freedom

Who Cares?


A partial compendium of Trumpian distractions designed to keep your eye off the ball. Click the image for a larger view.

Reading time – 2:59; Viewing time – 4:17  .  .  .

North Dakota Republican lawmakers must think they’re in Texas or North Carolina, because they’re pursuing the same kinds of voter discrimination that’s become so popular with voter suppressionists in those other states.

They passed voter suppression tactics designed to stomp on the rights of 40,000 Native Americans. Here’s where it gets really weird: they started their discrimination after early voting had already begun.

Gotta give points for creativity to the North Dakota Republicans, because all the voter suppression actions in most other states has been to keep black, brown and poor people from voting, but not in North Dakota. Their anti-Constitutional genius is designed to keep poor Native Americans down. It seems that all those broken treaties over the centuries didn’t constitute enough cruelty to satisfy the supremacist power thirst of these Republicans. And the story gets worse.

Native Americans challenged that law in Federal court, which stopped it. But then the Republican North Dakota Secretary of State appealed to the Eighth District Court, which reversed the lower court and allowed the discriminatory law to stand. That decision was appealed to the Supreme Court, which decided that the law should go into affect.

So, who cares? We don’t care about Native Americans any more than we cared about Puerto Ricans when the hurricane slashed through that island and killed 2,975 Americans. None of them is from white European stock, so who cares?

Then there’s the deceit of the Kavanaugh debacle. Read the letter from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers posted halfway down the HUFFPost article. You’ll come away with clarity about the fundamental dishonesty of the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. To wrap a bow around that, here’s a link to a video of Donald Trump mocking Dr. Blasey Ford. His words aren’t only cruel; they’re utterly false. But really, if you’re in power, who cares?

A football coach, an athletic director and fifteen high school kids were killed and yet more were injured by a gunman at Marjorie Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, FL on Valentine’s Day this year. Don’t even try to imagine how you would cope if one of your children had been shot dead at school, because unless you’ve lived it there isn’t even a remote possibility that you understand. But Fred Guttenberg does and he knows that doing something to help is what must be done. Guttenberg’s daughter, Jaime, was one of those killed that awful day in Florida.

Jaime was a dancer and she often helped those in need. She was small in stature, but took action to stop bullying. She simply cared about doing things to help others, so Fred created a foundation to do just that. It’s called Orange Ribbons for Jaime and I urge you to take a look. Watch Fred’s short video on the About page of the foundation’s website. Then take action to be like Jaime – do something to help others, like contributing to this foundation. Fred is completely transparent about what the foundation supports and, not surprisingly, that includes common sense gun safety reforms.

And support March For Our Lives, too. You remember David Hogg, Cameron Kasky and Emma Gonzalez – those kids who are wise beyond their years and who both broke your heart and filled it, as they spoke out on that day of murder in Parkland. They’re still speaking out and you can believe that they won’t stop until we defeat the gun lobby, whose only care is the profit to be made selling yet more guns. They won’t stop until we decide as a country that our children’s lives are more precious than unlimited arsenals in the house of any angry nut bag in this country. Chip in to help this movement.

Because the answer to the question “Who cares?” is you.

#WeAreTheMob
#WeWillVote

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

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

Hypocrisy


A partial compendium of Trumpian distractions designed to keep your eye off the ball. Click the image for a larger view.

Reading time – 2:51; Viewing time – 4:13  .  . .

I keep wondering when the hypocrisy, the slimy self-serving and the blatant dishonesty will quiet enough for the nation to take a breath, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

Mitch McConnell (R-KY), majority leader of the Senate, is the leader of the mob, all members of which seem to be able to make almost any nonsensical, self-focused thing come out of their mouths on command.

McConnell’s refusal of so much as a hearing for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, lasted for 293 days. McConnell based his judicial roadblock on his fact-less claim that no President had ever had a Court nominee reviewed in a president’s last year in office. That McConnell’s favorite, President Reagan, nominated Anthony Kennedy in his last year in office and that Kennedy was vetted and voted to the Court by a Democrat controlled Senate seemed to have escaped McConnell’s attention. When it was pointed out to him, he continued to deny a hearing for Garland and continued to base his intransigence on his original lie.

