Manipulation

A Political Peace Treaty – Or Not


“The Courage To Be Free” is Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign BS book that he hopes will propel him from his authoritarian throne in Tallahassee to the gold toilet just off the Oval Office that was left by a former extremist president. He tries to scare us, saying that, “The threat to freedom is not limited to the actions of governments, but also includes a lot of aggressive, powerful institutions hellbent on imposing a woke agenda on our country.”

A woke agenda? Imposed? Yikes!

He’s talking about enemies of freedom. Bad guys. ” . . . entrenched elites that have driven our nation into the ground.” They, “control the federal bureaucracy, lobby shops on K Street, corporate media, Big Tech companies and universities.”

Wow! That’s a lot of entrenched elites doing a lot of driving into the ground.

These bad guys, he says, “use undemocratic means to foist everything from environmental, social and governance (E.S.G.) policies on corporations, forcing as well critical race theory on public schools.” It’s, “an attempt to impose ruling class ideology on society.”

Holy smokes! These guys do E.S.G.? In public? And they force CRT on innocent children? And they’re imposing ruling class ideology on society? That sounds awful.

I find myself feeling sorry for DeSantis, wondering if Mommy and Daddy didn’t come to his room when he screamed in the night in fear of the monsters in the closet and the boogeyman under his bed. They left little Ronny in a terror that he never got over.

He has carried his terror and his angry fictions with him all this way and he still sees monsters and boogeymen, but now they aren’t just in the closet and under the bed. Now they’re in classrooms, libraries, in doctors’ offices, in voter registration offices and at Disney World. Indeed, they lie in wait in DC meeting rooms, hiding under conference tables and in the cabinet under the large screen TV where they keep the coffee service. Poor Ronny!

But the thing is that his boogeymen and monsters not only don’t exist, but he is using his fear of these fictions to harm you, to take away your freedom. He’s already taken away voting rights, women’s healthcare, education, books from the library and more. So, you already know some of the harm he could do if he were given the power to attack our entire nation in his childish fight against his night demons. You better make sure that little Ronny DeSantis doesn’t get the key to the room with that gold toilet.

Don’t you think it’s time for our country to end extremist driven political and cultural wars, like DeSantis’ hateful idiocy? Me, too, so here’s my proposal.

Resolved: that all members of all political parties will:
.

– Refrain from all attempts to limit voting rights.

– Nevermore discriminate in any way to limit or marginalize citizens on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, boxers or briefs, N95 masks or knowledge of CRT (if any).

– Never prohibit food or water from being given to citizens waiting in line to vote.

– Never require that schools teach a sanitized, race-blind version of American history to “protect” fragile White children and that they instead tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

– Never attack our democracy in any way.

– Never make vague, groundless accusations, like “entrenched elites that have driven our nation into the ground” and “aggressive, powerful institutions hellbent on imposing a woke agenda on our country,” or any other meaningless and inflammatory stupid stuff.

– Never demonize immigrants or those hoping to be immigrants. That means no replacement theory BS.

– Never emit hateful dog whistles.

– Never forget to take their meds every day so that they have the strength to control the Tourette-like M.S.U. (Make Shit Up) impulse.

– Immediately say, “I’m sorry” when they say something false, rude and mean, because they know that if they don’t say “I’m sorry,” the monsters and the boogeymen will be released from the closet and from under the bed and not even Ghostbusters will be able to stop them from a full assault on decency.

Oh, wait. No need to make this about all members of all political parties, because only Republicans are doing these hateful, stupid things. It’s amazing that people can still be sold magic beans and snake oil claimed to cure all ills.

Only the Republicans have sucked in millions of dollars of PPP money for their corporations, enjoyed debt forgiveness and have now killed student loan forgiveness.

Only the Republicans want to censure and impeach officials for the crime of breathing while being a Democrat. And worse, for doing their jobs.

Only Republicans are cheering Supreme Court decisions that reverse decades of progress, that eliminate rights and attack the foundation of democracy, that open the door to discrimination and religious intolerance and put the lie to the justices’ claim of fidelity to stare decisis.

Only the Republicans are attacking separation of church and state relentlessly.

Only the Republicans are cheering Ronny DeSantis and his boyhood lunacy.

Only the Republicans hate Americans like you.

To quote my friend Ed Gurowitz:

To effect real change, the majority [that’s us] must rebel – not by force of arms but by raising our voices in the media, at the voting booth, and everywhere else. The Right holds its power by lies and deceit. To counter that, the majority [that’s us] must stand up and speak out for the truth.

We’re in a clash not of right versus left, but of right versus wrong, So, it’s rebel or be overrun by forces of anger, hatred, discrimination, lies and deceit.

Political peace treaty? Nah, I don’t think so.

Independence Day Follow-ups

Read Richard Jacobs’ piece, Our Glorious 4th of July Heritage: Keeping It Working for All of Us. You’ll understand that it’s time for each of us to enter the arena.

And have a look at John Pavlovitz’s excellent post, July 4th: Mourning the America We Could Have Had. You’ll grow an enhanced and proper disdain for performance patriotism.

Finally, from Steve Sheffey’s July 2 post:

” .  .  .  make July 4 the day you start actively participating in the democracy we are celebrating by participating in the electoral process. Stop pretending that both parties are the same and stop treating bipartisanship and non-partisanship as virtues. Elections are partisan by nature and design, and the right to hold free and fair elections is what we are celebrating on Tuesday.”

Gotta love that –

“start actively participating in the democracy we are celebrating by participating in the electoral process.”
.

Voting. It’s a good thing.

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

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

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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


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

A Correction and Winning Elections


Correction

In my June 7 post I made a claim about Antifa that promoted discussion. I wrote,

There is no “woke.”
.

That’s just a label used inflame the base, much like they use the label “Antifa.” The panderers like to call out Antifa as though it is an invading army, a threat to our country, rather than an informal collection of Americans who refuse authoritarianism and fascism. Those who identify as Antifa don’t riot, they don’t intimidate other Americans, they don’t make death threats and they do think democracy is a good thing. Imagine that!

