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Who Cares?


POST 1286

Cheating The Vote – One More Time
  1. Why is it that only Republicans continue to wage a multi-decade effort to prevent women, poor people and people of color from voting?
  2. Why is it that only Republicans want to deploy weapons-carrying thugs to polling places to intimidate voters?
  3. Why is it that only Republicans make up lies about non-citizens voting?
  4. Why is it that only Republicans want to make it next to impossible for poor people and married women to obtain satisfactory ID to vote?
  5. Why is it that only Republicans close polling places that were convenient to people of color and poor people?
  6. Why is it that only Republicans eliminate drop boxes for ballots, making it especially hard for millions of poor people and people of color to vote?
  7. Why is it that only Republicans change polling places but don’t tell Democrats about it?
  8. Why is it that only Republicans change the postal service so that mailed ballots don’t get counted in time?
  9. Why is it that our Republican controlled SCOTUS emboldens our Republican democracy turncoats?

The answer to each question is the same, simple, dreadful truth: they do all this and more because they’ve known for decades that they cannot win unless they cheat. They make it pretty clear who they care about. And who they don’t care about.

Jeez, Republicans, you guys stink.

Speaking of the Truth, You Know It When You Hear It

In a 1954 case about obscenity and the first amendment, rather than defining it, Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart famously said, “I know it when I see it.” When Trump was asked about his focus on the plight of Americans as he wages unnecessary war on Iran, our president said this:

I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation, I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.

That isn’t an out-of-context distortion. It’s what he said and, from his actions and from many of his other blabberings, it’s plain to see that it’s the truth of what he mean. Trump doesn’t care about your financial situation. He really doesn’t think about you. He only cares about eliminating an existential threat that does not exist for whatever illegitimate reason serves him, like distracting us from the Epstein scandal.

Like Potter Stewart (who names their kid Potter?), you knew truth when you heard it. That was a most rare moment hearing Donald Trump tell the truth. Savor it.

STAT Report

.  .  .  Vice President JD Vance announced that $1.3 billion in Medicaid funds to California will be deferred over suspicions of fraud. Earlier this year, the administration threatened a two-year licensing freeze for new providers of home and community-based services in Minnesota and instituted a similar nationwide halt on durable medical equipment suppliers.

Odd how Federal cuts to programs that benefit We The People get cut mostly in Blue states. Maybe that’s because there’s rampant waste, fraud or abuse in blue states and none in Trump supporting MAGA red states. Yeah, that must be it.

The sarcasm sizzles.

Must Read

Morgan Freeman (yes, that Morgan Freeman) does a Substack column and you are required to read his brilliant piece,

TRUMP IS HAVING A PUBLIC NERVOUS BREAKDOWN AT EXACTLY THE WRONG TIME

His title is, indeed, in all caps. Read the piece and you’ll understand. Actually, you already know why.

Freeman’s message is stunningly clear and stunningly foreboding. Read it and pass it along to everyone you know and to three people you don’t know.

Melania really doesn’t care. Do U?

Many thanks to futurist and friend David Houle for showing me Freeman’s piece.

Speaking Of Caring

Here’s Melania on her way to visit children who had been ripped from their mothers, now jammed into ICE/CBP detention cages without so much as ordinary hygiene for them. Did they teach her to be cruel and uncaring back in Slovenia, or did she learn it from Trump?

Inadvertently Speaking Truthfully About Not Caring

Check this from College Democrats of America, reporting on Republican Louisiana State Sen. Jay Morris:

On Friday, during a redistricting session, White GOP State Sen. Jay Morris yelled “Shut up, boy” at our Executive Director Dadrius Lanus who, in Morris’s words, was “commenting and talking” too loudly for him to concentrate.

Sen. Morris says we misheard. That the audio proves it. That he said “you all need to shut up” to Black constituents behind him outraged that their votes won’t be counted.

Sen, Morris, an elected member of our legislature, thinks if he had yelled “you all need to shut up” it would be better.

It wouldn’t.

What Sen. Morris doesn’t understand is that White people have been telling Black folk to “shut up” for over 250 years.

What Sen. Morris doesn’t understand is that we remember being told we were 3/5ths of a person. That even when we won personhood in the eyes of the law, they instituted poll taxes and “reading” tests. That when we marched and dreamed and cried and buried loved ones who had hung as strange fruit from tall trees because they raised their voices too loud that what Black people have always wanted is equality.

Or maybe Senator Morris does understand all that.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I am a 70 year old Black man. And I don’t let anyone call me or my brothers “Boy.”

Any questions about what Sen. Morris cares about? Or about what any of the Republicans working so very hard to bring back Jim Crow care about?

The only question is .  .  .

What We’re Going To Do To Stop Them and Their Thievery.
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It’s not the vibes and it’s not the polls: IT’S THE VOTES!
Are you registered to vote? Check it out on any of these websites:
.

https://www.vote.org/am-i-registerilled-to-vote/

https://www.usa.gov/confirm-voter-registration

https://www.rockthevote.org/how-to-vote/am-i-registered-to-vote/

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

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!), because 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.

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 or Barnes & Noble 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 comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA

 


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Epic Failures – Plus Day 1 Again


POST 1285

Hey Fred and Mary Anne!

Yeah, you.

It was your job to properly raise your reprobate son to have good moral principles, to obey the law and to respect others. You were supposed to mold him into a decent American citizen worthy of breathing our air and taking up space on this planet. In that moment of conception you signed up for those responsibilities. Then your little pink baby showed up and you abandoned all of your responsibilities and sicced him on the world. He’s your scoundrel mini-you taken to extreme obscenity. You failed utterly and We The People are paying the price.

Remember when your little cutie was maybe 2 or 3 years old and you told him he could not have a cookie until after dinner? It was mid-afternoon and you turned back to what you were doing and your little darling saw those cookies, then looked back at you and realized that you weren’t watching. He grabbed one and went over behind the couch and ate that cookie. You actually saw that happen and thought it was just so cute and you never said a word, so he continued stealing cookies – then lots of other things, and has never stopped stealing. You taught him he could get away with anything.

Years later he was grounded for good reason, and as soon as you left the house he grabbed the car keys and was off. You found out about that, too, and never said a word. You just let him get away with another violation of the rules. There would be no accountability, no limits for him. He got away with all of his outrages. You were abject failures as parents. You made him and yourselves into what you see as the worst thing anyone can be: losers.

And this story only got way worse.

Hey Republican Congress!

You’re the people in the branch of government:

– who are supposed to give serious thought before giving advice and definitely before giving consent

– who are supposed to be a branch of government that checks the others

– who are the 535 who are supposed to represent We The People, what we value, what we believe, where we draw the line

– who are supposed to be ever vigilant for integrity, accountability and truth, justice and the America way

But you quit even before you started and have allowed the tyrant to get away with any nefarious thing, anything illegal or immoral he pleases.

