fraud

The Ultimate Con


POST 1056

CAUTION! Contains snark!

The content below touches on sensitive issues, willful ignorance and deeply held hypocrisies. It implies widespread gullibility and faith-free faith. Proceed if you dare, but follow the Surgeon General’s recommendation to wear an N95 mask while reading and to squint your eyes against the glare of nearly believable satire. Note that injections of bleach following reading are not recommended, but hydroxychloroquine injections are recommended, but only on a doctor’s orders and if you have malaria. Also recommended are to brush and floss daily and to hold hands when crossing the street.

The King Grifter Version – Click me

Donald, you’ve been a con all your life, including conning your father out of hundreds of millions of dollars and your relatives out of their inheritances. You’ve conned contractors and lawyers and even 1/3 of the American public. You’ve conned people by promising a university education and delivering nothing and by assuring them of vast riches by following your get-rich-quick scam. You’ve conned people with steaks and bottled water, vodka, a fraudulent charitable foundation, gold painted sneakers, perfume and now a Bible. Poor, easily influenced people have already been conned into buying a copy, as well as sending you donations for your ever-mounting legal bills to defend your felonies.

About that Bible. There is no American Bible. While we revere the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and the Bill of Rights, they are not holy documents and they were not inscribed by the finger of God – or even Lee Greenwood’s. Indeed, nowhere in any Bible other than your King Grifter Version is America mentioned. For effectiveness moving forward, we recommend that you not mention that you’ve broken most of the 10 Commandments repeatedly (Think: Access Hollywood tape), or that you don’t know anything that is between the covers of that book. And while most people don’t mind that you hoisted a Bible upside down in front of St. John’s Church after tear gassing peaceful protesters, it’s still not a good idea to mention that.

You have used The Big Lie repeatedly, even before the 2016 election, then claiming that if you were to lose that election that it would only be because of Democratic fraud that stole victory from you. That was a fine con, Donald, and through diligent practice over the years you’ve perfected The Big Lie, making claims not just of stolen elections, but Big Lies about judicial decisions you didn’t like and fantabulous lies about people, even about the daughter of the judge presiding in one of your cases. Because you adhere to the Big Lie principles so well, you’ve conned millions.*

But facing the facts of actuarial tables, Donald, you’re near the end of your run. Given your sedentary lifestyle and your diet of fast food junk, it’s probable that the only thing holding your body together is a massive clod of cholesterol glue. You’ve always been certifiably crazy, but now you babble incoherently, so dementia is right around the corner. While you still have the capacity to con on a grand scale, Donald, it’s time for supreme action.

You’ve tickled around the edges of claiming to be sent by God, saying things to your followers like, “I am being indicted for you,” and talking about your “divine purpose,” hinting not very delicately that you are Jesus himself, but that isn’t enough. You have to boldly transcend to The Ultimate Con.

You must take to the stage at your next big rally, with thousands of adoring dupes carrying Trump signs and Trump flags, wearing red, white and blue shirts and MAGA hats. You will speak (even to “my Negro”) and you’ll raise your hands pontifically. You’ll strongly – because you are a strong man – and with absolute conviction declare that you are not just a god, but the God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit – all of them. You’ll tell your faithful that you sent yourself to save America, to make it a Christian Nationalist place the way it was intended to be.** You’ll say that you are God, which means you can smite your godless opponents. You are The Law and all power and vengeance are yours, thus sayeth The Donald.

The Via Delarosa – Jerusalem

They will play deep, moving organ music and a great chorus of angelic voices will rise to the heavens strongly, as you solemnly labor from one side of the stage to the other, your hands grasping for purchase, your face in self-reverence, as though you’re struggling painfully and victimly along the Via Dolarosa. You will absorb the adoration of your people and all will bow their heads in maximus supplicationus. Many will weep.

The pundits will declare that to be against you is blasphemy. Pastors will pound pulpits in theocratic fervor and no Republican elected official will dare to utter even a single discouraging word, although that’s nothing new.

Yours will be the kingdom, the power and the glory of the Ultimate Con.***

This Ultimate Con hasn’t been tried since the first century AD/BCE when the incestuous Roman emperor Caligula grabbed that turf. He was a deviant, but that might appeal to you. Note, though, that his grab for god status didn’t work well for him, as he was assassinated not long after making that claim. Still, it was a great con.

Who knows? You might get away with it. If you can make this work and get yourself elected, your self-serving truth may be known and it will set you free (from prison).***  As your truth is said in the Book of Donald, “I say unto you, and this is true, it’s a witch hunt, a hoax. I won bigly and strongly. Stop the steal!” These moving words are for monks to ponder by candlelight in dark, damp monasteries for centuries.

Donald, this will be your greatest con ever.****

This Next Is No Con

Many thanks to Sheila Markin for this:

Below is a [link to a] letter written by a concerned American who wants to pressure Justice Roberts to ask Justice Thomas to recuse himself in the upcoming case United States v Trump. Take a look and see if you want to sign on. You do not have to be a lawyer to sign it. Pressure on Roberts to try to get Thomas to do the right things is probably worthwhile even if it doesn’t keep Thomas from doing the wrong thing.
.

https://ldad.org/letters-briefs/justice-thomas

I signed the letter and urge you to sign it, too.

________________________________________

* In a fine post by Thom Hartmann, he offers an audio clip of President Roosevelt during the 1944 presidential campaign, with FDR explaining The Big Lie masterfully. Scan down to the bottom of Hartmann’s post to hear the short clip. Important for your understanding is that Republican Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover had been in charge for the 12 years before Roosevelt won the 1932 election. Those Republican men brought us the Great Depression. So, it isn’t just today’s Republicans howling The Big Lie. There were Republican Big Liars in 1944, too.

