are angry. It’s about real grievances rooted in the lives of millions who suffer while the powerful few enrich themselves.

I’m all for capitalism, but it, like anything, can be used to abuse, which is why we have regulations. Sometimes those regulations are ignored by those in power. Sometimes they pass laws that either directly or indirectly pad their own pockets and those of their “donor class,” often at the expense of the rest of us.

One last example.

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was President Trump’s first national security advisor. He was lobbying for a foreign government at the same time that he was receiving top secret U.S. national security briefings. What’s wrong with this picture?

Flynn lied about it. Trump tolerated it. How are you feeling about the performance of the primary job of the federal government – to protect our country and ensure national security? Flynn got $600,000 for his deceit.

When it consistently feels like you’re the screw-ee, there comes a breaking point for all of us and we get very angry. Some want to carry torches in the street and burn it all down and they will vote for whoever speaks to their rage. As long as that rage is continuously validated, all other leadership outrages can be ignored, like putting numbers on the forearms of child detainees at our border concentration camps instead of assertively dealing with the crisis of people seeking asylum.

One of the reasons we remain so very angry is the continuing Russian propaganda machine that has permeated our nation. Russia has worked to divide us, polarize us, confuse us, sow dissent and stoke our anger against anything that we used to see as bedrock of our nation. The people in our national security agencies are working to unravel that, but the most important point is that the leader of our country refuses to crack down on the Russians. Rather, he continues to create chaos – distracting, America-defeating chaos – making the stock market tumble, shaking our international alliances and making foreign autocrats applaud.

All of that and more is why so many of us are angry.

One more thing in two points .  .  .

First, the government is shut down. That isn’t about immigration. It isn’t about national security and it isn’t even about a wall. It’s entirely about Trump’s infantile ego. He declared on TV, “If I don’t get what I want, I’ll shut down the government.” (Play the audio below for the recording.) That has absolutely nothing to do with what’s best for our country.

Trump is promising to hold his breath and turn blue until he gets his way. And he thinks that’s what we should care about.

How is that working for you – or for the thousands of federal workers who won’t be getting paid?

Second point: Trump’s tweet that he will swiftly remove our troops from Syria came as a surprise to literally everyone, including our own Defense Department. Trump intends to cede the entire middle-east to the Russians, the Turks and the Iranians and abandon our allies, the Kurds, again. That is past the line of what Gen. Jim Mattis can tolerate, so he’s leaving the Defense Department. That’s shaking up our allies because there are no longer any adults in the room.

Main point: As important as these two issues are, recognize that Trump has effectively changed the national story away from the known 17 current investigations into the Trump Crime Family. Keep your eye on the ball.

Last minute correction: I’m informed that the numbers being written on the forearms of detained kids at our southern border are being written by welfare workers. I don’t know how that makes a difference from the same thing being done by government workers, but I’m told that it does. Just get that if these kids hadn’t been separated from their parents there would be no need for Gestapo-like numbers on their arms or any other form of ID. And get that this tattooing is being done in your name.

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching a lot of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!). No subscriber information is ever shared with anyone, anywhere, any time.
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


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

Irony


Reading time – 3:41; Viewing time – 4:53  .  .  .

Chiang Kai-shek was the leader of the Republic of China during the Second World War and was our ally in fighting the Japanese. In the Chinese civil war following WWII Mao Zedong’s army won and Chiang and his army retreated from mainland China to the island of Formosa, now called Taiwan. Throughout the period we remained an ally of Chiang and saw Mao as our enemy, both because the enemy of our friend is our enemy, and because Mao’s Chinese were godless Communists bent on world domination like their Soviet neighbors.

When Stalin died in 1953 Nikita Khrushchev became First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. We didn’t like him or the Soviet Union and they were a far greater threat than was China because of their military might and their belligerence. Indeed, Khrushchev was famous for criticizing our capitalism, saying that the Soviet Union would sell us the rope used to hang us. He also said, “We will bury you.”

We saw the Chinese and the Soviets as godless Commies and nobody railed more or louder against them than our Republicans. They fashioned themselves as the ones with the heavy starch in their spines, the true defenders of our nation and the foremost opponents of Communism. Republican Richard Nixon made his reputation railing against Communists. But then some odd things happened.

