NO KINGS

Headlines Plus NO KINGS Pics


POST 1272

Headlines
.
.
U.S. Worker Thriving Declines as Job Market Pessimism Grows:
Over half of employees are seeking or watching for new jobs, even as most [72%] say it is a bad time to find one. – Gallup, March 24, 2026
.
‘I feel betrayed’: Trump is losing young voters over Iran, economy – The Washington Post, March 16, 2026
. 
.
Zelenskyy Offers to be Temp US President While Trump Undergoes Psychiatric Evaluation– The Borowitz Report, March 31, 2026
.

In these most troubled times, we need an injection of humor regularly.

NO KINGS – Pass In Review!

As you review these pics of signs at NO KINGS demonstrations and marvel at people’s creativity, note, too, that the signs this time were edgier than at the demonstrations last year. Read that as you will, but I’m seeing greater anger and frustration. We’ve had way too much of Trump’s cheating, lying, war-ing, cover-ups, lawlessness, betrayal and dementia,* as well as the cowardice of Republicans in Congress.

 

Actually, WE are our only hope. But I really like the sign!

________________________________________________________

Click me

* “We’re in a hell of a lot of trouble. Us, America, but the world is in a lot of trouble because the most powerful man in the world is both evil and demented.” – Psychologist Dr John Gartner. Click here and watch his clear explanation.

Many thanks to MZ for pointing me to this interview.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:

– Register voters

– Give to the ACLU

– Train to fight ICE

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!), because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

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

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.
  4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA

 

 

 

 

 


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

Get Up! Stand Up!


POST 1270

It is NO KINGS Day, 3-28-26. Look at the map. There are over 3,300 events and they are all over this country. There are even NO KINGS events in Kenya, Ecuador and all over Europe.

This is a worldwide declaration by

We The People

.

that we don’t want – we reject, we refuse – any king or monarch or authoritarian or dictator and the wannabees, too.

This isn’t just about Trump. We refuse the next power grabbing freedom thief too.

Wherever you are there is a gathering of people just like you, people who know that “enough is enough” doesn’t come close to the real message:

Any at all is too much!

.
Right now is the time. Click on the map and choose a location close by.
.

Be part of the biggest, most fundamentally just and morally right declaration for freedom from tyrants that has ever been.

GET UP! STAND UP! LIFT UP YOUR VOICE FOR FREEDOM!
.

Your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren will ask you where you were on this great day. Tell them,

I was on the street.

I was in the park.

I was in front of city hall and I was standing on the steps of the Capitol Building.

I was marching in front of the White House.

I was at the bay.

I was in the desert.

I was in the mountains.

I was on the vast plains.

On that great day I was where you needed me to be.

I demanded freedom for you.

I demanded justice for you.

I and millions of my freedom loving friends stood up, in community, for you.

We roared as with one voice:

NO KINGS!

NO KINGS!

NO KINGS!

.
RIGHT NOW – click the map and pick a venue. Then put on your marching shoes and head out to make your call for freedom heard.
.
This is the place. This is the moment.
.

GET UP! STAND UP!

Time for action is dwindling

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!), because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

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

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.
  4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA

 


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

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

    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!), because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

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

    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.
    4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

    Click me

    JA


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

What This War Is All About


POST 1268

A Little News Wrap-Up
  1. As detailed in Rolling Stone, 17% of young Republicans are Hitler loving Nazis, John Avalon reported on Morning Joe on Monday, March 16.
  2. The Chairman of the FCC and Trump are threatening broadcast networks that they’ll take action against those outlets which report news and opinion about the war that Trump doesn’t like. You’re right: that violates the First Amendment. Trump will do so to get his way through intimidation. See Timothy Snyder’s First Lesson in On Tyranny: Don’t obey in advance.
  3. Hegseth says we’re winning and doing so “without mercy” and “we will show no quarter for our enemies.” That means we will take no prisoners and instead we’ll kill everyone, including those who surrender. How very chest puffy of Hegseth to declare that. Other than the moral repugnance of such a thing, intentional cruelty and murder violate our own Uniform Code of Military justice. That means it’s a crime according to our own laws to follow Hegseth’s direction. And it’s a war crime, too. So, any U.S. military personnel who act according to Hegseth’s dictum will be international criminals.
  4. For an excellent explainer, read Sheila Markin’s post here.
War Update

Trump ignored warnings about likely Iranian opposition to a U.S. initiated war and did scant planning for it, even to the point of having no clear, achievable objectives.

The U.S. military doesn’t have the capacity to guard all regions of the globe, commit various offensive actions against Iran and also escort 130 – 150 ships per day through the Strait of Hormuz to protect them from Iranian missile and drone attacks. So, Trump is now trying to strong-arm other nations into filling the gaps in U.S. preparedness.

After harming them with tariffs, Trump has repeatedly threatened, disrespected and coerced members of NATO to help. In fact, now he is alternately begging and dismissing them regarding sending their warships to the Strait of Hormuz.