Well informed, eagle eye reader Sheila Markin replied privately,

Another good blog post. I agree with you.  But I do have some information that runs counter to the idea that Antifa is not like the far right.

The information comes from a counseling client I worked with about a year ago. He was a blogger on the left and had become an influencer. But someone revealed that he was an attorney and that he worked in BigLaw. After that he was assaulted verbally and threatened by “antifa.” The emotional toll was very heavy. He stopped blogging and invested more in his legal career but he was emotionally damaged by this.

The mere fact that he worked for BigLaw caused the backlash against him. He made good money which was considered a sin. His ideas were no longer considered valid. In my opinion extremism on the right and the left is bad news. Closed minded people are bad news. The right is worse but both the right and left are guilty of extremism and it is extremism that is so corrosive.

I’m not an expert on left wing social media, so I checked it out with Jay Becker to get her take on this. She introduced me to Antifa years ago. Here’s what she wrote:

The basic story has a ring of plausibility, not so much as an attack by “antifa” but because the tactics described are themselves so widespread among activists generally who identify as “woke:” rejecting or accepting a person because of their identity, not their political analysis (“standpoint epistemology”), rejecting ideas based on their source, not their content, etc. In this case, the person was canceled because he was a lawyer and worked for BigLaw, regardless of what he was advocating in his political writings, assuming that those threatening him were not making connections between his professional life and his advocacy, according to your friend’s report.
.
Verbal assaults have become common on social media against those who challenge whatever the latest “woke” tenets are, and any deviation can get you canceled by a virtual mob. That’s scary and intimidating, which stymies any real discussion, let alone debate. I have experienced this firsthand in trying to build resistance to abortion bans with Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights. Many people find these methods disturbing and grumble about them among themselves. The Revcoms (revolutionary communists) are taking this destructive phenomenon on directly. Here’s their 7 point indictment of “woke” as it has devolved, and here’s a playlist of their videos. I suggest starting with the speech Sunsara Taylor gave recently at UCLA, second on the playlist. (Watch at least the first 15 minutes, and you’ll see the “woke” bullies in action.)
.
So, I’m veering off from “antifa” but staying on topic because what your friend describes is so prevalent in how a generation of young people who do care about racism, fascism, misogyny, etc. is being trained to think and approach the world, which [is] doing a lot of harm. I hope it sheds some light, thanks for asking.
.
It seems that the unspoken invitation of social media to be a jerk is irresistible, regardless of which end of the political spectrum is its source.
.

Here’s a message to these left and right abusers. It comes from their moms:

Don’t be a jerk!

Thanks ever so much to Sheila and Jay for their insights and for permission to post their comments – big help.

I stand corrected.

What’s Your Message, Governor?

New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu delivered Republican clarity for all to see in his Washington Post opinion piece on June 5. He opened with, “Our [Republican] party is on a collision course toward electoral irrelevance without significant corrective action.” He declared, ” . . . candidates should not get into this race to further a vanity campaign, to sell books or to audition to serve as Donald Trump’s vice president.” So far, so good.

Sununu claims his vast worth as a leader and influencer and focuses direction for Republicans, saying, “We need to expand beyond the culture wars that alienate independents, young voters and suburban moms.” The problem with that is not about expanding beyond culture wars. That would be okay, it seems, although I don’t know what expanding means, since it doesn’t seem to mean stopping the lunacy,

The problem is that Sununu focuses on gaining votes. Not on what is right, moral, ethical, what We The People want or what’s best for the country. Just the pragmatics to gain votes and win elections.

Recall the so-called “Autopsy” that Republicans did after being pummeled in the 2012 election. That, too, was all about gaining more votes, not about changing Republicans’ evil ways. Indeed, they completely ignored that they were out of step with the vast majority of Americans. They ignored their own advice following that autopsy and have only become more entrenched in culture wars, demonizing and appealing to drooling, fang-toothed extremists.

There probably isn’t any reason to believe that Republican candidates will follow Sununu’s self-serving advice, nor will they get themselves aligned with the things the vast majority of Americans want. They will just continue to manipulate the system in order to retain their minority control, doing things like voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering.

Meanwhile, Sununu awaits the clamor for him to get into the race.

And Finally, FYI, The Key Provision of the Presidential Records Act (44 U.S.C. Chapter 22)

§ 2202. Ownership of Presidential records

The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records;

Specifically, the PRA:

•  Establishes that Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.

And that is why Donald J. Trump is going to prison.

Plus for election interference in Georgia.

Plus for  multiple counts of fraud in New York.

Plus for incitement of insurrection in DC.

Several years ago I predicted that once out of office, Trump will spend the rest of his days as a defendant in court and in prison. Easy forecasting.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

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

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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


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

Complacency


Caution: Offensive and Crude Language

There is an old series of hateful tropes passed along as jokes designed to embolden and inflame the already hateful and to attract new, impressionable recruits. They attack people they see as unworthy and make them an object of scorn. The oldest hatred – thousands of years of it – continues to target Jews.

Here’s an example of hate humor that illustrates this. But prepare yourself, because this is truly awful stuff.

Q. What do you call 6 million dead Jews?

A. A good start.

Yes, hatred is as crude and cruel and savage as that. And for those feeling oppressed, marginalized and disrespected, that kind of hate humor is quite appealing. It gives the aggrieved someone to blame – a boogeyman – for their lot in life. It leads to brainlessly shouting “Seig Heil!” and moronically chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” with a bunch of other juiced up skinheads in Charlottesville.

Heather Heyer – pic from her Facebook account

That led to a malicious bigot ramming his car into a protest rally, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 28 others and it led to 11 dead at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. There are material consequences to hate jokes and hate tropes.

