distractions

Stupid Distractions and Stop The Steal


POST 1148

Ugly Highlights From Last Week

There is a cadre of Musk hacker delinquents playing larceny games within our Treasury Department in the form of making “extensive changes to the [Treasury Dept.] code base for the payment system.” To whose benefit do you suppose those “extensive changes” will accrue? Who will get slammed one way or another by the malfeasance of these flying monkeys, as directed by the dangerous crime spree mob boss, Secretary of the Treasury, Elon Musk.

Oh wait – DOGE is not a federal agency or department, Musk was never qualified by anyone for any post and he was never elected to anything. You have as much right to his phony DOGE job as he does, but he gave Trump $288 million so he’s controlling your money now.

Curiosity of the week:

Musk and his flying monkeys are eviscerating USAID as their first move. That’s happening as USAID was/is investigating Musk and his Starlink internet hardware and service, which somehow was being used by the Russians to attack Ukraine. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

Musk’s delinquents – his storm troopers – invaded the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a first action to delete the agency that analyzes, predicts and warns us of dangerous weather conditions, including tornadoes, hurricanes and damaging winds and rain, all to keep us safe. That’s significant because it was recently discovered that a Sharpie cannot redirect a hurricane.

Musk intends to privatize the agency, giving away what we paid to establish and improve for 90 years, all to absolutely no benefit to We the People. Next he’s promised to eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy. It’s all so very Project 2025 to give away our assets to rich guys.

Trump earlier indicated that he plans to: invade Panama in order to retake and own the canal; make Canada our 51st state; and somehow acquire Greenland.

Now Trump says he’s going to send our troops to Gaza, ethnically cleanse all Gazans from the area and develop Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Surely, there will be a Trump Tower there and the whole area will be renamed Gaz-a-Lago or Trump Mediterranean.*

But,

– He isn’t going to send troops, take over Gaza and build a Middle East vacation spot for rich people.

– He isn’t going to annex Canada. He isn’t even going to impose a tariff that sticks. He’s already backed down. Same for Mexico.

– He isn’t going to acquire Greenland or the Panama Canal.

It’s all nothing more than fraudulent, flapping lips of distraction so that we won’t see his traitorous coup.**

It’s about the neutering of our law enforcement, dismantling of our intelligence agencies for the outright theft (or at least control) of our Treasury Department money and Trump’s power over the entire country.

This is the biggest burglary (now in progress) in the history of the world.
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His packed courts and hobbled FBI won’t do anything to stop him. This will continue as long as we are willing accomplices through our silence or our refusal to see what is before us.

And he’s aided and abetted by siccing techno-grifters on the nation. Read this.

Stop the Steal

Not that phony stop the steal. This one.

There were rallies/demonstrations all over America last week The one in front of the Treasury Department in DC had about 1,000 protesters. We’ll need a lot more actions. Here’s a short list.
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Constant protests, lots of them, likely requiring leaders of various NGAs to set aside ego and coordinate efforts (see below). The people’s power is in our numbers.

A blizzard of lawsuits filed at the federal, state and municipal levels – constant pressure. Who’s a lawyer you know who will suit up for this battle?

A blizzard of communication to every Republican coward in elected office. Tell them constituents are working hard to fire them. As well, reach out to Democrats to let them know what we expect from them and that we have their backs.

Public communication – ads, commercials, social media videos, etc. – about how American citizens have been hurt by the Trump/Musk/Republican cabal of oligarchs. Tell the stories of real people; e.g. women who couldn’t get health care and then bled to death from miscarriages; new cases of polio and other diseases for which there are proven safe, effective vaccines, but which RFK discourages, resulting in sick, paralyzed kids; people – including our FBI agents – injured or killed by pardoned Jan 6 perps. This is key to success and Democrats suck at communication.

Civil disobedience, culminating in a national labor strike to include all but necessary safety, health and national security personnel.

You and I can do all of that or, at the very least, we can appeal to people who can. Do you know a leader of an activist organization like Moms Demand Action, Indivisible, MoveOn, Our Revolution, Leaders We Deserve, Country First or any other? Call them. Text them. Email them. Tell them to join with other organizations to fight by using the power of a massive number of Americans.

My boyhood pal Frank Levy is a most impatient activist. We should all be that way now. Here’s his call to action.

What 47 and Musk are doing is a threat to many if not all Americans. As Heather Cox Richardson said in her February 5 Letters From an American, quoting Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), “It is extraordinary how much access Elon Musk and his sort of creepy 22-year-old henchmen have to all of our data.” Musk and his vigilante kid demons have no idea what damage they are causing. They now have the ability to cut off all Social Security checks and IRS refund checks and spy on the bank account information of most Americans.*** So, what can we do about it?

We can stand up, speak up and act up. How? If every individual who voted for Kamala and Tim went on strike for two days and rallied together on the steps of their state capitol it would shake cowardly 47 and let everyone in his government know that “We are mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore.” [I’ll add that millions in red states are mad as hell, too. This isn’t what they voted for. – JA]

Fighting back is simple. It does take courage, resilience and a determination to resist. But this is on us. Our future is in our hands. We cannot count on the feckless Democrats to help. We are on our own.

I’m calling for a national two-day strike to occur on Thursday and Friday, February 20 and 21, 2025. Who will join me?

In the 60s we used to chant “Power to the people!” This is a good time to renew the call.

For Anyone Who Missed the Message

Trump 2.0 is a profound, ongoing betrayal of America and everything that has made this remarkable nation the most powerful and prosperous in the world. It is why we must fight.

– Simon Rosenberg, Hopium Chronicles, Feb 6, 2025

REBEL!

____________________________________________

* Republican idiot (redundant?) Nancy Mace, in flagrante Trump suck-up form, said, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” thus securing her place with Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and a few more Republicans as the dumbest rocks at the bottom of the bucket. The rest of the Republicans aren’t dumb. Rather, they are cowardly hypocrites, bought off by a threat and for a few baubles tossed on the ground before them.

** Read Prof. Timothy Snyder’s post, Of Course It’s a Coup and Sheila Markin’s post, Trump and Musk Smash and Grab.

*** Just a guess, but I suspect that to Musk’s delinquents this diabolical rewiring of our Treasury Department is not much more than a video game played to win a pat on the head from Musk. It gets the rest of us suffering and even death.

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Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
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Crickets – Still


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

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

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

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

This story gets worse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just kidding.

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

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

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

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

What has happened to this once proud and respectable party?

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

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

Distractions In Action


Reading time – 4:02 .  .  .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Distractions in action.

  • ————————————

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

    YOUR ACTION STEPS:

    1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
    2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

    Thanks!


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

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