mental health

Potpourri v23.0


POST 1101


The Debate

In the spin room following the Trumpocalypse he claimed victory. He was asked again if would he would veto a national abortion bill should he be re-elected. He replied, “It was a perfect answer on abortion, and I’ve done a great job on that, and I’ve brought our country together.”

All but the extreme MAGAs now see clearly that he is uninformed, unglued and unfit. So he’s right that he’s brought us together – in recognizing his mental decline.

Here’s a CNN fact check on the debate.

Trump said that Harris had four years to fix our southern border immigration problem and didn’t get the job done. That’s worth mentioning because of a peculiar Constitutional limitation.

The vice-president has only two Constitutionally named jobs: 1. preside over the Senate; 2. wait for the president to die and then take over that job. Harris doesn’t set policy. Biden does. Trump seems to think he’s still running against Biden. For Trump, fantasy or reality – it’s all the same.

Steve Schmidt Quote of the Week

“What Donald Trump is running as is fuhrer of a fascist movement promising protection for White America against imaginary Haitians coming to eat their pets. The presidential campaign has become a clinic of mental illness – not on both sides. On one side.

“And that is the story of this race and the story that should be leading the news – all the news, every night, is that a man who wants access to the nuclear weapons that he singularly can launch, cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is fantasy.”

Meanwhile, George W. Bush’s Attorney General, Alberto “Torture Memo” Gonzales has endorsed Kamala Harris for President. Is that a good thing?

The Crime That Keeps On Stealing

At his State of the Union address in 2010, shortly after the Supreme Court invented a case that allows for massive, corruption-inviting loads of money to influence and at last buy our elections, Obama spoke directly about the Citizens United decision.

“With all due deference to separation of powers, the decision will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.”

Chief Justice Roberts, seated before Obama, shook his head and said, “Not true.”

But it was and it still is.

Foreign money has made it into our elections, but we only know about those bribes that have been caught. Beyond that, we know full well of many of the billions that warp every election. Here’s a link to a report that identifies the top 50 MegaDonor contributors, reported through August 20, with a breakdown of where their money went:

                 TO

Republicans                         $893.7 Million

Democrats                           $452 Million

Both                                     $203.6 Million

Third Party                           $29.6 Million

MegaDonor Total       $1.578.9 Billion

And there’s lots more mega-cash still rolling in.

Before the legalization of criminality that the Citizens United decision delivered, such contributions would have been considered bribes – felonies – and they would have been subject to criminal prosecution. But then John Roberts decided to create a law.

After deciding the actual CU case that was brought to the Court, Roberts called the litigants back and ordered them to argue the rights of inanimate objects – specifically, corporations. The Court then decided that corporations have all the rights that you have. That’s what allowed all those huge bribes to become legal and that’s why Citizens United is the crime that keeps on stealing.

A Second Flunked Taste Test

I did a taste test last month of a piece by Marc Thiessen of The Washington Post, headlining my comments, This Is Juicy. Mine was a most reasonable dissection of his idiotic claims, ending with, “So, nice try, Mr. Thiessen. You are entitled to your opinions, but the facts say you’re wrong.”

Thiessen came up with an intriguing headline more recently, Trump Can Knock Harris Out Of The Race In One Debate. Here’s how. I was sufficiently tweaked by his claim to give him one more taste test. Then I read his first paragraph.

If we have learned anything in recent months, it is that a single bad debate can end a presidential campaign — which is why Vice President Kamala Harris is apparently afraid to do more than one 90-minute, teleprompter-free exchange with former president Donald Trump.

Okay, it wasn’t just one debate that ended Biden’s campaign. There was also that massive in-party pressure.  But it’s the rest of the sentence that flies over the cuckoo’s nest.

Does Thiessen have inside information that says Harris is afraid to do more than one debate against Trump? Or that she is afraid to do more than one if they don’t include teleprompters? What is his source for what’s unstated but is in her head?

Of course, he has no source. He’s pretending that he knows. Ross Douthat of the Times and lots of other pundits do this often. It screams, “I really don’t know anything, so I’ll make up denigrating stuff.”

Mr. Thiessen, you have flunked my second taste test of your work. There won’t be another.

