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Thanksgiving Message From a Geek


POST 1234

Stand-Up Guys Do: “Don’t Obey Illegal Orders” Video

Six Democratic lawmakers posted a video to remind our military folks that they are required to refuse illegal orders, like murder. Trump, Hegseth and others are calling them insurrectionists, saying that their actions are punishable by death. Trump made threatening statements designed to inflame his followers and bully the six.

Sen. Mark Kelly was on Rachel Maddow’s program on Monday with his comments about the extremist, murderous comments.

“I’ve had a missile blow up next to my airplane. I’ve been…nearly shot down multiple times. I’ve flown a rocket ship into space four times, built by the lowest bidder, and my wife Gabby Giffords, meeting with her constituents, shot in the head. Six people killed around her. A horrific thing. She spent six months in the hospital. We know what political violence is, and we know what causes it, too . . . The statements that Donald Trump made . . . incite others . . . He should be careful with his words. But I’m not going to be silenced here…. I’m going to show up for work every day, support the Constitution, do my job, hold this administration accountable, hold this president accountable when he is out of line. That’s the responsibility of every U.S. senator and every member of Congress. He’s not going to silence us.”

I love stand up guys and am thankful for these six brave people. See number 1 below.

Thanksgiving

I’ve been thinking about what kind of Thanksgiving message to offer and confess that several times I’ve lapsed into a lazy “This is awful” funk. The times invite us there, but that is, as I say, lazy. So, with just a little effort, here’s a starter list of things to be thankful/grateful for, listed in no particular order.

  1. That there are strong, stand up people like Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), as well as Reps. Jason Crow (D-CO.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) and Chris Deluzio (D-PA) standing up for the rule of law.
  2. That in these fraught, threatening times millions of us are standing up and speaking up, refusing fascism and governmental cruelty.
  3. That when ICE thugs show up, a protest gathers within minutes, like in that town of 1,500 where 800 people showed up to say NO! to ICE.
  4. That 30,000 kids waliked out of school and protested ICE in Charlotte.
  5. That New Yorkers purchased the goods of street vendors so that they could scram and not be exposed to ICE thugs.
  6. That we still have our five fundamental freedoms of the First Amendment.
  7. That our courts are standing up for us and truncating the power of the president to order our National Guard and our Marines onto our streets and ruling against the compromising of our Department of Justice and against presidential overreach and gross violations of the law.
  8. That we care about our fellow citizens and instinctively reach out to help, like that Chicago neighborhood that stepped up to help a deli owner whose shop was vandalized.
  9. That 1.3 million men and women volunteers are on duty all around the world right now, standing guard, saying that nothing bad will happen to us on their watch.
  10. That doctors all over the country are putting the lie to Robert Kennedy’s baseless claims about vaccines.
  11. That Trump’s ongoing decline into mental incompetence and physical deterioration is on public display.
  12. That Trump is so bad, so demonic, so anti- all that is good that he has caused the unthinkable: that I now agree with Marjorie Taylor Green sometimes.
  13. That millions of us are donating money, food and our labor to help feed those who cannot take care of themselves or their children. And remember that it’s just November and that December through March it gets really cold in most of the country. Donate warm clothing, like a warm coat for someone who has no coat.
  14. That dear ones will be gathering all around the country tomorrow to make a statement about gratitude. In my family, once everyone is seated with a plate of food, we take turns saying what we’re grateful for. If that isn’t a standard practice in your family, I recommend it. I promise you’ll be surprised and, yes, grateful and thankful for what you hear.
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.

Slurs, Slights, Slime and Special Slime


POST 1233

Click me for the full story.

Slurs

From Rick Wilson’s post, Quiet, Piggy:

On Air Force One, which is far below the standards of his upcoming gilded Qatari bribe jet, Trump pointed his finger at Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey and snapped, “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy,” because she committed the unpardonable sin of asking about the Epstein files and what he knew.

Then,

He did not call Catherine Lucey “piggy” because he’s concerned about her health. He did it because she asked about Epstein, the files, and what Trump knew. When cornered on anything that smells like legal exposure, he defaults to the playground, because that is who he has always been: a 79-year-old mean girl with worse hair and more indictments.

