Treason

Immigration and Border Security Plan


Reading time – 5:19; Viewing time – 7:05  .  .  .

Ever since the flamboyant down escalator “look at me” event in 2015, it has been our new normal to have a minimum of a week’s worth of hair-in-fire news every day. Giving credit where it’s due, Trump is supremely good at getting attention and he does that by saying and doing outrageous things. Sadly, much of his grasping for attention has no relationship to truth or reality and that comes with consequences.

It’s no surprise that President Trump is now braying dumpster-loads of nonsense and accusations about immigration and border security. He vomits fantasy statistics, makes up cause and effect relationships that bear no resemblance to anything on planet Earth and accuses all who disagree with him of not caring about border security. That includes all Democrats who, by virtue of their refusal to fund his useless wall, clearly demonstrate that they don’t care about the rapists, murderers and drug smugglers that Trump tells us are crossing our southern border illegally. Pay no attention to the contrary facts from Customs and Border Patrol. Further, he tells us that his 7th century BC wall is an integral part of his plan for reform of immigration and border security.

Plan? Did he say “plan?” Yes, he did. Repeatedly. So what is his plan?

Click here and review the President’s in-depth reform plan, complete with the strategies and tactics needed to enhance our national security and for the fair and responsible changes needed to our immigration system.

Just kidding. Trump’s “plan” is just a list of accusations, “we should” statements, and a litany of “ain’t-it-awfuls” that demonize everyone but Trump. There’s even something about supporting “nuclear families,” meaning mom, dad and the kids. His plan says we should keep them together, unlike his own “zero tolerance” policy of ripping children from the arms of their mothers. No other sponsorship should be allowed, Trump’s plan tells us. He calls it “chain migration” and that has to stop. Interestingly, had such a policy been in effect a short while ago, Melania’s Slovenian parents would have been prevented from coming to America and would not have become naturalized American citizens last year.

There is no plan. Nothing. There is only red meat thrown to Trump’s base.

To understand that you have to understand something about Donald Trump. He cares about only one thing: what’s best for Donald Trump. He has no capacity for integrity, empathy, patriotism or norms of any kind. He gleefully tears down any structure because it keeps opponents off balance. His inner talk is solely about how to grab advantage for himself and it isn’t moderated by anything you learned in kindergarten. Apparently, he was absent that year.

Trump’s government shutdown is happening for exactly the reason you think it is: so that Trump can look and feel like a tough guy and curry favor with his base because that’s good for Trump. The harm his actions does to others has no influence on his words or actions.

 

I want to be both fair and clear about Trump’s flagrant falsities. There are two possible explanations:

  1. He knows the truth and is intentionally saying things that contradict the truth. We commonly call that lying. Mom grounded you for a century when you did that. Or,
  2. He is ignorant of the truth and not only doesn’t have the sense to keep his mouth shut, but proudly makes stuff up that he thinks benefits himself. He’s gloriously pleased to declare that he’s smarter and knows more than anyone else about everything, so there’s no need for him to ever seek counsel from experts.

So, he’s either a liar or he’s too senseless to shut up and get help. Either way we are the worse for it. Indeed, he is destabilizing the world, so everyone is the worse for this imposter of a human being.

Don’t look for Trump to do what’s best for the United States or for you. If either of those should happen it will be completely accidental, like an infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of word processors for an infinite amount of time. Sooner or later the monkeys will accidentally produce the Great Books.

Similarly, sooner or later Trump might stumble upon doing the right thing, but it will be way too late for hundreds of thousands of our federal workers, their families and the diner down the road where those workers won’t be eating or tipping their waitress. And it will be too late for 44,000 furloughed Coast Guard personnel and the 6,000 forced to work without pay, all of whom should instead be focused on protecting our shores.*

Trump has no plan for national security or immigration reform. His wall is solely a desperate grab to benefit himself. So, stand strong against the $5.6 billion down payment on the (minimum) $59.8 billion wall that won’t protect us from anything. And make sure your Repubican senators and representatives stand strong, too. The Republicans will come along when there’s enough pressure, so apply some.

*In my January 2 post I detailed a metaphorical federal worker, Mike, a postman, and erroneously said that he was not being paid due to the government shutdown. Eagle eye reader JC pointed out that the Postal Service is separate from other government agencies, is self-funded and postal workers are being paid. To make the metaphor work properly, please reread the essay and substitute a worker from any of these government agencies, because none of them is being paid.

Transportation Security Administration (TSA)

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Air Traffic Control (ATC)

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Federal Corrections officers

Coast Guard

Customs & Border Patrol (CBP)

State Department

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

When you head to the airport for your flight this week, consider this: our TSA agents, who are supposed to catch the bad guys and keep them off your flight, and the Air Traffic Controllers, who keep planes from going bump in the night, are distracted while working because they can’t pay the rent or their mortgage or the car payment and will soon have trouble putting food on the table for their kids. How are you feeling about flying now? Be sure to let your legislators know.

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching many people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  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 be better informed.

Thanks!

 


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

Why So Many Are Angry


Reading time – 3:59; Viewing time – 5:42  .  .  .