And fie on those who think their ignorance causes them to know what is in someone else’s head.

Despot Suck Up

The President of the United States has three primary jobs explicitly named in the oath of office and in Article II of The Constitution:

  1. Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States
  2. Be Commander in Chief of our armed forces
  3. See that our laws are faithfully executed

The are more duties, of course, but nowhere does the job description include cozying up to cruel dictators, condoning invasion of sovereign nations or abdicating the defense of our democracy. Here’s a quote from Ambassador Michael McFaul’s September 5 post:

In this column, I explained why “Putin has rational motives for wanting Trump to win,” including Trump’s pledge “to ‘look into’ recognition of Crimea as a part of Russia,” Trump’s “disdain for the United States’ alliances around the world [and] his “isolationist policies,” and indifference to “promoting democracy and human rights.”

Of course, Trump also encouraged Russia and Putin to, “do whatever the hell they want.”

Did I already mention “unhinged?” Add to that “faithless.”

Mental Health Warning

We see Trump’s obvious cognitive decline, his inability to complete a thought, his dissembling about fictional character Hannibal Lechter, sharks and batteries, his stringing together of words that don’t belong together and his fantastic claims, like that immigrants are eating pet dogs and others are taking over whole communities. Even as that stuff pulls the rug from under Trump’s election chances, it may provide an insanity defense in court. We need that guy nailed before he can get away with that.


It’s not the vibes, it’s not the polls: it’s the votes.
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“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”
  • – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016

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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.
    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, even if that makes them a few bucks more expensive. That will help to keep them your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

Mental Health Wake Up


POST 1099


CAUTION! THIS IS NOT SNARK

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Ugly Truth

We all know it’s a mental health thing, right? I mean, who but a mentally sick person would kill two kids and two teachers and wound 9 others? Who but a wacko dad would give an assault rifle to his mentally messed up 14-year-old kid?

“You don’t have to have been physically injured in this to be a victim,” District Attorney Brad Smith said outside the Barrow County [Georgia] courthouse. “Everyone in this community is a victim. Every child in that school was a victim.”

Who but someone deranged would blast away 20 first graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School? Or get bump stocks for his combat weapons, so he could fire over 1,000 bullets into concert attendees in just 10 minutes? He murdered 59 people and wounded at least 700 more at the Music Festival in Las Vegas.

They would be incoming freshmen right now. Thanks go to JN for this banner.

How crazy would someone have to be to massacre 17 kids at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School (Parkland), or murder sabbath service attendees at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh or kill grannies shopping at Topps Supermarket in Buffalo or murder the bible study people at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston or the County Environmental Health and Public Health employees in San Bernardino? Something must be mentally wrong with a person who would do such things.

And there’s plenty more insanity.

The political slaves to campaign contributions from the big bucks firearms industry will only admit that our daily slaughters can be blamed on mental health. Surely, they say, there’s no connection to our insane interpretation of the Second Amendment that allows combat weapons to be in the hands of anyone with the strength to lift one. But that excuse is insane. It’s a lie and they know it. We know it.

We are by far the world’s leader in firearms homicides and it isn’t because our kids watch more violent video games or because we are more mentally deranged than people in other countries or because we make and watch more violent movies. There’s just one reason:

We have more firearms per capita than any other nation on Earth – 120 of them per 100 Americans, including babies. That’s double the rate of the next most gun crazy country.
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It’s murderously easy to get a gun and ammunition. And that’s why we’re Number 1 in murders.

Are we massively mentally deranged, suffering from various violent behavioral anomalies, disorders, psychoses and apathy, too? Of course we are.

We’d have to be mentally ill to continue to elect people who will not do what 80% of us send them to office to do, like pass tough, common sense gun safety legislation. But we keep sending murder weapon enablers to Congress. It’s the very definition of insanity.

Of course we’re crazy, as we gasp at the atrocities and see the faces of the shell shocked survivors who will forever suffer from their trauma. But then we do nothing to stop the next shooting. That’s insane.

We ignore the paralyzing, knee collapsing shock that assaults our first responders who are first to the bloody crime scenes and have to face the horrid truth of the massacres and pick up what is left of those slaughtered. Then we move on and let those heroes fend for themselves. That’s insane.