Later,

Trump’s body insults are part of his dominance game. He is telling that reporter, and every woman watching, that the price of challenging him is public humiliation. He is sending a message to every young woman in journalism who watched that clip: ask a hard question, and the President of the United States might turn you into a meme, a punchline, a target for his howling online mob.

Trump saves his most rotten vitriol to spit it at women, whom he continues to think of only as sex toys, so he attacks their appearance. There has been plenty of commentary about Trump’s frequent demeaning of women, but Wilson’s is the best take down I’ve seen.

Trump tries to humiliate men, too, but never for their appearance – only for Trump’s need to demean their intelligence and competence. They are a threat to him due to his lack of both. Hence, he reverts to his playground bully name calling default. All of it comes from this now dementia addled, obese, decaying Petri dish smear of a human.

He continues to degenerate in full view, even as his apologists ramp up their excuses, denials and lies. It’s both a sad spectacle and grossly dis-empowering to our country that this rotting-in-place president is displayed before the world.

Slights

The sweet and touching remembrances by dear ones at the Dick Cheney memorial on Thursday were heartfelt and appropriate. The memories from professional colleagues surely spoke accurately and appreciatively of their experiences with the departed. This was the right place for such things. Yet we must remember a fuller picture than that.

He was nicknamed Darth Cheney for justified reasons. He helped spread the lies that brought us into two intractable and arguably illegal wars that killed hundreds of thousands for no significant benefit to any but our defense contractors. He was a promoter of our country torturing prisoners and of our abandoning the rule of law.

He was an architect of the plan that he and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld hatched, declaring that Iraqi oil would pay for that war. It was a plan for nothing less than piracy. Cheney held onto his Halliburton stock and this so-called selfless servant to our nation profited handsomely. Sound familiar?

He also outed Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer (i.e. spy), putting her life and that of her husband, Amb. Joe Wilson, at risk and ending her career.

Cheney proudly declared that budget deficits don’t matter, so he, Dubya and Rumsfeld conducted their wars “off balance sheet.” I still don’t know what that means, but I do know about the trillions of dollars of national debt they piled onto our backs. And our children’s. And our grandchildren’s. And  .  .  .

So, let the tears of loss for some fall as they may, but let’s not forget the fuller story and thereby inappropriately deify one responsible for so much death and destruction.

Here are more slights.

George W. and Laura Bush were at the Cheney memorial, as were Joe and Jill Biden, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Al Gore and Dan Quayle. Notably absent were Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama, who were invited to attend. Read whatever you like into those absences from a state funeral.

The sitting president of the United States, Donald Trump, and his nowhere-to-be-seen wife, Melania, plus J.D. Vance weren’t there because they weren’t invited.

Note that I intended to insert a photo of Cheney into this section and, in the end, I couldn’t get myself to do it

Slime

16 million men.

That’s how many Americans went to war to battle and eliminate the hatred and barbarity that swastikas represent. Are we losing our collective memory of those men, what they stood for and what they stood against?

It took us hundreds of years to figure out that a noose is a symbol of terror and hatred. At last in 2022 we got The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act signed into law. Now it looks like things are changing that could challenge that.

Here’s the beginning of WaPo’s story from Thursday, November 20. Click the headline pic for the full story.

The U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify the swastika — an emblem of fascism and white supremacy inextricably linked to the murder of millions of Jews and the deaths of more than 400,000 U.S. troops who died fighting [Nazis and their swastikas] in World War II — as a hate symbol, according to a new policy that takes effect next month.

Instead, the Coast Guard will classify the Nazi-era insignia as “potentially divisive” under its new guidelines.

“Potentially divisive?” Ya think? Is that the terminology the Coast Guard used in 1943?

Later that same day, The Hill reported:

Click the pic for the full story.

