trickle down

You’re Being Played, But Not Like You Think


POST 1114

An Insidious Conspiracy

JD Vance is a guy who compared Trump to Hitler. He said, “I’m a Never Trump guy. I never liked him.” He said lots more that was unlikely to cause Trump to find him attractive. Still, he got the nod, so many were asking why Trump picked him to be his running mate.

Vance is where he is because of millions of dollars invested in him by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Now, why would these guys shell out that kind of cash to get this phony hillbilly into position to be Vice President of the United States? You know they expect to get massive pay back for their investments. Let’s back up the story a bit to see what we can find.

Let’s make the assumption that the people at the Heritage Foundation, authors of Project 2025, are smart guys. You may not like their values or their policies, you may customarily call them some unattractive names, but they aren’t stupid. They and others like them have waged a 50 year war on our liberal democracy, perhaps even going back to FDR. Their fight has been constant and it is solely about amassing astonishing piles of cash and unlimited power, even as they claim patriotic values to distract you. And we all have been distracted. They have brought us to the point where a fascist, an avowed enemy of democracy, has an even chance to regain the White House.

It’s great fun to ridicule Trump, but that’s looking in the wrong direction.

We love to attack Trump for his crudeness, his cruelty, his lack of substance, his fundamental dishonesty and his flagrant stupidity. Now we’re watching him disintegrate mentally before our eyes.

But shift your thinking from the magician’s hand that you see – that’s Trump – to the one behind his back that is tricking you. Trump is the joker that the magician, the manipulator, the Heritage Foundation, flashes before our eyes. But behind their back is the hand manipulating events that will put Vance into the Presidency. Here’s how.

Trump’s mental faculties are unraveling before our eyes and before the eyes of the world. His ability to stay on a topic has shrunken to just a few seconds of outrageous accusations and idiotic projections, leading to a verbal spaghetti of senselessness. Just imagine the fear our NATO allies feel and the excitement that world dictators are enjoying over the prospect of another 4 years of Trump.

He has refused interviews everywhere. He won’t show up at CNN, CNBC or 60 Minutes and he won’t debate his opponent. He’ll only appear with fawning supporters and even then all he can manage are short periods of cruelty, threats of violence and mental incontinence. He couldn’t even stay glued together at a friendly town hall and had to resort to playing music and swaying moronically for 39 minutes.

His campaign staff, his family, MAGA politicians and pundits all know that they have to limit his pubic exposure because every time he opens his mouth to speak he undermines his candidacy. Far more important, they all know that if he wins the election that he will be unable to execute the duties of the Office of the Presidency or even the dictates of the Heritage Foundation.

You’re being played by master magicians, but not like you think. You’re being made to think that this chaos and instability are about Trump, the joker, but he’s just the distraction. The real danger is the manipulation we don’t see, but it’s being done in plain sight.

Within months, perhaps just days of Trump taking office, the 25th Amendment will be invoked. Congress will support it and JD Vance will become President of the United States, your ruler.

Did that send a shiver up your spine? It should, because Vance is smart, cunning, an extremist and the author of the violent introduction to Project 2025. He would follow its dictates and destroy our democracy. He wants you to be crushed by fascism. You know that frighteningly well.

That is the goal of the Heritage Foundation. Vance is the traitor to democracy who will make you a serf and give oligarchs all the money and all the power. These are our morbidly rich to whom we’ve already transferred $50 trillion of our wealth thanks to trickle down economics and self-defeating tax cuts for the rich.

.
We’ve been played, all right, but not by Trump, the snake oil salesman and marionette of the ultra-rich.
.

We’ve been played by the oligarch wannabes for at least five decades and now we’re being played to put Vance, the oligarch tool boy, into the White House to do their bidding.

.
This election isn’t about Trump’s insanity. It’s about whether we will crush our own democracy through our willful blindness to what is before our eyes.
.

Vance is actually worse than you already think. Have a look at this memo from the guys who ran Tim Ryan’s Senate campaign against Vance. They looked the beast in the eyes and they know what they saw. This guy is smooth, slick and dishonest. And no, he doesn’t think Trump lost the 2020 election. Or at least that’s the story he changed to after being named Trump’s running mate and shifting from being a Never Trumper to being a spineless Trump suck up.

