Leadership

Hogs and Bread


RJoni Ernsteading time – 51 seconds

Freshman Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) delivered one of five Republican responses to the President’s State of the Union address on January 20, 2015, and it’s a good thing she did. Mitch McConnell told us that she was the perfect person to deliver the establishment Republican rebuttal and, clearly, he was right.

Bear in mind that this is the same woman who campaigned vigorously to win her Senate seat and convinced Iowans that she has the necessary experience for that job by reminding them that she grew up castrating hogs. See the connection?

Okay, no you don’t because there isn’t one. It appears that she was trying to show herself as “just plain folks,” someone Iowans, overwhelmingly farmers and ranchers, could relate to. Don’t you want someone like to you represent you in the Senate? Of course you do, and so do Iowans. So they sent the Iowa Castrater-in-Chief to Washington, bringing along all the legislative and leadership abilities her well established personal skills imply.

In her perfect-person-to-deliver-the-Republican-rebuttal function, she continued to help us to relate to her by telling us that in growing up she only had one good pair of shoes and that Mom would tie bread wrappers around her shoes and ankles during wet weather to protect her footwear. That leaves us with an unusual visual of her in the hog pen while wearing bread wrappers.

After that she told us that the Keystone Pipeline project is a jobs bill – she actually called it “the Keystone jobs bill” – never mentioning that it is an oil pipeline proposal designed solely to benefit a Canadian oil company. She failed to acknowledge that the plan is for all the oil to be exported from our Gulf Coast, so it will never provide for American energy needs. She also failed to mention that at most there would only be 35 permanent jobs created by this “jobs bill.”Wonder Bread

That’s what you get when the perfect person to deliver the establishment Republican rebuttal is a person whose qualifications are that she castrated hogs and wore bread wrappers on her feet.

For more on Sen. Ernst, read Andy Borowitz’s satire here. (Thanks to FL for pointing me to Borowitz.)

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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. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Piñatas


Ed. note: Please help – see the note below and pass this along so that we make the kind of difference that needs to be made. America thanks you.

Reading time – 41 seconds  .  .  .

There they stand, the hopeful – hopeless? – wielders of sticks, lurching and whacking at the piñatas of political issues, wishing that their mighty blows will crack open and let drop at their feet an action figure costume. They believe that costume will grant them unlimited power and control and that the Oval Office will magically be theirs.

Say hello to today’s pretenders to the throne in 2016. And pay special attention to their ultra-crafty remaking of themselves, frequently in perfect contradiction (“to say against”) of other intentionally misleading, ultra-crafty things they’ve said to some different audience. Perhaps they believe that recording devices have not yet been invented. More likely, though, they believe we are too ignorant, lazy or stupid to notice. But notice we will, as the fact checkers have their way and the action figure costumes fall apart, revealing the disingenuous self-promoter beneath who doesn’t want to serve, but only to denigrate, bully and line others’ pockets with cash at your expense.

The whacking at piñatas would be humorous and entertaining, were it not for the destruction it causes.

The key as you endure the inane political rhetoric of this hyper-extended (make that “never-ending”) election season is that nearly all of the blather is about the self-serving candidates, never about you nor about America except in some childish idealistic or apocalyptically frightening way. Our job is to find one who speaks to our circumstances and to the betterment of America. If you and I fail in this we will be kicking The Dream to the gutter for a sackful of nothing and relegating America to suffer a self-deluded figurehead and all the abandonment of the American people that implies.

Get up and get active.

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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. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Usefulness of a Scalise Apology


What does this man actually believe?

What does this man actually believe?

Ed. note: Please help – see the note below and pass this along so that we make the kind of difference that needs to be made. America thanks you.

Reading time – 33 seconds  .  .  .

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) has been busted for having presented to a conference hosted by the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (or EURO), a white supremacist organization led by David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

(Snarky parenthetical note: Could there be a more stupid title than “grand wizard”? Would that make the grand wizard’s followers weenie wizards? Do they holster their magic wands when they enter the Dungeon of Hate? Back to Scalise and EURO)

This is a group, the members of which, are all warm and fuzzy for white people of European extraction – except Jews, whom they hate. They hate blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Central and South Americans. They only like white, Euro-Americans. Did I mention that they are led by David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan? Does it seem inappropriate to you that a representative in Congress might address such an organization, thus implying its legitimacy?

That’s how it seems to Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who is calling for Scalise to apologize for his address to that racist, bigoted group in 2002. Lewis misses the point.