He’s doing execrable things, like claiming that it was okay to bulldoze a wing of the White House as though it were just another of his properties with his name on it in ostentatious gold letters. He says he had a right to knock down part of that house, the house that actually belongs to the We The People. And you did nothing, Congress, so he got away with it.

He said he was making way for a ballroom that everyone knows isn’t necessary. It’s tasteless glitter that looks like yet more gaudy gold crap all over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, dwarfing the White House itself. He said that purposeless ballroom would be paid for by Trump and his billionaire friends.

This useless, tasteless ballroom will dwarf the White House, the international symbol of democracy and strength. And Congress is letting this happen.

But now he’s demanding $1 BILLION of our taxpayer money to build that monument to greed and his toxic narcissism. And he’s having the Reflecting Pool painted blue to look like  one of his swimming pools. This is the same brat who stole cookies, stole the car and who has grifted all his life.

And you, Republican Congress, are sitting on your hands letting him grift – just like failures Fred and Mary Anne Trump.
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You have done a miserable, embarrassing, humiliating and incompetent job. You even took lessons from this monster of depravity and have copied him, consistently doing what you think is best for you, not what is best for We The People.

He gets away with his outrageous scams, grifts and thefts because you’re too chicken and too greedy to do the job you promised to do, the job that we hired you to do.

We all know that “Shame on you!” bounces off your thoroughly corrupted senses but on November 3 we’ll remember both what you’ve done and what you’ve failed to do. We will send you away with the albatross of history around your neck and on your résumé. You’re an epic failure for our country, just like Fred and Mary Anne. And, like them, you’re losers.

More Advice For Day 1, January 20, 2029

Regular reader, commenter and boyhood pal Kirk Landers landed comments so good about what our next administration and Congress must do starting Day 1 that we are compelled to revisit the subject here.

It’s not enough for democracy advocates to have ideals for governing. We need an action plan, especially for 2029, to hit the ground running like the neo-Nazis did in 2024. Not just ideas, a plan of action, immediate actions that can be undertaken by presidential fiat, and legislation ready to go for the longer range actions that require Congressional approval.

For example, if I were running things, on the first day of the democratic presidency, the new President would order the removal of Trump’s name and likeness from all federal properties. Similarly, the goddamn ballroom and any other monstrosities Trump creates will be immediately destroyed and carted away while legislation will be introduced dictating that the [demolition] expenses will be covered by a special tax on billionaires.

On the first day of Congress, legislation will be introduced and passed by a Democratic majority that expands the Supreme Court by six justices. Other bills will stipulate that SCOTUS terms are limited to 10 years, that justices will be subject to standards of conduct equal to those of senators, representatives and presidents, and that nominees to the court must be screened by a panel of federal judges before being voted on.

From The Onion, of course.

The same day, I’d have Congress vote on a bill to form a special ‘crimes against democracy’ extension of the justice department that would immediately bring charges against members of the Trump Administration who violated laws and their oaths of office. Their trials would be limited to six months in duration.

In the second week of the first Congressional session, work could begin on restoring professionalism and functionality to the federal government, especially the DOJ, the State Department, the IRS and the FBI.

I’m still working on a plan to find a Madam LaFarge to audit the trials of the traitors in the Administration, and to knit as their heads are chopped off .  .  .

CNBC, January 22, 2020 – 1.1 million Americas died, over 750,000 of those preventable.

Trump says hantavirus is ‘under control’ as WHO tracks cruise outbreak

Aljazeera, May 9, 2026 – Trump is in charge. What could possibly go wrong?

Some Believe In Trump

Read Rick Wilson’s MAGA and Idolatry. His over-the-top satire is really just barely over the top. And it’s frightening that about 1/3 of our countrymen and -women are Trump idolators. You read that right.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

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!), because 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.

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 or Barnes & Noble 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 comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Starting Advice For Day 1


POST 1284

Taking Useful Instruction From Trump – A Note To Our New President and Congress For January 20, 2029

Showing the desecration of the White House and the size of Trump’s monument to himself.

When the Ds win the White House and Congress in 2028, they’ll need to hit the ground running. When Trump showed up for his first term he had under his arm 33 executive orders ready to be signed ostentatiously before TV cameras and attended by supplicants. He eventually signed 187 more of them over those 4 years. Most were an exercise in pettiness, designed to erase whatever Obama had done.

At the start of his second term he came armed with  26 executive orders and signed them on his first day. He signed 199 more of them in his first year – 225 total – and he’s signing still more. Not surprisingly, many were for the purpose of erasing both Obama and Biden, this to massage his ultra-fragile ego. Worse, lots of his EOs were plainly illegal.

The point is that the next president in 2029 should show up with a massive pile of executive orders designed to:

  1. Reverse every standing illegal Trump executive order. Along with that, all defenses against ongoing lawsuits challenging illegal executive orders should be dropped and the cases surrendered to plaintiffs.
  2. Reinvigorate the programs designed for the welfare of We The People, like SNAP and Obamacare assistance.
  3. Remove every Trump loyalist from the Executive Branch of government on charges of massive integrity abandonment.
  4. Be ready with indictments of Trump officials who broke our laws.
  5. Tear down all Trump narcissistic monuments to himself. Remove all Trump gold plated filth from federal property. No Trump coins. No buildings named for Trump. No Trump banners on any federal building. No gold draperies or gold filigree. No Presidential Walk of  Fame, as though the presidency is a WWF event. Restore the Rose Garden and the East Wing using the money his billionaire buddies “donated” for his idiotic ballroom.
  6. Restore our war matériel supply to Ukraine if that war is yet ongoing because they are fighting for both their own and our freedom.
  7. Set right lots of other stuff, like grants for medical and scientific research.

That, of course, is just a sampling. Expect more specifics next Sunday.

Steve Schmidt offered a clear statement to the next president about such things in his post, Tear Down This Ballroom, writing

The next president’s obligation isn’t to leave his/her mark. It’s to leave [the White House] intact.

Say it without equivocation: whatever has been built in defiance of that principle will be removed. Whatever has been altered for ego will be restored for country. Whatever illusions have taken hold — that this place can be claimed, reshaped, branded, or owned — will be shattered.

The next president must restore proper relations with our NATO allies and reaffirm our opposition to Russia, North Korea and to Chinese incursion anywhere.

In other words, next Democratic president, arrive for work on Day 1 ready, aimed and firing.
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I Have Another Problem With John Roberts – You Should, Too

In 2010 he made up his own case that had nothing to do with the merits or even the point of the Citizens United case before the Court and thereby accelerated the downfall of our democracy.

