Manipulation

Babble, Rinse, Repeat


HillaryReading time – 36 seconds  .  .  .

An open message to Hillary:

This just isn’t working. Pretending that email-gate is laughable or of no consequence makes it look like you’re being flippant about national security. That’s making red meat Republicans absolutely giddy over the scent of scandal in their flaring nostrils. It’s also making solid Democrats and Independents uneasy and your poll numbers show it.

To be sure, this is the latest in a multi-decade series of Republican witch hunts. These are attempts to smear anyone with the name of Clinton with anything that looks, sounds, smells or might remotely seem as though it is somehow bad and then keeping it in public view until people think it’s real. The difference this time is that it looks like there could be some “there” there.

Bill has an amazing facility for getting himself into complex and self-defeating situations and somehow saving himself from disaster. And he has the charisma thing going for him, so that after his disaster avoidance magic he somehow still holds remarkably high approval ratings. He shares that with Ronald Reagan, the “Teflon president.”

You don’t. You don’t have that mastery of the disaster dance and you don’t have the public charisma. That’s why your babble, rinse, repeat about the email server in your house and those possibly classified emails that might have been a national security breach just doesn’t work. It’s making happy Republicans and unhappy Democrats.

Start talking sense and being accountable.

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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.

ACTION STEP: 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.

Advice From Marvin


Marvin GayeReading time – 26 seconds  .  .  .

This is amazingly good. The current Quinnipiac Poll shows that only 28% of Americans approve the Iran nuclear deal, while 57% oppose it. That means that 85% of Americans have read the 159 page, very technical document and have considered its provisions and the likely consequences. They have conversed with people of both similar and differing views and formed their well thought out opinions on this issue of critical importance to our country. Hooray for our well-informed and involved public!

What’s that you say? You didn’t read the agreement? And you don’t so much as know of anyone who did? And neither does anyone else? If that’s true, how come 85% of us have such clear, firm views about it?

The answer, of course, is simple: We’ve been fed a fire hydrant flow of misinformation by political blatherers who created their opposition long before they knew a thing about the provisions of the agreement.They have formed organizations with fear stoking names, like Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran and American Security Initiative in order to bend your brain to their liking, which is to dislike with mindless consistency everything proposed by this administration. Once again we are being fed Big Lie propaganda designed for the benefit of a few rich guys and with no concern for the welfare of the country.

Marvin Gaye gave us some good advice for this situation in his song Heard It Through The Grapevine:

“People say believe half of what you see,

some or none of what you hear.”

When you’re listening to political mouthpieces, I recommend following Marvin’s direction.

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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.

ACTION STEP: 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.

Gaseous


Cassius Clay, aka Muhammed Ali

Cassius Clay, aka Muhammed Ali

Reading time – 109 seconds  .  .  .

Cassius Clay renamed himself Muhammed Ali shortly after becoming the boxing heavyweight champion of the world in 1964. He was known for his speed, his agility and for the prolific and colorful nature of his speech. He was dubbed “Gaseous Cassius” by the press, but the public enjoyed his remarkable presentation. And he was black, a Muslim and he refused to participate in the establishment’s war, so he gave the haters many opportunities to show off their skills. Remarkably, he never returned their hatred. During his public decades he was always a class act, regardless of one’s views of his bombast.

Sadly and destructively, our politics hasn’t had that same class for a long time. Perhaps ’twas ever thus, but it has been much more in evidence for many years, certainly since the Republicans decided that scorched earth was their best strategy. They have made fear, hatred and sheer meanness their tools to achieve power and have consistently appealed to the worst in us.

Doubt that? Donald Trump is all about demonizing, hating and meanness. Amazingly,  one-quarter of Republican voters now favor him to be their presidential candidate for 2016 and he is the personification of exactly the fear, hate and meanness that Republicans have been practicing for decades. He is also the poster boy for the fact-less spraying of of idiotic slurs.

Other examples: George W. Bush knocked John McCain out of the Republican primaries in 2000 by questioning his patriotism, just as he did with war hero and triple amputee, former Senator Max Cleland (D-GA). He did the same to former senator (D-MA), now Secretary of State John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004.

And it’s not just Trump and Bush who have appealed to fear, hate and meanness. It’s the birthers and the fools now criticizing the Iran nuclear deal, the stupid and fact-devoid attacks on the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and the dozens of substance-free congressional hearings and investigations into the Benghazi incident. It’s former Representative Darryl Issa (R-CA) refusing to allow any woman to testify about reproductive rights and former Vice-President Dick Cheney, who continues to this day his baseless WMD accusation, as well as former national security adviser Condoleeza Rice and her imaginary mushroom cloud.