Stable genius Trump’s demand has been rejected or ignored by over a dozen countries. He said that if they won’t support his war, “I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”

Let’s be clear that the United States attacked Iran, not the other way around. The NATO charter doesn’t require any support for a member nation that violates international laws regarding other nations’ rights and sovereignty. Nothing is promised to a nation which goes to war because its leader had “a feeling,” apparently based upon no evidence, that some unnamed bad thing was about to happen.

I swear it’s true that Trump posted this plainly self-contradictory idiocy:

“We have already destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military capability, but it’s easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close range missile somewhere along, or in, this Waterway, no matter how badly defeated they are.”

This is the person who started a war based on “a feeling.”

Insufficient and Insecure Being

On Thursday, with the Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sitting next to him, Trump made a cringe worthy comparison of his sneak attack on Iran to the Pearl Harbor attack. That was in response to a question about his failing to notify our allies in advance of his ambush. Said Trump,

“We didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan, okay?

Turning to her, he asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, okay?”

We shake off the willies and go on.

In the preface to Brother Wayne Teasdale’s book, The Mystic Heart, Dr. Beatrice Bruteau makes an insightful comment that applies to our time, writing,

Consider that domination, greed, cruelty, violence and all our other ills arise from a sense of insufficient and insecure being. I need more power, more possessions, more respect and admiration. But it’s never enough; the fear always remains. It comes from every side; from other people; from economic circumstances; from ideas, customs, and belief systems; from the natural environment; from our own bodies and minds. All these others intimidate us, threaten us, make us anxious. We can’t control them.

Hence, our sociopath.

Trump’s effrontery, like that dumped on the Japanese PM, and all of his anti-social exhibitions play out in his domination, greed, cruelty, violence and the rest, as they inevitably “arise from a sense of insufficient and insecure being,” He harms and kills others in his desperate clawing to fill his emptiness. But he’ll never fill that void. Never.

That explains, but it doesn’t excuse. And now we are in yet another intractable war that should never have been started. People are dying and people are suffering and it’s of no consequence to Trump. But it is to us.

Just get that all the outrageous narcissism is about Trump trying to fill his bottomless neediness and we are the now hapless victims of that. It’s about his deadly coverup, too. See the final sentence in this post.

Follow Up

Last Wednesday in my post Winning I detailed some of what should be wins for We The People but instead they are abject, painful losses for us. Here’s an important addition that’s critical to that list for a lot of people.

Two and a half years ago there was a freak and violent hurricane that hit the Asheville area of North Carolina. The residents looked to FEMA for help and there was very little. Then Trump took office and ravaged the agency, making things far worse. There are lots of people in that devastated area still paying mortgages on houses they cannot live in, while simultaneously paying for housing elsewhere. And FEMA is nowhere to be found.

To be fair to FEMA, it is sorely hobbled by a huge percentage of its people having been DOGEed by Chainsaw Musk, so those remaining are unfairly challenged. There’s no way to distribute desperately needed cash to desperate people if there’s nobody there to do the job. Do you think the folks in Asheville feel like they’re winning?

Report From The Snark Department

Perhaps you’ve wondered how MAGAs could remain in thrall to Trump in the face of his anti-patriotic bluster. They vote against their own best interests and even thump chests about that.

I’ve repeatedly cautioned that such people have valid grievances. Their blockage is that they are ruled by their anger and that blanks their ability to think clearly and critically. They are limited to rage and hatred and they are unable to oppose what is actually abhorrent to themselves.

Watch this rant from Cliff Cash.

CAUTION: There is a lot of potty mouth in this rant. If nasty words offend you, don’t watch the video.

Speak Up 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 the they are the minority and we are the majority.

The cure for hopelessness is action.
What It’s All About

DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT let Trump’s war distract you from his culpability in the Epstein crimes. Trump trying to cloud your eyes is what this war is all about.

  • Time for action is dwindling

    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!), because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

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

    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.
    4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

    Click me

    JA


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

The Rush To War And, Of Course, Money


POST 1266

This is an unusual day/time for letting you know about a new Disambiguation. It’s part of some good news, which is .  .  .

My web geeks tell me that they’ve fixed the spam inundation, which means that you can now enter your comments without getting the third degree from Captcha. So, speak!

The U.S. Stampede To War

A piece published in Dispatches from the Atlantic Council entitled Before striking Iran, Trump should answer these six questions explores what our bottomlessly ignorant President and State Department should have done before launching this illegal war. The questions are here, with my answers following them.

Questions and Answers

Q1: What is the objective of [this] military campaign?

First, foremost, middle and last, to distract from the Epstein case.

As to the military objective, nobody knows. It’s a vast cluelessness, callousness and official incompetence surrounded by tough guy posturing. See this sample of the White House videos.

Q2: What might Iran do in response?

There is no evidence that this was considered. But by now we know about their missile and drone strikes and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. You don’t suppose they might try some terrorist stuff, do you? Explosions? Cyber terrorism? Proxy uprisings?

Q3: Will Trump face any consequences this time around?

Oh, please, please, please.

Q4: [Wa]s there a feasible diplomatic off-ramp prior to conflict?

Yes, given that Iran posed no threat to the U.S. But Trump was too excited about looking like a tough guy flexing U.S. military muscle to bother with little impediments like diplomacy. Plus, there;s that wagging of the dog thing.

