Patriotism

Shame


“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block the battleground states from casting ‘unlawful and constitutionally tainted votes’ in the Electoral College. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, experts say.“

The Texas Tribune, December 8, 2020

“The states supporting the suit, all of which have Republican attorneys general, are Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.”

CNBC, December 9, 2020

There have been many wild accusations from Donald Trump, his family members, various sycophantic officials, members of the RNC and others claiming voting fraud, election unfairness, election rigging, stealing of the election and various other claims of election warping in favor of Joe Biden and against Donald Trump.

There are people in the streets who have been lied to over and over and manipulated to believe these outrageous claims. They’re now demonstrating outside the homes of state election officials, terrorizing children and chanting absolutist claims of election theft, even though none of them has seen anything to support the accusations. Many are threatening violence and death to these officials, both online and by telephone.

There have been over 50 lawsuits filed by Trump and Trump supporters in an effort to overthrow the election and flaunt the will of the American people. These cases have nearly all been either withdrawn or laughed out of court. In one sentence the Supreme Court dismissed a case against Pennsylvania and did so without hearing any testimony because, like all the other lawsuits, it was completely groundless, without evidence, valueless and lacking any basis in fact. Just wild accusations.

Now the Texas Attorney General has filed suit in the Supreme Court against 4 swing states in an effort to get the results of their elections tossed out and have their states supply electors who will vote for Trump in order to keep him in office. Seventeen other Republican state attorneys general have joined the suit, as has Trump. They are doing this in the face of no evidence whatsoever of voting irregularities. They can’t supply even one fraudulent vote as evidence. Indeed, Trump’s own attorney general has said that there is no evidence of voting fraud that would change the election. Christopher Krebs, former head of the agency that guards against cyber tampering of our elections said this was the cleanest election ever.

Gotta wonder why these attorneys general would file this bogus lawsuit. Let’s take a stab at an explanation.

  1. Trump has leaned hard on them to obstruct and overturn the election and they lack the courage to stand up to the playground bully. Plus they want a pat on the head for being good little do-bees.
  2. They’re sucking up to Trump’s angry base so that they can be re-elected and they don’t care who or what gets damaged in their pursuit of what’s best for themselves.
  3. The RNC threatened to refuse to give them financial support for their next elections unless they did the Trump suck up dance. So they’re sucking and dancing.
  4. They want a presidential pardon. From the Texas Tribune: “Paxton, who has been under indictment since 2015 for felony securities fraud charges, is facing fresh criminal allegations from eight of his top deputies, who said they believe he broke the law by using the agency to do favors for a political donor. The FBI is investigating Paxton over those claims, according to the Associated Press. Paxton has denied wrongdoing.” I have no information indicating that desiring a pardon is Paxton’s motivation, but in the Trump “pardon anyone with a last name and who supported me” era, one has to wonder. Further, it’s just a hypothetical about the other attorneys general involved in this suit. Look up accusations of federal crimes of these people if you feel like doing some research.
  5. They have had it with democracy and they want the United States to degenerate into an autocracy. A dictatorship. A fascist state. To that end, they are sowing doubt about the election to undermine public confidence in our institutions, our government and the Constitution itself. It’s another nail in the coffin.

Note that other than Mitt Romney, no elected Republican official in Washington has spoken out against these baseless lawsuits and claims of illegitimacy of the election. Only a handful have even called to congratulate Joe Biden on his overwhelming victory. Eighty percent of these Republicans acknowledge in private that Biden will be the new president, but they lack the courage to call and congratulate him, much less speak about it publicly.

⇒        This is today’s Republican Party        ⇐

There is nothing conservative in the actions of these people. There is nothing in their actions that would be recognizable to The Framers. There is nothing that they are doing that is in accordance with their oath of office. There is nothing patriotic in their actions. There is only monumental self-serving cowardice.

These reality deniers intentionally do great damage to our country, so shame on them. Too bad those words mean nothing to them. Because of their hypocrisy and cowardice they have lost the ability to be ashamed of themselves. The whole point of shame is a self-awareness that keeps us within civilized bounds. There is something distinctly sub-human about these people having lost that.

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Now that the election results of all 50 states have been certified, electoral votes will be cast on December 14 and Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021. Don’t be surprised if Trump stages his own phony inauguration spectacle in DC at the same time. He really is that desperately needy of attention. Nevertheless, Joe Biden will be the President of the United States as of 12:00:30PM EST that day.

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Countdown to Inauguration Day 2021Countdown

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so,

  1. Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe and pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Use the simple form above on the right.
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

The Chinese Century via Bioweapon


Reading time – 4:10  .  .  .

I’ve written many times about the likelihood of this becoming the Chinese century and the many things we’re doing (or not doing) to make that a reality. We pay a huge price for our shortsightedness and small thinking.

We’ve been complacent since our 1950s dominance of the world economy, riding our then-intact manufacturing base, the only country in the world to have one. Then we pretended for decades that the world economic power it created for us still existed. But it didn’t and it doesn’t and we’ve actually enthusiastically created the path for our economic demise through short term thinking and behavior. That’s why so many millions of manufacturing jobs disappeared. And our constant kicking the can down the road instead of rebuilding and enhancing our infrastructure has left us weak. Now, though, there’s another more urgent threat to our world leadership.

