Integrity

From the Way-Back Machine


Cliven Bundy is a rancher in Nevada who rented grazing land for his cattle from the Federal Bureau of Land Management. By 2014 he had failed to pay his grazing fees for over two decades and owed over $1 million.

He claimed that his refusal to honor his agreement was because of federal government overreach – he’s a state and local government sort of fellow. In addition, he aligns with “the sovereign citizen movement (which holds that people are answerable only to their particular interpretation of the common law and are not subject to any government statutes or proceedings).” That must be a very self-satisfying worldview.

Following years of invoicing, cajoling and threatening Bundy to get him to pay his bill, all to no effect, people at the BLM had had enough of his deadbeat act and sought to collect up close and personal. That led to Bundy’s armed standoff against state and federal government personnel. Bundy and hundreds of supporters brought their full-chested puffery, their assault rifles and their children to be used as shields. I guess that’s what real men do.

President Obama, a thoughtful man, sought a non-violent solution to the standoff, not wanting a repeat of the debacles at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Government troops backed off and two years later Bundy was arrested by the FBI at the Portland International Airport. He had been on his way to support the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. That was another middle finger demonstration against the federal government, this one led by Bundy’s son, Aamon. Unfortunately, Bundy’s court adventure for his freeloader fiasco ended in a mistrial and he was not re-tried.

The point of detailing this sad episode of “You can’t tell me what to do” is that there was no accountability for Bundy for his wrongdoing. Other than having to defend himself in court, Bundy paid no price for flaunting our laws. That is arguably a brick in the foundation underpinning the violence, lawlessness and profoundly anti-Constitutional beliefs and actions challenging law and order in this country right now.

For example, given Bundy’s having gotten away with his highly rationalized lawlessness, why wouldn’t Stewart Rhodes, leader of the treasonous Oath Keepers, imagine that he could get away with seditious conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding and more? His self-certainties about his imagined patriotism were right in line with Bundy’s.

With our national bent for conflict avoidance, we had unintentionally told Rhodes and everyone like him that they could do as they pleased. We gave that same clear message to the thousands who showed up on January 6 to attack and deface our symbol of democracy and to overthrow our government – the government We The People elected.

Our national lack of accountability didn’t start with Bundy. Reagan got away with his Iran-Contra lawbreaking. Ford pardoned Nixon for the entire line up of his crimes against the Constitution. George W. Bush lied us into two wars, where tens of thousands died and he paid no price. Our message of impunity for committing crimes has encouraged wrongdoing for a very long time.

And that is why it’s imperative that the Department of Justice nails every one of the January 6 perps, especially those at the top. It’s critical that we demonstrate that our words and our laws mean something.

We need the insurrectionists, the seditionists, to experience the consequences of their actions. We need them to understand down to their bones and at the price of their freedom that our words and our laws mean something.

So, cheer for DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith, Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis, New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James. We’re counting on them to drive an immovable stake into the sand. The Stewart Rhodes conviction is a really good start.

Time to take a stand, America. Here’s why.

Trump calls for the overthrow – the subversion – of our Constitution. The fantastic thing is that no Republicans are speaking out against this traitorous man.

Just In Time

The case is from North Carolina: Moore v. Harper. It will be heard by the Supreme Court this Wednesday. You can join Common Cause-Ohio’s listening party for oral arguments at 8:45- 10:15 AM CST this Wednesday, December 7, or listen on the Supreme Court web site. Look for a fuller description of what’s at stake – free and fair elections by We The People – in my post this Wednesday morning.

Link Of The Week

‘Tis the season and there really is a war on Christmas. I know you want to be on the right side in this fight, so read John Pavlovitz’s insightful explainer here.

  • ————————————

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

Fire the bastards!

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

Break Glass


I can’t listen to another pundit drivel on about whatever certainties s/he has about the election outcomes or the most important voter issues or which candidates were the most ineffective or whatever they think the unreliable polls tell us. I’ll shoot my TV if I see another ad for a politician conflating unrelated information shards to insinuate evil awfulness upon his/her opponent – and I don’t own a gun.

I’m really glad I can stop transferring my entire snailmailbox contents to the recycle bin without even glancing at what’s there. And if I get yet more solicitations from candidates I’ve never heard of clogging my email Inbox or my text message app, blaming, shaming or just begging for cash, I’ll shoot my iPhone. Did I mention that I don’t have a gun?

Regarding the election, the fat lady ain’t sung yet and it ain’t over ’til it’s over.

On the other hand, Trump and his minions of soul-less election candidates will be wailing poisonous red tears to stop the vote counting because they were ahead on Tuesday night. But here’s the thing.

The votes of millions of early voters are prohibited from being counted before election day in most states and some states don’t start counting those ballots until after election day. That means that it will take days beyond Tuesday – maybe weeks – to register all those millions of votes and determine the free, fair, real election winners, not just who was ahead in the counting on Tuesday night. These are the votes and the voters – We the People – Trump and his cheaters want to ignore. Poor babies, it’s so inconvenient for autocrats and fascists to have all the votes tallied fully and accurately.

Meanwhile, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that this election cycle is at last over. Or it would be if the anti-American, Constitution-denying, self-serving Piglets of Populism would stop lying and accept the will of We the People. Instead, they work to undermine us – We the People – this for their own benefit. Steady yourself for an onslaught, a never-ending tsunami of stupid stuff designed to submarine the Constitution, our democracy and us in order for these crepes to gain more power and money. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the 2024 campaign formally began last night.

The election denying, evidence-free lies and hollow-brain temper tantrums over yesterday’s election will go on, adamantly rejecting the facts, denying reality and attacking values the liars claim to have. Today’s election denying will be super-glued to the same evil, evidence-free claims still being made about the 2020 election. Once again, we must be conscious of the established fact that there is no bottom below which they won’t slime themselves.

This election was about a lot. Much Republican wailing and gnashing of teeth happened over inflation and the economy and it was a good issue, because voters are being smacked in the wallet every day. And everyone is afraid of crime – it’s in the news and in our neighborhoods. The Rs did a fine job of attacking, insinuating, blaming and making people afraid. They’re good at that. But, once again, here’s the thing:

They never – not even once – said what they would do to make things better.