Now we’re offered the spectacle of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings focused on Judge Brett Kavanaugh as President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court. We witnessed Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) discharging his duties by refusing to make available to Democrats on the committee 90% of the documents pertaining to Kavanaugh. Included in the withheld documents are all those pertaining to his service in the George W. Bush White House, where he was part of the legal team and where torture was declared not to be torture, and other various legal atrocities were committed. Grassley refused parliamentary motions by Democrats to access that information and motions to delay hearings to accommodate a proper review of documents. He was ably assisted by Sen. John Cornyn, (R-TX), who sprayed fatuous lies about the room.

In June, attorney Cyrus Sanai sent a letter to Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) detailing the rampant sexual misconduct of Kavanaugh’s mentor, Judge Alex Kozinski. Sanai claimed this was important, pertinent information regarding the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. He and his information were ignored.

Currently, there is an accusation of sexual assault committed by Kavanaugh. Without an independent review of the facts, a confrontation before the committee between the accuser and Kavanaugh would degrade the hearings into a “he said/she said” session, much like the debacle of Anita Hill’s accusation of sexual misconduct by Justice Clarence Thomas in his 1991 hearings. That’s why Kavanaugh’s accuser has requested an FBI investigation, as well as asking that the committee hear witnesses testifying under oath about this alleged crime.

President Trump is the only one who can order an FBI investigation and he has refused to do that. Chuck Grassley is the only one who can call witnesses to testify before the committee and he has refused to do that. Apparently, the President and the Republican leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee believe that rape allegations aren’t pertinent to decisions about a lifetime appointment to the highest court in America.

The American people are left with the painfully obvious fact of partisan politics and self-serving actions being the only concerns of our Congress and President. Truth and integrity don’t matter, nor does what is best for our country.

The public approval of Congress is now at 17%; you do the math for the disapproval rating. Can you think of a reason why we would view these elected officials with such disdain?

I knew you could.

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

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

Nightmare


Reading time – 2:40  .  .  .

We all knew Hillary was right, that Donald Trump was temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States. We knew he had no clear policy positions and no moral foundation. For Trump supporters, that was the attraction, the point. It was the middle finger flicked at the establishment and it has turned out to be the angry extremist gift that keeps on giving. For the rest of America his unfitness for office has become the ongoing nightmare we feared.

When he posted his infantile tweet that his button was bigger than Kim Jong-Un’s my fear of his being in control of our thousands of nuclear warheads came into full focus. I pictured Trump in the Oval Office ordering his generals to destroy North Korea and wondered what would happen. Would they salute, say, “Yes,sir” and give the orders to annihilate? That is what they are supposed to do.

Or would the generals each in turn refuse to start World War III? Would they stand up to this petulant narcissist, telling him that they will not enable him to destroy the Earth? I imagined him firing generals one after another until at last he found one who would knuckle under to his pique; then the destruction would begin.

This is an insane and convoluted situation because of two contradicting points. In my heart of hearts I pray for military people with spine to stand up to our tantrum-prone president. The incompatible point is that civilian control of our military is a foundational principle of our country. The military isn’t supposed to refuse orders from the Commander-in-Chief. Standing up to the president in that way is not just mutiny: it’s a coup.

We’ve had plenty of exposés of the White House chaos and backstabbing and of the quiet resistance to this president, but now we have the anonymous essay in the New York Times by a high level administration person declaring in no uncertain terms that people we didn’t elect are working at odds to the president. It is effectively a coup not unlike my nightmare wonderings about military resistance to nuclear confrontation. And weirdly, bizarrely, I’m cheering for the insurgents. My cheers are driven by my fear of the harm Trump is doing to our country.