While an apology might be nice, it isn’t useful moving forward because right now we are left to speculate about Scalise’s current beliefs and what they might mean for the people of the United States. What we really need is for Scalise to declare his true beliefs. We need to hear him state unequivocally that he is not a racist or bigot, that he believes that all men are created equal and that all deserve equal treatment, protections and opportunity. We need him to declare abhorrent and repugnant any form of bigotry and any type of discrimination. We need to hear him say – from the heart – that he rejects all of David Duke’s hateful principles.

After that, an apology such as that called for by Rep. Lewis might be believable. Maybe.

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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. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

We Had No Choice


Ed. note: Please help – see the note below and pass this along so that we make the kind of difference that needs to be made. America thanks you.

Reading time – 57 seconds  .  .  . 

“We have no choice,” said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zyhri in rejecting a cease fire proposal. Hamas had been launching rockets into Israel for years and nothing, it seemed, got the Israelis’ attention in the same way. Certainly, a cease fire wouldn’t help make the Israelis do what Hamas wanted. What else could they do but continue to fire rockets into Israeli cities? They had no choice.

Saddam Hussein was a really bad guy, President Bush told us. He killed his own people and was interfering with the work of the UN weapons inspectors as they searched for weapons of mass destruction. Condoleeza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, presumably speaking for the president, told us that, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” We had no choice but to invade.

And we had no choice but to bail out the big banks and refuse to prosecute the perps.

And we had no choice but to torture prisoners.

That’s the phrase people use so very often to explain their actions. Somehow, it seems, they were backed into a corner from which there was only one course of action.

Oddly, the facts suggest that sometimes there are alternatives other than the absolutes that are brainlessly invoked. Sometimes life and death hang in the balance awaiting our more thoughtful, wise judgment. Too bad the leadership in the House of Representatives can’t figure out such things and instead constantly regurgitates the non-scandals of Benghazi, IRS-gate and Obamacare. Too bad they have no choice. The new Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has told us that he intends to regurgitate those issues in the Senate, too. Apparently, he has no choice, either, any more than Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) saw any choice other than shutting down the government and making innocents suffer.

The next time you hear someone invoke, “We had no choice” to explain their actions, I invite you to consider a new meaning for that sentence: It is an admission of a complete failure of diplomacy, negotiation, thoughtfulness, creativity wisdom and leadership. It is the abject failure of the very things our leaders are supposed to do, practices in which they are supposed to excel. It is incompetence run amok.

We need better than that.

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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. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Every Life is Precious


Reading time – 71 seconds  .  .  .

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal  .  .  .” My life is precious and if we’re all created equal, then all lives are precious. It’s a simple syllogism and we all believe it. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Really?The Nation Tweet

The city of New York officially observed several minutes of silence starting at 2:07PM on December 23, 2014 for Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, cops assassinated in Brooklyn, NY by a mentally ill man with a gun. They also dimmed the lights of Christmas trees in New York for five minutes starting at 9:00PM that night, this, too, in honor of those slain officers. Oddly, the city did not similarly honor Eric Garner, who was choked to death by a gang of New York City cops and whom the New York City paramedics didn’t so much as touch, much less try to resuscitate. Perhaps we have a sliding scale of preciousness.

Back in the days when Chevy Chase did the Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live!, one bit went roughly like this:

“This just in: A Japan Airlines 747 crashed on takeoff from Tokyo International Airport, killing all 379 passengers and crew. But it’s okay, because there were no Americans on board.”

It’s always a relief when it isn’t us, as when we find that the fire trucks are parked at someone else’s house or that the tsunami struck half-way around the world. While we care about the suffering of the relatives of the 747 crash victims and the people living where the fire trucks are parked and the survivors of the tsunami, the farther away from us geographically and relationally, the less invested we human critters tend to be – the less precious those lives seem to be to us. That’s why those television commercials imploring us to donate money to help malnourished, pathology stricken children are so graphic and have that wailing music playing in the background. It’s what it takes to get through to us.

So, to be accurate, we don’t care to the same extent about every life until we can at least relate in a personal way or imagine ourselves in similar circumstances. For any of us to be moved to action we have to feel it – the preciousness of life – maybe our own – and that presents us with a challenge that we must overcome if America is to solve its problems.