We are powerless to remove Vance from the ticket, so our only hope to protect our rights, our freedom and our democracy is to defeat Trump, which would bar the White House door to Vance. We have to defeat the Republicans running for other offices, too. Our most sacred right,

VOTING

.

is our only weapon to ensure that there will be elections in 2026 and 2028. This is truly a use-it-or-lose-it moment.

We must crush the plan of the Heritage Foundation or it will crush us. So,

If you don’t want a President Vance;

If you don’t want democracy to end and be replaced by oligarchs counting the money they’ve taken from you and exploiting and abusing you;

If you’re tired of being played for a fool;

.  .  .  then you know what we must do. We must defeat the forces of evil which otherwise will subjugate us. They are fascists. They are despotic. They care nothing for your freedom except to take it away from you. They have been working all these long decades to defeat you and end everything you hold dear.

Your vote is critical, but it isn’t enough. You must get people to the polls. You have to motivate voters in red states and blue states and purple states to get off their Barcaloungers and show up and vote.

Put out your lawn sign, make calls to swing states, write postcards to swing state voters and talk to people, even your crazy Uncle Bob. Offer to drive people to the polls. Even staunch Republicans and MAGAs want their rights and their freedom and they won’t have either if Vance is behind the Resolute desk for 4 years. None of us will have the America we believe in if the Heritage Foundation owns it.

It’s time to redouble our efforts to send all Republicans packing – especially Vance and the other extremists – before they can reduce us to serfdom in their fascist state.

Best Guess

Trump is doing everything he can to lose this election by insulting as many people as possible, by advocating policies that will hurt as many people as possible, by flagrantly demonstrating his mental deterioration, by avoiding attracting as few new voters as possible and telling people that after this election they won’t have to vote.

Best guess: He isn’t trying to win in the old fashioned way because he can’t. He wants to spark a civil war and violently take over the country.

They’re Trying To Buy It Outright

From Mother Jones, October 21:

[Elon] Musk is saying he will give out a million dollars a day—every day until the election—to voters in swing states who sign a petition from his pro-Trump political action committee (and no, I will not link to it). He was also pledging to pay $100 to registered Pennsylvania voters who sign his petition through today.

Is that okay with you? I don’t think it’s okay with the Justice Department.

Tell people to vote like their life depends on it.

Because it does.

 

It’s not the vibes and it’s not the polls: it’s the votes. 
Are you registered to vote? Check it out on any of these websites:
.

https://www.vote.org/am-i-registerilled-to-vote/

https://www.usa.gov/confirm-voter-registration

https://www.rockthevote.org/how-to-vote/am-i-registered-to-vote/

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


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

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

    Click me

    JA


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

Idiotica – Part 1


Economy Idiotica

“The biggest picture is that the post-1980 economy failed to deliver the broad-based benefits that Reagan and his allies promised.”

That’s from a piece by David Leonhardt, Explaining Bidenomics. Focusing on the signal and not on the phony Republican noise, look at this chart.

In the 1920s we had our 1%, just as we do today. They got over 20% of U.S. Income and we got the Great Depression. Reagan came along with his brain-free, trickle-down economics lie proposed by an appropriately named propeller hat named Laffer. After the enormous effort of decades to lift people from poverty and strengthen our middle class, instead Reagan made sure that once again the rich got most of the money. We got the Great Recession.

Can we face the fact that when rich people get more money without having created greater value that they like that money and will always do their best to keep it for themselves? There’s no assurance that they will invest it so that anything trickles down to you.

The Republicans still want to steal from the poor and give to the rich. Things won’t be any better for working people, the bottom 95% of us, until the Bidenomics reversal of right-wing grift takes hold and is expanded. That takes time. For now, only wonks are excited by the recitation of improving statistics. That’s a problem.

To the American public that isn’t yet recognizing the benefits of Biden’s economic actions and who still lack confidence in the economy: I get it. But turning this thing around takes years – refer to the chart above. What is needed is for us to stay the course (I hate using Reagan’s phrase, but that one fits). If things are to continue to improve, our job will be to help people see what is hard to see, what they aren’t feeling yet.

“Inflation is down by almost two-thirds since its peak in June 2022, and this has happened without the recession and huge job losses many economists insisted would be necessary. Real wages, especially for non-supervisory workers, are significantly higher than they were before the pandemic,” writes economist Paul Krugman.

