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Open Letters


POST 1229

Open Letter To Republican Senators and Representatives

You know that Trump is solely about becoming King Donald I. And you know that his lawlessness has no bounds. You know that with your help he’s placed painfully unqualified sycophants into cabinet and other positions positions where they are doing abhorrent things to our country. You know that he is murdering people in international waters (16 so far) and supplying no evidence or justification for his murders that could pass even his bogus IQ test.*

You know he’s plunging millions of Americans into destitution, sickness and death. You know he’s running scam after scam from the Oval Office while you look away from the intentional cruelty and admire his new marble and gold latrine.

You have the power to stop these egregiously anti-American actions, but you sit in chambers trying to look like a statesman, while knowing you’re nothing but a coward and hypocrite. Gotta suck to be you.

John Thune (R-SD) is the wimpy Republican Senate leader, endowed by his master with certain Trump bestowed rights, including the right to suck up, the right and duty to block everything not specifically beneficial to Trump and the right to lead the 52 other Republican senators to impotence. They are the key enablers of Trump’s ultimate betrayal of our country.

Plus, of course, House Speaker Mike Johnson. He’s the guy leading 850,000 of his fellow Louisianans into starvation because he snapped the SNAP benefits. Gonna be a real interesting campaign for his seat a year from now.

Clearly we have to contact Republican senators and representatives and demand that they find their courage and obey the oath to which they swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, that thing that Trump has said he wants to terminate. Not that the congresswimps might have even a smidgen of courage. Still, one must do more than hope. So call them.

Hurry. People are dying.

Open Letter To Immigration Hardasses

Click for the story – be sure to read the comments

Click and read the Chicago Tribune story

It’s easy to watch the news, see  ICE cruelty and lawlessness and say, “Isn’t that AWFUL!” and then go back to whatever we were doing. It’s harder to redirect ourselves when the awful is happening down our own street, like it is this week in Illinois towns like Northbrook, Mt. Prospect, Evanston and Arlington Heights.

ICE holes are chasing down and arresting landscapers and even daycare workers in quiet neighborhoods. They’re terrorizing children and spreading cruelty everywhere.

So, I’ll tell you what, Mr. Immigration Hardass: You come do the clean up of the blizzard of fall leaves in my yard. You mow my lawn and trim my bushes. You go wash dishes, pots and pans in a steamy hot kitchen of some restaurant where you like to dine and be treated like royalty. You go do the stoop labor in the fields of California’s central valley picking fruits and vegetables.

That won’t happen, though, because you won’t work that hard. But you’re eager to stand on the necks of people who will, people who have hopes for their children, who work harder than you’d ever work.

Here’s the dirty secret: those people would be legal residents, many full citizens, if you’d stop wailing hyperbolic idiot slogans and lies to enrage our citizens against Brown people and instead you would actually fix our horrible immigration system.

But you don’t want to do that, because you and our federal White Citizens Council equivalent in DC want to get rid of Brown people. Then you parade your faux Christianity before the cameras.

I had a dream last night that a bunch of us started rounding up ICE holes, stuffing them into airplanes and dumping them in El Salvador. Maybe that treatment should be extended to our self-righteous politicians. Let them get a taste of the cruelty they condone.

Untold millions of people have entered this country over the centuries without having been processed by some Ellis Island equivalent, including all of our Founding Fathers, Davy Crockett’s family and most of our presidents’ ancestors. You get the idea.

Every one of those immigrants was looking to make a better life. They were no different than the landscapers in my neighborhood who were chased, thrown to the ground and dumped into unmarked vans, bound for a rendition destination, never to be heard from again.

So, as you vilify Brown people, Mr. Immigration Hardass, think of them as being just like your grandparents. In fact, exactly like your grandparents. Would you rendition Grandma and Grandpa to a gulag in El Salvador?

If your answer is any shade of yes, Mr. Immigration Hardass, you are way beyond irredeemable. You’re hopeless.

See Beaten, Trampled and Tear-Gassed After Deportation to a Salvadoran Prison, online as ‘You Are All Terrorists’: Four Months in a Salvadoran Prison”

Your felonious president cut a deal with Nayib Bukele, the brutal dictator of El Salvador, to incarcerate our deported. But he does way worse than just imprisoning them. Keep in mind that none – NONE! – of the deported prisoners has been convicted of any wrongdoing through due process of law. No matter. They are tortured regardless.

Do you still want to rendition Grandma and Grandpa, Mr. Immigration Hardass?

BTW

What company rents those black, unmarked vans, SUVs and sedans to ICE? Someone should track down those license plates so we can boycott the sell-out rental agencies.

Click for the story in The Onion

Click for the story in The Onion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

________________________________________

Click the “elephant”

* Trump’s recent “IQ test” was actually the Montreal Cognitive Assessment designed to identify dementia in patients. Why do you suppose he had to take that test a second time?

Trump said he “aced” the test, but the MCA does not measure intellectual capacity (IQ). He said, “The first couple of questions are easy. A tiger, an elephant, a giraffe.” Have a look- how’d he do?

Perhaps he knows the difference between a lion, a rhino and a camel. Sadly, there is little value of that animal knowledge in the Oval Office, even if he had given the right answers.

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. 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.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


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

Two Cruelties


POST 1228

Keeping Score

Trump’s Reichsführer, Stephen Miller, White House Nazi-in-residence, has an important goal. He says that we must deport (not incarcerate; deport) 1 million people per year, regardless of anyone’s absence of criminality, lawful U.S. residence or even citizenship. That may have to do with something primitive about blood and  soil.

Here’s the math.

1 million people removed in a year will require 2,739 people to be disappeared every day. ICE reports that they’ve disappeared 527,000 – about 1,370 per day. Clearly, Trump’s Thug Corps. is not on pace to brutalize people to match up with Miller’s nutso number. And there is nobody checking ICE’s number – could be worse – any more than there is anyone stopping their cruelty, so there is no particular credibility to their body count.

Now you see the reason for the Jonathan Swift solution proposed in POST 1227. It should appeal to psycho Stephen Miller as a serious recommendation cruel enough even for Trump, especially as a distraction from the Epstein files and rumored pedophilia and sex trafficking of little girls. And that perpetuates the cruelty to all of the victims of Epstein and his clients.

