integrity

Stampeding Dishonesty Is Trampling Everything In Its Path


This is about people who are knowingly saying things that are false. It’s called lying.

It’s not just that the dishonesty is present. It’s about its tentacles spreading malevolently and the speed of its corrosive march.

Trump’s blatant dishonesty was on full display when he called for the execution of the Central Park Five after they had been fully exonerated by DNA evidence. He moved on to the birther lie, then “Lock her up!” Then he proceeded to tell over 30,500 lies while in office, nearly one per hour for four years.

But the biggest pile of dishonesty is that of the senators, congressmen/women, pundits, talk show blatherers, TV fake news outlets*, governors, sycophants and cowards. They both have and are supporting Trump’s  Big Lie of a fraudulent election.

I have labeled other Trump lies as the Big Lie but I was premature in awarding the label. There is no bigger lie than to lie in order to overthrow our democracy and replace it with fascism. Trump proclaiming his fraudulent election Big Lie is a traitorous affront to our nation, but 140 Republican congressmen/women and 8 Republican senators have not only promoted his lie, but they have voted in favor of it, endorsing the Big Lie.

Look at that list of Big Lie promoters two paragraphs up. Every one of the people represented by those titles is getting something for themselves by promoting the Big Lie. Politicians are getting donations and votes. Pundits and talk show blatherers are getting ratings and advertising dollars. Sycophants are getting jobs and promotions. It is a whirlwind of self-serving, sell out greed as they shred the pages of the Constitution with their dirty shoes and spit on the flag.

This is going to get uglier, as we incrementally learn why warnings issued days before the January 6 insurrection were ignored and why the National Guard was prevented from being properly armed and called in to quell the rebellion – indeed, why they weren’t in place before the traitors arrived at the Capitol Building.

We’re going to learn about various conspiracies to promote the insurrection and its violence, their intent to murder members of Congress. It won’t be surprising if it’s found that government officials themselves were involved in facilitating the whole thing. Think: reconnaissance tours of the Capitol Building given to traitors led by elected officials the day before the attack.

There is nothing conservative in promoting, supporting and excusing sedition. These people are not conservatives.

Now we find this headline:

Republican Attorneys General Dark Money Group Organized Protest Preceding Capitol Mob Attack

Even as the majority of the nation was horrified the night of November 8, 2016, we didn’t hear Democrats claiming Trump didn’t win. We don’t have Democrats spouting QAnon conspiracy lies, like Jewish lasers in space starting California wild fires or that Hillary has a child sex trafficking ring (or was it child killing in order to drink their blood?) operating out of the basement of a pizza shop in DC.

All of these liars and traitors are Republicans.

There are no equivalencies. Any “they all do it” rationalizations, “they’re all liars” justifications or ways to blame George Soros are all just the refuge of liars and the willfully self-deluded.

Did you see the messages of the traitors on January 6? They were carrying Bibles and crosses and chanting “USA! USA!” and waving American flags, even as they nearly killed a Capitol cop with their flag poles. It was exactly as predicted by Henry Wallace, FDR’s second vice-president. Please download and read his clear explanation. He knew a lot about fascism, as we were in the last year of the war to defeat fascism when he wrote his essay.

It is exactly in line with a quote often attributed to Sinclair Lewis:

“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.”

We have galloping, stampeding, cowardly dishonesty, now supporting the Big Lie to end our democracy. That’s why we need our senators to put on their big boy and big girl pants and convict Trump for his sedition.**

Trump was defeated, but those fighting his battle to end our democracy are full of self-righteous anger and hate and they aren’t going away.

Wake up, America.

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And yet more dishonesty

Rudy Giuliani has come down a long way since he was marketed as “America’s Mayor” and has debased himself repeatedly by promoting every Trump lie, fraud and fantasy, including the Big Lie. To make the point starkly, he is a lawyer who has promoted sedition in pursuit of his client’s megalomania.

Giuliani has made defamatory statements about The Lincoln Project, so he has now received Nasty Letter Number One from their lawyer. You want to read this, not just because of the Giuliani smack down, but because it describes at least metaphorically, the last four years.

We’ve been wondering what Putin has on Trump such that Trump lapdogs at every opportunity. The same question can be shifted to wondering what Trump has on Giuliani to make him do and say the most idiotic things.

Many thanks to JHA for the link.

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Quote of the Week

“Sometimes I think that the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.”

Calvin and Hobbes

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*On February 1 as our Covid-19 Response team gave its thorough update to the nation, both CNN and MSNBC televised it from start to finish. Fox News instead reported on snow in New York, including one scene of a fellow picking up snow and throwing it into the air. Gotta wonder if Fox News refused to present the Covid update live in order to avoid angering its base of pandemic deniers.

**Q: Why are Republican Senators calling on us to look forward, not backward, exhorting the nation to put Trump’s sedition behind us and not hold him accountable?

A. They don’t want to stand up and be counted doing the right thing because they will lose the votes of the radicals, which might cause them to lose their next primary. That’s more important to them than our democracy.

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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. Said John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” So, educate me and all of us. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

You


Other than the “it’s a hoax” deniers, the super spreader attendees and the “you can’t tell me what to do” crowd, we all want to know the bottom line:

When can we get vaccinated and start down the road in the direction of something resembling what used to be normal?

Good thing you’re so smart that you’re reading this, because here’s your answer. Answers, plural, really.

In this nice piece of reporting by Helen Braswell of STAT you’ll learn why it’s taking so long to secure supplies of vaccines, distribute them and get a few cc’s into your arm, and much more. Plus, she provides a link for where to get vaccinated.

So, track down your vaccinations – get on the right list – and keep wearing your mask, socially distancing, washing hands and avoiding large gatherings for, oh, say the next 11 months.

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Republicans in Congress have suddenly been cured of their cyclical 4-year amnesia – sort of like the 17-year locusts – and have again discovered how awful and terrible and unconscionable deficits and debt are. The cure for their affliction is the same each time: the presence of a Democrat in the White House. Absent a Democrat living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue they can’t remember either of the “d” words and are peachy happy to increase spending and lower taxes on the wealthy. It happens every time. It’s too tiresome to list such things again, so just refer to this post for some sad recollections.

The point of mentioning the spontaneous remission of Republican amnesia is that their deficit fighting may well impact your health very soon. They are self-righteously invoking deficit and debt to refuse Covid relief in just about all forms, including providing money for the states to get vaccines into arms.

Recall that during the last administration of President He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the de facto Covid plan was for the feds to dump vaccines into states and then just walk away. Over the course of the prior 8 months they had been absolutely inept at crafting a plan to apportion vaccines sensibly and coordinate efforts to distribute vaccines to where needles and arms were waiting. The entire plan was solely to dump vaccines at airports. How’s that working for you?