The Citizens United case started as a challenge to the McCain-Feingold bill, with the plaintiffs appealing to be allowed to broadcast their “documentary” – it was trashy hit job propaganda, really – about Hillary Clinton right before the 2016 primaries and the general election. The plaintiffs won their case, but then Roberts ordered the litigants to come back to the Court to test the limits of free speech. That whole cloth fabrication of a case ended up with Roberts and his Court deviants giving inanimate corporations all the same rights you have – personhood. That gave them and fabulously rich guys the right to throw enormous amounts of money into elections to get the legislators they want, which has delivered the laws, the power and gobs of money to these uber-richy corporations and individuals. To be fair, you can do that, too, except you don’t have the money for such democracy robbery.

From Open Secrets:

During the 2008 election cycle, the last presidential campaign before the floodgates opened, outside spending totaled $574 million. Four years later, in 2012, that amount more than doubled — to nearly $1.3 billion. By 2020, outside spending reached $3.3 billion and came close to $4.5 billion in 2024. Most of that money was spent by super PACs.

In other words, Roberts’ fraudulent case caused our elections and our nation to be drowned by big money interests, which made you and your vote completely irrelevant.

The Chief Justice made up a case out of whole cloth and manufactured its decision so that he could take America from We The People and hand it over to American oligarchs.

So, yeah, I have a problem with John Roberts, as well as the problem about his racism.

From Ari Berman of Mother Jones:

The Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which effectively killed the last remaining provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, was authored by Justice Samuel Alito. But it represents the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts. The Roberts court has now gutted the Voting Rights Act on three different occasions, and Roberts wrote or joined every one of those opinions. And that’s not an accident. Roberts has been trying to kill the Voting Rights Act for more than 40 years, and it looks like he’s finally succeeded.

Watch our new video to understand how Roberts has steadily worked to destroy the Voting Rights Act and what can be done to fight back.

As Long As We’re Doing Charts

This one should speak for itself. Actually, it screams.

Questions:

  1. How come the Democrats have to constantly clean up the messes Republicans make of our economy, our jobs and our hopes and dreams?
  2. Are you going to show this to your MAGA googly, grievance infused crazy friend Bob? Because he’s getting screwed six different ways from Sunday. Tell him to check what he paid to fill his gas tank this week. Oh, he could only afford half a tank? And his wife has been cut back to half-days, they need groceries and his kids need shoes and he can’t afford any of that? Wake the hell up, Bob!
  3. The current sickly jobs report, the inflation report, the war report, the gas/diesel report and the cost of health insurance all are becoming far worse for Bob. What’s his plan for when he gets laid off, now that healthcare support has been cut? Wake the hell up, Bob!
  4. Is crazy friend Bob really cheering for the Republican controlled Congress and the racist Supreme Court, both of which are making matters worse for him and for all of We The People? Because Bob is only half-screwed now. The chart tells him far worse is coming. Wake the hell up, Bob!
  5. If Bob loves his grievance, he’s about to get a big whammy grievance dumped in his lap. Does he believe the truth of that yet? He will soon. And he’ll be griev-ier than he’s ever been in his entire life. Trump may tell him, “Nobody’s ever seen anything like this before.” While that’s just another Trump lie or another display of his mammoth ignorance, it won’t matter to Bob. He’ll be screwed either way. Do pass that along to your friend.
Breaking News! From Last Sunday Night

From The New York Times:

The question is:

Why isn’t he in a prison hospital?
.

The spinmeisters falsely labeled him America’s Mayor. Now we should call him America’s Penitentiary Mayor. Or America’s Dripping Hair Dye Mayor. I don’t care. I just call him the Trump Pardoned former mayor who belongs behind bars.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

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!), because 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.

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 or Barnes & Noble 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 comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Maybe You Thought The Civil War Was Over


POST 1283

It’s April 12, 1861* All Over Again

An on-point look at the steadfast discriminatory pummeling into  powerlessness of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the Roberts court can be found in The Post-Racial Deception of the Roberts Court. It was penned by Cedric Merlin Powell, University of Louisville, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, and published in the SMU Law Review. It is a ponderous, thick-headed cure for insomnia. Good news: you’ll get Powell’s message from his conclusion:

Post-racial deceptions are disruptive, devastating in impact, and disconcerting because they ostensibly preserve fairness and the Court’s vaunted legitimacy, but instead chill all positive race-conscious remedial efforts and initiatives to advance substantive equality through the diversity imperative. The Roberts Court’s post-racial constitutionalism has undermined anti-discrimination law in virtually every area: school integration, affirmative action, Title VII, housing, and voting rights with the added effect of constitutionalizing its post-racial deception.

Racist is racist and no amount of Supreme Court verbal sleight of hand can mask its deviousness and cruelty. Same for the shameless Congressional Republicans doing shameful, deceitful, discriminatory things.

Bait And Switch

George W. Bush appointed John Roberts to the Court in 2005. During Roberts’ confirmation hearing he told us that he was an originalist, a traditionalist and a steadfast proponent of

Stare Decisis: A legal principle requiring judges to honor previous rulings, providing consistency and predictability in the law.

Roberts described Roe v Wade as “settled law” then. But he trashed it in its first direct test before him. I guess it wasn’t decisis-ed enough for Roberts. Likely, he thought he had integrity wiggle room to pull the plug on the prior ruling, but he didn’t.

Then he trashed the 1965 Voting Rights Act at least twice.

Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices; and subsection (b) of Section 4, which contains the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subject to preclearance based on their histories of racial discrimination in voting.

When that law was overturned the Court’s decision made the gerrymandering and voter suppression shit hit the fan immediately in a dozen and a half states. Good-bye voting rights for non-Whites.

Last week the Roberts Court, proudly led by Justice Not-So-Stare-Decisis, trashed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Awful 6 have allowed the state of Louisiana and all the states that breathe that same polluted, hateful  air to racially redistrict their states to cut out representatives of color and thereby neuter non-Whites.

Calling all that racist switcheroo Bait and Switch really is far too generous to Roberts, because it looks like he showed up at the Court waving a stare decises flag while secretly looking for ways to kill Roe, neuter civil rights legislation and give big money people gigantic power over you (see this Sunday’s post for more on that). Some and maybe all of that was at least partly racist. So forget his alter boy looks. He’s a racist and the Court’s racist decisions have impact.

Roberts may not mean to be cruel and discriminatory, but his intentions are irrelevant. What matters is what he does and the cruel and discriminatory effect that has. He leads a “renegade, partisan Supreme Court.”

