White House Correspondents Dinner

What’s Wrong And What Isn’t


POST 1281

The White House Correspondents Dinner

A highly armed shooter sprinted past security people. He was stopped before he could hurt others. That is the only good news about what happened.

The far bigger issue is that the President of the United States is and has been promoting American violence going at least as far back as the Central Park 5 case in 1989. We can reasonably attach the current assault to Trump’s violence promotion. He urges his supporters to beat the hell out of protesters, to attack journalists and he slyly slips in references to the Second Amendment as “remedies” for his detractors. Why shouldn’t the WHCD intruder have the same remedy available to him?

Trump sent his ICE thugs to attack American citizens, legal non-citizens and undocumented people. There have been many deaths in ICE’s detention prisons and on our streets, all done at Trump’s direction. Inviting him to speak at the WHCD seems like a foolish normalizing of his attacks on the First Amendment and his violations of the personal safety of others. Bad idea.

After inciting the January 6 violence that killed and maimed, he pardoned the convicted seditious conspirators (insurrectionists), leading us to believe that there is not and never will be accountability for those who do violence against others and against our country, if their pardons serve Trump well. And he uses the power of the presidency to ignore laws and start wars.

Just what did anyone believe would happen when the President of the United States himself condones and promotes violence?

We have always been a violent country, regardless of self-serving claims about peace, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all of which disappear in the face of an armed assailant. We are now a thugocracy led by a thug. Nothing good can come from that, unless one thinks violent attempts at murder are good things.

We have well over one gun per citizen distributed about our country and somehow the puff-up types think this is good. I invite them to ask the survivors of any of our mass murders, loved ones of those who so easily commit suicide with a gun, murdered bystanders when the 7-11 is robbed and victims of drive-by shootings if they agree. I bet our president thinks the threat of such violence is a good thing.

Beyond that, too many of our media folks, many who were in attendance a the WHCD, allow themselves to be led along like sheep. They don’t do a Joe Wilson “You lie!” even though nearly everyone in the banquet hall and those who weren’t there know Trump lies, cheats and steals as easily and as often as he breathes. Instead, they fail to report simple but ugly truth.

This last comment for this section is from Karla Von Huben:

I suspect that most people are going to think this [WHCD violence] is fake, just like the ‘attack’ in Butler that resulted in no scar on his ear. I also think it’s going to backfire bigly. I’m just so sick of this lunatic I could scream. Or cry. Or throw things.

She ain’t wrong.

Closing In – Maybe

The 1973 War Powers Resolution is a plain language act that was triggered by Richard Nixon’s secret and illegal bombing of Cambodia in 1969-1970. The Act makes clear that no President may send our troops to war without the consent of the Congress. But that consent not only hasn’t been granted for Trump’s war, it hasn’t even been requested.

Sec. 2, (c) of the Act states,

“The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”

Trump cannot identify any immediate threat to the U.S. posed by Iran and none of the other authorizations apply, either.

Sec. 5 (b) clearly states,

Within sixty calendar days .  .  .  the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces .  .  .  unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States. [all emphasis mine]

None of those “unless” exceptions exists, so Trump will have pull our troops out of Operation Epic Blunder or get Congress to formally authorize this by Friday, May 1. Of course, that will require a Congress with a spine.

Republicans hold majorities in both the Senate and House and they could stop him from causing yet more senseless deaths and carnage. But Republicans are despicably obsequious little rodents. They really may cave to Trump’s demand for the right to bomb whomever, wherever using the pressure of his twin threats of:

  1. Them being blamed for losing Trump’s epic folly, and
  2. Them getting primaried in November.

If you listen in a quiet area you can hear their little rodent knees knocking.

Regardless of how they go paws up for Trump, he will do the equivalent of invoking a fictitious Bavarian law from 1198 AD and he will invent a quotation from the Magna Carta to claim his right to murder Iranians and anyone else anywhere, anytime he “feels” like it to justify his unjustifiable war or to blow up little boats in the Caribbean.

This is going to get even more moronic and far more deadly. And at this point, failure is an option. We The People will know Trump is to blame, even as he rage tweets against the “horrible people” in Congress and the vile journalists.

Sadly, he’s statutorily wrong, but this spineless Congress won’t do anything to stop him.

_____________________________________________

* Bill Barr, Trump’s last attorney general in his first administration, was a strong proponent of a “unitary executive,” as were many other fascist wannabees. Now that their favorite fascist and his cadre of billionaires, as well as his sycophantic little rodents have succeeded in making billions of people around the globe miserable, we have to wonder what percentage of them still thinks a unitary executive is a good idea. Maybe we should just tax every one of them down to middle class wealth, just as a unitary executive could.

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Keep standing up,
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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 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.

Deterioration


POST 1280

Starting At The Bottom and Deteriorating From There

Early in Trump’s first administration many mental healthcare professionals offered their professional opinions of Trump’s mental state. Many criticisms of their diagnoses followed, saying that no valuable diagnosis could be made in the absence of an in-person interview. It turns out that is incorrect.