Understandably, Trump is off the rails in anger over learning that his own people are undermining him. He and his sycophants are focused on calling the author of the op-ed ugly names. What they are not doing is addressing the substance of his/her accusations. Worse, neither is there anyone in Congress lifting a finger to do anything about it. Mostly we’ve been getting reactions to the op-ed from legislators saying things like, “This is nothing new to us,” as though it’s just another day through the looking glass. “Oh, well.”

The Trump craziness and the resistance to it is exactly what is going to continue to happen if Congress refuses to act. We will simply wait around for the next outrage and next insult to our democracy and Trump’s undermining of the Constitution – then the next and the next until there’s nothing left to insult. We can wake up each day with a new version of the ongoing nightmare. Or we can act.

What will those now idle lawmakers say to their grandchildren when they ask what they did to preserve our democracy?

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

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

Only Donald Trump


Reading time – 1:10  .  .  .

President Trump has said repeatedly that only he can do various things. As laughable as that has seemed, it recently set me to thinking about whether there might be some accuracy to his boasts. Here’s a list of what comes to mind as things only Donald Trump could have done:

  1. He’s made racist, weaselly, mean-spirited, hypocrite Jefferson Beauregard Sessions into a sympathetic character.
  2. In his mania to erase all of President Obama’s accomplishments and legacy, he double-crossed the Dreamers.
  3. In his mania to erase all of President Obama’s accomplishments and legacy, he pulled us out of the JCPOA, giving tacit approval to Iran to build nuclear bombs.
  4. In his mania to erase all of President Obama’s accomplishments and legacy, he pulled us out of the Paris Climate Agreement and is encouraging the burning of coal and the removal of pollution protections.
  5. He has criminalized asylum seekers and kidnapped hundreds of children.
  6. He has lied to the American public an average of 6.5 times per day for over 19 months.
  7. He has alienated all NATO countries.
  8. He has started multiple trade wars.
  9. He has expanded economic inequality.
  10. He has abandoned the people of Puerto Rico – Americans, every one.
  11. He has embraced white supremacists and emboldened them to ever more public hatred and violence.
  12. He has wiped his dirty boots on the First Amendment through his Muslim ban.
  13. He has negotiated away the safety and security of the United States and possibly the entire world and received nothing in return from North Korea. I have previously argued that any idiot could have done this, but no idiot would have been this idiotic.
  14. He has insulted the leaders of Mexico, Canada, Great Britain, Germany – where else?

Honestly, I think he may be right. He may be the only one who can do this stuff.

What am I missing? Add to this list in the Comments section below.

  • ————————————

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

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

Distractions In Action


Reading time – 4:02 .  .  .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Distractions in action.

  • ————————————

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

    YOUR ACTION STEPS:

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

    Thanks!


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

Breaking Point, or


How Trump Successfully Diverted Attention From His Kidnapping of 3,000 Children

Reading time – 4:49;  Viewing time – 7:35  .  .  .

I’ve been pretty hard on Congressional Republicans in my recent posts, but I’m questioning if that’s still justified. Perhaps things are beginning to change, although Thomas Friedman doesn’t think so, nor does James Comey.

We’ve wondered over and over about which shameless Trump outrage would at last do him in; none has. Not the Access Hollywood grab brag; not the “nice people on both sides” Charlottesville racism; not the job-killing tariffs; not the attacks on our FBI and Justice Department; not his 6.5 lies per day; not the firing of James Comey specifically because Comey refused to truncate the FBI investigation into Russian hacking of our election and possible Trump campaign collusion; not the betrayal and abuse of Dreamers; not the attacks on our allies; not the kidnapping of children; no outrage has stopped the runaway Trump train. Now, though, I’m wondering afresh if we’ve reached a breaking point and I’m daring to be disappointed yet again.

Trump has consistently sided with Putin over our intelligence services regarding Russian hacking. Now, though, The New York Times is reporting that before the inauguration Trump was fully briefed by our top intelligence agencies leaders about Russian hacking and was even shown intercepted Russian military agent emails which show Putin himself was behind the entire effort to subvert our democracy. Still, Trump continues to refuse to forcefully lay the blame on Putin and punish him for his wrongdoing, much less take action to protect our 2018 election.