The would-be fascists use violence to get their way. They are increasingly bold and some of them get elected to positions of power. That happens for just two reasons:

  1. Angry people are motivated and they turn out to vote for hateful, angry candidates.
  2. Complacent people, those just going about their lives and not paying attention, don’t vote.

That gives the haters the reins of power. And that leads to authoritarians tearing down our democracy, our safety and our way of life. The loss of safety for those hated by the bullies is obvious, but history is full of examples that show that eventually there is loss of safety and freedom for everyone. And all of this leads to radicalized terrorists killing innocent people.

Here’s Heather Heyer’s final Facebook post:

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

Are you outraged?

Hunter S. Thompson observed during the enormously illegal Nixon years that we were, “America acting on its worst impulses.” The same is true for all of the so-called populist tantrums, from the Civil War, to George Wallace standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama to stop Blacks from entering, to the traitorous January 6 insurrection, to today’s Republican reality deniers and voter suppressors.

Were Thompson still alive and chronicling our stumbles (some of them forward), he surely would have used his same words for America today. He would have blistering criticism of the reality denial that is rampant in America and the constant claims of victimhood – “America acting on its worst impulses.”

Joan Didion said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” The haters have their stories that they believe justify their hatred. The fascist lovers have their stories that they believe justify killing democracy and establishing despotic rule. The victimhood lovers always have their fantasies.

And we who believe that America should live up to its promise have our story, too.
.

Our collective safety hinges on the establishment of that story as our true story. The elements required for that include a shared reality, the rule of law and what Thomas Jefferson called “an enlightened citizenry.” You already know what lack of an enlightened citizenry does to our country.

Most of us believe in science and learning, knowledge and wisdom, cause and effect. More to the point, too many reject all of that.

Millions more of us are needed for the science, learning, knowledge and wisdom story. Specifically needed are the 33% of eligible voters who didn’t vote in 2020 and the 47.8% who didn’t show up in 2022.

Without them we are doomed to be repeatedly attacked by the haters and our democracy will always balance precariously on the edge of a cliff – until that balance is lost. Our country, our story, needs all of us right now.

There’s good news and there’s bad news about this.

The good news is that even in the face of this decades-long assault on reality and our democracy by authoritarian wannabes, our country will continue to stand.

The bad news is that if we don’t do something to stop these assaults, this may not be a country you want to live in. The hate jokes and the hate tropes will metastasize and your freedom will be gone.

It seems quite clear – and history teaches us – that under the yoke of despotism We The People would be powerless and cruelly subjugated. Maybe we should ensure that such a thing never happens in America.

Again, Heather Heyer said,

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

So again, are you outraged?

A Bit of Sunshine

Take a look at the updated Gallup tracking poll of how Americans see themselves on social issues. Could it be that Independents and Democrats combined have the muscle to stop the crazies and their war on Social Security, Medicare and trying to jam Christian nationalism and authoritarianism down the throats of all Americans? Do the math for 2023. Add the percents of moderates and liberals. There are more of us than there are haters and despotism lovers.

Click me

Required Reading For Every American

Every day we are assaulted by the Republican snake venom of outlandish, idiotic lies, distortions and pretend patriotism, like,

Biden crime family

Weaponized DOJ

Senate candidate Todd Akin’s claim, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Anything said by – you know: the usual suspects.

Actual, factual truth is the antidote to Republican snake venom. That’s why you’re going to read Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters From An American” of June 15.

Then you’re going to share it because you are paying attention and you are outraged and you aren’t complacent. To make that easy to do, just forward this post.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

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

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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


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

I’m Sorry


I’m sorry that Republican legislators are so angry and that they hate the Constitution, our laws and America itself so terribly that they are calling for angry, radical people to make violence on our citizens and on our nation.

I’m sorry that angry people are threatening to kill Merrick Garland’s wife and children and Jack Smith and his wife.

I’m sorry that Republicans are stuck in a spin cycle of whataboutism, and can’t get out. They can no longer make a declarative statement about just one issue, like the indictment. They instead have to justify the unjustifiable with phantom comparisons to Democrats, as though some other wrongdoing justifies this one.

I’m sorry that no matter what happens, Republicans are poor victims of Democrats, elites, gays, educators, hordes of would-be immigrants who are stealing our jobs and all the rest of the mean-spirited idiocy. So many poor baby Republican victims.

I’m sorry that Hillary had all those emails on her private server and that when it was searched for classified information by the Trump Bogeyman Super Snoopers they couldn’t find any. They only found documents which were classified after they were removed. They determined that Hillary had broken no law, but Trump and his angry hordes still chanted to lock her up. They still do.

I’m sorry that Trump made his DOJ continue an investigation into the Clinton Foundation for the duration of most of his administration, even though his investigators neither believed there was any there there, nor did they ever find any. (This sounds like weaponization – let’s have Jim Jordan check it out.) Nevertheless, Trump trumpeted lies about the Foundation. He still does, as do his sycophants.

I’m sorry that Trump and every Republican who has blurted an opinion about the indictment of Trump blames Biden for “weaponizing” the DOJ against poor, suffering Trump, this is in spite of the fact – yes, fact – that only Trump used the DOJ in that way – ref: one paragraph up. Their false blurting is in spite of the fact that Biden has strictly kept hands off what the DOJ does. It is in spite of the fact that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is independent even of Merrick Garland’s purview, as well as of Biden’s. And it is in spite of the fact that Trump has not been indicted by Biden or the DOJ. He’s been indicted by a grand jury of south Florida citizens.

I’m sorry that Joseph Goebbels was right about how The Big Lie works, that all that is required to get people to believe lies and propaganda and to do horrible things is to bellow it out, over and over until the weak of mind believe. In the present case, that has led 88% of Republican primary voters (the hair-on-fire, pitchforks and torches crowd) to believe that the indictment of Trump was politically motivated. They believe the lies to be truth.