They messed up. They let us know there’s an Epstein black book and a gazillion documents of his crimes and those of his allegedly wicked “clients.” Trump can dance, deny, and distract, but he and his bootlickers can’t make us forget that the incriminating evidence exists. I just hope that someone is retaining unaltered copies of the evidence so that suck up sycophant Pam Bondi can’t redact all of it into a black blob.

Congressman Brad Schneider (D-IL 10) and the Republicans

From Rep. Schneider’s October 31 newsletter:

On Monday [October 27], as chair of the New Democrat Coalition (New Dems), I reached out to my counterparts in the Republican Main Street Caucus and the Republican Governance Group (RG2), proposing we sit down to look for common ground and shared ideas for breaking the impasse between Republicans and Democrats  I was hopeful they would agree to join me in bipartisan conversations. Unfortunately, neither one was willing to engage. [I]nstead they leaked my outreach to the press and told us to effectively “pound sand.” Click here for [the] MSNBC story on my letter.

That’s what we can count on for help to get justice for Epstein’s victims and ICE’s victims. And that should tell you all you need to know about how desperate Trump and Speaker Johnson are to maintain distractions to prevent the Epstein files from being made public and how desperate Republicans are to avoid displeasing Trump. No amount of food shortages, economic woes and healthcare suffering by the public will dissuade them and fellow Republicans from stalling and covering up the horrific crimes likely to be found in those Epstein documents or stop the ICE unlawful cruelty.

From Steve Schmidt, November 3

The American people are besieged by malice, indifference, corruption, incompetence, venal leaders and a boiling hot lava of stupidity, which truly appears to be bottomless. It seems that a corrosive awfulness has saturated everything, everywhere, and that nothing decent remains.

Of course, that is the hope of the architects of our shared misery. Hopelessness is their greatest weapon. Fear is the poisoned tip of their arrow.

We’ve seen the poison tipped arrow up close in Chicago and now in Mt. Prospect, IL at the Randhurst Mall, in quiet residential neighborhoods in Northbrook and in Evanston. Rachel Maddow covered the ICE-hole* brutality on Monday, including an interview with Mayor Daniel Biss. Click here and then on the right for the Chicagoland Sets The Example segment. And click here for an ICE deportation tracker.

There are no riots, there is no vandalism, there are no attacks on people or property in our cities by We The People who are protesting ICE cruelty and Epstein victim cruelty. No one in the streets is rioting, regardless of the phantasmagoria spouted by the Liar In Chief.

Our police cannot fight ICE because doing so would be a violation of the law. The Republicans in Congress could fight the ICE cruelty as well as the cruelty to Epstein victims, but they are spineless cowards. That leaves the opposition to the fascists to you and me.

And that calls on us for our courage.

As your blood boils seeing the cruelty done to the survivors of Epstein and his clients and the cruelty to our neighbors in our streets, remember that any violence by We The People in the streets will give Trump his unwarranted excuse to send the Marines to permanently occupy our country and our freedom will be lost. That is what the domestic terrorists headquartered in Washington want. So .  .  .

Speak up. Show up. Take a stand. And remain non-violent. Always.

__________________________________________

* “ICE-hole” – kudos for the creativity and thanks to MHA for use of the term.

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. 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.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


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

Another Modest Proposal – Plus What Americans Want


POST 1227
Most Important First

You MUST read Prof. Timothy Snyder’s warning, The Next Terrorist Attack And What Comes After (Updated). It is an urgent warning for all of us.

The Jonathan Swift Solution

Click me

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is expensive. We’re paying over $28 billion per year plus another $170 billion from a bill passed in July for their president-led cruelty. This is your money, honey, that we’re giving to ICE thugs in a time of reduced food availability, vastly increased unemployment, a severe housing shortage, skyrocketing healthcare costs and more.

“Enough!” I say, There is a simple solution at hand, similar to A Modest Proposal offered bu Jonathan Swift to the people of Ireland in 1729. Trump and 4th Reichsführer Stephen Miller are sure to love this.

Instead of doing all the pesky legal things like due process that lefty vermin demand for Hispanics, whether they’re criminals or legal immigrants or simply Hispanic-looking American citizens, we will arrest and slaughter them. It will be a fine start for reversing the Great Replacement of White Americans.

But slaughter isn’t enough. We must not waste. We must process the slaughtered ones like beef and feed the meat to our poor people. That will provide multiple benefits:

Click me for the gold plated story.

  1. We’ll get those pesky non-White Christian pretenders off our streets.
  2. We’ll free up housing for real Americans.
  3. We’ll put our legal poor to work processing the meat so they will no longer be unemployed drags on our White population.
  4. Our poor will be fed this new food supply and thereby avoid compromising our regular food stocks intended for the rest of us.
  5. The savings will be enormous and crime rates will plummet.

We at last will be harvesting value from those caravans of immigrants, the murderers, the rapists and the ones hauling drugs to poison real Americans whom Trump warned us about in that golden escalator moment in 2015. How very Final Solution this will be!

Once we’re done with the Browns we can harvest the Blacks, then the Jews and the Muslims. Important footnote*

What Real Americans Want – The Numbers**

It’s cringe worthy when any Republican or former Republican gets misty-eyed in their self-certainty and lets roll off their tongues that this is a center-right country. I’ll give them a good score for being glib, but not for being accurate. Here, updated from June 4, 2025 is truth about where we’re at.

85 – 92% of Americans believe Social Security benefits should be maintained or increased.

58 – 73% of Americans support raising (not cutting) taxes on the wealthy and big corporations.

56 – 70% of Americans want Medicare For All (MFA). Enough with the ridicule of Bernie Sanders.

63% of Americans believe abortion should be legal.

52 – 63% of Americans believe automatic weapons should be banned.***

56 – 60% of Americans want stricter gun laws.

70 – 85% of Americans want strong red flag laws to keep guns out of the hands of abusers.

67% of Americans want the minimum wage to be $15/hour.

74% of Americans want Dreamers to have legal status in the U.S.

62 – 66% of Americans believe medication abortion should be legal.

82% of Americans want Medicaid to either stay the same or increase.

63 – 67% of Americans oppose ICE raids in schools and places of worship.