Q5: How will the Iranian people respond to a military campaign?

They will die and death will come from our bombs, missiles and drones.

Q6: What role will US regional partners play?

They will be targets for Iranian missiles and drones. They won’t lift a finger to help the war effort, nor will any U.S. ally.

We can add more questions, like:

Jax Q & A

Q7: What is the end game – the off ramp for ending this war?

There is none. Trump says bombing will stop “when I feel it, OK, feel it in my bones.” Yes, he said that.

Q8: Now that we’ve broken things, we own them, per the Pottery Barn rule as taught to us by Gen. Colin Powell. What are we prepared to do with the broken mess we’ve created?

Nothing. We will just turn our back to the suffering we’ve created. Think: Vietnam; Iraq; Libya; Syria; Afghanistan; Yemen; Somalia; Nigeria; Venezuela.

Q9: How will we repair relationships with the countries in the region that have suffered from Iranian bombardment, triggered by our display of our manly manliness?

Trump will tell them that nobody has ever seen anything like the rebuilding we’ll do. Then he will accept their bribes, which they will give, hoping for assistance. He will pocket the money and do nothing to help them.

Q10. How many dead American military is too many?

There is no number high enough to deter Trump from his Epstein distraction.

There is so much that should have been done way in advance of any hostilities at the direction of smart, wise experts in international affairs. But those people have been forced out of government service and replaced either by nobody, leaving us empty of expertise, or by know nothings and people who think war is a bar room video game.

Now the question is how we can get out of this mess. Trump will reject any solution that won’t leave him looking like a hero, the  likes of which nobody’s ever seen before, and keep us distracted from the Epstein criminal participants. Got any ideas?

Follow What?

After being forced out of office by the exposure of his criminality in the Watergate crimes, Nixon returned to his home in California and never admitted to any wrongdoing. Indeed, in an interview with David Frost in 1977 he defended himself, arrogantly declaring,”When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” That was an echo of the long dead divine right of kings and a precursor to the divine right of Trump, a vicious Supreme Court perversion of our Constitution.

The advice to Woodward and Bernstein for investigating Watergate was, “Follow the money.” We can do that now to understand Trump’s illegal war against Iran.

Who benefits monetarily? The easiest way to think about that is to consider who benefits from greatly increased oil prices.

The U.S. is energy independent. The Straight of Hormuz may be blocked and 20% of the world’s oil supply may be choked off, but that doesn’t affect supplies here. The cost to produce a gallon of gas or diesel fuel has not increased a bit, but still the prices at the pump continue to rise.

You’re the loser because you are funding the expanding profits of oil companies. Watch those quarterly reports for confirmation. Trump’s billionaire friends thank you.

Who else benefits from this war? Certainly, the manufacturers of war matériel receive enormous contracts to replace our fabulously expensive drones, missiles, rockets, bullets, that refueling airplane that crashed and killed 6 of our people and yet more. Betcha those billionaire friends of Trump are sending him messages with hugs and kisses emojis.

How about Saudi Arabia? They hate the Iranians. They’re in a centuries old battle of Sunni/Shia, each side certain that Allah is on their side and the other side is a horde of horribles, which may actually be true in both directions. Betcha the Saudis are content to have Trump do the dirty work of pounding Iran. They just might be paying Trump handsomely for him to be their bounty hunter. Watch for more billions to be given to Jared Kushner.

Russia has gained a windfall of over $6 billion due to Trump releasing Russia from oil sanctions. How come Putin gains huge whenever Trump acts?

You get the idea. This war was a money con long before a shot was fired. We’ve been given bottomlessly stupid explanations for the reason for our attack, including that Trump “had a feeling” that the Iranians might possibly do something or other. We’ve been given a long string of implausible goals for this war with no consistency coming from the idio-scenti.*

Pay no attention to our over 200 mangled troops dumped into VA hospitals or the now 13 flag draped coffins that have arrived at Dover AFB. Hey, our President told us with a yawn that people die in war, you know?

And he calls them suckers and losers.

Ultimately, it’s simple: follow the money. But DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT be distracted from the Epstein case and Trump’s involvement.

I’m Not So Sure

Likely, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a Lebanese-born U.S. citizen, was unglued because he had lost four family members to an Israeli bombing in Lebanon last week. So, he did what any of us would do. He strapped on his rifle, mounted his explosives filled vehicle and rammed it into a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan.

In the aftermath of each of our unceasing episodes of religious and racial violence we regularly hear calls to our “shared humanity.” I’m not so sure that we have a shared humanity, except in a genetics sense. When someone is moved to violence against others, is that person’s humanity displaced or perhaps destroyed by uncontrollable rage? Did the killer of eleven at Tree Of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh share our humanity? It looked to me more like he was sharing his rage and his full magazines of bullets. Same at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston where nine were murdered. Same when ten were murdered at the Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo. Do we have a shared humanity with those murderers? I’m not feeling it.

Right now I’m not much in the mood to understand those who want to get their way by means of murder. There just isn’t much detectable humanity in them.