** Regardless of the somewhat vague references to God in our founding documents, the Founding Fathers were adamant that this is not a theocracy, that this is not a Christian nation. CNN published a most accessible review of this. Better, albeit far more ambitious, would be a review of the Federalist Papers.

*** With apologies to The Lord’s Prayer and John 8:32.

**** Donald sent out a blizzard of 77 Truth Social ALL CAPS messages on Easter. His messages were about himself, attacking his opponents, attacks on judges and members of their families and comparing himself to Jesus. More specifically, his primary Easter message contained 7 words about Easter and 161 words attacking his enemies and whining about the legal system. Likely, his White Christian (in name only) minions ate it up. Great lead-in to The Ultimate Con.

Today is a good day to be the light

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


  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take 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 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. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Are You Better Off?


Post 1,054

Update on She Who Must Not Be Named

Wall Street Journal online, March 24:

[MSNBC’s president, Rashida] Jones told employees the cable network has no plans to have [former RNC Chair Ronna Romney] McDaniel on the channel, according to people familiar with the conversations. A number of MSNBC anchors and producers have voiced concern internally about McDaniel’s ties to former President Donald Trump and the RNC’s role in his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.

The natives at 30 Rock were plenty restless and the president of MSNBC was forced to abandon the idiotic, trust bashing decision to hire McDaniel.

Here is Steve Schmidt’s March 25 update:

On Friday, NBC News was disgraced by the actions of its executives who cavalierly discarded its reputation, ethics and standards.

On Sunday, [Kristen] Welker and [Chuck] Todd turned a cynical farce into one of NBC News’ finest moments.

Ronna McDaniel won’t be back [to MSNBC]. [emphasis mine]
.

The truth won on Sunday, and both Chuck Todd and Kristen Welker are owed the gratitude of all who care about the truth. These are people who can be trusted. They earned it.

This is all about truth, honesty and trust and how critical they are to journalism.

Here’s Rachel Maddow’s March 26 comment on this betrayal of honest journalism.

Here’s a brief review of McDonald’s actual sordid attempt to overthrow our democracy – a fact check against her claims on Meet The Press last Sunday. This woman is bad ju-ju in every way.

On To “Are You Better Off?”

Writes Prof. Heather Cox Richardson,

” .  .  .  four years ago [when Trump was President] we were in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Supermarket shelves were empty, toilet paper was hard to find, healthcare professionals were wearing garbage bags [for protection] and reusing masks because the Trump administration had permitted the strategic stockpile to run low, deaths were mounting, the stock market had crashed, and the economy had ground to a halt.”

There is lots more like this terrible list so I hope that Trump continues to ask his audiences his “Are you better off?” question, because they are much better off today and we will realize that more and more with each asking. Meanwhile, I have some questions.

Trump is flailing. He cannot complete simple sentences using low syllable count words because he devolves into gibberish. He cannot cover his half-billion dollar obligation to the State of New York and Joe Biden has come from behind in the polls to match Trump. He still has multiple trials for dozens of charges ahead of him with the first criminal trial just two weeks away. It’s highly doubtful that he can grift enough cash from his takeover of the Republican Party to cover his enormous legal bills.

That he has not been able to get a half-million dollar bond, now knocked down to $175 million, is easily the most troublesome thing for Trump. His properties stand at risk of seizure by the state, while no sane American would lend money to this over-leveraged, creditor stiffing blowhard. But he needs the cash. Where will he get it?

He’s re-hired convict Paul Manafort, the grifter who stripped millions from Ukraine and Russia. Do you suppose Manafort is back to exercise his skills and get Trump money from foreign sources like Russia or Saudi Arabia, which gave Jarrod Kushner $2 billion for his “I’m clueless” investment business? Possibly it will be China, which might see a leverage angle to giving Trump money, such that they could let pass his disparaging “China virus” slurs in favor of the ability to pull his strings.

The point is that if Trump can raise the money he needs he will likely be beholden to a foreign despot. Should he win the election, that indebtedness would be a situation that is terribly dangerous for America, as it would make the President of the United States a national security risk. Would he abandon our allies upon command from his creditors? Would our intelligence services dare to give him full briefings?

Must Read

I’ve read, I’ve studied and I’ve noodled endlessly hoping to understand people who vote against their own interests, who deny reality and who believe any preposterous, anger inducing thing that’s flashed before their eyes. They have some legitimate grievances, to be sure, but they spiral down from them into believing that everything about America is horrible and dystopian and that Democrats and the “elites” are in a child molesting cabal. They are convinced that only they and those who agree with them are real Americans and that hating “others” is a good and pure American thing to do.

David Corn of Mother Jones interviewed Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, co-authors of White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy and I think those guys are on to something valuable and clarifying.

I have not read their book yet, but intend to because the interview is so enormously valuable. Your reading assignment today is that interview.

Two more points about very proud rural Americans:

  1. From STAT: “A new study explains the rural-urban divide in cervical screening rates” Despite the rate of women dying from cervical cancer being almost a third higher in rural areas than in urban ones, screening rates are actually lower in rural communities. A new study published in Cancer found that this disparity has persisted in the country’s community health centers .  .  .”
  2. From the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston: “Americans in rural areas do not live as long as their counterparts in urban areas. Americans in urban areas are living longer, on average, than Americans in rural areas, and that divide is growing wider, new research from the University of Texas Medical Branch shows. In 2005-2009 life expectancy was 78.8 in urban areas compared to 76.8 in rural areas. Then from 2010 to 2019 rural counties experienced declines in life expectancy (-0.20 years for women and -0.30 years for men), while urban counties experienced modest increases (0.55 years for women and 0.29 years for men) .  .  .”

To that we can add that 95% of Covid deaths are of unvaccinated people disproportionately from red states.