80% of Americans support maintaining or increasing SNAP (food stamp) benefits.

75 – 90% of Americans oppose redistricting (gerrymandering) for political advantage.

When asked if they’re righties or lefties, millions of Americans claim to be conservatives – center-right or even more to the right. But when they’re asked specifically about their views on the issues above, they respond just as you see – like progressives. That’s why conservative blabbers really should stuff a sock in it. Their center-right claim just isn’t true.

If We The People want these things – and we’ve wanted them for a very long time – how come we don’t have them? Click here for the answer.

About the Kids Who Sat At The Back of the Classroom Shooting Spitballs Instead of Paying Attention
.

30% of Americans believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump but have no – zero – evidence for their belief. ZERO!

35% of Americans cannot name the 3 branches of government.

26% of Americans believe the sun orbits the Earth.

There will be no Blue Light Special to save us from the craziness on the cheap. This is going to cost our blood, sweat and tears. And it is a challenge worthy of America.

4 – 10% of Americans believe the Earth is flat. *****

27% of Americans distrust science.

The roughly 30% who are spitballers blindly follow Trump and they say and believe preposterous things. But many of them align with the list above of What Real Americans Want, even as they mindlessly continue to believe they are righties and continue to shoot spitballs.

If we want something better, like the center-left policies listed above, we’ll have to do something different, like elect Democrats to power who will get off their timid, boring, lazy butts and craft a comprehensive, audacious plan for We The People to get what we want.**** To that point, click to Ben Cominos’ post,

Project 2029: The Blueprint the Left Has Been Too Afraid to Write
.

It will take generations to fix the damage we’ve allowed to be done by our self-serving cowards and hypocrites who cower before bullies and debase themselves to lobbyists. And we’ve been let down – harmed, really – by the willful indifference of the over 90 million eligible voters whose butts remain on their couches every election.

Now is the best time to start the clean-up of the terrible Republican mess in Aisle 2025.

The Department of Hope

If we are to have hope for a better tomorrow we must stop wringing our hands. We have to reach down and grab our grit and use it to attack what deserves to be attacked. It’s time to speak the truth about America and Americans and demand the America We The People want. You know: center-left. That fight is what gives us hope. Plan the work. Work the plan.

Every day in every way, punch the bully in the nose and demand Project 2029 from the Democrats. Maybe then enough people will vote for them and we can start to get what we want.

Don’t back down. Don’t ever back down.
.

Click me. Definitely click me.

Update to Post 1226: Feel Better Now?

Americans are facing imminent food and healthcare shortages, loan defaults and other sufferings. Tens of thousands of federal workers are being forced to work for no pay, including air traffic controllers, TSA personnel and more. Your travel safety is in their hands. Do you really want them going to work hungry, worried about the mortgage, the car payment, feeding their kids, and cranky? And is any of that even remotely fair or right or decent?

Even as workers suffer, federal legislators are receiving full pay for not doing their jobs and the President of the United States is receiving full pay while expanding his grift, graft and cruelty. In addition,

ICE THUGS CONTINUE TO RECEIVE FULL PAY
FOR DOING THEIR CRUELTY AND BRUTALITY.
.

Betcher not feeling better about that.

__________________________________________________

* This section is satire; i.e. not a real recommendation. It is an exaggeration in all ways to highlight the brutality that is our every day lived experience in America today. In that way it is like Jonathan Swift’s original essay. Go read it – both links.

This writer and these posts DO NOT EVER advocate and they specifically oppose and reject cruelty, violence, murder, cannibalism, forced labor and other forms of official White House policy savagery. No person, whether or not holding the legal right to be in the United States either temporarily or being a citizen of the United States should be subjected to discrimination of any kind other than for specific, fact-based suspicion of criminality, and then only meted out with proper restraint and with the full due process of law.

** I once again looked up all the numbers presented here and easily found them from reputable sources with a simple search, “What percentage of Americans want .  .  . ” There are many reports on each of these topics, so some variation in the percentages can be found, but none that challenge the meaning of what is presented here.

*** In the wake of every mass shooting (think: Sandy Hook; Parkland; Topps Supermarket; Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Music Festival; Emanuel AME Church; Tree of Life Synagogue; Tucson-Giffords; etc.) the percentage of Americans who want automatic weapons, large capacity magazines, bump stocks and silencers to be banned goes up to 80-92%.

**** Gallup reports that approval of Congress is roughly 38%. That means that over 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of our Congress. 54 – 60% of us disapprove of the job Trump is doing. Why in the world should we tolerate such horrid job performance? Fire these guys!

***** For those who have forgotten history, John Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth. That was only possible because the Earth isn’t flat. It’s round. Really.

Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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 ALL 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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. 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.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


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

In Case You Didn’t Hear About These


POST 1225

Live fire across I-5

1. From Robert Reich on October 20: The Other Demonstration on Saturday – what happened during the NO KINGS demonstrations:

The Marine Corps — under the watchful [creepy] eyes of JD Vance and Pete Hegseth — staged a demonstration on Saturday in southern California.

It wasn’t a No Kings demonstration, though. It was more like a Yes Kings demonstration.

Some of the Marine Corps’ [live fire] shells that were fired by M777 howitzers across California’s Interstate 5 prematurely detonated, sending shrapnel down on what could have been hundreds of motorists.

Why the hell did the Marine Corps fire [live] artillery shells over Interstate 5 anyway?

Dick Altschuler, 1943

Note that the Marines have a live fire range not too far east of where they instead stupidly put people in danger. It was apparently for the benefit and entertainment of Fauxbilly Vance and Hopeless Hegseth.

Dad risked his life over and over to fight fascism, as did 16.1 million of his brothers in arms. We saw many of their pictures at the NO KINGS protests, held by descendants of those democracy heroes.

We damn well are nearly all anti-fascism – antifa – except for our simple minded, who want quick, simplistic solutions to our complex challenges and grievances. They got no stinkin’ reason to think. Their dictator will do all the thinking for them.

Note for fools believing Republican demonizing idiocy:

THERE IS NO ANTIFA ORGANIZATION. NO OFFICIALS. NO OFFICES. It’s just a catch-all term for we Americans who are against fascism and for democracy of, by and for We The People. It’s people like my dad and his brothers in arms. It’s like my family, friends and neighbors from sea to shining sea. It’s like all 7 million of us who marched on October 18.