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was promoted as a surefire way to increase the wages of working Americans and promote the hiring of additional workers. “More than 70% of this [tax cut] will be returned to workers,” said White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, reading from official White House notes. It didn’t work out quite that way.

Corporations used far more of their tax savings on stock buy-backs than on anything that would directly benefit workers. The total used for stock buy-backs has surpassed $1,100,000,000,000 and the primary beneficiaries of that are people who are already wealthy.

Let’s try one more example.

After filing for bankruptcy, Sears closed many of its stores and the pink slips they put into workers’ pay envelopes told them that there would be no severance pay for them due to the bankruptcy. Now they’re giving out $25 million in bonuses to top executives. These are atta-boys for the very geniuses who drove the company into bankruptcy.

Want another example?

Wisconsin voters elected to boot Republican Gov. Scott Walker out of office and replace him with a Democrat. The lame duck session of the Republican state legislature then passed a series of bills designed to dramatically limit the power of the incoming Democratic governor and Walker has signed those bills into law. That keeps power in the hands of the people who lost the election and effectively thwarts the will of the people.

This post isn’t about railing against fat cats or Republicans. Rather, it’s about why we citizens are angry. It’s about real grievances rooted in the lives of millions who suffer while the powerful few enrich themselves.

I’m all for capitalism, but it, like anything, can be used to abuse, which is why we have regulations. Sometimes those regulations are ignored by those in power. Sometimes they pass laws that either directly or indirectly pad their own pockets and those of their “donor class,” often at the expense of the rest of us.

One last example.

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was President Trump’s first national security advisor. He was lobbying for a foreign government at the same time that he was receiving top secret U.S. national security briefings. What’s wrong with this picture?

Flynn lied about it. Trump tolerated it. How are you feeling about the performance of the primary job of the federal government – to protect our country and ensure national security? Flynn got $600,000 for his deceit.

When it consistently feels like you’re the screw-ee, there comes a breaking point for all of us and we get very angry. Some want to carry torches in the street and burn it all down and they will vote for whoever speaks to their rage. As long as that rage is continuously validated, all other leadership outrages can be ignored, like putting numbers on the forearms of child detainees at our border concentration camps instead of assertively dealing with the crisis of people seeking asylum.

One of the reasons we remain so very angry is the continuing Russian propaganda machine that has permeated our nation. Russia has worked to divide us, polarize us, confuse us, sow dissent and stoke our anger against anything that we used to see as bedrock of our nation. The people in our national security agencies are working to unravel that, but the most important point is that the leader of our country refuses to crack down on the Russians. Rather, he continues to create chaos – distracting, America-defeating chaos – making the stock market tumble, shaking our international alliances and making foreign autocrats applaud.

All of that and more is why so many of us are angry.

One more thing in two points .  .  .

First, the government is shut down. That isn’t about immigration. It isn’t about national security and it isn’t even about a wall. It’s entirely about Trump’s infantile ego. He declared on TV, “If I don’t get what I want, I’ll shut down the government.” (Play the audio below for the recording.) That has absolutely nothing to do with what’s best for our country.

Trump is promising to hold his breath and turn blue until he gets his way. And he thinks that’s what we should care about.

How is that working for you – or for the thousands of federal workers who won’t be getting paid?

Second point: Trump’s tweet that he will swiftly remove our troops from Syria came as a surprise to literally everyone, including our own Defense Department. Trump intends to cede the entire middle-east to the Russians, the Turks and the Iranians and abandon our allies, the Kurds, again. That is past the line of what Gen. Jim Mattis can tolerate, so he’s leaving the Defense Department. That’s shaking up our allies because there are no longer any adults in the room.

Main point: As important as these two issues are, recognize that Trump has effectively changed the national story away from the known 17 current investigations into the Trump Crime Family. Keep your eye on the ball.

Last minute correction: I’m informed that the numbers being written on the forearms of detained kids at our southern border are being written by welfare workers. I don’t know how that makes a difference from the same thing being done by government workers, but I’m told that it does. Just get that if these kids hadn’t been separated from their parents there would be no need for Gestapo-like numbers on their arms or any other form of ID. And get that this tattooing is being done in your name.

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching a lot of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!). No subscriber information is ever shared with anyone, anywhere, any time.
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


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

The Reasons For Self-Destruction and What To Do About It


A partial compendium of Trumpian distractions designed to keep your eye off the ball. Click the image for a larger view.

Reading time – 4:55; Viewing time – 6:46  .  .  .

The phenomenon of Trump’s election and his continuing popularity among his “base” is hard to fathom for many of us, but I just got a dose of clarity from, of all people, Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci. He was on Joe Scarborough’s program hawking his new book and in the time it took to make coffee I saw enough of the interview to get his main point.

What I heard from him was the two word pairing “wrecking ball.” He said that people voted for Trump and continue to support him because they want him to be the wrecking ball of the establishment. Here’s why.

1. This country stopped working well for a lot of people a long time ago. For example, when globalization causes the main employer in your town to shut its doors, everyone loses their job, including the waitress at the coffee shop downtown. Everyone working at the movie theater becomes unemployed and the auto parts store closes.