Nixon was a raging racist. Reagan was a raging racist with a Hollywood face and an “Oh, golly” manner. Trump is whatever is beyond racist. What is that Republican hatred about?

Reagan campaigned accusing fictitious “welfare queens” and “young bucks” of grossly scamming we good White folks via welfare programs. Key word: fictitious. Reagan was a president urging us to hatred, much like today.

Be clear that John Roberts’ Awful 6 are a critical part of inciting racism. And recognize that we are just short of the cheating apotheosis initiated by the racist Moral Majority and Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich. He realized that Republicans could not win unless they suppressed (that means cheated) other voters. Their Song of Hatred is not only still being sung; it is blaring from loudspeakers all over our country and from the Court Chamber of the Supreme Court itself.

Given that, recognize how desperately we need a half dozen more Supreme Court justices to counterbalance the Awful 6.

Here’s what Sen. Rafael Warnock told Margaret Brennan on Face The Nation:

[S]tates that used to play old games, they’re playing new games. They’re 21st-century Jim Crow tactics in new clothes: moving voter polls, closing polls in Black and brown communities, purging people — people literally showing up [to vote] and not knowing that their names have been purged from the [voting] rolls. And the data shows that this disproportionately impacts Black and brown citizens.

That’s what the Supreme Court Awful 6 allowed.

From Rick Wilson in The Red Court Kills Voting Rights:

The War on Voting has entered its scorched-earth phase.

We are no longer debating “voter integrity,” “ballot access,” or the other endless sea of euphemisms in the polite, tepid tones of a Sunday morning talk show. We are witnessing a twin-pronged demolition of the democratic franchise so cynical, so surgically precise, and so fundamentally nihilistic that it would make a Cold War politburo blush.

Have a look at the Daily Docket, Mark Elias’ update for May 1:

After Supreme Court’s destruction of Voting Rights Act, here’s the latest on redistricting
.

Elias lists what the various states are doing to immediately undermine representation of and for people of color. John Roberts has given the go-ahead for them to do freebase racial gerrymandering. All of the gains of the 50s and 60s are systematically and relentlessly being wiped out, one Supreme Court decision at a time. Too bad for you, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, Roy Wilkins and so many others. And Rosa Parks, you get to the back of that bus right now to make room for Jim Crow to take over the entire thing.

The long term struggle for civil rights may not be dead, but it’s gravely injured. Maybe that win over enslavers in 1865 only postponed the full cruelty, because it looks like the haters aren’t just back; they’re back with a vengeance. They’re in plain sight and trashing our dearest values and our hopes for humanity before our eyes. The Civil War never ended and it’s being carried on by power crazed, scaredy-cat Americans, their hatred officially being permitted by our very own Supreme Court.

Finally,

From Ted Dintersmith in Better Days???:

Our esteemed SCOTUS is hastening the collapse of our democracy. John Roberts doesn’t seem to give a damn about America’s future.

He’s echoed by Robert Reich’s stunning revelation, Sam Alito and My Friend Mickey.

Last, a quotation from Steve Schmidt’s piece, A New Birth of Freedom, a piece inspired by Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:

The United States is great because it can be made new again by the people who are sovereign and free. It can be made more just and perfect. It is a place where dreams can be fulfilled and where freedom can flourish, but it will never be a place that is free from the dangers that come from the people who want to take those things away.

If you’re Black or Brown, you lose first because that war still rages. Who do you suppose will be next?

_____________________________________________

* April 12, 1861 was the day when Confederate forces opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, thus beginning the Civil War. That war succeeded in killing over 700,000 Americans in just 4 years. That’s 479 soldiers killed every day for 4 years. Or five 9/11s every 8 days.

That’s just a sampling of what greed and racial hatred can do.

 

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

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!), because 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.

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 or Barnes & Noble 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 comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Right?


POST 1282

What A Day For Racial Suppression!

Hip, hip hooray for the South because it’s rising again! Put those monuments to traitors like Robert E. Lee back in the town square. May Confederate flags fly forever, high above the slave market in Charleston, South Carolina! Put those uppity darkies like Malcolm X back in their place. Let the stirring words of George Wallace ring loud in the ears and hearts of all at every KKK meeting:

Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever!

Oh poll taxes! Oh literacy tests! Oh death threats! How we  love ’em!

The Supreme Court has raised its racist head once again by neutering another section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In 2013 John Roberts implied that we are a “postracial, colorblind society” and that there was no longer a need to prevent former Confederate states from stealing rights from minorities. The awful Supreme Court 6 struck down the provision of the Act that required pre-clearance of laws that could affect rights of minorities. Immediately following that brainless Court decision North Carolina passed a law that dramatically limited access to the polls for non-whites. Several other states did the same moments later.

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is a critical piece of legislation. Based on patterns of discrimination, all or parts of 16 states are required to submit any changes to voting procedures for approval by the Department of Justice or a federal court, prior to implementation. These states are both in the South as well as in cities in California, Michigan, and New York.

Now the Roberts Court has again hacked away at that law by telling the state of Louisiana that they are free to do racial gerrymandering. Obviously, other White supremacy loving states will feel free to do the same.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the court was not striking down Section 2 of the VRA [that prohibits racially discriminating gerrymandering], but rather “properly” interpreting it as “impos[ing] liability only when circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.

Unpacking that Court double-speak, Alito is announcing to all of the Republican controlled, White supremacy loving states that it’s okay to cut the power of the vote from those pesky darkies so that the Republicans can win elections that they would not be able to win in a free and fair election. More on this in the Wednesday, May 6 post.

Glory be to all that is discriminatory! It’s just right! The South is rising again!

I’m Going To Join The Republican Party

That’s because I’m a conservative and the Republicans are all about conservatism, right? And I should be able to effect change from within easier than from the outside, so I’m joining up. Here’s the deal.

The two most anti-conservative things we can do is to wage unnecessary war and to cut taxes and run up monstrous debt, right? So I’m going to push and push really hard to reverse what we’re doing:

  1. To end this transcendentally stupid war, and
  2. To raise the tax rates on fabulously rich people to what they were when those paragons of conservatism, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, were in charge – 70% top rate. Doing that will be conservative, right?

Conservatism is about following the intent of the Founders and other wise people through the centuries. It’s about conserving what they gave to us. So I’ll call for us re-upping to what the Constitution says, like our Bill of Rights – all of them. The wise people believed in due process and equal protection of the laws and so do I.

And I’ll push for a roll back of the powers snatched by the executive branch. You know: that separation of powers thing. We conservatives like that stuff. That’ll be conservative, right?

We can’t forget that “promote the general welfare” piece, either. Wouldn’t want to miss that part of true conservatism because we all know that we have to be faithful to the Preamble to the Constitution.