Makes me wonder if the slimy Trump administration leaked a story just to see what the public response might be, this in order to find out what they could get away with. Wouldn’t legalizing Nazi and White supremacy symbols in our military just tickle our hatred-stoked White supremacists, our un-Christian nationalists and our various extremist haters who think lynching is a fun, all-American way to cut loose on a Saturday night? That leak oughta solidify support from President Bone Spurs’ base.

Consider yourself slimed.

Special Slime

Six Democratic lawmakers, every one a veteran of military service, our intelligence services or both, published a PSA video for our military folks, reminding them not to obey illegal orders. They are required to refuse illegal orders and are taught and ordered as such by the instructors at our military academies and elsewhere. That directive is in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).*

President Bone Spurs has been issuing plenty of illegal orders, like sending the Marines into Los Angeles and murdering people in small boats in international waters. These lawmakers said our troops should obey their oath to the Constitution and not obey illegal orders from superiors. For their efforts, these patriots were rewarded by Trump calling them traitors guilty of sedition and promoting the idea that they be hanged.

That set Trump’s howling mob to making death threats against them. These hystericals can’t figure out that not only these six patriots, but all of us should protect and defend the Constitution instead of obeying the Dementia-In-Chief.

That’s constitutional slime, as well as inciting violence, which is illegal.

For more detail on Trump’s perfidy and calls for yet more murder, this time of elected officials, read Heather Cox Richardson’s post.

Just For Sardonic Grins

This is some of why I’ve long considered myself an Eisenhower Republican. Realistically, that kind of conservatism – yes, that’s what it was called – is long gone. But if enough Democrats can regain their spines, that stuff might yet be coming, but only if we demand it.

Tell you what: Go tell your senators and representative what you want.

Finally, Andy Borowitz reported that Lindsey Halligan Reveals Her Dream is to Someday Go to Law School.

___________________________________________

* Examples of illegal orders from the linked article:

A superior orders a soldier to engage in war crimes, such as:

Targeting civilians intentionally. [Think: murdering civilians in small boats in international waters]

Torturing prisoners of war. [Think: waterboarding. See above in the Cheney section.]

Looting or pillaging property

A commanding officer orders personnel to suppress lawful protests in violation of First Amendment rights. [Think: Lafayette Park in 2020 and in U.S. cities in 2025]

Violations of International Laws. [Think: those boats and those wars]

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.

Geeking Over Behavior


POST 1232

We learned during Trump 1.0 that when he says outrageous, incendiary, un-American things that he’s telling us what he actually will do. Then, oddly, when he does what he said he would do and breaks the law, so many are surprised.

“We’re shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you to find that there is crime being done in and from the White House!”

But we really did know what that snake was when we picked him up, so there should be no surprise at all. Horror? Fear? Blood running cold? Sure. But not surprise.

Perhaps what is more shocking is the capitulation done by people who had no need to capitulate. The knee benders. The ring kissers. The simple greedy bastards. The ones who obey in advance.

From Wikipedia:

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (Paul Weiss) is the sole law firm targeted by an executive order that did not sue the administration and instead made a deal with the administration to avoid sanctions and restore access.

In addition to Paul Weiss, eight other firms made preemptive deals with Trump to avoid being similarly targeted by executive orders. As part of the settlements, the nine law firms have agreed to provide a total of $940 million in pro bono work to efforts supported by the president and the firms.

Plus, they and many others each agreed to Trump’s extortion plan that they “donate” $16 million to Trump’s presidential library, for which there is neither a location nor architectural plans. Trump doesn’t read and his only book is Mein Kampf. There will be no need for book shelves. Neither will there be file cabinets for documents in a Trump library, were it to be built. Likely, there would only be his greatest hits reel showing his tough guy speeches and The Apprentice reruns in a gold and white theater.

Columbia University went completely paws up to Trump when he pulled $400 million in federal funding from them. To get him off their back they relinquished control of their programs, their classes and even their selection of faculty.

See Notes 4 & 5 below.

What they and so many others have in common is that they have ignored Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny – 20 Lessons From The Twentieth Century.