Now the Rs want to restrict the money to fight this killer disease by, for example, severely limiting what goes to already cash strapped states. That’s cash strapped as in: laying off police and teachers because they have no money to pay them. How do you suppose the feds stiffing the states will work for you and your health?

Did I mention that 3,000 – 4,000 Americans are dying every day from this disease, while millions of doses of vaccines are sitting in freezers? What’s wrong with this picture and how’s that working for you?

If you have a senator or congressperson with an R next to his/her name, be sure to call them and ask why they don’t care if granny or your kids’ teachers or your neighbor or you all die. Ask them if instead of fully funding everything needed to end the pandemic in this country whether they instead will be co-sponsoring yet another tax cut bill for the rich.

And while you’re talking with them, ask if they’re dumb enough to believe that Democrats are running child sex trafficking rings or drinking the blood of children or any of the other ought-to-be unbelievable conspiracy theories. Perhaps they’re just going along with the crazies in order to be re-elected. Too bad, because that emboldens the crazies.

Exactly what went wrong with education in America that allowed people to believe such detached-from-reality stuff? How did we breed millions willing to surrender their common sense and to reject the realities of science and learning? Why have we allowed people with big megaphones to incite anger, rage and violence? And why have we allowed self-serving, power hungry people to put themselves ahead of our country?

Here’s a memo to Republicans in Congress from Sheila Markin’s recent post:

Hey you guys, what about standing up en masse to educate your duped base instead of caving in? Just tell your constituents the truth:

Biden won.

Trump lost.

Biden is a good guy and a moderate, not a radical flame throwing Antifa.

Trump incited an un-American attack on our government.

Is that really so hard to do?

Our democracy needs you to stop the disinformation and defend the truth. Trump is banned from Twitter. Now’s your big chance.

Something very freaky and weird and dangerous has happened and it has sorely affected our democracy and is threatening your life.

Last time: How’s that working for you?

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For more on the insanity, watch the video about South Dakota’s shameful ranking of having the worst mortality rate in the nation and the 3rd worst in the world. “How Gov. Kristi Noem Rebranded Her Failures as ‘Freedom’” is a study in self-promotion in place of the health of the people.  After viewing the video, ask yourself how that’s working for the people of South Dakota.

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Another important thing

Insurrection, impeachment, expanding GOP insanity and far more are happening with the result that other critically important issues get ignored due to our overwhelm. One such critically important issue is the humanitarian crisis at our southern border, as deportations of refugees and incarceration in concentration camps of children continue. It’s time we learned more.

I’ve signed up to attend the watch party with Witness at the Border on Friday, Jan 29, 6:30 PM CST. Will you join me? Use this link to sign up:

https://www.mobilize.us/witnessattheborder/event/371870/?referring_vol=2566916&rname=Jack&timeslot=2630094&share_medium=email_link&share_context=email_1

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Last thing

Jennifer Rubin writes for The Washington Post. She used to be a sane Republican. She’s still sane, but I don’t know if she considers herself to be a Republican now.

Either way, she offers 50 things that are better already. Read and smile.

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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. Said John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” So, educate me and all of us. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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 Ledge


She tried to talk me off the ledge, but I only moved back a bit.

It was late in the afternoon and I was suiting up for walking the dog on a cold January day, muttering under my breath and slamming drawers that had done me no wrong.

“What’s the matter?” she asked in her gentle way.

“I’m mad as hell and not fit to be with. Please respect yourself by staying away from me. I’m so damned mad I’m trying to stay away from myself.”

She insisted on walking with me, so instead of grunting to myself as I walked the dog, I spoke mostly complete sentences.

I’m so goddamn mad that 4,000 of my countrymen are dying every day. President Doesn’t Give a Shit told us of his level of care directly, saying, “I’m not responsible for anything.” That comment was aimed specifically at anything having to do with our mass death pandemic, so of course I don’t expect any action from him to protect and defend the American people – you know, the ones dying at the rate of 4,000 per day?

But there’s a commission specifically tasked with distributing vaccines and getting them into the arms of Americans and now weeks after vaccines were available we’ve managed to vaccinate just 9 million people, while tens of millions more vaccine doses are sitting uselessly in freezers.

And 4,000 of us are dying every day. That’s one every 22 seconds. Go ahead – look at your watch or iPhone timer and count off the deaths. One every 22 seconds.

And every single one of those deaths is somebody’s mom or dad or grandma or grandpa or brother or sister or son or daughter or friend or co-worker or neighbor or the guy at the convenience store. Those who have died lost their lives. The survivors have lost their hearts.

And that goddamn incompetent distribution commission continues to bumble.

That’s why I’m furious.

Now President Burn It All Down has incited insurrection – sedition. He’s attempted to neuter the Congress, to violate every voter and take over the country in order to become a fascist dictator. His mobs have the same certainty that they are on the side of justice and what’s right, that they’re the true patriots and that God is on their side as does al Qaeda and ISIS and the World War II Nazis and the Hutu’s and Slobodan Milosevic’s army of ethnic cleansing thugs and all the rest of the genocidal maniacs.

This time the terrorists, the killers and the rampagers are our countrymen.

Our domestic terrorists believe they’re the true good guys because President Burn It All Down has told them so. He’s told them he loves them. Here’s what I’ll tell you.

We’ve always had our significant minority of citizens who hate, who dearly love to hate. I want to be bigger than this, but the truth is that right now I hate them. I fantasize about violently dragging those slimes off the walls of our Capitol Building and of beating the hell out of the vandals who beat the hell out our beautiful windows and doors of that building. I want to smash those who are trying to smash our Constitution.

My dad and 16.5 million of his generation served in the military in World War II. 405,399 of them died in Europe to end Nazism. On behalf of my dad and his compatriots in that awful war, our Greatest Generation says loud and clear that you goddamn neo-Nazis are an American disgrace. You are everything we know to be wrong.

That’s why I’m so damned angry.

In some ways what is even worse is the cabal of hypocritical, cowardly, manipulating cretins in Congress who have enabled and even encouraged the hate and violence, not out of some warped sense of patriotism, but for individual, stupidly selfish personal gain. We’ve known of their treachery for years and they have gotten away with it.

That’s why I’m livid.

The thing is, there are a lot of truly patriotic Americans on that ledge with me. That doesn’t ease my anger, but they and I know right from wrong and will not stand for anything less than full punishment for those who did these awful things. I expect that a lot of us will continue to be on that ledge until the balance of justice is restored.