Come to think of it, that’s a lot like Trump jamming our military into where it doesn’t belong, getting his way by means of murder.

Spare me the calls to shared humanity.

Make Your Voice Heard

Click here to find a No Kings rally near you. Then show up on March 28.

The cure for hopelessness is action.

_________________________________________

* Cognoscenti – “people who are considered to be especially well informed about a particular subject.” My made-up idio-scenti is the opposite of that and is well displayed in this government.

  • Time for action is dwindling

    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!), because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

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

    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.
    4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

    Click me

    JA


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

War, Consequences and Fantasy


POST 1265

What Will Iran Do?

If you had been in charge in Iran for the past 14 months and had heard Trump’s bluster and saber rattling about attacking your country, what preparations would you make? Surely, you’d be thinking about defense for your country and your people. What else?

The Iranians are a proud people. Having now been attacked without provocation, it’s reasonable to assume that they might want something Trump understands: retribution. There’s no way Iran will be satisfied just to have been a punching bag for the West’s military adventure. They can’t beat the U.S. and Israel militarily, so they would look for some asymmetrical way to hit back. One thing they do well is to sow terror. Indeed, it’s what they do best.

They have already attacked our military installations in the region, killing 7 of our people and injuring over 130. They’ve sent missiles and drones into Israel and clogged the Strait of Hormuz. They can only continue their attacks until their weapons supply is exhausted. Then they will do something else.

One thing they could do is to plant explosives, maybe even dirty bombs, around the U.S. and near U.S. embassies. They could place them in schools, hospitals and in government buildings. They could attack our infrastructure and our cities, with these explosives to be detonated as they desire. They could murder a lot of Americans and hobble our nation.

Their attacks would serve more than their hunger for retribution. Terrorist attacks could be a powerful trigger to permanently empower American authoritarians, our home grown fascists, to declare martial law, to destroy our democracy and to end our civil rights. They could destroy our way of life. They will believe that destroying “the great Satan” is a great and religious victory, a tribute to Allah.

What kind of corner do you think we’re painting ourselves into with this illegal, punitive and pointless war? Put your notions in the Comments section below.

If you want to stretch your brain further, consider what Vladimir Putin  and President Xi may do, as Trump systematically shifts global advantage to Russia and China. Trump is tolerating Putin’s providing Iran sophisticated targeting of American assets in the Middle East to blow up our hardware and to kill our people. Trump has also shifted much of our Pacific military might away from Taiwan, opening the door to Xi to walk through. What a fine time this is to be America’s adversary, thanks to Donald Trump.

To be fair, Trump’s deadly Iran folly is a brilliant move for Trump himself. He’s taking our eyes away from ICE cruelty and murder and from the Epstein affair and Trump’s part in it. It’s what con men do. Damage to our nation and the crushing of justice and the death of Americans? Big Trump yawn. He’d rather talk about his gold drapes and his “You’ve never seen anything like this” useless ballroom.

Ever and always, it’s all about Trump. He has no room in his narcissism for the welfare of the American people or the Iranian people or our servicemen and women. And as his dementia and other maladies progress, expect worse, especially because our Gallery of Cowardice Republicans are invertebrates. They whisper in private about how bad Trump is and then vote for whatever he wants in perfectly choreographed goose step. That will ensure many casualties, both in Iran and in America.

Selling The War With Brainless Hoo-Ah

Top officials in our government seem to think that war is nothing more than a video game. They thump chests while mixing extremely dangerous actions with toxic and murderous masculinity, as though war is just fantasy that doesn’t count in the real world. Hey, it doesn’t hurt Trump or his department heads, so why shouldn’t we war whoop?

Watch this official White House video promoting the awesomeness, the “Meanest S.O.B. in the valley of the shadow of death,” the absolute power of American might and our endless toxic testosterone.** And watch this video linked from Sunday’s post. In it Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, Destruction and Primal Screaming, shows how way cool war looks by mixing video from the actual bombing of Iran with video game footage. It’s not clear if one of the actual bomb explosions in Tehran shown in his video was the one that killed 175 little school girls. No problem, because Pete just doesn’t care about them or the over 1,200 Iranians already killed. It isn’t at all clear that Hegseth even cares about our 7 wear dead, either.

Keep in mind that those brain-free video dispatches aren’t from some cretinous, online troller. They are our official government cretinous dispatches.

They think they’re selling the war to the American people so that we’ll be silent as they create more death and destruction. They think that chest thumping is enough and that we won’t notice that they have no objectives, there is no strategy, there is no exit plan, there isn’t a definition of what comes next and there is not even a vague notion of what victory would look like. Trump says he demands “unconditional surrender,” perhaps to send a mothballed battleship to the port of Bandar Abbas to have surrender documents signed there. Idiocy.

Trump has invented a war so that he could be a war president, with all of us rallying ’round the flag and him. But a majority of Americans disapprove of this war and 74% oppose sending ground troops into Iran.

One thing is clear: sending U.S. ground troops into Iran will be a disastrous, murderous blunder. That, though, won’t stop President Bone Spurs. We’ll need the Congress to stop him. How’s that going to happen?