I’m sorry that whatever lawyers Trump can manage to hang onto will make pretrial motions with baseless, bogus accusations, like “prosecutorial misconduct,” solely for the purpose of bogging down the trial. Then it will get postponed by Trump suck up judge Aileen Cannon because it will then conflict with the 2024 election. You fill in the blanks illustrating what will happen next.

I’m sorry this guy stands with Trump.

Most of All, I’m Sorry

that so many Americans hate America and want to tear it down, and that there aren’t yet armies of Americans in the streets demonstrating for democracy, people who love America and want to protect and defend it and the Constitution.

But there could be. There’s still time.

Denée Benton

Oh, And I’m Glad .  .  .

.  .  .  that at the 2023 Tony Awards on. Sunday actor Denée Benton announced the Excellence in Theatre Education Award from Carnegie Mellon University, saying,

“While I am certain that the current grand wizard, I’m sorry, excuse me, governor of my home state [of Florida] will be changing the name of this following town immediately .  .  .  Plantation, Florida.” [emphasis mine]

Brilliant.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

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

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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


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

The Problem Isn’t Woke


“Florida is where woke goes to die.”

Governor Ron DeSantis, (R-Cruelty) loves to say that in his devoid-of-personality way. It’s obvious that it tickles him to declare stupid things that elicit favor from the base. He seems to revel in encouraging exclusion, intimidation and authoritarian, anti-American behavior. He knows what makes him happy.

I tuned in to a bit of the CNN town hall with Nikki Haley and was immediately smacked in the face by her own pandering to the base and constant focus on applause lines, rather than saying anything that actually means something of value to non-extremists. She’s pretty much like DeSantis.

For example, she criticized Biden’s climate initiative to get us off our fossil fuel diet. Electric vehicles are heavier, she told us, and our bridges can’t handle that, so we’ll have to rebuild a gazillion bridges, a cost that Biden omits from the projected cost of transportation conversion.

Heavier? And if they are, is that a barrier to taking action to save the planet and ourselves? Okay, that sounds stupid, but let’s check, shall we?

Here are three popular 4-door sedans, each with room for 5 passengers:

The 2023 Tesla Model 3 has a curb weight of 3880 lbs.

The 2023 Chevrolet Malibu has a curb weight of 3159 lbs.

The 2023 Toyota Camry has a curb weight of 3340 lbs.

Okay, Nikki, you nailed the key problem. it looks like we have as much as 721 pounds of excess, bridge-crushing woke in the electric car. The mindless audience applause still rings in that auditorium.

Jake Tapper, usually a reliable interviewer who doesn’t let interviewees get away with dodging questions or giving dodgy replies, let Haley get away with her practiced, intelligence-free statements. That went on the entire time I was able to tolerate watching the spectacle.

It was very disappointing, much like the misnamed Trump town hall. That’s where CNN’s Kaitlan Collins was powerless to stem the tide – the tsunami, really – of Trump’s fact-free, self-serving delusions in the form of applause lines. The entire event, complete with no audience members who were not faithful Trumpers, was nothing more than a Trump Rally. No news or informed, intelligent ideas were to be found anywhere in the vicinity.

All of Haley’s, Trump’s and DeSantis’ anti-woke pandering is nothing more than bumper sticker fictions that call extremists to hatred and domination of unacceptable “others.” These presidential candidates are world class inciters with the finest of reality-free applause lines.

There is no “woke.”
.

That’s just a label used inflame the base, much like they use the label “Antifa.” The panderers like to call out Antifa as though it is an invading army, a threat to our country, rather than an informal collection of Americans who refuse authoritarianism and fascism. Those who identify as Antifa don’t riot, they don’t intimidate other Americans, they don’t make death threats and they do think democracy is a good thing. Imagine that!

The problem we in America have is not woke. Our problem is the haters and manipulators who try to make people afraid of their boogeyman du jour. They pander for voters’ support by inciting hatred and violence using their cruel fictions about other Americans. They are the ones who least resemble what we used to call American values and who stand in the way of our recapturing them.

There is no woke that goes to Florida to die. There is just a cadre of liars creating an incentive to hatred and violence and, perhaps, causing others to die. That’s the real threat and they put it into law, like this:

Definition: “Stand Your Ground” law. A mechanism to boil testosterone and create dead bodies. It is much beloved by haters and other insecure, cowardly people and embodies the true essence of anti-woke.

Woke Clarity From Another Source

Retired attorney and thoughtful person Ralph Bernstein leads a weekly political discussion group via Zoom. In his agendum (yes, he uses that term correctly) for yesterday’s session, he offered this discussion teaser:

Repub [sic] legislators, judges who are said to be right-wing judges, and MAGA activists have set out to trample on free speech and individual rights in the name of battling “wokeism.” If they don’t like what teachers say about history, they gag them. If they don’t like certain books, they ban them. If they don’t like a corporation defending LGBTQ rights, they retaliate against it. Their crusade has become an expression of not only white Christian nationalism but of contempt for the Constitution and the First Amendment.

If you’d like to attend and participate in Ralph’s no-charge discussions, drop him a line at [email protected].

Woke Must-Read of the Week

From the John Pavlovitz essay, Woke Will Win, June 5, 2023 (click through and read this excellent post in full):

The leveraging of irrational fear is nothing new.

Throughout history it has been the go-to tactic of the worst of politics and religion.

When you lack substantive ideas, you need an encroaching enemy to move and motivate people.

When you have nothing redemptive to offer, you have to create a violent adversary for them to run from and push back against.

When vulnerable people are placed in your path, you need to somehow turn those people into a threat to be exterminated.

If you can’t or won’t engage in difficult conversations about complex issues, you turn words into monsters:

Illegals.
CRT.
Plandemic.
The jab.
Groomers.
Woke.

Anti-Woke Book Ban Selection of the Week

If sex, adultery, slavery, sex trafficking and murder are forbidden topics, this according to the anti-wokers, then we absolutely must ban the Bible. That is a nasty set of human debauchery tales if ever there was one. These books quite obviously don’t belong in libraries, schools, homes and other places where impressionable children might come upon them.

