DOGE

Extortion, Ugly Americans and Gaza


POST 1155

Executive Summary

> Musk failed. He’s expelled.

> Once an extortionist, always an extortionist

> Giving credit where it’s due: DOGE excels at idiotic claims and vile cruelty.

> It used to be “makers and takers.” Now it’s “Trumpys and parasites.”

> Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas were repatriated to Israel last week – in boxes.

Musk Update

Elon Musk failed to email his declaration of 5 things he did last week, as required by the demand email set forth in this space on February 26. Accordingly, he is immediately fired from his non-job. He will have 15 minutes to remove his personal items from his office and until noon tomorrow, Monday, March 3 to leave this country permanently.

The Extortionist

In 2019 Trump got caught trying to extort President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, demanding an announcement from Zelenskyy claiming he was investigating wrongdoing by Hunter Biden in Ukraine. Trump hoped that would kneecap Joe Biden in the upcoming election. Appropriately, Trump’s attempted extortion got him impeached.

Ukraine continues to be in need of military aid and Trump is making that aid contingent upon Ukraine giving away half of its rare earth mineral wealth and caving in to Putin’s Russia.

It’s yet another Trump extortion. To be fair, it’s actually a protection racket. You can almost hear Trump saying to Zelenskyy, “You’ve got a nice little country. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.”

The Lowest god

Surely, the Trump/Vance ambush  of President Zelenskyy served to puff up Trump’s extremist bro-bros. It served to buoy Putin’s ambitions to restore the Soviet Union through grabs of entire countries. And it served to display the reality that everything associated with Trump is solely about money and fame/power. But all that Trumpian worthlessness misses the point.

From Norm Eisen, The Contrarian, March 1:

Trump and Vance in one fell swoop managed to embolden our adversaries (not just Russia) and alienate our staunch European allies.

As Trump and hillbilly Vance vomited their playground bully stupidities, believing that they were humiliating President Zelenskyy, they were, in fact, humiliating themselves. They are too vain and clueless to understand that, but that misses the point anyway. They were humiliating the United States of America before the world. That’s the point.

We all understand that their Mafia don behavior in public will be enthusiastically applauded by right wing extremists (MAGA swagger for the insecure) and by spineless Republicans. But it will serve as a warning to our allies that the United States is no longer the leader of the free world and cannot be counted on as an ally. It will show Putin and Xi that we are nothing more than a grovelling paper tiger that can be manipulated by a single complementing breath and a pat on Trump’s comb-over.

Apparently, Trump’s art of the deal is nothing more than crude extortion and humiliation. Trump fancies himself king and a god. Perhaps he is right. But he is solely a god of self-humiliation

Trumpy Americans

They are the ones who support Trump and his pet raptor, the co-president of Smash and Grab. Just like Trump, Musk is severely challenged to stay within sight of truth, reality and decency. Look at this tweet from him →

Let’s unpack that.

First, there isn’t 90% of Americans loving DOGE; it’s around 50% and falling. That is like the oops of Musk conflating millions into claims of billions when he reports government savings through his ready, fire, don’t-bother-to-aim shotgun firings.

Musk gets such things wrong because:

A. He just likes the sound of “billions” the way some people like the sound of their own voice.

B. His love of ignorance and fantasy far outweighs his experience with truth and reality.

C. He’s going to Mars anyway, so why should he sweat the small stuff that doesn’t hurt him?

D. He’s been far too busy jumping like a 4-year-old to notice little discrepancies that are off by a thousand times.

E. All of the above

Second, other than the most determined-to-be-angry extremists, almost nobody “loves” a phony, largely illegal bunch of juvenile delinquent flying tech monkeys or their greedy non-boss.

Third, this statement apparently from Trump’s mean girl press person* makes clear that for those in the White House and for the national Trumpy ones, there are “others” and who cares about them because everything is only about whether it affects “you”? – meaning themselves. Empathy has no place in this White House or in that third of our citizens.