Meanwhile, the domestic terrorists have promised more violence and hate in DC and in our state capitols this weekend and on Inauguration Day. So,

Memo to DHS, the National Guard and all the agencies that somehow managed to come out and beat the hell out of Black Lives Matter protesters last summer:

Show up and do your job this time. I don’t give a damn what President Doesn’t Give a Shit or Burn It All Down says to you. Do your goddam job.

On January 6 they failed us. They failed to do their job. Now the Capitol Building is desecrated and four more people are dead.

That’s why I’m on the ledge.

Late Additions

Three congressmen/women have tested positive for COVID-19 following their sheltering in the Capitol Building on January 6 with Republican congressmen/women who arrogantly, selfishly, stupidly refused to wear masks. They should be chained to the wall of the darkest, moldiest part of the basement of the Capitol Building and left there until they fervently apologize for their cruelty to others and swear to comply with the simple public health directions of the CDC for the duration of the pandemic.

Watch/listen to what Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has to say about the attempted overthrow of our government.

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Countdown to Inauguration Day 2021Countdown

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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. Said John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” So, educate me and all of us. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

Government Hall of Shame


While traitors attacked our democracy, we were killing 4,000 Americans with COVID-19 every day. Somehow, four 9/11s every three days – one gasping death every 22 seconds – got overshadowed. That’s how insane things are.

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Be sure to read to the end for a poem for our time.

We start with the obvious.

Sedition – 18 U.S.C. § 2384:

“If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”

Benedict Arnold

You could have stopped reading in the middle of the second line above at “conspire to overthrow,” because that’s what scheming to fraudulently reverse an election is. And the sedition guilt isn’t in the overthrowing; it’s in the conspiring. The conversation is all it takes to earn 20 years in prison. Still, feel free to be motivated by the “seize, take, or possess” part as well, and apply that to Trump’s incitement to riot, vandalize and seize the entire Capitol Building. Seriously, is there any part of this that isn’t clearly worthy of a Benedict Arnold award?

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State

If you take the time to read the transcript or listen to the audio recording of the phone call Trump placed to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger last weekend (yes, that was just 8 days ago), you’ll hear Trump and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows attempting to persuade, cajole, muscle and threaten Raffensperger into fabricating 11,780 votes in order to award the election to Trump. Attempting to overthrow an election and toss out the votes of millions of Americans is an affront to any sense of democracy and is illegal on its face.

So is inciting violence, beginning with calls to beat up protesters at his rallies starting in 2015 and his Charlottesville “good people on both sides” declaration in 2017. So is inciting people to riot, like inviting the Proud Boys and neo-Nazis to storm the Capitol Building during the recording of the Electoral College votes. His continuing shameful calls to violence were the training wheels for his calls to sedition on January 6. All of this whipping up of mobs is what fascists do. And, because this is a democracy, that’s why all of that is illegal.

How illegal, how un-American, how outrageous does a crime spree have to be until we at last say, “No more. Not now; not ever“? Failing to do so will invite far worse from the next megalomaniac to hoodwink our country.

So, shame on Trump, of course. But shame on us if we let him get away with his crimes.

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The senators and congressmen listed below (someone called them the Sedition Congress – and no, there isn’t a “both sides” argument) promised to do all they can to subvert the will of the people by overturning a free and fair election. Each of them swore on a Bible to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, including some brand new legislators, whose very first official act in office was to betray their supposedly solemn oath. That happened after mutinous, faithless thousands stormed the Capitol Building to undermine our democracy.

Their claim of fraud is the very same non-existent fraud that Trump made up and blabbered all across MAGA-Land. It’s all fake. It’s all treachery. It’s all lies. And these Republicans broadcast those lies from the halls of the Congress of the United States.

There is speculation as to why these turncoats would stand up in Congress and declare to the world and for all history that they themselves are seditionists. I am certain that ignorance of reality is not the reason. They know that Trump lost the election fairly and that there was no fraud. The only way for them to weasel out of guilt for betraying our country is if they are truly delusional – mentally ill – and believe that elections are only valid if their preferred candidate wins. But contagious mental illness contracted only by Republicans just isn’t what’s going on.

January 6 , 2021, U.S. Capitol Building – The flag of treason, our lowest moment as Americans.

They want to avoid getting tweet-trashed by Trump before their next reelection campaign. That might avoid their getting primaried by a gold plated Trump suck up and that might help them to keep their jobs.

Theirs is a job that pays $174,000 per year and gets them free healthcare and free parking at Reagan National Airport. I hope our adversaries like Russia, Iran, North Korea and China don’t realize how cheap it would be to get these sell-outs to sell out.

They have turned their backs on the Constitution and their formerly sacred word. And they’ve done all that and worse for the self-serving possibility that Trump’s base will vote for them in their next election.

Is it any wonder that approval and respect for Congress is just 15%? That means that 85% of Americans disapprove of Congress. Now we know what it takes to get bipartisanship.

Here Are Your 2021 Government Hall of Shame Inductees
Heap Shame and Scorn Upon Them as Befits Their Absence of Integrity

________________________________________________________________________

Senate

Sen. Tommy Tuberville                             Sen. Cynthia Lummis                            Sen. Ted Cruz

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith                              Sen. John Kennedy                              Sen. Josh Hawley

Sen. Rick Scott                                           Sen. Roger Marshall

And, of course, the Chief Perp, Donald Trump

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A Poem For Our Time

A mob of the MAGA persuasion

Conducted a Capitol invasion.

Though possibly armed,

They parted unharmed,

And that’s how you know they’re Caucasian.

– Lindsey Horner

– @NoMorBS1958

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Countdown to Inauguration Day 2021Countdown

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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. Said John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” So, educate me and all of us. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

Proper Names


Trump has abandoned nearly all presidential duties since November 3. What’s missing from this list?

Reading time – 3:29  .  .  .

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. – Confucius

The Crash occurred in October of 1929 during Herbert Hoover’s first year as President. He had been successful in business and had held several high level government posts where he produced good results. He beat Al Smith in the 1928 presidential election, was sworn in and proceeded to bungle his presidency because of his grossly inadequate response to the Great Depression.

Hoover opposed efforts to provide federal relief measures for the millions of suffering Americans, which was quite odd. He had led the American Relief Administration to help European countries following WW I and also led the federal response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 to provide emergency relief. But he refused to do the things that were needed to help struggling Americans and to dig this country out of the depression.

Seattle Hooverville

One of the outcomes of Hoover’s intransigence was an enormous amount of homelessness. People were evicted for nonpayment of rent, but they didn’t just vanish. The had to go somewhere, so they found what materials they could and built ramshackle shelters. These hovels joined with others to create slums and there were hundreds of these miserable villages of homeless people all across the country. In a derisive gesture at the insufficient actions of the president they were called “Hoovervilles”.