There not only aren’t any jobs to be had, there isn’t even hope. But the bosses who were running the factory that closed still have jobs pushing paper around for the offshore company where their goods are now made, and they paid themselves huge bonuses for their genius that made that all happen. If you were one of the workers who lost their job and their hope, how would you be feeling about that?

READ THIS to understand today’s Republican Party. And click the pic for a larger view.

2. There have been huge productivity gains throughout our economy for decades, but nearly all the gains went to the top. Says Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, in his interview by Andrew Ross Sorkin,

“We’ve got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart and constructive.”

Think: The guys who off-shored the factory in your town.

Truth be told, they were, in fact, smart enough to have secured great riches for themselves, including from all those productivity gains. If you were a worker who didn’t participate in those gains, would you be okay with that?

3. Unemployment has been steadily going down to the point that we’re effectively at full employment. That should drive wages up, as employers fight to hire new workers, but that isn’t happening on a scale or at a pace that is remotely proportional to the increased demand for workers. In fact, wages haven’t significantly improved since at least as far back as Reagan’s presidency. If you were one of the workers affected by stagnant wages, how would that sit with you?

All of that speaks only to the economic drivers of citizen anger, and doesn’t touch on the fear of people living in a nation in transition and their imagined terrors of what change will do to them.

I’ve written several times in these posts (here and here and here) that the 2016 election and the leadership of Trump was and is a raised middle finger campaign. Trump speaks to the angry, the disempowered, the abused and forgotten of America. He speaks a rage that mimics their rage. He constantly targets enemies on whom to focus their rage, chief among which are anything that even suggests the establishment. Here’s a short list of Trump’s targets:

The press

The FBI

The Justice Department

NATO

The Democratic Party and all Democrats

Brown and black people

Migrants seeking asylum

Muslims

Cable news

And that targeting leads to someone sending pipe bombs to people on Trump’s list.

I recall playing Monopoly when I was a kid and can tell you that I didn’t like losing. One time I played with a friend and he won 3 games in a row in our Saturday marathon of game playing. I was so frustrated that I swept my hands across the board and scattered all the tokens, the houses, the Chance cards – everything. I took a metaphorical wrecking ball to the game – very much like blown-off Americans want to do with our establishment and exactly what Trump is doing to stoke their anger and resentment and to garner their continuing support. But there is a price that we pay for the wrecking of our establishment.

Paul Volcker named that price, saying,

I don’t know, how can you run a democracy when nobody believes in the leadership of the country.

From Sorkin’s comments on Paul Volcker:

Mr. Volcker is no great fan of the president, but he acknowledged that Mr. Trump had cannily recognized the economic worries of blue-collar workers. Mr. Trump “seized upon some issues that the elite had ignored,” he said.

This rage endures powerfully within about 38% of the electorate, who are so angry and feel so strongly about being victimized that they’re perfectly comfortable overlooking Trump’s obvious lies, the Russian hacking and possible Trump conspiracy, his boasting of having the right to grab women you-know-where, his blatant use of his office to enrich himself, his refusal to stand up to Putin, his abandonment of the people of Puerto Rico, his use of an unsecured iPhone that’s being hacked by the Chinese and others and all the rest of his lunacy, as long as he sticks it to the establishment.

It’s possible that populism is a more proper word than mob-ism, which I just made up, but you get the idea. What we’re seeing is a continuing public lynching of the foundations of our democracy carried out via non-stop campaign rallies that stoke yet more anger.

People who are energized by Trump show up on election day. People who don’t show up to vote enable this self-destruction of America. And the people who vote for third party candidates in their principled protest are enablers every bit as much.

Read Tom Friedman’s post, How To Make America America Again from October 23rd. Then follow his advice: vote for Democrats. Not because you’re a liberal. Not because you’re a Democrat. Not because you’re black or brown or a tree hugger or a snowflake or a woman or a graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School or because you’re a believer in global warming or a supporter of Medicare for all and free tuition, but because the most important thing right now is to save our democracy.

Vote for Democrats. Go do it now.

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Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  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 be better informed.

Thanks!


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

The Perfect Examples


A partial compendium of Trumpian distractions designed to keep your eye off the ball. Click the image for a larger view.

Reading time – 558; Viewing time – 8:31  .  .  .

NOTE: This was written and videoed prior to any Senate votes on Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

CAUTION: Language in this post may be inappropriate for sensitive readers and there’s just a little snark, too.

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Recall from a couple of previous posts the differentiation between a liar and a bullshitter. According to Harry G. Frankfurt,

“The distinction between lying and bullshitting is fairly clear. The liar asserts something which he himself believes to be false. He deliberately misrepresents what he takes to be the truth. The bullshitter, on the other hand, is not constrained by any consideration of what may or may not be true. In making his assertion, he is indifferent to whether what he is says is true or false. His goal is not to report facts. It is, rather, to shape the beliefs and attitudes of his listeners in a certain way.”

Here are a some perfect examples of what bullshit looks like.

You know about Trump claiming to have had the largest inaugural crowd ever. That’s just stupid and quite unimportant bullshit, but bullshit nevertheless.