In this age of extremist rage, Mitt Romney’s label “takers” has devolved into “parasites.” Today there is never a description of anything by MAGAs, Republicans, oligarchs or fascists without including demonization of “others.” That stuff often comes from the ethically strained White House and always comes from dictators.

The over-proud, angry and poorly informed Trumpy Americans brought us this crashing of the America they claim to love but clearly they don’t. It’s the America they should have learned about in civics and history classes, the America of All-We-The-People, but they obviously never did.

Finally,

Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas were quite alive when they were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. The mother likely was raped and tortured after that. Then they were all dead.

In repatriating the bodies to Israel, Hamas substituted a deceased Gaza woman for the dead mother of two dead children. Connect all that to some other dots and perhaps you’ll see things a bit differently, if you dare.

From Mike Koplow regarding the return of the bodies of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas last week:

It is unfathomable to watch Hamas parade coffins of dead innocents who were kidnapped into Gaza [and are now being flaunted] before the cheering hundreds as music blares, unfathomable to watch them march tortured hostages onto a stage in a public square and force them to humiliatingly thank their cruel captors in front of television cameras before their release, unfathomable to contemplate that no Palestinian in Gaza appears willing to step forward and put an end to this or to even publicly object.

As you contemplate the horrors visited upon non-militant Gazans, consider Koplow’s words and scratch your chin a moment to see if you can understand, even if only a bit and even if only for a moment how that might have come about.

What if you had attended that concert in the desert on October 7? What if that were your family returned in boxes? What if one of those humiliated prisoners was your brother, friend, or father who was tortured for no reason other than Hamas savage sadism, was malnourished and forced to humiliate himself in front of cameras and a cheering Gaza crowd? That is the kind of reality Israeli’s live in.

Go slowly and gently with your certainties – and teach your idealistic college student waving a Palestinian flag to do the same. Perhaps there is more to learn. Perhaps there are things worth standing up for that are beyond our own individual limited view and which surpass our own individual sense of offense.

_________________________________________

* Questions for 27 year old Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary:

  1. Do you think that bratty mean girl rants are what the world should hear from the press room of the White House?
  2. Do you think that the cross you prominently display absolves you from the answer to the question, “What would Jesus say?”?
  3. No seriously, do you think it’s okay to lie for Trump?

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The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

Enough Small Ball


POST 1153

Executive Summary

> Link through to J.B. Pritzker’s address for inspiration and direction.

> Focus on the Big Picture – they are trashing the constitution, the rule of law, democracy, freedom of the press and our individual freedoms. We need an inspirational leader to stop the bad guys.

> We the People are for the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse, but even more we want to eliminate Elon Musk. We provide the firing email to him.

Where To Start
  1. If you have not heard Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s State of the State address you need to hear it. Start at the 33 minute mark. It’s about America. His words are medicine for your heart.
  2. Trump has stomped his foot on the neck of freedom of the press. From Ron Fournier:

“The White House said Tuesday that presidential aides will dictate which news outlets regularly cover the president and presidency up close .  .  .”

That means they decide who can attend press briefings, ride in the steerage section of Air Force 1 and more. The rate of destruction is accelerating.

Leadership I

Yes, Trump intends to replace ordinary, Constitution defending workers with people loyal only to Trump. That’s what he said he’d do.

Yes, Musk is a chainsaw wielding maniac, a racist and a thief.

Yes, it’s deplorable how cruelly and illegally our civil servants are being treated.

Yes, it’s immoral and homicidal to withhold food from starving people and medical aid from the sick.

Yes, it’s a blatant abuse and a prelude to grand larceny that Musk and his juvenile delinquent flying monkeys have your personal financial and other private information and they now control when and whether you receive your tax refund or your Social Security check.

Yes, it used to be unthinkable that funding for Alzheimer’s Disease research could be cut, but that’s exactly what Trump is doing.

All that is horrible, yet it’s relatively small ball. It misses the point, the big picture, the forest unseen because of the trees. We need crystal clear focus on the forest.