They offered no solutions, no policies, no nothing for We the People.

They never had anything for us other than telling us to be afraid and who is to blame.*

What Republicans promise. Thanks go to Jim Nathan for this pic.

That was the direction Mitch McConnell gave the Republicans. Even if one of them had had a policy idea at any time over the past 40 years, Mitch the Merciless told them to stuff it. “Never betray that we Republicans haven’t a constructive brain cell among us,” he seemed to say.

That’s been the Republican platform at least since the 2020 race, when the platform was outlined on a single sheet of paper that essentially explained that they have no platform, other than to cut yet more taxes for rich guys and corporations and to eliminate every program that helps We the People. See the graphic to the right.

So, more good news and bad news.

The good news is that the cruel, hollow-brained, nothing-for-the-nation Republican strategy is what you can expect to hear for the next two years. At least you know what’s coming. It will be wrapped in red, white and blue, but it will be anti-American. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the future of our nation is at stake and about 90 million eligible voters didn’t bother to vote yesterday to preserve and protect it. Question: Why do we celebrate record turnout of 50%?

Break glass. Yell “FIRE!“

——————————–

* The movie An American President was written by Aaron Sorkin. Here are some of his words via his fictional President Andrew Shepherd from that film. Substitute for the name Bob Rumson any Republican liar, MAGA extremist, election results denier, voter fraud claiming candidate for any office.

“Why would a senator, his party’s most powerful spokesman and a candidate for President, choose to reject upholding the Constitution?”

“I’ve known Bob Rumson for years and I’ve been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn’t get it.”

“We have serious problems to solve and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He’s interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”

Woe is us if President Shepherd was right.

————————————

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

Fire the bastards!

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

SPECIAL SATURDAY EDITION: Aren’t You Tired of Being Lied To?


It’s your turn now.

Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade county are particularly sensitive to anything that smacks of Communism. They and their lucky ancestors fled Castro’s cruel dictatorship and now these Americans will vote against anything that even sounds like “Communism.”

So, Republicans are blasting them with disinformation, saying that President Biden is a socialist and that he will foist socialism on them, which, factually, is absurd, since Biden is a centrist, a capitalist. But these Hispanics are being lied to over and over to scare them into voting against Democrats.

Hey Cuban-Americans: Aren’t you tired of being lied to?

Paul Pelosi was attacked by an intruder intent upon attacking his wife, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. She wasn’t at home in San Francisco, so the intruder beat Paul Pelosi with a hammer. He’s at last left the hospital and is recovering from his wounds and surgeries to his head and hands.

The new owner of Twitter, Chief Twit Elon Musk, wasted no time suggesting Pelosi and the attacker had a gay relationship. Then Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Green amplified that, essentially blaming the victim for the attack. Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted a picture of his underwear with a hammer sitting on it.

There are dozens (possibly hundreds) more Republican attacks on the Pelosis.  And there are the silent cowards who refuse to offer any statement of empathy or caring. They all lie and inflame violent extremists like the Pelosi attacker and at the same time tell you and me that they are the patriotic ones.

Hey Americans:  Aren’t you tired of being lied to?

Brian Kemp beat Stacy Abrams for the governorship of Georgia 4 years ago. He was the Secretary of State then, in charge of elections. I’m sure it was just a coincidental that while he was campaigning that he purged the voting rolls of 560,000 voters, 107,000 of whom should never have been “purged.” Guess what color most of them were?

This year Kemp doesn’t directly have a hand on voter registrations, so he only removed 90,000 voters. Guess what color most of them were?

He tells everyone what a patriotic guy he is.

Hey Georgians: Aren’t you tired of being lied to?

Kari Lake is having a time of it running for governor of Arizona, spewing multiple false statements in a single sentence. And she’s following the Trump skulduggery, recently telling an interviewer who asked if she will accept the results of the election that she’s going to win the contest to be governor of Arizona, so, yes, she will accept the result of the election.

Woe be to Arizonans if she doesn’t, because she will claim fraud, stolen election, locusts, frogs and fire. She will demand recount after recount and threaten a zombie apocalypse. She will claim that she’s seen headless corpses in the desert like her former deranged governor Jan Brewer and will threaten to make more of them.

The singing group the Zombies (the name is so appropriate for today’s liars) had a hit in the 1960s that anticipated Lake:

.

Now you’ve been told.

Hey Arizonans: Aren’t you tired of being lied to?

Regardless of the other worldly idiocy that will come from the Supreme Court over Affirmative Action and the majority opinion that will be written by Clarence Thomas (because he’s Black and is pleased to be a tool), Whites are not being discriminated against in our colleges and universities. Thomas’ opinion will be just as stupid as John  Roberts’ opinion that gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Roberts said that discrimination of non-Whites was over and we no longer needed to stop racist voting suppression. North Carolina and several other states immediately expanded their gerrymandering to dis-empower Black voters, did gross purging of voter registrations and closed polling places in poor areas. Thomas’ opinion on affirmative action will be packed with just as many lies and reality denying stupid stuff that similarly hurts people who need protection from White supremacy.

Aren’t you tired of being lied to?

Now this from Common Cause:

Donald Trump’s disinformation machine is already preparing to call to overturn midterm election results in swing states… before most voters have even cast their ballots! [emphasis original]

You read that right – over the past few months, Trump has mobilized extremist attorneys and dark money groups – all towards a desperate attempt to reverse any results he doesn’t like.

I suppose you can call these the “pre-lies” or “there was no penalty for the 2020 election lies, so these are pile-on lies” or “our pants are already on fire, so why not lie?” or “we don’t care if our nose is as long as a telephone wire lies” or “paving the way for more grift lies” or “deflate you to keep you from voting lies.”*

Aren’t you tired of being lied to?

It’s all they have. Republicans, MAGA, alt-right – they don’t have any policies, concern for your welfare, any notion of honoring of values except grubbing for power like pigs at a trough and backroom deals to get them money.