And we ignore that our flag waving politicians have voted to further de-fund our mental health facilities. That’s insane.

Yeah, we have a mental health problem. It’s us.

Solutions

The Second Amendment is:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The reason for the amendment is spelled out in the first 13 words. It was included in the Constitution to placate southern enslavers who feared a slave uprising. That got Southern states to vote to adopt the Constitution. But the need for protection against a slave uprising no longer exists and it hasn’t since the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

Those 13 words call for not just any militia, but a well regulated militia. That means a force of trained troops under the command of a regulating authority. We have that. It’s our National Guard and every state has one. We have no need for vigilante militias or vengeance seeking wackos. So, second Amendment enthusiasts and the gun industry conveniently ignore all 13 words, focusing only on the last 14.

Those 14 words tell us that We The People may keep and bear arms, meaning firearms. In the Founders’ time there were only flintlock pistols and muskets. They didn’t have semi-automatic pistols or AR-15s or bump stocks or large capacity magazines. The right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment applied to muskets.

So, let’s be strict originalists, just as our extremist right wing Supreme Court justices think of themselves. Let’s change our understanding of the Second Amendment to mean exactly what the Founders meant.

American citizens may keep and bear all the musket ball firing flintlock pistols and long guns they want. And those are the only firearms that we originalists should allow.

Muskets have a repeat firing rate of possibly one ball fired every 30 seconds. If the Las Vegas shooter had used a musket instead of his bump stock-modified AR-15 he could have harmed only about 20 people in his 10 minutes of carnage, instead of over 750.

For our gun myopians:

  1. The Second Amendment wasn’t about showing what a tough guy you are, taking your AR-15 to Starbucks or to a bar or to polling places to intimidate voters, so don’t do that insane thing.
  2. Put trigger locks on your firearms and lock them up unloaded so that your aggrieved kid can’t grab them and kill other kids at his school, like that deranged 14-year-old kid at Apalachee High School in Georgia did last week. Same for the shooters at Sandy Hook, Parkland and Uvalde.
  3. Try being a good dad instead of a pretend soldier with a warped notion of patriotism. And get into therapy that focuses on anger management.
Wake Up

This is a wake up call to all of us to elect representatives who will do what We The People want them to do. Doing anything less is insane.

Wake up.


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“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”
  • – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016

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

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    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore, even if that makes them a few bucks more expensive. That will help to keep them your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


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

Bumper Sticker


While taking a road trip recently we were amazed by all the billboards for personal injury attorneys. We saw the same billboard posted three deep. We saw not only repeated cycles of multiple billboards for a single firm, but even two identical billboards stacked one on top of the other.

These advertisements were in the farm fields among the acres of winter wheat. Some were near wind generators. They were in the cities. They were nearly everywhere. Sometimes they were for any kind of injury and sometimes they were for specific injuries, like the attorney who apparently specializes in cases of injury related to over-the-road trucks. Lots of them were for medical injury cases. All of that made me wonder,

What does this endless solicitation for victims say about us?

Are we so clumsy or careless or unlucky that we’re constantly being injured? And if we are, how does that translate to someone else having to pay for our clumsiness, carelessness or injury?

We have over 70 years of Republicans training Americans to be angry and to see themselves as victims of some great global cabal or of the anti-American Democrats or of some supposed coastal elites or of some swamp. We’ve been instructed to see awfulness and grievance-stoking evil behind every tree, disrespect in every word and deed and a violation of our values and principles by anyone who disagrees with us. Our discontent has been validated constantly over those decades to the point that millions of us are now more dedicated to being angry and resentful than to anything else.*

We have a former President to whom this nation has listened for many years and who cannot get a full thought out of his mouth without lies accusing someone of wronging him. Worse, he has taught an entire generation of politicians and ordinary citizens to mimic his invented victimization. Woe be to these hapless victims for the terrible wrongs visited upon them by “others!” (That last is sarcasm.)

Now we the public have ramped up our victim-hood, to the point that nothing can assuage our pain until someone else pays for it and even then we’re still pissy. So, the ambulance chasers keep posting their come-on billboards and we keep them in business, seeking payment for the ills of our lives at the cost of 30% of a settlement, plus expenses.