Hoover wasn’t responsible for the crash, just as Trump isn’t responsible for the virus. Each of them, though, is accountable for their response to an American catastrophe that confronted them and each failed miserably. Hoover refused to do what was necessary. Trump blatantly said, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

Click me

Trump proceeded to make a lot of noise about Covid-19, promising wildly impossible things (“It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”), recommending treatments that are ineffective (hydroxychloroquine) or even toxic (Lysol and Clorox) and doing effectively nothing to protect the people. We’re nearly a year into the pandemic and we are still woefully short of PPE, Covid tests, contact tracing to create safety quarantines, and leadership to encourage the simple preventive measures that can minimize our suffering and deaths. There are vaccines, but Trump has refused to see the job through, making it impossible to get vaccines into American arms rapidly. Instead of helping the people, he’s still doing his “don’t blame me” dance. Trump’s refusal to take responsibility means that he put Harry Truman’s “The buck stops here” sign into locked storage and abandoned his post.

The old saying is that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but of course that isn’t literally true. The violin wasn’t invented until 1500 years after his death. But, “His infamous reign is usually associated with tyranny, extravagance” and ruthlessness. He killed his own mother. Perhaps oddly, Nero was a populist, having captured the fancy of many commoners. Nevertheless, Nero was a cruel sociopath.

Most of those descriptors of Nero sound painfully familiar today. Instead of his fiddling, we can accurately say that Trump golfed while hundreds of thousands died. It’s projected that 700,000 Americans will be dead from this disease by the time 75% of us are vaccinated some time late this year. At 2,000 – 3,000 deaths per day over the winter, the math is pretty simple. If the vaccine distribution problem isn’t fixed quickly, the mortality numbers will be far worse.

Roughly 75% of all of the deaths from this pandemic would not have occurred with proper presidential leadership from the start (see this).  The number of excess deaths caused by Trump’s ineptitude and intransigence are staggering. Biden’s plan should help, but the momentum is baked in for producing a terrible total.

Vaccines stuck in warehouses or on hospital shelves don’t help a bit.

It’s crucial that we apply the proper name to Trump’s well-earned responsibility for our massive, preventable suffering and death. What shall we call that? Trump Fever? Death by Sociopath? Leadership Abandonment Syndrome?

And what is the proper name for the slums of today that are populated by people displaced by this pandemic? Trumpvilles? MAGA Motels? Trump Tower Slums?

History will record the craziness of these years and the great harm brought to our country by a madman. There will be headlined paragraphs in history textbooks with the proper names for these times. One will be American Supplication to Russia. Another will be The Massive Assault on Democracy. Still another will be When America Abandoned Reality. But the biggest, boldest headline of all will be Massive Death and Suffering By Presidential Abandonment.

Here’s hoping that we learn the painful lessons* before us and make 2021 the year we restarted America’s great march to form a more perfect union.

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  • * Try this on for a painful lesson we need to learn.
  • From a recent commentary: “the casualties to date are shocking and far in excess of what was expected  .  .  .” But are we really shocked?
  • Front line healthcare workers have been shocked. Families of the dead were shocked. The unemployed and food insecure are shocked. But a huge percentage of Americans – tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of us – go on with only minor changes to our lives, which doesn’t result in shock – only minor inconvenience. Worse, the numbers of the infected, hospitalized and dead are so large as to be mere statistics without an apparent connection to human beings and their suffering. It seems that there is no shock unless people are impacted directly. Perhaps we have a national empathy outage.
  • What shall we do with this lesson?
  • And millions of Americans oddly refuse to believe that Covid-19 is real. With the reality of suffering and death all around, they steadfastly hold to their claim that it’s a hoax and respond to calls for simple public health measures with refusal and scorn. Of course, that spreads the disease quite efficiently, which means far more people get sick.
  • What is the lesson begging for understanding in that?

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Countdown to Inauguration Day 2021Countdown

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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. Said John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” So, educate me and all of us. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

Freedom


We begin with an incontrovertible fact, even as facts are so very 2015:

We have a lot of very big problems, challenges and opportunities in America and mounting them will require that we all get on board the solutions train. This will require our work, our sacrifice, our brilliance, our creativity and our cooperation in ways not demanded of us since WW II.

It’s my belief that if we succeed we will assure our prosperity and our leadership of this century. If we fail to do what is necessary, we will relegate ourselves to decline, insignificance and, at last, we’ll lose our freedoms.

We have fostered our decline through our anger, our rage, our self-righteousness and hatreds, which have led us to the lightning-charged divide that separates us from one another, where I-and-Mine are far more important than We-and-Ours. Sadly, we seem to have forgotten the lesson so painfully demonstrated and then laid bare by Abraham Lincoln, that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Whatever your personal certainties, you may safely be certain of that.

We are a nation borne of revolution, accurately seeing ourselves then as the underdog and we still prefer the underdog. Think: Rocky; whatever team is playing the team Tom Brady is quarterbacking; Star Wars; the Cubs. You get the idea.

We still think there’s something heroic when the little guy confronts the big guys and I’m wondering how much that fuels the popular resentment of those who have been called the “elites.” Never mind that the elites are equal citizens, that they actually may have earned what they have or that it’s possible they are creating opportunities for so many of us. There are those bent on resenting them and that helps to enlarge our national divide.

We have a lot of personal liberty absolutists, like the Michigan militia perps who plotted to kidnap and execute the Michigan governor  because they believed their freedom was abridged by her measures to stop the pandemic. They first expressed their displeasure by brazenly refusing to follow simple health guidelines to protect all of us, then by storming the state capitol armed with semi-automatic military assault rifles and waving Don’t Tread On Me flags, as though King George III had returned. They were clear about what they think our pandemic is about: it is about their own personal freedom. I-and-Mine.

They reminded me of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada cattle rancher who initiated a standoff against federal and state agents in 2014. Bundy had failed to pay his grazing fees on federal land for over 20 years and the Bureau of Land Management at last came to collect. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of armed anti-government absolutists joined Bundy. They proudly proclaimed that government overreach was the issue, that they were the true patriots and that the government didn’t and shouldn’t own and control land. They and Bundy apparently saw themselves as the freedom heroes of the story.

Bundy’s son Ammon seemed determined to have his own self-righteous fit of freedom in his occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon two years later. What they all have in common with our militias today is their clarity that I-and-Mine is more important than We-and-Ours. They thought that the federal land was theirs to do with as they pleased, regardless of the impact on others.