  1. Rule No. 1: Do Not Obey In Advance. Don’t do what you think the bully wants you to do, perhaps hoping to curry favor. Doing so is surrendering without even an objection, much less a fight. It’s voluntarily going paws up. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damned bully in the face. Hard.
  2. Rule No. 2: Defend institutions. Tyrants want to smash institutions, disempower them so that he can control everything and everyone. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damned bully in the face. Hard.
  3. Rule No. 5: Remember professional ethics. Refuse to succumb to directives ordering discrimination and violation of your oaths. Instead, put on your big boy or big girl pants and punch the damned bully in the face. Hard.

There is more, of course, but it all comes down to taking a stand protecting and defending what must be protected and defended. Failure to do so is nothing but caving in, hoping you’ll quickly get out of the crosshairs of the bully and do so on the cheap. The best that can be said about that is that it is astonishingly myopic and self-deluding. When a little kid has a temper tantrum and then you give him what he wants, you’ve trained him to come back in full tyrant form and demand more later. That’s what happens to quick sell-outs. Don’t be an idiot. Take a stand.

And that’s the message that so many should have heard and heeded. Trump’s threatened lawsuits would have been easy to defeat in court because his actions and demands weren’t defensible. His style is to make capitulation the cheapest exit from his bullying. But there really is no exit for those who cave. So, take a stand.

There are yet more short-term thinkers, like the bullies who became ICE thugs. He found a cheap hook to recruit them – a $50,000 signing bonus – and then he owned them. He told them to bully, beat, gas, shoot and assault people indiscriminately – fellow citizens, neighbors – and to pay no attention to whether they were U.S. citizens, legal residents and to essentially ignore whether they were innocents or criminals.

The goal wasn’t about crime. It was and is to terrorize the country so that he could rid the country of non-Whites, using illegal immigration as a cover story, plus cow all of us into submission.

And these ICE capitulators stepped up to collect their checks and then started beating up innocents.

The question to ponder in this “greatest country in the world,” in this “indispensable nation,” in this “American exceptionalism country” is why our educated people in this land of the free and home of the brave would be so easily seduced and manipulated. How does this happen here?

The day will come when the capitulators are in deep, deep trouble, maybe existential anguish. They will look for strength deep inside and will find only an empty vacuum where their souls used to be.

They gave up. They sold out on the cheap until nothing was left.

BTW

From Bloomberg News:

The FBI Redacted Trump’s Name in the Epstein Files.

Hundreds of FBI personnel scrubbed the Epstein documents in AG Bondi’s possession. They removed or redacted Trump’s name and those of his favorite deviants.

Now connect the dots to explain Trump directing Congress to vote to release the Epstein files. He’s made sure that everything incriminating or even embarrassing to him has been redacted from the files that will be released so that there is no risk to Trump, everything sanitized for his protection and no justice to be found anywhere.

He’s ordered the DOJ to investigate Democrats who might be connected to the Epstein crimes. That way Trump can refuse to release hundreds, perhaps thousands of files, claiming that doing so would interfere with an ongoing investigation. There will be terrible obstruction games to come.

The fix is in. If you listen you can already hearing Trump falsely brag yet again that he’s been exonerated.

Given the likely tampering of evidence, consider the votes in Congress yesterday to be not an open road to justice, but the end of the beginning of that road. The real battles are just getting underway.

If you long for justice for those long suffering women who were a while back those horribly abused girls – children; if you long for justice for the sake of justice itself and for the protection and welfare of us all; If one of your fondest wishes is for a fair and just country that resembles at least a little the America you grew up believing in; then you are advised to put your hopes and expectations on low and anticipate a long, critical and brutal fight against the very worst people ever spawned by this country. And expect to be a soldier in that fight, along with the rest of us.

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.

Because You Wanna Know – Plus Good News!


POST 1231

The “Ya Gotta Wanna Know” Department

Watch this interview of Jennifer Moriarty by Evanston, IL Mayor Daniel Biss to know what ICE is doing to our innocents. If you wanna know.

In describing Trump there have been periodic references to Hitler, fascists, Nazis and other 1930s government thugs and manipulative creeps since not long after Trump first took office in 2017. “References to Hitler are overblown and not even a little useful,” cooler heads would caution. That was helpful – right until the moment when fascism was in our faces.

