intelligence

Your Share and Mushrooms


POST 1269

DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT .  .  .

.  .  .  let Trump’s war distract you from his culpability in the Epstein crimes. Trump is trying to cloud your eyes with this war. That’s what it’s all about. Instead, focus on the pedophilia.

Your Share

It’s a fool’s errand to calculate your individual share of our national debt. The total now stands at roughly $39 TRILLION.

Okay, I’m fool enough to do that. We divide the total debt by roughly 330 million Americans and your share is $118,000. Same for your infant son, Same for his big sister. Same for each of their grandparents. Same for every American. And Trump’s pet legislation, BBB, will add another $10 trillion to our debt which will pile another $30,000 onto everybody’s personal bill.

Let’s focus for a moment on just the additional $200 billion Trump wants for his blisteringly stupid and illegal war on Iran. That extra will add $606 to everyone’s tab, all 330 million of us. And you know that if he doesn’t go all TACO, he’ll be demanding still more money from us soon. He will tell us that throwing yet more money on that oil fire will be like nothing anyone has ever seen. He will almost be correct about that.

Note that the $200 billion is on top of our current military budget of between $901 billion and $1 trillion. That’s more than the defense spending of the next 9 or 10 countries combined. Got insight on why we need to spend that much? Help us out in the Comments section below.

That baseline defense spending equates to $2,730 of cost for each of us – just for the Defense Department – every year. Adding in the $606 supplementary cash grab each of us will owe for Trump’s Iran blue bomb special, if authorized, will bring your share of our military bill this year to $3,396. Feeling good about that?

Mushrooms

“If you look for mushrooms, you will find mushrooms.” – William Raspberry, Washington Post columnist.

The point is that we find what we are looking for, whether it’s there or not, and even as we might miss other things, like wild strawberries. Or the truth.

Our fact spurning president in 2003, George W. Bush,* looked for WMDs in Iraq and told us he was sure they were there. The United Nations weapons inspectors refuted the vague and unsubstantiated claims used by Bush to justify his call to war, as they came largely from an individual who was well known to be psychologically unstable. Plus, our own intelligence community told Bush that they were far from sure that Saddam had WMDs or was working to develop them. Read this Los Angeles Times post for detail.

Dubya and VP Cheney wanted to make war on Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. Dubya told us he was a “bad guy” and a “cruel dictator” and to Bush that was enough reason for America to topple him. I recall thinking at the time that there are many bad guy leaders around the world. Were we going to make war on all of them?

Dubya’s war guy Donald Rumsfeld told us that Iraqis would welcome our troops, throwing flowers to them. When challenged by what such a war would cost, Rumsfeld told us that Iraqi oil would pay for the war, just as though it was ours to take. That made clear the reality of what that invasion was about. And they told us the cost was okay because it was an “off balance sheet” war. Somebody explain in the Comments section below what that means and how it makes any sense at all

In the process of that war thousands died and the entire region became even more chaotic, with fallout that continues today. That’s just some of the wages of myopic focus on what Bush wanted to find and, generally, what happens in regime change wars. It’s clear that we refused to learn our lesson then, since or now.

Now we are burdened by a president who doesn’t even look for metaphorical mushrooms. He just makes stuff up to suit his craziness, “finding” whatever “intelligence” will give him the “feeling” he wants. Indeed, Andy Borowitz wrote,

Confirming the suspicions of many in the international community, on Monday Donald J. Trump revealed that intelligence played “no role” in his decision to go to war with Iran.

“People keep asking me about intelligence,” he told reporters on Air Force One. “I made this call with no intelligence whatsoever.”

Trump has wanted to attack Iran for a very long time. We’ll leave it to the professional mental health experts to figure out his pre-dementia obsession that he’s now metastasized into a regional war.

Meanwhile, we live with the consequences of Trump finding reasons, like phantom WMDs, to make war and ignore truth. People are dying, like the 175 Iranian school girls and 13 of our military people. That’s happened without the benefit of truth that could easily have been found before the bombings began, had the people in charge been looking for it. Consider all that as the body count and your prices rise, as our allies refuse us and as Putin wins more and more.