Seriously now, aren’t you tired of being lied to?

Because there’s something you can do to stop the right wing lying attack on America:

VOTE!

Vote for any candidate who opposes the liars. Vote against the insanity. Vote as if our way of life – yours and mine –  is at stake.

Because it is.

Doubt that? Read this.

———————————

* As Sen. Joe McCarthy was defaming a quite innocent young attorney, Army lawyer Joseph Nye Welch intoned, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Of course, the answer to Welch’s question was a firm and resounding “NO!” McCarthy had no sense of decency and neither does Trump, nor does any of his spineless followers, like Kari Lake. Their only interest is more power and more money. But you already knew that.

Note that the Mr. Cohn referred to in the recorded exchange is Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s father’s hydrophobic lawyer and Trump’s rabid model for his decades of chicanery.

Vladimir Lenin is quoted as saying, “When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract.” It seems that now as then we can be bought for a relative pittance, this at our grave peril.

The cheap lies will kill us just as dead as Lenin’s rope if we let them.

————————————

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 – just 3 days left. Get up! Do something to make things better – VOTE!

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

Dracula Today


Now it’s your turn.

Bad Moon

John Fogarty and Credence Clearwater Revival sang about it decades ago, perhaps prescient about the dangers that surround us today.

I see a bad moon rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightning 
I see bad times today
    
Don't go around tonight 
 'Cause it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise

I always needed an interpreter to understand Fogarty’s words. For example, I thought he said that there’s a bad moon “on the right,” not “on the rise.” If he had sung it the way I heard it, he’d be exactly right for today’s America, although his way is pretty accurate, too.

That bad moon on the right brings hatred, lies, hypocrisy, lost integrity and an imminent threat to our very democracy and threats of violence and death to our fellow citizens. But you know that, just as Fogarty seems to have known it in my misinterpretation of that line in his song.

We have 6 days left to stop that bad moon on the right and make the difference that must be made.

American Psychosis

Yes, of course we’re psychotic. That’s what explains all the reality denial and our pronounced sociopathy, like that self-deluded thug smashing Paul Pelosi’s head with a hammer. We’ve been down this Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole many times and somehow we’ve survived it. All we had to do was to tolerate the death and destruction and voilà! everything was just fine again.

Like the Civil War, when half the country violated its sacred word, violated its oath and attacked the other half of our country. We only had to tolerate over 600,000 dead and many times that number wounded, hobbled, disfigured for life or insane.

Like over 86 years of Jim Crow lynchings – 4,743 of them according to the NAACP – and those are just the documented lynchings. And, of course, there was the terrorizing of millions.

Like the hatred and violence unleashed on various immigrant groups, like the Catholics, Irish, Italian, Chinese and Jews.

That’s just some of what we’ve tolerated.

See Note 5 and the final graphic below.

In David Corn’s book American Psychosis he recounts the cruelty and flagrant dishonesty of America’s alcoholic senator, Eugene McCarthy (R-WI). A fellow senator, Millard Tydings (D-MD), described McCarthy’s claim about the State Department being infested with communists, saying his charges were “a hoax perpetuated on . . . the American people” and “perhaps the most nefarious campaign of half-truths and untruth in the history of the Republic.”

Nevertheless, Republicans back then “viewed McCarthy as a potent weapon to deploy against Democrats.” McCarthy supported “a popular revolt against the upper classes,” and “accused the Truman administration and Democrats of being traitors to America. He had no evidence, only accusations.” Put a bookmark in that: no evidence, only accusations.

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was campaigning for the presidency in 1952 and was to give a speech in Milwaukee. Included was a paragraph excoriating fellow Republican McCarthy, the insanity of McCarthyism and the spinelessness of the followers of his hatred. That paragraph said that to believe McCarthy was to believe that the government was being run by “men whose very brains were confused buy the opiate of this deceit,” meaning the deceit of McCarthy.

But Eisenhower needed Wisconsin votes, so he never spoke those words in public. In fact, even as he deplored McCarthy, he remained silent for years about McCarthy’s hypocrisy and the cruelty he set upon good Americans and the very fabric of American values. Even the Supreme Court took a swing at what we profess to be our values by ruling that the First Amendment did not cover communists. Surely you’re seeing the parallels to today.

Trump is our McCarthy, the liar, the manipulator, the hatred spewer, the accuser of wild conspiracies without evidence. So, too, are his imitators, suck-ups and opportunists for votes who are doing the same thing, just as happened in the 1950s.

Were Sen. Tydings alive today we surely could show him what a real hoax on the American People can look like. He’d have a new take on “perhaps the most nefarious campaign of half-truths and untruth in the history of the Republic,” the Nazi-MAGA scourge.

Like the Civil War, lynchings and McCarthyism, our present psychosis – our blood sucking Dracula, in Halloween-speak – will not go away on its own. We’ve already tolerated too much death and destruction and America’s Dracula will continue to attack us and suck the life out of this republic until we take action.

This national vampire must be fought into a coffin and a stake driven through its foul heart so that it can’t drain all the blood from America. That’s what you’re going to do next Tuesday.

From Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) yesterday:

But I’m also sad this violence [against Paul and Nancy Pelosi] isn’t more surprising — just as I wasn’t surprised by January 6th.  This is what happens when we’re taught that those who disagree with us are existential threats to our survival; when we label our own tribe good and the other evil; when we fail to call out the bad behavior of our own “side” out of loyalty or denial.

We’re hearing calls of sympathy, empathy and caring for the Pelosi’s from Democrats. The Republicans are made of other stuff and prominent individuals are making up horrible conspiracy stories, they’re blaming the victim and refusing even a hint of concern for the Pelosi’s. Likewise, they haven’t concern for any of the Democrats or their families who receive a near constant stream of death threats prompted by Republicans’ dreadful demonizing. Republican politicians can’t even muster a, “Sorry that happened to you.”

Think about that when you go to vote on Tuesday. Think, “A stake through its heart.”

————————————

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

Fire the bastards!