Fascism is Trump V2.0, guided by the Republican plan for domination, Project 2025, with Gestapo-like thugs on our streets abusing and illegally arresting largely random people; our military on our streets; 2.5 branches of the federal government* in the control of one megalomaniac; U.S. citizens being “disappeared” and legal immigrants being sent to foreign and domestic gulags/concentration camps. That’s excused by the cover claim of getting rid of “the worst of the worst” criminals. Great idea, except more than 70% of those attacked by ICE aren’t criminals. They have not been charged with any crime. They have not been convicted of anything. Their most common offenses are:

  1. Landscaping while Hispanic
  2. Looking Hispanic while on a sidewalk
  3. Peacefully protesting injustice
  4. Throwing a partially eaten sandwich at an abusive ICE thug

Meanwhile, der Führer threatens and bullies members of Congress to get his way, pressures his weak followers to rig elections to his benefit and suggests that he will run for president again in 2028 in obvious violation of the 22nd Amendment. Should he be successful, Trump would effectively cement his dictatorship, which would have been accomplished through blatantly illegal voting “irregularities,” like preventing millions from voting.

Okay, Hitler was different. He won the position of prime minister with a miserable plurality of the votes. Wait: Trump barely got a plurality. Then Hitler bullied and then dissolved the Reichstag (parliament) and began his destruction of the world.

Wait again: Trump has bullied law firms, universities, whole cities, news organizations and many others to bend to his will and threatened every Republican in Congress to get them to vote his way, effectively neutering Congress.

Tell me you can see what’s happening. Regardless, read this post from Clark Kissinger.

The key is that ya gotta wanna be informed, ready to do a little digging to open your eyes. So, click the link. Many thanks to JB for providing it.

Wait once again: Do you really wanna know? Then watch this interview conducted by Evanston, IL Mayor Daniel Biss. He’ll help you learn from a firsthand account what is really going on. Go ahead – click the link. Because if you’re going to be in the know, ya gotta wanna.

Speaking of Being In The Know

From Heather Cox Richardson, November 13:

Credit: Click me

“The administration has justified its violence against undocumented immigrants by insisting those they round up are violent criminals, “the worst of the worst.” That claim is increasingly exposed as a lie, and Americans are pushing back.”

” .  .  .  on the September 30 raid on an apartment complex in Chicago in which federal agents stormed the complex in a helicopter and military-style vehicles, broke into apartments, and marched individuals outside, claiming they were Tren de Aragua gang members

“Government agents arrested 37 people in the raid but ultimately claimed that only two of them were gang members. The journalists spoke to one and found he had no criminal record.”

“Venezuelans the Trump administration sent to the infamous CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador endured systematic torture, including beatings and sexual violence. Only 3% of those the U.S. rendered to El Salvador had been convicted of a violent crime in the U.S.”

“Dreamers by the hundreds of thousands gave the U.S. government their personal information in exchange for a promise they would not be deported. But Congress never acted, and now, in its quest to reach 3,000 deportations a day, the administration is targeting the DACA recipients, whose adherence to the rules the government established makes them easy to find and target.”

Can you say “betrayal” boys and girls?

Now you know what your government is doing – in your name.

And just to be clear about this once again, Trump and his lying lackeys have told us over and over that they are going first and foremost for “the worst of the worst” criminals to deport them. But the the reality is plain and painful to see, because

MORE THAN  7 OUT OF EVERY 10 HELD IN DETENTION HAVE NO CRIMINAL CONVICTION
.

In case that doesn’t get your indignation motor revving, try this:

HUNDREDS OF THOSE CALLED VENEZUELANS AND TREN DE ARAGUA MEMBERS WERE SENT TO THE
EL SALVADOR GULAG AND TORTURED
.

But,

NONE – ZERO – NADA – OF THOSE PEOPLE
WAS  AFFORDED  DUE PROCESS OF LAW
.

You know: like the Constitution requires.

Of course, the 83 people killed on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific by Trump’s Luftwaffe drones got no due process either. The big, tough bully just murdered them.