My friend Sheila Markin (The Markin Report) dug into this during Trump’s fist term in an interview in 2024 of Dr. Vince Greenwood, a psychologist. He is certified to make assessments using the Hare Assessment Test. She reports their conversation it here.

I urge you to read her report. Add to that our observations of all the chaos and destruction that Trump has caused since January 20, 2025 and all the obvious signs of Trump’s mental deterioration we all see and commonly refer to as dementia.

This is not a happy case of confirmation bias. It is a serious and foreboding clinical diagnosis from a qualified professional and what we see every day that is a clear and present danger to all of us.

The Emptying Cabinet

From Dan Rather in his piece, Kash Out, explaining the likely upcoming departure of yet another of Trump’s galacticly unqualified Cabinet secretaries:

Patel, a former public defender with scant law enforcement experience, was a highly unusual choice to run the FBI, but one that makes sense if you want to change the FBI’s mission from protecting Americans to pursuing vengeance.

Trump has many skills, high on the list of which is avoiding accountability, His record is not unblemished (see: the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault and defamation cases; the New York tax fraud case; the Stormy Daniels hush money case; 6 bankruptcies; etc.), but he’s managed to get away with cheating and defrauding a lot of people, including stiffing contractors and his ongoing grifting violations. He just hates to be held accountable for his actions like you would be.

What with Pam Bondi’s  complete failure to get indictments of Trump’s many accusers, people who had the temerity to tell the truth, she had to go. Poor Pam. She’s been made available to industry, but who would hire disaster Pam?

ICE Barbie Noem snared too much spotlight that otherwise might have shined on Trump, so she had to go. Will the people of South Dakota re-hire her to be their look-at-me governor? In this age of celebrity over intelligence, integrity, insight and ignorance, maybe they will.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer was caught with her pants down and her liquor up. Too embarrassing to be close to Trump, so he pulled the plug and down the drain she went.

Each of these firings/faux resignations both shifted blame for Trump’s failures and changed the subject from the Epstein scandal. Effective moves, Orangeman! And all the rejects are women.

But now Kash Patel seems to be in the center of Trump’s bulls eye following The Atlantic publishing a piece detailing some of his embarrassing habits, including drinking and being AWOL from his job. And, of course, there’s that damning video of him beer-ing it up with the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team following their gold medal win. Trump didn’t like that. Maybe that deer-in-the-headlights look of Patel’s will seem to fit better soon.

Quick Quiz:
  1. How many unconfirmed department heads (“acting” secretaries – i.e. not confirmed with the advise and consent of the Senate) will there be by November?
  2. How many unconstitutional ways will they find to rig the mid-term election for Trump?
Wuzzup?

The Washington Post reports that a Third U.S. aircraft carrier arrives in waters near Iran. We all get that Trump is trying to amp up his threats. He wants to look like the toughest tough guy, like his idols Putin, Kim Jung Un and Xi.  Orbán used to be in that murderous collection of psychotics but his countrymen enthusiastically booted his fat ass out of office in their April 12 election, along with removing a bunch of his toadies from their legislature.

Back to our aircraft carriers now stationed and ready to threaten Iran, support an invasion and imperil the global economy through American toxic masculinity.

The USS Gerald R. Ford left its patrol of the Red Sea and eastern Mediterranean. It is now redeployed to the the Strait of Hormuz.

The USS Abraham Lincoln was patrolling the South China Sea before being deployed to the Persian Gulf.

The USS George H.W. Bush departed Norfolk, VA and is now in the Persian Gulf region.

Consider the important global areas that we are now ignoring at our peril for the purpose of aiding Trump’s Operation Epic Blunder.

Quick Quiz:
  1. Is China giving serious thought right now to taking over Taiwan by force, now that we’ve concentrated our forces elsewhere? Think: Pearl Harbor.
  2. How many terrorists of various stripes are in high gear to cause trouble now that so many places are unguarded?
The White House Correspondents Dinner

This post was prepared before the White House Correspondents Dinner. This section originally supposed what would happen, including the President embarrassing himself and our country with his typical broadsides against the “mainstream media,” the “enemy of the people.” He would display his congenital inability to stay on point, would go off-script into an impressive recitation of meaningless and self-contradictory gibberish and cruelty. That is what we expected. But that didn’t happen because the event was interrupted by a shooter.

It’s too early to post much information about the shooter, but that news will come to us swiftly, At a press conference at the White House after the excitement was over Trump suggested his later follow up would include his prepared vitriol. He will attack the press and, indirectly, the First Amendment and he will attempt to give a black eye to some of the journalists he likes to attack. He will try to be funny, but he will only succeed at being cruel. Of course, that’s just my guess.

Because this is what passes today as presidential.

Best Feel Good In A Long Time

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

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.

Where Political Influence Comes From – and a Destructive Snit


Reading time – 4:19; Viewing time – 6:49  .  .  .