Said another way, our people are angry and dysfunctional and are suffering and dying younger, even as we have the tools to reverse that. We are left to wonder what would propel people into self-destruction. I’m thinking that their being fed a whirlwind of lies and malicious disinformation for decades is at least a piece of that. So, no, these people following Trump, continuing to ingest the poison he feeds them still, are not better off than they were four years ago.

Late Update

NBC News has cancelled Ronna Romney McDaniel from all parts of NBC. Just guessing Lester Holt is greatly relieved.

Today is a good day to be the light

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


  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take 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 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. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Break Glass


I can’t listen to another pundit drivel on about whatever certainties s/he has about the election outcomes or the most important voter issues or which candidates were the most ineffective or whatever they think the unreliable polls tell us. I’ll shoot my TV if I see another ad for a politician conflating unrelated information shards to insinuate evil awfulness upon his/her opponent – and I don’t own a gun.

I’m really glad I can stop transferring my entire snailmailbox contents to the recycle bin without even glancing at what’s there. And if I get yet more solicitations from candidates I’ve never heard of clogging my email Inbox or my text message app, blaming, shaming or just begging for cash, I’ll shoot my iPhone. Did I mention that I don’t have a gun?

Regarding the election, the fat lady ain’t sung yet and it ain’t over ’til it’s over.

On the other hand, Trump and his minions of soul-less election candidates will be wailing poisonous red tears to stop the vote counting because they were ahead on Tuesday night. But here’s the thing.

The votes of millions of early voters are prohibited from being counted before election day in most states and some states don’t start counting those ballots until after election day. That means that it will take days beyond Tuesday – maybe weeks – to register all those millions of votes and determine the free, fair, real election winners, not just who was ahead in the counting on Tuesday night. These are the votes and the voters – We the People – Trump and his cheaters want to ignore. Poor babies, it’s so inconvenient for autocrats and fascists to have all the votes tallied fully and accurately.

Meanwhile, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that this election cycle is at last over. Or it would be if the anti-American, Constitution-denying, self-serving Piglets of Populism would stop lying and accept the will of We the People. Instead, they work to undermine us – We the People – this for their own benefit. Steady yourself for an onslaught, a never-ending tsunami of stupid stuff designed to submarine the Constitution, our democracy and us in order for these crepes to gain more power and money. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the 2024 campaign formally began last night.

The election denying, evidence-free lies and hollow-brain temper tantrums over yesterday’s election will go on, adamantly rejecting the facts, denying reality and attacking values the liars claim to have. Today’s election denying will be super-glued to the same evil, evidence-free claims still being made about the 2020 election. Once again, we must be conscious of the established fact that there is no bottom below which they won’t slime themselves.

This election was about a lot. Much Republican wailing and gnashing of teeth happened over inflation and the economy and it was a good issue, because voters are being smacked in the wallet every day. And everyone is afraid of crime – it’s in the news and in our neighborhoods. The Rs did a fine job of attacking, insinuating, blaming and making people afraid. They’re good at that. But, once again, here’s the thing:

They never – not even once – said what they would do to make things better.

They offered no solutions, no policies, no nothing for We the People.

They never had anything for us other than telling us to be afraid and who is to blame.*

What Republicans promise. Thanks go to Jim Nathan for this pic.

That was the direction Mitch McConnell gave the Republicans. Even if one of them had had a policy idea at any time over the past 40 years, Mitch the Merciless told them to stuff it. “Never betray that we Republicans haven’t a constructive brain cell among us,” he seemed to say.

That’s been the Republican platform at least since the 2020 race, when the platform was outlined on a single sheet of paper that essentially explained that they have no platform, other than to cut yet more taxes for rich guys and corporations and to eliminate every program that helps We the People. See the graphic to the right.

So, more good news and bad news.

The good news is that the cruel, hollow-brained, nothing-for-the-nation Republican strategy is what you can expect to hear for the next two years. At least you know what’s coming. It will be wrapped in red, white and blue, but it will be anti-American. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the future of our nation is at stake and about 90 million eligible voters didn’t bother to vote yesterday to preserve and protect it. Question: Why do we celebrate record turnout of 50%?

Break glass. Yell “FIRE!“

——————————–

* The movie An American President was written by Aaron Sorkin. Here are some of his words via his fictional President Andrew Shepherd from that film. Substitute for the name Bob Rumson any Republican liar, MAGA extremist, election results denier, voter fraud claiming candidate for any office.

“Why would a senator, his party’s most powerful spokesman and a candidate for President, choose to reject upholding the Constitution?”

“I’ve known Bob Rumson for years and I’ve been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn’t get it.”

“We have serious problems to solve and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He’s interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”

Woe is us if President Shepherd was right.

————————————

Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:

Fire the bastards!

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

We Can Make This Worse – Or Better


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

According to his public statement, Ford gave Nixon,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Look at the progression:

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

Reagan flagrantly violated the law and covered it up.

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

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

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

Which brings us to today.

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

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

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

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

Hey, Merrick Garland: got a minute to chat?

————————————

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

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Freedom and At Long Last


Freedom

Passover is nearly here. It offers many messages and one of the most important is the message of freedom.  It is the story of a people living without freedom for hundreds of years and they knew that bitterness. It is exactly that bitterness that the Ukrainian people are now fighting to prevent from overwhelming them.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Freedom loving people all over the world stand with Ukraine and its people. Now is a good time to help, because these days are desperate for the Ukrainian people.

—————————————

A Platform, At Long Last

It’s true. Really.

The Republicans at long last actually have a platform!

Pretty much.

Mitch McConnell has publicly declared that Republicans will not have a platform for the 2022 and 2024 elections, just like in 2018 and 2020 when they refused to take a stand on anything. No policies, no positions, no programs, no nuthin’. But opportunist, Medicare defrauder and presidential hopeful Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) has made his Look-At-Me! mark with his 11-Point Plan To Rescue America.

