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Michelle Goldberg had an interesting piece in the New York Times last Sunday entitled “To Understand The Midterms, Meet Joe and Marie.” They are the Republican and Democratic candidates for Washington state’s 3rd congressional district seat and, as you likely suspect, they are quite different from one another.

Goldberg explains that Joe Kent has

.  .  . attempted a dance that’s become common in today’s G.O.P.: remaining in the good graces of the far right while putting some distance between himself and its most abhorrent avatars.

It’s like the now common, phony Republican candidate dance around abortion, attempting to mask how foamy-mouth wacko they’re against it. Then, having pulled a fast one on voters to get elected, they plan to let fly their true inner goggly-eye wacko.

In contrast, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is running a straight campaign, saying what she believes and giving indication of how she will represent the voters, emphasizing abortion rights and protecting democracy.

Goldberg uses the entire center spread of the Opinion section of the Sunday paper to flesh out what’s happening in Washington’s 3rd . Not surprisingly, the fuller reality is freakier than the short paragraphs above suggest. Goldberg reports:

Here’s what Kent [said he] intends to do in his first two years in office:

“Impeachment, obstruction and oversight. The Biden agenda dies off in the crib.”

In his speeches Kent promised to impeach

“Biden on Day One, and then Vice President Kamala Harris (‘one of the lead fund-raisers for antifa and B.L.M. during the summer of 2020’), Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.”

At [a] town hall, he emphasized his willingness to shut down the government: “I used to work in the federal government,” he said [he is a former Green Beret]. “It can shut down. It’s really not a big deal.”

Kent promised to hold Anthony Fauci “accountable” for the “scam that is Covid.” “Criminal charges,” said Kent. But what charges, I asked. “Murder,” he replied, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

It’s messy and awkward quoting someone who is quoting someone else, so apologies to Goldberg for my quotation mark clumsiness.

Meanwhile, you’ve just read a fine litany of the insanity and dishonesty that is today’s G.O.P. It’s a continuous loop of imagined and contrived grievances and absurd, tough guy payback. I mean, does Kent actually believe that Congress will impeach all those people? What are their high crimes or misdemeanors? Wait – scratch that last question. That was my mistake – I was being logical.

And Kent says he wants to go back to a full court press of obstruction so that nothing We The People want will come about. Welcome back to the Obama years dealing with the GOP Congress, the party of NO:

NO to all Democrats and Democratic policies, even if they’re identical to Republican ideas

NO to anything that will deal with our substantial national challenges

NO to everything that supports democracy

NO to kids being safe in school

NO to reproductive freedom for pregnant women and NO to anyone who wants to use any form of contraception other than the rhythm method

Old Joke:

Q. What do you call people who use the rhythm method of contraception?

A. Parents

Just get used to NO. If the Republicans gain control of even one house of Congress, NO is what we will have voted for.

And wait: Anthony Fauci is a murderer?

Just to be clear, having been a Green Beret doesn’t make Kent a congressional or budgetary genius or an expert on the price that is paid when the G.O.P. shuts down the government – AGAIN! – basically giving the finger to all 330 million of us.

But he’s right about one thing: Blathering this angry, baseless, stupid stuff in red and red-leaning areas, then being Jim-Jordan-Marjorie-Taylor-Green inflammatory is the way to get and stay elected. But that leaves us with having to deal with the Trump manipulation contrivance:

They spew a continuous fire hose of reality-free absurdity (commonly called bullshit) at a pace that prevents factual refutation – like the Kent idiocy listed above. Besides, their inflammatory lunacy appeals to voters driven by victim-hood.

So, how does one campaign against these Loony Tunes cartoon candidates? How can a reality-based candidate engage with voters poisoned by hateful G.O.P. fantasies? How can you even have a conversation or debate with people who believe the unreal and who wear a chip on their shoulder as though it’s a badge of honor?

These are the people vying to take control of our school boards, our library boards and our local, state and federal governments. They want to subjugate the rest of us in their puritanical, totalitarian horror show. That’s what’s at stake in the November midterm election and in every election for the next “who knows how many?” years. This is no sprint. This is a marathon of colossal duration and monumental consequences and we must win every race or everything you hold dear will be lost.

————————————

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

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2022 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Integrity


You’re Not God, Mob Boy

Click me

So, you want this to be a Christian nationalist country, a Christian theocracy. Got it. You’re all about Jesus and have carefully picked Bible quotations, as well as excerpts from the Federalist Papers that you think justify your actions. Got it. You’re certain that some elite others are a cabal of Satanic and cannibalistic sex-trafficking pedophiles bent on world domination and you believe other conspiracy claims, too. Got it. You believe that the ends you desire justify whatever means you employ. Got that, too. But consider just a couple of things.

Like that your opinion doesn’t eclipse mine. That your fantasies about truth and reality don’t replace actual truth and reality. That your accusations in the absence of any evidence aren’t the same as conviction. There’s still that “prove it” thing, you know?

The unavoidable result of your certainties is you threatening violence and murder and brutalizing others. That is prima facie evidence that you believe that you have the right to end human lives if, gosh, someone doesn’t toe your line. But that right isn’t yours anywhere or under any circumstances. That belongs to a higher power and I’m absolutely certain that you are not God.

Honestly – and you can take this as gospel – your claims of being a Christian were demolished the moment you picked up your phone to threaten an election worker, or brought your AR-15 to the Michigan Capitol Building to intimidate government workers, or as you chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” or when you climbed the Capitol steps and vandalized the building, or when you shouted hatred at a school board meeting or when you showed up for Trump rallies and cheered the abuse of protesters, or when you drove your pickup truck with its oversized hatred flags and tried to run President Biden’s campaign bus off the highway, and every time you repeated Trump’s lies. Really, now, would Jesus do any of that?