Trump likes to claim that The Celebrity Apprentice was the number one show on television. With the exception of one episode in one season, the show almost never even cracked the top 10. That Trumpian claim, too, is stupid and quite unimportant bullshit. Here’s where bullshit becomes substantive.

On September 25 Donald Trump addressed the United Nations and said that his administration, “ .  .  .  has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” That’s a ridiculous claim, to be sure, but that wasn’t the most important part.

After a short pause for translations into the various languages of the attendees, the delegates in the General Assembly began a long, slow roll of laughter at Trump for his obvious grandiosity and the absurdity of his claim. That national humiliation hasn’t happened before at the UN to anyone or to any nation and it’s a clear and painful embarrassment for this country, but even that isn’t the most important part. That came the next day.

At a news conference Trump said,

“They weren’t laughing at me, they were laughing with me.”

“We had fun.”

“That was not laughing at me. So the fake news said, ‘People laughed at President Trump.’ They didn’t laugh at me. People had a good time with me. We were doing it together. We had a good time.”

That was bullshit.

Trump has made a laughing stock of the United States of America, in part through his bullshitting. Perhaps that’s what he meant when he said over and over that only he could do so many things. And really, can you think of anyone else who could have accidentally had the entire world laughing at the United States?

I repeat the clarity offered by Mr. Frankfort:

“In making his assertion, [the bullshitter] is indifferent to whether what he is says is true or false. His goal is not to report facts. It is, rather, to shape the beliefs and attitudes of his listeners in a certain way.”

Speaking of bullshit  .  .  .

Let’s be clear about a few things surrounding the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.

Read this article in The Washington Post for all of Brett Kavanaugh’s lies about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony. In his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh even contradicted himself, so he made himself a liar right in front of the Committee.

Further, the President – perhaps Senate Republicans, too – have hidden over 90% of the documents that pertain to Kavanaugh’s record, including all of the documents pertaining to his time in the Bush White House, where the White House counsel team that Kavanaugh was on busied itself declaring that torture isn’t torture.

We’re left to guess why they would shield Kavanaugh’s documents from the Democrats and what dishonest and disqualifying things we might find among those documents. True, that’s speculation, but just guess what the Republicans would be saying if the roles were reversed. That hiding of documents is an attempt,”to shape the beliefs and attitudes of [Trump’s] listeners in a certain way,” and it’s Presidential bullshit.

Kavanaugh claimed to have had no participation in the torture memos, but we’re left to wonder if he’s telling the truth. As Sen. Richard Blumenthal discussed with Kavanaugh at the hearings, Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus: false in one thing, false in all things.

Brett Kavanaugh has shown himself to be fundamentally dishonest. I don’t mean he fudged just a trifle; I mean he’s a serial liar. Have a look at this video that reveals a series of lies he told the Senate Judiciary Committee in just the past few weeks.

Kavanaugh has lied to Congress, both at the hearings for becoming a federal judge and in the hearings regarding his Supreme Court nomination. That’s perjury. It’s contempt of Congress and it’s a felony.

Brett Kavanaugh on the bench? That’s bullshit. Brett Kavanaugh belongs in jail.

Likely you’ve heard that the FBI isn’t interviewing dozens of witnesses (some say as many as 40) who could help to shed light on what happened or what did not happen between Dr. Ford and Brett Kavanaugh. Many of these witnesses have volunteered to be interviewed and the FBI hasn’t even returned their phone calls.

Translation: Trump has put the blinders on the FBI and prevented them from doing the kind of thorough, professional investigation they customarily do. Trump’s investigation isn’t about truth or falsity. “It is, rather, to shape the beliefs and attitudes of [Trump’s] listeners in a certain way.” In other words, it’s bullshit.

Answer this question: What kind of country do you want? We may not know one another, but I’m willing to bet that your answer doesn’t include bullshit in our highest public offices.

Next question: What are you willing to do to get what you want?

You know where this goes. It comes down to us getting off our butts and advocating for what we believe in. It comes down to us knocking on doors to spread the word. It comes down to us voting. It comes down to us bringing others to the polls with us, people who otherwise wouldn’t vote.

Because if we don’t do that, someone else – perhaps a bullshitter who wants a very different America from the America you want – will do all of that, and they’ll get their way because they’ll be the only ones talking and voting.

It comes down to us. You know what to do.

One last thing  .  .  .

I’ve seen nothing about it in the press. I haven’t found a word written nor a word spoken about the debt we owe to three men in particular. I speak, of course, of Lindsey Graham, Brett Kavanaugh and Chuck Grassley, who speak for so many.

It has been a long time coming to unshackle this marginalized group and to let fly the voices of a people who have suffered iniquities for so long. At last we are hearing the voices of the long suffering, angry, rich, old white men of America.

Each of these men has shown us the way, as they let fly their pent up anger at those who have been mean to rich, white guys. They snarled and they spit and they sneered. They vented their emotions for all to see and at last led us toward the promised land, the true path of America for its real citizens, angry, rich, old white men.

Forever may she wave with gilded edges in rooms of elegance, the red white and blue!

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Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  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 be better informed.

Thanks!


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

Nightmare


Reading time – 2:40  .  .  .