Got it MAGAs and Republicans in Congress? Ah, probably not.

One more thing: We damn well have no business firing live artillery shells across Interstate 5. I bet those war lovers, Vance and Hegseth, got their sophomoric jollies over that stupidity. Think about that as you look forward to Trump being confined in a mental hospital and Article 25 bringing us Vance behind the Resolute Desk. Shivers.

—————————————–

2. From Daniel Lippman in Politico last Tuesday:

Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, told a group of fellow Republicans in a text chain the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and said he has “a Nazi streak,” according to a text chat viewed by POLITICO.

You’re surprised that Trump would nominate a creep like Ingrassia, right? Not likely.

As serial creep and sex predator Matt Gaetz did, Ingrassia has removed his name from nomination, both of them because they hadn’t a ghost of a chance passing muster. The real question is why a Nazi was nominated by Trump. You don’t suppose Trump thinks of himself as Der Führer, do you?

—————————————–

The Trump East Wing Death Star Ballroom under construction – thanks for this, RT

3. From Donald Trump, via Steve Schmidt: about his $300 million dollar ballroom to replace the East Wing of the White House.

“It won’t interfere with the current building. It won’t be. It’ll be near it, but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite place. I love it” — Donald Trump

In July he said the ballroom he expected to build would not touch the East Wing. Now the East Wing is gone, there are no permits or approved plans to build or even weather proofing plans for the remaining building to protect it through the coming winter months and there is no authorization from Congress to demolish government property that is a national treasure.

Listen for, “Believe me: you’ve never seen anything like this. Nothing like it anywhere in the world. It will be the best. Nobody has ever seen anything like this. Believe me.”

And our cowardly Republican Congress stands mute watching this, doing their constant impersonation of dead crickets.

Note that Trump brought in cranes to demolish the East Wing just after the NO KINGS protests. Maybe he thought nobody would notice, that he could sneak this past us. Kinda hard to miss that kind of destruction, though. It like – yes, it’s very much like the destruction he did to the Rose Garden (take that, Michelle Obama!) and the destruction he’s doing to the Constitution.

These are hard times that are getting harder for We The People. Inflation is shrinking the value of paychecks (3% year-over-year), millions are going without a paycheck at all and soon millions more will be in financial peril because of Trump’s economic blitzkrieg on America. He’s managed to shut down the government, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so actual employment numbers are unknown, but nobody is hiring. Tariffs derived from Trump’s vacuous brain are making things more expensive and new car sales are declining. And while people suffer, Trump is building a $300 million golden ballroom that no one but Trump wants or needs. This truly is our Marie Antoinette moment. Let the rubes eat cake.

—————————————–

Click me if you think you can stomach this.

4. Here’s yet more of Trump’s crude, crass embarrassment of our nation.

Immediately following the NO KINGS marches Trump posted his AI video of him as king piloting an F-18 and dumping feces on marchers.

Just when you thought that there was no way for Trump to debase himself and our country worse than he’s already done. Just when you foolishly thought there was a bottom to Trump’s awfulness. Just when you thought the dip shit had run out of shit.

Wake up. There is no bottom to what Trump will do or say. He’ll always find yet worse ways to be worse.

There is something so very emboldening about hatred and cruelty. And Trump’s MAGAs, hypocritical non-Christian Evangelicals, overt racist, misogynist, xenophobic, toxic masculine morons gorge themselves on it. They puff themselves up on that feeling of power. That’s Trump’s base.

Trump will always flatulate ever-more outrageous idiocy to distract you from the Epstein files. This destruction of the White House East Wing and his poopy plane are just the most recent chapters in his ongoing saga, “Bright, Shiny Objects Distract the Dopes From My Villainy.” Which leads to,

—————————————–

5. Raise your hand if you give so much as a rat’s ass if the Epstein files made public will embarrass Trump and others and send some to court and then to prison. Oh, golly: no hands.

You must (as in ‘MUST“) read Thom Hartmann’s fiery piece,

Trump’s Elite Pedophile Protection Program: Who are they Protecting?
.

It’s subtitled,

Amy Wallace says the FBI and DOJ have the list. Twenty abusers. Zero accountability. How long will we tolerate this cover-up?
.

Making this more personal, how long will YOU tolerate this cover-up? Call your senators and representative, especially if they are Republicans. You’ll know what to say to them.

—————————————–

6. We are required by all that is right to offer yet another apology to our Canadian friends. Reported by The Washington Post*: Trump cancels trade negotiations with Canada over anti-tariff ad.

That’s right. Our Infant In Chief is once again in an electric purple temper tantrum, pounding his fists and his bone spur heels on the floor and screeching his tyrannical obscenities. Now he’s yelling at a maple leaf flag, “I’ll never play with you Canadians again because you do stuff I hate so you’re a doo-doo. Maybe I’ll drop you from my kingly poo-poo-dropping airplane, too.”

Apologies to you, Oh Canada! You deserve far better from the U.S.

Now Some Good News!

Just imagine a day when the Supreme Court and we Americans can once again tell the difference between We The People and a fiction written on a piece of paper.

Many thanks to LR for passing this along.

________________________________________________

* 13 months ago Jeff Bezos caved to Trump, bent his knee and kissed the ring. He withheld the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris for president, betraying the newspaper’s motto on its masthead, “Democracy Dies In Darkness.” Indeed, it does and Bezos clouded the sun.

He forever stained his integrity. That’s when the Post began to bleed its finest reporters and opinion writers. I terminated my subscription. There have been no mentions of that formerly great newspaper in these commentaries since then.

I have not been able to shut off their solicitations, though, which include a daily list of their stories. I confess to being impressionable, so when they offered a year digital subscription for 50 cents per week, I accepted the offer. And yes, I feel a little slimy about doing this.

Question: How desperate must the Post be for readers if they are offering a 50 cents per week rate?

Fear not: I’ve tagged my calendar to cancel the subscription next year before the cost jumps to $3 per week. We’ll see if I can tolerate the slimy feeling that long.

Mid-Term Election
Goes fast, doesn’t it?