He continues, “Poll after poll shows Americans rating economic conditions as very bad” Oddly, “.  .  .  while most Americans feel that they’re doing OK, they believe that the economy is doing badly, where “the economy” presumably means other people.” How do you suppose that’s happened?

There is plenty to chew on here, but one thing is certain: Republicans continue to poison Americans with their stories of American dystopia and carnage, including about the economy. This disconnect between how Americans see the nation’s welfare versus their own experience is yet another example of what a constant torrent of lies can do.

Covid Idiotica

Americans continue to die from Covid. That doesn’t shock anymore, because such news is so yesterday, so back seat to whatever is today’s outrage. But it isn’t going to stay in the back seat.

With the new variants floating just outside our nostrils and people indifferent or even hostile to vaccines, our communal resistance to dire consequences from the disease is pitiful. We could just wait around to see if we become infected and then die, but that would be dumb.

The right wing conspiracy machine is making sure that we continue to be a bifurcated nation. 95% of those dying from Covid are anti-vaxxers. They aren’t stupid people. They are suicidally and homicidally angry and stubborn. The rest of us have rolled up our shirtsleeves, gladly accepted the jab and are unlikely to have serious consequences should we test positive.

Go-Go DeSantis

But not so much in Florida. Democracy hating Governor Ron DeSantis, he of the white go-go boots in a post-hurricane photo op, has buddied up with his brain-free state surgeon general Joseph Ladapo to urge Florida residents under the age of 65 to refuse the new vaccine. That’s the one that will keep people who contract the new variant of the disease from dying. Apparently, DeSantis and Lapado want to ensure that Florida continues to be a major promoter for members of the casket making industry. I wonder if they’re donors.

Republican Idiotica

This brings us to the choices before the American people.

You’re either for supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes, or you’re for Putin, Hungary’s Orbán, Turkey’s Erdoğan and Xi and not for America.

You’re either for the rule of law or you’re for autocracy, fascism and lawlessness.

You’re either for championing NATO as key to our national defense or you’re for Putin and Xi and not for America.

You either believe in democracy and America or you believe in a cult leader who is working to bring it all crashing down.

Republican children in geometry class. Click the pic for an easier to read view.

You’re either for all people’s rights or you’re for bigotry and hatred.

You’re either for full citizenship for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people – all of us – or you’re for subjugation and hatred.

You’re either for facts, science, truth and reality or you’re for manipulation and boundless fraud. You might even be in favor of ignorance.

You either have a moral compass or you don’t.

You either believe in freedom of belief or you’re a religious bigot.

You either challenge the un-American, anti-constitutional craziness that’s all around or, at best, you’ve resigned yourself and our nation to insignificance.

You either stand up for what’s right or you’re a hypocrite and a coward.

You either love freedom or you think it’s okay to dominate others.

You either care about our national defense or you’re a performative patriot only out for yourself and you don’t care about putting our military people and our nation at risk.

You’re either a patriotic American or you’re just a liar and traitor wearing red, white and blue.

Sadly, what was once the Grand Old Party is now populated by people who choose what comes after the “or” in the choices above. They are

The Republican Idiotica
.

It cannot be that every election finds democracy at the edge of a cliff tipping toward oblivion. Our task for as long as we live is to push it back from that edge, regardless of how many times that’s required, until the voices of hatred of democracy are at last silenced.

__________________________________

Watch for Idiotica – Part 2 this Sunday.

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

I Admit It – Plus Abusing My TV


I have bashed Trump supporters.

(Parenthetical: Isn’t that backward? Aren’t our elected officials supposed to support us?)

I’ve called them names. I’ve accused. I’ve assumed and projected. And I stand by all of that for the violent crazies. But for millions of them who voted for Trump I’ve been wrong because I’ve largely missed the facts that animate them, although I’ve periodically mentioned those facts.

Every one of these people sees him/herself as a patriot. And their anger is based in the reality of the betrayals that stab them in the back to this day. They really have been taken for granted and left behind.

They lost jobs because of the “offshoring” of jobs, the closing of the factories, the hollowing out of whole towns and the rest of the destruction of abandonment. They lost jobs because of the “right-sizing” of businesses (which means to layoff people, most of them permanently), all condoned by Congresspeople more focused on themselves than on We the People. They never lifted a finger to help those who were losing their jobs.