Trump told us he would be a dictator. He wants to do away with Congress, the courts, the press, freedom of assembly, everything and rule as dictator. I repeat: He told us.

Hitler dismantled Germany’s democracy in just 53 days of bullying and threatening members of the Reichstag to get them to prostrate themselves. As Trump is bullying and threatening our legislators and press, don’t you think it’s time we stopped pretending Trump might work within the bounds of our government when he is right now manufacturing an American dictatorship?

Lickspittle Republicans are using cowardly silence to allow Trump to take down of our democracy. It’s time we put banana peels under their shoes like these people did at a recent town hall in Georgia.

Focus on the BIG PICTURE:

  • TRUMP IS STEALING OUR COUNTRY FROM US
  • AND HE’S DOING IT IN PLAIN SIGHT!

Enough small ball, however important those issues truly are. There is an ongoing TrumpMusk revolution to stick our Constitution, our laws and our democracy into an incinerator. It’s time for us to fight back with a real American revolution to restore what our Founders fought a mad king for, what our Union military fought for, what our dough boys and our WW II Yanks fought for. It is time to stop the bad guys.

Russell Vought is the newly confirmed Director of the Office of Management and Budget, which is frightening because he is a chief architect of Project 2025, the Republican road map to dictatorship, the plan that Trump is executing right now.

Vought said,

We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains … We want to put them in trauma.

Really? That’s the America you want, Oberführer Vought? We the People surely don’t want that.

Anne Applebaum put the actions of DOGE into perspective, writing,

DOGE has attacked at least 11 federal agencies that were embroiled in regulatory fights with Musk’s companies or were investigating them for potential violations of laws on workplace safety, workers’ rights, and consumer protection.

Does that sound like the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse? It sounds to me like Musk is trashing the legitimate agencies scrutinizing him and his companies. That’s what Chainsaw Musk can do when he controls government. That’s how Trump can get away with stealing classified documents and inciting an insurrection.

It is unacceptable to be immobile with hopelessness and frustration now. The battle call from the bugle of America is deafeningly loud and it is calling you and me. It is calling us to be in the streets with millions of patriots telling the cowardly Republicans that we demand that they find their spines, that they stand up and end this insanity. And that bugle tells them that if they fail to answer that call that we will discard them like rotting food waste.

Leadership II

We need national, inspirational leadership, so I wrote to my senators and representative:

Our democracy is in an existential moment – you know this. We need powerful, stand-out leadership, not policy wonks, and with few exceptions, we are presented with Democratic and Republican Party deafening silence. Where is that leadership? Where are you?

Feel free to copy, paste and send that message to your legislators. Find them on house.gov and senate.gov. Go there and click on the Contact button.

Leadership III

Hakeem Jeffries was on Rachel Maddow’s show on Monday and spoke with true bureaucratic zeal about policies House Democrats are pursuing. She replied by saying, in so many words, that what people want is not new policies, but inspiration and leadership. Maddow is right. Jeffries, for all of his fine qualities, doesn’t seem to be wired to provide what we need.

Who will step up in our hour of need?
.

Hey: What about Adam Kinzinger to lead our charge?

Not-So-Dear Elon:

Chainsaw Musk

It was announced by someone in the White House that you are now merely an advisor to the President. That means that you have no power or authority over anyone or any agency of our government. You have no license for your cruelty. Of course, you really never did.

Nevertheless, you sent an email to many thousands of our dedicated public servants, treating them like misbehaving school children, demanding that they justify their jobs or be fired. You required them to reply not later than last Monday night.

Turnabout is fair play, Chainsaw. Here is your requirement from America.

You will list not less that 5 actions you took in the last week that actually helped our country. You will justify your claims with actual facts, unlike the fatuous idiocy you commonly make up. You will email your information to [email protected] not later than midnight this Friday, February 28 so that your reply can be vetted and reported in the JaxPolitix Disambiguation on Sunday.

Failure to comply with this directive will result in you being fired from your non-job and banished from America forever. That will give We the People a reason to smile.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

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.
.

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.
.

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.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


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

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