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe at no charge – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too, because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get this job done.

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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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. 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.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


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

Cruelty


POST 1223

  • When your political universe is sorted into “pure” and “traitor,” cruelty becomes a tool. The point isn’t just to be offensive—it’s to police loyalty.
  • – Dean Blundell
  • _______________________________________

Here’s some clarity from @JoJoFromJerz:

@JoJoFromJerz is right, of course. This intentionally cruel material dumps onto us every day. Here’s another example.

Click the pic and watch the short video.

In Cicero, IL (Chicago area) ICE thugs dragged two women from their car in an elementary school pickup line and “arrested” them. In ICE-speak that means they brutalized them, threw them to the ground, handcuffed them and jammed them into an unmarked van. They did this without a warrant or even a faint suspicion of these women having broken any law. After hours of being “detained” – that’s ICE-speak that means the women were locked up incommunicado – then they were released. Turns out those women are in this country legally, but they were treated worse than hardened criminals would be.

And the kids exiting that school were terrorized by seeing that cruelty, as were all the moms and dads in that after school pickup line.

It appears that Trump’s main Nazi, Stephen Miller, was telling the truth about ripping babies from the arms of their mothers at our southern border during Trump’s first term.* When confronted about the cruelty, the horrible barbarity his thugs were inflicting on moms and their little kids, Cruelty-Meister Miller said, “The cruelty is the point.” And he’s doing it again.

This is what Nazis do and why they do it. This cruelty toward anything not Trump and MAGA is why we have to banish these thugs, these Nazis, these fascists from any position of power in our country. It would be fine with me were we to rendition them to that El Salvador gulag. If we keep them here for a little while we must prosecute them for the laws they are breaking. We’ll bankrupt them via lawsuit, just like Trump is trying to do to people on his enemies list. Trump’s cruelty is why we must vote for Democrats.

No, the Dems aren’t perfect. But they are the only path to rid ourselves of the vicious, anti-Constitutional, anti-American, hatred-fueled Republicans. As Obama advised, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Vote for the good. Things will be better.

Maybe you aren’t convinced that we need to vote for Dems. That’s okay. But before you reject the idea entirely, read the Politico report, ‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat.

You read the title correctly. Cheering cruelty, racism, misogyny, murder and the joy of inflicting pain on others is sport to these degenerates, these Young Republicans, these Hitler Youth. It makes no difference if you believe these Young Republicans really mean the filth they mouth. Maybe it’s just youthful “locker room talk,” like Trump’s Access Hollywood filth was fraudulently called by Trump apologists. At the very least these Young Republican degenerates are enablers of such barbarity. And they are unchecked by Republicans with power today. Crickets from them.

Check the subtitle of the Politico essay: Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape. Politico found that these horrible messages were sent over at least seven months. Clearly, these egregious cruelties that are chuckled over by today’s Republicans aren’t one-offs. This is standard Republican stuff.

These are the children of Trump, the spawn of the Republican Party.

Almost as bad, Vice President J.D. Vance defended these miscreants with whataboutism. And on the Charlie Kirk Show he said,

“I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke—telling a very offensive stupid joke—is cause to ruin their lives.” He called them “kids” seven times.

Julianne McShane of Mother Jones checked out Vance’s assumptions for his exoneration of the vile texters.

I found ages for eight of the 11 people included in the chat. And, spoiler alert: None were minors. The youngest appear to be 24, the oldest 35. (I could not find publicly available ages for three of the participants.) This information raises the question: At what age does the vice president believe people become grown adults who should be held responsible for their actions?

It turns out none of the participants sending and reading those abhorrent, hateful messages is an adolescent. Nevertheless, Vance wants to exonerate them, effectively saying, “They’re just kids, you know?”  But even if they were all under 18 years old, their messages and their senders would still be abhorrent.

Here’s the worst part:

The senders of these horrible messages are
the future leaders of the Republican Party.
.

.And as you can see, they will be welcomed by today’s Vice President of the United States.

That’s why you must promote and vote for Democrats now.

NO KINGS

The NO KINGS protests – “.  .  .  the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances .  .  .” are like the Boston Tea Party, of proud American heritage. Read Heather Cox Richardson’s post of October 16 and you’ll understand.

And for sure read Ira Leavitt’s post,

Those ICE Guys Could Have Been Worse!
But Not Much Worse
.

This is cruelty. On We The People. Every day.

And we are as many as 8.2 million of We The People marching in the parks and in the streets, declaring,

NO DAMN WAY WE’LL HAVE A KING!

.

We sent one packing 242 years ago and we’ll send away this one or his 25th Amendment replacement not later than January 20, 2029. Until then and following the mid-term election next year we’ll tie them up with a stout rope made from the same parchment our Constitution is written on.

.

 

 

 

“Together Strong!!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your intrepid chronicler reporting from Highland Park, IL. NO KINGS, DAMMIT!

_________________________________________

* The last count I heard was that despite the hard work of good people in the Biden administration, having reunited over 4,000 kids with their moms, there were about 1,000 still separated, Stephen Miller did his proud, goose stepping, swastika waving work for his boss by refusing to document separations. That made reuniting moms and kids impossible for so many and that has heaped ongoing cruelty onto defenseless people.

Miller’s mother must be so proud.

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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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. 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.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


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

Making a Difference


POST 1216

What If You Could?

Many people have doubts.

“I’m just one tiny voice.”

“I don’t have any special skills or power.”

“This is too big for me.”

“I don’t even know what to do.”

“I hate what’s happening to our country, but I’m no billionaire.”

“What good would it do?”

My friend MG of The Deconstructing Trump Corner posted the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem recently. I think it’s for all the perfectionists, those of us who hold back because they fear their efforts will be imperfect or of little value. If you’re one of those, pay attention to these lyrics. They give you permission to be human.

  • “Ring the bells that still can ring.
  • Forget your perfect offering.
  • There is a crack in everything.
  • That’s how the light gets in.”

Oh, and how we need that light right now!

Your imperfect efforts will be good enough. They will join with tens of millions of other imperfect offerings to crash through the crass dishonesty and the cruelty and the light will once again get in.

All because you rang the bell that still can ring.

RING THAT BELL!