Gasseous

Gaseous

All of that and more is at the heart of Republican strategy. Read Timothy Egan’s column in the July 26 New York Times article, Trump Is the Poison His Party Concocted. The only difference for Republicans now is that their own poison strategy is being used by Trump on them. Oddly, they don’t seem to like that.

That Trump is gaseous is self-evident. That he and his Republican cohorts do it without class is equally self-evident.

Blog Bonus: Here is a special quote for our politicians who haven’t grown beyond the narrow-minded notions they had when they were 19 years old:

“Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.”

                                                                                                                Ayn Rand

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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.

ACTION STEP: 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.

Education


Iran DealReading time – 53 seconds  .  .  .

Robert Dold (R-IL) represents the 10th congressional district of Illinois and it is quite obvious that he not only took a speed reading course, but he may have invented a hyper-eyeball version of it. I say that because he delivered a blistering rejection of the Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a 159-page document, on the floor of the House of Representatives mere minutes after it was released. As you know from reading this column, Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) verbally blasted the agreement on Morning Joe on MSNBC immediately after it was announced. How do these guys absorb so much complex material instantaneously?

Of course, the answer is that they don’t. What they do is to prepare in advance carefully worded, vacuous attacks for the purpose of their own self-interest and especially in order to ensure the goal named by the 15 Republicans who met the night President Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009 – that he would be a one-term president. Oh, wait – that didn’t turn out too well for them. Regardless, the tactic of opposing anything President Obama supports, the strategy decided by the 15, is still in play, the needs and best interests of America be damned.

The point is that a lot of Rs are slinging partisan red meat into the cages of their “base.” I love that term, as though it forms some kind of foundation. Its true identity is a bunch of knuckle-dragging angry guys who believed Ronald Reagan when he told them that government is the cause of the problems in their lives and who fondly remember good old days which actually never happened.

Don’t bother yourself with the noise of the hyperbolic rhetoric of bloviating politicians. Instead, listen to this podcast from the Wilson Center and consider what a group of well-informed and thoughtful people have to say about the Iran deal. If you’re feeling ambitious, read the deal yourself and make up your own mind. Free yourself from Washington bumper sticker talking points and doomsday idiocy crafted for election season.

This is all about your own education about one of the most important international agreements of the past 50 years, one destined to have critical long term impact for the United States and the world.

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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.

ACTION STEP: 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.

Knee Jerks


Knee prepared to jerk

Knee prepared to jerk

Reading time – 42 seconds  .  .  . 

New York, July 14, 2015 – These exchanges took place on the Morning Joe program on MSNBC just moments after a deal between 6 countries and Iran to prevent nuclear proliferation had been announced and before anyone other than the negotiating parties knew its terms.

Mika Brzezinski: “Senator Lindsey Graham, have you seen the deal?”

S. Graham (R SC): “Ah, no.”

Seconds later he continued:

S. Graham: “We’ve ensured that [Iran will] become a nuclear nation, ensured that there will be a nuclear arms race  .  .  . You have created a possible death sentence for Israel  .  .  .  This is a virtual declaration of war against Sunni Arabs.”

Later on the same TV program  .  .  .

Joe Scarborough: “Senator [Tom Cotton, R-AR]*, you obviously heard the president’s speech. What’s your initial reaction?”

S. Cotton: “Joe, this proposed deal is a terrible, dangerous mistake that’s going to pave the path for Iran to get a nuclear weapon, while also giving them tens of billions of dollars of sanctions relief, even lifting the arms embargo at a time when they’re destabilizing the entire middle-east  .  .  .”

JS: “Does [the aggressive inspection regime] satisfy your concerns about inspections?”

S. Cotton: “No, Joe .  .  .  They will have weeks to delay, they’ll be able to decide which sites that we inspect .  .  .”

It’s most impressive that these men along with so many other Republicans seem to be clairvoyant, in that somehow they see all the danger embedded into an arms limitation agreement that they haven’t read and about which they are totally ignorant.

Actually, it is far more than sad that they have a knee-jerk rejection to anything President Obama supports and that they justify their rejections with fabricated facts. The reason it is more than sad is that they are willing – even eager – to counter the president even if their self-serving behavior leads to another avoidable war. They prefer dead soldiers and a plundered American treasury over resolving differences through diplomacy if diplomacy might give the president a “win.”

These knee jerks could reasonably be accused of treason.

