Political obfuscation (a “snow job”) is an elemental force which cannot be overcome by fact or reason. It can only be defeated when enough people rise up in indignation, refusing to be lied to again.
Are you there? Are you sick of the lies, the distortions, the refusal of our leaders to take on the real challenges of America, to solve the enormous problems that affect all of us? Are you longing for hope that someone will be a leader who doesn’t take us down yet another blind alley and march us into even more stagnation? Metaphorically speaking, are you furious that you’re still waiting for the men and the truck to show up and fix the damn potholes? Are you up to here with political stupid stuff?
If you’re not, you’re probably not paying enough attention, because you’re being played for a sucker every day.
From the New Testament:
James 2:17 – “Thus also prayer by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
Translation: Waiting and praying leads to nothing. You have to actually do something.
Has your indignation at being lied to reached the point when you’re ready to “have works” and do something? Then make your voice heard.
Go to the Common Cause website, enter your address and click GO. You’ll see who the candidates are in your state and district and whether they support reform. If they haven’t responded to the Common Cause questionnaire, blast ’em an email or tweet – there’s a utility for that right on the website – and tell them to get going. You deserve to know where they stand, so demand it.
Then add your voice right here in the Comments section below.
And as a reward, click on the pic above to watch Samantha Bee’s brilliance.
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BREAKING NEWS! (Wait a second – if it’s news, it must be breaking. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be news. It would just be old information, right?)
It was just revealed that the Orlando shooter had sex with two Latino men, one of whom revealed afterward that he is HIV-positive. Shortly after that the bad guy entered a gay bar frequented by Latinos (and himself at other times) and shot 103 people. So, maybe the massacre wasn’t inspired by ISIL. Maybe the guy was terminally angry over his own stupidity and took it out on others.
Maybe we need a gun law that prohibits gun purchases by emotionally unstable stupid people.
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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.
YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe. Thanks! JA
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Sadly, yes, because more than rudeness is inflicted on us by weak people. There is also:
– boundless ignorance masquerading as muscular ideas
– bigotry, xenophobia and continuing appeals to the crudest of instincts, all coming out as hatred
– constantly shifting positions on important issues driven by spinelessness and dishonesty
Don’t imagine that this description is only applicable to our current sociopathic political reality show. While our politics truly are in an exaggerated, comic book state right now, this dysfunction is a constant. Caveat voter.
Thanks, GRR, for pointing out the quote.
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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.
YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe. Thanks! JA
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Reading time – 67 seconds; Viewing time – 2:34 . . .
You’re flashing the bird at the “establishment” – the authority figures, the big money kids, the guys in the expensive suits and power ties. They have been screwing you for so long that you can’t even remember when you weren’t being screwed. You have no recollection of the last time anyone from any establishment said something that didn’t ring phony. You’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore.
Got it. You’re right – you are being screwed.
And you’re being screwed in ways you might not realize.
Because the crazies with the megaphones have been tweaking your nose over immigration, God, guns and gays. They’ve been fanning your flames with absolutist junk, like, “You’re either with us or you’re not an American” and they have made your blood boil. And all the time they were doing their misdirection trickery they were picking your pocket.
It started with Reagan’s “supply-side economics,” which was supposed to “trickle down” wealth to you from the fat cats. How’s that been working for you? The answer is that it’s not working at all, because the fat cats kept it all for themselves. And they’re still keeping it and protecting their rights to keep their claws deeply embedded into your wallet, thanks to the laws your legislators enacted that created tax breaks only for already wealthy people. You didn’t catch even a little break.
They told you that it was all about jobs, jobs, jobs. That sounded good. Then they defeated every attempt at job-creating legislation except the one for vets. And the Republicans had to be shamed into passing that.
That’s right: They distracted you with tweaky social issues while they ate your lunch. And they’re still eating your lunch.
