Manipulation

Not About You Know Who


no-trump-silouetteReading time – 1:23; Viewing time – 3:01  .  .  .

There is no perfect candidate. There never has been. There never will be.

So, here’s a Dr. Phil prescription for your candidate ennui: Get over it.

On the one hand, Hillary has very real flaws. On the other hand, Hillary’s list of flaws has become far more than misleading; much of it is flat wrong.

  • Three different special prosecutors could find no wrongdoing over her Republican advertised Whitewater “scandal”.
  • Seven Congressional investigations could find no wrongdoing over her Republican advertised Benghazi “scandal”.
  • Nobody could find any connection whatsoever to the Republican advertised connection between Hillary and Vince Foster’s suicide.
  • The FBI could find nothing criminal about Hillary’s private email server.
  • No one has found a connection between Bill Clinton’s philandering and any Hillary “scandal”.
  • There is no evidence that contributions to The Clinton Foundation while Clinton was Secretary of State resulted in anything of any benefit whatsoever to contributors.

This list could go on for pages, but you get the idea. The right wing foaming mouth babblers have continued to promote Hillary scandals, even as they have been proven false again and again.

Have a look at this piece from the Wall Street Journal about Hillary-Hatred Derangement Syndrome. More importantly, read some of the comments that follow the article, because they are the most instructive. You’ll see assumptions of criminal guilt, treason, and accusations that Hillary promotes cop killing (“If you want dead cops, vote for Hillary.”). One calls Hillary Evita, saying that he wouldn’t vote for her because of, “.  .  .  her collusion to place Israel in Iran’s nuclear cross hairs.” Another writes, “Clinton is corrupt to the core and belongs in jail, not in the White House.”

That last – belongs in jail – for what? The private email server was dumb, bad, irresponsible and all the other things James Comey said it was. Accepting large foundation contributions while she was Secretary of State is bad optics for sure. But criminal and she “belongs in jail”? If that’s what you want to see, then that’s what you will see. And the Derangement crowd is fixed on that vision. For that matter, though, get over the stars in your eyes for Hillary, if that’s what you see.

There is no perfect candidate. Sadly, all are flawed human beings and we are saddled with the miserable job of picking the best (or least worst) of the lot. The only alternative is despotism. The divine right of kings. Dictators. Want that?

If not, get over Hillary-Hatred Derangement Syndrome. She’s an imperfect human being and an imperfect candidate. On the other hand, she won’t start World War III.

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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 and engage.  Thanks!  JA


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

Trump Debate Bingo


Reading time – 87 seconds; Viewing time – 2:42  .  .  .

In a snappy article in the New York Times cleverly entitled, A Week of Whoppers From Donald Trump, authors Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns list a single week’s “.  .  .  blizzard of [Trump’s] falsehoods, exaggerations and outright lies  .  .  .” and then debunk them.

After reading the piece it occurred to me that watching the September 26 debate would be more fun if I were to keep track of the false innuendo and bovine fecal matter that dribbles from Trump’s lips  .  .  .  just to record his prevarication score in Bingo-like fashion  .  .  .  to identify which lies he told the most times in just one 90-minute period.

Given that he was to be just one of the two debate participants, he would be limited to about 45 minutes of blatant deceit possibility, minus the time moderator Lester Holt might use for posing questions and suppressing audience reaction. Surely, not even Donald the Deceiver could rack up a high score in so little time, right?

Wrong.

In a debate where I found Donald Trump to be especially incoherent and non-specific, here are the top scoring Trump untruthables according to our crack CYA News staff:

  1. I was against going into the war in Iraq. He said something like that 4 times. Hard to tell because of his meandering, incoherent rhetoric. He said it other ways, too, which if added to the blatant denials of the truth brings the total to about 8 whoppers.
  2. Our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape they’ve ever been in before. He said some form of that approximately two times – sort of. Again, it’s hard to nail this down due to the Trump verbal blizzard of non-sequiturs.
  3. Lots of whoppers vying for third place, like:
    1. ISIS is in more and more places.
    2. I’m all for NATO.
    3. The Iran agreement is one of the great giveaways of all time.
    4. We lose on everything.
    5. “Stop and frisk” wasn’t found to be unconstitutional.

