Leadership

A Hard Time to be a Republican


FBI Director James Comey

FBI Director James Comey

Reading time – 2:02; Viewing time – 3:27  .  .  .

Confirmation bias is the standard issue human foible of looking at something and finding whatever supports our biases and ignoring or being blind to what contradicts our notions.

Most Democrats, supporters of Hillary and haters of Trump and anything right wing will find that all is well because Hillary won’t be indicted, per the recommendation of FBI Director James Comey.

Most Republicans, supporters of Trump and haters of Hillary and anything left wing will find that she was criminally careless and potentially compromised US national security, which confirms for them that she is untrustworthy and unfit to be President.

Before this news, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) released the House Select Committee on Benghazi Report, the seventh (or was it the eighth?) Republican investigation into the terrible events in Libya. Almost immediately after release of the report much of the center and lefty press declared that there was no new information flowing from the $7 million investigation and that the entire investigation wasn’t a serious affair, but rather, a political stunt. Looking at that same report, righties found seven key pieces of “new” information. We humans manipulate to our liking and see what we want to see: confirmation bias at work.

We are in the midst of a presidential contest that is, by any calculation, a race to the bottom, an exercise in which each candidate is working to define the other as the worst in the slime bucket – e.g. “S/He says I’m awful and not qualified but, oh yeah? S/He is far worse.” The Founders would surely be very proud. Just to be clear, that last is sarcasm.

Even if you find Hillary to be disreputable, untrustworthy, manipulative, a tool of the establishment and icky, nobody questions her intelligence, international experience and understanding of the presidency. It is impossible to see Donald the Sociopath that way or as qualified for the job. Mark Salter, the former chief of staff to Sen. John McCain, makes that point eloquently in his Real Clear Politics essay. You need to read it. And you need to send this blog to all your Republican friends and relatives because they need to read Salter’s words, too.

It’s a hard time to be a Republican. That isn’t meant as sarcasm; it’s true empathy – and it’s accurate.

NOTE: This blog was crafted just moments after FBI Director James Comey made his announcement on the FBI investigation into Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server. The post went live immediately, but you didn’t receive the email announcement until early Wednesday morning. By that time anything may have happened, including that the Democratic presumptive nominee may now be unelectable. Just imagine, a presidential race that hands the presidency to a known sociopath, cheat and swindler. it is as insane as the 1979 mayoral race in Chicago that was won by Jane Byrne because Mayor Michael Bilandic didn’t get a heavy snowfall removed fast enough.

This is a hard time to love American politics.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

The Challenge of 1776


Continental Congress

Second Continental Congress

Reading time – 1:33; Viewing time – 2:39  .  .  .

Actually, they tiptoed up to the Declaration of Independence. There wasn’t a mad rush to shove parchment in King George’s face and everyone was aware of the self-imposed threat to life and property, should they, ”  .  .  .  assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,” and , ”  .  .  .  declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Yet they did that, even with only tepid support of some of the states. We are left to deal with that separate and equal station, this collection of individual states – and deal with leaders who now seem destined to continuously knock heads against one another.

Our present lunacy is not without precedent, yet that is scarce comfort, as our politicians frantically race to the bottom of human disgust. Those debating independence during that blisteringly hot summer of 1776 in Philadelphia argued with passion, but they did not pour their energies into rank personal attack devoid of meaning, nor could they have contemplated our politics as snake oil salesmanship.

And here we are, 240 years later, a divided United States.

We all value loyalty, personal independence, toughness, honor, safety, collective pride, respect, fairness, caring, inclusion and more. The sociologists explain that our problem is that we individual humans place different emphasis on those things and that leads to very different behaviors. And each of us is certain that we got it right and cannot fathom how anyone would disagree with us and we are annoyed by and intolerant of the idiots who foolishly don’t see it our way.

Surprise: The Founders had to deal with those same human dynamics. Yet, somehow they managed to create a new and united country.

If they could do that, exactly what is our problem right now?

FranklinGo to your community parade tomorrow and, as the fire trucks, clowns and floats, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops and the politicians vying for your vote pass by, recognize that we’re all feeling our way forward, just as they did in Philadelphia all those years ago. As Benjamin Franklin said to the signers, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

We have big challenges right now, so it’s time for us to hang together.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

Magic Beans


BrexitReading time – 2:41; Viewing time – 3:48  .  .  .

The people of the United Kingdom have spoken and, while the final count was very tight (51.9% to 48.1%), the slim majority has decided the future of the UK and it is not with the European Union. World financial markets, governments around the world and a global army of pundits are trying to sort out the meaning and ramifications of the decision. Everyone wants to know how this works, what’s next and how it affects themselves. All good questions, but the far more important question is why apparently sensible people would do such a thing. What are the drivers for this out-sized behavior? Try this.