This crook (details below) is actually declaring he’s for something other than brain-free opposition to the opposition. And what a plan he’s proposing! Here’s a link to his self-serving, gag-on-the-flag explanation. I encourage you to link through to the details of his “points.” CNN had a look and made some comments of their own in their piece, Rick Scott’s ‘Plan to Rescue America’ will do anything but that. Here are some of Scott’s key points:

The Rick Scott 11-Point Plan To Rescue America
.
  1. First, we’ll raise $1 trillion in new taxes, almost entirely on the backs of the poorest Americans. And o’ joy! There won’t be any financial impact on Scott’s hedge fund buddies. We’ll tax the poor to ensure that “every American has skin in the game.” Yes, he said that.
  2. Next, we’ll end Social Security.
  3. And Medicare.
  4. And the Affordable Care Act.
  5. And Medicaid,
  6. We’ll end every social welfare/safety net program within five years. He calls it “sunsetting.” What that really means is a knife across the throat of all the programs that help people, so call it “murdering.”
  7. Trump stole $15 billion from the Defense Department and built only 80 miles of his wall in places where there wasn’t already a barrier. Rick Scott will finish the remaining 1,500+ miles of that wall and name it after Trump (“Felon’s Fortification”?). And no, Mexico won’t pay for it. You will.

I know you think I’m making this up, but I’m not. This is the Republican dream that they’ve dreamed for decades. It’s been their hearts’ fondest desire to kill FDR’s New Deal, the collection of programs that led this country and all Americans out of the Great Depression. Rick Scott wants to lead Republicans in stopping all the things that help people.

Did I mention fraud? Before he ran for office, Scott’s healthcare company committed the biggest Medicare fraud in U.S. history and had to pay an $840 million fine. Here’s the complete fact check.

So, let’s see, first Rick Scott defrauds you and me and the U.S. government – he’s the Big Kahuna of Medicare cheats. Now he wants to cheat some more by taking from working and poor people who are barely getting by and then he wants to eliminate all the the things that help them. What would you call that?

Now, at long last, we have a clear declaration of what Republicans will do if they get their hands on the reins of power again.

You good with that?

Must Read

“Democrats need to get back to a fundamental message: When in power, they make government work for ordinary people and defend American values (democracy, opportunity, fairness, playing by the rules). They solve real problems. When Republicans are in power, they create division, conflict and chaos. They are not on your side. That’s it. A simple dichotomy.”                                                                                 Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post

Gotta add something.

It’s time – long past time, really – to take an axe to Republican lies and cruelties. Call these guys out ruthlessly with the truth.

I know, I know – Democrats like to play nice and they don’t like to be mean.

GET OVER IT!

Because we can already smell the defeat that’s on the way.

————————————

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

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

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Daydream 2, The Rolling Stones & COVIDumb


You can find Daydream 1 here. JA

—————————————–

In Federal Court, Washington DC

It is the jury selection process, where I am being questioned as a potential juror by skilled lawyers for the defendant, Donald J. Trump.

Lawyer: Are you an attorney?

Me: No

Lawyer: Do you now have any legal case pending before any court?

Me: No

Lawyer: Have you ever been involved in either a civil or criminal case?

Me: Yes

Lawyer: Please describe all such cases.

Me: There was a civil dispute years ago with a former employee of my company who violated his employment contract. It’s sad how some people simply can’t be trusted. Know what I mean?

Lawyer: Are there any issues pertaining to that case that remain unresolved?

Me: No

Lawyer: Are you familiar with the defendant, Donald J. Trump?

Me: Yes. I know of him.

Lawyer: How do you know of him?

Me: He was the President of the United States. Pretty hard to miss that.

Lawyer: Do you have any opinions about the defendant?

Me: You’re kidding, right?

Lawyer: Please answer the question.

Me: Yes

Lawyer: Please tell the court what your opinions are, this for the purpose of determining if you will be open to hearing evidence as an unbiased, impartial juror.

Me: Okay.

It’s been established by multiple mental health professionals that Mr. Trump is an amoral narcissist who willfully refuses to consider the harm he does to others while in pursuit of what he wants for himself, which happens pretty much all the time. That enables and encourages the criminal acts he committs in plain sight. He has violated many laws, including sedition, conspiracy to commit lots of crimes, money laundering, various kinds of fraud, incitement to riot, election interference, the emoluments clause of the Constitution, the Hatch Act, at least 20 sexual predator acts and more. So, sure, I’ll be a most impartial juror.

Lawyer: Your Honor, clearly this juror candidate is incapable of being impartial. This goes way beyond a peremptory challenge to his being wholly unfit for jury duty.

Me: No, wait, Your Honor. Don’t listen to him. Put me on the jury. I promise to listen to all of this lawyer’s absurd lies about his client and do it with an open mind. Really. No fingers crossed. I’ll give serious thought to his B.S. evidence before rejecting it. Even more, I’ll consider with an open mind the total crap testimony of the defendant before I vote to convict him and recommend the maximum sentence for each and every one of his crimes. I’m so unbiased that I’ll recommend to the court that the defendant’s sentences run successively with no possibility of parole. That should lock him up with some very unusual people for a few hundred years.

It’ll be great, Your Honor! See? I’m impartial. C’mon, put me on the jury. Please?

The Rolling Stones

In a hopeful article, Build Back Better Isn’t Dead Yet, David Axelrod reminds us of the premature declarations of death of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) in 2010. After months of fruitless negotiations with Republicans, no agreement could be found – imagine that! Not even Democrats could agree with one another – imagine that, too! – and many progressives argued at high decibel levels that lack of a public option made the ACA pointless. Nevertheless, the Act passed a couple of months later. In spite of 7,963 Republican legislative efforts over the next 11 years to drown it in a bathtub, the ACA remains the law of the land and continues to grow in popularity.