Just get this: Donald J. Trump has been and is an integral part of the establishment misdirection scheme that got your pocket picked. His claws are holding your cash and he’s proposed cutting taxes even more for the rich kids – but not for you. Trump won’t be trickling any money down to you.
You know a phony when you see one, even if he sounds like a really good circus sideshow barker. So, when November comes around, put your hand on your wallet and keep it there as you vote.
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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.
YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe. Thanks! JA
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Reading time – 66 seconds; Viewing time – 31 seconds . . .
It’s all but a done deal that Donald J. Trump, the real estate serial failure guy with all the presidential right stuff of a circus sideshow barker, will be the nominee of the Republican party. There is poetic justice in that.
The Republicans have been sowing the seeds of distrust and anger toward government for decades, certainly since Ronald Reagan campaigned in 1980, telling us that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
They have compounded that by paralyzing government for the past 6 years, including shutting it down altogether. The public anger that has stoked has now come back to bite the Republicans in the person of Donald the Arsonist, spraying gasoline on anything that has the kindling material of “establishment”.
In advance of the Indiana primary, Trump garnered the endorsement of Bobby Knight*, the flamboyant, abusive and fired former basketball coach of the Indiana Hoosiers. That endorsement was a notable pairing with Trump’s foreign policy speech just a day earlier, wherein he offered vague, belligerent claims, supported by incorrect information. For example, Trump promised that once he is president, ISIS will disappear, “very, very quickly.” Said Trump, “We must as a nation be more unpredictable.”
Yet we now know how Trump will defeat ISIS, thanks to his new endorser (so much for being “unpredictable”). Click on the bottom left corner of the video and you will understand the foreign policy methodology of The Trump Doctrine.
* Click through to the link in the text above and listen to the crowd after Knight waxed red-white-and-blue over the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. That should add to your understanding of the people who support Trump. (Note to historian Knight: It happened in 1945, not 1944.)
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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.
YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe. Thanks! JA
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
What these publications and every newspaper, every cable blatherer and every AM radio talk spewer misses is that what will matter to America is not the carefully crafted, focus-grouped bumper sticker words that are tortured into something designed to suck votes. What will matter is what a candidate might actually do once in office.
The common wisdom about Bernie pulling Hillary to the left is just so much nonsense. Hillary will say whatever she needs to say to get elected and so will every other candidate. However, it’s folly to believe that Bernie, having been her opponent in the primary, will have magically morphed her brain, such that, should she become president, she would act more lefty than had she been sans Bernie. All the shape shifting is just so much show business.
The test for voters is whether we can tell the difference between reality and the distorted appearance of reality in this hall-of-mirrors election season. Thanks in part to our press mindlessly regurgitating the election-ese language manipulation of candidates, millions of Americans can’t tell the difference. This is troubling.
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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.
YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.Thanks! JA
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Reading time – 69 seconds; Viewing time – 2:53 . . .
Pundits and non-pundits alike have been continuously baffled, as Trump has brayed out his fact-less, mean-spirited, anti-Constitutional idiocies. Why don’t people abandon him as he proves yet again that he hasn’t a thought in his head, other than promoting Trump? That seemed to be a continuously repeating departure from the norm of candidate stupid stuff harming or killing a campaign. Wuzzup?
Turns out it wasn’t and isn’t a departure from the norm. When people are angry it’s pretty standard that their concern over being respectful or even being accurate vanishes. Our country was founded with a huge piece of resentment powering the revolution. But is there a chasm of stupid that’s just too wide for even Trump followers to leap?
He may have found it this week, as he managed to anger everyone on both sides of the abortion issue. Not even angry people like it when their mouthpiece demeans them and lies about an issue they care about.
Trump was never a viable contender in a general election and I predict that he has now sealed his fate as a failed primary election contender. You can stop worrying about a President Trump. And there’s more.
Now that the DC Madam’s lawyer has promised to release records that he asserts will impact the 2016 presidential race and implicate someone as a “client” of this so-called, high-end escort service, be prepared for a bit more pruning of the ranks of contenders. Confession: I do hope that the soon-to-be-found out john is a self-righteous, Bible-thumping, wrapped-in-the-flag type. I just love the unmasking of a hypocrite.