* Senator Tom Cotton is the author of the letter signed by 47 Republican senators sent to the leaders of Iran. It indirectly instructed the Iranian leaders not to trust the President of the United States. That could reasonably be called treasonous, too.

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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.

ACTION STEP: 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.

I Can’t Believe I’m Writing This


TrumpReading time – 57 seconds  .  .  .

I’m bugging myself by writing this, as it is yet more free attention for Donald Trump. He doesn’t deserve it, but our national dysfunction does. So, Mr. Crazy Hair, here it comes.

First, read this. It is an excellent essay by marketing genius Bruce Terkel. He’s a frequent guest on FoxSnooze, so, while I don’t know Bruce’s politics, it’s clear that many on the right hear his views and likely not so many on the left. His view on self-promoting, dishonest Donald are worthy of your review, though, regardless of your political hue.

Meanwhile, my addition to the discussion is about how disconnected most Americans are, such that they have any interest in Donald Trump and his manipulation of public attention. Nobody – and I mean that in the absolute sense – should be paying him any attention, because he is nothing but a bad circus sideshow barker enticing people to a freak show. That people pay to get into Trump’s sideshow tent says more about their lack of seriousness about our very serious challenges than it does about Trump’s value. Sadly, our big media rushes its reporters and cameras into that tent and tells us that what they’ve found is breaking news. Cue the dramatic music and serious faces of TV anchor people.

So, big media, grow up. Put on your big boy and big girl pants and start behaving like adults. Cover the real news. Stop pandering to just plain stupid sensationalism.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

And, American voter, wake up and heed the words of Thomas Jefferson:

“An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight.”

Pay attention to the real news, because we have real challenges that require “an enlightened citizenry.” Stop allowing yourself to be sucked into the brainless vortex of useless sensationalism.

Does that apply to you? Almost certainly not, because you make sure that you’re informed. You’re interested enough to read this blog. But you know people to whom this does apply. Now you have the tools. Give ’em a wake up by passing along this blog.

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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.

ACTION STEP: 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.

Far Too Much Love


Reading time – 64 seconds  .  .  .

Concord, New Hampsire, June 26, 2015

Seventeen announced and presumptive Republican presidential candidates for the 2016 election, all campaigning in New Hampshire today, hastily called a press conference in response to the Supreme Court decision legalizing same sex marriage throughout America. Surrounded by the presidential wannabees, Mike Huckabee spoke from prepared text, saying,

“I’m speaking for all of us when I say that this is a very sad day for America. Everyone knows that there is far too much love in America and this airhead ruling by the Supreme Court that makes same sex marriage legal in all 50 states threatens to expand what already has flooded our land. And the story is even worse than that.

“We all agree that it’s sad that those nine people were gunned down in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, but now some southern states are talking about getting rid of the Confederate battle flag. That flag was created and hoisted up the capitol flag posts as honorable resistance to the menace to the United States made by the civil rights movement and in honor of the Confederate dead in the War of Northern Aggression. We were just keeping their memories alive and it had nothing to do with slavery. No, really. The very suggestion of allowing full citizenship of those people now smacks of – what? – maybe respect? It’s just too much.

“Now we may be on the brink of getting ready to think about possibly preparing to have a tentative conversation about immigration – immigrants! – as though there might be room in this country for those people. That would be a horrendous abdication of our centuries old superiority over other people. How can we tolerate dropping that and allowing some liberal wave to drown our red, white and blue conservative bones?

“Perhaps it is time for term limits for our Supreme Court justices. It might even be time to begin impeachment proceedings against a few of them.

“I say again, there is far too much love in America and we are on a slippery slope toward destruction of what we hold dear. It is time to stand strong against this invasion, this attack on our establishment.”

With that the presidential candidates left the room, refusing to take reporters’ questions, although Donald Trump was heard to say that this issue is “huge.” In reply, Rick Perry admitted that he didn’t know what the issue is.

Note: The above is satire. However, Huckabee actually did lose it following the Supreme Court decision. Read about his brainless rejection of the First Amendment here.

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Addendum

Writing for the majority in the same sex marriage case (officially Obergefell v. Hodges – right side of the SCOTUS home page under Recent Decisions), here are the closing comments of Justice Anthony Kennedy:

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the  highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

“The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

“It is so ordered.”

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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.

ACTION STEP: 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.