We’ve been told since the 1960s that the world is changing and that the pace of change will continue to accelerate. Indeed, it seems that the crystal ball gazers back then were right and the world now looks in many ways as it was predicted to be by outlandish science fiction stories of the past. And be clear that there are unintended consequences to all that change, one of which is job displacement.

One of the key drivers of the Brexit impetus was a reaction to immigrants. The EU mandate is to accept immigrants, many of whom come from Eastern Europe with not much in the way of marketable skills. The belief of the UK public is that these immigrants have been stealing jobs from the “natural” residents of the British Isles and, in consequence, depressing all wages. Regardless of the accuracy of that belief, Britons have reacted in a protectionist way, wanting life to return to a time when they had a steady job with good, livable wages. All they have to do, they apparently believe, is to raise an Anglo-Saxon finger eastward and prevent all that immigration. That feels ever-so-powerful.

Another way to say that is that the world has changed, they don’t like it and they want to revert to a time before the change, when things were understandable, life was steady and predictable and they felt in control of their own lives, when “others” weren’t upsetting their equilibrium. They imagine that they felt powerful then.

And that sounds a lot like the Donald Trump “Make America Great Again” message to American voters.

Millions of Americans are angry. Their jobs went somewhere to someone who would work for 1/30th of the wages they worked for. All they can find are jobs that pay poorly and have no benefits, so they can’t support their families, even as their well educated kids are living in their basements. They’ve been promised over and over that their leaders will make things better, but those same leaders have betrayed them for selfish reasons. They’re angry and they’re raising an American middle finger in just about every direction, especially at the establishment.

We, like the UK, are living in a state of change and some of it hits us hard. Worse, we don’t know what tomorrow will bring and human beings have an existential fear of the unknown that hates unpredictability.

Circus sideshow barker Trump is doing what the Brexit leaders did: he is promising a return to a predictable world, some imagined golden yesterday. That message sells well to people desperate for some sense of control and power in their lives, but it is nothing more than the illusion of vapor, something that nobody can deliver.

No one knows how this rapidly globalizing world will work; we humans are making it up as we go along. So, beware the charlatan who tries to sell us magic beans, lest we make a mess for ourselves the way they just did in the UK.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

Up To Here


Samantha Bee - Full Frontal

Samantha Bee – Click the Pic

Reading time – 47 seconds; Viewing time – 2:01  .  .  .

Read this (perhaps again). Then read this:

Political obfuscation (a “snow job”) is an elemental force which cannot be overcome by fact or reason. It can only be defeated when enough people rise up in indignation, refusing to be lied to again.

Are you there? Are you sick of the lies, the distortions, the refusal of our leaders to take on the real challenges of America, to solve the enormous problems that affect all of us? Are you longing for hope that someone will be a leader who doesn’t take us down yet another blind alley and march us into even more stagnation? Metaphorically speaking, are you furious that you’re still waiting for the men and the truck to show up and fix the damn potholes? Are you up to here with political stupid stuff?

If you’re not, you’re probably not paying enough attention, because you’re being played for a sucker every day.

From the New Testament:

James 2:17 – “Thus also prayer by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

Translation: Waiting and praying leads to nothing. You have to actually do something.

Has your indignation at being lied to reached the point when you’re ready to “have works” and do something? Then make your voice heard.

Go to the Common Cause website, enter your address and click GO. You’ll see who the candidates are in your state and district and whether they support reform.  If they haven’t responded to the Common Cause questionnaire, blast ’em an email or tweet – there’s a utility for that right on the website – and tell them to get going. You deserve to know where they stand, so demand it.

Then add your voice right here in the Comments section below.

And as a reward, click on the pic above to watch Samantha Bee’s brilliance.

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BREAKING NEWS! (Wait a second – if it’s news, it must be breaking. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be news. It would just be old information, right?)

It was just revealed that the Orlando shooter had sex with two Latino men, one of whom revealed afterward that he is HIV-positive. Shortly after that the bad guy entered a gay bar frequented by Latinos (and himself at other times) and shot 103 people. So, maybe the massacre wasn’t inspired by ISIL. Maybe the guy was terminally angry over his own stupidity and took it out on others.

Maybe we need a gun law that prohibits gun purchases by emotionally unstable stupid people.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

Tony Soprano in the Cabinet Room


Reading time – 54 seconds; Viewing time – 1:53  .  .  .

May 24, 2016
Chicago, IL
WLS Radio, 890 AM

Local radio talk show host Jonathon Brandmeier interviewed a caller today who identified as a truck driver. He poo-poohed criticism of Donald Trump for having connections to the mob. He said that if you want concrete for your construction project, as Donald Trump does for each of his buildings, then you have to do business with the mob. No big deal.

Brandmeier asked the caller how he would feel if Trump were elected president and brought in mobsters for every cabinet post. The caller said that he couldn’t care less. Besides, he said, those guys know how to get things done.