Bob Woodward’s book Rage includes an examination of Covid-19 and it details comments from Robert O’Brien, National Security Advisor. Before you dismiss him out of hand because he is just another of Trump’s revolving door cavalcade of advisors, read what follows, lifted directly from Woodward’s book (p. 333), referencing comments by O’Brien on June 11, 2020:

O’Brien continued, “It appears that they closed down travel all through China so that this disease couldn’t get to Shanghai or Beijing and other key cities. But at the same time they’re letting other folks travel from Wuhan to all over Europe and infected Europe and infected the United States. That’s not good. But whatever happened the Chinese have repurposed it into a bioweapon. And they’re using it, they’re attempting to take advantage of Covid to gain a geopolitical advantage over the United States and the free world, and to displace the United States as the leading power in the world.” [emphasis mine]

O’Brien said since Covid “hit the whole world, they’re using it with what they call their wolf diplomacy and for a long time they were attempting to trade PPE to get access for Huawei [5G provider with systems that allow the Chinese government to spy on users, including us] into countries. They were bullying countries into thanking them. They were bullying countries into saying things about the U.S. But overall, the theme is that they, as an authoritarian government, with all their surveillance state and their concentration camps and all that sort of thing, offer a better alternative for the world, a more efficient alternative, a kind of weird nationalistic, technocratic alternative to the world that’s better than liberal democracy. And Covid is an example of why the world should embrace China and Chinese values, and the Chinese form of hybrid capitalistic-mercantilist-communist government.

O’Brien said, “they’re taking every measure possible during this crisis to displace the United States. And we’ve got a hell of a fight on our hands.” [emphasis mine]

O’Brien concluded the consequences were dire. “If we lose our economic edge and we lose our economic might and stay closed for too much longer, we might be in a position where we couldn’t stay ahead or maybe we’d get behind and couldn’t catch up.”

CDC chief Dr. Robert Redfield had something to say about this, too (p. 332):

“It was difficult to understand how China had aggressive travel restrictions within China, and yet did not move to any travel restrictions” for people who wanted to leave China and go abroad, Redfield said.

“They really locked down Wuhan at one point. I think they quarantined over 11 million people. You couldn’t go from Wuhan to Beijing, but you could go Wuhan to London.”

Trump has done little to deal with the Chinese efforts beyond childish name calling. There have been no aggressive steps to lead Americans to safe behaviors to counter the pandemic; worse, he has given dangerous advice and helped to spread the disease. Nothing has been done at the federal level to make it safe to “reopen” our economy or begin to rebuild our economic might, which puts us further behind.

We are in the international fight of our lives – for our lives. We either face the reality of Chinese economic, military and political might or we will become a second rate nation.

This is the challenge the Biden administration faces on day one, even as we’re hobbled by disease. We’re all going to have to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time and we’ll have to stop fighting ourselves immediately, or the consequences for us will be terrible. We’ll have to face up to the danger before us and stop whining about a little inconvenience or even large personal impacts and instead support one another through our health and economic suffering and recovery. Prosperity and international leadership will require universal sacrifice for our common good. The question that will stay with us is whether we still have it in us as a nation to do that.

Some of the cost of complacency is incremental, like the chipping away at our industrial base; some happens faster. Regardless, complacency is a guarantee of our demise. I’m reminded of Hemmingway’s words in The Sun Also Rises, when his character is asked how he went bankrupt. He replied, “Gradually, then suddenly.”

We love to think of ourselves as extraordinary, that we are blessed with American exceptionalism. As gratifying to us as that may feel, we undermine ourselves with our self-congratulation. As I wrote in one of the essays referencing this becoming the Chinese century,

The problem with American exceptionalism is that we assume a superiority that isn’t always warranted. That doesn’t make us exceptional.

But we could be.

We’re already late in building 21st century America. It’s time to take action, to accept the necessary sacrifices and get on board that train to the future. And it better be a high speed train. The chief obstacle to that will be obstructionist Republicans in Congress who may rediscover the awfulness of deficits, now that a Democrat will be in the White House. They are in the way of our exceptionalism.

Mitch McConnell is the leader of the Republican wall of obstruction to progress. His Senate filibustered nearly everything Obama tried to accomplish for the first six years of the Obama administration, including efforts they themselves had championed before January 20, 2009. They effectively eliminated a fundamental tenet of our society: majority rule. For the two years after that McConnell was the majority leader in the Senate and he refused to bring most legislation proposed by Obama or any Democrat to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

We are paying the price for that wall to progress right now and McConnell’s obstructionism is going to continue during the Biden administration. There’s only one way to limit the damage he and his Republican agents of despair can do to America and the pain they inflict on you and me. It is to put Senate leadership into the control of Democrats so that the obstructions to progress can be minimized and we can begin to build our 21st century.

The January 5 double Senate run-off elections in Georgia give us the opportunity to create a 50-50 headcount in the Senate, which will strip Senate leadership and much of the power to obstruct from McConnell. For that to happen we have to do everything in our power to remove the two corrupt sitting senators from Georgia and replace them with honest brokers for We the People. Your part is to help to make that happen.

Go to this link and do all you can. If you’d like to understand this more, I strongly suggest that you read Sheila Markin’s excellent post.

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Ed. note: It has been said that the soon-to-be former president has lived in our heads rent-free for over 5 years, starting with his birtherism slander. That is what constant outrageousness and sensationalism can do, as every circus sideshow barker knows. But our national eviction notice has been posted. The squatter will be gone on January 20 and there’s a permanent

sign for him and every other ego-maniacal tyrant. I recommend that you post a similar sign for your own head.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so,

  1. Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe and pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Use the simple form above on the right.
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Forehead Slapping


Reading time – 3:14  .  .  .

We’ve known the basics of this since at least February 2020. Now the Institute for New Economic Thinking has published a clear, well researched and most accessible paper (this is required reading) giving us the roadmap out of our pandemic and economic quagmires:

To Save the Economy, Save People First

This is a statement of what has been forehead slappingly obvious from the start. Consider their first recommendation:

Recommendation #1: Save the Economy by Saving Lives First

Limiting economic damage caused by the pandemic starts and ends with controlling the spread of the virus. Dozens of experiments conducted in different countries across the world definitively show that no country can prevent the economic damage without first addressing the pandemic that causes it. The countries that swiftly focused first on pandemic abatement measures are now reopening in stages and growing their economies. Most of the countries that prioritized bolstering their economies and resisted, limited, or prematurely curtailed interventions to control the pandemic are now facing runaway rates of infection and imminent state and national lockdowns.