And that’s the problem. We cannot overcome our 21st century challenges and grab our opportunities if everyone acts as though s/he is an independent nation with absolute freedom of their own. So, I have something for folks like the Bundys and the camouflaged members of the Michigan militia who balk at anything that smacks of being an order or even simple direction.

Go ahead and refuse to wear a mask, socially distance or wash your hands. Stand proud and defiant. Feel free (I know you do) to congregate inside in small and large gatherings, in bars and saloons, in basement man caves and anywhere else you like. Spread COVID-19 within your freedom bubble in the manner of your choosing.

But when you become sick, as you surely will, when you have a fever and your body aches all over, when you’re weak and you can barely breathe and you feel like you’re drowning, don’t go to the hospital. You’ve done everything possible to ensure that you get sick – you had the freedom to do that. Now it will be time to man-up, to accept the consequences of your actions and not burden others who have played by the rules of We-and-Ours.

At that point it won’t be okay to dump your sick body onto the workload of our already horribly overworked and exhausted healthcare people. Just go into the woods and die alone. You have the freedom to do that. You will have lived your personal philosophy of I-and-Mine to the end and with your last tiny breath you will know that you died as you lived, all about you.

That’s absolute stuff, offered here as an extreme example to make the point that we don’t have to agree, but we do have to work together or we’ll metaphorically all die alone in the woods.

We have to stop our rugged individual stubbornness and our rages against authority. We have to agree that our absolute personal freedom stops at the tip of another person’s nose. We have to stop denying reality in some fit of grievance or resentment or denial. We have to stop listening to the hate mongers, the liars, the conspiracy theory con artists and the political manipulators. We have to hold our elected officials to account and call out their self-serving lies and then fire them. And if they’re criminals (no, that doesn’t mean “political opponents”) they have to go to prison.

And enough with so-called “alternative facts,” because they aren’t facts at all. They’re lies that make us weak. Even as difficult as it may be, we have to recognize that we are all on the same ship, and we will all share in its fate. Our future success lies in We and Ours.

So, we all have to roll up our shirtsleeves and partner with Rosie the Riveter. Our freedom is at stake in ways not even contemplated since WW II and surely not contemplated by our angry militants bent on assaulting other Americans. It’s time to build a new America, which makes it time to put down the guns and pick up a hammer. To those who won’t do that, get the hell out of the way of those of us who still think patriotism is a verb and it means that every one of us has an obligation to all of us.

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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 is for.
  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.

Shame


“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block the battleground states from casting ‘unlawful and constitutionally tainted votes’ in the Electoral College. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, experts say.“

The Texas Tribune, December 8, 2020

“The states supporting the suit, all of which have Republican attorneys general, are Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.”

CNBC, December 9, 2020

There have been many wild accusations from Donald Trump, his family members, various sycophantic officials, members of the RNC and others claiming voting fraud, election unfairness, election rigging, stealing of the election and various other claims of election warping in favor of Joe Biden and against Donald Trump.

There are people in the streets who have been lied to over and over and manipulated to believe these outrageous claims. They’re now demonstrating outside the homes of state election officials, terrorizing children and chanting absolutist claims of election theft, even though none of them has seen anything to support the accusations. Many are threatening violence and death to these officials, both online and by telephone.

There have been over 50 lawsuits filed by Trump and Trump supporters in an effort to overthrow the election and flaunt the will of the American people. These cases have nearly all been either withdrawn or laughed out of court. In one sentence the Supreme Court dismissed a case against Pennsylvania and did so without hearing any testimony because, like all the other lawsuits, it was completely groundless, without evidence, valueless and lacking any basis in fact. Just wild accusations.

Now the Texas Attorney General has filed suit in the Supreme Court against 4 swing states in an effort to get the results of their elections tossed out and have their states supply electors who will vote for Trump in order to keep him in office. Seventeen other Republican state attorneys general have joined the suit, as has Trump. They are doing this in the face of no evidence whatsoever of voting irregularities. They can’t supply even one fraudulent vote as evidence. Indeed, Trump’s own attorney general has said that there is no evidence of voting fraud that would change the election. Christopher Krebs, former head of the agency that guards against cyber tampering of our elections said this was the cleanest election ever.

Gotta wonder why these attorneys general would file this bogus lawsuit. Let’s take a stab at an explanation.

  1. Trump has leaned hard on them to obstruct and overturn the election and they lack the courage to stand up to the playground bully. Plus they want a pat on the head for being good little do-bees.
  2. They’re sucking up to Trump’s angry base so that they can be re-elected and they don’t care who or what gets damaged in their pursuit of what’s best for themselves.
  3. The RNC threatened to refuse to give them financial support for their next elections unless they did the Trump suck up dance. So they’re sucking and dancing.
  4. They want a presidential pardon. From the Texas Tribune: “Paxton, who has been under indictment since 2015 for felony securities fraud charges, is facing fresh criminal allegations from eight of his top deputies, who said they believe he broke the law by using the agency to do favors for a political donor. The FBI is investigating Paxton over those claims, according to the Associated Press. Paxton has denied wrongdoing.” I have no information indicating that desiring a pardon is Paxton’s motivation, but in the Trump “pardon anyone with a last name and who supported me” era, one has to wonder. Further, it’s just a hypothetical about the other attorneys general involved in this suit. Look up accusations of federal crimes of these people if you feel like doing some research.
  5. They have had it with democracy and they want the United States to degenerate into an autocracy. A dictatorship. A fascist state. To that end, they are sowing doubt about the election to undermine public confidence in our institutions, our government and the Constitution itself. It’s another nail in the coffin.

Note that other than Mitt Romney, no elected Republican official in Washington has spoken out against these baseless lawsuits and claims of illegitimacy of the election. Only a handful have even called to congratulate Joe Biden on his overwhelming victory. Eighty percent of these Republicans acknowledge in private that Biden will be the new president, but they lack the courage to call and congratulate him, much less speak about it publicly.

⇒        This is today’s Republican Party        ⇐

There is nothing conservative in the actions of these people. There is nothing in their actions that would be recognizable to The Framers. There is nothing that they are doing that is in accordance with their oath of office. There is nothing patriotic in their actions. There is only monumental self-serving cowardice.

These reality deniers intentionally do great damage to our country, so shame on them. Too bad those words mean nothing to them. Because of their hypocrisy and cowardice they have lost the ability to be ashamed of themselves. The whole point of shame is a self-awareness that keeps us within civilized bounds. There is something distinctly sub-human about these people having lost that.

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Now that the election results of all 50 states have been certified, electoral votes will be cast on December 14 and Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021. Don’t be surprised if Trump stages his own phony inauguration spectacle in DC at the same time. He really is that desperately needy of attention. Nevertheless, Joe Biden will be the President of the United States as of 12:00:30PM EST that day.