Brandmeier then ridiculed those who think ties to the mob is a worrisome thing, as though it’s a given that such people are fools.

And that is the attitude of dismissal of ethics and good judgment that pervades our political world right now. It’s a friendly elbow in the ribs of understanding among like-minded people who don’t care about anything they don’t feel threatened by at the moment. Hey, whatever works.

We live in an era of great political emotion. Dangerously, the emotion of 35% of Americans is destructive of learning, reason and democracy.

Talking reason to an emotionally charged person is an exercise in futility. So, our job between now and November 8 is to stop whining about the lack of sense of Trump supporters and instead speak to the 65% with both our reason and our emotion. You can begin your part right now by passing this piece to 3 people you know who aren’t politically attentive.

All that hangs in the balance is the future of America.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

Hoffer Clarity


HAHofferPicReading time – 27 seconds; Viewing time – 55 seconds  .  .  .

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

Is additional explanation really necessary?

Sadly, yes, because more than rudeness is inflicted on us by weak people. There is also:

– boundless ignorance masquerading as muscular ideas

– bigotry, xenophobia and continuing appeals to the crudest of instincts, all coming out as hatred

  • – constantly shifting positions on important issues driven by spinelessness and dishonesty

Don’t imagine that this description is only applicable to our current sociopathic political reality show. While our politics truly are in an exaggerated, comic book state right now, this dysfunction is a constant. Caveat voter.

Thanks, GRR, for pointing out the quote.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

Bruce Rauner and Us


9,000 Illinoisans demonstrated against Rauner at the statehouse on May 18, 2016

9,000 Illinoisans demonstrated against Rauner at the statehouse on May 18, 2016 – Photos courtesy of Karl-Heinz Gabbey

DSC_5953Reading time – 1:17; Viewing time 2:42  .  .  .

There probably wouldn’t be a budget crisis in Illinois – or at least it wouldn’t be as severe – had we not spent decades in Magical Thinking Land.

State workers, including teachers – you know, the people who teach your kids – really did need better incomes, but increasing taxes to fund that was not a politically clever thing to do. Politicians wanting to keep their jobs decided that what would be better was to offer a pension to state workers. It was a promise to underpaid state workers of retirement income at a later date. That way the state could defer the additional expense and let the job of finding extra money for that to be dumped on some later generation of legislators and governors.

But the day never came when politicians in Springfield had the courage to face up to the reality that the promise of those deferred payments to workers would actually have to be honored. They just waited, juggled budget line items and hoped for some magical solution to appear, even as state liabilities continued to pile up. All that waiting wasn’t a serious problem, right up to the point when the state went broke.

At that same time we found ourselves in the dungeon of Republican thinking, where all government is bad, where all unions are bad and all taxes are bad. Then Bruce Rauner rode into town on his mealy-mouthed promise of fiscal responsibility for the state. That meant eliminating unions so that workers would have nothing to protect them from people like Bruce Rauner. We could solve our fiscal problems on their backs and on the backs of teachers. Also on the backs of mentally ill patients and school kids. This makes sense if your name is Rauner.

So, shame on all of us for allowing our politicians to let us believe that there was a free lunch that extended for generations. Taxes were low – everyone liked that – but now we have a crisis of epic proportions, paired with an intransigent governor who seems to believe that he is an emperor and is above compromising with the pitiful representatives of the people.

We’re approaching a full year without a budget and Illinoisans – once again, these are real people – are suffering. It just might be that Bruce Rauner is monumentally wrong for Illinois, but we’re stuck with him unless he is found guilty of some impeachable offense. Sadly, being arrogant, mean and a tool for the 1% are not such offenses.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

The Trump Doctrine


Reading time – 66 seconds; Viewing time – 31 seconds  .  .  .

It’s all but a done deal that Donald J. Trump, the real estate serial failure guy with all the presidential right stuff of a circus sideshow barker, will be the nominee of the Republican party. There is poetic justice in that.

The Republicans have been sowing the seeds of distrust and anger toward government for decades, certainly since Ronald Reagan campaigned in 1980, telling us that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

They have compounded that by paralyzing government for the past 6 years, including shutting it down altogether. The public anger that has stoked has now come back to bite the Republicans in the person of Donald the Arsonist, spraying gasoline on anything that has the kindling material of “establishment”.

In advance of the Indiana primary, Trump garnered the endorsement of Bobby Knight*, the flamboyant, abusive and fired former basketball coach of the Indiana Hoosiers. That endorsement was a notable pairing with Trump’s foreign policy speech just a day earlier, wherein he offered vague, belligerent claims, supported by incorrect information. For example, Trump promised that once he is president, ISIS will disappear, “very, very quickly.” Said Trump, “We must as a nation be more unpredictable.”