Clearly, some people wrong others, whether intentionally or accidentally. When that happens, they should be held responsible and made to pay to clean up their mess.

But there isn’t always a bad guy. Sometimes it’s just the embodiment of the bumper sticker:

Next time be more careful.

The Train Derailment

It took a while for Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation, to show up in East Palestine, OH. I don’t know anything about that timing, but a lot of people are pretending to be inside his head and are ascribing fantasy reasons for it. Those fantasy reasons are of absolutely no value, other than that these people have something to whine about, someone to blame and something to use to crank up the anger of listeners. Instead, let’s do some digging into substantive things we can learn.

During the Trump administration when conscious reasoning by governmental officials was a cause for being fired, there was a mania to eliminate government regulations. The mania was based on the evidence-free notion that all regulation is bad.

Trump demanded that any new regulation be counter-balanced by the elimination of three existing regulations. Pick three, any three. Doesn’t matter which ones. Doesn’t matter their relative merit, whether they have anything in common with the proposed new regulation or whose pockets would get lined by removal of the regulations. That ought to work, right?

That brainless adherence to a goose stepping mantra has started to come home to us. The NTSB** will investigate and issue a final report on the cause of that train derailment. I’ll bet the report will include that a key cause was the elimination of railroad safety measures that were part of the regulations that were thrown away during the Trump administration. That’s an easy one to predict, because that actually happened.

I’ll also bet that those regulations that were dumped a few years ago were eliminated at the behest of the railroad industry. Now the people of East Palestine are suffering the consequences of that.

For a better understanding, watch the video of Pete Buttigieg speaking at the crash site, as well as the commentary by Brian Tyler Cohen. I like Cohen’s commentaries, but he’s particularly wound up over this issue and talks quite rapidly. You’ll be rewarded by hanging in there for the full 9:22.

It’s About The Kids – Of All Ages

Click the pic and watch the 59 second sheriff’s video of violence in a Florida high school. This is what we’ve taught our kids to do. Want to work in a school?

First read this from the National Education Association. It details the violence our teachers and school staff face every day. This dysfunction is driven in part by the massive increase in mental health problems in our nation and in school kids in particular. I believe it’s what we’ve created by means of our national pastime of adults behaving like brats on the playground. You know: the role models.

Our national promotion of violence is key. We can throw money at schools for support of student mental health, training for staff and more (although the public doesn’t want to pay for any of that), but if kids are getting messages outside of school that violence is good, justified and right, fixing this is a mountain that cannot be climbed.

We need major cultural change. We need moms & dads, politicians, everyone in any position of leadership to stop acting like a brat. If we stop teaching kids to be violent, they’ll stop being violent and magically, so will the rest of us. If we provide the money required to do what needs to be done, it will get done. This whole thing is a painful exercise in avoiding the obvious, the forehead slap about the things we all know we need. And no, teachers unions aren’t the problem. We are.
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We’ve been under-funding our schools for decades, possibly forever. But if you think taxes are high, think about the cost we’re already paying with half-way measures to prevent school shootings and mass murders in countless venues. Ask any Sandy Hook mom about that cost. Think about the cost we pay when we let yet another kid slip through the cracks into a hopeless life. Think about the stupid stories we tell ourselves about how great we are, even as millions are suffering and we’re doing nothing about it.
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It doesn’t have to be this way.
Top Stupiditude of the Week

Click the pic for the stupiditude story. Many thanks to Jim Nathan for the pointer.

‘Nuf said.

See Note #5 below

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* From David Corn’s American Psychosis, page 120:

” .  .  .  the New Right feeds on discontent, anger, insecurity, and resentment, and flourishes on backlash politics.”

Jack’s comment to that: The New Right isn’t new. The Right has been nurturing discontent, anger, insecurity and resentment for well over half a century.

** For a forehead slapping look at self-embarrasing Republicans in the House Oversight and Accountability Committee majority, read Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters From An American of February 25. It will make you glad you aren’t a Republican or it will drive you to leave that party, looking for signs of intelligent life elsewhere.

______________________________

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


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

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

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

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

    JA


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

DO SOMETHING! – Part 2


Gov. Abbott press conference in Uvalde, TX. Click the pic for the story.