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

The 2022 Pond Scum Awards


Pond Scum Award #1

The 2022 Pond Scum Awards

Elon Musk put in a bid to buy Twitter some months ago. Then he tried to slime out of the deal when it didn’t look too good for him anymore. However, even in the face of right wing extremists constantly vaporizing integrity, good sense and reality, a contract is still a contract (for the moment). Musk and his co-investors ponied up the cash and Musk has already started the corporate executions. He did that right after his bathroom sink “look at me” stunt, apparently as if to say, “I bought it – let that sink in.” Turns out that does sink in – in a really personal way.

I have a day job delivering leadership keynotes and workshops. I do those in the lofty hope of ending the motivation for any employee to ever again utter that horrible, life sucking sentence, “My boss is a jerk.” If I keep this up long enough perhaps I’ll have made a modest dent with my Fully Alive Leadership offerings. Here’s the connection of that to the change in Twitter ownership.

David Hogg is a survivor of the horrific mass murders at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL and a spokesperson for Never Again.

I have Twitter accounts for both my leadership work and for these posts, both in the pursuit of reaching more people. Nobody knows if Twitter is useful in that way, but I do know that I don’t want to contribute in any way to Elon Musk inviting extremists to spew hatred, lies and vitriol. I want nothing to do with a platform that invites Donald Trump to further radicalize violent people and move us to abandon democracy and to embrace authoritarianism.

So, this is my last post to be linked to Twitter, as I will be closing my accounts there permanently.

Will Musk lose sleep over my exit from Twitter? Of course not. But I would lose sleep if I thought I were helping to enable evil that is unscrupulously masked as free speech.

CRITICAL DIFFERENTIATOR: The first amendment guarantee of free speech has to do only with preventing government from restricting our speech. It has nothing to do with Twitter or any other non-government public platform and the speech they allow or disallow. Those decisions are no more than company policies. None of us has a free speech right to publish on any of those platforms.

A boy and his sink enter Twitter HQ in San Francisco. It’s a proud moment for all plumbing.

So, Musk can make all the self-serving, self-congratulatory claims he likes about Twitter and free speech. That’s just a disguise for appealing to extremists in order to maximize his return on his dubious investment. And if his new Twitter handle is “Chief Twit” – he picked that – well, I agree. And he gets this 2022 Pond Scum Award.

Anyway, that’s what I sink.

Adios, Elon.

Pond Scum Award #2

My pal Jim Nathan is nothing if not an excellent unearth-er of great political commentary in the form of cartoons, pictures and clever statements. Here’s one he just sent to me:

Here you see a group of self-satisfied, ego-puffed Republicans congratulating themselves like a bunch of bratty high school juniors having successfully towel snapped all the freshmen boys in the locker room. These congressional embarrassments are so very proud that the only thing they accomplished (other than all the destruction, like trashing high speed mail sorting machines in order to slow down your mail service) was to give rich guys a huge tax cut and to stiff you.

Somebody has to explain to me why middle-class Americans would want to give power to these selfish dopes. These guys are so very worthy of their very own 2022 Pond Scum Awards.

Pond Scum Award #3

Here’s another pic from Jim:

First, that’s right. Second, a generation later your grandmother didn’t fight to be in charge of her own body just so you could sit at home in November, either.

The Pond Scummers shown in the pic in section #2 above are threatening to take away your freedoms, even all forms of birth control. There’s no telling how many more freedoms they will take away from you if they get their scummy hands on power. There is only one way to stop them, to prevent them from making you powerless:

You have to vote for people who will protect your freedom and your rights.
.

You cannot count on any Republican to do that. They are unpatriotic and they are insane for power. They’re still lying about the 2020 election. They’re promoting idiotic child trafficking and cannibalistic child eating conspiracies. They are stupid-claiming that the only possible outcome in any election is that either they win or that Democrats cheated and stole the election.

These people are unpatriotic and they are insane. You must not vote for any Republican. Those guys are 2022 Pond Scum Award winners, all. Here’s why:

  1. Republicans have no ideas and no policies to tackle inflation or any other challenge. They have admitted this. They have abandoned you to struggle in the face of national challenges entirely on your own. This is literally true.
  2. Republicans are spineless sycophants of Trump who chicken out of speaking truth. They want to take away your freedom and your rights just so they can grab more power. And they spew hatred, racism and antisemitism every day. This is literally true.
  3. Republicans want to end our democracy and make this country a dictatorship – Seig Heil, Trump! That would make you a powerless peon. This is literally true.

And you don’t want any of that!

That’s why you have to vote for sanity. Vote for Democrats because:

  1. They aren’t hateful, hypocritical thieves and liars. They won’t pick your pocket and give your money to rich people and they won’t make your kids ignorant and stupid. This is literally true.
  2. They believe in democracy and will protect and defend it and the Constitution – just like you would. This is literally true.
  3. They have ideas and policies in place to make your life better. E.g. gas prices are already falling, major new job opportunities are on the way and your bridges and roads are already being repaired. Every Republican voted against all of this. This is literally true.

Go vote for Democrats, just as your great-grandmother, your grandmother and your mother want you to. Make their work and their sacrifices mean something enduring.

And the answer is YES! Pass this along to every voter you know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

————————————

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

Fire the bastards!

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA

 


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

20%


“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

When I came across those words of anthropologist Margaret Mead years ago I found them to be so hopeful, a promise that good things that had been so elusive might actually come to be within grasp. Thom Hartmann amplified that hope by estimating that it wouldn’t take a majority of us to set things right. All it would take is about 20% of the population – a “small group of thoughtful committed citizens.” We can do that, I told myself. We can get 20% of us to insist upon what’s right.

Turns out that both Mead and Hartmann were right and I was wrong.

About 20% of Americans want to turn the United States into a reality denying, authoritarian thugocracy, not that “insisting upon what’s right” part I’d hoped for. Republican politicians are working at that, cheating and lying every day to make that happen. Most of the 20% is electrified, thinking they’re the true patriots and demanding what they believe to be right. And they just might get their way. That is where I was wrong, because what that 20% wants surely is not right.