Perhaps things seem hopeless and you feel your sense of dignity and even your sanity assaulted by the Trump blasts of political dishonesty. Well, take heart – there is hope!

Have a look at the newest offering from the Represent.us folks. After watching their highly encouraging video, click through to their website. Then maybe even do something to make things better. I mean, really, that shouldn’t be too hard, since the bar is set so low.

DIRTY STINKING LIES BONUS SECTION:

David Leonhardt heads the New York Times Daily Opinion report and published the following summary of Deceitful Donald’s excursions from reality. There is no link to this in the newspaper, as this material was only offered as the lead article in the email to subscribers immediately following the September 26, 2016 debate.

Dear Times Reader,
He lied about the loan his father once gave him.
He lied about his company’s bankruptcies.
He lied about his federal financial-disclosure forms.
He lied about his endorsements.
He lied about “stop and frisk.”
He lied about “birtherism.”
He lied about New York.
He lied about Michigan and Ohio.
He lied about Palm Beach, Fla.
He lied about Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve.
He lied about the trade deficit.
He lied about Hillary Clinton’s tax plan.
He lied about her child-care plan.
He lied about China devaluing its currency.
He lied about Mexico having the world’s largest factories.
He lied about the United States’s nuclear arsenal.
He lied about NATO’s budget.
He lied about NATO’s terrorism policy.
He lied about ISIS.
He lied about his past position on the Iraq War.
He lied about his past position on the national debt.
He lied about his past position on climate change.
He lied about calling pregnancy an “inconvenience” for employers.
He lied about calling women “pigs.”
He lied about calling women “dogs.”
He lied about calling women “slobs.”
So… who won the debate?
You can sign up for this daily newsletter, containing commentary and links to The Times’s full daily Opinion report, here.
David Leonhardt
Op-Ed Columnist

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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 and engage.  Thanks!  JA


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

About Those Deplorables


false

Click the meter to get the fact-checked story on who started the birther insanity.

Reading time – 1:37 seconds; Viewing time – 2:56  .  .  .

I instantly cringed when I heard Hillary say,

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?”

There is a difference between the act (saying something deplorable) and the person (they are deplorable) and my belief is that to condemn the person is to vilify, and that is a deplorable thing to do. So, I’m forcing myself to read between the lines and make a differentiation.

The polls have shown that a very large percentage of Trump supporters are motivated by some form of hate. The white supremacists are the extreme example, of course, but ordinary Americans with strong biases about race, gender identity, religion and national origin practice”othering” and they say and do, well, deplorable things. Like beating up protesters. My blood boils at the hatred of Trump and his cadre of brownshirts and brownshirt wannabees and I struggle to keep my “reject the action, not the person” mindset. In fact, there, I just failed again with the brownshirt comment.

Separating out these people who expressly promote hate, like David Duke, former Grand Peabrain of the Ku Klux Klan, and Alex Jones, Right Wing Village Idiot (and no, I won’t provide links to these two haters), I think a lot of Trump supporters are in his Kampf for far more benign reasons. They are frustrated at being lied to over and over by elected officials. They are suffering because so many good American jobs have disappeared (Fact: a large percentage of jobs are gone because of automation – off-shoring and bad trade deals aren’t the only boogie men). And they have been fed a steady diet of lies and hate from politicians, telling them that others are the cause of whatever their woes might be, all this in the absence of any facts that might be at least tangentially connected to reality.

All that doesn’t make these people innocent. At the very least they are guilty of allowing themselves to be ignorant. In their black and white world, they refuse to allow for the complexities of the world and foolishly insist on simple answers. And they allow themselves to be led by nothing more substantive than bumper sticker slogans.

And they are getting all of that from Donald Trump.

