October 7

Extortion, Ugly Americans and Gaza


POST 1155

Executive Summary

> Musk failed. He’s expelled.

> Once an extortionist, always an extortionist

> Giving credit where it’s due: DOGE excels at idiotic claims and vile cruelty.

> It used to be “makers and takers.” Now it’s “Trumpys and parasites.”

> Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas were repatriated to Israel last week – in boxes.

Musk Update

Elon Musk failed to email his declaration of 5 things he did last week, as required by the demand email set forth in this space on February 26. Accordingly, he is immediately fired from his non-job. He will have 15 minutes to remove his personal items from his office and until noon tomorrow, Monday, March 3 to leave this country permanently.

The Extortionist

In 2019 Trump got caught trying to extort President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, demanding an announcement from Zelenskyy claiming he was investigating wrongdoing by Hunter Biden in Ukraine. Trump hoped that would kneecap Joe Biden in the upcoming election. Appropriately, Trump’s attempted extortion got him impeached.

Ukraine continues to be in need of military aid and Trump is making that aid contingent upon Ukraine giving away half of its rare earth mineral wealth and caving in to Putin’s Russia.

It’s yet another Trump extortion. To be fair, it’s actually a protection racket. You can almost hear Trump saying to Zelenskyy, “You’ve got a nice little country. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.”

The Lowest god

Surely, the Trump/Vance ambush  of President Zelenskyy served to puff up Trump’s extremist bro-bros. It served to buoy Putin’s ambitions to restore the Soviet Union through grabs of entire countries. And it served to display the reality that everything associated with Trump is solely about money and fame/power. But all that Trumpian worthlessness misses the point.

From Norm Eisen, The Contrarian, March 1:

Trump and Vance in one fell swoop managed to embolden our adversaries (not just Russia) and alienate our staunch European allies.

As Trump and hillbilly Vance vomited their playground bully stupidities, believing that they were humiliating President Zelenskyy, they were, in fact, humiliating themselves. They are too vain and clueless to understand that, but that misses the point anyway. They were humiliating the United States of America before the world. That’s the point.

We all understand that their Mafia don behavior in public will be enthusiastically applauded by right wing extremists (MAGA swagger for the insecure) and by spineless Republicans. But it will serve as a warning to our allies that the United States is no longer the leader of the free world and cannot be counted on as an ally. It will show Putin and Xi that we are nothing more than a grovelling paper tiger that can be manipulated by a single complementing breath and a pat on Trump’s comb-over.

Apparently, Trump’s art of the deal is nothing more than crude extortion and humiliation. Trump fancies himself king and a god. Perhaps he is right. But he is solely a god of self-humiliation

Trumpy Americans

They are the ones who support Trump and his pet raptor, the co-president of Smash and Grab. Just like Trump, Musk is severely challenged to stay within sight of truth, reality and decency. Look at this tweet from him →

Let’s unpack that.

First, there isn’t 90% of Americans loving DOGE; it’s around 50% and falling. That is like the oops of Musk conflating millions into claims of billions when he reports government savings through his ready, fire, don’t-bother-to-aim shotgun firings.

Musk gets such things wrong because:

A. He just likes the sound of “billions” the way some people like the sound of their own voice.

B. His love of ignorance and fantasy far outweighs his experience with truth and reality.

C. He’s going to Mars anyway, so why should he sweat the small stuff that doesn’t hurt him?

D. He’s been far too busy jumping like a 4-year-old to notice little discrepancies that are off by a thousand times.

E. All of the above

Second, other than the most determined-to-be-angry extremists, almost nobody “loves” a phony, largely illegal bunch of juvenile delinquent flying tech monkeys or their greedy non-boss.

Third, this statement apparently from Trump’s mean girl press person* makes clear that for those in the White House and for the national Trumpy ones, there are “others” and who cares about them because everything is only about whether it affects “you”? – meaning themselves. Empathy has no place in this White House or in that third of our citizens.

In this age of extremist rage, Mitt Romney’s label “takers” has devolved into “parasites.” Today there is never a description of anything by MAGAs, Republicans, oligarchs or fascists without including demonization of “others.” That stuff often comes from the ethically strained White House and always comes from dictators.

The over-proud, angry and poorly informed Trumpy Americans brought us this crashing of the America they claim to love but clearly they don’t. It’s the America they should have learned about in civics and history classes, the America of All-We-The-People, but they obviously never did.