Perhaps you’re a biblical type and would like the message in that context. Try this.

Imagine Moses, Miriam and Aaron leading the Hebrews from Egypt. They have arrived at the shores of the Red (“Reed”) Sea. They have no boats, so they have stayed there a long time, but the Egyptian army is not far behind them.

Try this adaptation of Deuteronomy 1:6-7:*

You have stayed long enough in this place, God said.

Time to go forward.

Turn your face to the future.

Believe that you can cross this sea and survive.

Inside you is a Moses; within you Miriam dances, unafraid.

Lift up your voice and sing a new song.

If today “this place” is where you’ve stayed as an observer, then it’s time to go forward, to turn your face to the future. It’s time to believe that you can do what seems impossible, because it is not impossible.

It is possible because of what is inside you.

Lift up your voice and sing a new song.

Sing it loud.

Sing it so everyone can see the future that you see.

Sing it with your integrity and your imperfect voice.

That’s how the light gets in!

____________________________________________

* from Mishkan Hanefesh, Machzor (prayer book) for the Days of Awe, Rosh Hashanah, page 33.

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    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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. 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.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


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

Realities


POST 1215

Some Things Just Have To Lede

Brace yourselves, flat-earthers.

Tomorrow at 1:19PM the reliable, count-on-it solar system will deliver this year’s autumnal equinox even for the flat earthers. It will be the very moment when the forces of summer and the forces of winter will hold hands, balance on tip-toe and suspend for just a moment their individual certainties. They will set aside their differences and their wobbling convictions. One side will even return, if only fleetingly, to once again recognize laws and the eternal nature of reality. The other will cheer them with welcome, asking, “Where’ve ya been?”

Many thanks to AT for this most valuable question.

For just that moment.

Then we will be returned to a world of lies, grift and cruelty, led by the Monster Liar In Chief (see the valuable question to the right).

Now Something Quite Serious

The lying done by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and the rest of the extremist Palestinian mouthpieces is well known and has been paraded prominently before the world at least since the leadership of Yassir Arafat. They excel at making themselves appear to be victims in order to garner the sympathy of the world and thereby gain support. It is a self-defeating, suicidal strategy, but those leaders don’t seem to care about the suffering of their own people.

For the past two years Gazans, most of whom are not Hamas, have suffered starvation, injury and death. Hamas is the only reporting entity there and they report tens of thousands dead, among whom is a high percentage of children. We do not know whether their claims are accurate, but regardless of the actual numbers of dead, there are obviously many. That’s great victim PR for them.

That is horrendous for the people of Gaza for obvious reasons. And it is horrendous for Israel, too, which is well on its way to becoming a pariah state. The problem isn’t the majority of the people of Israel. It is Benjamin Netanyahu and his murderous government. Read Sen. Bernie Sanders’ message of September 18 in The Nation, It Is Genocide.

Almost as bad as the genocide, the Trump administration is complicit in these deaths by sending Netanyahu offensive weapons that he is using to incrementally destroy what is left of Gaza. Perhaps that is so that Trump can have his “Riviera of the Middle East.” If he gets that it will be paid for by children buried in the rubble or dying of starvation.

Jimmy Kimmel, Deployed National Guard, Public Health, ICE Thuggery  .  .  .

You know about all those and more, so rather than detailing them in this post, here is your Sunday reading list.

§ In Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s post Be Loud — For America he lays out the obvious truth that Trump’s deranged verbal attacks on Chicago and his threats of sending in the military aren’t about stopping crime. They are about sowing chaos and destabilizing our democracy and our country so that he can establish his dictatorial power.

§ Dan Rather offers insight into our escalating violence in How Did We Get Here? Where the president is a proponent of political violence. He explains,

A political leader’s reaction to political violence is a test of character. It is a test that Donald Trump has failed. He exploits others’ violent acts to further his own vengeful agenda. At a time when our leadership should be seeking unity, Trump is using Kirk’s killing as a call to arms for his supporters. “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them,” the president said at the White House last week.

Trump said that even before we had a clue who the alleged perpetrator was or what his motivations might have been. Nevertheless, he pointedly has called for violence against fellow citizens.

§ Read the transcript of Rep. Jason Crow’s address to the House, Concerning State of US Politics & the Path Forward to Unite Our Country or watch it via the embedded video. And share it with others.

Ahoy, Maties!

Friday was National Talk Like A Pirate Day.

What? You forgot?
.

(Read the following aloud and with proper pirate-ness.)

Shiver me timbers, ye scalawags. Arrrr!

De tieves ha’ been a-tievin’ and a-takin’ what be ours, workin’ dere treason wi dere lies.

Me proud beauties, ’tis time we be a-weigin’ anchor and puttin’ our bow to de waves to make good trouble. Fie on Davey Jones hisself if he dare be gettin’ in our way. Dis be de hour we ‘cede to set tings aright.

Raise full sails, me hearties, an’ make ar headin’ to where de treasure waits fer such as us. We parlay wi de traitor, de scurvy bloated orange poxy hisself, if we must. But eider way, we be takin’ back de rule what be rightly ars.

So stand ready, ye sea dogs. Ar Jolly Roger flies and de battle be wid us!

The Deconstructing Trump Corner
.
  • Reality is that which when you stop believing in it,
  • it doesn’t go away.
  • Philip K. Dick, 1981
  • Nothing doth more hurt in a state
  • than that cunning men must pass for wise.
  • Francis Bacon, 1625
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    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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. 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.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


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

A Message For Our Time


POST 1214

Where We Left Off On Sunday

From John Pavlovitz’s September 12 post, The Shameful Christian Idolatry and Fraudulent Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk:

“Kirk has left a hateful, dehumanizing legacy of words that Conservative Christians are either choosing to ignore in their zeal to canonize him, or they simply share his racist, phobic, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, supremacist sentiments, and in Trump’s garish, Jesus-less remodeling of the Christian faith in America, now imagine them righteous.”

“Jesus’ central command was to love. How exactly did Kirk love immigrants and people of color and women and Trans teens and Muslims and Democrats and atheists?”