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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. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

Oh, Kevin


New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd annually gives her Thanksgiving column space over to her brother Kevin, whom she calls a conservative. I’ve read several of his offerings and have come away with the sense that Kevin is not a conservative; he’s a Trumpy, which is distinctly not conservative. And in this year’s essay he gives us an exquisitely clear example of why it is so difficult for moderates (Republicans and Democrats alike) to have a constructive, seek-to-understand conversation with a Trumpy. That is the focus of this post.

I want to be clear that in my comments below I am cherry picking his essay, this for brevity. Here’s a link to his complete comments. Also, full disclosure: I agree with some of what Kevin wrote. Most of that is not covered here because that isn’t where the problem lies.

Here are some examples of obstacles to conversation. The wording in green is verbatim from Kevin’s essay and the substantiating data that he presents is included in the same color.

  1. Trump gave us a strong economy.
    1. Actually, the economy continued on the same trajectory from throughout the Obama years. Until it didn’t. Trump promised 4% GDP growth. Before our current recession we had an “economy like no one has ever seen,” when we had GDP growth that averaged just 2.5%. Overall it’s 1% since Trump took office. It never hit 4%.
  2. Trump achieved the lowest unemployment in 50 years.
    1. True, but  .  .  .  Actually, unemployment continued to decline on a straight line trajectory passed on from the Obama years. The best you can say for Trump is that he didn’t screw up a good thing. Until the pandemic arrived. Then he screwed up everything, including unemployment.
  3. Trump fortified the border.
    1. There were only 9 miles of new border wall constructed over the 4 years of Trump’s presidency. All the rest of the construction was replacement for old, dilapidated fencing. And Mexico hasn’t paid a dime for any of it. Does that qualify as “fortified”?
    2. Our southern border has been turned into concentration camps on the U.S. side and death in the desert on the Mexican side. Does that qualify as “fortified”?
    3. Our immigration system refuses to grant asylum to most of the people fleeing rape and death in the Central American countries they left behind. No clue how that makes our border fortified. It does make us complicit in assault and murder.
  4. Trump has guaranteed the integrity of the judicial system by appointing over 200 judges and three Supreme Court justices.
    1. Appointing judges does not guarantee integrity of the judicial system. It only guarantees butts on benches.
    2. 10 of Trump’s nominees were rated Not Qualified by the American Bar Association and 67 were rated only Qualified (i.e., they’re marginally OK warm bodies to hold down a bench).
    3. Two of Trump’s appointees had never practiced law or even been inside a courtroom. That doesn’t sound like integrity.
    4. There was a huge deficit of federal judges when Trump came to office because Mitch McConnell had shoved a stick in the spokes of judicial appointments for nearly all of the Obama years. If there was any additional integrity it was only because more judges meant swifter justice for the accused. Trump doesn’t get integrity kudos for that.
  5. Trump had foreign policy successes, including:
    1. Renegotiating NAFTA – into essentially the same agreement but with Trump’s name attached.
    2. Abandoning the Iranian nuclear deal.
      1. Which allowed the Iranians to resume both enriching uranium and building their bomb making capabilities.
      2. Kevin doesn’t mention it, but after abandoning the multi-nation agreement Trump slapped sanctions on Iran that have been labeled “crippling.” On the other hand, they don’t seem to have curtailed any of Iran’s military activities. Not seeing a foreign policy success here.
      3. Kevin claims that we gave the Iranians a $400 million bribe to get the nuclear deal done. That claim was a standard right wing talking point when the JCPOA was being negotiated and was wailed about afterward by the anti-Obama crowd. What actually happened is that because of Iran’s past bad behavior we had frozen their assets during the Obama administration. Returning to them what was rightfully theirs was part of the Iranian nuclear deal. So, it wasn’t a bribe; it was a return of stolen property. And it was $300 million, not $400 million.
    3. Trump brokered Middle East peace deals and was the greatest friend Israel ever had.
      1. Two recently concluded agreements between Israel and the UAE and Israel and Bahrain had been in process since 2015. These agreements were essentially “normalization” documents to formalize what already existed. Trump had nothing to do with the negotiating or finalizing of the agreements. He did claim credit for them.
      2. Might not Harry Truman be the greatest friend of Israel, since he was the first world leader to recognize the new state in 1948? Or President Obama, who handed the Iron Dome defense system to Israel in 2011? Or every other president who has sided with Israel against brutal attacks in the U.N.?
      3. Note that moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem did not help Israel. It only served to inflame Palestinians and make a 2-state solution even more difficult to achieve.
      4. It’s interesting that the “greatest friend Israel ever had” meme is quoted. It’s word-for-word what Trump has said repeatedly and his followers pick it up as though making the claim is the same as stating reality. It’s akin to his saying that he’s been the greatest president for Blacks, with the possible exception (or since) Abraham Lincoln. Making the claim isn’t the same as saying truth, but Trump’s followers repeat his phony superlative opinions of himself anyway.
  6. Trump made the Republican Party tougher, teaching it to counter punch harder than its opponent.
    1. The Republican Party was intransigent and spiteful long before Trump showed up (think: Gingrich, McConnell, Boehner, anyone from the Tea Party, etc.) and they played dirty before Trump came along, doing things like filibustering everything with Obama’s name on it, essentially exterminating majority rule. For verification of Republican cheating, check with Judge (not Justice) Merrick Garland.
    2. We need to understand why “counter punch[ing] harder than its opponent” is important. Doing so guarantees no cooperation, so America’s problems don’t get solved. This sounds like being macho is more important that doing what is best for America and honoring one’s oath of office to protect and defend. I do understand the momentary puff-up feeling of being powerful that comes from dominating others.
  7. Kevin writes, “The Democrats remain mystified by the loyalty of Trump’s base. It is rock solid because half the country was tired of being patronized and lied to and worse, taken for granted. Trump was unique because he was only interested in results.”
    1. First sentence: I agree. Surely, I agree with the “mystified” part. It is what underlies the question of this post.
    2. Second sentence: How much of these beliefs of being patronized, lied to and taken for granted is due to people being fed a constant stream of right wing propaganda, rather than the facts? Hatred of ordinary Americans by elites is a standard of righty talking heads and that constant drumbeat stokes belief and ratings. And anger and hatred. Show me the facts, though, or this is just another hateful Big Lie.
    3. Counterpoint to #2 above: I don’t know about the patronizing, but there have been a lot of promises broken and without question the Democrats have taken some people for granted. Nobody likes to be treated that way.
    4. Third sentence: Trump was, is and forever will only be interested in results for Trump, not for America. And he doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process (think: playing golf throughout the pandemic). His continuing lies to undermine our election are corroding our democracy and pouring more fuel on the fire of hatred. Further, ask any contractor who worked on a Trump Building and got stiffed about what results were important to Trump. Or ask the State Department, which has consistently been overcharged for everything during the Trump administration. Secret Service personnel were forced to patronize Trump properties and rent rooms at far above standard rates. And I know it’s a small thing that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago billed the U.S. $3 to serve Trump a glass of water, but it’s a satisfactory placeholder for all his grifting. I agree that Trump is focused on results, but are results like these what we should want?