We’ve known  this, so how is it that this is news?

Our national politics have focused on the economy and largely ignored the suffering and death that is driving our economic disaster. As much as we have been harmed by Trump’s flip-flopping, disingenuous and stupid healthcare recommendations (injecting Clorox and Lysol, treating COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine, etc.) and his refusal to lead, our disaster isn’t solely about the lack of proper leadership from Trump.

Click me for the story

South Dakota has the third highest rate of death from COVID-19 in the world. Nevertheless, the governor of that state recently bragged about refusing to mandate mask wearing. That kind of political posturing, denial and healthcare myopia has made things exponentially worse in every way. And she’s not alone in her denial.

We Americans demand instant gratification, which is great for popcorn at the movie theater. It isn’t so great for dealing with pandemic disease or national economic issues or even your own personal economic issues. But we don’t have solutions for any of these vexing problems that don’t require both sacrifice and patience.

Further, we Americans don’t like to hear unpleasant news, but that makes us weenies when we need to be courageous. So, it comes down to this: we must buckle up and do what needs to be done. It will be bad, but not nearly as bad as all the other options.

As I wrote in a recent post, “The problem won’t go away without taking the cure. Even if the cure is painful, at least it’s temporary. Without taking the cure, the pandemic is permanent.” That will still be true for a long time, even after vaccines become available. And the economy will remain hobbled unless we save lives first.

Read the entire INET report. The data is shockingly clear and persuasive. Then slap your forehead over the obvious truth we’ve been refusing to see and how Trump’s continuing refusal to lead this country to health is killing Americans and our economy.

Trump is the kid who lost the Monopoly game and is throwing the tokens, houses, hotels, Chance cards and money across the room, because if he can’t win he wants to make sure nobody else can win, either. This is what happens when a temper tantrum brat gets his hands on power. He may be on his way out, but he’s making sure that he continues to get gobs of attention by booby-trapping all he can. And he hasn’t a care in the world how many people get hurt or how badly compromised he makes our nation. It is ever and always solely about him, and he simply can’t deal with being a loser.

But he is. And people are dying.

For those who have refused to see, that’s a forehead slapper, too.

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Fun  Contest

Donald Trump is incapable of admitting he’s a loser, so he will not attend the inauguration of Joe Biden or voice any acknowledgement of the reality that he lost. On the other hand, he will have to leave 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and that is the source of our contest.

Check only the circle that most applies:

Ο – Trump will sneak out of the White House when nobody’s looking in order to minimize his humiliation.

Ο – While waiting for the end, Trump will plant loaded mousetraps in the drawers of the Resolute Desk, put Whoopee Cushions under the seats of the sofas in the Oval Office and have his gold plated toilet removed and shipped to New York without replacing it with a new fixture. Then he will attempt to hide the bust of Andrew Jackson under his overcoat to take it as a souvenir. He will allow Secret Service agents to drag him out of the White House by his elbows in front of TV cameras in order to maximize his victimhood and enhance his martyrdom. As he is being led across the South Lawn to Marine 1 he will shout that the election was full of fraud, that it was rigged and that “Everybody knows I won the election.” He will instruct the pilot of Marine 1 to fly over the National Mall in a pattern depicting a human hand with an extended middle finger.

Mail your entry along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope, to:

    • Trump Biggest Loser Contest
    • 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
    • Washington, DC 20500
    • Att’n: Loser in Chief

Entries must be received by 11:59AM on January 20 to be eligible. Winning entries will be announced  at 12:00 noon on that same day. The decision of the voters is final.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so,

  1. Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe and pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Use the simple form above on the right.
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Thanks


The original announcement for this post went out without a link. It should work this time.

Please watched this video It’s just right for today

And Peggy Noonan’s essay Blessings In a Hard Year is required reading. You’ll see why.

Many thanks to AH for the pointer.


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

President Donald Trump’s Final Address to the Nation


Reading time – 3:12; Viewing time – 4:51  .  .  .

The White House, Washington D.C., January 19, 2021

My fellow Americans, we gather tonight on the eve of a new administration for our country. Once again we are affirming our democracy with the peaceful transfer of power exactly as envisioned and required by our Founders and our Constitution. This is one of the ways we demonstrate to the world our commitment to the rule of law and the all important bedrock of our democracy, rule by We the People. May the world take notice.

There are always a great many challenges to the United States and today is no different, except that we now face the biggest challenge in 100 years: the coronavirus pandemic. Most of the rest of our challenges rely on solving this problem first. Only then will we be able to heal our people and at last repair our great nation. Because this is of supreme importance, tonight we focus there.

Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, Dr. Redmond and all of our epidemiologists have been clear, as have our ER and ICU medical professionals, that we cannot go on as we have. Our healthcare capacity has been over-topped and dramatic steps are needed to reverse this deadly trend.

That is why tonight I am urging – I’m imploring – that you and all of us follow the advice and direction of our medical professionals. There is no vaccine at hand that can suddenly protect all of us, so we must do the preventive things the experts advise. Wear a mask any time you’re near others you don’t live with. Stay at least six feet away from others even if everyone is wearing a mask. Wash your hands often in the manner prescribed by our medical people. And avoid all unnecessary contact with others. That means don’t visit stores any more than you have to – combine trips. Don’t sit inside restaurants or bars. If you are an essential worker, make sure you’re protected from co-workers, for example with plastic panel dividers. Do all of these things all of the time and we can begin to turn things around for all of us.

I’m not wearing a mask right now only because I’m addressing you for the moment and because only broadcast personnel are in the Oval Office with me and they are all at least 15 feet away. As soon as this address is over I will don my mask once again.