In fact, I don’t think you should be reading such salacious material either. As Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography, “I know it when I see it.” So do you.

If you are to be a flamer who burns those awful books, you better start gathering them and tossing them into a dumpster right now. Otherwise, Ron DeSantis and those 11 crazies responsible for so much book banning are going to have all the puritanical, witchy fun, as well as the ego rush that comes from bullying.

A Peculiarity

Yesterday was June 6. On that day in 1944 we and our allies made the Normandy invasion, the major push to defeat the Nazis and bring WW II to an end. What is peculiar now is the lack of recognition of the date in the news and elsewhere. D-Day used to be a major event in the public consciousness, but apparently no longer.

It’s just my speculation, but perhaps that is happening because of the rapid loss of those of our Greatest Generation who fought for our democracy, now dying at the rate of about 180 per day. That number used to be many times greater, but, of course, there are so few left.

  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

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

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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


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

The Canary plus The Good Old Days


This Is a Get Smarter Opportunity

We are sometimes given a gift – a chance to see into the future, if only we will look at what is before us. That’s what we have right now.

You’ve heard of the many democracy, freedom and rights abuses Ron DeSantis and his rubber stamp Republican Florida legislature have inflicted on the citizens of Florida. He has sucked up to as many White supremacist grievances, fears and hatreds as he could in order to get extremists to support his bid to become an authoritarian president.

His assaults represent far worse than oppression of Floridians: DeSantis and his extremists are normalizing fascism.

DeSantis’ actions leave us with an obvious clarity about what he would do to our entire country were he to get his hands on the reins of power. That is why I believe that

Florida is the canary in the fascist infested coal mine.
.

If you’re skeptical about this, read Thom Hartmann’s take. You won’t be skeptical anymore.

You don’t have to be a Floridian to be worried about this, because we see similar things happening elsewhere. That’s why I’m encouraging you to get smart about this, wherever you are.

My friends Jim and Karen Nathan have co-founded Floridians For Democracy, a group dedicated to protecting democracy in Florida and, by extension, where you live. It is to that end that they are inviting you to two informative Zoom sessions:

    • “White Supremacist Activities in Florida: A brave sheriff and a state representative“
    • Jun 7, 2023, 7:00PM EDT. Co-Sponsored by SWFL Voices for Racial Justice
    • and Concerned Citizens of Lower Lee County
    • “Saving Democracy” with Author David Pepper
    •                                                          June 15, 2023, 5:30PM EDT. Co-Sponsored by Floridians for Democracy and SWFL Voices for Racial Justice

Here’s a link to full program descriptions and the Zoom link to each session. Note that these sessions come to you without cost and they are not fundraisers. They are education that is offered because you need to know.

Make no mistake: this is not just about DeSantis attacking minorities or even just about Florida. This is about all the anti-democracy bullies all over America stealing education from our children, cheating Americans of their voting rights, reducing women to second class citizens, refusing gun safety and all the rest.

This matters to you because one day DeSantis and the bullies will be coming for you and you’re going to hate it when they crash through your door.

The Good Old Days

As the default/budget bill was being readied for a vote in the House last Wednesday, Ron DeSantis was pontifi-whining about it, stupidly saying that we’re going to go bankrupt. Other idiot extremist Republicans were saying similarly stupid, apocalyptic things.

They all long so dearly for the good old days when fiscally responsible Republicans were in charge and they never added to our national debt. That made me wonder which days those were, so I dug around and the chart below is the product of that digging.

The numbers represent the total each president added to our national debt over the course of their administrations. Harding and Coolidge delivered surpluses. All the rest gave us more debt.

Most notably, each administration added billions of dollars of debt until Reagan came along and ratcheted that up to trillions. He put six times more debt on the U.S. than his Democratic predecessor did. In fact, he added just shy of twice the debt of all preceding presidents combined!

You can blame his supply side economics for much of that. He truly was Saint Ronny the Reverse Robin Hood, patron saint of giveaways to the rich. Republicans still genuflect at the sound of his fiscally larcenous name.

Simple fact: In large measure our national debt is a function of both low and lowered taxes matched with increased spending. Somehow such debt, while a big DUH! to the rest of us, is not easily understood by supply-siders, who believe Tooth-Fairy-like that we will have increased revenue by means of decreased revenue.
.

George W. Bush dramatically lowered taxes while starting two “off balance sheet” wars. I still don’t know what that term means. He doubled our national debt over all previous presidents combined, including Reagan! Oddly, that failed to impress voters.

The debt Dubya left for us is hardly a surprise, given his wars and his tax cuts. What is surprising is how Trump managed to increase our national debt in one term even more than Dubya did in two terms.

The Dubya and Trump tax cuts for the rich cost the U.S. nearly $10 trillion and included tax breaks for yachts and private jets.* We’re left with the glow of enhancing the lives of rich people and with the bill they left for us.

Someone please tell me which are the Republicans’ good old days when they were in charge, were fiscally responsible and didn’t add to our national debt.

Take a look at the chart and see if the “tax and spend” label that Republicans like to staple to the chests of Democrats makes sense to you. Or the Republican claims of fiscal responsibility. Or the moronic belief in supply-side economics. If any of that makes sense to you, you will immediately be sent to a 3rd grade remedial math class to see if you can keep up with 8-year-olds doing flash cards.

Source: The Balance

________________________________

* It’s heartwarming to know that the new budget just squeezed out of the Congress cuts $21 billion in funding from the IRS. That was a critical thing for Republicans. Two points about that:

  1. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that hobbling the ability to go after tax cheats will result in $40 billion in lost revenue, resulting in an increase to the debt of $19 billion.
  2. Gotta answer this question: Why was it so important for the Republicans to inhibit the IRS from chasing down rich tax crooks? Hint: Can you say “donors” boys and girls?
  • Today is a good day to be the light.