This Trump administration is the cabal that has:

– imperiled our economy

– raised the cost of living for everyone

– has not just killed job growth but has cost over 100,000 manufacturing jobs

– brutalized, imprisoned, tortured and killed innocent American citizens, legal residents and immigrants who have done no wrong

And now it has started a war that immediately spread to be a regional war with no solution even at the horizon. What are we going to do about it.

Click here to find a No Kings rally near you. Then show up on March 28. Add the event to your calendar._______________________________________________

* It’s great political theater to brag that we have the greatest military in the world, but how sure are we that China isn’t the biggest, baddest gorilla? How sure are you or any of us that we really are the greatest military?

  • Time for action is dwindling

    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!), because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

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

    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.
    4. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
    6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate.
    7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

    Click me

    JA


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

Cruelty


POST 1223

  • When your political universe is sorted into “pure” and “traitor,” cruelty becomes a tool. The point isn’t just to be offensive—it’s to police loyalty.
  • – Dean Blundell
  • _______________________________________

Here’s some clarity from @JoJoFromJerz:

@JoJoFromJerz is right, of course. This intentionally cruel material dumps onto us every day. Here’s another example.

Click the pic and watch the short video.

In Cicero, IL (Chicago area) ICE thugs dragged two women from their car in an elementary school pickup line and “arrested” them. In ICE-speak that means they brutalized them, threw them to the ground, handcuffed them and jammed them into an unmarked van. They did this without a warrant or even a faint suspicion of these women having broken any law. After hours of being “detained” – that’s ICE-speak that means the women were locked up incommunicado – then they were released. Turns out those women are in this country legally, but they were treated worse than hardened criminals would be.

And the kids exiting that school were terrorized by seeing that cruelty, as were all the moms and dads in that after school pickup line.

It appears that Trump’s main Nazi, Stephen Miller, was telling the truth about ripping babies from the arms of their mothers at our southern border during Trump’s first term.* When confronted about the cruelty, the horrible barbarity his thugs were inflicting on moms and their little kids, Cruelty-Meister Miller said, “The cruelty is the point.” And he’s doing it again.

This is what Nazis do and why they do it. This cruelty toward anything not Trump and MAGA is why we have to banish these thugs, these Nazis, these fascists from any position of power in our country. It would be fine with me were we to rendition them to that El Salvador gulag. If we keep them here for a little while we must prosecute them for the laws they are breaking. We’ll bankrupt them via lawsuit, just like Trump is trying to do to people on his enemies list. Trump’s cruelty is why we must vote for Democrats.

No, the Dems aren’t perfect. But they are the only path to rid ourselves of the vicious, anti-Constitutional, anti-American, hatred-fueled Republicans. As Obama advised, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Vote for the good. Things will be better.

Maybe you aren’t convinced that we need to vote for Dems. That’s okay. But before you reject the idea entirely, read the Politico report, ‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat.

You read the title correctly. Cheering cruelty, racism, misogyny, murder and the joy of inflicting pain on others is sport to these degenerates, these Young Republicans, these Hitler Youth. It makes no difference if you believe these Young Republicans really mean the filth they mouth. Maybe it’s just youthful “locker room talk,” like Trump’s Access Hollywood filth was fraudulently called by Trump apologists. At the very least these Young Republican degenerates are enablers of such barbarity. And they are unchecked by Republicans with power today. Crickets from them.

Check the subtitle of the Politico essay: Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape. Politico found that these horrible messages were sent over at least seven months. Clearly, these egregious cruelties that are chuckled over by today’s Republicans aren’t one-offs. This is standard Republican stuff.

These are the children of Trump, the spawn of the Republican Party.

Almost as bad, Vice President J.D. Vance defended these miscreants with whataboutism. And on the Charlie Kirk Show he said,

“I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke—telling a very offensive stupid joke—is cause to ruin their lives.” He called them “kids” seven times.

Julianne McShane of Mother Jones checked out Vance’s assumptions for his exoneration of the vile texters.

I found ages for eight of the 11 people included in the chat. And, spoiler alert: None were minors. The youngest appear to be 24, the oldest 35. (I could not find publicly available ages for three of the participants.) This information raises the question: At what age does the vice president believe people become grown adults who should be held responsible for their actions?

It turns out none of the participants sending and reading those abhorrent, hateful messages is an adolescent. Nevertheless, Vance wants to exonerate them, effectively saying, “They’re just kids, you know?”  But even if they were all under 18 years old, their messages and their senders would still be abhorrent.

Here’s the worst part:

The senders of these horrible messages are
the future leaders of the Republican Party.
.

.And as you can see, they will be welcomed by today’s Vice President of the United States.

That’s why you must promote and vote for Democrats now.

NO KINGS

The NO KINGS protests – “.  .  .  the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances .  .  .” are like the Boston Tea Party, of proud American heritage. Read Heather Cox Richardson’s post of October 16 and you’ll understand.

And for sure read Ira Leavitt’s post,

Those ICE Guys Could Have Been Worse!
But Not Much Worse
.

This is cruelty. On We The People. Every day.