You get the idea. I’m gonna be a Republican for sure because those guys are all about being conservative.

And that ain’t wrong.

Right? Right?!!!

It’s Time To Think Bigger

Joining the Republican Party actually might not work. So, I’m starting a new political party. It will be focused on values, not culture warfare; personal prosperity, not lies that pile on trillions more in debt; actual moral behavior, not wink-wink and do nothing about immoral and illegal behavior by officials; accountability for wrongdoers, regardless of how many billions they’re worth. In short, it will be focused on getting things done for you and me.

The new party will have a name that represents where the focus is. It will be called the Getting Shit Done For We The People Party, or

THE GSD PARTY
.

It will be focused on making a positive difference in the lives of We The People. When this party is in power:

We won’t spend $1.5 TRILLION per year (as much as all other countries combined) on defense or on war.

We actually won’t start stupid forever wars.

We’ll make sure everyone gets a proper education and kids get pre-school.

No kid goes hungry.

Everyone will be obligated to two years of service to We The People.

We’ll have public healthcare that protects us from pandemics and everyone gets regular healthcare.

We’ll once again subsidize research, medicine, science through grants that draw the best and brightest to do the things that help We The People.

We’ll re-embrace our allies because that helps us all.

We will get religion out of government and government out of religion – absolute separation of church and state – no wiggle room for cheating, for example, by vouchers or shifting tax money from public schools to private schools, and no, nobody will be allowed to post any version of the Ten Commandments in any public building.

We’ll kill the travesty that is Citizens United and get dark money out of our elections so that We The People are in charge, not the power usurpers.

We’ll get the wrongly imprisoned out of jail and we’ll eliminate the for-profit prisons that have been rewarded for those wrongful imprisonments.

We’ll restore the people’s rights (e.g. voting rights, abortion rights, etc.) that have been hacked away from us by our current disingenuous, hypocritical Supreme Court.

We will separate the Department Of Justice from all influence by any President.

We will have tough gun laws and we’ll make huge magazines, bump stocks and assault weapons illegal; we will require safe storage of all firearms when they are not in use; and we will take guns away from bad guys.

We’ll require the DOJ to act swiftly, because justice delayed is justice denied and We The People have been denied justice being applied to major wrongdoers through enormous foot dragging.

We will energetically go after partisan judges who skew justice into injustice.

We will have all stupid, incompetent suck ups removed from government.

There are those who claim as a no brainer that this is a center-right country. Look at the list above. It is center-left or left AND ALL OF IT IS WHAT THE VAST MAJORITY OF WE THE PEOPLE WANT!

Just in case this new party isn’t up and operating by the time of the next regularly scheduled elections, vote for candidates who embody this spirit and have backbone and dedication to service to We The People. Here’s how you figure out who they are.

Give them 10 seconds to explain why they want to hold the office they’re running for. If their answer is anything other than duty to and service for the people, it’s the wrong candidate.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

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!), because 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.

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 or Barnes & Noble 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 comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

What’s Wrong And What Isn’t


POST 1281

The White House Correspondents Dinner

A highly armed shooter sprinted past security people. He was stopped before he could hurt others. That is the only good news about what happened.

The far bigger issue is that the President of the United States is and has been promoting American violence going at least as far back as the Central Park 5 case in 1989. We can reasonably attach the current assault to Trump’s violence promotion. He urges his supporters to beat the hell out of protesters, to attack journalists and he slyly slips in references to the Second Amendment as “remedies” for his detractors. Why shouldn’t the WHCD intruder have the same remedy available to him?

Trump sent his ICE thugs to attack American citizens, legal non-citizens and undocumented people. There have been many deaths in ICE’s detention prisons and on our streets, all done at Trump’s direction. Inviting him to speak at the WHCD seems like a foolish normalizing of his attacks on the First Amendment and his violations of the personal safety of others. Bad idea.

After inciting the January 6 violence that killed and maimed, he pardoned the convicted seditious conspirators (insurrectionists), leading us to believe that there is not and never will be accountability for those who do violence against others and against our country, if their pardons serve Trump well. And he uses the power of the presidency to ignore laws and start wars.

Just what did anyone believe would happen when the President of the United States himself condones and promotes violence?

We have always been a violent country, regardless of self-serving claims about peace, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all of which disappear in the face of an armed assailant. We are now a thugocracy led by a thug. Nothing good can come from that, unless one thinks violent attempts at murder are good things.

We have well over one gun per citizen distributed about our country and somehow the puff-up types think this is good. I invite them to ask the survivors of any of our mass murders, loved ones of those who so easily commit suicide with a gun, murdered bystanders when the 7-11 is robbed and victims of drive-by shootings if they agree. I bet our president thinks the threat of such violence is a good thing.

Beyond that, too many of our media folks, many who were in attendance a the WHCD, allow themselves to be led along like sheep. They don’t do a Joe Wilson “You lie!” even though nearly everyone in the banquet hall and those who weren’t there know Trump lies, cheats and steals as easily and as often as he breathes. Instead, they fail to report simple but ugly truth.

This last comment for this section is from Karla Von Huben:

I suspect that most people are going to think this [WHCD violence] is fake, just like the ‘attack’ in Butler that resulted in no scar on his ear. I also think it’s going to backfire bigly. I’m just so sick of this lunatic I could scream. Or cry. Or throw things.

She ain’t wrong.

Closing In – Maybe

The 1973 War Powers Resolution is a plain language act that was triggered by Richard Nixon’s secret and illegal bombing of Cambodia in 1969-1970. The Act makes clear that no President may send our troops to war without the consent of the Congress. But that consent not only hasn’t been granted for Trump’s war, it hasn’t even been requested.

Sec. 2, (c) of the Act states,

“The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”

Trump cannot identify any immediate threat to the U.S. posed by Iran and none of the other authorizations apply, either.

Sec. 5 (b) clearly states,

Within sixty calendar days .  .  .  the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces .  .  .  unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States. [all emphasis mine]

None of those “unless” exceptions exists, so Trump will have pull our troops out of Operation Epic Blunder or get Congress to formally authorize this by Friday, May 1. Of course, that will require a Congress with a spine.

Republicans hold majorities in both the Senate and House and they could stop him from causing yet more senseless deaths and carnage. But Republicans are despicably obsequious little rodents. They really may cave to Trump’s demand for the right to bomb whomever, wherever using the pressure of his twin threats of:

  1. Them being blamed for losing Trump’s epic folly, and
  2. Them getting primaried in November.

If you listen in a quiet area you can hear their little rodent knees knocking.

Regardless of how they go paws up for Trump, he will do the equivalent of invoking a fictitious Bavarian law from 1198 AD and he will invent a quotation from the Magna Carta to claim his right to murder Iranians and anyone else anywhere, anytime he “feels” like it to justify his unjustifiable war or to blow up little boats in the Caribbean.