You have no right to threaten or harm anyone, no matter how pissy you become when you don’t get your way or how puffed up you feel when you fondle your assault rifle or inflict your cruelty on others. One honest look in the mirror will tell you that this isn’t 1776, you’re no Minuteman and vengeance isn’t yours. You’re not God, Mob Boy. You’re just a guy who put his integrity into long term storage.

And all of that goes for you seditious members of Congress who are trying to tear down our democracy. It goes to your shame for violating your oath of office. You remember that “protect and defend” stuff about the Constitution, right? The stuff to which you swore with your hand on a Bible? You remember integrity, don’t you? Perhaps not.

Like the Mob Boys, you can take one look in the mirror and you’ll know instantly that you’re no nation’s Founder, no “originalist.” You’re just a thug in a suit and you’ve abandoned your integrity.

“The fault, dear seditionist, is not in your stars, but in yourselves .  .  .  “

With apologies to William Shakespeare, Cassius and the entire ensemble of Julius Caesar.

The Important Part Is .  .  .

Elise Stefanik in June, with jellyfish Kevin McCarthy proudly looking on

Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 Republican in the House, Is all about getting Republican women elected to Congress. She’s raised over $4 million for her “Elevate PAC” to grease those wheels. In a most interesting piece in The New York Times she bragged,

“My own experience going through impeachment No. 1, where I played an outsized role on the House Intelligence Committee — we built up a national donor list,” Stefanik said Wednesday at a briefing at the Republican National Committee about the midterm elections. “We’ve been able to have that donor list support other women candidates across the country.”

Let’s see, there was an impeachment of the President of the United States going on and in her “outsized role on the House Intelligence Committee” Stefanik’s key accomplishment was building a donor list. Not dealing with the President’s extortion of the president of Ukraine. Not ensuring integrity in the highest office. Not solidifying of our democracy. Creating a donor list!

This is the woman who replaced Liz Cheney as the No. 3 Republican in the House.

One more time, Elise, and this is about your integrity: the most important part of what you do is .  .  .  what?

The Economy

In an effort to combat inflation, the Fed has raised the interest rate by 3/4 of a point in each of the past 3 months, which has caused interest rates on the street to more than double and investors to get a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. They’re fearing a recession, a nearly inevitable outcome when business investment drops off, which it does when money becomes too expensive to borrow.

The interest rate is the only tool in the Fed’s inflation fighting toolbox, but it is a bludgeon of a tool and is excruciatingly slow to combat inflation. What big interest rate hikes are exceedingly good at doing is stimulating recession and putting people out of work. The estimates are that about 1,000,000 people will lose their jobs due to the Fed’s recent wild swings. They figure we’ll stop buying as much stuff – that’s especially true for the newly unemployed, of course – and that will induce lower prices which will curb inflation.

Some day.

But reduced inflation will come at the cost of misery to a great many people, especially to the 1,000,000.

Our inflation is like that of every other developed country. We’re suffering the enormous discombobulation of the logistics system for everything from raw materials to finished goods and that reduced supply is sustaining a glut of unmet demand. That raises prices. That’s largely due to Covid-19 throwing sand into the machinery of the commerce engine worldwide, as well as the huge disruptions caused by Putin’s adventure into AtrocityLand.*

There are other drivers of inflation, too, including the breathtaking profiteering by shipping monopolies, fossil fuel companies, retailers with margins 30% above normal and others who are charging more for a classic reason: because they can. Fossil fuel profiteering has caused soaring prices at the gas pump and that has contributed significantly to inflation. But that, like war and the disrupted supply chain, is unrelated to the Fed’s interest rate hikes.

We’re in for some very turbulent times, as the Fed attempts to club our economy back to 2 – 3% inflation. Bummer for newly unemployed people and for all who can’t get that first job. Look for a huge spike in the number of people living in Mom’s basement, as well as some world class politically stupid claims.

———————————

* The O.E.C.D. estimates the war’s toll on the global economy to be about $2.8 trillion for 2023.

————————————

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

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2022 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Week


Required Reading of the Week

John Pavlovitz writes a regular column and his post this week is entitled, One Day to Save America. He’s asking the key question, “How much is America worth to you?” Your answer is critically important and, no, it hasn’t anything to do with a dollar sign. Read the entire essay and then answer John’s question. Your grade on this mid-term exam will be your grade for the entire semester. And the next 4 semesters.

Regret of the Week

Puerto Rico has been slammed by yet another hurricane and power is out over most of the island. There is flooding everywhere. It’s so very regrettable that Donald Trump isn’t there to benevolently throw paper towels to residents. If only that election hadn’t been stolen .  .  .

Pic of the Week

Finally, a special pic for Senator Lindsay Graham, the Official Weather-vane of the United States Senate.

Note the flags – Lindsay Graham could live here.

————————————

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

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2022 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

We Can Make This Worse – Or Better


In 1974 Gerald Ford, the guy whose only professional ambition had been to one day be Speaker of the House, found himself to be President of the United States. That followed the crystal clarity of the breathtaking criminality of Richard Nixon that drove Nixon from office just ahead of a Senate impeachment posse. With Nixon’s disgrace on view across the globe and the passions in this country still white hot over Watergate, what would Ford do?

According to his public statement, Ford gave Nixon,

“a full, free, and absolute pardon…for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon .  .  . has committed or may have committed or taken part in”

Ford excused his accountability-killing action by saying that prosecution of the perp would,

“cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.”

And so Nixon avoided being held accountable. That left us wondering if the pardon was part of a shady deal that had made Ford Vice-President following former Vice President Spiro Agnew’s sordid bag man criminality and forced resignation.

In his third interview with David Frost, Nixon declared that, “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” That stunning Nixon moment of Through The Looking Glass lunacy left many of us dumbfounded and enraged. This is the man who abused his power by ordering the Watergate break-in, obstructing justice, illegally bombing Cambodia and using the apparatus of government (FBI, IRS, etc.) to persecute everyone on his “enemies list.”