All done in our name.

Now you’re in the know.

Some Good News

Start with the obvious: likely on the way is the unmasking of Trump as a violator of little girls, enraging even his adoring, unthinking MAGA followers. That being made public is just a guess now, but clearly bad juju is on the way to the gold and marble latrine.

The key good news is the clarity delivered by Patti Vasquez about how to vanquish the pestilence that poisons us. She challenges us to choose between our momentary comfort and what we really want.

“The billionaires are betting we love our stuff more than our freedom. They’re betting we’ll sell out our neighbors to keep our parking spots. They’re betting we’ll surrender the country to save the couch.”

“Comfort is the enemy of courage. Every revolution started with people who chose discomfort over compliance. Every freedom we have came from someone who decided that being uncomfortable was better than being enslaved.”

“The authoritarians are counting on our addiction to comfort. They know we’ll tolerate almost anything – raids, camps, chemical weapons against protesters – as long as we can still make our car payments. They know we’ll watch democracy die from our couches, angry but motionless, tweeting our rage between Netflix episodes.”

It isn’t enough for a few million of us to get up and protest, waving our clever and angry signs. The change we need requires far more from us and from far more of us.

It might require us to create massive labor strikes.

It might require us to refuse to pay our taxes.

It might require us to post the home addresses and family member names of every Republican toady, making clear that we intend no harm to them; only that they viscerally understand what the toadies are doing to the rest of us.

It WILL REQUIRE that the couch dwelling 90 million of us who haven’t voted, haven’t protested, haven’t canvassed for worthwhile candidates, who haven’t registered citizens to vote and who haven’t spoken up at town halls to GET UP! It will require those who have not done a damned thing but hypnotize themselves in front of streaming pablum for their brains, clutching their ignorance, to

GET UP OFF THEIR ASSES WHILE THEY STILL CAN AND
JOIN THE FIGHT
.
FOR THEIR FREEDOM
.
FOR THEIR CHILDREN’S FREEDOM
.
FOR TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY
.
FOR THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE
.
FOR THEIR RIGHT TO GLUE THEIR ASSES TO THEIR COUCHES IN TIMES THAT ARE NOT PERILOUS
.
FOR THE HONORING OF ALL WHO CAME BEFORE US WHO ARE NOW IN ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY, THE AMERICAN CEMETERY AT NORMANDY, THE GRAVES ON IWO JIMA AND PRIVATE GRAVES STRETCHING FROM 1776 TO TODAY. THAT INCLUDES THE 1.3 MILLION WHO STAND GUARD OVER US RIGHT NOW, COMMITTED TO ENSURING THAT NOTHING BAD WILL HAPPEN TO US ON THEIR WATCH. WE OWE THEM AND WILL NEVER STOP OWING THEM. WE HAVE A DEBT THAT CANNOT EVER BE REPAID, BUT IT CAN BE HONORED BY KEEPING THE FAITH WITH OUR ACTIONS.

Credit: Click me

.

So how come that’s good news?

Because all each of us has to do is to convince one of that 90 million to get up and speak out. Just one. Then everything gets better for all of us and Lady Liberty will stop crying.

_______________________________________________

* Every now and then the Supreme Court makes a slight nod to independence.

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.

They Never Miss An Opportunity


POST 1230

Last March enough Democrats, wimply led by Captain Cave-In Chuck Schumer, voted to advance a 6-month government funding extension – a continuing resolution of our then-current spending. They did that because, o’ golly, stopping that funding would have shut down the government. Then the Republico-fascists passed Trump’s Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad budget bill, which reality show dweeb Trump signed on July 4.

That funding bill is the grease to the wheels of lawlessness that everyone saw coming because the undermining of our Constitution, Project 2025, was in plain sight for everyone to see. It and the Republico-fascists promised to do all the terrible, horrible, very bad things that are happening today. Trump and our congressional Republico-fascists stood up proudly and said, “We don’ care ’bout no stinkin’ We The People.” Turns out they were right. They really don’t care.