Yet we now know how Trump will defeat ISIS, thanks to his new endorser (so much for being “unpredictable”). Click on the bottom left corner of the video and you will understand the foreign policy methodology of The Trump Doctrine.

  • * Click through to the link in the text above and listen to the crowd after Knight waxed red-white-and-blue over the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. That should add to your understanding of the people who support Trump. (Note to historian Knight: It happened in 1945, not 1944.)

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA

 


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

Stop Obsessing About the How – v2.0


Reading time – 2:01; Viewing time –   .  .  . 

Last month I explained that challenging the presidential contenders to the throne on how they would accomplish the things they say they will do is folly, but we keep hearing such useless challenges. Indeed, cable news picked up the story from the April 1 interview of Bernie Sanders by the New York Daily News editorial board and somehow found a fatal lack of how-ness in his responses and they obsessed over that.

The Daily News interviewers said to Sanders, ”  .  .  .  you expect to break up [the big banks] within the first year of your administration. What authority do you have to do that? And how would that work? How would you break up JPMorgan Chase?”

Oddly – and this may be news to our cable news obsessers – it just isn’t useful to ask him that, because – BREAKING NEWS! – our presidents are not dictators. They don’t get to wave their hand and have the country “make it so.” What they get to do is to name the things they see as critical and which they will influence to the best of their ability to come about if they’re elected. That’s all they have.


Hillary Clinton tells us on her website that she will reform campaign finance. She has a 3-step program to do that. First, “Overturn Citizens United.” Next, she will “End secret, unaccountable money in politics.” Third, she will “Establish a small-donor matching system to amplify the voices of everyday Americans.” Good ideas. But as president, she wouldn’t be able to do any of that. Presidents don’t get to overturn Supreme Court decisions or make laws. Again, all she would be able to do would be to try to influence those in other parts of government to accomplish those things. That’s it.

Donald Trump tells us that he’s going to build a 1,989 mile long wall along our entire border with Mexico and he’s going to get Mexico to pay for it. Setting aside the belly laughs that are coming from Mexico City, when asked how he will get the Mexican government to pay for it, his most specific answer that is understandable to a normally functioning human being is that he claims he’s a hard negotiator. Here’s what he said:

“Mexico must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages; increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if necessary cancel them); increase fees on all border crossing cards of which we issue about 1 million to Mexican nationals each year (a major source of visa overstays); increase fees on all NAFTA worker visas from Mexico (another major source of overstays); and increase fees at ports of entry to the United States from Mexico. We will not be taken advantage of anymore.”

Don’t be troubled by your inability to understand most of that, because some of it is vapor from Trump’s imagination and the rest are things he cannot do by fiat. Assuming he is serious about doing the things he mentions, he cannot do them – at least not on his own.

There are exceptions, like Bernie Sanders telling us how he would fund tuition at our state universities through a tax on financial transactions. There are other candidates who list some how stuff, too.

For the most part, though, we can examine all the issues detailed by all the candidates, but in fact, there isn’t much to examine. From a practical point of view, the only thing of use to you is that you can get a general idea of how a person thinks, what they believe and the things they want you to believe they will do if they are elected. You get to sort through all of that noise, jettison the stupid stuff and then make your selection.

So, one more time: Stop obsessing about the how.

And pass this along to whatever broadcast or cable news outlet you follow, telling them to chill about the how.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

What If It’s Worse?


Reading time  – 61 seconds; Viewing time  – 2:08  .  .  .

Hanion’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, but don’t rule out malice”. Robert J. Hanion

I’m going around the country and presenting my program, Money, Politics & Democracy: You Aren’t Getting What You Want, and I never get push-back from audiences. Mostly, they tell me that they appreciated my program, that I did a great job and that they didn’t realize things were as awful as they are.

While I appreciate the kudos, I’m mostly struck by their realization of how they personally are being affected by our pay-to-play politics and that they are just beginning to get it. This morning I got chills, as it dawned on me,

What if it’s worse than I thought and I’m just beginning to get it? What if all I’ve been seeing is the tip of the iceberg of our legalized system of political bribery?

What I know is that freshman legislators are instructed by the RNC and the DNC to spend 4 hours a day dialing for dollars and another hour or two daily pressing the flesh of big donors.

What I know is that industries that invest a lot of money in our legislators get favored in our laws and regulations.

What I know is that you and I are not getting:

  • – the gun safety legislation we want
  • – the legislation to deal with global warming that we want
  • – the healthcare service delivery and outcomes we want
  • – the student debt reform we want
  • – the job training and job growth we want
  • – the reform of our prison-industrial complex that we want
  • – the voting rights we want
  • – the lead-free drinking water we want

And that’s just a small sampling of the list of things that we Americans overwhelmingly want and are not getting. It’s all because our pay-to-play politics makes otherwise good people in Congress vote contrary to the desires of we the people.

Vote for the reformers.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


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

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