If Trump goes after Iran’s infrastructure, as he’s promised he will, try to imagine what Iran will do. Terrorism is what Iran does best. What do you think Trump will do if they come after our infrastructure as a counter attack?

Quote Of The Week
  • “Societies that adopt conspiratorial explanations for political, social and economic problems lose the ability to rationally redress them.”
  • The Dangerous Logic of the Joe Kent Letter
  • by Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic, March 17, 2026

Think: demonizing immigrants, non-European Whites, non-Christians, anybody Trump doesn’t like; etc. And attacking Iran.

Moral Inversion

By now you know both that Robert S. Mueller has died and that Trump has celebrated his death. You could brush that off as just another case of Trump neurotically making everything about himself and waving his victim flag, but it’s more than that.

True, once again Trump has portrayed himself as a poor victim where there is no victimization. He’s demanded that his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent call for sympathy for Trump as the victim, even as Mueller is the one who died and whose family is grieving. Steve Schmidt captured it this way:

This is not conservatism. It is not populism. It is not even politics. It is the normalization of moral inversion.

I implore you to fire the false victim. So .  .  .

Make Your Voice Heard This Saturday

Click here to find a No Kings rally near you. Then show up on March 28. Change our atmosphere that has been poisoned by our home grown fascists. Make it clear that they are the minority and that we are the majority and that this is designed to be a majority rule country. You know: by We The People.

The cure for hopelessness is action.

_________________________________________________

* Shortly before 911 the CIA briefed Bush, warning of an al Qaeda attack that might use hijacked commercial aircraft (the August 6 Presidential Daily Brief, “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US”. In response to an earlier similar warning, Bush’s response was, “Alright, you’ve covered your ass.” I guess those reports weren’t the mushrooms Bush was looking for.

How many PDBs do you suppose Trump has ignored? Is ignoring intelligence a Republican Party thing?

  • Time for action is dwindling

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    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
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    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Best We Can Do


Disarming the Monterey Park shooter – Click me

Monterey Park, CA

After hearing an interview with Brandon Tsay, the man who disarmed the Monterrey Park shooter, Shannon Watts, Founder of Moms Demand Action, said,

“We are asking everyday civilians to stand up to gunmen because our lawmakers are too cowardly to stand up to gun makers.” *

You know in your bones that she’s right.

Here Are The Totals:  January 1 – 28**

Click me

.
  • All gun deaths                 3,244 – 116 per day
  • Mass shootings                   43 – 3 every 2 days
  • Children killed                    128***
  • Children injured                  297***

Those aren’t just numbers; they’re people. Like granny. Like your kids. Like you.

Is this the best we can do? Really?

Speaking of Violence

You know that Tyre Nichols was beaten by 5 Memphis cops and that he later died from that attack. You may have watched the videos that were released Friday evening. You may be tempted to share your horror with others by inviting them to watch the video.

Before you do, read this from Bear Bellinger of Indivisible. In part, he writes,

“Sharing the video is sensationalizing violence while minimizing the pain that it imparts on Black bodies. Share solutions. Share actions. Share outrage. Do. Not. Share. The. Video.“

So, hold on to your horror, your sadness, your rage. Your feeling that way and more proves that you are a human being with empathy, but that’s not enough.

“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”– MLK

Is this the best we can do? Really?

It Ain’t Over

Here’s a graph of total Covid deaths since the first, then-mysterious one in February 2020.

Click me

As you can see, we’re continuing to raise the death count, now at the rate of 543 dead bodies per day – and the rate is increasing. Weirdly, the pile up of bodies has faded into national background noise, as we seem to have forgotten the over 1.1 million already dead – roughly equivalent to everyone in Dallas, TX – the nearly 104 million total cases reported (likely, there are many more) and all the suffering. The point of showing you the graph is to help you realize that this isn’t over. The war isn’t won. Not all the boys are coming home.