But at 12:01AM on October 1 the government officially ran out of cash because the U.S. Congress, tied into knots by stand-up-and-fight Democrats, failed to pass appropriations legislation for the 2026 fiscal year, which began that day. The federal government has been officially shut down since then.

Democrats have refused to go along with the Republico-fascists because their legislation doesn’t include an extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which would leave tens of millions of Americans without healthcare. For that moment Democrats appeared to have spine, standing up to the bullies and standing for those tens of millions of Americans.

The shut down has dragged on since then and Trump unlawfully cut SNAP (food stamp) benefits, which was especially poignant on Veterans Day because so many of our vets rely on SNAP benefits to feed their kids. He refuses to pay air traffic controllers, paralyzing air traffic. And he refuses to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which will leave (did I say this already?) tens of millions without healthcare.

Click to read Reich’s enlightening post.

Happily, the American people blamed the Republico-fascists for the shut down, as well they should. Democrats were riding high, partly because Trump was shooting himself in the foot with his cruelty and his failure to deliver on his promised prosperity for all. His approval numbers were abysmal and the Dems looked good because at last they were standing strong. But Democrats are not built for lasting success.

On November 10 seven Democratic senators and one independent joined senate Republico-fascists to extend funding and end the shutdown. It would be reasonable to expect that the 8 extracted mighty concessions for their votes, but they didn’t.

Lunch with the bully. Thanks to LR for this.

In fact, the 7 Democrats and 1 independent gave away everything earned in the shutdown for what Paul Simon called, “a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises.” They got a promise of a handful of magic beans.

They got nuthin’. They just caved. They wussed. For nuthin’. See this explainer.

The American people, bruised though they were, mostly by the willful, unnecessary cruelty of Trump, had stood with Democrats against Trump and his Republico-fascists. We The People suffered due to the shutdown and those 8 sold us out. We have nothing to show for that Republico-fascist-caused suffering. Nothing.

Do you remember TACO – “Trump Always Chickens Out?” Why are Democrats copying him?

Abba Eban, the Israeli ambassador to the United States decades ago, said of the Palestinians regarding making peace with Israel and creating a better life for themselves,

“They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

So it is with our congressional Democrats. Oddly, they think we should vote for them.

My standing question is this:

Who will lead?
Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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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 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.

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?

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.

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.

Feel Better Now?


POST 1226
BSO Mastery

Sure, Trump is a constant tsunami of snow job, obfuscation and BSO (Bright, Shiny Object) distractions. He always needs them because of his blatantly illegal, unconstitutional, cruel, anti-America vice king blitzkrieg. There is nothing he won’t do to keep us looking somewhere else so that the Epstein files don’t reveal proof that he’s a pedophile and rapist. That’s particularly important, because his unquestioning MAGA supporters will tolerate grift, fraud, murder and much more, but they won’t tolerate his abusing and violating little girls.

He’s killed people in international waters where no U.S. law applies. That’s a lot like terrorism, maybe piracy. Those on the boats weren’t formally accused of anything. They weren’t indicted or arraigned and no evidence, much less proof of wrongdoing has been offered, All we have is the Liar In Chief saying there were drugs on board those boats. We can’t prove he’s a liar any more than he can prove he’s right because he killed nearly all the 4 dozen or so people who were supposed to be innocent until proven guilty and he sank the evidence. All that was done without a legal right to have taken any action against those boats or the people in them. And now he’s threatening a land invasion of a sovereign nation, Venezuela.

There was a story in the Miami Herald on Monday, Venezuela claims capture of CIA group, accuses U.S. of plotting ‘false flag’ attack. What makes this shocking is that it’s a believable story. Trump sending CIA operatives to Venezuela? Of course. Nothing distracts public attention like a land war and a huge show of force by our Naval warships. Nothing galvanizes citizens to back a president like a war. Nothing makes a president look like a strongman like – you guessed it – a war. It’s all so distracting.

So, who’s going to focus on the Epstein files after Trump has trumped up a phony war?