The grabbing for ever more power, the denial of truth and reality and the retribution and violence threatened and sometimes exacted against opponents and scapegoats is how Moussolini, Hitler, Orban, Erdoğan, Duterte and, really, all autocrats gain power. And autocracy always leads to despotism and the people always suffer, especially through loss of freedoms and even extra-judicial killings.

It’s so easy to wheedle people to sell out their integrity just by offering the right bribe, like power, position and wealth or by threatening them with loss of all that or even with physical harm. That creates an army to promote the despot. You know all of this because you’ve seen it for decades.

Worse, the pace of deterioration of our government and, really, of our way of life has accelerated dramatically. Now some candidates and voters openly pledge to honor election results only if the authoritarian wins. Now some legislators are manipulating election laws to prevent people from voting, to steal yet more rights and to incrementally take our freedoms. Now the thugs are making death threats and committing mass murders.

Sadly, We the People have allowed that to happen. We’ve done it by failing to speak out against what’s wrong. We’ve done it by 40% of eligible voters (about 100 million in 2018) consistently failing to do the simple primary act of citizenship: vote. It’s the self-deluded who mindlessly declare that they would never vote for a Democrat, perhaps solely because their parents always voted for Republicans; or because they believe the lies they’re fed, so they refuse to see the truth that’s in plain sight. Besides, it’s easier to be lazy and not think for themselves. Or maybe they get a charge from the ignorant obstruction of progress, the middle finger claim to power. Maybe we’ve just become complacent and our blinders have become too comfortable.

The human capacity for selfishness, laziness and self-deception is too great to be overcome simply by making good, common sense. It will take something far more direct and far more muscular.

Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine was right in 1775 with his “Common Sense” and he’s still right: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” And these times are frighteningly like Paine’s, as we wonder who will fight for democracy.

In these fraught times we have only two choices. One is to sit back and watch as everything we care about, everything we hold dear is lost, as though we’re spectators at a Sunday football game, watching our vastly overpowered team losing to cheaters and hobbled by crooked referees. The other choice is to get onto the field of play to help score touchdowns and eventually to win the game.

This will be hard. This will require us to stay the course for the entire conflict, especially when things seem dire. Make no mistake in understanding this metaphor: we’re backed up to our own goal line right now.

Your vote is how you “Never give in” – see below. Many thanks to JN for this graphic.

But this is no metaphorical football game. This is life and death. People will die and democracy will be lost, with not even a mention in the replacement history books of authoritarian propaganda, unless those of us in the 80% take a stand and get this right. And we better do that quickly, because the Election Countdown Clock is fast approaching the zero hour.

———————————–

Here’s What Minority Influence and Rule Look Like.

Example 1.

For an instructive look at how an enraged, vocal minority can derail the best of how we might be, read The Right Wing Attack on Public Education Began In One Elite Illinois High School, by Isabela Dias in Mother Jones. What began as an educational seminar on diversity for the nearly all White school population turned into a parental hate-fest, the likes of which, sad to say, you’ve seen elsewhere. It was so-called conservative parents (how did “conservative” come to mean “White supremacist”?) objecting to whatever they nightmared* the seminar would be. As you read the piece, take note of the projections, false assumptions and ignorant accusations spewed by these angry opponents of the seminar. And imagine how puffed up on power these people must feel. One now has a podcast. The “look at ME” value of that must be enormous. Yet the teenage students, trying to make sense of a confusing world, are caught in the crossfire.

That’s what happens when “a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens” decides that tyrannical minority control is the American way.

Example 2.

“The new British prime minister, Liz Truss, has laid out a terrific supply-side economic growth plan which looks a lot like the basic thrust of Kevin McCarthy’s Commitment to America plan.” – Larry “Usually Wrong” Kudlow on Fox News.

Let’s see, supply-side economics has never worked for anyone but the rich and has just been dumped by the Brits for its immediate and obvious failure. But that’s what Kevin McCarthy will bring to us if he and the Rs representing a minority of Americans gain control of Congress.

All of that is why you must follow the admonition of Winston Churchill:

  • “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.”

Winston Churchill, speaking at The Harrow School, October 29, 1941

* Made-up word for this occasion.

————————————

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

Fire the bastards!

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

Potpourri-v15.0


You’ve Heard Of ALEC

Right:  the American Legislative Exchange Council. What do you suppose they exchange?

Here’s a maddening investigative piece from Atlanta’s NBC-11, The Back Room: Where Georgia Bills Are Made to help you understand. It does a nice job exposing what ALEC and its funding lobbyist buddies are about. Here’s another piece from the Center For Media and Democracy. This stuff goes on in every state and at the national level, all out of sight – out of your sight.

ALEC is the high court of pay-to-play. It’s where bills are written by industrial giants for the benefit of legislators and – guess what? – industrial giants; but not for you. It’s where big business tithes millions to get back billions and where politicians are on the take. It’s where you get sold out.

Now that you’ve had a look, let’s revisit that question about ALEC: What do you suppose they exchange? Right. They exchange money for massive influence and control. Is that okay with you?

A Little Kindness

Herschel Walker with his participation trophy

Poor Herschel Walker has said many times that he’s transparent. For example,

    • – He said he was a member of law enforcement. He even showed a police badge given to him by the sheriff of Johnson County. It was for community support, not for law enforcement.
    • – He said he was in a police shoot out. He wasn’t.
    • – He said that he graduated from the University of Georgia. He never graduated.
    • – There are multiple credible domestic violence claims against him.
    • – And, of course, he is categorically against abortions no matter what, even as the mother of one of his four illegitimate children provided proof that he paid for her to have an abortion.

Herschel is transparent, all right, but it’s only because of fact checkers who show him to be, let’s say, a few slices short of a loaf. Yet, let’s cut him some slack for his over-abundant truth transgressions and his inability to speak any language but Paleolithic Word Salad. He took some vicious hits to the head playing football and there’s no telling how scrambled he is intra-cranially. We don’t know if he’s lying or if he’s so permanently injured that he doesn’t know the truth.