Is it possible that Congressional Republicans now have something in hand that is so not okay that they’ll stop being jellyfish? Well even some formerly silent Republicans are speaking out. You can read many of their comments here – it’s important that you have a look.

Congressman Will Hurd (R-TX) wrote an essay that you’ll want to read: He begins,

“Over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president would be one of them”

Newt Gingrich is pushing back, however tepidly:

Even Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is managing to counter the President and his refusal to accept the undisputed evidence of our intelligence community. Ryan said,

“They did interfere in our elections – it’s really clear,” Ryan told reporters in Washington. “There should be no doubt about that.”

“Not only did Russia meddle with our elections, they’re doing it around the world,” he said. “They did it to France. They did it to Moldova. They’re doing it to the Baltics. Russia is trying to undermine democracy itself, to delegitimize democracy, so for some reason they can look good by comparison.”

Shifting now to Democrats for one specific point  .  .  .

Having been Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton knows a thing or two about foreign affairs and has a question for Trump:

Great question. Which side do you think Trump plays for? And if you think it’s the USA, exactly what evidence can you offer to support your opinion? And, no, a MAGA hat doesn’t count. It’s just a hat.

If you’d like to revisit an accurate prediction of what national security would look like with Trump as President, have a look at this video from October 31, 2016 – at least watch 6 minutes starting about the 14-minute mark. You’ll find it an eerily and frighteningly precise description of what has happened since then. It’s not as though we weren’t warned.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) is onto Trump’s cave-in to Putin and is poking at what is in the back of everyone’s mind:

Trump is making the world demonstrably more dangerous with his every insult and lie about our friends and allies and with every suck up to Putin, Kim Jong-un and Xi. He is isolating our country and destroying our protections. It is impossible now to avoid the key questions:

  1. What does the United States of America get out of Trump’s capitulation to Putin and his attacks on our friends? We have some answers to that question and they aren’t pretty.
  2. What does Trump himself get out of that? The answers to this question will illuminate all. Have a look at conservative Ross Douthat’s take on this.

If President Obama were selling out America the way Donald Trump is, can you imagine any Congressional Republican whose hair would not be on fire? The volume of the outrage would be deafening. The calls for impeachment and imprisonment would be continuous.

The thing is, in that scenario, the Republicans would be right. Their indignation would be justified. Their red, white and blue righteous fury would befit the wrongdoing.

But this isn’t Obama’s malfeasance; it’s Trump’s. So, where is the Republican hair-on-fire, the outrage, the indignation and righteous fury and the calls for impeachment and imprisonment? Perhaps they are starting, albeit slowly. Maybe we’re hearing the first crack of the breaking point.

The Republicans in Congress have both the power and the obligation to take action to stop this treachery, this betrayal of our country. Pray that Trump’s sell-out of the United States and all of western democracy is the breaking point for Republicans and that they at last stand up against Trump’s treason. Better yet, call them and demand that they do their job.

Trump’s deception, his double-dealing, his breach of faith and trust constitute a clear and present danger that threatens America. That is why over the past week you shifted your attention away from 3,000 kidnapped children; Trump is a master of distraction. Stay focused on democracy, because worse distraction is on the way and you may be tempted to forget Helsinki by next week. Don’t do it – for the sake of our democracy.

  • ————————————

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

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Pretending Not To Know


Reading time – 1:31; Viewing time – 2:19  .  .  .

Do you remember when Republicans held themselves out as the solid bulwark against the Russians? When Republicans represented that they were the true defenders and stiff backbone of our country? When Republicans made it clear that anything remotely less than hostile to the Russians was unpatriotic? I do, too.

I remember Richard Nixon, the “commie-baiter,” and Ronald “Tear down this wall!” Reagan. Those were the days when Republicans had spine. They were all about tough talk and standing up to the Russians.