    ______________________________

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

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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


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

Cut The Crap – Part One


Broken News

In a stunning display of muscular, applause sucking fantasies, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) announced that he is a candidate to become his party’s nominee for President of the United States.

He dutifully blamed President Biden for all problems, stopping just short of blaming Biden for mosquito bites. As significant, he claimed credit for everything that has gone well, including the things that most or all Republicans voted against, like the infrastructure projects they tried to kill, then went home and bragged to constituents about how they had brought home the bacon for them.

Cut the crap, Tim.

More Broken News

THIS PICTURE IS A FAKE

The May 22 AI generated picture of a FAKE bombing of the Pentagon (to the left) isn’t even a good fake, but it was good enough for Bloomberg News to pick it up. It went viral on Twitter and elsewhere and first responders had to show up before it was announced that this is a completely FAKE picture. There was no fire or harm done to the Pentagon or to any personnel.

The technology to produce fakes is only going to get better and we stand to be fooled so often that we’ll learn to distrust news reports, government – everything. That leaves us with this core question:

Who stands to benefit from the undermining of public trust?
.

Post your answer in the Comments section below.

Pig Troughs and Justice

We’re being played for chumps by industry and by political toadies who are in the pocket of Big Money. Here’s the key to what needs to be done for We The People.

Reverse the Citizens United decision – the one that reinforced the Boston v. Bellotti decision that legalized political bribery*. And while we’re at it, impeach Chief Justice John Roberts for

– lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee in his  confirmation hearing, saying that he believes in stare decisis (honoring past Supreme Court decisions, like Roe). Same for Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito and Coney Barrett

– lying to that same committee, saying (or implying) that Roe is settled law. Same for Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito and Coney Barrett – probably Thomas, too.

– and most egregiously, for causing the lawyers to return to the court following the CU decision on the case that was presented to the court. This time Roberts directed the attorneys to argue rights for corporations, something that was not in contest in the Citizens United case. That debasement of our system of justice and the Court’s decision on it gave corporations the same rights as people like you, including the right to give huge sums of black money to PACs that distort our election system in favor of rich guys.

In his dissent from this nefarious decision, Justice Souter said that in addressing an issue that was not raised by the litigants, “ . . . the majority changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.” Souter was right. This is a prime example of right wing manipulation of our laws and institutions for the purpose of destroying our democracy.

For all their wailing about spending, Republicans don’t want to touch programs that line the pockets of their big money donors. Instead, they want our poor and disadvantaged to carry the load. Here’s what that means.

McCarthy and his hollow-headed, far right extremists have figured out that the American people like Social Security and Medicare A LOT and that cutting those programs would be political suicide, so they want to cut other stuff instead, like veterans medical benefits and

” .  .  .  public health; food safety inspections; air traffic control operations; the administration of Medicare and Social Security; housing and other assistance for families with low incomes; education and job training; and scientific and medical research, to name just a few.” – Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

They want to cut everything that helps actual people.

Kevin McCarthy and his co-conspirators are trying to bring down the government of the United States in every way possible. Right now they are attempting extortion using the debt ceiling approval process to get budget concessions like those listed above. “After all,” they say, “spending is directly linked to our national debt.” That’s like saying that we can’t send a rocket to the moon because there’s that gravity thing on Earth. Moronic.

If Republicans were serious about wanting to trim spending they could have done so with their congressional majorities during the Trump or the George W. Bush years. In fact. with the support of his congresses, Dubya piled up more debt than all previous administrations combined. Don’t forget there were those two “off balance sheet” wars.

Both Dubya and Trump increased spending every year while cutting taxes for the ultra rich and thereby ballooning our national debt.

So, no, the Republicans aren’t serious about dealing with spending or debt. They just want to bludgeon Democrats by cutting programs that help people in order to prove how tough they are. They want to brag about their phantom fiscal responsibility and crash our government and our democracy so that they can take over in a fascist putsch. You know: fusing industry with government in a despotic rule over We the People.

Cut the crap, Republicans.

Because these industry representatives (meaning senators and representatives in the pockets of Big Money) will not cut the crap, we’ll have to dump them and replace them with people who will cut the crap. Repeal and replace is the phrase the Republicans like to use about Obamacare, so let’s use it for what We The People want – to repeal and replace these Republican industry toadies.

The replacements will be the same people who will create sensible gun safety legislation, will restore abortion rights, will refuse to abandon our most vulnerable, will honor and keep faith with our military .  .  . you know the list. It’s all the stuff that the vast majority of We The People want. We’ll only get it when we dump the bad guys who are doing the crap – delivering minority controlled tyranny – and replace them with those who will serve We The People.

BTWs

In case you were thinking Biden would get rolled by right wing extremist Republicans who want to hold our nation hostage, take a look at this, posted last Sunday.

And here’s a love tweet for Kevin McCarthy, who still hasn’t replied to my request for all those January 6 videos he sent to Tucker Carlson.

 Watch for Cut The Crap – Part two this Wednesday, May 24.

____________________________________

* From Thom Hartmann:

“The following year Richard Nixon put [Justice Lewis] Powell on the Supreme Court, where he personally authored the 1978 Boston v. Bellotti decision that claimed corporations are persons with rights under the Bill of Rights and corporate money in politics wasn’t bribery or corruption (as it had been under the law since the founding of the republic) but merely an exercise of First Amendment-protected free speech. Money wasn’t money: it was speech.”

And that “speech” is way louder with orders of magnitude more money powering it. Citizens United took that farther and wider and has effectively silenced you.

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

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

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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    Click me

    JA


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

NO! v1.0


In Sam Adler-Bell’s essay The One Thing Trump Has That DeSantis Never Will, he makes distinctions between the manipulative governor and the unscrupulous Trump. He identifies their bets on campaign donors and which sections of the voting public each seems to think he can attract. Adler-Bell writes,

If [Trump’s] wager pays off, it will be a sign not just of his continued dominance over the Republican Party but also of something deeper: an ongoing revolt against “the best and brightest,” the notion that only certain people, with certain talents, credentials and subject matter expertise, are capable of governing.