According to Nixon’s idiotic declaration, all of those crimes he committed weren’t crimes because he was President when he committed them. He was a self-serving, counter-factual, inherently evil man making a statement that matched his derangement. Yet Ford had pardoned him even before he was indicted, much less convicted.

The Nixon get-out-of-jail-free card wasn’t the last one issued. In fact it was modern history’s bedrock upon which an expanding avoidance of accountability has been built.

From 1985 – 1987 Ronald Reagan’s administration committed multiple crimes captured under the banner of the Iran-Contra affair. The basic framework was that a team headed by Vice-President George H.W. Bush sold arms to Iran, then funneled the proceeds to the Contras in Nicaragua to help them overthrow the far left government ruling their country.

The problem was that only Congress has the power of the purse, not the Chief Executive. As well, Congress had made specific law that prohibited the actions of the Reagan-Bush cabal. Once the illegal activity was exposed, we got an “Oh, golly” from Reagan, as he took responsibility in scripted Hollywood fashion, playing nothing more than a pretend role. The significant part came later.

Eleven administration officials were indicted, convicted and sent to prison for their Iran-Contra crimes. Both Reagan and Vice-President Bush were implicated in the scandal, but not a thing was done about that. When Bush became President he pardoned all of the convicts – on advice from his attorney general, William Barr. Yeah, that William Barr. And all the criminals were freed. So much for accountability.

Barr was and is a strong proponent of the “unitary executive,” the main point of which is the belief that the President, as head of his own branch of the government, is not subject to oversight or check on his actions by Congress or the courts. That theory would make a President a dictator, completely above the law and any accountability. Hello Viktor Orbán.

In 2004 George W. Bush told us that he was a strong proponent of that cockamamie notion, which is handy for him, because he had lied us into two intractable wars. And he refused to accept intelligence warnings before the 9/11 attack, leaving us completely unguarded and unprepared. And he led us into the Great Recession of 2008. When a CV includes such things, it’s good to have a Get Out of Jail Free card in order to avoid accountability.

Look at the progression:

Nixon sent out thieves and then obstructed justice and the Congress.

Reagan flagrantly violated the law and covered it up.

H.W. Bush pardoned all the criminals of the Iran-Contra affair.

W. Bush’s lies led to wars that killed hundreds of thousands and his dereliction of duty led to 9/11 and the Great Recession.

Lack of accountability does exactly what you would expect: it leads to greater and more harmful wrongdoing, because the message is that if you’re high enough in government you’ll never pay a price for your criminality or incompetence.

Which brings us to today.

The doomsday predictions of far right violence if Trump is indicted and convicted might actually come about. But what we know with certainty will happen is that if he isn’t indicted for his alleged string of crimes, like incitement to riot and sedition, obstruction of justice, election interference, wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, violations of the Presidential Records Act, lying to federal agents, violations of the Espionage Act and more, we’re setting the stage for – wait for it – worse things to happen.

Because as horrid as Trump’s alleged crimes are, if Trump gets away with them, the next President will do far worse, because s/he will know in advance that there won’t be a price to pay for breaking the law. We’ve seen the continuing descent into ever worsening lawlessness, so we know how this works.

And the next guy may be – probably will be – way smarter, more manipulative and far more clever than Donald Trump. That will be the moment when everything is lost.

But we don’t have to wait for that and then cry “woe is us.” All we have to do is to establish solidly that nobody – not anyone – is above the law. All we have to do is to hold Trump and his operatives fully accountable for every one of their might be, could be, likely are crimes.

Hey, Merrick Garland: got a minute to chat?

————————————

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

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!)

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2022 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Gimme a Break


Caution: This post was made in a facility known to contain snark. Sensitive readers are advised to just get over it. Maybe eat some comfort food like chocolate chip cookies as they read.
Gimme a Break, Jim Jordan

Apologies, Jim. I’ve been meaning to write to you for a long time, but you know how it is, what with impeachments, insurrections, theft of national security documents and all the other annoying little stuff popping up all the time.

Things have changed since your days at the Ohio State University when you were an assistant wrestling coach. You remember back then when you failed to report all those abuses of student athletes by team doctor Richard Strauss, right? The sexual misconduct stuff? His hands on their genitals?

Just one question about that, Jim. You present yourself to the House and to the nation as a powerful, confrontational, absolutist, principled guy. To you, everything has the competitive urgency of an Olympic gold medal wrestling match, right? If that’s true, how come you didn’t take a stand to protect those young men at Ohio State who told you exactly what was going on? Where were you when it was time to confront the abuser and the enablers all the way up to the University administrators?

Are you just a paper tiger, Jim, or is it that everything is solely about what serves you best in the moment? I’m starting to worry that maybe those principles aren’t as absolute as you’d have us believe.

A word of caution about that reprehensible abuse business, Jim. If enough of the victims decide to make big noise about it, there is still the possibility of censure and even expulsion from the House for you. I don’t know much about the statute of limitations for such a wanton refusal to act rightly, but you might even face indictment. So here’s what to do, Jim.

First, be sure you have your cockamamie Nazi buffoon “I knew nothing” story all buttoned up. Then, on your next McDonald’s run for your fuhrer, put that yooge sack of Big Macs and fries in your car and head on over to Starbucks. Pick up a couple of hemlock lattes, one for you and one for him. Keep yours in the fridge. You’ll know when the time is right to slug it down.

Jim, you’re amazingly good at gumming up all progress on the critical issues facing our nation, using phony outrage and unrelated inanities. You’re really adept at overly aggressive speech and behavior, too, as though you think that the marble floors of the Capitol Building are a big wrestling mat. But, Jim, they aren’t. Think of them as unyielding bedrock. Sort of like democracy. You remember democracy, right?