Finally,

Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas were quite alive when they were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. The mother likely was raped and tortured after that. Then they were all dead.

In repatriating the bodies to Israel, Hamas substituted a deceased Gaza woman for the dead mother of two dead children. Connect all that to some other dots and perhaps you’ll see things a bit differently, if you dare.

From Mike Koplow regarding the return of the bodies of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas last week:

It is unfathomable to watch Hamas parade coffins of dead innocents who were kidnapped into Gaza [and are now being flaunted] before the cheering hundreds as music blares, unfathomable to watch them march tortured hostages onto a stage in a public square and force them to humiliatingly thank their cruel captors in front of television cameras before their release, unfathomable to contemplate that no Palestinian in Gaza appears willing to step forward and put an end to this or to even publicly object.

As you contemplate the horrors visited upon non-militant Gazans, consider Koplow’s words and scratch your chin a moment to see if you can understand, even if only a bit and even if only for a moment how that might have come about.

What if you had attended that concert in the desert on October 7? What if that were your family returned in boxes? What if one of those humiliated prisoners was your brother, friend, or father who was tortured for no reason other than Hamas savage sadism, was malnourished and forced to humiliate himself in front of cameras and a cheering Gaza crowd? That is the kind of reality Israeli’s live in.

Go slowly and gently with your certainties – and teach your idealistic college student waving a Palestinian flag to do the same. Perhaps there is more to learn. Perhaps there are things worth standing up for that are beyond our own individual limited view and which surpass our own individual sense of offense.

_________________________________________

* Questions for 27 year old Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary:

  1. Do you think that bratty mean girl rants are what the world should hear from the press room of the White House?
  2. Do you think that the cross you prominently display absolves you from the answer to the question, “What would Jesus say?”?
  3. No seriously, do you think it’s okay to lie for Trump?

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The Fine Print:

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

Click me

JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Precedented


Post 1,009

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Precedented I

Republican Warren G. Harding was our nation’s 29th President of the United States. His administration was infested with scandal. He died two years into his presidency, thus preventing him from doing even more damage. He was long considered the worst president ever, an impressive achievement, given some of the dopes who have held that job.

But then came Nixon to lower the bar.

Then Dubya.

Then Trump.

Even before they came along with their scandals and criminal behavior there were extremists who promised division, chaos and nothing to solve our national problems and challenges.

In the early 1960s the Republican Party was a groundswell of extremism, proudly led by Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ). He was famous for saying chest-thumping, stupid absolutist things, like,

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
.
He ginned up “the base” with such stuff, along with promises of nuclear annihilation. Goldwater and other far righties made fearful advances toward taking over the Republican Party and caused moderates more than a little worry. On July 14, 1963 Governor Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY) gave a speech addressing this very issue. Sections of it are below. I’m confident this will feel uncomfortably current.
.

I am now convinced that, unless the vast majority of Republicans who subscribe to these [extremist] principles are aroused from present inaction – whether this inaction stems from complacency, from fear or from a fantastically short-sighted opportunism – the Republican party is in real danger of subversion by a radical, well financed and  highly disciplined minority.

For it has now become crystal clear that the vociferous and well-drilled extremist elements boring within the party utterly reject these fundamental principles of our heritage. They are, in fact, embarked on a determined and ruthless effort to take over the party, its platform and its candidates on their own terms – terms that are wholly alien to the sound and honest Republican liberalism that has kept the party abreast of human needs in a changing world, wholly alien to the broad middle course that accommodates the mainstream of Republican principle.

This cannot be allowed to happen. The continuing commitment of the Republican party to its historic principles including its fundamental dedication to equality of opportunity for all men cannot and must not be betrayed. No temptation of political gain through cynical expediency can be permitted to becloud our commitment to principle and purpose.

After branding these extremists “the radical right lunatic fringe,” Rockefeller went on to say,

These people have no program for the Republican party or the American people except distrust, disunity and the ultimate destruction of the confidence of the people in themselves. They are purveyors of hate and distrust in a time when as never before, the need of the world is for love and understanding.

They have no concern with and offer no solutions for the problems of chronic unemployment, of education and training, of housing of racial injustice and strife, of all the other problems which must have answers if our democratic ideals are to be translated into living reality.