Read Pavlovitz’s full comments here. And refer to the footnote in my Sunday post for accurate descriptors of Kirk. Then you won’t be too quick to canonize this man who was full of messianic delirium and hatred for anyone not precisely like himself. He infected our young people with his charismatic thumping, but Kirk is no martyr for Jesus. Maybe he just smoked too much of his own weed, swam in his own juice, sang his own songs until they were all he recognized. Elmer Gantry was delirious over the delusion of the faithful, too.

The young were fooled too easily by Kirk. It is important that we help them to be un-fooled and that we ourselves not be fooled by any charlatan.

Wait.

Is mine the lefty “savage rhetoric” Trump says led to Kirk’s death? Am I one whom Trump has vowed to go after, one “who contributed to this atrocity” even in my ignorance of Kirk?

I repeat that before the murder I knew nothing of Charlie Kirk and never spoke of or wrote about him. But Trump’s cosplay Wild West retribution macho-ness likely won’t differentiate my former ignorance from some imagined “savage rhetoric,” so woe be unto me for whatever it is I didn’t do, because Trump is way, way through the looking glass and my ignorance will be no defense.

“Off with my head!” will the Putin puppet king demand, needing a constant river of blood for his unquenchable thirst. He’s like the mad king in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, maniacally gouging hearts from chests.

Given Trump’s continuing willingness to be played by Putin, do you think Putin really has Trump’s pee tapes? Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s just Trump’s paranoia exacerbated by his dementia. Regardless, Trump is gleefully dismantling everything good about America, including cancer research and our individual health.

Did I mention something about charlatans? We should never allow a charlatan to have any power.

Where Are The Heroes?

As we approach Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of a Jewish new year and a wake up call to the realities of life and death, retired Rabbi Rami imagined how he would lead services and offered this closing:

A period of silent meditation will follow our discussion, after which I will distribute shofarot (ram’s horns), each with a taped message inspired by the one Woody Guthrie attached to his guitars in the mid-1940s: THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS. Ours would say, THIS HORN FIGHTS FASCISM. Those who are able would step outside to blow the horn and wake the neighborhood to the threat of fascism, while those unable to walk would do the same inside. The entire service would last no more than two hours and conclude with a communal shout of “In a place without heroes, be a hero!” – Rabbi Hillel

If Rabbi Rami has it right, in these most fraught of times, with danger and the promise of rising evil all about, when we desperately need heroes, how will you be a hero?

Give that some thought and post your notions – your promise to yourself and to the people you love – in the Comments section below to clarify your own thinking, to stimulate others’ thinking and to inspire people who need inspiration. That would be all of us.

To be clear, this invitation isn’t about being Jewish. In fact, it isn’t about religion at all. It is about the realities and threats to our lives right now, both individually, communally and nationally. It is about recognizing the dangers to our deepest values and the need for us to step up, to hear and respond to the clarion call to duty.

How will you be a hero?
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    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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. 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.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


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

Today’s American Crisis


POST 1210

I wrote recently asking, Can We Drop The Pretenses and Denial Now? Clearly, I’m not the only one sounding the reality alarm, the point of which is to make clear that we are not in danger of some advancing fascism: we’re in it.

It’s poisoning us, our country, our children and the world with lies and cruelty and the theft of all we hold dear. “The cruelty is the point,” we’ve been told, and we’re too late to prevent that. But we aren’t powerless. We can take action to create the America we believe in, the one where you have full rights, where nobody can snatch you off the street and disappear you, where your children can see a good future for themselves and their children.

Chris Armitage wrote the playbook for what we know in our bones is right and good and actionable in his piece, I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%.

That’s right: zero percent. Once entrenched, fascism lasts for miserable generation after miserable generation. Armitage documents that clearly and when you read his post you’ll know he’s right. This is one of the most frightening and realistic things I’ve read about our plight. It is oddly also one of the most hopeful.

Thomas Paine

His message is today’s version of Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis*. You’ve known Paine’s clarion call to action since you were in high school. The first pamphlet in his series urging that we become an independent America, free from the whims of a mad king, begins, “THESE [sic] are the times that try men’s souls.”

Paine was right then and, indeed, our souls are severely tried again today. We are threatened every minute of every day by a king wannabee who is mad and cruel and who has surrounded himself with sycophants to rule over you for only their own benefit.

This is not a time for “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot,” but a time for We The People to take bold and courageous action. It is time for us to break free from the mesmerizing of baseball and football games, from the vapidity of unreal TV reality shows and from the rest of the escapes from our actual reality. It’s time for us to stand strong with new, powerful and deeply American action.

You need to read Armitage’s post. He’ll make clear what We The People can do. His paper is longer than most things you read and it is vital throughout. Read it. We The People need every member of your family to read it, too, including your crazy Uncle Bubba and Aunt Shoo-Shoo. We need your neighbors, your senators and your representative to read it.

Or we can wallow in the swamp of permanent powerlessness, subjected to the cruelty of mad despots. But we don’t want that. And we know that preventing that perversion of America won’t happen by wishing it away.

We are the people Emma Lazarus wrote about, the ones welcomed by the Statue of Liberty and by Lazarus’ words emblazoned on that bronze lady. We’re the people “yearning to breathe free.” It is up to us to ensure that we and all who count on us will, indeed, breathe free.

Read Armitage’s clarion call. Now.

Reality Quotes
    • Trump has murdered the concept of facts and truth. He has replaced both with a sick dogma, which has, at its core, a terrible truth: what is true is what Trump and his minions declare it to be.
    • Steve Schmidt, Clarity and Conviction, September 1, 2025

Reading together from page 1 of our Citizen Manual, “Nuh-uh. Not okay with us.”

    • Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
  • John F. Kennedy
  • And that is why we must wake up to the possibilities that Chris Armitage details.

Full disclosure: I don’t know Chris Armitage. Until reading this essay I had never heard of him. I receive no value whatsoever for promoting his essay to you except the pleasure of perhaps making a smidgen of a difference for the betterment of us all.

Anticipatory Regret

What with the obvious physical and mental decline of Trump, my mind wandered to the national tradition of the honoring of dead presidents with a funeral procession. In my mind’s eye I can see the rolling caisson carrying the flag-draped casket of the deceased and the beautiful black stallion, riderless, with polished boots backward in the stirrups. I can see the military in their dress uniforms standing rigidly at attention and the flag hanging sadly at half staff. I can see a black clad widow standing forlornly as the procession passes.