Komodo dragon – Click me

I’m sure your alt-right colleagues see you as a fine trench warfare fighter and there’s no doubt that some of those guys wish they could pull off the kind of stuff that you do. You’re smart and you’re quick, but, Jim, you have the moral judgment of a Komodo dragon. So, while they are self-serving like you, they just don’t have the chops for your unique displays of lack of integrity. Well, okay, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have chops, too, but they need their assault rifles to look tough.

So, Jim, harbor no illusions of ever being the focus of a chapter in any book about political courage or patriotism. American voters who might possibly admire you or think fondly of you come with dysfunctional rage and a mania for destruction which you and your fellow provocateurs incite. You fight dirty, Jim, rutting in the leavings of the Great Orange Pig. Hey – that’s “GOP”!

I have to advise you to dramatically pare back your maniacally rabid support for the disgraced, twice impeached, former president. He’s going down, Jim, under multiple indictments. And you’re in danger, too, because of all your January 6 phone calls and texts with various subversives in the White House in those heady, anti-democracy days.

You could have been great for America, Jim, but instead you chose to be an extremist terrier, always biting at the heels and ankles of progress. You know that’s true, so it kinda sucks to be you, doesn’t it, Jim?

Please be sure to recommend to your dysfunctional MAGA family that they listen to President Biden’s speech from Independence Hall on September 1. You and they will have to watch it on YouTube (here), since Fox didn’t bother to give listeners the audio in real time. Instead, they showed a tiny frame of the President in the corner of the screen, while Tucker Carlson blabbered his stupiditudes. Tell your homies to answer the President’s question and declare which side they’re on: Trump’s or America’s. And be sure to tell them and all of us which side you’re on, too, Jim.

Oh, never mind. We already know.

Gimme a Break, R-Dudes

I confess that I was stunned when Trump began to dominate the news in 2015, as he wailed every grievance he could make up and blamed opponents of doing every psychopathic thing he himself did. In the mental health field that’s called projection. On the street it’s called lying.

Republicans are adept copy cats and opportunists, so both Republican politicians and every day citizens learned to mimic the Sociopath-in-Chief, to the point that the Republican Party is now organized around victim-hood. And the default sound they make is a perpetual, disingenuous whine.

I’ll let Paul Waldman of the The Washington Post be my Explainer-in-Chief. As you read his essay, which includes comments from “#whine-o Republicans”, keep in mind this fact-check: none of the grievances the Republicans blubber about is real. It’s all made up stuff, commonly called “lies.” All of it.

Click here to access Waldman’s piece. Then watch the Politics Girl video here. Many thanks to Steve Sheffey for the pointers. Check out his insightful posts here.

————————————

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

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!)

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2022 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Divine? Not So Much


Hey – it’s September 11. 9/11. That date rings a bell, right?

In this constant blizzard of the absurd, where everything is BREAKING NEWS! our attention is easily diverted. Nevertheless, it’s important that we hold on to the truth of it – the horror, the political ineptitude, the generosity of strangers, the selfless courage of our first responders and the determination of the warriors on Flight 93.

This is a good day to remember that day.

The Divine Right of Trump

From Wikipedia:

“In European Christianity, the divine right of kings, divine right, or God’s mandation is a political and religious doctrine of political legitimacy of a monarchy.”

That’s very legitimizing if you’re the king.

King George III, who in 1776 was on the throne by means of just such a right, was considered by many to be a mad king. Ref: the Declaration of Independence for an astonishing and awful list of things he did. The word “mad” just might come to mind.

He manipulated rules and events to enrich himself and his wealthy aristocrats, including the notorious tax on tea that gave the East India Trading Company a virtual monopoly and triggered the Boston Tea Party. Divine source of power or not, sometimes We The People get to the point where, as Bernie Sanders likes to say, enough is enough, although I’ve never cared for that phrase when any at all is way too much.

Meanwhile, you can substitute the disgraced, twice-impeached, former president’s name for King George III in the Declaration of Independence. Then substitute Trump’s egregious wrongdoing, including his illegal, unconstitutional and immoral actions into an updated version and it’s now the Declaration of Expulsion. You’ll understand immediately that he is totally mad and why he was the loser in the 2020 election. Any of him is way too much.

Plus, there’s nothing divine about Trump. So, notwithstanding the mindless and odious Christian theocracy zealots and the “self-defining as patriots” insurrectionists, we turned him out decisively for all those mad reasons. And we’ll do so again via the voting booth, should he beat all the legal raps coming his way.

Click me

All of which is to announce to Trump and to all of his angry, frothing (some just deluded) voter base and to his vile legislative sycophants that there is no Divine Right of Trump. To paraphrase Obi Wan Kenobi, “These aren’t the leaders we’re looking for. We can go about our business of replacing them.” Here I’m working a Jedi mind trick on you.

Yoda

To be fair, Trump has one inherent right, albeit constitutional rather than divine. He has the right to be held accountable and to pay the price for his wrongdoing. It’s going to be a rocky, uncertain and dangerous road, but, quoting Yoda, “Make that happen we must. On this everything depends.”

Yoda is very wise.

Can’t Catch a Break

King Charles III

The recent anniversary and media saturation coverage of Princess Diana’s death were noteworthy for an unexpected reason.

As their marriage was devolving, both Diana and Prince Charles had extramarital affairs. She was understood and continued to be adored by the public. He was castigated. He never stood a chance, as the public took the side of the pretty princess.

Now Queen Elizabeth II has died after 16 years as a princess and 70 years as queen. She endeared herself to the public, first at age 14, as she spoke via radio to the terrified children of the empire during the blitz of WW II. She brought words of comfort, hope and strength to them. Later she greeted the troops coming home and did so much more over the decades that won over the public. And she reigned for such a long time that few can remember any other monarch.

Immediately upon her death her 73 year old son became King Charles III. It really won’t matter what he does or how well he does it. His mother was and will remain so enormously popular that he will be regarded as little more than a caretaker until his son becomes king and renewal begins.