Obama took heat for years over the lack of a public option, but he consistently responded with the truth: they passed what could be passed. He refused to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

What if we were to apply that same clarity and action to President Biden’s Build Back Better plan? What if we were to pass what can be passed? What if the perfect were set aside in order to achieve the good? What if we were willing to pass BBB piece-by-piece, like FDR did with the New Deal?

The Rolling Stones said it clearly and said it best:

“You can’t always get what you want.

“But if you try sometime, you just might find

“You get what you need.”

COVIDumb

Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat

The U.S. has:

4% of the world’s population

20% of the world’s COVID cases

15.2% of the world’s COVID deaths.

That’s what continues to happen in this first world, wealthiest nation on Earth. For an understanding of how that is possible, do the Deep Throat imperative: Follow the money to determine who benefits from our homicidal dysfunction.

Hint: It might be those who will benefit from a weak economy and an angry citizenry.

.

The big loser states – all with gubernatorial and/or legislative obstacles to vaccinations and masking. There is a terrible price for obstinance and false claims of freedom.

A Tale of Death in Two Same Story Cities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

….Can you help with an attribution for this video?

————————————

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Existential


Steve Bannon told us long before the 2016 election that he wants to “tear it all down,” meaning the administrative state. That includes our Constitution, democracy, learning and wisdom and the institutions that uphold our moral foundation. He wants it all blown up.

He is a nihilist, a hater of authority and a manufacturer of chaos and hatred. I have no interest in understanding his deep and profoundly debilitating daddy issues that drive him to create destruction, because doing so is useless to the critical task at hand. What is important is to recognize how impactful Bannon is and has been to Trump becoming the first American dictator and what that means to us.

Trump used Bannon first to get himself elected, then to convert the presidency into a money machine for Trump. Neither of them has even a consciousness, much less a concern for all who get crushed by their maniacal, mentally ill lust for ever more power and money. And, of course, Trump has used hundreds of sycophantic goons to subvert every agency of all three branches of government, demonstrating just how easy it is to get people to sell out and be manipulated for what they think are self-serving reasons. Even with regular examples dangled in their faces they just can’t seem to get it into their heads that they themselves will be next to be fed into Trump’s guillotine.

Many of us want to preserve our democracy and don’t agree with the 20% of Americans who are both Trump followers and who think violence is justified in order for them to get their way. That leaves us with critical challenges, chief among which is to answer the question, “What are you going to do about it?”

One option is to give in to the threats. History is teeming with examples of people cowed into submission by the threat or use of force. That means that they willfully made themselves serfs without rights, just pawns to be played and sacrificed for the benefit of the bullies. It’s understandable how fear could make people allow that, but if we do that we invite the despotism the bullies seek to create and which you and I don’t want.

In a recent webinar presented by The Atlantic one of the topics discussed was how to deal with millions of our fellow citizens who accept accusations that are completely untethered to any facts and who reject out of hand any observable evidence that counters their beliefs. The point made by the experts is that we don’t have an option of changing such peoples’ minds because they are set in concrete. They are impervious to all information that doesn’t support their predetermined certainties, so we must do things to appeal to those who have at least one foot on real ground if we are to protect our democracy.

I don’t have confidence in the Democrats’ willingness to face reality and do what needs to be done. Test my lack of confidence by listing all the times in a week you hear or see any Democrat directly and specifically unmasking the insurgents, the liars, the cheats and the haters. Include the times that you see the bad guys get punished for doing things like Lauren Bobert’s attack on Muslims and the White supremacist, anti-Semitic statements of Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene and the homicidal representatives with their AR-15 Christmas cards. Where are the smack downs of Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz? Add up all the incidents of push back to the crazies that you find in a week. I’m betting that the number on your list will be zero or very close to it. I’m afraid that we just can’t count on the Dems to do the right and necessary things – yet.

But what if we can turn up the heat on them?

We need people who will primary our confrontation avoiding senators and representatives. We need those people to be on the fiery point of the arrow aimed at the Trump conspiracy to end our nation. We need people who will organize giant protest marches in the streets of our towns and cities. We need people to show up at the protests and demand justice be visited on the law breakers and that democracy be assured for We The People. We need people to canvas door to door and encourage the non-voters to show up because that’s in their own best interests and because they’re screwed if they don’t.

We need you and I to get up off our BarcaLoungers and make noise. Lots of noise. We need for us to show up at protests and put lawn signs out front where the neighbors will see them. We need to write opinion pieces online and in local and regional newspapers (where they still exist). We need us to call into online talk shows and blast back against the hypocrites and haters so that other listeners might have their eyes cracked open just a bit. We need to go to town hall meetings and smack down the smack of the violent ones.

We need people who will challenge every calm and reasonable approach to our crisis of democracy, because those calm and reasonable tactics are powerless to stop an authoritarian coup backed by 20 million armed people who believe violence is okay. Doubt that? Grab your history book and read about Nazi Germany in the 1930s – and no, that isn’t hyperbolic and yes, it’s an apt comparison. We are in that kind of danger.

This is no thought experiment. This is existential – an actual life and death battle for democracy. Steve Bannon and the rest of the bad guys say they want to tear it down. I say, “Not on my watch.”

What do you say?

475

That’s the number the Associated Press published in an illuminating examination of our bemoaned, hallucinatory plague of voting fraud.

They looked at the 2020 election votes in the six so-called battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – where 25.5 million votes were cast. The total of all suspicious votes (like people voting for dead relatives) reported by those states was just 475. That’s 0.00186% of the total vote.