Note, though, that we’re electing a commander in chief and not our national pants zipper monitor, so a private dalliance shouldn’t be a job dis-qualifier now, anymore than it should have been for Bill Clinton. On the other hand, we as a nation haven’t fully moved past our Puritan roots, so our neurotic sexual hang-ups will continue to rule. I guess we didn’t turn all the way around that corner in the ’60s.
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BTW:
As of April 1, 2016 $412 million has been raised by SuperPACs in support of the remaining presidential candidates. The SuperPAC Billionaires for Bernie has raised exactly $0. What do you think of that?
Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.
YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.Thanks! JA
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Reading time – 46 seconds; Viewing time – 2:46 . . .
Said Edward R. Murrow, “Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.”
Imagine if Donald Trump understood that. Or Ted Cruz. Or Mitch McConnell or Chuck Grassley or Sarah Palin or any of the long list of people whose notion of public service is:
To block any progress on anything other than bulking up the wallets of already rich people, and
Saying ludicrous, flagrantly false things designed to stoke fear and anger in people who are already fearful and angry.
It was during Bill Clinton’s presidency that the Republican party went full bore obstructionist. It became the party of “no” and offered absolutely nothing that would make America better, nothing to “form a more perfect union.” Republicans were solely about clawing for power via public confrontation, even opposing things they had previously championed.
Their philosophy was perfected during the Obama presidency, as Republican lawmakers and a few others gathered at an exclusive DC restaurant on inauguration night, January 20, 2009. The purpose of the meeting was to declare their strategy to defeat Obama in every way, to deny him any victories, regardless of the stupidity of their actions and the cost to our country.
Mitch McConnell went public with that, telling us his number 1 goal was to make President Obama a 1-term president, making clear that anything to make things better for the country or for the American people was secondary. It was all about a Republican power grab. Indeed, they would refuse to do the very jobs they were hired to do and instead would focus solely on partisan warfare. For them, cooperation and compromise meant that everyone else must cave in and agree with them 100%.
None of that strategy would have made sense or been wise had it been heard at the end of the bar. It surely was a clarion call to self-destruction that was heard halfway around the world and that didn’t make it any wiser.
It still isn’t wise and we’re living with that stupidity right now, as McConnell refuses to vet a Supreme Court nominee. He claims that presidents in an election year never make such appointments. That’s absolutely true, except for Anthony Kennedy, who was appointed in Reagan’s last year in office. In fact, one of every three presidents has made a Supreme Court appointment in an election year.
Sadly, Murrow was right.
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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.
YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.Thanks! JA
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Reading time – 61 seconds; Viewing time – 2:54 . . .
Bernie Sanders is telling us that he wants Americans to have universal health care – single payer. He is challenged by those on the left, the center and the right, asking how he’s going to get that done.
Donald Trump tells us he’s going to deport 11 million undocumented residents now in the U.S. The math for that works out to 7,534 people to be deported every day of a 4-year presidential term. How will he do that?
Ted Cruz has a plan to completely re-make the federal tax system. It would reduce the income of the government by $8.6 trillion over a decade. At the same time, he plans to dramatically increase money for the Defense Department and the National Security apparatus. The math simply doesn’t come anywhere near to working, so how will he do that?
Marco Rubio disapproves of increasing the national debt limit, but he doesn’t explain how the United States will avoid default on existing debt without raising the limit. By what magic will we not become a deadbeat nation?
Hillary Clinton has accepted many millions of dollars from big money influencers, including the fossil fuel industry, big Pharma and big banks. How will she lead without being influenced by those massive campaign contributions and the money sure to arrive for the purpose of funding her second term?