This guy just can’t catch a break.

Here’s Maureen Dowd’s take on this.

————————————

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

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!)

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2022 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Over Just The Past Few Days


Education

Ron DeSantis blasted President Biden’s student debt relief program – just another entrant in the “Nothing So Stupid That the Republicans Won’t Say It” contest.

We established publicly funded public schools 170 years ago to educate our people. From How Stuff Works:

“Massachusetts passed the first compulsory school laws in 1852. New York followed the next year, and by 1918, all American children were required to attend at least elementary school.”

From QuestionAnswer.IO:

“By 1918, all U.S. states had some sort of mandatory attendance law for [high] school.”

Each level of education became necessary for the welfare of our nation and for individuals to be ready for the challenges of our rapidly changing life and world. We funded schools publicly then, as now, because both we-the-public and our nation benefit. Ignorance just doesn’t work well for our country.

The world has progressed and much of what it takes now to succeed simply cannot be supplied solely by a K-12 education. Ever-finer, more advanced skills continue to be required. We’re late coming to the realization that we must publicly fund college just as we do public grade schools and high schools. Here’s an example of why that’s true.

We graduate about 70,000 engineers annually. China graduates about 600,000 and India graduates about 350,000. They are both dramatically out-educating their young compared to us.

We’re in a global competition and we will remain unprepared to compete and win as long as we continue to refuse to fully educate our citizens for today’s world and tomorrow’s. Keeping our people unprepared would be a huge economic and national security mistake.

Doubt that? Read this.

And recognize that student debt relief and public funding of colleges and universities necessarily mean a redistribution of wealth – the haves will be required to subsidize the education of both the haves and the have-nots. Everyone else will have to pitch in, too. That brings us to the never ending conflict over wealth redistribution, which traces its angry origin at least as far back a the Civil War, and that brings us to,

This Gallup Moment

Check the graph below from Gallup’s This Week In Charts and you’ll have no difficulty seeing the massive shift to public approval for heavy taxes on the rich to finance the commons, which importantly benefits our poor and middle class with schools, roads, etc.

I suspect this change in public attitude has been accelerated by the past 50 years of legislation favorable to the rich and which penalizes the rest of us. The change may also be traced to the lack of enforcement of laws to prohibit rich guy favoritism. Example: only one guy went to prison for the massive fraud and deceit of the George W. Bush financial meltdown of 2008, even though many violated SEC regulations and fraud statutes. Then there are all the massive “trickle down” tax breaks, about 85% of which benefited already rich people, not you and I.

You’re right: that isn’t fair.

So the rich have benefited enormously for decades – for generations, really – while the rest of us just muddled by. It seems that now over half of we Americans think that rich people should pony up their fair share for the benefit of all of us. Imagine that!

Click me for the story.

The IRS and (probably not) You

On August 26 German Lopez wrote in The Morning newsletter of the New York Times, opining on the Biden announcement about increasing the number of IRS agents and resources, “Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, tied the increase in [IRS] agents to the F.B.I. search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and warned, ‘Not a single one of us is safe.’”

I sure hope she’s right, if by “safe” she means “protected from being audited and indicted for tax evasion.” I don’t want anyone to be safe from that.

While squatting in the Oval Office for four years, Trump dramatically reduced IRS resources in a stunning effort to protect himself and his rich buddies from scrutiny. That worked. Now Biden is working to restore the agency to a level where it can actually do its job. Got a problem with that, Kari Lake? We can fix your problem by defeating you in November. Go back to your hollow-head TV gig.

Covid Corner

Covid continues to rear its ugly head and promises to keep doing that until all the unvaccinated people either get vaccinated or die. It’s just that simple.

Below are the new cases chart and the death tally chart. These are cases per day averaged over 10 days. We’re still reporting nearly 100,000 new cases every day, and that number doesn’t include the cases identified via home test and those who never get diagnosed (the ones who just tough it out).

Nearly 500 of our fellows are dying every day from Covid. Almost every one of those 500 had refused to be vaccinated. Some have religious objections. Got that. But some just refuse as a demonstration of their stubbornness, masked in a mantle of self-identified freedom. And some refuse to be protected because they believe the cruel and evil lies about both the disease and the vaccine that have been crammed down their throats since Covid was identified and then vaccines became available.

Regardless of the why of their intransigence, our vaccine refusers are over-burdening our medical professionals and institutions and are walking super-spreaders who endanger the rest of us.

Whatever happened to “promote the general welfare” and concern for others and our freedom to not be infected by stubborn people?

Source: STAT, 8-29-22 – click me

Everything’s Okay Now

Following the virulent Republican anti-abortion campaign of fear and moral outrage over the past 49 years, the extremist Supreme Court killed Roe and now everything is just great for Republicans.

Wait – it’s not?

The national outrage over Republicans ending rights and promising to end still more has caused Democratic voter registrations to double those of Republicans and has caused Kansas to declare there’s nothing wrong with it. They defeated the extremist minority, killing the anti-choice state constitution amendment by 18 points.

The mid-term election is just 69 days away and proclaiming an anti-abortion position is threatening to be an anti-get-elected certainty for Republicans. What’s an extremist, hair-on-fire, Trumpy-MAGA candidate to do? Well, they figured it out.

Republican candidates are removing anti-abortion everything from their websites, their campaign literature and their campaign stops, hoping you won’t remember it was there. They haven’t changed their toxic minority position and they still want to force their medieval ways onto the majority of us and they’re just as authoritarian as before. But they think you’re dumb enough to forget who they are and what they stand for, now that they ditched the evidence.

See? Everything’s okay now.

Finally,

All of this happened over just the past few days. This list doesn’t include the Donald Documents crimes and his threat to our national security, extremist violence, mass shootings or stupid Ted “Cancun” Cruz or Lindsay “Weather Vane” Graham statements. It omits Doug Mastriano, Hershel Walker and Dr. Oz inanities, billionaire Barre Said’s $1.6 billion gift to an ultraconservative PAC that avoided taxes, and, and, and.