Stretch yourself, though, to allow that in their heart-of-hearts they love America just as much as you do and that they believe in right over wrong and good over bad. If you can do that, then Stephen King can explain our national obsession with delusion in this way:

the-trust-of-the-innocent

Think about that as you watch the debates.

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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 and engage.  Thanks!  JA


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

It Isn’t About Your Message


Housefly.Reading time – 1:54; Viewing time – 3:17  .  .  .

The 2012 general election generated a lot of forward looking comments from pundits and political operatives, like:

The Republicans will have to change their messaging if they are going to appeal to Latinos.

“Severely conservative” Mitt Romney will have to pivot to the center in order to attract independents.

Republican candidates have to stop saying things like, “A woman’s body has a way of shutting that down [in cases of rape],” and “[Pregnancy from rape] is God’s plan.”

This year those statements are being modified only slightly by saying that Trump will have to change his messaging if he is going to appeal to Latinos and African-Americans. Like Romney, he’ll have to pivot to the center in order to attract independents. He’ll have to stop demeaning women and he’ll  have to refuse to align with hate groups if he is going to attract anyone but the hair-on-fire pissy people (my description, not a quote).

The important point, though, is that all that “how to win elections” word torturing is completely misguided, wrong-headed and even dishonest.  It seems to say that all that matters is the manipulation of the message and of voters.

To which I say, “Nuh-uh.” What is important is not the crafted messaging of an appeal to African-Americans or a pivot to the center or avoiding saying stupid stuff. What is important is what candidates would actually do. And however you dress up Trump’s piggy statements, it’s clear that even with lipstick, he will continue to be a pig and he will do what pigs do.

Charles Blow recently wrote, “Trump is an unfiltered primal scream of the fragility and fear consuming white male America.” Surely, there’s much we can learn from that. More critically, though, Trump’s frivolous comments about the use of nuclear weapons abandons common sense and even survival. In a real crisis, what would he do?

This election is about many things including what’s already been mentioned, as well as voter disenfranchisement, big money poisoning of our politics and the millions of good paying jobs that Congress continues to say “It’s all about” but consistently refuses to take action to improve. It is about these substantive issues and is not about focused-grouped, misleading messages.

TO OUR POLITICAL CANDIDATES (not just Trump) – News flash: It isn’t about your message.You need to understand that Latinos don’t care what you say about immigration reform; they care about what you would do about it. Americans don’t care how you flap your lips about Medicare, Social Security, jobs, climate warming and terrorism; they care about what you would do.

If you’re all about the hot air of your finely honed, misleading messaging, then all you are is a manipulator and we will sniff you out. You may have had your way with us for a while, but if you’ve been dishonest with us, we will swat you like we would an annoying housefly and flick you away.

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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 and engage.  Thanks!  JA


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

America Through the Looking Glass


Antique Looking GlassReading time – 37 seconds; Viewing time – 55 seconds  .  .  .

You’ve heard comments about the multiple Trump bankruptcies and failures, but to really understand you need to read the meaty account of them in Newsweek, Donald Trump’s Many Business Failures, Explained by Kurt Eichenwald. As you read it, keep in mind that Trump has told us repeatedly that he’ll be the greatest president ever because he’s such a great businessman and a winner. Eichenwald’s essay puts the lie to that nonsense.

Trump wants you to believe that he knows things that you don’t know, and he’s right. You don’t understand, for example, that failure is success. You just don’t get that a lie is better than the truth and that innuendo, insult and slander are hallmarks of personal greatness. All of us but Trump missed the fundamental life lesson that fraud is the calling card of great virtue. To any sane person, it’s craziness.

But the true craziness of our time is not Trump and his dishonesty; it is that 30 percent of the American electorate is so enraged that they support him and cheer anything he says that feels like a “f**k you” aimed at others. They are so enraged by all the lies and sellouts over so many years by those in power that they mindlessly latch onto Trump’s permanently raised middle finger.

What have we done?