Gov. “Bang-Bang” Abbott of the Shooting Gallery of Texas said he was livid at his press conference following the Uvalde massacre, this because he didn’t get the full, straight story about police actions, if there were any. His cops and his hand picked public safety officials had essentially snow jobbed him, he told us. Of course, we understand anger over not getting a straight story, because most of the time it’s impossible for us to get a straight story from Abbott. That makes lots of people livid.

If he’s livid it may be because this time he got caught as an accessory to the murders of school kids by a really well equipped, Texas authorized shooter. You know, body armor, two AR-15s and lots of ammo, stuff that Abbott wants troubled 18 year olds to have. Of course, Abbott didn’t have what it takes to give us the straight story about that. What we know is that he was livid about looking foolish, mouthing bad information – so very sad for his ego. He gave no indication that he was livid about 19 dead kids and 2 dead teachers. In fact, when he told us he was livid they were still trying to identify those little corpses and eventually had to resort to DNA matching, but he didn’t mention that.

Still, right then and there Abbott promised mental health services for survivors in Uvalde. That’s great, because those people are hurting terribly. It will be generations before the people of that town get over this catastrophe, if, indeed, those folks ever do.

It’s wonderful that Gov. Abbott is promising mental health assistance right there in Texas, which ranks 4th in the nation in prevalence of mental illness, but last in access to care. Plus it’s going to be tougher and extra awful for the suffering people of Uvalde, because Abbott can’t possibly provide the help he bragged about. That’s because he recently chopped the state budget for mental health services by $211 million. It seems we’re back yet again to that business of not being able to get a straight story from Gov. Greg Abbott.

Besides his phantom mental health support, it’s noteworthy that last year Abbott boasted of having signed at least 7 new laws making it easier for Texans to get guns, including one that allows people to carry handguns without a background check, without training and without a permit. Just buy, load and go. More recently he urged Texans to buy more guns because a report said that there were more guns in California than in Texas. Gotta love his competitive spirit. Bang bang.

All of that is in the wake of 23 shoppers killed at a Walmart in El Paso, 10 kids killed in their school in Santa Fe and 26 churchgoers shot dead in Sutherland Springs. Now 19 kids and 2 teachers in Uvalde have been murdered. Read this and this if you want to understand how deeply objectionable this guy is and exactly why people like you and dead gun victims simply don’t matter to him.

I pick on Gov. Abbott for several reasons, chief among which is that he deserves it. I want to be bigger about this, but the truth is that I enjoy verbally beating the snot out of this guy – or any guy – who’s all about promoting himself in the face of the ghastly price paid by others for his bravado. He’s a placeholder for all the “real man” chest thumpers and the “my rights and my freedom” guys who still have not figured out that there are a lot of other people just beyond their noses who also have rights.

Like the right to not get murdered. We’d like for our kids to have the right to stop having to do active shooter drills and for our elderly loved ones to have the right to go shopping without it being a death defying act. We’d like for all the you-and-me regular folks to have the right to go to the entertainment district and not get killed by a monster with weapons in his hands made possible by Gov. Greg Abbott and others just like him. I pick on Gov. Abbott because he is a self-righteous tyrant and promoter of death who deserves a verbal thrashing.

We’ll do well to admit that Gov. Abbott and other officials like him, as well as ordinary citizens described in the above paragraphs, are people who we’ll never persuade, so we’ll have to over-power them. That means that way more of us will have to vote.

To our gun culture enthusiasts:
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I get that having and firing a handgun or hunting rifle or assault rifle is fun. It makes young men and lunatic congressmen and women feel powerful, in charge, important. Gun culture is intoxicating. But here’s the thing: If I care at all about the pleasure you or anyone gets from owning, handling and firing guns, it isn’t even in the same universe as my care for little kids sitting at their desks at schools or grannies shopping or people in church or doctors and nurses at their hospitals.

Your right to own and fire your guns isn’t even remotely as important as our right to life, as described in the Declaration of Independence as an unalienable right. That means that you are not allowed to kill anybody. Your puffed chest Second Amendment right is way behind others’ right to safety.
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Quoting Peggy Hamburg, former FDA commissioner, “If you don’t see the light, you will soon feel the heat.”