We didn’t used to have so many unforced domestic errors.

 

————————————

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

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!)

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2022 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Rent, Rights, Stupid & The Best


Rent

Recognizing the reality of the very present question of whether we can still govern ourselves, I offer to you two questions from a Thomas Friedman essay, flavored by a quote from Muhammad Ali:

“Do [we] want a country that is inclusive and capable of offering respect and dignity to all of its citizens or a country based on the negation of the other?”

“[W]hat kind of country do we want to be, what kind of leaders do we want to have, what sort of soul is at the core of America?”

Here’s the Ali flavoring:

“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.”

If Ali was right (and I strongly believe he was), then our answer to Friedman’s questions must be governed by Ali’s assertion. Consider it akin to the Constitution’s “promote the general welfare” phrase in the Preamble, the introduction that explains the “Why” of the Constitution and of our nation. Glad to have your responses to Friedman’s questions. Post them in the Comments section below.

Here’s a fun little experiment,

Pose the Ali-related statement to any of our conspiracy and MAGA folks, our vaccination refusers and our immigration opponents, most of whom are going through life with a raised middle finger:

“How are you paying your rent?”

I suspect many are dramatically in arrears in their payments.

We don’t evict those who freeload and who refuse to lend a hand to others, but somewhere along their path there will be a lot of back rent due as well as substantial accrued interest owed.

Rights

Yoda

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

But here’s the real deal: keeping our democracy is the only way to preserve our rights. “On that everything depends,” Yoda instructed us.

So, if we are to have rights, we must do everything we can to preserve our democracy, like voting against the authoritarians – the dictator lovers – the Republicans who work every day to end our rights and our democracy.

Nothing So Stupid

O’ the wailing, the indignation, the fury of Republicans in Congress over the bashing and poisoning of our fragile little ones by forcing Critical Race Theory into their impressionable brains. Surely, they will be scarred for life by this perversion of American history, bemoan our extremists, saying that CRT makes so many of them feel guilty for their whiteness.

Out with it! demands Florida Governor Ron “anything to get attention from the extremists” DeSantis. We’ll have none of that in our classrooms of little children. Teaching CRT in Florida is strictly forbidden.

There’s just one thing: There is no grade school or high school in Florida that is teaching or ever taught CRT. I can’t find a single school anywhere in the nation, from kindergarten through 400 level classes in university that teaches CRT. It’s a theoretical construct discussed in law schools by people age 22 and older – i.e. adults. Still, the Republicans are caterwauling their false claims that they are protecting our little ones from imminent harm.

There is nothing so stupid that Republicans won’t say it.

Ronald Reagan, the former patron saint of Republicans, fired off a tax cut blast, the benefits of which accrued almost entirely to rich people. He told us that the wealthy would use that money to invest in businesses, which would then create jobs for we little people and wages would go up. He claimed that the benefits from the tax cut would “trickle down” to the masses and he used the idiotic theory and graphs of Arthur Laffer to justify his predictions. I wish I were kidding about Laffer’s name, because it matches his theory, but I’m not and it does.

Deficit hawks of that time worried that cutting taxes without cutting spending would disastrously balloon the national deficit. Cleverly, Reagan had his budget director reprogram the computers that calculate such things to make them show that a deficit wouldn’t happen. And he passed that lie along in order to sell his giveaway to his fat cat buddies. Here’s the surprise inside.

Lots of money went to rich people and nothing – literally nothing – trickled down to workers. No new jobs. No increased wages. And the deficit ballooned, just as the deficit hawks feared. Oh, golly, as he was fond of saying.

Saint Ronny got his buddies the wallet stuffing they wanted by lying to us and stiffing us. That’s trickle down economics. And it’s been the same story with every tax cut lie since then.

There is nothing so stupid that Republicans won’t say it.

Sen. James Inhoff (R-OK) holding a snowball made from snow outside the Capitol Building to prove there’s no global warming.

This is about stupid lies constantly brayed by Republicans. Here is just a handful more:

The 2020 election Big Lies

Ivermectin and bleach

Any history that doesn’t favor Republicans and White guys

Claims that vaccines will make you sterile

Obama’s coming for your guns and besides, he wasn’t a “real” American

Biden is senile

There’s no such thing as climate warming

Benghazi – 14 times

Space lasers igniting wild fires

Pizzagate

The insurrectionists were “just tourists”

Mexico will pay for the wall

Anything about Hillary

The FBI planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago

“Witch hunts” that aren’t

Obama tapped Trump’s phone

Democrats are Satan worshiping pedophiles

Trump’s inaugural crowd was the largest in history

Obama “pals around with terrorists”

There are hundreds more, of course, so please post the stupids that come to mind in the Comments section below to entertain us all. Note that some Republican will read what you wrote and will repeat it as though it’s true.

Because with each of these, there is nothing so stupid that Republicans won’t say it.

Saving the Best For Last

We face episode after episode of law breaking, lying and fabricated outrage in search of greater power for the authoritarian wannabes. Worst of all are the elected and appointed officials in whom we placed our trust and who betrayed us and our country.

These are the people who swore an oath – most often with their hand on a Bible – to protect and defend the Constitution. Instead, they’ve done everything they could to subvert it. Their self-serving reasons are meaningless and are evidence of both their treachery and their cowardice. They are a grotesque stain on our nation and we are left to decide how to deal with that.

I have argued many times in these posts for strict accountability, not only because the absence of it proclaims our stated values to be false, but also because lack of accountability invites still worse in the future.

The New York Times editorial board has taken the clearest and most patriotic stand on this issue. I urge you to read Donald Trump Is Not Above The Law.

————————————

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

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!)