Butch


"Rooster04 adjusted" by User:Fir0002 - Uploaded by Didactohedron. Licensed under GFDL 1.2 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rooster04_adjusted.jpg#/media/File:Rooster04_adjusted.jpg

Photo credit: “Rooster04 adjusted” by User:Fir0002 – Uploaded by Didactohedron. Licensed under GFDL 1.2 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rooster04_adjusted.jpg#/media/File:Rooster04_adjusted.jpg

Reading time – 41 seconds  .  .  .

Thanks to reader JL for forwarding this cautionary tale.

Sarah was in the fertilized egg business. She had several hundred young pullets and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs. She kept records and any rooster not performing was replaced and then went into the soup pot.

This took a lot of time, so she bought some tiny bells and attached them to her roosters. Each bell had a different tone, so she could tell from a distance which rooster was performing. Now, she could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.

Sarah’s favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but this morning she noticed old Butch’s bell hadn’t rung at all. When she went to investigate, she saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.

To Sarah’s amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn’t ring. He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job, and walk on to the next one.

Sarah was so proud of old Butch that she entered him in the Fouritch Competition and he became an instantaneous sensation among the judges. The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the “No Bell Piece Prize,” they also awarded him the “Pulletsurprise” as well.

Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making. Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most coveted awards by sneaking up on the unsuspecting populace and screwing them when they weren’t paying attention?

Vote carefully in the next election. You can’t always hear the bells.

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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.

ACTION STEP: 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.

501c(4) Organizations and You


IRS BuildingReading time – 59 seconds  .  .  .

There is a really good reason why we give tax exempt status to charitable institutions: we as a nation have decided that we want to ease the way for organizations whose sole purpose is to do good for our needy and make it attractive for citizens to support these organizations.

There is a really good reason why most of our educational institutions are not taxed: we as a nation have decided that education is a really good thing and we want to support and encourage the education of our kids.

There are museums, hospitals and many more kinds of organizations that are tax exempt because their sole purpose is to do good for all of us. Our laws are structured to protect that do-gooding and they are strictly enforced, right? Turns out, not so much.

For example, Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS is a 501c(4) organization, so by IRS definition its raison d’être is to operate exclusively for the promotion of social welfare. But Crossroads GPS spent nearly $71 million “electioneering” during the 2012 general election cycle. That’s money that was spent primarily on negative TV and radio ads designed to trash opponents of candidates whom Rove’s contributors supported. What seems to be missing from their actions is any social welfare, even as Crossroads GPS is exempt from federal tax.

And that’s just Rove’s 501c(4). There are many more 501(c) organizations enjoying tax avoidance benefits, all the while flaunting the law. And the story gets worse.

Donors to 501c(4) organizations can remain anonymous. That means that you and I don’t know who is contributing millions of dollars to these secret organizations and using their money to construct a government that is, let’s say, “friendly” to them.

All of that comes to us courtesy of the lame-brained Supreme Court decision that was crammed by Chief Justice John Roberts into a case that had nothing to do with political contributions, expenditures by non-profit organizations or public do-gooding. The distorted finding of the Citizens United case legitimized rule by the rich and remains one of the most democracy killing actions in U.S. history.

How’s that working 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.

ACTION STEP: 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.

Fear Mongering


President George W. Bush at the Cincinnati Museum Terminal, October 7, 2002, claiming Iraq had WMDs and Saddam was in partnership with al Qaeda
President George W. Bush at the Cincinnati Museum Terminal, October 7, 2002, falsely claiming Iraq had WMDs and that Saddam Hussein was in partnership with al Qaeda

Note: On Friday there was an error in the link from the email notification of this blog to the blog itself. Apologies for the mistake and thanks to all who sent a heads-up that the link didn’t work. JA

Reading time – 17 seconds  .  .  .

I’ve been wondering and worrying for many years about the enormous rise in worldwide fear and anger. The world seems so much more polarized today, more us-versus-them. What is driving that?

Today I got a piece of the answer via this essay on the Daily Kos. The short answer is that for years our government and political mouthpieces manipulated us by means of fear. They made sure we stayed scared by flashing in our faces the idiotic color-coded threat levels, by telling us to line our windows with duct tape and by warning us to scan airplanes for bad guys. And they did it with outright lies.

Fear mongering was and still is being used as a propaganda tool. And don’t think for a minute that you’re somehow immune to this sick use of power, because it doesn’t work that way.Goebbels

Just click through and read the essay. Do it now and you will understand. And you won’t like what you read because it is so – what’s the word? – Goebbels.

Be sure to give some thought to exactly who benefits from the fear mongering. It isn’t 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.

ACTION STEP: 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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