So, instead of sending Herschel to the U.S. Senate, let’s send him to a facility capable of doing brain scans. Forgive him, voter, for he knows not what he says.

But don’t forgive the Machiavellian Republicans supporting and promoting him in order to gain power for themselves. They know what they’re doing and that he’s terribly damaged goods. They know he hasn’t the ability to meet even minimal standards of performance in the Senate. These Republicans don’t care about Herschel Walker, Georgia or the United States of America. All they care about is power for themselves.

So, let’s extend a little kindness and help Herschel to help himself by sending Rafael Warnock back to the Senate.

Important to Remember

William Barr seems to have conveniently discovered a small whiff of integrity by not lying to protect Trump from the January 6 Committee. That was at least a tiny bit refreshing, coming from this guy who wants to make the Commander-in-Chief an Imperial President, a monarch. Barr’s anti-democracy values made him a perfect pick to serve Trump (not the nation) to aid the Great Deceiver in:

    • – ripping migrant children from their parents
    • – distorting the findings (okay, lying about the findings) of Robert Mueller’s investigation in order to manipulate public opinion for the benefit of Trump
    • – allegedly bringing DOJ cases in order to settle Trump’s political scores
    • – hamstringing the prosecutions and the sentencing of Trump’s felonious goons

See note 5 below

The reason for calling out the Imperial Presidency Whisperer is because he and Stephen “Goebbels” Miller and Louis “stop the mail” DeJoy and many more sycophantic, pathological extremists are who we’ll get if today’s Republicans get their hands on power. Spineless, “Gosh, I sure hope I get to be Speaker of the House” Kevin McCarthy has announced that he will appoint election denier, conspiracy lunatic and stalker of Parkland shooting survivors Marjorie Taylor-Green to be number 2 in the House. “This is the democratic emergency that is Donald Trump.” Many thanks to Rep. Jamie Raskin and his book Unthinkable for that descriptor.

Raskin warns us to be “alive to the perils facing democracy,” questioning, ” .  .  .  will the minority Trump party be able to rule through anti-democratic mechanisms like voter suppression and gerrymandering backed up by political violence?”

The answer to that stunning question depends on you and me.

————————————

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

Fire the bastards!

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

Inside President Biden’s Head


Page 1: Conjuring

He has not invited me into his head, nor has he shared his inner politician or inner President with me. He and I have had no Vulcan mind meld, nor any spooky transmissions. But there’s stuff going on in President Biden’s brain and, blurt-prone though he may be, not everything he thinks gets spewed publicly. We’re left to conjure his intentions.

And conjure, I do! About things like our blatantly political and extremist (did I mention radical?) Supreme Court as an arm of the Republican Party, exactly what the Founders thought they were protecting us from.

People were calling for Biden to expand the Court with centrists and center-leftists even before he was inaugurated, afraid that the things we feared would come about – things like yet more voter disenfranchisement, the end of Roe, more onerous gerrymandering, preventing the EPA from regulating the emission of greenhouse gases, defeating efforts to keep guns out of public places, tearing more bricks from the wall separating church and state and the flood of corporate cash into our politics (what did I miss?). Our fears have been realized, as all of these things have come about.

The bad news from the Court may not be done. On the docket now is a case to decide if state legislatures can take away your vote – literally negate your citizenship (Harper v. Moore). That’s exactly what Republican controlled state legislatures are attempting to do. If they get their way via this radical Supreme Court, it will be a time stamped event that will mark the moment when democracy was permanently crushed and died. The decision is now in the hands of the Court, with oral arguments having been presented on October 4. If this doesn’t scare you, re-read this paragraph.

So, how come President Biden has been silent, not even speaking to something as simple and non-aggressive as imposing ethics rules on our Supreme Court justices – rules like those on judges in other courts? Or establishing term limits so that we can shed grumpy and radical old men? And how come he has refused comment on expanding the court to 13? Two reasons.

First, attempting any of that before the mid-term election would likely produce an overwhelming wave of Republicans in Congress, at which point all progress would grind to a halt and a Republican would win the White House in 2024. Trying to do any reform would be a near-perfect strategy for losing.

That could change following the mid-term election because Biden has Captain Kangaroo pockets full of major legislative wins. But that’s not likely, which leads us to the second reason Biden has been silent.

He doesn’t like any of those ideas. His refusal to so much as have a conversation about any effort to moderate this radical Court tells you all you need to know about what’s in his head. Expect reform of the Supreme Court in about half a century. Maybe a full century. If we still have courts and if we still have a democracy.

That’s what I conjure about Biden’s conjuring about the Supreme Court. I really want to be wrong about this and fear that I won’t be.

Page 2: Hurricane Ian and President Biden

From former colleague Nora Paller:

Community In Action

Watching the scary, dangerous, horribly damaging Hurricane Ian devastate Florida and beyond was tragic. Many people will never be able to come back financially [or] from the emotional trauma of this event. The only good thing was to see all the people who reached out to help – to see community in action. Pulling together to face a larger threat can bring people at odds with each other to let it go and work together. All of sudden, DeSantis wants to talk to Biden. Instead of wasting Florida’s money sending asylum seekers to Massachusetts [link is mine], he is doing something direct[ly] for the people of Florida. Could we stop all this nonsense and work together? Turns out they could and we can.

President Biden, you can lead a Community In Action parade with just your words. Here’s hoping that’s in your head, because the people of Puerto Rico, Florida and the Carolinas need a parade right now.

Page 3: What Is In President Biden’s Head

Securing solid majorities in both houses of Congress is in the front of President Biden’s frontal lobe, because all progress depends on that. Absent those majorities, hateful fools like Republican Joe Kent will get their way and obstruction is all that will happen.

We had eight years of The Party Of No when President Obama was in office and people like Speaker of the House John Boehner and Tea Party Republicans were pledged to Mitch McConnell’s hateful commitment to “Make Obama a one-term president.” True to their word, that’s all – that’s everything – they attempted to do. The Republicans opposed everything Obama proposed in goose-stepping, moronic uniformity. They were and are The Party Of No.