For a fuller understanding of the Trump alternate universe, take a look at Katy Tur’s piece on the Marie Claire website and you’ll see that life around Trump is life through the looking glass. Can that possibly be good for you or even for Trump’s 30 percent? Could America as we know it survive that?

Thanks go to ABS for the pointer to the Newsweek piece.

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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 and engage.  Thanks!  JA


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

Yooge


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yooge

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yooge

Reading time -122 seconds; Viewing time – 4:04  .  .  .

Now that we’re in the midst of the political conventions and immediately following the Trump narcissist extravaganza, it’s time to do something unusual, to separate from cable blather and give our full attention to reality.

Trump’s 1987 book “The Art of the Deal” was presented as an autobiography by the then-38-year-old Trump. In truth, Tony Schwartz is the ghostwriter who penned every word of it and he has an irreparably guilty conscience now for having done so. His Faustian bargain with Trump and the truth about Trump’s dishonesty are detailed in the July 25, 2016 issue of The New Yorker magazine in a critically important piece by Jane Mayer, author of “Dark Money.” Schwartz tells us that in writing the book, “I put lipstick on a pig.”

You need to read this piece to fully understand:

    1. That Trump really is a sociopath.
    2. That Trump is impulsive and has no attention span.
    3. That, “Lying is second nature to him.” “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.”
    4. That Trump has no regard whatsoever for the people he falsely claims to champion.
    5. That the only thing Trump wants to make great is his public attention. For Trump, it is not and never has been about America.

On that second point Schwartz says, ” .  .  .  that it’s impossible to keep him focused on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes  .  .  . ” His experience with Trump left him with the clarity that Trump has, ” .  .  .  a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance.” Those are really bad personality flaws for someone who is Commander in Chief of the world’s most powerful military. The job of president requires the ability to learn and understand deep and complex issues and all the implications surrounding them. Says Schwartz, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

Regarding Trump’s claim to care about the poor and working people, “In the past seven years, Trump has promised to give millions of dollars to charity, but reporters for the Washington Post found that they could document only ten thousand dollars in donations – and uncovered no direct evidence that Trump made [the promised] charitable contributions from money earned by “The Art of the Deal.”

To illustrate the impact of the last point about public attention, George W. Bush wanted to be seen as a war president. He proceeded to lie us into invading Iraq, which led to ISIS, the Syrian civil war, an unrestrained Iran, terrorist murders around the world and our never-ending Middle-East wars, all because Dubya wanted the public attention and image of war president. And Schwartz tells us, ” .  .  . that Trump seemed driven entirely by a need for public attention.” What do you suppose that sort of personality disorder might mean for our children and grandchildren?

It’s crucial that the American people know and understand the frightening truth about this P.T. Barnum-like charlatan before it’s too late. So send this blog to everyone you know, lefty, centrist or righty, informed or not and tell them to click on the link to Mayer’s article on Schwartz, just as you will. Tell them to read the piece – it’s startling – and then to pass this along to everyone they know. Because this is about reality – actual facts – from the guy who studied Trump like no other and knows the truth about him. We can handle the truth; what we can’t handle is a yooge sociopath in the White House.

So go ahead – do it now before the next hyperbolic news cycle breaks your concentration. And remember – and I mean this literally – we’re all counting on you.

You can watch Tony Schwartz on Bill Maher’s Real Time – RNC Convention Edition here starting at 22:20.

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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.

A Man for Any Season


Seal_of_the_United_States_National_Security_Agency.svgReading time – 2:31; Viewing time – 3:26  .  .  .

In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001 the people of the United States were in the mood for a few things; chief among them was security. Not long afterward President George W. Bush started the National Security Agency’s warrant-less wiretapping program. Bush’s own Justice Department later reported that it could not certify the legality of that program, a euphemistic way of saying that the program was illegal.

The program had a hard stop date of March 11, 2004 and needed a sign-off by the Attorney General in order for the program to continue under the terms of its original authorization. Shortly before the reauthorization deadline, Attorney General John Ashcroft became quite ill with what was diagnosed as gallstone pancreatitis and doctors had removed his gall bladder. He lay in intensive care, a very sick man.