I want none of that for Trump. He deserves none of the tradition and honoring. Plus, I don’t believe that Melania would shed a tear for this faithless man. But it will happen that Trump will be honored in this traditional way because that is what we do, regardless of his incompetence, malfeasance and treachery.

Perhaps it will be a positive thing for us, as we revive a cherished tradition for We The People. This is a time when most of our cherished traditions have been thrown to the dirt and awful people with dirty hearts have wiped their dirty shoes on them.

Perhaps Trump will die in his prison cell where he’s incarcerated for his conviction on 34 felony counts, where his sentence for theft of top secret materials and another sentence for his role in the January 6 insurrection will run concurrently for the next 30 years. If so, it will be bizarre to honor him with our tradition for presidents. I will regret that parade.

There was no traditional funeral procession upon the death of Richard Nixon; just a private ceremony. Perhaps Trump, yet another criminal president, will have the decency to do the same.

Nah. What was I thinking? That kind of decency could never come from Trump.

The Deconstructing Trump Corner
.
  • Those who cannot remember the past
  • are condemned to repeat it.
  • George Santayana, 1905
  • Keep Santayana’s words in mind
  • as you consider
  • the horrors of past fascisms.
  • Nothing so soon destroys freedom
  • as cowardly and servile acquiescence.
  • Clarence Darrow, 1941

    _________________________________________________

    * Paine’s essay was written in a day when people’s attention span had not yet been truncated by both an avalanche of information and the enslavement of us by electronic devices. He got away with publishing an essay that is several times the length of these Disambiguation posts. And the people read them.

  • I urge you to read The American Crisis to reconnect yourself in a most visceral way to the real America that you long for.

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    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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. 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.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


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

Inside-Out, Upside-Down


POST 1204

The CDC Shooting – Domestic Terrorism

A deranged soldier in the war on sanity opened fire at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, killing a police officer. Apparently, the shooter was killed by police, halting his threat to others.

The shooter was vehemently anti-vaxx, as encouraged by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert “Brain Worm, Dead Bear” Kennedy. Here’s a piece of a STAT report on the violence.

Former surgeon general Jerome Adams writes in a First Opinion essay that the shooting “is not an isolated event,” but rather “a dire reflection of ever-escalating threats public health workers face in a climate increasingly shaped by misinformation, politicization, and inflammatory rhetoric.” Read the essay.

Adams is a master of understatement. Imagine being a public health worker, committed to protecting the health of all of us, and some MAGA pea brain and others like him want to kill you because of your life of service to them and others. Like a lot in America today, this is inside-out, upside-down.

The Trumpstein* Catastrophe

I remember my high school biology teacher standing behind the lab table that stood at the front of the room and served as his desk. It had a black stone top, on which he had placed a recently deceased frog, which obediently lay in repose on its back.

My teacher then inserted an electrical probe into the top of one leg muscle – the frog’s, not his own – and the dead frog’s leg jerked out suddenly, just as it had when he was alive and on the move. The probe was removed and the extended leg retracted back to the relaxed position. My teacher then repeated the procedure and out stretched Mr. Frog’s leg once again. Then teacher gave him a zap again and again, but something was changing. Before long the leg extensions were far less powerful and at last the leg failed to respond to stimulus at all. Tough day for Froggy.

The point, of course, was to demonstrate a declining response to repeated stimulus and today we are in danger of being the frog. We are overwhelmed by Trump’s continuing insults to our values, our culture, our Constitution and the very structure of what keeps us safe. Worse, we are at risk of reacting less enthusiastically to his outrages, like:

firing the messenger who brought him bad labor numbers

moving pedophile sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to a country club prison

lying about economic and jobs numbers

arranging to meet Putin on American soil (no way he’ll extradite war criminal Putin to the International Criminal Court, where there’s an arrest warrant for him for kidnapping, murdering civilians and lots more) and refusing to include President Zelenskyy in the “peace talks,” which really are Ukraine surrender talks

organizing and expanding his Gestapo to arrest people with no warrant and no probable cause

making appointments to positions of power for nothing but talent-less Trump suck ups

creating global economic chaos with bi-polar tariffs and no-deal deals

There’s more every day. Little wonder some of us have a case of over-stimulated frog leg syndrome.

Our failure to respond to his outrages, though, is exactly what Trump wants. He wants his every day idiocies to distract us from his more serious crimes, like bringing down our way of life and replacing it with fascism, with Trump as Der Führer. And, of course, he’s binging on feeding us distractions from the Trumpstein Catastrophe.

Don’t take his bait. Don’t ever let him beat you into exhausted submission to his brutality and his inside-out, upside-down cruelty. Flip yourself over on your personal mental health lab table and hop to the job we all must do. Which leads to this.

Knife Fights

I quoted Patty Vasquez in my last post, and with good reason. Gotta come back to her today. Here are a couple of paragraphs from her August 11 post.

Democrats Finally Stop Bringing Spoons to a Knife Fight:
.

[Trump] doesn’t just break the rules. He forces everyone else to break them too. He makes corruption look like the only rational response to corruption. He turns defending democracy into an argument for abandoning democratic principles.

The Texas Democrats hiding in Illinois didn’t want to flee their state. They wanted to do their jobs, represent their constituents, and follow the rules. But Trump made that impossible. He turned governing into a hostage situation where the only choice was collaboration or exile.

Trump is polluting our entire culture with his inside-out, upside-down distortion of reality and the undermining of the principles we used to live by. THAT is why we must fight.

The Deconstructing Trump Corner

Our regular feature is joined today by two folk offerings from We The Folks. Click through each and enjoy the clever work of people speaking out with just enough Trump deconstruction snark to fit this space and make you smile. Then enjoy the historical wisdom that breathes yet today.

  • Click me

  • Click me

  • I decline utterly to be impartial
  •  as between the fire brigade and the fire.
  • Winston Churchill, 1926
  • Stand with anybody that stands right.
  • Stand with him while he is right,
  • and part with him when he goes wrong.
  • Abraham Lincoln, 1854

________________________________________________

* Credit to Keith Olbermann for the term

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    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 necessarily 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, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. 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.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

    Click me

    JA


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

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