Half-size caskets with cartoons for Uvalde kids. Click the pic for the sad story.

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The day is coming when all of this will be self-evident. Greg Abbott will be long gone, as will Ted Cruz and all the knuckle dragging congressional and state legislative candidates firing or handling guns in their campaign ads. Be clear that I respect the guns – they’re dangerous – but I don’t respect those people.

They’re not protectors from a tyrannical government, nor do they protect us from immigrants or from anyone else. What they do is to endanger We The People every day.

These chest thumpers are not the opponent; they are the enemy of American public safety. Some day they must be defeated.

We can hasten the arrival of that day. Indeed, we must hasten the arrival of that day, because over 100 Americans are dying by gunfire every day.

From DO SOMETHING! – Part One:

What creative ideas do you have to get candidates elected who are bold enough to pass meaningful, sensible laws to protect our children and grannies and church goers and concert and movie attendees and .  .  .  wait .  .  .  that’s all of us.

Which candidates will you phone bank for? Will you send out election reminder post cards? How about kicking in a few bucks to a congressional candidate in a swing state? You can even do something to elect state legislature candidates who think my little granddaughter and other school kids shouldn’t have to do active shooter drills. Here’s a link to The States Project. These folks are all about that and you can make a difference that just might keep people from getting killed.

Remember: To Fire the bastards! (see below) we have to replace them with good guys. That’s about promoting the right people and voting. That’s on us.

Key Words: DO SOMETHING!
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Like March For Our Lives – June 11
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Click the button to be directed to the closest march to you.
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Marches Near You!

June 11 – BE THERE!

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Must Reads

How Greg Abbott and Under 4 Percent of Texans Are ruining the State for the Rest of Us

The Epidemic of Mass Shootings is Neither Inevitable Nor Unsolvable

He Did Not Act Alone

Post Script

After little kids and grannies were massacred, after dozens of concert attendees were mowed down, after multiple murders in churches, synagogues and mosques, how can it be that there is any political resistance at all to laws to protect us from these killing machines and from homicidal maniacs?

What has happened to us such that we know what to do and yet steadfastly refuse to do it?

Have no misunderstanding, no fog of ignorance: This is a test. It is a test of who and what we care about, what we value, what is precious to us. The answer to the single test question is not yet another string of hollow platitudes or another chest thumping, self-serving speech. The question is critical. I fear the answer.

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

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

DO SOMETHING! – Part 1


I was talking with my long time friend David Ellman the other day. Actually, we were venting our rage over 19 more kids and two more teachers being massacred. We were livid.

We, like most of the American people, are sick of the constant stream of innocent dead people, the hypocritical thoughts and prayers, the stupid non-solutions (only one school door and it’s locked all day, Sen. Cruz? Really?) and the intransigence of the suck up wing of the Republican Party (that’s roughly all of them). More on that coming in DO SOMETHING! – Part 2.

Anyway, Dave had an interesting solution – actually a few solutions – to help cops to intervene to stop murderers. You know: like, DO SOMETHING!

  1. Install small, inexpensive cameras in classrooms and hallways that can be streamed to dispatchers and cops so that the cops know where the bad guys are. That way they’re not breaching a door without knowing which way to shoot to stop the bad guys.
  2. Install peep holes between rooms. This solution has a couple of extra benefits, like being super cheap, plus cops can stop the threat without actually entering the room by shooting through the wall.
  3. Same idea as #2, but with schoolroom false ceilings.

He went on to say,

“I bet there are hundreds of retired men and women in every community who have mechanical skills (basic construction), and who would gladly donate some time to assist in the installation of peep holes, cameras, etc. in local classrooms. All it would take is one knowledgeable (and properly licensed) person to lead a team of workers. Labor would be donated by everyone. I’m sure that teams in every town could be created in days, not years.”

None of Dave’s ideas requires battling the NRA or its bought and paid for politicians. And yes, I agree that there will be privacy issues to contend with over cameras and peep holes, but Dave continued,

“In a country that allows an unhinged 18 year old boy to buy an AR-15 with a thousand bullets, and Donald Trump to have total control over a button that could initiate a nuclear war, I don’t think it’s a stretch that a school principal should be able to turn on a camera in a grade school classroom that has just been taken over by an armed shooter.”