As you can see, there are sweeping claims, but almost no supporting facts. That’s standard M.O. for Trumpies and it does not lead to any possibility of a meeting of the minds. In fact, it is one of three major reasons that a fruitful conversation is so difficult. Another major reason is the denial of provable, observable facts, as is a commonly found belligerent attitude.

Kevin ends his essay with dire warnings for the media and especially for Fox News, which has recently been slightly less of a lapdog for Trump. I’m sure Kevin is right in claiming that Biden’s TV ratings will be lower than Trump’s. What is far more disturbing is that anyone would care about such a thing.

It’s worrisome that anyone would equate TV ratings with the quality of the job a president is doing for the country or even whether a president is popular. Nobody paid attention to such things until the circus sideshow barker came to town and constantly bragged about his TV ratings, as though his primary job was to get high ratings. It’s akin to Trump bragging for months about having had the biggest inaugural crowd ever, which, of course, he didn’t. He bragged that way as though that’s what was important. For most of us, it wasn’t and isn’t. It shouldn’t be for any of us.

I appreciate Kevin’s passion and understand that he has his certainties – I have my own passion and certainties – and both of us are sorely infected by confirmation bias, of course. But I need someone to bring us real world stuff to examine and which will help us to understand one another, not bring just sweeping, baseless superlatives.

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The important question is how to deal with people who refuse facts, truth and reality. They are our countrymen and -women, after all, and we are obligated to figure out how to live together.

Roughly 80% of those who voted for Trump believe his lies/fantasies/distortions that the election was rigged and riddled with fraud. They believe him when he says he won the election and that “everybody knows it.” That’s around 60 million Americans who are living in an alternate reality. I’m guessing that to them this is just another example “of being patronized and lied to and worse, taken for granted.” And I’m also guessing that they are very angry they didn’t get their way, especially because they believe they were cheated. That makes conversation extremely difficult.

These folks are supported by the continuing refusal of nearly all elected Republicans to stand up and speak up about the Big Lie that is Trump and Trumpism. They provide tacit approval to believe Trump’s hateful and anti-democratic venom. These elected officials do great damage to our country with their cowardice (read this). They make it ever-harder to have a conversation with Trumpies, because they stoke the macho bravado posturing to “counter punch harder than its opponent.” That relegates us to communicating via fistfights. Or worse, like attempting to kidnap and execute a sitting governor. It’s worth noting again that our macho, bravado angry citizens are the ones who own most of the guns in this country.

So, you tell me how to bridge this insane divide that is America today, with half of us believing the untrue. And if I got any of this wrong, please set me and everyone straight.

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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. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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 Gloves Are Off


Reading time – 3:55  .  .  .

Heroes

As of this post we have lost – as in: they died – over 2,000 of our frontline healthcare workers – nurses, doctors, techs, EMTs, sanitation staff – all the people who make it so that we can get healthcare when we need it. They work hellishly long hours and risk their lives every day for the rest of us. And that risks transferring infection to their children, significant others, perhaps their parents, too.

They risk their lives for the supermarket clerk who, in spite of gloves, a mask and plastic partitions still gets infected. And they risk their lives for the school children who get sick and the elderly in our nursing homes who might be your mom or dad or grandma or grandpa.

They even risk their lives for the MAGA hat wearers, those who boldly and defiantly attended a Trump rally or the Harley Davidson rally in South Dakota – the people who refuse to wear a mask or socially distance. Same for the gilded set who attended White House functions and who refused to follow the advice of the experts. They were all warned repeatedly, but they called it a hoax and acted as if there were no pandemic at all. That means that our frontline healthcare workers are dying because some refuse to follow some simple instructions.

Nevertheless, to our refusers, the ones for whom a simple mask is a terrible infringement of their freedom and a sign of personal weakness, who take delight in conspiracy theories and for whom science and truth are unimportant concepts, I have good news for you.

When you crawl into the ER, in terrible pain and gasping for breath, feeling like you’re drowning and you’re begging for help, our healthcare heroes will take you in and give their all to save your sorry ass. They will put themselves at risk of getting sick, dying and perhaps infecting their loved ones, all to save your life and your defiant, selfish attitude. They’ll do all that, knowing that you were repeatedly given the choice to be healthy and to stay out of the hospital, but you refused it every time, insisting instead on being contemptuous. Then you came into their world, sick and infectious and threatening them with suffering. Still, they’ll be there for you.

And that is why they are heroes and you are not.

But you could be.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. I hope you told everyone that you give thanks for our healthcare heroes, because instead of being with their families yesterday, they showed up for work in case you showed up in their ER. If you didn’t express your gratitude – best done with a call to your local hospital or by mailing a note of appreciation – do it now before one of our heroes has to drug you and shove a ventilator tube down your throat to save your life at the risk of their own.

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75 Years

World War II ended 75 years ago, with Adolph Hitler committing suicide in his bunker in Berlin. The world is still writing about, talking about and detailing those awful years of brutality and suffering, which is an interesting legacy for a monster.

PBS is running a series, The Rise of the Nazis, and it is quite informative, but that isn’t why it’s mentioned here. The point is to recognize the world’s continuing examination – even fascination – with the Nazis and the mindsets and the behaviors of the criminal leaders that produced the world’s greatest hate-fueled brutality.

They detail Hitler’s disinterest in governing, refusal to read and learn, his focus solely on himself, on his powerful skills of lying and manipulating and more, traits that are disturbingly familiar to us today.

One could say that we don’t have concentration camps today, but of course we do; or that certain groups aren’t being discriminated against and marginalized, but of course they are. One could say that there isn’t a flagrant call for violence, but of course there is. One could say that there isn’t a power grab to destroy democracy and control all of government, but of course there is that, too. One could even say that there isn’t a refusal to honor the will of the people, but of course there is.

I predict that 75 years from now people will still be writing about Trump and Trumpism in an effort to explain the horror of our home grown megalomaniac, the complete capitulation of our Republican Congress and the anger and threats of violence from the right, each of which seems inexplicable and boundless in its destruction. Call me in the year 2095 to discuss the then-current books on the subject.