And we are as many as 8.2 million of We The People marching in the parks and in the streets, declaring,

NO DAMN WAY WE’LL HAVE A KING!

.

We sent one packing 242 years ago and we’ll send away this one or his 25th Amendment replacement not later than January 20, 2029. Until then and following the mid-term election next year we’ll tie them up with a stout rope made from the same parchment our Constitution is written on.

.

 

 

 

“Together Strong!!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your intrepid chronicler reporting from Highland Park, IL. NO KINGS, DAMMIT!

_________________________________________

* The last count I heard was that despite the hard work of good people in the Biden administration, having reunited over 4,000 kids with their moms, there were about 1,000 still separated, Stephen Miller did his proud, goose stepping, swastika waving work for his boss by refusing to document separations. That made reuniting moms and kids impossible for so many and that has heaped ongoing cruelty onto defenseless people.

Miller’s mother must be so proud.

Mid-Term Election
Goes fast, doesn’t it?

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe at no charge – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too, because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get this 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 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.
  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 or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


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

Don Quixote and You


POST 1219

What Motivates

Likely you’ve heard about the government funding war now being waged between the “just-found-our-cojones” Democrats and the “we don’t give a crap about the people” Republicans. Maybe you’re wondering what kinds of things are about to happen, like Trump saying he’ll fire another 100,000 federal employees, which means he’ll likely do it.

How about cuts to Medicaid? You know, about how we care for “the least” among us? Those draconian cuts are already in the works. Try this from STAT:

Millions of people are set to lose insurance coverage when President Trump’s budget bill — which was signed into law on July 4 and includes work requirements for Medicaid enrollment — goes into effect in 2027. But who are [those who will be required to work to get benefits]? A new study published in JAMA analyzes nationally representative federal survey data to better understand the characteristics of those who are most at risk.

The data included 344 people ages 20 to 64 who worked fewer than 20 hours per week or who were unemployed but won’t be considered exempt from work requirements. Overall, 41% had three or more chronic conditions, and that rose to 66% when looking at those over age 50. More than 20% overall had dyslipidemia, obesity, hypertension, urinary incontinence, depression, or arthritis. The study reaffirms previous research that has found that Medicaid beneficiaries who do not meet work requirements have worse health than the people who do. [emphasis mine-JA]

In other words, our Fourth Reich government has set up a program that specifically targets and harms the very people who most need our help. That oughta beat back waste, fraud and abuse, right MAGAs?

Pity the poor and the sick in red states who voted for this, a government focused on some superior Aryan race. Only the young, healthy and strong need be here. Do you think Trump’s cruelty dispensers will resort to just taking suffering people out back and shooting them? That would save some money.

Sadly, Chuck Schumer and a handful of other Democrats voted in July for that Big Crappy Bill in the delusional spirit of bipartisanship, as if that still exists. And now Hakeem Jeffries tells us that he expects that Republicans will do the right thing about healthcare for Americans. Yes, he really said that.

And these guys are leaders?

It’s long past time for younger, aggressive, nose punching Democrats to step way up. People like Newsome, Pritzker, Walz, Swalwell and Schiff have done some punching and more is needed. We need these people and others to get further out front and lead the way.

While it’s true that our democracy is being stolen, yelling that and waving arms in the air is way too heady and inspires almost nobody but those who are already ardent believers. Esoteric stuff doesn’t motivate. Here’s what does.

Instead of wailing that they’re cutting healthcare from millions of people, say, “You know they hate and despise you because they’re taking everything from you, including all your money, all your safety and Granny’s healthcare.”

Instead of talking about rural hospitals and clinics closing, say, “They’re intentionally bankrupting hundreds of rural hospitals and clinics, including the one near you, which means that they don’t care if you bleed to death from an accident and they don’t care if your pregnancy goes wrong and your baby dies. Maybe you, too.”

Instead of talking about tax cuts for billionaires, say, “They don’t even see you, much less care about you. All they see is more power and money for themselves.”

Those examples are not intended as snark, They are about telling the truth and appealing to voters’ emotions, especially their sense of fairness. Do your senators and representatives, both state and federal, get that? If not, educate them. Now.

From Robert Reich:

As a practical matter, Trump has been illegally shutting down the government since the moment he was sworn in. [emphasis original]

Trump effectively shut down U.S. AID, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. He gave the heave-ho to hundreds of thousands of federal employees, crippling the Department of Education, Centers for Disease Control, Environmental Protection Agency, and Food and Drug Administration.

Former Rep. Tim Ryan

So, for example, as then Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) explained in Congress, the Republican healthcare plan is:

  1. Don’t get sick.
  2. If you get sick, die quickly. It’s cheaper that way.

The same level of non-care for you goes for those other government agencies.

A Little Constitution Clarity

There has been great idiocy spewed over claims of freedom of speech or imaginary violations of freedom of speech, so it’s time for a little refresher. Recall sophomore year in high school.

Isolating the speech part of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law  .  .  .  abridging the freedom of speech

It’s likely the Founders didn’t like King George III telling them they had to shut up, so they prohibited our new government from continuing such citizen muzzling. Got that? That Amendment is about stopping the government from preventing you from saying what you want to say.