This is going to get even more moronic and far more deadly. And at this point, failure is an option. We The People will know Trump is to blame, even as he rage tweets against the “horrible people” in Congress and the vile journalists.

Sadly, he’s statutorily wrong, but this spineless Congress won’t do anything to stop him.

_____________________________________________

* Bill Barr, Trump’s last attorney general in his first administration, was a strong proponent of a “unitary executive,” as were many other fascist wannabees. Now that their favorite fascist and his cadre of billionaires, as well as his sycophantic little rodents have succeeded in making billions of people around the globe miserable, we have to wonder what percentage of them still thinks a unitary executive is a good idea. Maybe we should just tax every one of them down to middle class wealth, just as a unitary executive could.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

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!), because 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.

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 or Barnes & Noble 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 comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Deterioration


POST 1280

Starting At The Bottom and Deteriorating From There

Early in Trump’s first administration many mental healthcare professionals offered their professional opinions of Trump’s mental state. Many criticisms of their diagnoses followed, saying that no valuable diagnosis could be made in the absence of an in-person interview. It turns out that is incorrect.

My friend Sheila Markin (The Markin Report) dug into this during Trump’s fist term in an interview in 2024 of Dr. Vince Greenwood, a psychologist. He is certified to make assessments using the Hare Assessment Test. She reports their conversation it here.

I urge you to read her report. Add to that our observations of all the chaos and destruction that Trump has caused since January 20, 2025 and all the obvious signs of Trump’s mental deterioration we all see and commonly refer to as dementia.

This is not a happy case of confirmation bias. It is a serious and foreboding clinical diagnosis from a qualified professional and what we see every day that is a clear and present danger to all of us.

The Emptying Cabinet

From Dan Rather in his piece, Kash Out, explaining the likely upcoming departure of yet another of Trump’s galacticly unqualified Cabinet secretaries:

Patel, a former public defender with scant law enforcement experience, was a highly unusual choice to run the FBI, but one that makes sense if you want to change the FBI’s mission from protecting Americans to pursuing vengeance.

Trump has many skills, high on the list of which is avoiding accountability, His record is not unblemished (see: the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault and defamation cases; the New York tax fraud case; the Stormy Daniels hush money case; 6 bankruptcies; etc.), but he’s managed to get away with cheating and defrauding a lot of people, including stiffing contractors and his ongoing grifting violations. He just hates to be held accountable for his actions like you would be.

What with Pam Bondi’s  complete failure to get indictments of Trump’s many accusers, people who had the temerity to tell the truth, she had to go. Poor Pam. She’s been made available to industry, but who would hire disaster Pam?

ICE Barbie Noem snared too much spotlight that otherwise might have shined on Trump, so she had to go. Will the people of South Dakota re-hire her to be their look-at-me governor? In this age of celebrity over intelligence, integrity, insight and ignorance, maybe they will.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer was caught with her pants down and her liquor up. Too embarrassing to be close to Trump, so he pulled the plug and down the drain she went.

Each of these firings/faux resignations both shifted blame for Trump’s failures and changed the subject from the Epstein scandal. Effective moves, Orangeman! And all the rejects are women.

But now Kash Patel seems to be in the center of Trump’s bulls eye following The Atlantic publishing a piece detailing some of his embarrassing habits, including drinking and being AWOL from his job. And, of course, there’s that damning video of him beer-ing it up with the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team following their gold medal win. Trump didn’t like that. Maybe that deer-in-the-headlights look of Patel’s will seem to fit better soon.

Quick Quiz:
  1. How many unconfirmed department heads (“acting” secretaries – i.e. not confirmed with the advise and consent of the Senate) will there be by November?
  2. How many unconstitutional ways will they find to rig the mid-term election for Trump?
Wuzzup?

The Washington Post reports that a Third U.S. aircraft carrier arrives in waters near Iran. We all get that Trump is trying to amp up his threats. He wants to look like the toughest tough guy, like his idols Putin, Kim Jung Un and Xi.  Orbán used to be in that murderous collection of psychotics but his countrymen enthusiastically booted his fat ass out of office in their April 12 election, along with removing a bunch of his toadies from their legislature.

Back to our aircraft carriers now stationed and ready to threaten Iran, support an invasion and imperil the global economy through American toxic masculinity.

The USS Gerald R. Ford left its patrol of the Red Sea and eastern Mediterranean. It is now redeployed to the the Strait of Hormuz.

The USS Abraham Lincoln was patrolling the South China Sea before being deployed to the Persian Gulf.

The USS George H.W. Bush departed Norfolk, VA and is now in the Persian Gulf region.

Consider the important global areas that we are now ignoring at our peril for the purpose of aiding Trump’s Operation Epic Blunder.

Quick Quiz:
  1. Is China giving serious thought right now to taking over Taiwan by force, now that we’ve concentrated our forces elsewhere? Think: Pearl Harbor.
  2. How many terrorists of various stripes are in high gear to cause trouble now that so many places are unguarded?
The White House Correspondents Dinner

This post was prepared before the White House Correspondents Dinner. This section originally supposed what would happen, including the President embarrassing himself and our country with his typical broadsides against the “mainstream media,” the “enemy of the people.” He would display his congenital inability to stay on point, would go off-script into an impressive recitation of meaningless and self-contradictory gibberish and cruelty. That is what we expected. But that didn’t happen because the event was interrupted by a shooter.

It’s too early to post much information about the shooter, but that news will come to us swiftly, At a press conference at the White House after the excitement was over Trump suggested his later follow up would include his prepared vitriol. He will attack the press and, indirectly, the First Amendment and he will attempt to give a black eye to some of the journalists he likes to attack. He will try to be funny, but he will only succeed at being cruel. Of course, that’s just my guess.

Because this is what passes today as presidential.

Best Feel Good In A Long Time

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

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!), because 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.

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 or Barnes & Noble 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 comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Quick Hits For A Wednesday


POST 1279

Cautionary Tale

Jamelle Bouie’s Sunday Piece, Trump’s Second Term Is a Cautionary Tale, caught my eye right away. We as a people are no longer imbued with caution regarding consequences, even those consequences attendant to dangerous actions. We riotously celebrate our stupidization by banning books, defunding education, defunding medical and scientific research, humiliating allies and the step-by-step crushing of our government that used to be of the people, by the people and for the people. Instead, we are cautionlessly constructing short term, gargantuan enrichment of the rich as though there were no consequences to us for doing that.

Dear Leader has no use for caution and operates primarily from such drivers as chaos, corruption, craving, carelessness, catastrophe, covetousness, conspiracy, cheating – I’ve run out of “c” words. Add your own in the Comments section below.