The point is that there can be simple and inexpensive solutions that don’t get stymied by self-serving, disingenuous, mealy-mouth politicians. Of course, such measures won’t stop every attack, but they’ll stop or at least limit some. What if we can come up with additional simple and inexpensive solutions? Do you think that we just might gradually reduce the body counts in America? So do I.

The people of Uvalde and Buffalo have spoken, telling us what to do and they are right: DO SOMETHING! That’s what they told President Biden. That’s what they’re telling us: DO SOMETHING!

I haven’t faith that 10 Republican senators can be found who will vote for whatever compromised-to-near-nothingness bill is negotiated and presented to them. It comes down to us – you and I – to take whatever steps We The People can take right now. Later, as the magenta below makes clear, we’ll Fire the bastards!

Here’s the action summary of this One-Two DO SOMETHING!

One

This is going to take everybody’s hands on the rope to pull this wagon to get it to where we want it to be. You’ve heard Dave’s ideas. What creative ideas do you have? Scroll down and you’ll find the Comments section where you can contribute your ideas to stop or limit our ongoing national death march. My commitment is to compile a list and forward it to all members of Congress.

Two

What creative ideas do you have to get candidates elected who are bold enough to pass meaningful, sensible laws to protect our children and grannies and church goers and concert and movie attendees and .  .  .  wait .  .  .  that’s all of us.

Which candidates will you phone bank for? Will you send out election reminder post cards? How about kicking in a few bucks to a congressional candidate in a swing state? And you can do something to elect state legislature candidates who think my little granddaughter and other school kids shouldn’t have to do active shooter drills. Here’s a link to The States Project – these folks are all about that and you can make a difference that just might keep people from getting killed.

Remember: To Fire the bastards! (see below) we have to replace them with good guys. That’s about promoting the right people and voting. That’s on us.

The Onion provides context. Click the pic and watch the slide show.

All of our noodling over solutions that can do something about our national carnage is way less of a problem than our being perpetually livid – most of the country is livid right now. We’re livid over 19 little kids and 2 teachers, plus shopping grannies and church goers being killed and with 25 being injured, too, all in the space of just 10 days. And during those same 10 days there were 15 other mass shootings in America. Those tallied 11 more dead and 61 more injured and that count doesn’t include Tulsa. See for yourself here.

“It goes up to 11. That’a louder, i’nit?” From This Is Spinal Tap

The Uvalde and Buffalo survivors are right when they say, “DO SOMETHING!” We can’t count on Congress now, so it really is up to us. Crank up your creative ideas machine and set it to 11.

Many thanks to Dave for his ideas and for stimulating this post.

Must Reads

Yolanda Renee King is a 14-year-old granddaughter of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She has a message for her peers that you need to both read and then distribute to the teens and 20-somethings in your life. She has the spirit of her grandfather and we surely need that spirit right now. Many thanks to JN for pointing out this remarkable piece.

And read Allie Carter’s piece in the Washington Post, At school, we prepare to be shot at. This is how it feels.

Livid: A Question For Our Time

Where were the parents of that Uvalde shooter for the past 18 years?

Or the parents of the Buffalo shooter for the past 19 years?

For that matter, where were the parents of all of our Glock-, AR-15- & AK-47-armed, body-armored teenage mass murderers for all of their years?

WHERE THE HELL WERE THE PARENTS?

Every one of them raised a monster.

From President Biden:

Enough. It’s time for each of us to do our part. It’s time to act. Add your name to urge Congress to take action to end gun violence.

  • Finally, read this if you want to know why 18 – 23 year olds commit mass murders. Then, DO SOMETHING!

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

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

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

The Most Valuable Event at the Tokyo Olympics


Simone Biles, easily one of the best and perhaps the best of women gymnasts, dropped out of the team competition. She cited a case of the “twisties” and perhaps some other issues that were troubling her. Social media creeps wasted no time in attacking her, calling her a quitter and applying far more horrific labels. She has retained her dignity and has not responded to the ugly. That leaves us with two things.

First, the internet trolls continue to show us the depths to which humans will go to be inhumane, to be cruel, selfish and hateful. They teach us the boundlessness of their ignorance and the harm they hope to do in their ignorance. While that may give them a rush of power, we know who and what they are.