Yes, wearing a mask is a nuisance. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable and now and then even a little nasty. And yes, it is an imposition on the freedom of all of us to have to wear a mask. But we can lick this problem, we can meet this challenge to protect all of us if we each sacrifice a little for the betterment of us all. It is a patriotic duty. It is a sign of the loyalty we swear to one another. We do this for ourselves, for our families, our friends and for our country. This is what proud, patriotic Americans do.

Many months ago I told you that the cure must not be worse than the problem. At the time we were seeing millions of newly unemployed people, sent home due to our shutting down so much of our economy. The last thing I wanted to see was so many Americans out of work and perhaps evicted from their homes. That was the cure that I thought might be worse than the problem.

But the disease multiplied fast, faster than many anticipated, and it is terribly deadly. It has infected over 10 million of us and has killed over a quarter of a million of our dear ones. It seems that there is no solving this problem without taking the medicine, the cure.

So, it’s time for us to dig into our vast resources of American grit and gumption and take that medicine. It’s going to hurt, but that hurt will end. If we don’t take that medicine, the hurt will go on forever, compromising not just our health, but our lives, our prosperity, even our national security.

Join me now in following President-Elect Biden and our experts, the very best in the world doctors, scientists and epidemiologists. In following them every day in every way we will beat this terrible enemy and restore our nation to health. And we’ll do it together in a patriotic crusade.

Good night, my fellow Americans, and may God bless this great nation of ours. Now, put on your mask!

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Closing Comments

Imagine if the essence of this speech had been given 10 months ago. Lest you think that leadership doesn’t matter.

If this post makes sense to you be sure to read my pal John Calia’s post from yesterday. Oddly, surprisingly, we both used the same convention to communicate the same critical message at the same time:

It was, is and will continue to be all about leadership.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so,

  1. Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe and pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Use the simple form above on the right.
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Moving On


Reading time – 4:43  .  .  .

The election should be over – after all, it only takes 270 and it’s clear to all who’s won and who has lost. But this is going to be dragged through the courts for a while by baseless Trump lawsuits and fantasy charges of fraud. Trump’s anti-American histrionics and tweet storms won’t change the outcome, though, so we proceed.

What Has Happened

Donald Trump has spent his entire life trying to prove he isn’t a loser because his father told him that being a loser is the lowest, most worthless thing. Yet who but a loser goes bankrupt six times, including bankrupting four casinos? CASINOS!

Not even the moral rot of lying, cheating, stealing, defrauding, and even compromising the security of this country is off limits for Trump’s bottomless neediness. He tried to turn this country into an autocracy to serve himself. He has spewed hatred at innocent people and has mocked disabled people and Gold Star families. He demeaned and defamed both our war dead and even our doctors during this pandemic and made this virus yet more deadly.

Many thanks to MZ for the pic

There has never been a low that is so low that Trump would not go there.

Now, though, it’s all caught up to him. The con is over. The jig is up. The American people have held him accountable and it’s plain for anyone to see that he is the loser. It’s the one thing he cannot handle, even as the truth is staring him in the face.

Trump-as-loser is an enormously satisfying thing for those of us who can still remember the meaning of words like “moral” and “decency” and “empathy” and “duty” and “protect and defend” and “loyalty” and “integrity.” We know right from wrong and we won’t tolerate any more of his wrong.

Click me

It’s our turn to take the reins, to make up with friends he offended (see the quote from Paris, France below), to put adversaries on notice and to re-balance our nation for the benefit of We the People instead of for Trump.

So, let us end this long dark night of our country with the familiar words of Glinda, the good witch of the north:

“Let the joyous news be spread,

“The wicked old witch at last is dead.”

It’s going to take many years to fix what Trump has broken and we begin the process right now.

What’s Next

Said Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times In April, “If a new administration succeeds [Trump] in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind.” So, we don our citizenry Hazmat suits and have at it.

Love of country . . . – Joe Biden

I’m imagining that during the lame duck session President-Elect Biden will be preparing some executive orders to sign in the afternoon of January 20 for things needing immediate attention, like:

Restoring full status to the CDC and announcing steps to end this pandemic

Reinstating DACA protections and ordering ICE to stand down and to reunite with their parents all those children in cages at the southern border

Reversing the Muslim ban

Rejoining the World Health Organization (WHO)

Rejoining the JCPOA to make Iran stop nuclear weapons production

Rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement so that we leave an inhabitable place for our grandchildren

Rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership so that we don’t cede all of the Pacific rim to the Chinese

Imposing sanctions on Russia for the Putin-led interference in our elections

It’s time to roll up our collective shirtsleeves and get to work repairing this nation. While President Biden is signing those executive orders, we Americans ourselves start by making peace with one another. See the chart at the bottom for the challenges we’ll have to overcome. And read this.

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Closing Metaphor

I’ve had a persistent vision of life since I was a little guy, this of a long wagon train moving west. The people in the wagons and on horseback and those walking are on a very long journey and all the regular things of life happen along the way. Sometimes someone dies and the wagon train must stop to bury the dead. Prayers are said, tears are streamed and grief is wailed. But when that is over, the people know they can’t stay and that there’s only one thing to do: move on. So, they once again mount their wagons and their horses and on they go toward their new frontier. Progress always means leaving something behind.

We have had much suffering over the past four years and not just from Covid. A major casualty has been our sense of national unity and a certain respect for one another. Some of our most cherished institutions, norms and values have been crushed. Some can be repaired; some may have to be buried. Regardless, there is only one thing to do: we must mount our wagons and our horses and continue on toward our new frontier.

The challenge for all of us is to make sure that everyone comes along. It may be difficult, but we are – all of us – bound to this wagon train and we are headed toward our new frontier together.

C’est la vie.

Immediate reactions to the Biden/Harris win:

From Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris, France: “Welcome back, America.” She speaks for the world.