Nixon the Commie hater was in the midst of making the Watergate affair as bad as it could be and off he went to Communist China to sip ceremonial drinks with the very people he had spent decades vilifying. The primo anti-Communist began the process of normalizing relations with Communist China. It was amazing irony.

Ronald Reagan spent decades waving the red, white and blue and vilifying the hammer and sickle and when it was his turn to fight the Cold War he did it by increasing our military spending 43% in peacetime, including development of the B-1 bomber. That forced the Soviet Union to increase their military spending to keep up with us. At last they couldn’t do it any longer and, effectively, we spent them into bankruptcy.

At the same time Reagan established a relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, even as he implored Gorbachev to, “Tear down this wall.” Reagan bankrupted the Soviets, made friends with their leader and won the Cold War without firing a shot. No irony here. Then it came back.

It was left to Republican George H.W. Bush to put the final nail in the Soviet coffin. But a Soviet KGB agent named Vladimir Putin wasn’t at all happy about what had happened and vowed to return Russia to its former self-imagined greatness.

Fast forward to 2015 and Putin’s Russia had figured out how to infiltrate American culture to bend America his way. The U.S. intelligence agencies are unanimous and clear about Russian hacking, propaganda, cyber-infiltrating, as well as human infiltration into our elections, our government and our society.

We’re learning of Russian infiltration of the Second Amendment thumping NRA and what is likely to be found to be tens of millions of Russian dollars filtered through the NRA to get Trump elected.

What the Russians have done is very bad and very threatening. What we have done is far worse.

Under this Republican president we have done nothing to stop the Russians. Trump has refrained from everything he might have done to restrain Russia and has lauded praise on Putin whenever he could. And even those aren’t the worst things that have happened.

Our Republican Congress has done nothing to get to the root of the Russian invasion and, indeed, they’ve done everything they could to block congressional investigations into it. This Republican Congress has done absolutely nothing to prevent yet more Russian meddling. They have put no checks on this president and his Russia enabling, nor any requirements for action to stop the hijacking of our democracy.

Get that these are Republicans, the self-described stalwart defenders and protectors of our nation. They’re the chest-puffed strong ones and they’re allowing Khrushchev’s threats to come true.

The irony is stunning. The cowardice in the face of a clear and present danger is appalling.

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching many people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

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

Potpourri v6.0


Reading time – 4:32; Viewing time – 6:38  .  .  .

Good news! This is a safe place, because there’s no coverage of Russian conspiracy, plea deals, Trump fact checking, stupid tweets, emoluments, an unworthy AG, sucking up to Saudi Arabia and Putin, obstruction of justice, temper tantrums at the G20-Argentina, a $50 million penthouse bribe or even anything about Melania’s jacket. Have a pleasant Sunday

 

In my last post, This Is Going To Be A Challenge, I suggested that staying the course to right this ship-of-state, to move our democratic wagon in the right direction will take determination, focus and sacrifice. That’s made more difficult by our historically new insistence on instant gratification. That’s what is going to make this a bigger challenge.

I’m reading Jon Meacham’s new book now, The Soul of America (thanks go to LP for the pointer), and I found this in his introduction:

In the best of moments, witness, protest, and resistance can intersect with the leadership of an American president to lift us to higher ground. In darker times, if a particular president fails to advance the national story – or worse, moves us backward – then those who witness, protest, and resist must stand fast, in hope, working toward a better day.

It looks like we might be in one of those “darker times” right now, but we’re getting some traction. Don’t be fooled, though, into believing that the prize is won. It took us decades to go this low and it’s going to take a long, hard pull to once again begin to create a more perfect union. Our challenge is to stay the course.

The annual Global Climate Report mandated by Congress was just published and our unenlightened president promptly dismissed it. He made it crystal clear that he doesn’t believe in climate warming or human acceleration of it and he let us know that his gut is smarter than everyone else’s brains. His dismissal of the report comes at a time of national devaluation of science, suspicions that climate scientists are on the take and general distrust of anything and everything that smacks of “the establishment.”