We all knew Hillary was right, that Donald Trump was temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States. We knew he had no clear policy positions and no moral foundation. For Trump supporters, that was the attraction, the point. It was the middle finger flicked at the establishment and it has turned out to be the angry extremist gift that keeps on giving. For the rest of America his unfitness for office has become the ongoing nightmare we feared.

When he posted his infantile tweet that his button was bigger than Kim Jong-Un’s my fear of his being in control of our thousands of nuclear warheads came into full focus. I pictured Trump in the Oval Office ordering his generals to destroy North Korea and wondered what would happen. Would they salute, say, “Yes,sir” and give the orders to annihilate? That is what they are supposed to do.

Or would the generals each in turn refuse to start World War III? Would they stand up to this petulant narcissist, telling him that they will not enable him to destroy the Earth? I imagined him firing generals one after another until at last he found one who would knuckle under to his pique; then the destruction would begin.

This is an insane and convoluted situation because of two contradicting points. In my heart of hearts I pray for military people with spine to stand up to our tantrum-prone president. The incompatible point is that civilian control of our military is a foundational principle of our country. The military isn’t supposed to refuse orders from the Commander-in-Chief. Standing up to the president in that way is not just mutiny: it’s a coup.

We’ve had plenty of exposés of the White House chaos and backstabbing and of the quiet resistance to this president, but now we have the anonymous essay in the New York Times by a high level administration person declaring in no uncertain terms that people we didn’t elect are working at odds to the president. It is effectively a coup not unlike my nightmare wonderings about military resistance to nuclear confrontation. And weirdly, bizarrely, I’m cheering for the insurgents. My cheers are driven by my fear of the harm Trump is doing to our country.

Understandably, Trump is off the rails in anger over learning that his own people are undermining him. He and his sycophants are focused on calling the author of the op-ed ugly names. What they are not doing is addressing the substance of his/her accusations. Worse, neither is there anyone in Congress lifting a finger to do anything about it. Mostly we’ve been getting reactions to the op-ed from legislators saying things like, “This is nothing new to us,” as though it’s just another day through the looking glass. “Oh, well.”

The Trump craziness and the resistance to it is exactly what is going to continue to happen if Congress refuses to act. We will simply wait around for the next outrage and next insult to our democracy and Trump’s undermining of the Constitution – then the next and the next until there’s nothing left to insult. We can wake up each day with a new version of the ongoing nightmare. Or we can act.

What will those now idle lawmakers say to their grandchildren when they ask what they did to preserve our democracy?

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Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  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 be better informed.

Thanks!


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

Potpourri v3.0


A partial compendium of Trumpian Distractions designed to keep your eye off the ball. CLICK HERE to see how they anticipate distracting you from what they don’t want you to see.

Reading time – 3:51; Viewing time – 5:59  .  .  .

♠ Investigations

The past week was busy:

– Paul Manafort was convicted on 8 criminal charges.

– Michael Cohen plead guilty to multiple felony charges.

– Michael Cohen also accused the President of directing him to commit felonies.

– Allen Weisselberg, the longtime CFO of the Trump Organization, was granted immunity in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors. He knows where all the bodies are buried.

– David Pecker, CEO of the media empire that publishes the supermarket trash rag the National Enquirer, was granted immunity in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors. He knows where the hush money went.

Of course, there was more, but as the pundits are saying, the walls are closing in on Donald Trump. One result of that is the ever-expanding list of Trump’s outrageous tweets designed to distract us from the Justice Department investigations into criminal wrongdoing of the Trump organization, his foundation, his campaign and his administration. See the Art of the Distractions box in this post for a short list of the Trumpian stupid stuff from just the last 7 days.

For now, begin to brace yourself for what likely will become multiple Constitutional crises. This is going to get really ugly before things start to get better and, perversely, it may be the world’s greatest political theater.

Meanwhile, get active. Mark election day, November 6, on your calendar. Decide which two of your friends you’ll bring with you to the polls. Here’s why you’ll do that:

Roughly 125 million votes were cast for president in 2016. 102 million registered voters stayed home. That brought us Donald Trump and this spineless Congress.

Friends don’t let friends fail to vote.

Final note on this topic: As of this writing we still haven’t heard a word from Republican legislators about any of the criminality close to the president that’s been uncovered by federal investigators. The Rs insist on remaining jellyfish.

♠ Nukes

It’s likely you were shocked over Trump’s sometimes veiled and sometimes blatant nuclear threats toward North Korea and Iran, but, surprisingly, there’s good news attached to his rantings.

Last week the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine held a public workshop entitled Exploring Medical and Public Health Preparedness for a Nuclear Incident – you can look it up here. The good news is that the people in charge of dealing with a nuclear “incident” are investigating our preparedness and perhaps recommending changes for the better.

The bad news is that Trump’s rhetoric has made the investigation necessary.

♠ The Democrats’ Problem

Chris Buskirk curated the New York Times “Opinion today” last week and offered a George Orwell view of democratic socialists, writing,

George Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, neatly described the political dilemma faced by the Sanders crowd: “The inability of mankind to imagine happiness except in the form of relief, either from effort or pain, presents Socialists with a serious problem.”