From David Hogg, survivor of the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School and co-founder of Never Again: “Who’s ready to win GA?”

From Lt. Col. (Ret.) Alexander Vindman: “Congratulations to President Elect @JoeBiden and Vice President Elect @KamalaHarris. I am grateful for your willingness to continue to serve the American people. Now we can start to heal and rebuild.”

From Preet Bharara, former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York: “Who wants to dance?”

Chirpus invertibratis Republicanis, AKA, “spineless cricket”

From Van Jones of CNN: You must watch this clip.

From Don Lemon of CNN: You must watch this clip.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky immediately sent congratulations to President-Elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris.

From most Republicans in Congress: crickets

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Click me for the full report

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so,

  1. Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe and pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Use the simple form above on the right.
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA

 


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

Illusion


Reading time – 3:40  .  .  .

Blanketed with frustration and anger over this ongoing spectacle of an election, disappointment haunts me, but it isn’t about Trump. I want to hug my ancient 48-star flag, not to disrespect Alaska or Hawaii, but to touch what I used to believe. Underneath it all, my heart is breaking.

The people of North Dakota have spoken. A majority of voters in that state made the clear and unambiguous statement that they want Donald Trump to stay in the White House for another four years. The challenge for all of us is to understand why they would do that.

Perhaps for these folks voting is simply a reflex action: voting for a Democrat is simply unthinkable. Grandpa was a Republican and Daddy was a Republican, so these voters are Republicans, even as the meaning of “Republican” isn’t remotely what it used to be.

Perhaps they believe the demeaning caricature of Democrats that Fox News and the president have painted for them. They’re convinced that socialism, crippling taxes, rule by fanatical anarchist mobs and high rise ghettos invading their suburbs would be certainties if Joe Biden were to become the next president. It’s just another episode of The Big Lie, but the tactic seems to have worked.

Multiple domestic and international studies have shown conclusively that the horrific infection and death rates from Covid-19 in the United States have been made far worse by the lack of national leadership to combat it. A minimum of 75% of the deaths are due to Donald Trump refusing to provide assertive, positive leadership.

If North Dakota were a stand-alone nation, it would have the highest rate of infection in the entire world. Hospitals are overrun with sick and dying patients. By now nearly everyone in the state must know someone who has suffered and perhaps someone who has died of it.

Nevertheless, North Dakotans voted to keep in office the very person who allowed that to happen. In other words, they had the choice of life or death and they chose death.

And that’s just North Dakota.

In Kentucky voters gave Mitch “Big Hypocrite” McConnell a double-digit win. In South Carolina they gave a similar margin to Lindsay “Spineless Hypocrite” Graham. Maybe I remember this incorrectly, but didn’t it used to be a bad thing to be a hypocrite?

Our former allies, the ones who were our friends before Trump insulted and abandoned them, had been waiting for this election to show that Trump was just a mistake of our democracy, an aberration that we would set right at the first opportunity. Now, even if Biden wins after the mail-in ballots are counted, they will know that they are only one election away from destruction of the stable order that protected us all and provided prosperity for 75 years.

We’ve told our allies plainly that they can no longer count on us and, if they have any sense of self-preservation, they will be forging new alliances and moving steadily away from the U.S. All of this will happen as Trump cedes more of our democracy to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. And all of that will happen because a huge percentage of Americans voted for it.

The cleaving of Americans from one another surely can be traced to Richard Nixon and his Southern Strategy. Reagan stoked divisions, too, with his lies about welfare queens and more. During the Clinton years Newt Gingrich became Chief Congressional Flamer and a Republican Congress unleashed junk yard dog Ken Starr to poke into the underwear drawers of both Clintons in what really was a witch hunt. They framed everything in self-righteous biblical certainties.

Obama’s presidency gave fuel to racial divisions and the unleashing of frothing senators and congressmen. And Trump is a never ending font of victimizing, demonizing and calls to hatred and violence. We’ve always had differences and Fox News deserves much credit for stoking them, making fine clarity about who the “bad guys” are so hatreds can be fed. Clearly, we have to give a lifetime achievement award for divisiveness to the Republicans.

And now here we are with our clear, unambiguous and heartbreaking election statement of who we really are.

Thomas Jefferson told us plainly what we need in order to sustain our democratic republic:

“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.”

And roughly half of all Americans perversely insist upon being low information voters. They refuse to be educated sufficiently to exercise oversight. Instead, they watch Fox News and listen to the haters deny reality and incrementally allow our democracy to be stolen from us.

We are led by the world’s greatest circus sideshow barker, drawing into his tent the rubes who believe his grandiose lies about what’s inside. Abraham Lincoln was right, that you really can fool some of the people all of the time. I never dreamed that “some of the people” meant half the voters.

I had a picture of what America is. Regardless of what we find to be the final counts from this election, it turns out that my picture was an illusion and I have become dis-illusioned.

—————————————-

Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so,

  1. Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe and pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Use the simple form above on the right.
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Transcript of the Third Debate


Transcript of former Vice-President Joseph R. Biden’s closing argument at the imaginary 3rd and final Presidential Debate, 2020

Well, folks, we’ve gotta give credit where it’s due. It’s only right.

We’ve just heard the closing argument of President Trump, giving you his best story to get you to vote for him. It was so odd that he couldn’t give us a single reason to vote for him, like what he’d do in a second term. He just whined about how he was being treated so unfairly. He offers us nothing and wants us to believe he’s a poor victim. That’s pathetic. But still, some credit is due. Here’s the credit.

Never in at least the last 100 years of presidential contests have so many lies been told in just two minutes. He’s really very good at lying. That’s the credit he’s due.

Lots of his lying is just Trump trying to make himself look good, so he makes up total fictions hoping you’ll buy the nonsense and he does it in such a tsunami of lies that there’s no chance for you to say, “Wait  .  .  .  what?” But that’s dangerous, because it puts you and your family at risk.