BSO Mastery Unmasked

Tearing down the East Wing of our national treasure, the White House, the one that belongs to We The People and not to the felon temporarily housed there, is a horrific violation of all that is right and good. President Real Estate Scam is getting away with this because Spineless Speaker Mike Johnson refuses to reconvene the House because doing so will require him to swear in and seat newly elected Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ).

She will be the 218th vote for the discharge petition to force the release of the Epstein files. Trump just cannot have that, so puppy dog Johnson manufactures fantasy reasons to refuse Grijalva’s swearing in. With the House AWOL, there is no possibility of Congress stopping anything Trump wants to do, including Gestapo cruelty in our streets, murdering people at sea, starting a war and tearing down the East Wing, all so that we don’t get to see that he’s a pedophile.

Fortunately, the folks at The Lincoln Project are adept at laying bare official misconduct and hypocrisy and they’ve done it again. Watch this AI video of Trump pitching his new, nobody-else-wants-the-damn-thing ballroom.

Q & A

A TV newscaster was asking why in this hyper-connected digital age aren’t more people agitated by official government cruelty to the point of taking action.

In part it’s because so many things online have a cartoon-ish vibe, a sense of “it isn’t real – it’s just the internet.” There’s a lack of depth and solidity to such stuff. When a report comes to us about people dying, it’s almost as if they are cartoon characters or actors in a movie who can go home after shooting their film for the day. We are left unmoved by the not-quite-real perception, so the outrage we should feel over a terrible real event doesn’t materialize in a fully human dimension.

There are roughly 330 million of us, 32% of whom are MAGA types, leaving 224 million who are not MAGA types. If 7 million show up at the NO KINGS rallies, where were the other 217 million Americans who believe that cruelty is being done in their names and who want change for the better? Why do they stay home?

Maybe, in part, because all the bad stuff doesn’t feel quite real to them. Plus, leaders have lied to them over and over, saying it’s just “fake news.”

Democrats Don’t Get a Free Pass

The Democrats are led by inept, uninspiring men, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. They offer far too little for us to get excited about. The most patriotic thing each of them can do is to step down from leadership so that real leaders can step up to save us from Republican cruelty. We need new leaders with fire in their bellies to rail against:

ICE cruelty in the streets of Chicago and Portland. Speak from where ICE is brutalizing citizens, not from a safe lectern downtown Tell everyone, “We stand with We The People!” Shout it out that ICE goons and the goons who sent them hate America and Americans.

Trump’s stupid tariffs and inept economics that are bankrupting farmers and impoverishing the rest of us. Go to red states, Democratic firebrands, and declare that we stand with farmers. Do it from a soybean field that won’t get harvested. Tell We The People that’s because Trump has driven away our markets for soybeans. The silos are full and there is no place to put this year’s harvest. Get former Sen. Jon Tester, an actual farmer, to do the talking.

Trump’s ICE thugs who have emptied the produce fields of people doing stoop labor that you’d never do. You’re going to pay double for your fruits and vegetables if you can get them at all. Firebrands, say that on camera in a supermarket with half-empty shelves.

Want to know why Democrats lose elections? It’s because they don’t have the best people leading the charge, they don’t present much that people can identify with (please, no more heady policy!) and they present themselves as wimps. And everybody knows that wimps always get the snot beaten out of them and they lose their lunch money to the cruel playground bullies.

Who will punch the bullies in the nose? We need an answer very quickly.

We Don’t Want You To Worry

With this Republican, Trump-powered federal government shut down, paired with all the defunding that has already happened and furloughs of people we have counted on, millions of formerly productive, fairly paid Americans are going without a paycheck. This is happening now. Moms, dads, kids – really everyone – is or soon will be liquidating retirement savings, rationing food and avoiding all but emergency healthcare.

But you shouldn’t worry. Even as the government is shut down and millions are forced into despair about how they’ll make the house and car payments, how they’ll feed and clothe their kids, our manipulative, lazy-ass Republicans in Congress are being paid their full salaries for refusing to do their jobs, as is Donald Trump. They are and will continue to be financially sound without a money care in the world.

Feel better now?

Mid-Term Election
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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.

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.

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 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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