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2022 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Means Testing and Rip-offs


A new report in STAT details the financial support that hospitals and medical centers are receiving from FEMA. That’s the federal agency tasked with dealing with ordinary stuff like tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes and massive fires. You know, the once-in-a-century stuff we now experience several times a year.

The Rs assure us that there is no global warming, or at least their fallback position is that we aren’t contributing to it or we don’t know for sure what’s up. That’s why Val Demings is impressively challenging Marco (“It isn’t proven science”) Rubio, hoping to drive more substantive climate programs before Florida becomes Atlantis. But I digress.

That FEMA funding for medical institutions has been needed because of the enormous costs that hospitals have incurred fighting the Covid pandemic and keeping Americans alive. It’s the massive overtime, the enormous PPE requirements, ventilators, meds and the rest that could otherwise force into bankruptcy these institutions which protect you. Thank you FEMA, but there’s a problem.

There are hospital systems that are very – as in: VERY – profitable. While they’ve had massive Covid cost increases, too, they have not been and are not in financial distress. In fact, they’re financially just fine, but they’re peeling billions from the FEMA wallet, anyway. That okay with you?

The problem is that nobody seems to be wailing great buckets of tears over enormous piles of cash going to already wealthy medical institutions. Now, why is that? Gotta ask where the means testing is.

Taking this one step further, Republicans wail great buckets of tears over cancelling student debt, saying that tax payers shouldn’t be paying for some trust fund baby’s Harvard education, which actually makes sense to most of us. On the other hand, there aren’t that many trust fund babies with big student debt, so nearly all of the relief from cancelling student debt would go to we ordinary folk. Republicans would hate that. Still, means testing would make sense. If you’re rich, you shouldn’t get college debt relief. Means testing, baby. Means testing.

Looking at this from another angle, why did we allow trillions of dollars to be diverted to – ripped off by – Iraqi and Afghani warlords, politicians and crooks? That went on for decades.

Regular readers of these posts know that I bash Republicans (so many reasons, so little time),* but this issue is largely one of equal opportunity bashing. What is it about us that allows for such enormous misuse of our tax money?

So, yes, cancel debt for those who’ve done the hard work to advance their education and better themselves and our country. John Kennedy was right: college is America’s best friend and that’s critically important now, as China is graduating as many engineers every year as we have in total. And I think Bernie Sanders has it right, too. Make public universities and colleges tuition free. Provide public funding for them just like we do for grade schools and high schools and for the same reasons funding the lower grades makes sense. Today’s jobs require better educated people, especially because this is and will remain a global competition.

For those who want a private education, go right ahead – and you pay for it. No public money for any private schools, be they secular or religious. Ever. And no, I don’t care whether it’s Dubya’s support of “faith-based initiatives” (money going to parochial schools and other religious institutions) or today’s Evangelical know-everythings or our “my religion is the law” Supreme Court.

Yes, I know that the fat cats won’t like that because they love getting fatter, like from Trump’s despicable tax cut, 83% of which went to the hugely wealthy and to corporations, which bought back their stock with that windfall cash and that artificially boosted stock prices, which made the fat cats fatter. And those guys love fossil fuels, because their short term gain is just so nifty to have, even as those fuels imperil the lives of all of our Gen Zs and whoever comes after them. They’re the same as with the wealthy private hospital CEOs who love digging into FEMA’s wallet.

The song says “This land was made for you and me,” not just you, rich guys. And as Elizabeth Warren cautioned, you didn’t build it on your own. We the People built the infrastructure that has allowed you to prosper.

Means testing says that a poor kid in the inner city gets help and you don’t, trust fund baby. It means that we should be in a Manhattan Project to build sustainable energy, even if the fat cats don’t get their oil, gas and coal dividends. And we should be rooting out all the cheaters who took so many millions of dollars from the Paycheck Protection Plan and stuffed it into their pockets, stiffing so many people who needed help. That’s fat cats in Congress helping their fat cat donor buddies.

We have screaming needs right now and, honestly, I don’t care who doesn’t like our doing what must be done, including the ending of yet more cash for the already rich.

Speaking of Rip-offs

I know you’ve wondered why Donald Trump stole at least 30 boxes of records containing at least 300 classified documents. Be clear that these items weren’t souvenirs or cocktail napkins, as Sheila Markin Nielsen writes. She’s an attorney, a former prosecutor, she’s politically astute and her essay lays out a broader picture of what happened and why it happened as it did and why pursuing Trump’s theft is critically important.

It’s clear that he is guilty of at least 3 crimes. First, by taking the records – any records –  he is in violation of the Presidential Records Act. Second, his lying to federal agents about having returned all the documents when, in fact, he had retained at least half of them, he committed another felony. And in taking classified documents he is guilty of violating the Espionage Act.

And none of that even touches on laws that apply to what he may have done with those national security documents, some of which would surely be worth billions to a U.S. adversary.

Think about it: Trump has demonstrated it’s a constant that he doesn’t care about rules, consequences to others or even legality. And he loves to cozy up to American adversaries, like Putin, Xi and MBS. And there he was in Mar-a-Lago with his stolen Top Secret documents. What could possibly go wrong?

If you want better clarity on this in a religious context (and you do in this age of Christian theocracy threats), read Thom Hartmann’s essay, Is Donald Trump the Antichrist? Come to think of it, read that piece, regardless or your motivation. It offers a startling and valuable perspective.

—————————————

* So, just to be consistent, here’s a shot across the bow.

Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which

 –  Reduces prescription drug prices

–  Caps pharmacy costs at $2,000

–  Insulin costs for Medicare beneficiaries are capped at $35 per month

–  3 million more Americans will have health insurance and care

–  Tax credits for using clean energy

 –  Provides up to $14,000 direct consumer rebates for installation of energy efficient appliances

–  Tax credits for installing solar

–  Promotes clean energy

–  Reduces greenhouse gases by 1 gigaton in 2030

– 15% minimum tax on corporations

–  $0 increase in taxes on individuals making less than $400,000 per year

 –  There’s lots more – click here for the official tally

EVERY REPUBLICAN IN CONGRESS VOTED AGAINST THIS ACT!