Like his lies about the coronavirus. Folks, we’re not rounding the bend; one thousand of us are dying every day and it’s getting worse.

Trump surrenders to COVID-19, February, 2020

We’re in the midst of the biggest surge of infections yet, now over 80,000 per day. He tells us that he’s done an incredible job with this pandemic, but the truth is that he abandoned his post and let the virus attack. He’s literally done nothing to help you stay healthy. And every day he models the very behavior most likely to make a lot more people sick and for many of them to die, like his refusal to wear a mask and like his super-spreader rallies. And just last week his chief of staff announced that they waved the white flag of surrender and won’t do a thing to protect you. All they’re doing is counting on vaccines and treatments that don’t exist.

That’s why some of the kids in your child’s school got infected and were sick for days, perhaps for weeks. Maybe it hit your child. It’s why people’s grandparents – maybe yours – got sick and died alone. It’s why our doctors and nurses are so exhausted and our hospitals are so overcrowded that you can’t get help if you have a heart attack or are involved in a car crash. That’s what has happened because this president abandoned his post. He quit.

He lies to make it sound like he’s done something useful, but he hasn’t helped you at all. He even demeans the true experts who can help you.

And he’s cut way back on testing so that the number of cases reported will be lower just to make him look good. But that doesn’t lower the actual number of people who become sick and die. How dumb does he think you are?

Folks, his lying has made the greatest country in the world look like a helpless 3rd world nation. We’re leading the world in infections, suffering and death. That doesn’t fit too well with our notion of American exceptionalism, our can-do spirit.

Sadly, Trump will never be a real live boy because he lies all the time.

Have you heard enough lies from this president?

Folks, I’ll never surrender. I’ll never wave a white flag or give up on We the People. We’re going to beat this thing together.

How about his lies about the economy? Millions of our fellow citizens – maybe you – have lost their jobs and 42% of those furloughed won’t ever be rehired – and still he lies.

He tells you how great the economy is doing. The tax cut he’s so proud of was supposed to increase your wages and stimulate new jobs. That’s what he promised you. How’s that working out for you? Folks, it was never going to happen.

Instead, he gave billions of dollars to big corporations to buy back their stock in order to increase their stock prices so that big shareholders would become even richer. And the money also went directly into the investment portfolios of other rich guys. Nearly nothing went to you, and still he lies to you about how great the economy is doing. C’mon man, gimme a break!

Have you heard enough lies from this president?

He lies to you about how great our international safety and security are, but he’s alienated all of our friends, the nations who partner with us to protect us all. And he’s sucked up to Putin and other brutal dictators, putting us all at risk and lying to you at the same time.

Have you heard enough lies from this president?

He said he was going to drain the swamp – maybe you wanted him to do that. But what he did instead was to get rid of the competent people who make the government work for us and he replaced them with industry insiders, lobbyists, big donors and incompetents. They’re all swamp creatures! Then he fired them and recruited even worse people and lied to you about that, too!

The We The People Presidential BS Detector

Have you heard enough lies from this president?

He loves to vomit out his strings of superlatives about himself, but they’re all just vapor. There’s no substance to them. They’re just more of his lies.

Folks, we all know how this works. Every one of us has a very sensitive BS detector and the big We The People BS Detector has been pegged out for 4 years. So, if you’ve had enough, if you’re sick of being lied to and cheated and put in harms way for no reason other than so Trump can grab more money, more power and more attention for himself, it’s time for you to take a stand and speak up. You do that with your vote.

This won’t cut it. If you’ve heard enough lies, you have to VOTE HIM AWAY!

Vote this liar out of office right now. Put on your mask and go to your polling place this afternoon or tomorrow morning at the latest. Get in line and stay in line to make your voice heard with your vote. Tell Trump you’re done with his lies.

Folks, this president has broken our country. Fixing it will require an end to his lies. Then we’ll put America back together again. We’ll Build Back Better and restore America’s health and honor and leadership in the world because this is the United States of America.

God bless you and God bless our troops.

———————–

Signs of Trump Insanity Affecting You

From STAT:

Three Western states join California’s Covid-19 vaccine review group

Washington, Oregon, and Nevada yesterday joined California’s Covid-19 vaccine safety review group, which will independently review any Covid-19 vaccine approved by the FDA. Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the initiative last week. The review panel is currently made up of California scientists who specialize in immunization and public health, and the governors of the three states who have joined the effort will also select and name their own experts to the panel. States are taking up this effort to verify a vaccine amid concerns about a politicized and rushed approval for a Covid-19 vaccine. In addition to these four states, New York last month also announced that any FDA-approved Covid-19 vaccine will be independently vetted by state health officials. [emphasis mine]

How insane is it that we can’t trust our formerly world leading Food and Drug Administration to ensure that our vaccines are safe and effective – this because of Trump’s lies and manipulations? There truly is nothing that Trump won’t lie about and ruin, including our confidence in those entrusted to protect us and even your health.

——————————-

Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA


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

Minority Rule


Reading time – 3:52  .  .  .

NOTE – read to the end for the key message.

60%  of Americans want stricter gun safety laws and regulations.

61% of Americans support a woman’s right to choose.

66% of Americans want a government health insurance plan for all.

70% of Americans believe most undocumented immigrants working in the U.S. should be offered a chance to apply for legal status.

That’s just a very small sample of what the majority of Americans want. But they either don’t have those things or they now realize these issues are mortally threatened by the new composition of the Supreme Court, as manipulated by Mitch McConnell. It can all be traced to the decades-long push for minority rule by monied interests and the Republican Party.