Former House Speaker John Boehner proclaimed over and over that jobs, jobs, jobs was the number one issue. Then he proceeded to kill every attempt at creating, protecting and enhancing jobs and wages with only one exception: jobs for vets. These were vets coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan and Boehner had to be shamed into putting the bill on the floor of the House twice before anything good happened for those vets.

These people suffered while the fat cats grew multiples richer, as three huge “tax reform bills” were promised to increase jobs and wages, but they never did. They just stuffed the pockets of the rich elites.

They suffered because Reagan introduced what became known as “Reaganomics,” which has been an over 4 decades long theft of wealth from 99% of us that has been treansfered to the super wealthy. Nothing “trickled down” to the rest of us.

They watched us slip into a gigantic recession driven by bank bigwigs, some of whom broke laws. Only one went to jail. Then We the People were forced to bail out the banks, the people who sold us fraud.

These people were lied to over and over and fed the red meat of blame wrapped in cultural issues that came rapid fire and were shoved down their throats.

All of that was done by “the elite” of our country. It was done by Congress, the President and the ultra rich corporate titans interested only in their own welfare. Can you guess why Trump voters might hold a grudge against anyone who can be labeled as an elite?

By this point it’s so easy to blame “coastal elites” for anything and everything, as they promote cultural issues that just don’t resonate in the lives of people in the middle of the country. That made it easy for Trump to snatch their loyalty and get them to support candidates whose sole position is a constantly raised middle finger. And all that pent up rage made it easy for them to ignore Trump’s horribles.

Read Bret Stevens’ piece, I Was Wrong About Trump Voters. That essay got me restarted thinking about this issue.

And that rethinking brought back to mind that most of the betrayal of middle Americans has been done by Republicans. That makes it more than curious why anyone would vote for a Republican.

They told people that up is down, that whatever terrible things the Rs did wrong was actually what the Ds did. You know: “alternative facts.” Back in the old days we used to call them lies. And there was shame on the liars when they were caught, but, of course, this is now a shame-free world. Gotta give credit for the stunningly well done Republican propaganda, the Big Lies and the rest that made victims love their victimizers.

I don’t take back any of the things I’ve said about the haters, the violence practitioners or the spineless politicians. They deserve every scathing word.

But the millions who appear to be voting for anti-democracy and against their own best interests believe fervently that they are voting against elites who have stolen America and their American Dream. For the most part it appears that their passion has run too far ahead of their otherwise good sense, but these are not fundamentally flawed people, nor are all of their grievances baseless.

Their anger has roots in a reality that has hurt them. They have been ignored by leaders with policies and ideologies that have  left them far behind, but which has been pedaled to them by disingenuous opportunists.

We cannot abide the destruction done by or promised by angry people. What we can do is to look at the realities that have stolen the American Dream from Americans and take action to restore it for everyone.

Christopher C. Miller official portrait.jpg

Christopher C. Miller, Acting Secretary of Defense stooge for Trump, November 9, 2020 – January 20, 2021

Abusing My TV

As I watched the January 6 insurrection become worse, bloodier, more violent, more destructive, I was screaming at my TV, “WHERE THE HELL IS THE NATIONAL GUARD?” Not long after that I heard rumors that Trump had frozen all of our military so that they could not respond to the crisis. That turned out to be true.

According to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller’s own testimony, on January 3 he was ordered by Trump to “do whatever was necessary to protect the demonstrators” on January 6. The next day, January 4, Miller issued a one page edict that buried the feet of the DC National Guard in cement. They were ordered not to act. They were prevented from stopping the carnage and restoring the peace, jobs that they are trained to do. Here’s a download of Miller’s order to the DC National Guard. Read it sitting down, because it is stunningly evil. Watch Miller’s testimony to the January 6 Committee here.

At Trump’s explicit order, the Capitol Police, the DC Metro Police, the Vice President, every member of Congress, every Secret Service agent, every news crew and every worker in the Capitol Building that awful day were all left bare to the violence of Trump’s murderous mob.

That’s why I was screaming at my TV.

————————————

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!)

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

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

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

JA


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

 Scroll to top