That has no application when you want to rant on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform or spew at political parties or to political organizations. The same applies to any newspaper, TV or radio station. Those are privately owned, non-governmental companies and they can cut you off whenever they want to, for any reason or for no reason. It’s their privately owned platform and they can limit who can use them or appear and even what they are allowed to say, as they choose. You have no freedom of speech in a private venue.

That means that nobody’s right of freedom of speech right is violated when they can’t get on TV to blabber their blabber. So, if MSNBC doesn’t want some MAGA flamer to suck up valuable air time, they have no obligation to put said flamer on their feed. Same if some ultra-right podcaster or cable station doesn’t want to showcase AOC.

Our freedom of speech is solely about preventing the government from muzzling you, which is what Trump is trying to do with his abhorrent lawsuits attacking his perceived enemies. Say it with me:

“That’s unconstitutional.”

Reality Check For Windmill Tilters

From my pal FL:

Click me

Like you I have spent my life trying to make a difference, and right now, I feel like Don Quixote, tilting at very dangerous, angry and powerful windmills.

Maybe tomorrow will bring something to be hopeful about.

Perhaps you, too, have had such a Don Quixote moment. Maybe you’re looking for something to make you feel hopeful. This might help.

On October 18 there will be another NO KINGS DAY. Click the map and find out where your democracy loving friends will be and go join them. Bring your sign, your enthusiasm and your red, white and blue self. There will be millions of us across nation making it clear that we ditched a king once before and we’re prepared to do it again.

Click me

My pal FL and I will both be there. We’ll look for you.

About Your Heart, Mr. Quixote

Likely, you remember the murderous attack at the Tree Of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. The folks at the temple have created a traveling message about it. Read about it in this post from Tree of Life Synagogue. It speaks of the power of human compassion and solidarity, even in the face of cruelty and violence.

If you will be in New York any time from October 5 – November 9 you can view the exhibit at

The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust

Edmond J. Safra Plaza
36 Battery Place
New York, NY 10280

  • Mid-Term Election
    Goes fast, doesn’t it?
    .

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe at no charge – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too, because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get this 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 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.
  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 or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate or intentionally cruel. If you must post something cruel, stop reading these posts immediately and instead invest your time with a good therapist.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally and unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


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

IMMIGRANTS UNITE!


POST 1185

First, Minnesota

A thug murdered three Minnesotans, two of them Democratic state legislators. This should come as no surprise, since Trump has been calling since 2015 for violence against Democrats, progressives, protesters and anyone who disagrees with him about anything. He claims to be “your retribution” against “those others.” So of course some wing nut listened to him and took action, perhaps expecting to be pardoned by Trump.

This is just today’s chapter in Trump’s program of I Don’t Care, So Death To You.

To The National Brother/Sisterhood/Childhood of Immigrant Workers
.

Yesterday there was a massive national demonstration, an opposition, a revulsion, the rejection of the tyrant’s attack and his anti-America corruption of the values we hold dear. Indeed, our immigrants, whether documented or not, came here to live by those values and they and we won’t stand for this vile little man’s evil.

This President has unleashed his attack thugs, masked gunmen bearing no identification, no badge of any kind, carrying no arrest warrants and exercising no concern for innocent people. He dispatched them with instructions to kidnap anyone who they think looks like they might be in America without documentation – that means Black and Brown people. They select kidnap victims based on their ignorance.

They have arbitrarily claimed thousands of people to be criminals. They have arrested citizens of the United States with the same right to be here as any of us. They possess no evidence of anyone’s wrongdoing and act in the total absence of due process rights. In short, they are thugs acting illegally at the order of a lawless president and you, immigrants, are their primary target.

Demonstrations against this lawlessness are powerful and good, but it will take more for the American public to become fully aware of what these illegal actions mean to Americans. They don’t realize that they themselves will feel the effects of this. They don’t realize that one day the tyrants will run out of Black and Brown people to abuse and others will be next to be labeled enemies. That’s what tyrants always do.

That is why I’m calling for an ad hoc action, a labor strike, to make clear how Trump’s White, Non-At-All-Christian actions will impact everyone. Specifically, I’m calling on:

hotel and restaurant workers

construction laborers

domestic workers

garment workers

farm workers

landscapers

day laborers, like the folks who hang out early in the morning at Home Depots and 7-11s hoping to earn a day’s pay

It’s time to take a stand, so immigrant workers:

DO NOT SHOW UP FOR WORK THIS THURSDAY OR ANY THURSDAY UNTIL THIS CRUELTY STOPS.

.

Maybe some of the White privilege people who whine and moan their “Replacement Theory” lunacy will show up in California’s Central Valley to do stoop labor, like picking strawberries and lettuce. Maybe they’ll do the work of moving heavy wheel barrows full of cement or removing debris from construction sites. Maybe they’ll scrub the pots and pans in a hot commercial kitchen 14 hours a day, or clean befouled hotel rooms left by hotel guest slobs. Maybe they’ll scrub the floors of rich people’s homes.