So much of what has happened over the past 50 years has been labeled “unprecedented,” including anything from the falsely named Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus to nearly everything Donald Trump has done or said over the past 9 years, perhaps foreshadowed by his fraudulent Birther defamation. But in fact, there is precedent for much of what we’ve seen, perhaps excluding Trump’s over 30,000 lies and his blatant attacks on the rule of law and his denial of actual reality.

It’s sad to say, but extremism never fully disappears. It waxes and wanes with new appearances of those who covet power for themselves above all else.

This stuff is precedented, including by the Confederates in the 1800s all the way into the 1900s; Nazis in the 30s and 40s; by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, both of whom thought they were above the law; and by the dastardly far right today using perversions of our laws to steal the vote from whole swaths of our citizens and to mount a multiple front assault to steal an election from our nation. It’s plain that these attacks on freedom, democracy and our Constitution come along regularly to torture our nation.

Fortunately, our justice system is now applying the proper elbow to the solar plexus of law breaking extremists. The political elbow blows, though, are left to us to deliver to make extremism wane before permanent damage is done.

Precedented II

Likely you remember those pictures for kids about which you’re asked to name what doesn’t belong, like a carrot in a tree. It’s more difficult to identify what’s missing from a picture.

It’s right that we have empathy for Palestinian civilians who have been wounded or killed and for their loved ones who are suffering. They are our fellow human beings in terrible circumstances, largely through no fault of their own. The media coverage of that is front and center. We are fed those images every day, but there’s something missing from that picture.

The only victims of the October 7 massacre to which the world media seems to be paying any attention are the hostages. The focus is largely on what happened next.

There is footage of injured Palestinians, but where is the coverage of the 3,300 injured Israelis? We see awful funeral processions for dead Palestinians, but what about the funerals of the 1,400 Israelis killed and the wailing of their loved ones? We see the destroyed Palestinian homes and apartments, but where are the stories and video of the thousands who had to flee their homes in terror on October 7 and who then came back to devastation? Even as so many Palestinians suffer, there are tens of thousands of Israelis suffering, too. Why the stark empathy disparity?

This is not unprecedented. This is standard unbalanced world attention orchestrated by Hamas and we’ve seen this time and time again. Hamas, like Yassir Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Army before it, uses the suffering of Palestinians to twist world opinion in their favor. They keep their own people hostage in areas they know Israel must attack in order to stop Hamas, so Palestinians suffer, making Israel look like the bad guys. It’s such an obvious PR scheme and the world falls for it every time.

People are calling for a ceasefire in the name of mercy, but it doesn’t work that way (see this). Were the IDF to simply pack up and go home now they would leave Hamas its weapons, its mob of terrorists and time to rearm. That would hasten the next October 7 style massacre of Israeli civilians. More brutally said, the lopsided empathy of the world, calling for a ceasefire, seems to prefer Israeli corpses over Palestinian corpses. Where is the mercy in that?

This manipulative PR stunt is not unprecedented. It is old and predictable and cruel.

Just For Fun

Here’s are five golden rules for spotting an idiot, this from Arwa Mardawi of The Guardian.

  1. Beware of anyone who describes themselves as a “proud non-reader of books.”
  2. Similarly, avoid anyone who thinks that every book should have been a six-paragraph blog post.
  3. Remember that wealth isn’t directly linked to intelligence.
  4. Dropping “AI” or “ChatGPT” into every second sentence is a major idiot red flag.
  5. Keep a wide berth from people who obsess about their IQs.

Here’s my favorite, linked to #3 above:

Click the pic for the source. Many thanks to JN for the pointer.

Today is a good day to be the light

______________________________

  • 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 ALL 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.
    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.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Just Say No To Metastasizing


Post 1,008

—————————————

O’ Those Crazy Republicans

1. As Karoun Demirjian outlined in the New York Times, Jim Jordan and his allies deployed a pressure campaign – meaning threats of violence and death – against those Republicans opposed to him. As she puts it, they’re “working to unleash the rage of the party’s base voters against any lawmaker standing in his way.”

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) said,

“So far I’ve had four death threats. I’ve been evicted from my office in Colorado…because the landlord is mad with my voting record on the Speaker issue. And everybody in the conference is getting this …. Family members have been approached and threatened, all kinds of things are going on ….”

2. From Heather Cox Richardson on October 16:

Last week, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) called for shutting down the government in November unless Democrats agree to cutting all spending for processing or releasing into the country any new migrants. He says the demand is “non-negotiable.” But U.S. and international law require the U.S. to process asylum requests, even if a migrant arrives in between legal points of entry.