It seems to me that Buskirk is quite wrong. Bernie Sanders is very clear about a democratic socialist future. His dilemma, as Buskirk labels it, is the inability to bring a majority of voters to his view.

The real dilemma of most Democrats is that they can’t seem to find a coherent message with two hands and a flashlight. Add to that inability a few more, like being solely reactionary to circumstances and rarely proactive, communicating in the most needlessly complex way that leaves people befuddled, a refusal to focus on a unifying message, and the seeming inability to speak with blue collar Americans where they’re at.

More painful yet and, as placeholder for all wimpy Democrat ways, we watched the debate where Hillary refused to tell Trump to stop stalking her and to sit down and shut up. Democrats have a way of creating their own worst obstacles, often through lack of assertiveness. Perhaps our new generation of candidates will do better at this.

♠ Coherent Message

We all have our key issue and I know yours is important. I believe, though, that one overrides all others because everything you hold dear will disappear if this Big Kahuna issue isn’t resolved: keeping our democracy. That’s why Robert Mueller is so important to the United States right now and why his work must go all the way to completion.

After we put the bad guys in prison we can tackle money in politics next, because that is what informs and distorts your key issue and that tsunami of special interest money is helping to destroy our democracy.

Save our democracy. That’s the coherent message. Let’s focus on that.

♠ Edu-Bang-Bang

Education Secretary Betsy “I’ve never been to a public school” DeVos is weighing using money intended to drive academic enrichment for students to buy guns for teachers. Yes, really.

  • ————————————

    Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

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

Crickets – Still


A partial compendium of Trumpian Distractions designed to keep your eye off the ball. CLICK HERE to see how they anticipate distracting you from what they don’t want you to see.

Reading time – 2:28; Viewing time – 3:35  .  .  .

Arthur Jones received over 20,000 votes and won his primary bid to be the Republican candidate for the Illinois 3rd Congressional District. Arthur Jones is a long time, self-avowed and proud Nazi.

No Republican  stepped up to challenge Jones in this suburban Chicago district. Does that mean that there isn’t a single Republican in the Illinois 3rd with respectable moral values who could have run against and stopped this Nazi?

This story gets worse.

Radio talk show host Steve West won the Republican primary for the 15th district in the Missouri State House. According to the Kansas City Star, in January 2017 West proudly proclaimed on KCXL radio,

“Looking back in history, unfortunately, Hitler was right about what was taking place in Germany. And who was behind it.”

He cites “Jewish cabals” doing reprehensible things in this country, declaring one conspiracy theory after another and, of course, he offers no evidence because there isn’t any.

The Missouri Republican Party spoke out about West last week, saying,

“Steve West’s shocking and vile comments do not reflect the position of the Missouri Republican Party or indeed of any decent individual. West’s abhorrent rhetoric has absolutely no place in the Missouri Republican Party or anywhere. We wholeheartedly condemn his comments.”

Thanks for that, Missouri Republican Party. That’s a good start.

What must be done now is to defeat both Nazis, Jones and West, in November. There’s only way to do that and that’s why individual Republican officials in both Illinois and Missouri are speaking out against these hate mongers and urging Republicans to vote for their Democratic opponents.

Just kidding.

There hasn’t been even one Republican official in Illinois and no individual Republican in Missouri who has stood up and spoken out against these thugs in the only way that will make a difference. There doesn’t seem to be even a single Republican office holder in these states with a spine.

The trumpets should be blaring and urging every Republican to man the battlements against those who are attacking fundamental decency in America. Where is that Republican call? And if it ever shows up, who will answer it?

Read what Republican Christine Todd Whitman, former Administrator of the EPA and then Governor of New Jersey has to say about the assault on decency in America and what needs to be done about it. Hers is that trumpet call, telling Republicans to vote for Democrats to defeat spineless Republicans.

Because once again Republicans are offering us crickets. When the need is dire, they are nowhere to be found. But we can do something about that in November.

What has happened to this once proud and respectable party?

And finally, some good news. It’s great to see that, unlike nearly all of our Republican elected officials, our intelligence community leaders are standing up and speaking truth to power. Good on all of you!

  • ————————————

    Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

    YOUR ACTION STEPS:

    1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Not Dumb


A partial compendium of Trumpian Distractions designed to keep your eye off the ball

Reading time – 2:28; Viewing time – 3:17  .  .  .

This is the third post with Trump Distractions included for your clarity.

There is a daily deluge of tweets and quotes that would be outrageous coming from any other President in American history, but somehow this is our new normal. The key point of them is to keep you unfocused from our gravest national emergency, the extensive efforts of Russia to undermine our democracy and that of all western democracies. More specifically, the distractions are designed to direct your attention away from possible conspiracy by Trump and Trump campaign and administration operatives to aid Russia in its efforts to weaken our country.

Somewhere in the vicinity of 38% of all Americans are totally unmoved by the obvious peril to our country posed by Russia and a possibly connected home grown conspiracy. These folks instead continue to be focused on their anger and Trump’s dog whistles. The distractions are red meat and they love them, so this post isn’t for them.

Want proof? Read this book.

Rather, I’m saying that the distractions are designed to pull the eyes of the other 62% of us away from what is hiding in plain sight. Your job is to make sure that the distractions don’t work on you.