It’s going to take decades to clean up the mess that our terrible infant president is creating. Some things will take much longer and will leave permanent scars. Other Trump damage, like loss of endangered species, will be impossible to fix.

We’re told that the Donald Trump Environmental Protection Agency intends to “sharply curtail rules on methane emissions.” It’s possible that methane isn’t a focal point of your day, so I’ll explain what this newest EPA ruling will mean to you.

Methane is likely the gas that burns in your home furnace and water heater. Burning natural gas instead of other fossil fuels produces less carbon dioxide, so it adds less to global warming, and it’s cheaper to use, too. That’s where the methane happy stuff ends. The rest requires a little story to explain it.

The phenomenally destructive Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission granted Big Money interests – deep pocket individuals and corporations – the power to dominate and control our politics using their cash. That was more than surprising, since the case was only about the Citizens United organization wanting to show their movie trashing Hillary Clinton right before each primary in 2008. It wasn’t about campaign contributions and domination of politics.

The McCain-Feingold Act prohibited such “electioneering” within 30 days of a primary, so Citizens United was enjoined by the district court from showing their 30-minute attack ad that was designed to influence the primary elections. They filed suit and the case wound up before the Supreme Court, which reversed the district and appellate court rulings against Citizens United. That should have been the end of the case, but it wasn’t.

Chief Justice John Roberts ordered the attorneys to return to the Court to re-litigate the case, this time testing the rights of corporations and speech equivalency. In that gross distortion of the original case, the 5-4 conservative majority decided that corporations have all the same rights as flesh and blood human beings, including the right to make campaign contributions and air political advertising.*

Justice John Paul Stevens

As outrageous as that is, if you’re a Constitutional purist, get that, “[In addressing an

issue that was not raised by the litigants], the majority changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.” That is from the blistering dissent of this decision, written by Justice John Paul Stevens.

Effectively, the Supreme Court legislated from the bench on issues that were not in contest in this case. Citizens United v. FEC had nothing to do with human rights or corporate rights or political contributions, but its adverse effect in those areas will be felt for a very long time.

Dig into the case a little deeper and you’ll have a new and dark understanding of Chief Justice John Roberts. Be sure to pay attention to his Senate confirmation hearings, where he did the now familiar confirmation dance, spewing volumes of words while not answering questions. More specifically, though, he invoked stare decisis, the principle of not upsetting prior court decisions and making current decisions based upon precedent. Roberts had a solid belief in that, he told us.

Turns out that stare decisis actually wasn’t a real important thing to John Roberts and that allowed him to legislate from the bench. That bench-created new law gave us things like the NRA being such a powerful campaign contributor to legislators that our elected officials refuse to create the gun safety legislation that 90% of Americans want them to create. Sadly, we have a government of, by and for Big Money, not you and me.

Here’s how that connects to the EPA lifting methane emission regulations.

Point #1: Over the course of 20 years methane released into the atmosphere has 86 times more powerful global warming effect than does carbon dioxide. The EPA has taken down its web page detailing this.

Point #2: Natural gas comes largely from fracking wells and as many as 50% of them leak methane into the atmosphere. The page for that has been taken down from the EPA site, too.

Point #3: The Obama administration generated regulations to cause the actors in the methane extraction business to take action to reduce methane emissions.

Point #4: Trump’s EPA is in the process of trashing those Obama era regulations and allowing essentially uninhibited methane leakage.

Some major oil companies have stated that they are opposed to the change the EPA is proposing. Do your own math on why they’d do that, especially since their own industry association and lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, has come out in favor of EPA’s proposal to eliminate methane emission regulations.

There’s a really good chance that you are not in favor of the EPA’s proposal that will dramatically increase the rate of global warming. The problem for you is that our legislators don’t really care what you think about that, any more than they care about the 90% likelihood that you want strict gun safety regulations.

Just like healthcare, immigration reform, voting rights, education and so many other issues, you’re not getting what you want and it can all be traced back to Citizens United.

That’s now compounded by Trump’s ongoing snit over being dissed by President Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011. Since that time Trump has been doing everything he can to negate everything Obama accomplished, including DACA, regardless of the harm he does to you and all of us, our allies and our planet.

Such is the behavior of this terrible infant president. We are paying the price for his temper tantrum and, as I said earlier, it will take decades to clean up his mess.

Quote of the Week

Trump is a man who has been progressively hollowed out by the acid of his own self-regard. David Brooks

Opinion Piece of the Week

The Frauding of America’s Farmers, Paul Krugman

*Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, wrote,

“The First Amendment does not allow prohibitions of speech based on the identity of the speaker  .  .  .  even if the speaker is a corporation.”

It is beyond any possibility that the Founders intended the Bill of Rights to have any connection whatsoever to non-human entities, like corporations. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect the rights of people. Humans. Read the amendments and it will be clear to you.

So much for Justice Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas being “originalists.” They claimed to interpret the Constitution as the Founders originally intended. so they liked to call themselves originalists. Clearly they were/are not.

————————————

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

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

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  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

NOTES:

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

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

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