Former senior Department of Homeland Security lawyer Tom Jawetz told Greg Sargent of the Washington Post that Jordan’s plan “would be both illegal and a practical impossibility.” Administration officials “are legally obligated to process people for asylum on request,” he said. “It’s not a choice.”

But therein lies the heart of today’s Republican Party: its extremist leaders no longer believe that rules apply to them.

3. Ohio has a ballot initiative on the ticket to enshrine women’s healthcare, including the right to abortion, into the state constitution. The Republican Secretary of State of Ohio has rewritten the ballot initiative from the clear, simple language of the original to something confusing, unclear and unattractive to voters. It’s a Nixon-worthy, Roger Stone-worthy dirty trick. Its like the Republican sponsored billboards in largely minority areas that remind people to vote, but they advertise the day after the actual election.

4. 147 Republican members of congress voted to stop the counting of the Electoral College votes. They tried to keep your vote from being counted. That’s against the Constitution They supported Trump’s entirely fraudulent, dishonest, anti-American claim of a stolen election. Most of the traitors are still in congress.

5.  From Haaretz on October 20:

Republicans Compare Jewish Protesters Calling for Gaza Cease-fire to January 6 Insurrectionists
.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is among the pro-Trump supporters calling for hundreds of American-Jewish protesters who staged a sit-down in a congressional office on Wednesday to be ‘held in the DC gulag,’ equating their actions with the treatment meted out to those who stormed the Capitol in 2021.

First, of course, there is no “DC gulag.” Second, while I don’t agree with the demonstrators, all they were doing was demonstrating. They didn’t try to kill police. They didn’t vandalize the building. They didn’t try to overturn the Constitution of the United States. They didn’t  .  .  .  oh wait. I’m being logical in opposition to Marjorie Taylor Greene, the logic and reason arsonist. What was I thinking?

That is thugocracy from the likes of Jim Jordan and other far right extremists. Indeed, that’s MAGA style democracy, which is to say, no democracy.

All this and far more are what the Republican Party is today.

“But,” you might say, “traditional Republicans aren’t like that.”

Perhaps 20% of Republicans, every now and then, might be described as “traditional.” But any of them who cave in to MAGA thugocracy or who don’t publicly oppose the slimy and violent tactics and the destruction the thugs are doing are letting their cowardice drive their actions. They’re selling out our country. Which of them will stand up for what is right if doing so costs them something?

It doesn’t matter if they disagree in private with the wrong that they see. Their public silence is tacit support for the Republican path to destruction. Effectively, duty means nothing to them. So, don’t bother to wave the Yeah-But flag, because it’s meaningless. The Republican Party is irredeemable from its criminal march to destroy our democracy.

This is not the first time when power obsessed, virulent autocrats have tried to murder our democracy. They tried it in the 1850s, the 1930s and the 1950s. If you know our history you realize that each time they were traitors to the values we believe in. They actually perverted the words of the Declaration of Independence for their ends. They did the same with the Preamble to the Constitution and even the Federalist Papers. Some waved our red, white and blue next to Nazi swastika flags in the 30s and 40s. They’re doing it again today.

They and their cause are a cancer metastasizing inside our nation. Theirs is a grand larceny of what protects our nation from those intent upon stealing our birthright as a nation and as individuals. They are metastasizing the disease against which our Revolutionaries fought.

So we persevere in the fight for our democracy. We never give in. We join the battle because that is what we must do. We will not allow dishonesty and breach of oath and faith to stain our nation or to go unpunished. We will not allow our democracy to be destroyed.

This is from The Union, the activist arm of The Lincoln Project:

Scared, sad, worried, heartsick, jittery and jaded about our democracy? Put all of that on the shelf right now. Step up and join The Union. The Action Center is a direct line to volunteer actions you can take every day through more than 100 partner organizations dedicated to electing pro-democracy candidates. We’re an activist coalition 65,000+ strong, with members from across the political spectrum. And while we don’t agree on every issue, we’re in complete agreement about the one that counts: Defending American democracy now and strengthening it for generations to come. [emphasis mine]

Update

Hamas continues to rain rockets on Israeli civilians. 31 days after the October 7 massacre there are still over 3,300 injured Israelis, 249 are still being held hostage and 1,400 are still dead.

Today is a good day to be the light

______________________________

  • 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 ALL 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.
    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.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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