On the night of March 10, 2004, the night before the reauthorization deadline, White House Counsel Alberto R. GoSeal_of_the_United_States_Department_of_Justice.svgnzales (the same legal counsel who had declared that waterboarding was not torture and was, therefore, legal) and President Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr. were on their way to Ashcroft’s intensive care bedside to strong arm him into signing the re-authorization that he had refused to sign prior to becoming ill. Ashcroft’s deputy Attorney General was James Comey, who was acting Attorney General due to Ashcroft’s incapacitation. When Comey learned what was about to happen he rushed to the hospital and prevented the strong arming, while at the same time refusing to sign the re-authorization.

Bush later authorized the illegal surveillance himself and caused it to continue. That was the last straw and Comey and the rest of the top officers in the Attorney General office were prepared to resign en-mass, refusing to be a part of an administration that would subvert the law. Bush then backed off, agreeing to make changes to the program.

400px-US-FBI-ShadedSeal.svgThat is the same James Comey who issued a blistering assessment of the use of private email servers by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and at the same time said that his FBI team found no evidence of criminal intent and recommended that no legal action be taken against Clinton.

This is the same James Comey who stood his ground during the hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as several Republican members attempted to impugn Comey’s integrity, suggesting political considerations bent his judgment and that he allowed for a double standard of justice, one for the Clintons and another for everyone else.

James Comey

FBI Director James Comey

We now seem to have an overabundance of people focused solely on political advantage for themselves, who want to warp the understanding of events into whatever fantasy serves them and whose spines seem to be a bit too flexible. They don’t care whom they trample or how they crush integrity.

In contrast, how refreshing it is to find a man like Comey who stands up, speaks truth to power, saying, “Not on my watch.”

For full details of the 2004 hospital confrontation, read the Washington Post report here.

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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.

Two Shirts


Two ShirtsReading time – 1:39 seconds; Viewing time – 2:47 .  .  .

July 5 – Alton Sterling is shot and killed by Baton Rouge, LA police.

July 6 – Philando Castile is shot and killed by St. Anthony, MN police.

July 7 – An angry sniper – a black man – kills 5 and wounds 7 white Dallas police, as well as wounding at least 2 civilians.

What are we to make of all that? Try this.

Tens of thousands of people participate every year in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. They are committed to preventing and curing breast cancer, so does that mean that these people don’t care about those who suffer from heart disease or diabetes?

The Mothers Against Drunk Driving leaders are singular in their focus, many of them because they have lost someone due to a drunk driver. Does that mean that they think it’s okay to drive stoned?

Tax Increment Financing is a tool used by cities in many countries for the purpose of redevelopment of sub-standard neighborhoods. Does that mean that the mayors of these cities don’t care if other areas fail?

My mother gave me two shirts as a birthday present many years ago. I immediately went to another room to try one on and then returned, only to hear Mom say, “You don’t like the other shirt?”

Clearly, choosing one doesn’t mean the dismissing of another. It isn’t a zero-sum game.

All of which is to say that the lily white criticism of Black Lives Matter, proudly proclaiming that all lives matter, is stupid and, worse, it’s racist. I have yet to hear any spokesperson for Black Lives Matter say or imply that only black lives matter. Their mission is about changing things so that black lives matter as much as every other life.

So, when you hear blabber-mouths complain about the Black Lives Matter movement, hear their words for what they are: an attempt to avoid the very real subject of active racism in America. They are trying to make it look as if whites are the poor victims of blacks who don’t want to get murdered by cops. That’s racism.

In an article for STAT about racism, police brutality and the training of our medical professionals, doctor/author Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu declares that, ”  .  .  .  as a nation we have a crippled conscience.” Perhaps those who complain about Black Lives Matter should get a pair of cultural crutches.

Does this speak to you? Then speak it along to friends & followers – LIke it, Tweet it, LInk it, FB it with a link to http://bit.ly/29RaiPA.

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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.

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.

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.

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