President Biden’s cumulative margin of victory in those states was 311,257, which places the suspicious votes at 0.15% of the margin. Even if all those sketchy votes actually were fraudulent and even if all of them were added to Trump’s vote count in just one battleground state (pick one, any one), they still wouldn’t come close to making a difference in the outcome.

Some of us think that there is a firm reality that can be counted upon, like gravity, verifiable facts and counting. The rest aren’t interested in reality. For them, it’s evidence, schmevidence. So, sadly, nobody’s views will be modified even a little by the AP reporting. Such is the state of our political trench warfare and the failures of education to overcome primitive beliefs. Turns out we really aren’t much beyond beating drums in the jungle.

And Just For Fun

Thanks go to SS for the pointer.

————————————

The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

This Continues To Be True


A while back I wrote:

It’s easy to pin that clear and present danger on Trump, but it’s critical that you see him as the embodiment of the forces of absolutism running hellishly in our society. Trump is both the repugnant inciter of rage and a tool of the brutal, angry mob. He wouldn’t be in office or be getting away with his criminality, his cruelty and the destruction of our democracy if there weren’t millions of people who want that, who think his behavior is okay, who believe the end justifies the means. It doesn’t matter to them how evil and eventually tyrannical both the end and the means prove to be.

Then this:

It is truly frightening that millions of people are demanding authoritarianism in America. They want an end to our self-rule, our long and noble experiment in democracy. Christopher Ingraham spells out the truth that has been so difficult to define in his Washington Post article, “New Research Explores Authoritarian Mind-set of Trump’s Core Supporters.” Key takeaway: We practice apathy at our collective peril.

This continues to be true.

Texas Republican lawmakers and their governor continue their battle against rampant voter fraud in the Lone Star State. These brave warriors of the ballot are at the pointy end of the spear to prevent a continuation of the cheating that threatens our elections. Indeed, the Texas Tribune reported last December that,

“As of election week, the Texas attorney general’s office had closed cases on just over 150 defendants prosecuted for election offenses since 2004, according to the attorney general’s office. That’s out of nearly 90 million ballots cast in Texas in statewide primary and general elections since 2004  .  .  .  “

Or check it out in the Houston Chronicle.

That’s 150 prosecutions, not convictions, which amounts to 0.00017% (that’s 17 one-hundred-thousandths of a percent) of total votes cast which were found to be questionable. Not fraudulent; questionable. It’s a really good thing that Texas is crafting the most draconian anti-voter, anti-voting laws in the country to stop this stampede of non-fraud. Kudos to the state Republican Ballot Warriors for their courage to battle the near-complete absence of voting fraud in Texas. I believe they should be awarded a trophy of a windmill mounted in a jail cell.

Clearly we are indebted to Mike Coudrey for his sharp-eyed reporting from Wisconsin. He told us that Wisconsin had more votes cast in the November 2020 election than the number of registered voters in that state. Clearly, voting fraud is a pestilence upon the dairy state.

Except for one thing: The actual numbers supplied by the Wisconsin Election Commission show that there are roughly half a million more registered voters in Wisconsin than the number of votes cast in November. Guess we dodged that pestilence thing and the cheese is still safe to eat.

Mike Coudrey is an activist and promoter of all things Trump. What we don’t know is how to explain his false claim. We don’t know whether he’s a terrible – as in: inept or lazy or evil – elections researcher or just another Trump liar. But, really, does it even matter?

Because we are constantly beset by false claims, many, perhaps most of which, are painfully, obviously self-serving lies. The Big Lie of a stolen election is, of course, the most dangerous, because it is being used as an in-plain-sight attempt to end our democracy.

This continues to be true.

It may have always been true that mere accusations are enough to establish a false claim as truth in the minds of we gullible humans. However, we have been beset by wild, false political accusations going back decades and they have led to absurd and dangerous actions.

The Gingrich Republicans hated Bill Clinton and fabricated salacious stories about him and Hillary, like their claim that Vince Foster’s suicide was really a murder done by Clinton and their claim that Hillary Clinton’s Whitewater land deal in Arkansas was somehow illegal. They had no evidence to suspect either accusation, so there was only one thing to do: appoint a special prosecutor, which they did.

They hired Ken Starr to investigate all things Clinton and he spent four and a half years and 52 million taxpayer dollars poking into their underwear drawers, metaphorically speaking. He pored over every aspect of the Clintons’ lives and came up with nothing. Literally, absolutely nothing.

Until Monica Lewinsky’s friend Linda Tripp went out of her way to betray Lewinski and told Starr about sex in the Oval Office. You may find such behavior repugnant – here I’m talking about the sex, not the ugly stab-in-the-back betrayal – but it isn’t illegal. Yet it was all Starr got out of those millions of dollars and all those years of feigned moral superiority. His prosecutorial genius was limited to getting Clinton to lie to a grand jury about the sex.

Even better was that years later, after a most tragic attack in Benghazi, Libya where four Americans died, the Republicans controlling Congress held hearings into, not the incident, but into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s culpability. Did I say hearings? They held 11 hearings over 2 miserable years of muck raking and every time found no culpability.

In both cases, Ken Starr’s investigation and the Benghazi Congressional spectacles, the true victory belonged to the Republicans who did their self-righteous crowing and tsk-tsking for years, keeping phantom Democrat wrongdoing in the public eye. They were surely the true white knights of our country, saving us from the unworthy ones. You just have to ignore their dishonesty and hypocrisy. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Just like they’re saving us from that most awful hoard of fraudulent voters. The same ones they can’t find in Texas or Wisconsin or in any other state.

This continues to be true.

————————————

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Said John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” So, add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  3. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Numbers


The Election

The electors have voted, the election vote totals are in and they are final.