So many young people today are disinterested in current affairs and tune in only to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for their news, and then really only for the humor. A tiny fraction of them vote, even as many of our elected officials act for self-aggrandizement instead of for the benefit of those same disinterested young people. Their preciousness seems to be less important to elected officials than it should be and that puts our next generation at risk.

We’re not going to change human nature, so young people today who are disinterested in current affairs are going to stay that way unless something precious to them is at risk, like themselves. Likely it’s opaque to them how today’s affairs dramatically and sometimes diabolically limit their future lives. But they will run this place in just a few short years, so it falls to us to figure out how to get through to them so that they feel it enough to take action.

We must do that because every life is precious, including the lives of people who will inherit what we leave to them and who don’t yet feel the peril that’s right around the corner.

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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. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

An Open Letter To . . .


Reading time – 32 seconds  .  .  .

.  .  .  our lip-flapping, self-serving senators and representatives

Caution: Contains snark. Sensitive readers should man up.

___________________________________________________

Let me say with all due respect and appropriate decorum that:

– Pretending that continuing to refuse to have relations with Cuba enhances American security is idiotic.

– Treating Cuba differently than we treat any other repressive regime has completely failed to influence Cuba to change any of its policies and hoping otherwise is folly. Get over it.

– Refusing to have diplomatic relations with any country (i.e. refusing to be in dialogue) ensures that nothing good will happen.

– Limiting Cuban cigar imports to what is smuggled into America and believing that will pummel the Castros into submission is brainless.

– Treating Cuba as though it is still a Soviet satellite state suggests you’ve had complete amnesia for the past 25 years.

– Continuing a policy that has so obviously and consistently failed will not cause things to get better. (Note to legislators: Slapping your forehead and exclaiming “Duh!” right now is appropriate.)

– Having a hissy fit over at last having a dialogue with Raul Castro is grandstanding, self-serving politics that abdicates your responsibilities to the American people.

Special note for Sen. Marco Rubio (R. – Moon): Your pretty face doesn’t imply any mental ability or even common sense. Grow up. Learn something before it’s too late.

End of open letter.

Action Alert to readers: When you hear anyone in Congress telling you that the sky is falling now that President Obama has had the courage to do what generations of presidents before him should have done, change the channel, turn the page or click the “Off” button immediately. Then pass this message along to those you love and respect as an act of compassion, because nobody should have to listen to that drivel.

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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. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Poison Pills


Reading time 49 seconds  .  .  .  .

We the People paid for all the losses (and far more) from the big banks having gambled with government guaranteed funds and plunged us into a recession from which we may never fully recover. Of course, we are wanting to ensure that such a thing will never happen again, so naturally our legislators, those in the People’s House whom we elected to represent us, are out front leading the battle to protect against funding the banks’ gambling addiction, right? Any governmental protection for those banks from their gambling losses would be a legislative poison pill to our representatives because they represent you, right?

Wrong and wrong. The House of Representatives passed a budget bill that ensures that you foot the bill the next time Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, gambles and loses.

And don’t think that it’s just those corrupt, bought-by-big-business Republicans ensuring a banking free pass. 57 Democrats voted for that idiotic budget, too. That’s how deep Big Money reptilian fangs are embedded into the neck of your country.

The four biggest banks handle 90% of all derivative action, so this damnable banking amendment to the budget is not designed to protect the thousands of mom and pop banks in America. This amendment is solely for the benefit of those four hideously large special boys who are too big to fail and which we ensured with wimpy Dodd-Frank legislation will continue to be too big to fail.

Too many of our legislators are focused on their own short term self-interest and that is inextricably tied to the interests of Big Money. Unless you’re a member of that club, a majority of our legislators don’t hear a word you’re saying. And that should be a poison pill for you.

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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. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Mojo


Reading time – 51 seconds  .  .  .

This week President Obama declared an executive action that redirects our immigration people so that about 40% of our undocumented residents need no longer fear deportation. Families get to stay together. American children will no longer have to fear that they will come home from school to find that mom and dad are gone forever. Some of these people might even stop being exploited by nefarious employers.

The President telegraphed the importance of this issue starting when he was a state senator in Illinois. For years he has been telling Republicans in Congress that they must take action on immigration reform or that he will. He’s stated that promise repeatedly for over 500 days, ever since the Senate passed an immigration bill and sent it to Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Obstruction) for consideration in the House. Boehner is still sitting on that bill, refusing to bring it to the floor of the House for a vote. And can you believe that guy – the President? He went and did what he said he would do. He signed an executive order reforming the parts of our broken immigration system on which he has the authority to take action.