The primary and overriding job of the President of the United States – every President of the United States – is to protect and defend our country. Everything else is secondary. The most obvious and immediate kind of threat is that of state actors attacking us. That is exactly what Russia is and has been doing and is exactly where this president has utterly and willfully failed his duty.

You know about Trump’s subservience to Putin and his attacking of our friends. You know about his undermining of the very institutions designed to protect America and Americans. You know about his refusal to lead our intelligence apparatus to protect us and, of course, there’s more. That is presidential failure of his sworn, primary duty, quod erat demonstrandum. Surely, that’s a dumb thing to do, but is Trump dumb?

He’s only dumb if you accept my definition of the primary job of the President. There is nothing dumb in Trump’s words or actions if you think that the President should be focused entirely on doing what is best for himself, his family and his friends.

Is Trump a liar? I quote again:

In Brené Brown’s new book, Braving the Wilderness, she quotes Harry G. Frankfurt in differentiating between liars and bullshitters. The liar rejects the authority of the truth; the bullshitter pays no attention to the truth at all.

No, Trump isn’t a liar; he actually pays no attention to the truth at all. It simply doesn’t exist for him. That’s why it’s so easy for him to vomit distracting falsehoods and inanities designed to keep your eye off the ball. That’s why it’s so easy for him to sell out our country. That’s why I post his distractions.

Trump isn’t dumb. Far from it. He’s a very smart, bullshitting traitor.

  • ————————————

    Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

    YOUR ACTION STEPS:

    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 be better informed.

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

Distractions In Action


Reading time – 4:02 .  .  .

Last week the Distractor-in-Chief issued an official Presidential policy statement. Of course, it came via tweet, wherein he boldly declared in all capital letters,

The Iranian leader was so thoroughly cowed by the President’s capital letter tweet that he replied that all Iranians are “unimpressed.”

And so go the current threats of suffering, war, annihilation and any other menace Trump can conjure. This sounds quite a bit like the Rocket Man threats from just a few months ago. Why would this president pick this fight? And what does it mean to the United States? Try these explanations.

First and foremost, Trump got disastrous push-back over his secretive suck up sessions with Vladimir Putin and their joint press conference in Helsinki. That included getting harsh criticism from Republican legislators, “the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before.” His Congressional control was looking a bit shaky, even after Trump flip-flopped multiple times trying to reinvent what happened in Helsinki to make himself sound better. Clearly, he had to do more.

So, he had the official government transcript of the Trump-Putin press conference altered, removing a reporter’s key question to Putin, to which Putin responded that he had wanted Trump to win the 2016 election and that he had directed his agents to help to make that happen. Regardless of that exchange having been recorded by news services all over the world, you wouldn’t find it in the published American government transcript until after Trump was caught lying by his omission. Then the transcript was reconstituted. Welcome to the Official American Age of Disinformation. Be clear that you are the intended dupe.

Even that wasn’t enough to stop some Republicans from criticizing Trump’s undermining of our intelligence services and his refusal to confront Putin. He had to find a way to redirect Republicans.

Threatening nuclear war is quite attention getting, so off he went to the Twittersphere to attack the Iranians. Try this visual: Shortly after tweeting apocalyptic taunts, picture Trump on the deck of an aircraft carrier where he’s all about declaring his dominance over the Iranians, about how tough he is and that his button is bigger than President Rouhani’s. Nobody is talking about Helsinki any more. The Republican Congress is once again his Congress. Mission of Distraction Accomplished.

Here’s a second reason for Trump to have picked this fight with Iran. The mid-term elections are just 100 days away and Trump wants several victories to brag about by November in order to get Republicans elected so that he retains control of Congress. That way they can continue to be his lapdog in the destruction of our democracy.

It doesn’t matter whether Trump issues threats to Iran or makes his standard misleading or flagrantly false claims of victory, like the phantom denuclearization promises he claims to have elicited from Kim Jong-un. He only needs enough material to make outrageous claims. He does that 6.5 times per day as his standard, so this should be easy for him.

Trump has already torn up the JCPOA – the multi-lateral, anti-nuclear Iran deal – and, in consequence, given the tacit go-ahead to Iran to continue to develop nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. That will conveniently allow him to declare Iran to be far more dangerous so that he can threaten even more menacingly. We rarely remove leaders in times of national peril, so Trump’s lunatic threats to Iran are helpful to his job security in 2020.

He’s tweeting tough, just as he did with North Korea. Look for a summit with Iran, or at least an invitation. Even if the Iranians decline, Trump will declare that he’s the tough guy, the winner, and they are the wimps in the face of his toughness.

Should that summit take place, expect Trump to announce yet more phantom promises and victories, thus proving that only Trump can do these things. That’s not true, though, because any fool can give away safety and get nothing in return.

If there are talks with Iran they will happen just before the mid-term elections and for the sole purpose of manipulating voters into electing Republicans. Trump has no plan for Iran; all he has is a bagful of useless idiocies and vague, grandiose promises and threats. His only uses for Iran are to use it to retain his own power and to distract us from the lickspittle he is to Putin.