The good folks at Quinnipiac have a detailed breakdown of this information, so have a look if you’re interested. Plus, updated vote totals can also be seen here. For our purposes, what’s important is in red, because it begs the question:

How can we govern ourselves when almost 60 million Americans prefer to believe lies and don’t trust what is in front of their eyes?

I’ll phrase that in another way, this time addressing the 60 million:

You’ve been fed lies for decades from elected officials, Fox News, conspiracy nutballs*, propagandists, Breitbart, and more. For the last 4 years (plus the campaign year of 2015) the President of the United States has stuffed your head with fantastical lies, lies claiming his greatness, lies demonizing hundreds of people who he didn’t think were sufficiently loyal to him (although their job was to be loyal to the Constitution), lies slandering millions of people, lies citing false statistics and made up facts. The President lied to you over 17 times per day for over 4 years – over 25,000 lies. Here’s your question:

How do you feel about being played for a sucker?

Perhaps you’ll hear it better this way:

How do you like being lied to?

Note that if you don’t care about being played for a sucker and you don’t mind being lied to, there’s nothing you need to do. Just go along as before, being fed lies that stoke your fear, that fire your anger, that make you distrust your neighbors and hate anyone who isn’t exactly like you. No need for that E Pluribus Unum stuff.

On the other hand, if you’re sick of being played for a sucker and you’ve had it with being lied to, welcome to Planet Earth #1. Glad to have you aboard.

Regardless of Trump’s vacuous claims, even his attorney general couldn’t find any evidence of voting fraud. The same is true for the guy who protected our election from cyber hackers. There isn’t even one state election official who could find illegal voting activities – that includes all 50 states. The election was clean. Joe Biden won fair and square. The number of frauds committed in the election is zero.

To be clear, there was cheating. There were tens of thousands of voters purged from voting roles when they should not have been. Polling places were closed, making voting difficult for many thousands of voters. There were dirty tricks to confuse voters into not voting. But all of that was done by Republican operatives for the benefit of Trump. There is no “both sides” argument. There is no room for whataboutism. That number is zero, too.

Back to the original question: How can we govern ourselves when 60 million Americans prefer to believe lies and don’t trust what is in front of their eyes? Those 60 million people are largely angry, resentful, certain theirs is a just cause, believe they are the true patriots and oh, by the way, they own most of the guns in private hands. Did I mention that they’re angry? Plus, their elected representatives in both Congress and the state houses are terrified of them, so the number of Republican legislators those folks both listen to and who will provide leadership in the direction of the aforementioned E Pluribus Unum is zero.

Those are the numbers. President Biden, how will you govern?

The Pandemic

Here is how this killer pandemic stacks up against events we have universally called tragedies, monstrous killers and national disasters. The charts below are from December 10.

 

 

 

 

 

Those are, indeed, awful numbers. Day after day, week after week we’re given nothing from any of our Republican national leadership (the President and those in Congress) to indicate even a little concern over our massive suffering and death. Instead, we get over 50% of Republican House members signing onto the gigantically stupid lawsuit filed by the pardon-seeking attorney general of Texas, seeking to invalidate the votes of millions of citizens of four states in order to give the election to Trump. That was their focus, instead of the suffering of the American people.

Thanks, Melania, for explaining this administration and the Republicans in Congress.

As for how we’re doing relative to other countries, we already know that we’re just 4% of world population and but we have 19% of worldwide Covid deaths. It’s noteworthy that densely populated India has the second highest number of Covid deaths. Their number is 38% fewer deaths from Covid than the U.S., yet India has over 4 times as many citizens. This is not a good way for the U.S. to be number one.

Now vaccines are beginning to be available, but at least 25% of Americans are either skeptical of them or outright hostile to them. If you have reservations about taking a vaccine, given the manipulation, lying and grandstanding of the President about vaccines, given the pressure he’s put on the FDA to approve vaccines without any reasonable review, even for an Emergency Use Authorization, there is some hope.

It comes in the form of a clear explanation of what’s gone on to make it possible to develop a vaccine so quickly. It wasn’t done by cutting corners or succumbing to political pressure. It was done by years of hard work borne of developing vaccines for other pandemics, like Ebola, MERS and SARS. For some confidence building and satisfaction of your curiosity, read this piece from the BBC News. It explains the good things that happen when we trust facts, knowledge and science, instead of populist rage and manipulation.

As for interim relief for Americans suffering from personal economic devastation, Republican leadership in the Senate continues to refuse to help We the People. We have the means to alleviate much suffering, but Republicans, who couldn’t wait to give $1.5 trillion to rich people and corporations, are suddenly horrified that we might run up some debt feeding our hungry and protecting our soon-to-be-homeless people. Help was created over half a year ago, but these programs all go away within a few weeks. There are rumors that McConnell has come out of his shell and that there may be a little relief coming. But right now those are just rumors. If you have a Republican senator, be sure to lean on him/her to refuse to be stingy and instead take proper action to relieve suffering. Even if you’re doing okay, millions of others are not.

Finally, that swelling of passion you feel when you see vaccines being delivered to our heroically courageous front line healthcare workers is testament to how gut wrenching this pandemic has been. Still, the number of available vaccine doses is small and it will be months before you and the people you love will be able to be vaccinated. So, boring as it may sound at this point, keep that mask on, socially distance, wash your hands, avoid all but small gatherings and sanitize everything. We’re starting the last lap of this marathon race. This isn’t the time to stop running.

—————————-

*No, there wasn’t a child trafficking scheme operated by Hillary in the basement of a pizza parlor in DC. The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School did happen. There is no plot for Jews to control the world. The Denver International Airport does not sit above an underground city housing The New World Order. The moon landing wasn’t faked. There is no evidence to support the notion that Jesus and Mary had offspring, many generations of which have been hidden in Europe. George Soros doesn’t fund Antifa and it is not a single far-left militant group. Democrats aren’t molesting and selling children. Global warming is real. The Israelis don’t use animals to spy or attack. Fluoride in our drinking water isn’t a communist plot to poison us. The earth is not flat. Elvis and JFK really are dead and are expected to stay that way for a while.