And the Republicans had a brain inversion for 24 hours, claiming his action did everything from grant amnesty to criminals to infecting everyone in America with both Ebola and Benghazi fever. (That’s a Republican-crafted disease invented by Darryl Issa (R-Meanie) which causes complete issue amnesia, such that everything has to be investigated forever.) And within 24 hours the Republicans shut up, because President Obama has the high ground on immigration and the Republicans look like jerks. They set themselves up in the clown suit suspended over the tank of water and the President obliged them by pitching a perfect strike into the triggering mechanism.

This is what leadership looks like. It is about taking a stand on the right side of the tough issues. It is about doing what can be done and setting aside whining because things are hard or can’t be made to be perfect.

This is President Obama’s last rodeo. He’s off the bucking bronco in just over two years. Do you want to see him go out in a blaze of legacy-creating, lasting glory? Encourage him to continue to lead boldly. Let him know that you respect him most when he answers the call of his own mojo. That is what you hired him to do.

For more on the frequency of presidential executive orders, have a look at this chart. Hint: No president has issued fewer executive orders than President Obama since Grover Cleveland in the late 1800s.

For a discussion on whether President Obama’s executive order on immigration is legal, read this short article.

Thanks to SDA for the references.

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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. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Math


Reading time – 41seconds . . .

About 1/3 of registered voters cast ballots in the last election. That’s about as good as it gets in a non-presidential year. Let’s see what that means to you and me and all Americans.

Since most elections are decided by just a few percentage points, that means that just over half of the ballots cast were for the winner, so approximately 18% of all registered voters determined the victors. Yes, that’s right: Just 18% of all registered voters decided for the rest of us, registered or not, who will hold power. And the story gets crazier.

People over the age of 50 vote in higher percentages than any other age group. More specifically, whites over 50 show up. And while there are considerably more white women than white men, the men show up in higher numbers. People who are members of minority groups vote in a low percentages and poor people don’t show up at all.

So, what the math says is that a small bunch of old white guys decided who will be in charge in Washington and in our state capitols. Is that okay with you? Do you know any poor or minority people? If so, ask them if that math is okay with them. Because old white guys are getting what they want, but the rest of us aren’t.

And lest you think that’s as bad as it gets, think again. The big money bad kids broadcast lies, false innuendo and blatantly misleading propaganda and they do it incessantly – like Rush Limbaugh proclaiming that President Obama violates the Constitution or that he is going to come and take away your guns or that he was born in Kenya. Like Ted Cruz (R-Mars) talking about President Obama’s “lawlessness.” Like Saint Ronald Reagan railing against “welfare queens” in Chicago (there weren’t and there aren’t any – he just made that up). Of course, they aren’t the only slimers doing the sliming. The Koch brothers, the NRA, the American Petroleum Institute, the RNC and so many more do the same things, lying in order to get what they want. As bad as that is, this gets even worse.

These reality distorters keep beating their “gimme more” drum until the vitriol and falsehoods are familiar to the people who show up at the polls. It’s the Big Lie and ordinary (i.e., non-super rich) Americans fall for it and vote against their own interests.

Well, at least 18% of Americans – old white guys – do. And the rest of us just let that happen.

So, vote on November 1, 2016. Vote in 2018, 2020 and in every election. And bring at least two people to the poles with you. Work in a call center to get out the vote. Go door-to-door in your neighborhood just urging people to vote. Put door hanger reminders on their doors regardless of whether they’re home. If we don’t do our part and our friends and neighbors fail America, it’s partly on our shoulders.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke, Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 – 1797)

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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. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

It’s All About Us


Reading time – 17 seconds  .  .  .

I was recently facilitating workshops at a leadership conference -The Trust Summit – and it was and is all about leadership and trust.

I worked with an advanced group of leaders to explore self-trust, relationship trust and organizational trust and I’m confident that it all begins and is driven by the individual. As Steven Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, puts it, “If you think the problem is out there, that very thought is the problem.”

This conference was conducted by the LGL Leadership team in conjunction with the National Council on Culture & Leadership and it’s as clear as can be that without trust there is no leadership and people hunker down into self-preservation mode and we’re all worse off. Combine that with the findings of the Pew and Gallup organizations that have found that 81 of 100 Americans don’t trust our government and it is easy to understand why we as a nation are mired in paralysis.

We have to trust ourselves and care enough to make change for the better.

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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. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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