There is a huge story to tell and it is much too big for a 1,000 word post, but you already know some of the basics. For example, you know that in White areas of many of our cities the wait time to vote is about 15 minutes. In the poor and Black parts of town the wait time can be eight hours due to the closing of polling places, a limited number of voting machines and insufficient staffing.

In the 2018 election Democrats in Wisconsin got 205,000 more votes than Republicans, but the Republicans wound up with a 27 seat advantage in the state Assembly. It has been the same in North Carolina for many years.  And in those states, as in about 2/3 of the rest, it allowed the state houses to restrict voting rights for massive numbers of Americans. Say it with me: Gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering allowed states to remove a voter’s registration if the voter didn’t return a post card within 14 days. And those post cards were targeted at poor and minority people.

Gerrymandering allowed states to impose ID requirements in order to vote, something that is both relatively costly and burdensome to obtain for poor people. Note that the Constitution only requires citizenship to vote.

Gerrymandering allowed the secretaries of state of these discriminatory states to close polling places, locate polling places in difficult to reach areas, restrict voting days and hours and more.

Gerrymandering is what reduced mail-in ballot drop boxes to just one in all of Harris County, Texas (that’s the entire Houston metropolitan area).

Minority rule has also given us Republican governors who suck up to Trump and who have by fiat denied mandatory face mask wearing in their states – places like Iowa, South Dakota, Florida, Nebraska, Texas and more – this as the cases of COVID-19 are skyrocketing, with more than 70,000 new cases every day.

Republicans want very much to restrict voting rights. That’s because they will become an extinct species if We the People actually have a democracy – i.e. majority rule. Paul Weyrich, founder of the self-righteous Moral Majority and other right wing manipulation machines said it plainly, clearly and publicly in 1980:

“I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the election, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

The leverage Weyrich was referring to is that of Republicans, not conservatives. There’s a difference, as exemplified by there being nothing conservative in most of what Donald Trump does or says. He’s all about not conserving what the Founders intended.

Weyrich was right. If the roughly 100 million eligible voters who typically don’t vote, many of whom are unfairly prohibited from voting, suddenly showed up to vote, no Republican would win, because most of those 100 million citizens aren’t rich people. They are minorities and poor people and, of course, tens – perhaps hundreds – of thousands of disaffected, frustrated middle class people. Most of them would vote for Democrats, which is why Republicans don’t want them to vote.

What that means is that a small minority is ruling this country. It’s how the Supreme Court wound up looking as it does. It’s how the Republicans have controlled the Senate. It’s how the House has been largely under Republican control for decades. And it is why we are now in this insane election process that threatens to be decided by our lopsided, contorted Supreme Court, instead of by We the People.

We can’t change our current insanity instantly, but we surely can start the process and it’s up to you to do that.

Samuel L. Jackson has laid it out plainly for you. Watch his YouTube video, because he’s very smart. Do as he says.

If you haven’t voted yet, you have only 6 days left. It may be too late for mail-in voting, although you may be able to drop off your mail-in ballot at your precinct voting place, your city hall or in a ballot drop box. In-person early voting is ongoing and it’s your best opportunity to ensure your voice is heard and to vote this horrid minority out of office.

VOTE NOW!

————————

Resources
  1. Read John Pavlovitz’s great clarity in “No, I Won’t Agree To Disagree. You’re Just Wrong.” He’s right.
  2. This Is Not Normal, by Amy Siskind in The Washington Post
  3. The entire “Sunday Review” of The New York Times, October 18, 2020: Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, and Here.
VOTE NOW!

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Idle Speculation of the Week

Rudy Giuliani is spending his days and nights in Ukraine, digging for dirt to help Donald Trump. He’s unleashed volumes of anti-Biden, pro-Trump Russian propaganda repeatedly. Even his daughter opposes his behavior.

He tells us he’s Trump’s lawyer but that he’s not being paid. Does that combination make any sense to you? Speculate on this: What does Giuliani get out of being Trump’s muck-making slime bag? My idle speculation is that Trump has promised to make him Attorney General if Trump is re-elected.

Scientific Speculation of the Week

From STAT:

“A new modeling study finds that there could be half a million Covid-19-related deaths by the end of February next year, but universal mask use could save 130,000 of those lives.”

Just wondering which group the fiercely independent face mask refusers want to be in, the 130,000 who could live or the rest who will be dead. There’s a really big cost for them stomping feet and yelling, “You can’t tell me what to do.”

Scientific speculation: The rest of us pay a huge price for refuser selfishness.

Unintentionally Revealing Quote of the Week

From the New York Times:

”  .  .  .  Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, essentially offering a verbal shrug on CNN on Sunday: ‘We’re not going to control the pandemic.’

‘We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations, because it is a contagious virus — just like the flu,’ Mr. Meadows said.”

Mark Meadows is co-founder with insanely rabid Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) of the patriotically misnamed Freedom Caucus. Apparently, Meadows wants us to be free to get sick and die.

What he’s telling us is that our top national leadership is not focused on protecting the American people. They are doing nothing to prevent our exposure to a killer virus that is most definitely not like the flu. Instead, these public servants (supposedly serving We the People) are focused on vaccines and therapeutics that don’t exist! That’s minority rule as a cruel, manipulative, homicidal refusal to act and to lead. And it’s killing us.

Watch this 1-minute video.

Did I mention,

VOTE NOW!
————————
Quotes for Today

From Rachel Maddow on October 27, 2020: “If you’re standing in line waiting to vote, know that you are pulling a thread through a lot of history. Stay in line.”

From Admiral (Ret.) William McRaven in his 20-minute 2014 commencement address at the University of Texas: “Don’t ever, ever ring the bell.” [i.e. quit]

From me: Get in line, stay in line and vote to change our country and change the world.

From Yoda: “On you, everything depends.”

From me again: I like Joe Biden, but if the Democrats had nominated a box of rocks to run against Trump, I’d vote for the rocks.