Well, Katherine Hayhoe just isn’t okay with that, oddly being a believer in facts and reality. She has plenty to say about global warming, science and the idiocy of pretending that disasters aren’t just around the corner. Watch any of her videos on her YouTube web page, GlobalWeirdingSeries.com. Be sure to scroll down to the video entitled “Climate change, that’s just a money grab by scientists, right?” That will answer some of the self-serving blather of denial you hear daily from the knuckle draggers. Regardless, be clear that global warming and human contribution to it don’t care if you believe in them. They’re happening just the same.

And, as long as you’ve decided you want to dip a toe into the warming waters of climate change, have a look at  “Why do we need to change our food system?” prepared by UN Environment. Here’s a hint: methane released from livestock poop contributes more to global warming than does all of what comes from the tail pipes of our cars.

Larry Kudlow made his chops as a TV financial talker. Somehow that qualified him to become Donald Trump’s Director of the National Economic Council. Right now he’s putting lots of effort into convincing us that there’s no recession in sight. The economy’s great, he tells us. Wall Street is happy. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, have a look at this piece and, after reading it, come back here and let us know about your confidence in Larry Kudlow’s proficiency in accurate economic predictions.

Hint: It’s terrible. As bad, he’s a devoted supply-sider and has been since Reagan. That’s the same as trickle-down economics. Exactly how much has trickled down to you over the past 40 years of supply side lies? And Kudlow thinks that’s great.

Note: Our just-passed former President George H.W. Bush called it “voodoo economics.” He was right.

Finally, I have a solution to a couple of our problems, tackling them both in one brilliant strategy. One is our immigration problem, which for some odd reason only seems to be an issue in connection with non-white people and non-Christian people. The other is our need for a lot more firefighters. Here’s my solution.

It’s impossible to fail to notice that the frequency and severity of wild fires in our western states continues to accelerate and fighting these fires is enormously labor intensive. These fires appear suddenly and just as suddenly we have a need for huge numbers of firefighters and we just don’t have enough of these fine folks.

The solution to both the immigration and firefighter insufficiency challenges is to give immigrants green cards and training to become firefighters. The green card will remain valid only as long as they answer the call when they’re needed, which is likely to be multiple times per year, or they reach a pre-determined age for retirement from the task.

We don’t have thousands of our citizens clamoring for those fire fighting jobs, but new immigrants would be grateful to have them.

The result of this program will be that we’ll get the help we need to fight our ever-growing requirement for firefighters, the immigrants will become part of our melting pot instead of a solution-less problem and we can get out of the business of ripping children from their mothers and tear gassing people whose crime is that they want to work to support themselves and their families. The only downside to this plan is that Donald Trump will have to find someone else to hate.

Do you think that’s nuts? Okay. These are real and demanding challenges, so pen your idea below.

Yes, really. You and I know that we have to do better than we’re doing now and our leadership in Washington seems to be solely focused on discrimination and hand wringing. That’s why it’s up to us. So, take a stab at this.

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching many people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!). No subscriber information is ever shared with anyone, anywhere, any time.
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


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

This Is Going To Be A Challenge


Reading time – 3:50; Viewing time – 5:07  .  .  .

The experts tell us what is painfully obvious, that we’ve trained ourselves to have a short little attention span and we refuse to hone our ability to hold conflicting or complex thoughts in mind. We are impatient in the extreme.

Examples:

It used to take about 45 minutes to bake a potato. Now it takes 4 minutes in the microwave oven and we stand in front of the machine counting down the last 30 seconds and maybe opening the door before it beeps because we just don’t have the patience to wait those last 7 seconds.

The online order that took 3 minutes for you to place arrives on your doorstep in no more than 2 days. We used to be satisfied with 2 weeks.

Information on nearly anything is available in under one second and we’re surprised if it takes more than one click to find it.

No doubt you can think of more examples of our expectations for instant gratification and wish fulfillment, but let’s just admit to our near-universal impatience. That’s why this is going to be a challenge.

That kind of behavior and expectations neatly delivers to us leaders who couch every issue as a simple problem with a quick, binary choice of solutions, when in reality most of the challenges we send our representatives to solve are complex, three dimensional puzzles that require holding complex thoughts in their heads and staying focused, on-task.