And that’s what we’ll get again unless there are solid BLUE majorities elected next month. That’s in President Biden’s head for sure. He knows that. You know that, too.

————————————

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

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

Criminals


Did You Ever Wonder .  .  .

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) tells Fox News that he was grateful to have been in Washington instead of helping his constituents in Florida during Hurricane Ian. After the barrier islands off Fort Myers disappeared into the ocean he said, “Just think how much worse the hurricane would have been if global warming were real.”

.  .  . how the former Criminal-in-Chief has gotten away with so much obvious lawlessness for so long? Here’s an excerpt from Sheila Markin’s explainer, One Two Punch for Donald Trump:

Of course, the reason he has gotten away with so many travesties is that he was shielded by Republicans who were eager to use his power as president to get power for themselves and benefits for their ultra wealthy funders [emphasis mine]: tax cuts for the wealthy, right wing judges on the federal bench to protect corporate interests, culture war victories, a border wall instead of a reasonable border policy, the end of women’s reproductive rights to keep evangelicals loyal voters and an undercurrent of threat from white supremacy mixed with militias to keep low information aggrieved white men happy. Next, Trump knows how to talk out of both sides of his mouth as every good crime boss does, which allows him plausible deniability. And third, it takes time for investigations to be carried out when they are done thoroughly, factually, and investigators follow the rules which they must do to have an unbeatable case.

More is needed to explain Trump’s years of alleged money laundering, stiffing of contractors and lawyers, bribing skin dancers and calling it a campaign expense and far more, but you get the idea. Meanwhile, I find the part about his Republican shields (a.k.a. cowards and jellyfish) to be most interesting, what with the lying and reality denial. If you want to understand more of how lying became not just acceptable to, but required of Republicans, be sure to read Carlos Lozada’s piece, The Big Joke That Became the Big Lie.

Lozada defines the Big Joke as, “the idea that American politics is, in essence, a joke, and that it can be treated as such without consequence.” He goes on to give examples of the Big Joke, as when,

“politicians publicly defend positions they privately reject”

“they give up on the challenge of governing the country for the rush of triggering the enemy” [“own the Libs”]

“they intone that they must address the very fears they have encouraged or manufactured among their constituents”

“their off-the-record smirks signal that they don’t really mean what they just said or did”

Read the piece. I promise that you will not laugh at the joke.

Meanwhile, the good news is that our very own supremely bad guy – the former Criminal-in-chief – is going down in at least a half dozen really nasty ways. Be patient and be ready to celebrate. I already have a special post prepared for his first of many courtroom defeats. And that’s no joke.

Speaking of Criminals

Republicans have entered a new phase of national sabotage by threatening to refuse to fund the government unless President Biden and the Democrats reverse all their policies.

Yes, really: All!

This refusal to raise the debt ceiling is a favorite bludgeon Republicans use to try to get their way with Democrats. Basically, they threaten to hold their breath until they turn blue (fine with me) unless they get what they want. They’ve been playing this self-destructive game since Newt “Mr. Amoral” Gingrich was Speaker of the House in the 1990s, slyly fingering his never executed “Contract With America”. He and his phony, power grabbing posse acted as though there weren’t always a contract, an obligation of Congress to the American people. But there was and there is. Back then Clinton was president and he was a Democrat, so the extremist Republicans shut down the government. Twice.

To review, raising the debt ceiling (done over 100 times since it was first a thing roughly 100 years ago) is simply allowing our government to pay its debts that it has already incurred. It’s like paying your credit card bill. Raising the debt ceiling is not more government spending. It’s avoiding being a deadbeat. Congress did it 18 times under Reagan and 3 times under Trump. But last year under Democratic President Biden the Republicans refused to pay our bills and they’re refusing again this year. Are you seeing a pattern?

But that’s not important to Republicans. Their propeller hats are spinning wildly now, as are their eyeballs, glorying in this wonderful opportunity to show everyone how testosterone-y they are.

The Senate passed a short-term extension of government funding to December 16. During the week prior to that date look for a most entertaining spectacle of Republicans wildly grabbing the big gun to see who can shoot more holes in America’s foot, telling the world that we are a most undependable nation. “Don’t trust us,” they’ll tell the world, “because we’ll Trump you with non-payment of our debts.”

This is yet another example of why Republicans must be defeated at the polls. That happens in just 37 days and you are the engine that will make that happen.

Speaking of Criminals – Again

22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while in the custody of the Morality Police in Iran following her arrest for improperly wearing the hijab last month. As I understand it (let me know if I have this wrong), the requirement for wearing the hijab is based on the well known fact that the very sight of a woman’s hair can cause men to go mad with lust. Anything they might do under such a spell is the fault of the uncovered woman. It’s quite like the rapist’s defense, claiming that the way she was dressed or acted caused his assault.

Shifting to a national perspective, our insurrectionist thugs and our Republicans would have us believe that their malfeasance, like sedition, is someone else’s fault.

I think I’ve been clear on these pages that accountability – personal responsibility – is a real thing and that there is a price that must be paid for wrongdoing.

So, MAGA boys, even if you think there are elites controlling poor, oppressed you, even if you’re the most absolutist pickup truck driving, AR-15 toting, Jim Crow loving cowboy, you may not threaten, attack or kill others and claim that the elites or Democrats made you do it. You’re just a criminal thug blaming someone else for your crimes.

Hey Merrick! Make those guys pay the price.

On the other hand, perhaps we can export the “blame somebody else” types to Iran. I’m sure they’ll love it there. Maybe the rest of the Republicans will go, too. They can blame any women who are not wearing the hijab and get away with their cruelty.

Hypocrisy of the Week

“President Biden, I take back all the idiotic and false things I’ve said about you. Okay. Now that we’re buddies, how about some emergency help for Florida? What if I throw in returning those Venezuelans to San Antonio? I could ditch the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, if that would help and I can pressure Florida school boards to stop burning books. What do you say?”

Ron DeSantis was elected to Congress in 2013 and proudly voted against a $9.7 billion federal flood insurance assistance package for the victims of Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey. Now, as governor of Florida, he’s begging President Biden for emergency help for his state. DeSantis explained, “We all need to work together, regardless of party lines.”