The second thing we are left with is a profile in courage, a demonstration of bravery to do what is right in the face of enormous pressure to do otherwise. We have a picture of what honesty looks like, a stake in the ground for mental health, a demonstration of class and a reminder and an opportunity to fine tune our caring and empathy for one another.

Whatever records are set, whatever astounding performance in sports is displayed, however we are wowed by the elite Olympic athletes, Biles withdrawing from the team competition is and will stand as the most valuable event at the Tokyo Olympics.

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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.

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

Here’s Why, Mr. Towns, and More


1965

2004

Reading time – 3:58; Viewing time – 5:19  .  .  .

In the 1965 movie classic The Flight of the Phoenix (with a remake in 2004) there is a clash of personalities between the pragmatic airplane captain and a most particular aeronautical engineer. In understated frustration, the engineer at last says to the captain, “Mr. Towns, you behave as though stupidity were a virtue. Why is that?”

I’ve asked that question about Donald Trump many times. Now I think I have an answer.

I founded an industrial water treatment company and ran it for 25 years. We would have monthly meetings to discuss what was going on, plans for future endeavors – standard business stuff. And there was one person in the company who had a way of derailing almost any discussion. He would interject a comment that was far off-topic or just plain nuts, and progress would come to a halt. It took me a long time to get past my boundless annoyance with his behavior and come to understand what was really going on.

This guy was profoundly uncomfortable in his own skin and needed lots of attention. And the only way for him to feel safe was to keep everyone else off balance. Hence, his discussion mangling behavior.

Now about the president  .  .  .

Trump constantly says things that upset others, that jar stability, that unhinge focus, that make heads spin. He lies with every breath and is cruel and has frequently contradicted himself multiple times within a single sentence. He repeats his crazy talk over and over, as though to convince himself that his fantasies are reality. All of these things keep everyone else off balance. And they keep the world focused on him, feeding his desperate need for attention. Perhaps the little man in the big White House has to do that in order to feel safe in the world.

Keeping everyone else off balance doesn’t require the work of consultation with experts on vital issues, or having sound strategy for dealing with complex challenges, or giving even momentary consideration to consequences. All he has to do is to supply a constant stream of lunacy. It’s a truly brilliant tactic to avoid being found out – to keep others from knowing he’s just a scared, insecure fraud.

In addition  .  .  .

The Trump administration has published a final rule change – the “public charge” bastardization of the 1999 rule regarding immigrants receiving benefits. This new rule effectively says we only want rich, educated immigrants. Others need not apply.

One result of this new rule is that immigrant families are afraid to get their kids vaccinated against infectious diseases, because receiving public assistance in any form will count against them when it’s their turn for a green card.

If putting immigrant kids at risk by withholding cheap vaccinations doesn’t trip your trigger, just get that this cruel policy of this hateful president is putting your children at risk.

Next, some math  .  .  .

As has been noted recently – and you may remember this from 7th grade science class – trees breathe, taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. In doing so, they become a carbon sink, or storage facility, sequestering carbon in their wood. Because of that remarkable facility, they counter global warming.

As such, It has been estimated that we can dramatically reduce global warming by planting 1 trillion trees worldwide. There are about 8 billion people in the world, so basic math says that to accomplish that level of planting, every person on earth will have to plant 125 trees. That’s challenged by the number of people living in areas where trees just don’t grow, so the number trees the rest of us will have to plant will have to be higher.

The Amazon rain forest is said to be the lungs of the planet, supplying about 20% of the planetary carbon dioxide-oxygen exchange, but vast areas of that life giving forest are burning. That is releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the air and undermining the area’s future capability to store carbon because the trees are gone.

That 125 trees per person number is going up. Better start planting.

And finally  .  .  .

President Trump has repeatedly inquired about using a nuclear bomb to stop hurricanes. The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has explained that not only would dropping a nuke not stop a hurricane, it would make the storm radioactive and spread that radioactivity over places where lots of people live.

Just so you know.

Note: My video math is off by a decimal point. The printed number – 125 trees per person – is correct. Apologies for my limited access to fingers. JA

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. So,

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

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

Thanks!

NOTES:

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

JA


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

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