  • I’m over 70 and my age alone makes me a pretty good target for any variant of this virus. And it found me. I hunkered down with Paxlovid and got better. Then Covid came back, laughing at me for my foolish belief that I had beaten it. I think it’s gone now.
  • I didn’t like having Covid, but the point is that I’m still here and able to say so.
  • Thank you, vaccine people!
  • Fie on vaccine conspiracy crazies!
  • The majority of us took one or two vaccines, but only about 16% of Americans have taken the bivalent vaccine for protection from the primary variants that are stalking us right now. You need to get it into your head that you need to get the updated booster into your arm. Not tomorrow; today, if you want to avoid being one of the 543 tomorrow.
  • Did I mention that only 16% of us have protection against the new viruses that are trying to take us down?
  • Is this the best we can do? Really?
  • Congress
  • Fifteenth ballot winner for Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy (R-Hypocrisy), is convening a new select committee, which means he gets to select its members. It is the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government (“HSS-WTF“).
  • Per Heather Cox Richardson,

“Yesterday in The Bulwark, Jill Lawrence explained that the true goal of the committee is ‘shoveling paranoia and distortion into the news stream’ to make right-wing voters distrust the government even more than they already do. David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Florida who left the party in 2018, told Lawrence: ‘It’s a drug they’re going to put out on the street for conservative media and conservative voters.'”

No surprise there. No surprise, either, that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Rabies) will chair the WTF committee to ensure it is a circus of hateful delusion. It’s just what he does.

Plus, McCarthy has evicted Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from the Intelligence Committee and plans to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the Foreign Affairs Committee. He falsely claimed that Schiff and Swalwell had lied to the American people and that allowing either of them on that committee would compromise national security. As for Omar, Republicans need to punish her because, as is quite obvious, she is a woman, is of color and is a Muslim. He didn’t say that part out loud.

So, he’s packing the Intelligence Committee with far right extremists who tried to overthrow our government on January 6. All this is a matter of integrity to McCarthy, he told us. Seriously, he said that.

I figure that removing Schiff and Swalwell and replacing them with brain-free extremists will significantly lower the overall intelligence of the Intelligence Committee. My recommendation is to have low expectations of it.

As for the Foreign Affairs Committee, clearly, we wouldn’t want anyone with foreign experience to have a seat there. Good thing they ditched Omar.

That’s where the Republican majority is focused, even as we face a debt ceiling debacle.

Is this the best we can do? Really?

Education

Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida and 2024 presidential wannabe, is doing his best to keep kids in his state ignorant and to polarize his citizens. He recently removed AP (Advanced Placement) African-American studies from the high school electives offerings, claiming it is not education, but “indoctrination.” That was his word choice.

It’s interesting that De Santis doesn’t consider AP French to be indoctrination. Neither does he claim AP European History or AP American History or AP World History or AP U.S. Government and Politics or AP Spanish or any other AP course to be indoctrination. It’s only indoctrination if it’s about Blacks. Stoking culture wars in a “one up, all others down” society: does it get any better than that for any self-serving extremist?

This is his latest move to promote ignorance in Florida, following his book banning and the threat of 3rd degree felony charges against teachers or librarians who so much as whisper words suggesting anyone or anything that is not straight – the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law. This has led to a new state motto flapping above the capitol building in Tallahassee:

IGNORANCE R US

.

In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

  • “1984”, George Orwell
  • Many thanks to my lifelong friend, Frank Levy, for the quote.

Is this the best we can do? Really?

Finally, a Chuckle

Of course you remember Hurricane Ian that devastated Ft. Myers, FL last September and threatened states all the way to North Carolina. I pinged friends there to see if they were OK – they were – and they sent the pic of Mar-a-Lago to the right.

Ian, was that the best you could do? Really?

_______________________________

  • * The only thing that stops a cowardly, bad lawmaker with a vote is a good lawmaker with a vote.
  • Elect good lawmakers.

** Source: www.GunViolenceArchive.org

*** Firearms are the Leading Cause of Death for Children in the United States, But Rank No Higher Than Fifth in Other Industrialized Nations – Kaiser Family Foundation

______________________________

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


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    The Fine Print:

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

    JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Crickets – Still


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

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

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

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

This story gets worse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just kidding.

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

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

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

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

What has happened to this once proud and respectable party?

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

  • ————————————

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    Thanks!


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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