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Cabinet Announcements

Click me for the story

On Tuesday President-elect Biden made public several of his cabinet picks for his new administration. Most striking was his naming John Kerry as his Special Envoy on Climate (read this post) and making that a cabinet level position, as well as assigning Kerry to sit on the National Security Council. It will be refreshing for us to take the planet seriously.

In addition, Biden announced the ending of a cabinet department that had been an office created especially for the Trump administration. Biden said that as soon as he finishes taking the oath of office at noon on January 20 the Department Of Obviously Fraudulent Underhanded Stuff (DOOFUS) will close permanently. No successor department will be named and all employees of that office will be instructed to submit their resignations and have their offices cleared of personal items prior to that date and time.

The same directive applies to the outgoing President. Anything left behind will be submitted to the FBI Museum Of Really Obtuse National Swindlers (MORONS) and put on public display as the modern equivalent of putting people in stocks in the public square for shaming and ridicule. Sadly, many in the outgoing administration are not capable of experiencing shame.

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The JaxPolitix Game

This edition of the JaxPolitix Game is inspired by an accident with a Thesaurus.

Read this entry, then answer the question below:

double-cross

verb

he was double-crossing his family behind their backs: BETRAY, CHEAT, defraud, trick, hoodwink, mislead, deceive, swindle, break one’s promise to, be disloyal to, be unfaithful to, break faith with, play false, fail, let down; informal two-time, sell down the river; British informal stitch up, do the dirty on.

QUESTION: Who does this describe?

Enter your answer in the Comments section below. The first 80.6 million entrants with the correct answer will win a new president, complete with a full set of action figures. You must be 18 or older in order to be 18 or older and only those who spend the majority of their time on this planet may enter. Not valid for residents of states beginning with the letter Q.

Bonus Questions!

The Constitution does not prohibit convicted felons from becoming President, even if they’re still incarcerated for money laundering, tax evasion or fraud. How is it that the Founders didn’t consider the possibility of that happening? Oh, right, they thought there were norms – guardrails – for our democracy.

For 25 points each:

  1. Will Trump run in 2024?
  2. Two trains leave their stations heading toward one another on parallel tracks. The stations are 107.9 miles apart. Train A travels at 31.6 mph; train B leaves 41 minutes later than train A and travels at 77 miles per hour. How far from the station from which train A departed would Donald Trump say the trains will pass one another? (Hint: Trump will hire someone to solve this problem for him and will add to his answer baseless accusations of fraud, claiming that the quiz was rigged. And he will stiff the person he hired to help him.)
  3. Who would Donald Trump say is buried in Grant’s tomb and which name would he call him: “loser” or “sucker”?

For 9 points each, answer these critical TP questions:

  1. What are the creative ways you’re hiding your TP from your neighbors?
  2. Other than the standard purposes, what are the other uses you have for all that TP in your house?

  • —————————————-

    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. That’s what the Comments section is for.
    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.

President Donald Trump’s Final Address to the Nation


Reading time – 3:12; Viewing time – 4:51  .  .  .

The White House, Washington D.C., January 19, 2021

My fellow Americans, we gather tonight on the eve of a new administration for our country. Once again we are affirming our democracy with the peaceful transfer of power exactly as envisioned and required by our Founders and our Constitution. This is one of the ways we demonstrate to the world our commitment to the rule of law and the all important bedrock of our democracy, rule by We the People. May the world take notice.

There are always a great many challenges to the United States and today is no different, except that we now face the biggest challenge in 100 years: the coronavirus pandemic. Most of the rest of our challenges rely on solving this problem first. Only then will we be able to heal our people and at last repair our great nation. Because this is of supreme importance, tonight we focus there.

Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, Dr. Redmond and all of our epidemiologists have been clear, as have our ER and ICU medical professionals, that we cannot go on as we have. Our healthcare capacity has been over-topped and dramatic steps are needed to reverse this deadly trend.

That is why tonight I am urging – I’m imploring – that you and all of us follow the advice and direction of our medical professionals. There is no vaccine at hand that can suddenly protect all of us, so we must do the preventive things the experts advise. Wear a mask any time you’re near others you don’t live with. Stay at least six feet away from others even if everyone is wearing a mask. Wash your hands often in the manner prescribed by our medical people. And avoid all unnecessary contact with others. That means don’t visit stores any more than you have to – combine trips. Don’t sit inside restaurants or bars. If you are an essential worker, make sure you’re protected from co-workers, for example with plastic panel dividers. Do all of these things all of the time and we can begin to turn things around for all of us.

I’m not wearing a mask right now only because I’m addressing you for the moment and because only broadcast personnel are in the Oval Office with me and they are all at least 15 feet away. As soon as this address is over I will don my mask once again.

Yes, wearing a mask is a nuisance. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable and now and then even a little nasty. And yes, it is an imposition on the freedom of all of us to have to wear a mask. But we can lick this problem, we can meet this challenge to protect all of us if we each sacrifice a little for the betterment of us all. It is a patriotic duty. It is a sign of the loyalty we swear to one another. We do this for ourselves, for our families, our friends and for our country. This is what proud, patriotic Americans do.

Many months ago I told you that the cure must not be worse than the problem. At the time we were seeing millions of newly unemployed people, sent home due to our shutting down so much of our economy. The last thing I wanted to see was so many Americans out of work and perhaps evicted from their homes. That was the cure that I thought might be worse than the problem.

But the disease multiplied fast, faster than many anticipated, and it is terribly deadly. It has infected over 10 million of us and has killed over a quarter of a million of our dear ones. It seems that there is no solving this problem without taking the medicine, the cure.

So, it’s time for us to dig into our vast resources of American grit and gumption and take that medicine. It’s going to hurt, but that hurt will end. If we don’t take that medicine, the hurt will go on forever, compromising not just our health, but our lives, our prosperity, even our national security.

Join me now in following President-Elect Biden and our experts, the very best in the world doctors, scientists and epidemiologists. In following them every day in every way we will beat this terrible enemy and restore our nation to health. And we’ll do it together in a patriotic crusade.

Good night, my fellow Americans, and may God bless this great nation of ours. Now, put on your mask!

——————————

Closing Comments

Imagine if the essence of this speech had been given 10 months ago. Lest you think that leadership doesn’t matter.

If this post makes sense to you be sure to read my pal John Calia’s post from yesterday. Oddly, surprisingly, we both used the same convention to communicate the same critical message at the same time:

It was, is and will continue to be all about leadership.

—————————————-

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. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  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.

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