Meanwhile, these “c” words and far worse words represent the America our lack of caution has allowed ourselves to become.

Cautionary tales are supposed to warn us about potential dangers, moral pitfalls, or negative consequences of specific actions. But we haven’t been paying attention or too many of us have resigned ourselves to terrible consequences. The very worst cautionary tale is the one we ignore, so it’s time to un-resign.

From the Yeah-Really Department

The Strait of Hormuz is open to shipping.

The Strait of Hormuz is closed to shipping.

We’ve obliterated Iran’s missile capability.

Two Indian flagged vessels were hit by Iranian missiles.

Gas prices are way down.

Gas prices are high and will stay high for a very long time.

Those Iranian schoolgirls are still dead and other than one senator, John Kennedy (R-LA), no U.S. government official has so much as expressed empathy, much less apologized for killing them.

Allies are working to create new trade and defense networks that don’t include the U.S.

Trump is putting considerable effort into retribution against those who oppose him and his illegality, as viewed through his psychopathy as his perceived “enemies.” It’s far less than he is putting into life and death issues, like the Iran War and killing people in little boats on the high seas.

The Epstein cover up is alive and continuing to slither in the slime under DOJ rocks. Pam Blondi lives!

Feel free to add your own statements of our reality – or the official idiocies of the administration.

A Note To Eric Swalwell

Oh, Eric, such a disappointment,

First, to be fair, you have been accused, not convicted, and we have heard your denials. But what are we to make of this?

Open secrets are not secrets at all, so how did you manage to put yourself in such a position as though the rules don’t apply to you?

You have been brave, standing up to tyrants and speaking truth to power. You are an eloquent voice in Congress and outside those walls. You are greatly skilled, but it appears that you have succumbed to hubris, a terminal disease that is avoided only with humility. Where has your humility gone?

Your future looks to be most difficult. If there are civil or criminal prosecutions in your future we wish only for proper justice. But in this time of constant vilification masquerading as patriotism, you can expect a lot of the nasty, especially from the far right self-righteous extremists. They will invoke your name as the evil they fight against, even as they do far worse to our country. If only they would be as quick to hold accountable the abusers in their midst, especially the greatest abuser.

This isn’t going to be pretty. You’ve lost a career and who knows how much damage you’ve done to your family? And we’ve lost a much needed fighter.

Now, The Bests

Best Video So Far This Week

Watch Prof. Timothy Snyder’s explainer, Superpower Suicide.

Best Explainer of How To Reach Gen Zs

Read Why Democrats are failing to reach young voters like me by Ethan Norton.

Democrats: Are you listening?
.
The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

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!), because 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.

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 or Barnes & Noble 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 comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

You Aren’t Going To Live Longer – But You Could


POST 1278

This warning is required by everyone’s 8th grade English lessons:
CAUTION: This post contains snark, plus metaphors and satire badly mangled.
The Bad News

The workouts, the kale, the yoga om, the nix on red meat, the stairs instead of the elevator, your fixed genetics and the rest have taken you as far as they can. All that’s left for extending your lifespan is looking both ways before you cross the street, wearing your seat belt and dealing with the unhinged asshole sitting next to you in seat 13B. Let’s call him Mr. Rectum.

He’s unhinged about having a middle seat – so unfair! – and frantic about making his connection so that he can get to his Grift Jubilee. But your flight is an hour and a half late because there was weather somewhere and he’s going to miss his connection. Woe is him!

He’s flailing and wants to “retribution” someone. He cannot sit still or shut up because of the insanity that ceaselessly rages inside him and because of his innate hostility to everyone. Mr. Rectum is what is known in mental health circles as both troubled and toxic. In the real world where you and I live we just call him an asshole.

Click me

You will live longer if, metaphorically speaking, you move to a different seat, but it’s a full flight and nobody – I mean nobody – is going to switch seats with you and sit next to Mr. Rectum. In still more mixed metaphorical words, these derived from the movie Jaws, you’re going to need a bigger boat.

Which brings us to our current reality, the one where up is this way (↑) regardless of Mr. Rectum’s nearly constant misdirection. It’s a place where you sometimes get a citation for speeding and we want assholes in 13B to get what’s coming to them, too. You know: accountability.

But we’ve let Mr. Rectum get his way without consequences for a long time. Much too long. Indeed, for all of his life. Oh, we have our reasons, including our rationalizations (delusions, really) that the alternative was worse; that he would keep his word and fulfill his promises; that he was super special and deserved to endanger us by driving too fast and never getting a citation. We believed at the same time that he was a regular guy who was just like we little people and we would somehow, some day become big rectums like him, too. But that hasn’t happened and it never will.

We let him put an insufficiently educated racoon penis slicer, a man with a heroin damaged brain, in charge of vaccinations. Millions of us puffed our chests and stood up to The Man, refusing to vaccinate ourselves and our kids against measles, polio and more. Then thousands became sick, many died and some are heading to a lifetime of debilitation, none of which would have happened if they had listened to the medical experts instead of Mr. Pee-pee Chopper. These people are suffering because we put hatred-fueled Mr. Rectum in charge.

Real, actual, hurts-like-hell gas prices in Hilo, HI. Don’t you wish Tulsi Gabbard would go back there and get in line to buy six buck gas?

That innate Rectum hostility has now killed thousands in a Middle East war that had no business happening because there never was a national security threat to us from there. The global economy is sinking further into a long term funk. Mr. Rectum tells us that inflation and gas prices have come way down, but see the pic to the left for actual current prices. There is nothing, no verbal invention, no untethered-to-reality idiocy that the unhinged guy in 13B won’t say to benefit himself, as he rages at the weather, his middle seat, flight safety regulations and he threatens to sue everyone who still has a pulse and even some who are already dead.

Make no mistake about this: neither seat 13B nor the weather is the problem. We are the problem. Pogo is still correct.

We seated Mr. Rectum in 13B, believing our delusions and then going about our lives, heads down, oblivious to our foolishness, our gullibility and consequences. And we got what we selected.

His behavior is way past what the flight attendants (our representatives) can or are willing to handle, so it’s time for the captain (that’s us) to come out of the flight deck and inform Mr. Rectum that he’s being removed from the flight. We can land at a remote airport and kick him out, leaving him where he can’t harm us anymore, or we can slow the airplane to landing speed, open an exit door and shove him out at 37,000 feet.

Either choice will work for us just fine because Mr. Rectum will be gone. No more lies. No more toddler tantrums. No more of his killing people on the high seas, in mountains and deserts and in Minneapolis. And no more impoverishing of billions of people around the globe. We’ll find the way forward just fine without his insanity.