But none of that is ever going to happen. Here’s what will happen.

None of those angry, privileged White guys will show up to do the hard work our immigrants do every day. Housing construction will slow to a halt, restaurants will close their doors and produce bins in grocery stores will be empty. And there will be a lot of hotel rooms that don’t get cleaned and landscaping around rich guys’ houses will become nothing but weeds.

It’s time to make the point to all American citizens that their way of life is dependent upon the hard working immigrants to this country and that those tax paying immigrants are a major part of the reason for hope for this nation.

Immigrants to America Unite!

You have nothing to lose but the threat of deportation to a torture concentration camp, never to see your family again.

.
Memo To Silent Americans

.

Turn off the ignorant and the stupid.

.

Treasonous Americans are trying to steal your country, your values, your freedom, your future and your hopes for your children.

They tried an insurrection to murder leaders and take over your government, killing and maiming cops and befouling our Capitol Building.

Trump pardoned the convicted criminals, enabling them to continue to conspire to overthrow us.

The Supreme Court gave the president the right to break our laws with impunity.

Trump and his criminal suck-ups are moving every day to use our military to take action against you and make this a police state.

THAT WILL BE THE END OF YOUR FREEDOM!
.

DO NOT sleepwalk through reality. DO NO be an existential threat to the United States of America through passivity. DO NOT tolerate the murderous Oath Keeper criminals, the DOGE flying monkeys who stole your personal information and the lying Trump bastards violating your Constitution and your rights every day.

Wake up!

.

America isn’t about any king.

It is about We The People.

We declare that in no uncertain terms right here.

.
Pics From The Highland Park NO KINGS Event

Yes that Highland Park. July 4, 2022. 7 killed, 48 wounded. Still this little village turned out over 3,000 yesterday to tell everyone that we will not have a king. We will not tolerate cruelty to anyone. The Law is the law and nobody is above it. Those sentiments were on display in over 2,160 locations nationwide with attendance in the millions.

Paraphrasing Winston Churchill’s address to the House of Commons in the darkest days of the blitzkrieg of the Battle of Britain, June 4, 1940:

We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight them in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight them in our town squares, we shall fight them in the hills. We shall never surrender. We shall fight them in our state houses, we shall fight them in our Congress. We shall fight them in our courts and we shall fight them in our voting booths. We shall rescue and liberate ourselves from their cruelty to carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, we restore our promise of America.

 

kakistocracy | kakəˈstäkrəsē | government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state

 

 

 

Credit to MG for this one

Countdown to November 3, 2026
Mid-Term Election
Countdown Timer
Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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 this 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 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.
  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 or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


Now Is The Time – It Always Is


POST 1184

Click the pic

On February 19 Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker delivered his State of the State address. Appropriately, most of it was focused on Illinois issues, but he reserved his final comments for the state of our country and the perils we face moving forward.

We are now four months further down the dangerous path Pritzker described and things are turning more dire with every Trump power grab and his every attack on our Constitution. That makes Pritzker’s warning yet more important and urgent.

Down goes Trumpy! Down goes Trumpy! Down goes Trumpy!
Trump ridiculed Biden for tripping on the Air Force One stairs. Do you think he’ll rip himself for doing the same thing? Click the pic

Watch and listen to Gov. Pritzker’s cautionary message. If you’d like to watch his entire address (36 minutes), click here.

Here’s another framing from Pritzker about where we stand in the march of history:

What we do and don’t do matters. It matters right now more than it ever has before. When my future grandkids look back on this moment, I want them to know that my voice was one of the loudest in the room, screaming for justice and fighting against tyranny.

What do you want your grandkids to know about what you did when everything was on the line?

It’s time to stand strong in the face of the tyrants. Here’s what Churchill said about that in 1940 during the Battle of Britain, even as the bombs of Hitler’s blitzkrieg (“lighting war”) exploded in London.

Click me. Definitely click me.

America isn’t about any king.

It is about We The People.

We declare that in no uncertain terms right here.

.

You and I are just like the Founders in our abhorrence of kings – dictators, really. We are threatened by such people right now. That’s why June 14* is

NO KINGS DAY!*

.

“You have to know what you stand for, or you’ll fall for anything.” – Les Brown

Click the map to find a demonstration near you. As of this writing there are over 1,800 of them, all for people across the nation who won’t tolerate Trump’s reign of scams, cruelties, corruption and the destruction of our Constitution he hopes will lead to his dictatorship and make him Orange King Donald I.

So, show up on June 14 to demonstrate who we really are, what we stand for and what we won’t stand for.

And pass this message to others. This existential battle needs all of us – and we need this battle in order to restore our country.

___________________________________________________

* It’s also the day of Trump’s ego-maniacal military parade. Watch for his lying press secretary Karoline Leavitt to lie in a manic, fantastical frenzy about parade attendance, a la Sean Spicer.

Countdown to November 3, 2026
Mid-Term Election
Countdown Timer
Goes fast, doesn’t it?

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 this 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 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.
  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 or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, punctuation, typos and voluntary idiocy and to exclude those I deem inappropriate.
  7. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


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

1 2  Scroll to top