Now, though, we have an enemy of our country, those same Russians, attacking us with cyber warfare and undermining our most cherished values and rights. Our president steadfastly refuses to stop them and most Congressional Republicans are silent about that.

Trump continues to attack and embarrass our allies. He imposes tariffs on our best friends to no economic benefit to us and, in fact, to our detriment. He attacks NATO, the alliance that has kept the west strong for seven decades.

He receives ongoing, concrete proof that Vladimir Putin has directed his henchmen to undermine America. They’ve gone about it with electronic guns blazing and Trump sits on his hands. Trump continues to treat Putin like his Godfather, as in: Corleone. He meets with Putin when there are no other Americans present, leaving us to wonder about the harm he allows to be done to our country. Who are the Republicans speaking out against that? What are they doing to protect us? What happened to their spine?

Buy this book and read it.

Yeah, Republicans, I get that Trump will tweet mean, untrue things about you if you don’t support him. We all know that you’ll get primaried from the right if you don’t suck up to Trump or at least keep quiet. But this isn’t about Trump’s constant lying or his disgracing of the Presidency. This is about confronting and stopping threats to our very democracy. This is the time to stand up and be counted. If we don’t stop this now, there may not be a second chance.

So, tell me, Republicans in Congress, what is it that you’re pretending not to know?

  • ————————————

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

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

Cold, Dead Hands


  • Reading time – 1:32; Viewing time – 2:17  .  .  .

Every Fourth of July I stick a flag on a pole and insert it into the back of my convertible. I commonly remove it on the 5th and this year it sat in the back of the car until this morning, when I picked it up to put it away. That’s when my neighbor called out something about showing it proudly.

He said that he had been in Denver for the Fourth and asked his son there why he didn’t display a flag on his house that day. His son said that waving a flag in that part of the country meant just one thing: supporting the far-right wingnut agenda, which he did not want to do. Hence, no flag.

Perhaps he isn’t alone in refusing to display a flag. Many of us are ashamed now about things being done in our name: things like kidnapping children and abandoning habeas corpus; things like slapping our friends in the face while embracing tyrannical world leaders; things like pardoning public lands arsonists in order to suck up to “the base.”

The problem with abandoning the red, white and blue because of the extreme wrongdoing of some is to abandon our country and cede it to the crazies.

And yes, I mean crazies. I DO NOT mean those who have other notions about how to achieve what nearly all of us believe in. This is about refusing to give our country to those who would wipe their dirty boots on those things we hold dear as Americans. So, here’s what I have for the crazies.

Perhaps you remember Charleton Heston’s defiance at an NRA convention 18 years ago. He declared that they (apparently government – he specifically named Al Gore) could have his gun when they could pry it from his cold, dead hands. While there isn’t much that I had in common with Heston, I’ll borrow his phrasing:

You can have my flag when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands. And you better know that even then you’ll have to get past my kids.

I will not allow you to take the flag, ruin my country and claim it exclusively yours. My flag is on display at the front of my house every day. Deal with it.

  • ————————————

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

    YOUR ACTION STEPS:

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

    Thanks!


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

Bad For America


Reading time – 1:53 seconds; Viewing time – 2:47  .  .  .

In yet another 5-4 decision the Supreme Court has allowed Trump’s Muslim travel ban to stand. And by the same margin the Court allowed Ohio to continue to purge its voter roles of poor people and people of color. 5-4 is the same margin by which the Court allowed Texas and North Carolina Republican gerrymandering to suppress minority voting to stand.

Click for the Snopes fact check

It’s highly unlikely that any of those decisions would have gone this way had Merrick Garland been on the bench instead of Neil Gorsuch. That is exactly why Mitch McConnell sees his lie-filled theft of choice from President Obama to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Court as his proudest moment.

This is yet another example of the dishonesty that undermines our values and drives Americans to distrust government. It’s another lie that is easily exposed, like what @edelweisspirat showed us last week in what is perhaps the greatest tweet ever to expose Trumpian dishonesty:

Well, yeah, Melania, we really do care. Why don’t you?