Instead, they focused on:

 –  Banning abortion

 –  Banning books

 –  Passing anti-CRT in our grade schools, even though none of them teaches CRT

 –  Passed Don’t Say Gay laws

 –  Voted against the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxins Act of 2022 (“PACT”) which is designed to help our veterans exposed to toxins and toxic burn pits

 –  Voted to take away voting rights with more gerrymandering, limitations on voting by mail and closing of voting places

–  Voted to permit Republican secretaries of states and Republican legislatures to ignore the will of the people and instead select their own candidates for elective office.

–  And, of course, there’s lots more

————————————

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

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!)

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2022 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Human Being 101


Nuremberg Rally, 1934

You might reasonably wonder why Neil Steinberg recently wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that he found a frightening comparison of sociopath and mass murderer John Wayne Gacy and sociopath and democracy murderer* Donald Trump (my descriptor).

Trump has gotten away with so much because he has appealed to long simmering American anger and because he is in reality an autocrat – a dictator. He removes those still clinging to a shred of integrity and replaces them with sycophants. He issues threats and intimidation to everyone else, all of this to the cheers of the angry mob. It’s just what autocrats do. Think: the Nuremberg rallies.

As Steinberg writes, “In a totalitarian state, the leader is the king and his word is truth. His word is law. Period.” He rules “unhindered by any pang of conscience or shred of humanity” with “an unshakable sense of superiority.” That’s how fascist leaders roll and that is what the GOP is threatening to unleash full throttle upon all of us. Indeed, as Steinberg writes,

“A vote for most Republicans is a vote to end voting.”

Click to read me

Gacy wasn’t too different from that narcissism and at least 33 people died in agony by his hand. Now consider the potential headcount of a sociopathic narcissist with the nuclear secrets in boxes in his basement.

My day job is to deliver keynotes and workshops, mostly to C-level people. These sessions are focused on how they can be better leaders producing more engaged, happier and more productive followers. The foundation for that is a basic human behavior thing – call it a priciple of Human Being 101: “See leader, emulate leader.” The way the leader shows up, how s/he behaves, is how followers will behave. The intensity of emulation varies, but the principle holds.

So, if the leader lies, followers will lie. If the leader is cruel, followers will be cruel. If the leader denies easily observable facts and reality, so, too, will followers. And that is exactly what we’ve seen in Trump followers since we heard the hate-filled 2015 carnage claims and finger pointing brayed from an escalator. Nothing is quite as satisfying and exculpatory as blaming others for our own shortcomings and failings, so autocratic leaders do that and their followers follow. See leader, emulate leader.

The leaders of the Confederacy (not a democracy, but an “oligarchic police state”, per Thom Hartmann) called on the indignation and rage of those who would have to renounce their mastery over an entire race of people if the abolitionists were to get their way. The calls to their rage by their leaders led to over 600,000 dead Americans. It was as though John Wayne Gacy had been the leader of the slave states. See leader, emulate leader.

Steve Bannon announced from the start that he wants to “tear it all down,” and he made it clear that by “all” he meant American institutions, our democracy, our values and more.

From Rep. Jamie Raskin’s book, Unthinkable:

“But Trump and his operatives [including Bannon] had worked to destroy every well-established constitutional rule, legal and ethical norm, and customary tradition that might have been an obstacle to imposing his will on everyone else.”

Stop the Steal “rally”, January 6, 2021

Bannon and Trump are smart and clever with their explanations and their furious attacks and they have led millions to want to do their will, to tear it all down. It’s all cloaked in red, white and blue, a liberty and justice for all mantle, a “USA!” chant and a demand for election integrity, but they are about none of that. Those who emulate them aren’t about that either, although they appear to have deluded themselves sufficiently to believe that they are patriotic, even as they call for the destruction of it all. Ref: January 6.

The crowd of MAGA extremists hears, “Stop the steal!” There is no evidence that anything was stolen. There are no facts. Only baseless claims and indignant, angry chants that amplify grievances. Yet they chant, “Stop the steal!” every time they’re told to do so. No thought. Just Pavlovian fury.

The message of this writing is simple:

If we are to have a better America, we must have better leaders, not the autocrat wannabees.
.

I don’t mean leaders who are better liars or who are more cruel or who are more deft at reality denial. I specifically mean leaders who, rather than drawing out our most base, most selfish and cruel instincts, instead those who call on us to be what Lincoln prayed for in his first inaugural address, that we be led “by the better angels of our nature.”

Fort Sumter

We are at a great and critical crossroads in our national history and, dangerously, we will be here for a while. It is a crossroads as perilous as that of April 12, 1861, when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

There are many hundreds of elected leaders and self-certain, self-promoting pundits firing on America right now, calling for violence, insurrection, even a new civil war, and invoking what Lincoln called a “mobocratic spirit.”** And there are millions of wildly engaged followers of these would-be autocrats thumping chests and repeating lies fed to them over and over, emulating these leaders.

Neil Steinberg is right: “A vote for most Republicans is a vote to end voting.”

If we are to have a better America, we must have better leaders, not the autocrat wannabees.
.

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* Trump, the MAGAs, the conspiracy propeller hats, the militias – these people are a threat to democracy and you understand that threat. I know you do because you keep yourself informed – you wouldn’t be reading this unless you wanted to be informed. But most Americans are not well informed. Their concerns are their kids and the price of gas and food and housing and what’s on cable and perhaps finding a better job. With all their concerns, they just don’t have the bandwidth to think about democracy. Besides, it’s already here, secured, they believe, by prior generations. Yet it is so very fragile.

** From The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions: Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838.

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

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  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
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JA


Copyright 2022 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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