What all that means to the United States is yet more unprepared chaos driven by unforced error and self-serving misdirection. The consequences of that Trumpian chaos are ever-expanding authoritarianism and the deliberate undermining of our own country in a very dangerous world.

Distractions in action.

  • ————————————

    Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

    YOUR ACTION STEPS:

    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 be better informed.

    Thanks!


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

Breaking Point, or


How Trump Successfully Diverted Attention From His Kidnapping of 3,000 Children

Reading time – 4:49;  Viewing time – 7:35  .  .  .

I’ve been pretty hard on Congressional Republicans in my recent posts, but I’m questioning if that’s still justified. Perhaps things are beginning to change, although Thomas Friedman doesn’t think so, nor does James Comey.

We’ve wondered over and over about which shameless Trump outrage would at last do him in; none has. Not the Access Hollywood grab brag; not the “nice people on both sides” Charlottesville racism; not the job-killing tariffs; not the attacks on our FBI and Justice Department; not his 6.5 lies per day; not the firing of James Comey specifically because Comey refused to truncate the FBI investigation into Russian hacking of our election and possible Trump campaign collusion; not the betrayal and abuse of Dreamers; not the attacks on our allies; not the kidnapping of children; no outrage has stopped the runaway Trump train. Now, though, I’m wondering afresh if we’ve reached a breaking point and I’m daring to be disappointed yet again.

Trump has consistently sided with Putin over our intelligence services regarding Russian hacking. Now, though, The New York Times is reporting that before the inauguration Trump was fully briefed by our top intelligence agencies leaders about Russian hacking and was even shown intercepted Russian military agent emails which show Putin himself was behind the entire effort to subvert our democracy. Still, Trump continues to refuse to forcefully lay the blame on Putin and punish him for his wrongdoing, much less take action to protect our 2018 election.

Is it possible that Congressional Republicans now have something in hand that is so not okay that they’ll stop being jellyfish? Well even some formerly silent Republicans are speaking out. You can read many of their comments here – it’s important that you have a look.

Congressman Will Hurd (R-TX) wrote an essay that you’ll want to read: He begins,

“Over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president would be one of them”

Newt Gingrich is pushing back, however tepidly:

Even Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is managing to counter the President and his refusal to accept the undisputed evidence of our intelligence community. Ryan said,

“They did interfere in our elections – it’s really clear,” Ryan told reporters in Washington. “There should be no doubt about that.”

“Not only did Russia meddle with our elections, they’re doing it around the world,” he said. “They did it to France. They did it to Moldova. They’re doing it to the Baltics. Russia is trying to undermine democracy itself, to delegitimize democracy, so for some reason they can look good by comparison.”

Shifting now to Democrats for one specific point  .  .  .

Having been Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton knows a thing or two about foreign affairs and has a question for Trump:

Great question. Which side do you think Trump plays for? And if you think it’s the USA, exactly what evidence can you offer to support your opinion? And, no, a MAGA hat doesn’t count. It’s just a hat.

If you’d like to revisit an accurate prediction of what national security would look like with Trump as President, have a look at this video from October 31, 2016 – at least watch 6 minutes starting about the 14-minute mark. You’ll find it an eerily and frighteningly precise description of what has happened since then. It’s not as though we weren’t warned.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) is onto Trump’s cave-in to Putin and is poking at what is in the back of everyone’s mind:

Trump is making the world demonstrably more dangerous with his every insult and lie about our friends and allies and with every suck up to Putin, Kim Jong-un and Xi. He is isolating our country and destroying our protections. It is impossible now to avoid the key questions:

  1. What does the United States of America get out of Trump’s capitulation to Putin and his attacks on our friends? We have some answers to that question and they aren’t pretty.
  2. What does Trump himself get out of that? The answers to this question will illuminate all. Have a look at conservative Ross Douthat’s take on this.

If President Obama were selling out America the way Donald Trump is, can you imagine any Congressional Republican whose hair would not be on fire? The volume of the outrage would be deafening. The calls for impeachment and imprisonment would be continuous.

The thing is, in that scenario, the Republicans would be right. Their indignation would be justified. Their red, white and blue righteous fury would befit the wrongdoing.

But this isn’t Obama’s malfeasance; it’s Trump’s. So, where is the Republican hair-on-fire, the outrage, the indignation and righteous fury and the calls for impeachment and imprisonment? Perhaps they are starting, albeit slowly. Maybe we’re hearing the first crack of the breaking point.

The Republicans in Congress have both the power and the obligation to take action to stop this treachery, this betrayal of our country. Pray that Trump’s sell-out of the United States and all of western democracy is the breaking point for Republicans and that they at last stand up against Trump’s treason. Better yet, call them and demand that they do their job.

Trump’s deception, his double-dealing, his breach of faith and trust constitute a clear and present danger that threatens America. That is why over the past week you shifted your attention away from 3,000 kidnapped children; Trump is a master of distraction. Stay focused on democracy, because worse distraction is on the way and you may be tempted to forget Helsinki by next week. Don’t do it – for the sake of our democracy.

  • ————————————

    Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

    YOUR ACTION STEPS:

    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 be better informed.

    Thanks!


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