Bumper sticker slogans are so much easier than six pages of explanation and they’re instantly gratifying. That encourages our leaders to deliver what Elaina Plott described as, ”  .  .  .  a warped polity whose leaders are manipulative of public opinion rather than responsive to it.” Further, she said, “Popular discourse is given [over] to extremes.”

Chris Hedges wrote about this in a 2012 essay, How To Think. By the standard of our national nanosecond attention span, his piece is long and thick. So, go ahead – test your focusing skills – read the entire excellent essay. Meanwhile, here’s a excerpt:

“Human societies see what they want to see. They create national myths of identity out of a composite of historical events and fantasy. They ignore unpleasant facts that intrude on self-glorification. They trust naively in the notion of linear progress and in assured national dominance. This is what nationalism is about—lies. And if a culture loses its ability for thought and expression, if it effectively silences dissident voices, if it retreats into what Sigmund Freud called “screen memories,” those reassuring mixtures of fact and fiction, it dies. It surrenders its internal mechanism for puncturing self-delusion. It makes war on beauty and truth. It abolishes the sacred. It turns education into vocational training. It leaves us blind. And this is what has occurred. We are lost at sea in a great tempest. We do not know where we are. We do not know where we are going. And we do not know what is about to happen to us.”

Hedges’ comments were made 4 years before Trump was elected. What’s changed in the interim is the severity of the problems we face, as well as our having achieved an increasing clarity about the looming disaster that is about to happen to us. At the same time, we’re ever more impatient.

Click the caricature for the original

If Donald Trump has served a useful purpose for the United States it surely is as a caricature of our acquiescence to ignorance and easy non-solutions to complex problems. Those things give us a chest-thumping sugar high right until the moment when reality arrives and we come crashing down, like when we learned about all those children ripped from their mothers’ arms and then put in cages. He’s shown us daily what foolishness, greed, hate mongering and dishonesty can do to a nation. Perhaps the results of the mid-term election indicate that we are beginning to see for ourselves what has happened to us. We don’t like it and we’re taking action to redirect our country.

Angry old white guys who long for a proud and pleasant but fictitious past are dying off, so my hopes are for our young to put their shoulders to the wheel and move this national wagon in the right direction. The Parkland kids are showing the way. They just received the 2018 International Children’s Peace Prize, awarded by Bishop Desmond Tutu in Cape Town, South Africa. The Millennials at www.Represent.us and the tens of thousands who canvassed for candidates in this election are showing us the way as well.

For them and us to succeed will require that we hold complex thoughts in our heads and stay focused. It means now and then we will have to accept less than instant gratification. It means we may have to live with some level of disappointment and nevertheless stay the course.

This is going to be a challenge. And it is our challenge.

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching many people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!). No subscriber information is ever shared with anyone, anywhere, any time.
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


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

Break the Glass!


Reading time – 1:01  .  .  .

Donald Trump just crossed a red line.

President Trump has now made the first clear and substantive move to end Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation by firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions and putting into his place Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker. Whitaker was formerly a pundit who publicly declared his opposition to Mueller’s investigation and recommended his “starve the beast” tactic to end it. That is to say, he’s a protector of Trump instead of a protector of the Constitution. Be clear that the only job of the Attorney General of the United States is to protect and defend the Constitution. Now Whitaker is in a position to undermine that very document.

At stake is the rule of law.

This is a choice point between whether this will be a nation of laws or a nation of men. Another term for nation of men is dictatorship, which, if not bad enough in itself, often degenerates into tyranny. There’s a reason the Founders rejected the divine right of kings.

If Mueller’s team is shut down, the perps they’ve discovered will get away with their crimes. That includes this President of the United States and his family. In such a future, we will have declared that the president is above the law, as are all of his henchmen.

Click me to find a demonstration near you – then SHOW UP AT 5:00PM TODAY.

It’s time for action.

But that isn’t okay with you, and you want to do something about it. That’s why you’re going to show up today at 5:00PM local to protest this attempt to subvert the law and our way of life. Click the pic to the right to find a demonstration near you, then SHOW UP.

This is not a drill. This is an emergency.

BREAK THE GLASS!

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


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

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