Funny how things work differently when DeSantis is the one in need. Insert your own label for him in the Comments section below.

DeSantis is a “drown government” guy. Leave everything to the private sector – “the market,” he believes. I’m just wondering what part of “the market” is going to pony up $90 billion to glue Florida back together and help all those suffering people.

Required reading on this topic: The White Man’s Burden, Revisited, by Ed Gurowitz.

————————————

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

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

Integrity


You’re Not God, Mob Boy

Click me

So, you want this to be a Christian nationalist country, a Christian theocracy. Got it. You’re all about Jesus and have carefully picked Bible quotations, as well as excerpts from the Federalist Papers that you think justify your actions. Got it. You’re certain that some elite others are a cabal of Satanic and cannibalistic sex-trafficking pedophiles bent on world domination and you believe other conspiracy claims, too. Got it. You believe that the ends you desire justify whatever means you employ. Got that, too. But consider just a couple of things.

Like that your opinion doesn’t eclipse mine. That your fantasies about truth and reality don’t replace actual truth and reality. That your accusations in the absence of any evidence aren’t the same as conviction. There’s still that “prove it” thing, you know?

The unavoidable result of your certainties is you threatening violence and murder and brutalizing others. That is prima facie evidence that you believe that you have the right to end human lives if, gosh, someone doesn’t toe your line. But that right isn’t yours anywhere or under any circumstances. That belongs to a higher power and I’m absolutely certain that you are not God.

Honestly – and you can take this as gospel – your claims of being a Christian were demolished the moment you picked up your phone to threaten an election worker, or brought your AR-15 to the Michigan Capitol Building to intimidate government workers, or as you chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” or when you climbed the Capitol steps and vandalized the building, or when you shouted hatred at a school board meeting or when you showed up for Trump rallies and cheered the abuse of protesters, or when you drove your pickup truck with its oversized hatred flags and tried to run President Biden’s campaign bus off the highway, and every time you repeated Trump’s lies. Really, now, would Jesus do any of that?

You have no right to threaten or harm anyone, no matter how pissy you become when you don’t get your way or how puffed up you feel when you fondle your assault rifle or inflict your cruelty on others. One honest look in the mirror will tell you that this isn’t 1776, you’re no Minuteman and vengeance isn’t yours. You’re not God, Mob Boy. You’re just a guy who put his integrity into long term storage.

And all of that goes for you seditious members of Congress who are trying to tear down our democracy. It goes to your shame for violating your oath of office. You remember that “protect and defend” stuff about the Constitution, right? The stuff to which you swore with your hand on a Bible? You remember integrity, don’t you? Perhaps not.

Like the Mob Boys, you can take one look in the mirror and you’ll know instantly that you’re no nation’s Founder, no “originalist.” You’re just a thug in a suit and you’ve abandoned your integrity.

“The fault, dear seditionist, is not in your stars, but in yourselves .  .  .  “

With apologies to William Shakespeare, Cassius and the entire ensemble of Julius Caesar.

The Important Part Is .  .  .

Elise Stefanik in June, with jellyfish Kevin McCarthy proudly looking on

Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 Republican in the House, Is all about getting Republican women elected to Congress. She’s raised over $4 million for her “Elevate PAC” to grease those wheels. In a most interesting piece in The New York Times she bragged,

“My own experience going through impeachment No. 1, where I played an outsized role on the House Intelligence Committee — we built up a national donor list,” Stefanik said Wednesday at a briefing at the Republican National Committee about the midterm elections. “We’ve been able to have that donor list support other women candidates across the country.”

Let’s see, there was an impeachment of the President of the United States going on and in her “outsized role on the House Intelligence Committee” Stefanik’s key accomplishment was building a donor list. Not dealing with the President’s extortion of the president of Ukraine. Not ensuring integrity in the highest office. Not solidifying of our democracy. Creating a donor list!

This is the woman who replaced Liz Cheney as the No. 3 Republican in the House.

One more time, Elise, and this is about your integrity: the most important part of what you do is .  .  .  what?

The Economy

In an effort to combat inflation, the Fed has raised the interest rate by 3/4 of a point in each of the past 3 months, which has caused interest rates on the street to more than double and investors to get a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. They’re fearing a recession, a nearly inevitable outcome when business investment drops off, which it does when money becomes too expensive to borrow.

The interest rate is the only tool in the Fed’s inflation fighting toolbox, but it is a bludgeon of a tool and is excruciatingly slow to combat inflation. What big interest rate hikes are exceedingly good at doing is stimulating recession and putting people out of work. The estimates are that about 1,000,000 people will lose their jobs due to the Fed’s recent wild swings. They figure we’ll stop buying as much stuff – that’s especially true for the newly unemployed, of course – and that will induce lower prices which will curb inflation.

Some day.

But reduced inflation will come at the cost of misery to a great many people, especially to the 1,000,000.

Our inflation is like that of every other developed country. We’re suffering the enormous discombobulation of the logistics system for everything from raw materials to finished goods and that reduced supply is sustaining a glut of unmet demand. That raises prices. That’s largely due to Covid-19 throwing sand into the machinery of the commerce engine worldwide, as well as the huge disruptions caused by Putin’s adventure into AtrocityLand.*

There are other drivers of inflation, too, including the breathtaking profiteering by shipping monopolies, fossil fuel companies, retailers with margins 30% above normal and others who are charging more for a classic reason: because they can. Fossil fuel profiteering has caused soaring prices at the gas pump and that has contributed significantly to inflation. But that, like war and the disrupted supply chain, is unrelated to the Fed’s interest rate hikes.

We’re in for some very turbulent times, as the Fed attempts to club our economy back to 2 – 3% inflation. Bummer for newly unemployed people and for all who can’t get that first job. Look for a huge spike in the number of people living in Mom’s basement, as well as some world class politically stupid claims.

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* The O.E.C.D. estimates the war’s toll on the global economy to be about $2.8 trillion for 2023.

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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.

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JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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