A blinding flash of the obvious jumped off the page with the words “capable of governing.” It suggests that Trump is, was or would be in some way associated with the act of, the idea of, the possibility of governing.

We’ve seen the chaos for years, as he careens across his always-on performance stage, always grifting. Trump has no more relationship to governing than did Caligula. He has more in common with anarchists, who, by definition, abhor governing and government.

Many thanks to JN for this

DeSantis has no more regard for our traditions and institutions than does the twice impeached, disgraced and indicted former president. He is as narcissistic as Trump, but he does know how to push and pull the levers of governmental power, although only for his own benefit, a la Trump. Think: his ban on/prevention of actions to limit Covid deaths, which gave Florida the 12th highest death rate during the pandemic.* He’s very dangerous to those who prefer to remain alive.

Meanwhile, in this era of proxy war with Russia, mounting tensions with China, a soon to be nuclear Iran and a completely unpredictable and nuclear North Korea, this is a really good time to have the best and the brightest at the helm of this ship of state. That’s far better than to have our country controlled by short-sighted, grievance stoked, self-serving, autocracy loving faux populists.

Signing petitions is nice and protesting in the streets can be helpful and can feel empowering, but

ALL OF THE POWER COMES FROM THE VOTING BOOTH!
.

It’s long past time for tens of millions more of our voices to be heard from that powerful place saying, “NO!” Mark your calendar to do that on November 5, 2024.**

Watch for “NO!” v2.0 this Sunday, April 23.

_____________________________

* Nine of the eleven states with worse Covid death rates than Florida are solid red states. Are you seeing a picture?

** Two million registered Democrats in Florida failed to vote in 2022. Had they voted, Charlie Christ would be the governor now, having won 52.5% of the vote. We wouldn’t be facing book bans and art bans and war on Disney and the end of abortion rights. There would be no Don’t Say Gay law or immigrants shipped to Martha’s Vineyard in the dead of the night and with no preparation for them upon their arrival. All that would have been required to stop the DeSantis insanity was for we good people to say “NO!” to the crazies.

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

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


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    JA


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

Scheming


Here’s Some Of What Decades of Far Right Scheming Have Brought You

Voter suppression through:

extreme gerrymandering;

voting rights suppression;

throwing out voter registrations for obscure reasons – especially in poor and minority areas;

eliminating voting places;

restricting ballot drop box access;

School vouchers for private and parochial schools that starve public schools of money and violate the freedom of religion guarantee of the First Amendment;

Attacking and eliminating healthcare rights;

Cheating on Supreme Court confirmation hearings to get a polarized Court;

Cultivating a power base by appealing to racism and hatred – no more need for dog whistles;

Book banning and book burning;

Stoking fear of the “other;”

Promoting supply side “voodoo” economics for over 40 years, which has served only to make the wealthy wealthier and more powerful and make all others poorer and less powerful;

Packing the Supreme Court to engineer the Citizens United decision into a grotesque monster that allows enormous sums of money from hugely wealthy individuals and corporations to control our elections. This was accomplished by expanding the original case into something not in contest – in effect, making up a new case to ensure power for the wealthy;

Denial of truth and embrace of cruel fictions that stick a spoke into the wheels of progress in Congress and state houses, then complaining that government can’t do anything. Example: spouting lies about the safety and efficacy of the coronavirus vaccines and demonizing public health officials, while well over a million people died and our healthcare infrastructure (hospitals) failed, leaving millions without healthcare at all – and at the same time complaining that the government grossly mishandled the pandemic;

A Trump appointed Texas judge overruling the FDA to eliminate Mifepristone, this on a foundation of boundless ignorance and vacuous reasoning. That compliments what appears to be his whitewashing of his extremist views that he hid during his lifetime appointment judgeship confirmation process;

Challenging election results on the basis of absolutely no facts or evidence – but the false claims have accomplished the undermining of citizen confidence in our elections;

Stoking fear and hatred of LGBTQ citizens and inciting violence;

Ignoring the overwhelming public will on issues like gun safety, abortion, healthcare and more. Here is an example in a chart from the April 11 STAT report, based on a Kaiser Family Foundation study.

These are shocking numbers and the story is actually worse than it appears. Read the full Kaiser Family Foundation report. This is what happens when a minority is in control and they ignore what the rest of us want. It’s deadly.

The extremists have been at this for decades, applying billions of dollars and enormous political pressure and their scheming has paid off in their minority control and their fantastic self-enrichment. Decide for yourself if this stuff works for you. If it doesn’t, then perhaps we should be scheming to set things right.

DNC: I don’t hear a thing from you except solicitations for my money. Is that your best shot?

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

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


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    JA

 


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

Potpourri v18.0


Silence
This is for those Republicans quietly whining in their closets about right wing extremists: you really should be speaking up.
.
You should have voted for a Democrat to be Speaker of the House instead of voting for spineless Kevin McCarthy. You should have been speaking out against Trump’s outrages and those of the alt-right for years, maybe for decades, because you know the difference between right and wrong. Right?
.
Your closet whining instead of speaking up probably helped you keep”the base” votes,  I suppose, but at what cost to your integrity, your legacy and our republic? What will you tell your grandchildren?
.
From Heather Cox Richardson:
.

That today’s Republican leaders have not condemned any of [Trump’s] attempts to cheat speaks volumes about the party. As Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) pointed out [on March 22], when “[Michael] Cohen was arrested, indicted, convicted, and went to prison for participating in an illegal hush money payment scheme to Stormy Daniels, not a single Republican leader complaining now said a thing about what happened to Michael Cohen.” So why the rush to defend Trump in the same case?

From Ella Wheeler Wilcox, author, poet and activist, 1850 – 1919:

To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards out of men.

Democracy

I’m not partisan by nature, but the past 40 years have made me a non-Republican, as that party ran headlong into autocracy mania. Even so-called traditional Republicans have ducked and run from what is actually conservative, leaving Democrats the only ones to vote for if we still want a democracy.