Here’s the point: You’ll never get a satisfactory answer to “How?” from any of the candidates. Nobody can tell you how a Democrat as president will get what they want through a Republican Congress. Nobody can tell you how an absolutist Republican president would accomplish his absolutist ends with the filibuster alive and well in the Senate.
All you can get is an idea of what these people believe in and the direction they would take the United States if they could take it some place. Decide for yourself if their values and ideas match yours (or if they are totally cuckoo bird) and stop fretting about the “How?” stuff, because most of what is promised during a campaign will never be done.
And VOTE. Illinois, Florida, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina primary elections are on Tuesday, March 15. Show up and VOTE.
Here’s some happy news: If you’re an Illinois resident and are not already registered to vote, you can register on election day. Yes, we have same-day registration now, so bring a few forms of ID, like your drivers license, passport, student ID, credit card, utility bill with your name on it – you only need one, but bring more just in case. Show up at your poling place and you’ll be able to register and VOTE right then and there.
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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.
YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.Thanks! JA
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Kudos go to CBS for their exposé of the rip off of veterans and Americans thinking they were contributing to the rehabilitation of our wounded vets when they donate to Wounded Warrior Project. The board of directors of Wounded Warrior Project has fired CEO Steve Nardizzi and COO Al Giordano for their extravagant waste, according to Jim Warren of The Poynter Institute. That action followed not only CBS’s story, but also that of the New York Times and a February 14, 2016 blog post on this site.
Don’t you love it when people doing bad things are held accountable?
Now, if we could just apply that to our politicians who paralyze our country and prevent any of our vexing challenges from being met, to the banksters who laid low our country with their fraud and nearly brought down the entire world economy, to the climate change liars, to the people who profit from locking up our fellow citizens and to so many others who serve their own short term interests and do lasting harm to all of the rest of us.
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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.
YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.Thanks! JA
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
Ed. note: This was my response to a letter from a friend, updated only very slightly, and was posted three months before the 2012 general election. Sadly, the question still haunts us.
Reading time – 3:34; Viewing time – 8:36 . . .
Thanks so much for your comments. I completely and enthusiastically agree . . . You said we have bigger fish to fry and we certainly do have enormous financial issues.
We really have been living beyond our means for decades and our politicians (both R’s and D’s) have done a good job of protecting their jobs instead of doing their jobs and, in the process, they have led the public to believe that there is a free lunch. We, the public, somehow went along with them when, to paraphrase Richard Pryor, the politicians said to us, “You gonna believe me or your lying good sense?” And we believed them. Go figure.
Notwithstanding the stupidity of all parts of that dynamic, my original comments that perhaps seemed polarized were and are intended to be focused on the broader issue. You used the word “reprehensible” and it is both apt and at the heart of my meaning. Here are a few data points, all of which raise a singular question.
The Republicans, led by Ted Cruz, held hostage the entire nation – even the entire world economy – to their fiscal demands. I understand that it was a leverage point, but the debt ceiling and a new budget are two entirely different things and the authorization to increase the debt ceiling should have been done as an independent issue. It should have been done immediately in order to declare our resolve to remain the standard for the world economy. Threatening financial disaster can be seen in another way: It is a statement of the kind of America the Republicans are trying to create. Is that really who we Americans are?
Conservatives Reagan, Bush I & Bush II, each in his time, ran up the biggest deficits/debt in the history of the world. Reagan and Bush I increased taxes to pay for their spending. Bush II instead both decreased taxes and started two unnecessary wars. All of that pushed us to the brink of financial disaster. Is that really who we Americans are?
Recall for a moment the Reagan-initiated frenzy for deregulation, a Republican mania that continues today. That led directly to the financial collapse of 2008 and, yes, D’s were complicit in that. All those trillions of bail out dollars are gone and with no accountability and nearly no mechanisms to prevent another round of “too big to fail.” Strangely, the Republicans are howling for still more deregulation which would put us at ever greater risk. Is that really who we Americans are?