——————————-

There might not be time to mail in your vote and have it arrive in time, so DROP IT OFF in a drop box.

Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

JA

 


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

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & Democracy


Reading time 5:16; Viewing time – 8:35  .  .  .

BREAKING NEWS  .  .  .

In the second and last presidential candidate debate last Thursday President Trump set a new International Prevarication Record – the coveted IPR – by lying more than once per minute with peak gusts to 3 per minute for multiple extended periods of time. The record had been held by Pinocchio since 1883, but Trump obliterated Pinocchio’s record in just 90 minutes. Said one of the judges, “Boy, that guy sure can make up total crap really fast.”

Many of his lies were about the coronavirus. His lies have and will continue to prove to be lethal to Americans. More on that in the Health Statistic of the Week section below.

————————–

The Main Point

In looking for a particular quotation, I recently had occasion to revisit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter From the Birmingham Jail (download a copy here). I wound up reading the entire document again and found that much of what he wrote in 1963 applies to today.

This isn’t the 1950-60s segregated South or the middle of the 19th century before the Civil War, but we are once again at Robert Frost’s metaphorical point where two roads diverge and the choice we make for the path moving forward will have profound consequences. This road is both about race in America and whether we will continue go be a democracy and we must decide which path to take.

Dr. King wrote his letter to a group of clergy with whom he was quite disappointed because of their lack of support and outright criticism of the peaceful, nonviolent demonstrations he led for racial justice. With that in mind, here are some quotes from his letter. Decide for yourself if his words feel uncomfortably applicable to today.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham [feel free to apply this statement to today by substituting Portland or Kenosha or St. Paul or Ferguson or  .  .  . ]  But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being.

Birmingham’s [or substitute the name of another city] ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. It’s unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. [See this post for confirmation.]

I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

We know from painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

  • For a contemporary look at this and to truly understand what is going on in America right now, watch author Kimberly Jones’ 7-minute video. Before watching you need to know that her words are hard. They are rough. If all you can tolerate is a Kumbaya moment, this isn’t for you. This is only for you if you really want to know the truth, if you really want to know the “why” of what goes on and not just the “what” and if you really want to see what our country steadfastly refuses to look at. Many thanks to Amy Tucker for highlighting this video.
  • Be clear that race is an issue where choice and consequences demand our immediate action. At the same time we are dealing with the destruction of much of what had been believed to be our national bedrock, the rules, practices and guardrails that have allowed us to be a democracy since the Constitution was ratified.
  • There’s big trouble right now, leaving us with the ongoing challenge to both issues and the requirement to answer the questions: What will we do? And what will we be?
  • The principles driving our choices and the consequences they produce in both race and for our democracy itself are interchangeable.
  • That road diverging into two paths and the choice about which we follow is upon us. We are facing the choice between destruction and hope. We are deciding whether we will continue to hate or whether we will find reconciliation. We are deciding whether might makes right or whether right makes right. We are deciding if we truly believe that all men and women are created equal and whether the call of the Pledge of Allegiance for liberty and justice for all means anything. It is a profound moment in America. History and our children’s children will be a brutal judge if we choose poorly. Choose wisely right now.

  • VOTE IN PERSON EARLY**

  • WEAR YOUR “I VOTED” STICKER WITH PRIDE

  • ————————–
Health Statistic of the Week
  • There are over 70,000 new cases daily and
  • OVER 700 COVID DEATHS EVERY DAY IN THE U.S.
  • Click the graph for the WaPo article.

President Trump told us clearly and in no uncertain terms that “We’re rounding the bend” on the coronavirus and that “it affects virtually nobody.” Just to prove him right, over the past 7 days more than 5,600 American nobodies rounded that bend and are now dead.* According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the actual number is almost certainly far higher than the official count.

We send our deep, heartfelt condolences to all of our dead American nobodies.

Dr. Scott Atlas is a radiologist – an MRI, x-ray guy. He’s an infectious disease and epidemic imbecile. He’s heading Trump’s program of avoidance of doing anything positive to protect Americans from the pandemic. Atlas recommends herd immunity to beat the coronavirus. That consists of waiting for infection to sweep the nation and for millions to die. After that we’ll just carry on with the few of us remaining. Trump has talked about this method of national suicide at times and, by his lack of action, appears to favor it. Why would he do that? Try this.

The elderly are the ones most likely to die from this disease, so doing nothing to protect people will cull the herd of millions of those whose tax dollars funded Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid but who are now a financial drain from the system. Neither George W. Bush nor Paul Ryan could get those programs privatized, but Trump may accomplish the same tax dollar savings by getting millions of our people killed. Genius.

So, we chant, Trump lied, people died.

  • ————————–
Quote of the Week

This is for all the hissy fit people who refuse to wear a mask because it infringes on their freedom.*** And for those whose liberty has been squashed and want the schools to reopen, regardless of how many teachers, staff and grandparents become infected and die. And for all those so desperate for a drink that they need their favorite bar to open so they can have a Covid party. And for the mega churches in Denver whose rights were so horribly stomped on that they sued and won the right to jam mask-less people into their amphitheaters in weekly super-spreader events. And for all the self-proclaimed keepers of the one true vision of America, the daddy issues militia morons, whose rights are somehow more important than those of the rest of us.

“Liberty doesn’t mean freedom to infect other people.” – Paul Krugman, NY Times

  • ————————–

*Worldwide the number is over 1 million dead.

**You really need to read Ira Leavitt’s take on this.

***Read Paul Krugman’s love letter to Libertarians here. My view is that any Ayn Rand is too much.

  • —————————————-

    There might not be time to mail in your vote and have it arrive in time, so DROP IT OFF in a drop box.

    Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so,

    1. Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe and pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Use the simple form above on the right.
    2. Engage in the Comments section 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, so don’t bug me about it.
    2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
    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.

    JA


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

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