Yoda

I get that keeping our democracy is far too ethereal to be sufficiently motivating to most Americans to get them out to vote. We prefer not to expend the effort to be aware of anything not in our immediate lives. It’s just a human being thing. But here’s the real deal: Keeping our democracy is the only way to preserve what we call our American values. “On that everything depends,” said Yoda.

Accountability

What if we actually believed what so proudly we hail about our virtues, values and beliefs – like accountability?

Last week was the 20th anniversary of George W. Bush’s second faithless war. We lost 4,400 Americans in Iraq. More important, they lost everything. We saw 32,000 of our people wounded. Nobody knows how many of our returning vets committed suicide or are still living on our streets two decades later. And, of course, nobody knows how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed or how many millions are still refugees.

Bush looked for an excuse to invade Iraq as far back as 1999, two years before he took office. He wanted to be seen as a strong “commander in chief.” That would ensure his 2004 re-election, and, of course, that was what was most important. Pay no attention to the dead bodies in his wake.

All that death and suffering was based on Bush’s quicksand foundation of lies, fear mongering and his reprehensible swagger. Here’s just a tiny sampling.

Lies

Lie #1: Saddam was a really bad guy and had to be removed. Actually, it isn’t a lie to say Saddam was a bad guy. What was a lie was that Bush contended that was enough of a reason to topple him. There are a lot of other bad guy leaders in the world, but, oddly enough, we don’t depose them for being bad guys.

Lie #2: Saddam was in cahoots with al Qaeda, the bad guys who attacked us on 9/11. Actually, the al Qaeda group was fanatically religious and Saddam was entirely secular. They hated one another. Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.

Lie #3: The Iraqis will receive us as liberating heroes and will pay us for the war with their oil. Except those Iraqis who were killed or tortured or forced to become refugees – we’re not heroes to them. And their oil was never ours to take.

Lie #4: Waterboarding isn’t torture and torture is legal. No point in elaborating – you already know.

Fear Mongering

Bush told us that Saddam Hussein is “this close” to having weapons of mass destruction (“WMDs”). Actually, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission was continuing its search for WMDs in Iraq before our invasion and had found nothing to indicate that Saddam had any such weapons or was working to acquire them.

From Bush’s National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice: “.  .  . we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Seriously, she said that over-the-top, scare everyone into compliance outrage.

Covert CIA operative Valerie Plame was outed by Dick Cheney because her husband, Amb. Joseph Wilson, unmasked Bush’s and Coliin Powell’s lies about yellow cake and aluminum tubes. That didn’t even momentarily pause the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld march to war. And our almost entirely lapdog Fourth Estate, our press, forgot that it was supposed to be a check on government.

Our Congress bought the lies and fear mongering and voted an Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which Bush was all too eager to use. Congress is only now moving to end that authorization.

Swagger

Bush swaggered across the aircraft carrier flight deck wearing a flight suit, flight helmet under his arm, following his being nothing more than a passenger for the aircraft carrier landing. He stood in front of his false and embarrassing MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner, even as our troops were being blown up by roadside bombs, IEDs and more. The war dragged on for years after that. I guess that mission wasn’t quite accomplished after all.

There weren’t any WMDs. There never were. There never were going to be. The WMDs existed only in the fraud perpetrated on millions of duped people so that Bush could be commander-in-chief in wartime and get re-elected. Plus, Cheney could acquire no bid contracts for Halliburton, but that’s another story. The key story is the death, the wounding and disfigurement and the miserable displacement of millions, all for a fraud.

Two decades later not a single Bush administration liar has been held accountable. Dick Cheney sneers on, without a heart, both figuratively and literally. Bush paints bad portraits of veterans, dogs and world leaders and sells them for ridiculous prices. Condoleeza Rice is the director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Cushy for all, except for an America without accountability.

Here’s the truth about what happened. And watch Rob Reiner’s movie Shock and Awe.

Healthcare Capitalism

Let’s give credit where it’s due: Trump’s childishly named “Operation Warp Speed” worked. We gave vaccine producers the up front money to create new vaccines to protect us from the new, not well understood SARS‑CoV‑2 coronavirus that was killing people at a devastating pace. Indeed, we gave Moderna $12 billion for research and development of their vaccine. That has earned the company over $40 billion over just the past two years. In other words, we paid for the risky up front costs and Moderna has reaped the benefits. Now Moderna has a surprise for us.

Said Senate Health Committee chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT),

“Here is the thank you the taxpayers of this country received from Moderna for that huge investment: They are thanking the taxpayers of America by proposing to quadruple the price.”

The part I loved best is that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), former CEO of a private investment firm, said that Moderna is an example of capitalism at its best.

Moderna has just one successful product, the mRNA coronavirus vaccine, the R & D for which We the People paid. Our government funding of Moderna to produce that vaccine was not a fine example of capitalism.

It was pure socialism!
.

Remember: that vaccine socialism was powered by chief socialist, Republican Donald Trump. O’, those evil socialist Republicans!

Debt Ceiling Update

That’s Congress as Dastardly Whiplash, who tied the U.S to the tracks. Click the pic

“Good” Republicans dither while others (the suicidal crazies) continue to threaten to default on and extinguish the full faith and credit of the United States of America. They’ve tied the country to the tracks and we can hear the locomotive coming. It’s just a few months off and the crazies continue to behave as though future spending negotiations have something to do with paying the bills for what Congress itself already bought. Read this explainer to understand that our debts must not only be paid, but that they must not even be questioned. Better yet: send the link to your representative in Congress.

“If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re going”

     – Irwin Corey (American Stand-up Comic 1914-2017)

Many thanks to friend and futurist David Houle for the reminder.

A Question From The Future

“Hey Mom and Dad – is it really true that a while back people could be denied health insurance and healthcare just because they had a pre-existing condition? No way, right?”

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

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


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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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