A violent storm went through my area this morning and a power line was downed by a broken tree limb just a block from my house. The police were out in the violent storm within minutes, cordoning the area and protecting everyone from the continuous blast of 600 volt sparking and fire. Before heading to my basement due to a tornado warning, I saw more flames from another direction, called 911 and was connected to the fire department. I reported the situation and a bunch of guys saddled up and headed out in a fire truck, this while most of us were huddled in our basements from the continuing storm.
Consider, too, the school teachers to whom we entrust most of our kids’ education and those who drive snow plows through blizzards so we can go where and when we want. All these people protect and support us, including in dangerous situations and often in terrible conditions. They are also the people who the Republicans want to strip of some of their pay, their pensions, their right to bargain collectively and the Republicans want to lay off a bunch of them, too. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker wants to take nearly all of the savings from the heavy load put on the backs of Wisconsin cops, firemen, teachers and others and give it to rich people. Is that really who we Americans are?
Paul Ryan wants to kill Medicare, send everyone and their money to a few private medical insurers and leave millions of those who need health care adrift in their poverty. 70% of the savings from his plan to kill Medicare would go directly to rich people and corporations. Is that really who we Americans are?
In Michigan, the Republican controlled state government has decided that they have the right to take over any local governmental body in the state if the geniuses in Lansing decide that the locals need their help. [Update: Take a look at the Flint, MI lead-poisoned kids to get an idea of what a fine job those geniuses are doing.] They have effectively stripped voting rights from entire communities and imposed a dictatorship on the state. Is that really who we Americans are?
In Arizona, former governor Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio enshrined discrimination into the law and into desert concentration camps. Is that really who we Americans are?
Rand Paul says that it’s immoral that we helped the victims of Hurricane Katrina. That pretty much captures the America he and so many of the hair-on-fire R’s want us to become. Is that really who we Americans are?
The Republicans voted in lock step to continue to give tax breaks to the biggest oil companies which have the greatest profits in the history of the world. Huh?
Everything I see tells me that the Republican party wants to turn the clock back to the days of the robber barons. Life was very good then for the very rich. For everyone else, well, it wasn’t so good. The Republicans seem to be in favor of anything to kill those hated programs that help people who need help. Yes, I know there are plenty of dim-witted and even self-defeating programs that never should have been started or which have long outlived their usefulness. And don’t misunderstand me: There is nothing wrong with being rich. The wrong is in excluding everyone else.
The financial burden from the past is enormous and vexing. The financial challenge of the future will look different from the free lunch nonsense to which we are accustomed. There is plenty of fixing to do. The key, though, is our clarity of vision of who we want to be – our national True North. That direction is being decided right now, in part, by people doing reprehensible things. The reprehensible behavior is not one-sided, of course. The bulk of it that I see, though, comes from the right.
I wish I could find one of those moderate Republicans you mentioned who has the backbone to speak what s/he believes, rather than what they thought would get votes from “the base” and who would offer reasonable centrist views. I’m hoping that you are incorrect about them being extinct, but instead find that they are in hiding, waiting for the chest thumping storm of temper tantrum insanity to pass. I will welcome an honest exchange that focuses on making a better America.
At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I believe we are right now at an important crossroads in the battle for the soul of America. We are in a defining moment of setting a vision – a self-image – of who we Americans really are.
We are crafting the America our children and grandchildren will inherit – and we’re doing it right now!
We better get about the task. We better speak up about the task, because:
If you don’t make your voice heard, people who want a very different America from the one you want will be heard, because they will be the only ones talking.
Speak up! In the Comments section below. With your friends, your family and, yes, even your crazy brother-in-law. Speak up or you and your children will have to put up with what you’ve tolerated.
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.
With 25 years of hands-on executive experience as CEO of the commercial and industrial water treatment company I founded, I now use every bit of what I learned there in delivering workshops and keynote speeches on leadership. And it seems our national political leaders need a bit of that training, too. Let's talk about it here.
Reading time – 27 seconds; Viewing time – 55 seconds . . .
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