Mr. Rectum has been very busy failing, wrecking everything within reach. Many thanks to JN for forwarding this.

Regardless, you aren’t going to live longer, unless .  .  .

The Good News

.  .  .  unless you’ve smartened up and now, for example, get your vaccinations and get your kids vaccinated, too. In that case you will live longer. Markedly longer. And you won’t infect your neighbor, your Pilates bro, the barista who serves you that frothy froo-froo drink or anyone else. All of us will thank you for not infecting and killing us and our kids. Plus, prices for your froo-froo drink, gas, housing and much more will, in the absence of Mr. Rectum’s ignorant manipulations, eventually come down.

But you have to help with the in-flight eviction of Mr. Rectum in order for things to get better.

Stand up. Help to drag Mr. Rectum out, even as he’s kicking, screaming, biting, claiming he’s a poor victim of terrible people, saying he will make things better like nobody has ever seen before, blaming his constant failures on Biden, claiming he’s Jesus, failing at quoting “two Corinthians” and homicidally ordering the National Guard to shoot peaceful protesters in the legs. You’re a target of that, too, but once he’s off our airplane you can ditch your bullet proof pants.

And once we’ve jettisoned our gullible nature, you really will live longer.

Quote Of The Week

Dr. Amy Acton

From Dr. Amy Acton, Democratic candidate for Governor of Ohio, speaking to The Zoom Where It Happens, April 17, 2026:

.  .  .  everyone is exhausted and voters want public servants again who will help them solve problems.

What a concept: public servants actually being of service to We The People! Quite the contrast to servants of Mr. Rectum or his sycophants. So refreshing.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

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!), because 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.

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 or Barnes & Noble 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 comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Madmen


POST 1277

Click me for a larger version of this pic, plus the Reuters essay.

Jesus Isn’t Just On our Side: He Is Our Side

April 13 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as a Jesus-like figure .  .  .

Note the inclusion in this picture of the American flag, jet fighters, a heavily armed winged figure in combat fatigues with a spiked thing on his head. There are several other troops, all heavily loaded with weapons, a pair of bald eagles, the Statue of Liberty, two colonnaded buildings denoting government power – all very strongly manly, and – this is critical – only White people.

It appears that Trump-Jesus holds a divine light. Perhaps it’s the core of a nuclear explosion. He is laying his other hand over the head of an apparently wounded vet, perhaps to cure him by a miracle. All this takes place as a beautiful White female nurse looks up at him adoringly, perhaps eagerly anticipating his Access Hollywood pussy grab.

He’s been roundly criticized for this post by rational people, which Trump knows is so unfair to him. So, Trump went on the offense, attacking those who criticized his self-anointed divinity.

It’s easy to stop thinking about this in a logical fashion due to its obvious repugnance. But here’s the key: It wasn’t posted by some anonymous but creative and stupid twit whose brain hasn’t developed past age 15 and who doesn’t understand the concept of consequences or anything beyond his own need for attention. It was posted by Trump himself.

Okay, let’s be fair. Trump is that twit whose brain hasn’t developed past age 15 and who doesn’t understand the concept of consequences or that there is anything larger than himself.

Trump is the President of the United States whose finger is poised over the nuclear button and who seems to think he’s a god. Or wants to be a god. Or wants to have powers like a god, like life and death. Or he wants you to think of him as a god and worship him. He is naturally averse to self-examination, but he might recognize that he’s slipping fast and needs your worship of him very quickly, before he’s unable to bask in it.

If he pushes the button in a fit of retribution frenzy, like in a rage focused on Iran, it’s no problem for him. As throughout his entire life, he will be protected and never held to account. If the rest of us die, it’s of no consequence to him.

And that becomes yet more terrifyingly possible as Trump sinks ever deeper into dementia and is even less tethered to the day of the week.

The people who could stop this madness, this abuse of morality, of good sense, of the Constitution and the rule of law – they sit mute. They fawn over him and encourage him to do another wondrous miracle so they can cheer and clap their hands and swoon over him like infantile forest animals in a fairy tale.

Read Rick Wilson’s post from yesterday, Is Trump The Anti-Christ? and coverage from The Washington Post.

Living In The Age of Wimp

This is from a post by Ted Dintersmith, April 13, 2026, likening us to passengers trapped on a bus going at breakneck speed on a path to blow itself up.

Today, our entire nation is on an out-of-control bus. A madman is at the wheel, assuring us he’s history’s all-time greatest bus driver. He barks ludicrous tweets into the phone in his left hand. In his right hand [are] the nuclear codes. His knees do the steering. Front-seat passengers could intervene, but those seats are filled with sycophants who prize their proximity. Sheer horror, with years ahead of us. So how will this bus ride end? Bankruptcy? World War III? A full-fledged dictatorship? All of the above?

You don’t think that we can avoid our own disintegration sync-ed with Trump’s dementia-driven disintegration by sitting on our hands, do you? You don’t think that some wimpy Republican has the cojones to break the glass on the 25th Amendment or file impeachment charges, do you?

We are living in the Age of Wimp. The self-paralyzed ones are madmen endangering us every day.

The key is for us, you and me and others willing to see things as they are, to understand the danger all around us and to refuse to tolerate the Wimps in their madness. The key is for us to fight them everywhere.

On June 4, 1940, shortly before the fall of France and just after the disastrous British retreat from Dunkirk, Winston Churchill challenged the House of Commons with a declaration of defiance. His words ring true and valuable for us today.

We shall fight on the beaches,
We shall fight on the landing grounds,
We shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
We shall fight in the hills;
We shall never surrender.

Link through to read Churchill’s full address.

Our fight today is nearly as dire. We know the truth and that is why this is dire. So,

We shall fight the Wimps in the Congress.
We shall fight them in the state legislatures.
We shall fight them in the fields, in the streets and in the town square.
We shall fight them in the courts and in the polling places.
We shall never surrender

And in the end we will be victorious. We will save our fragile democracy from their cowardice and their malice.

For inspiration, think of the glorious and righteous prosecutions to come of those who sold out our country for a few coins in their pockets.

Here’s what we can do now.

Keeping The Promise

Last Sunday I promised you some direction for how you can fight the menace. Here it is.

Reader and activist Sheila Markin is making your next step easy. Take clarity of action from this. She writes,

TRUMP AND MAGA REPUBLICANS KNOW THEY CANNOT WIN FAIR AND SQUARE. 

THEY ARE GOING TO LIE, CHEAT, AND STEAL

to stay in power.  

They already are.

We must do 4 things:

Click the logo pic above to find out what the 4 things are. Also, see this.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

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!), because 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.

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 or Barnes & Noble 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 comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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