—————————————-

Countdown to Inauguration Day 2021Countdown

—————————————-

Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so,

  1. Did someone forward this to you? Welcome! Please subscribe and pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) Use the simple form above on the right.
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me and all of us. That’s what the Comments section below is for. Please use it to help everyone
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA

 


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Worst Is Yet To Come – Very Soon


Reading time – 4:17; Viewing time – 6:19  .  .  .

Late Addition

The “Million MAGA March” has concluded with great bluster, chest thumping, hate spewing and the absolute rejection of all facts that don’t comport with demonstrators’ predetermined beliefs and conclusions. It was something of a “Yea for us, we’re so so tough and so powerful and so right” celebration of self. If it looked to you like something from another world, it’s because it is. Traditionally, America hasn’t looked like that.

In the run up to the November 3 election I wrote a satire about how to deal with the people harboring denial of reality, rage and that barely disguised threat of violence that lurks ever-present and is always trolling for a target. But as we go farther through the looking glass I’m beginning to think that the satire is less satire and more sense. I recommend to you a review of that piece. Meanwhile, all that MAGA muscle flexing will pair perfectly with what Der Trump likely has in mind.

Times, WaPo, WSJ and others, stop wasting time on Trump’s voting fraud distraction. Focus on identifying the outrage he’s planning for January 20.

Trump has once again managed to distract the world with his baseless claims of voter fraud. He did it after the losses he sustained in primaries in 2016. He did it after the drubbing he took in the 2018 mid-term election. Now he’s doing it following the repudiation of him in the 2020 election. We’ve seen this movie and, frankly, it’s boring.

So why in the world should we chase down yet more of his bright shiny object lies? Doing so is far worse than a waste of time.

It’s an abdication of our responsibility to get ahead of and stop his next scam.

Given the short time available, that next scam will be his worst and it will be here in a few days.

Trump has fired the Secretary of Defense and several other high level people in the Department of Defense and has replaced them with know-nothing yes men, people loyal only to him. Same for our National Security leadership and he fired the head of our cybersecurtity team, as well as the leader of the agency that safeguards nuclear weapons. That’s a lot of compromising of our national security protections all at once. Why would he do that with only 2 months left in his administration?

You know that he’s desperate to retain power, because he’s facing an encyclopedia of indictments the minute he steps off Marine One on January 20. Plus, he’s told us plainly that he wants to be president for life and that maybe he won’t leave. He always telegraphs the wrongdoing he’s going to commit and we ignore that at our collective peril. So, given his stated intention to stay in power forever, what do you think he might do?

From Wikipedia (lightly edited):

“The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Hitler’s government stated that  .  .  .  a Dutch council communist was the culprit, and it attributed the fire to communist agitators .  .  . The day after the fire, the Reichstag Fire Decree was passed.”

You need to know about the Reichstag Fire Decree:

“The decree nullified many of the key civil liberties of German citizens. With Nazis in powerful positions in the German government, the decree was used as the legal basis for the imprisonment of anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazis, and to suppress publications not considered ‘friendly’ to the Nazi cause. The decree is considered by historians as one of the key steps in the establishment of a one-party Nazi state in Germany.”

It’s a classic wag-the-dog tactic and I’ve been warning for years that Trump would attempt to secure all power for himself in just that way. He’ll stage a catastrophe, then claim that an enemy – perhaps our mainstream press, which he calls “the enemy of the people” – is behind it. He’ll declare a state of national emergency and impose martial law. He has sycophants running our military now, as well as the Justice Department and much of our intelligence apparatus, so it may be easy for Trump to get away with that.

Good-bye democracy, hello fascism.

Do you think that’s hyperbole? Fantastical thinking? Histrionic?

So did the citizens of Germany in 1933.

In fact, Hitler told them that he would “Make Germany great again.” Sound familiar? Read the essay. You’ll be shocked at the parallels.

Need more convincing? Have a look at what Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University and the author of “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century” has to say in a Boston Globe essay- click here. And read his book.

Or have a look at the comments of Steven Levitsky, co-author of “How Democracies Die,” this in a conversation reported in MIT News or listen to an interview of Levitsky here. There are plenty more people concerned about Trump’s threat to our democracy – just look it up

We all better wake up to the reality of what megalomaniac Donald Trump has promised and which is likely just around the corner. We’ve been watching this coup d’état in slow motion for four years and the finale will likely play out within the next 66 days.

It’s a horrifying thing to realize that with most of the Republicans in Congress actively participating in Trump’s fraud and with the courts and major departments of government effectively neutered, the fate of our democracy may rest solely on the decision of a few generals to resist an illegal order. As bad and perhaps worse, if Trump attempts a coup, 71 million Trump voters will applaud. What will we do with that?

A lot of barrels of ink and miles of newsprint, as well as huge volumes of online e-ink have been used to celebrate the Biden/Harris win. But it isn’t time to sit back and sigh in relief over a coming Biden/Harris administration or that we’ve turned away from chaos and cruelty, because that may not happen.

Of course, my analysis may be all wrong. Pray that it is. Maybe all Trump is doing is collecting donations for his SuperPAC and his re-election fund for 2024. He can later divert those hundreds of millions of dollars to himself and his family, like he did with his charity. Or maybe he’s trying to stay relevant so that he can start a $6 per month subscription streaming service that rakes in a billion dollars a year from his devoted followers. His grifting would be a welcome alternative to the destruction of our democracy.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so,

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