He’s captured in just a few words the insanity of what Trump and the far right use in place of integrity and good sense. Just get that the lies and dishonesty have consequences, like those 5-4 decisions that incrementally steal freedoms from Americans.

Things are about to get worse now that Justice Anthony Kennedy has announced that he will retire from the Supreme Court on July 31. McConnell has announced that he plans to jam through Trump’s nominee quickly, this in the face of his logic in 2016 that there should be no new Supreme Court pick in an election year in order to, “let the people speak.” Somehow, his disingenuousness that prevented Obama’s pick doesn’t apply now that there’s a Republican in the White House.

There is no Senate filibuster to keep another Trump nominated far righty from the bench, and that will almost certainly lead to accelerated loss of our rights. And that pick will be a stepping stone to authoritarianism: there will be no way to stop Donald Trump’s wrongdoing and our accelerated spiraling into fascism.

What a proud day this must be for those who favor bullying, dishonesty and disorder over democracy; who favor party loyalty and their own position over patriotism. It appears that the righty extremist ends justify their means. Good for them. Bad for America.

Click me

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

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

Thanks!


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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Populism and Obi-Wan


Reading time – 2:59; Viewing time – 4:06  .  .  .

Here’s Jax definition of populism: Mob behavior gussied up with a slick political cover.

Trump’s base is entirely populist, calling for extreme reaction to any issue and blunt force solutions to all problems. Think: Muslim ban; kidnapping children; building a $38 billion wall; embracing white supremacy and more.

Here are some characteristics of populism:

We are poor, innocent victims and that gives us the right to attack the imagined meanies who we fantasize have victimized us.

There is only “us” and “them” and we have to repress “them” or they will take over and victimize “us.”

There is always an enemy to demonize and dehumanize and blame for every problem. It’s never our fault and it’s never simply new cultural circumstances or the result of technological or global change. (See the cartoon below.)

All problems can be solved by hitting harder.

New thinking and fresh ideas are never contemplated or even welcome. Truth, facts and reality are no more than minor inconveniences, bumps in the road to greater power grabs.

Subtlety? What subtlety? We don’ need no stinking subtlety. We don’ need no stinking diplomacy. Or regulations to stop those who would exploit us. Or a press or justice system to hold leaders accountable. What accountability?

We are demanding of and slavish to an autocratic leader, a hero to worship, a strongman to idolize.

Perhaps democracy – rule by the people either directly or through democratically elected representatives – is an anomaly in human existence. Perhaps we are globally on the way back to monarchical, even dictatorial rule as our human default. The key is to envision what that looks like when we tear apart our hard won rights and structures, the foundations of freedom we’ve spent centuries building.

Our ancestors rebelled against the tyrant, King George III. You learned about that in your history classes, and his kind of tyranny is the world standard in the absence of democracy. In a monarchy, the people are rarely happy and most often are oppressed by the ruling class. That’s only attractive if you’re part of that ruling class. If you’re Dorothy from Kansas, not so much.

So, to the 27% of Americans who think that the government kidnapping of infants and children is okay, who think that shoving a thumb in the eye of our international friends is a good idea, who want to cozy up to tyrannical enemies of our country and who want to dismantle all of government and the judicial and press foundations that check executive excesses, you better be careful what you wish for. You just might get it and you will not like it and your grandchildren will curse you for your blindness.

Populism is driven by and generates great rushes of testosterone fury. It creates huge clouds of the sensation of being powerful, of sticking it to someone. But when those clouds lift we’ll be left with the tyranny of oppression.

To be clear, Trump and his minions are our challenge now. But to step back and look at a bigger picture, there is always a tyrant waiting to steal the reins of power and commit horrible acts and steal our democracy for himself. That can only happen if we allow the 27% to have their way.

I don’t have any notion that anyone can quickly change the visceral drive of the mobs that are the populism of this country. The Obi-Wan that is our only hope lies within the rest of us.

Click me for a larger image

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

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