Tuesday, January 20, 2026 - A Greenland Solution, Tariffs, the Next Congress, an Editorial, and Online Gambling

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A Greenland Solution  

A One-Way Ticket

After President Trump’s term of office concludes, the United States must do two things: (1) Reiterate the legislation and agreements recognizing that Greenland is a part of and should remain under the control of Denmark, and (2) appoint him as a permanent American emissary to that place, provided that he reside there permanently, even if it takes a ‘Go Fund Me’ campaign to buy him a one way ticket to get there and a gold painted dog sled. 

JL 

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'What Kind of Fool am I?’ 

That’s the title of a song from the 1962 Broadway musical, ‘Stop the World, I Want to Get Off,’ which premiered earlier in London. But we’ll get back to that shortly. 

According to the Constitution, (Article I,Section 8), the powers of Congress include the levying of tariffs on imports. Here’s how it reads: ‘The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States, etc, etc. … ‘That sounds to me like imposing tariffs is the job of Congress. 

But it doesn’t say they have that power ‘exclusively.’ It is understandable that the President can also assume this power, among other powers, but only in a national emergency. But he can’t run around making one or more such emergencies up! 

President Trump interprets this extremely liberally, using the mere threat of imposing tariffs as a weapon in our relationship with other nations, without any real national emergencies existing. When he first started using this tool, he was challenged, but such criticism has become mired in back and forth arguments and its resolution awaits the opinion of the Supreme Court. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.  Meanwhile he continues to do it, along with many other illegal or unconstitutional acts. 

But get one thing straight. Allowing him to get away with that weakens the rule of law on which our government is based. If there’s a national emergency at this time, it is the person who is the current occupant of the White House.

President Trump will go down in history as a criminal, convicted in the courts of New York State on 34 counts, and a lawbreaker. That is why he is tacking his name on everything in sight right now, fully believing that would never happen once he is out of office and Americans realize what kind of fools they were to elect him President twice, succumbing to what amounted to a political version of his shady real estate developer’s pitches. 

Anyone who voted for him should be joining with Anthony Newley as he asked the question raised by the song from that show back in the 1960’s and the subsequent motion picture: ‘What Kind of Fool Am I? 

JL 

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Coming Together 

I try to keep clickable links at a minimum (most of you know how to get there anyway) on Jackspotpourri.  But Simon Rosenberg’s January 18 piece on ‘Coming Together’ is something you should not miss. Please copy and paste https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/sunday-hopium-some-thoughts-on-meeting on your device’s browser line, or click right here. 

JL 

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Jeffrey Who? 

While Professor Heather Cox Richardson’ January 15 ‘Letters from an American’ repeats the litany of President Trump’s misdeeds and the acts by which they manifest themselves, she also makes the point that they take the spotlight off of the Epstein documents, only a miniscule portion of which have been released, even in a ‘redacted’ format, despite an act of Congress requiring that be done by a now-passed deadline. Who is hiding what? This will not end well for those involved, but also for the nation that let this mess stay out of the spotlight for so very long! 

JL 

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Future Actions by a Democratic Congress 

Nice column by Maureen Dowd in the Times on January 17 and Heather Cox Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American’ dated January 16 and January 19 as well. Read them. 

It is obvious that the President is out of his mind and beyond senility! No doubt about it. 

I believe that if (I cautiously avoid using the word ‘when’) the Democrats take control of both houses of Congress in November, Trump will finally be successfully impeached, or removed from office through the 25th Amendment. There will be problems with his successor, but at least the Mad King will be replaced with sanity. See the top article in this posting for an idea of what then to do with him. 

A Democratic Congress might also immediately withhold funding of the Immigration Control and Enforcement Agency until it starts observing the provisions of the Constitution and its Amendments, and we have an Executive Branch that must learn that lesson as well. Congress controls ‘the power of the purse’ and must use that power. 

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Two misguided and crazy assassination attempts on the President’s life (one in Pennsylvania where his ear was struck and one threatening him on one of his golf courses, aborted by the Secret Service) as well as innumerable columnists’ opinions and newspaper editorials have failed to budge Donald Trump from his tyrannical behavior which can destroy our nation and the alliances with other democracies it has led for years. As an editorial example, here’s the text of the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s editorial of January 20. It is very hard to disagree with it: 

'Weakened and Weary: America a Year Later - Sun Sentinel Editorial Board  - January 19, 2026 at 6:00 AM EST 

President Trump’s second inauguration one year ago found our nation more divided and apprehensive than at any time since the Civil War. For his followers, it was a time for jubilation. For others, it foreshadowed grave danger for our republic. The fears weren’t idle after Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election he had lost and threatened retribution against those who thwarted him. A better person would have taken his return to power as an opportunity to put the past aside and unite us. But Trump is everything a president should never be: petty, petulant, vindictive, vulgar, indifferent to unwelcome facts, addicted to lying, ignorant of history and pathologically egotistic. 

 He boycotted Joe Biden’s inauguration. 

 He refuses to display Biden’s portrait at the White House. 

 He recently replied to a heckler with an obscene gesture. 

It was apparent almost from the moment of his second inauguration that he did not intend to keep his oath to uphold the Constitution. His conduct has been the worst that we feared, and then some. In what seemed a joking remark (with him, you can never be sure), Trump recently told congressional Republicans that he would not try to block the 2026 election because people would then call him a dictator. It’s much too late for that. 

Defining a tyrant 

 A president who prostitutes the Department of Justice to persecute or intimidate his perceived enemies, now including the chairman of the independent Federal Reserve, is a tyrant. 

 A president who demands absolute obedience from his party’s officeholders and who calls for their defeat when one crosses him is a tyrant. 

 A president who threatens to seize another nation’s territory “whether they like it or not” is a tyrant. 

 A president who orders states to redraw voting districts in a non-Census year to strangle the opposition is a tyrant. 

 A president bent on imposing his will on everything from the media to universities to international corporations to major law firms to the nation’s museums to how the states conduct their elections is a tyrant. 

 A president who trashes the people’s White House as if he owned it, and who plants his image or name on everything from National Park passes to a memorial for an assassinated predecessor, is a tyrant. 

 A president who makes war and orders extrajudicial killings on the oceans without so much as notifying Congress is a tyrant. 

Contempt for the Constitution 

Trump’s contempt for the Constitution and for any restraint on his conduct was on display throughout a two-hour interview with New York Times reporters Jan. 7. “Is there anything that could stop you?” they asked. “Yeah, there is one thing,” he replied. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good.” The words of a tyrant. 

Pressed about Greenland, he said it “may be a choice” to seize it by force, even if that should destroy NATO. He seemed to forget that he had promised the public $2,000 checks from his tariffs, then claimed the right to pay them without congressional approval. He spoke of replacing tariffs with “licenses” if the Supreme Court rules against him. ‘I won three times’: A lie. 

He would not commit to respecting the 2026 congressional election returns, insisting that “we have very dishonest elections” and that “I won three times.” A better president and wiser Congress could eventually remediate the vast damage that Trump has done to the federal work force, civil rights, equal opportunity, scientific research, the environment, the national debt, public health, ethics in government, our diplomatic corps and the industries decimated by ICE’s inhumane arrests and deportations. 

There are greater damages that will be far more daunting to repair. He has shattered the respect our nation earned worldwide over 250 years as a beacon of democracy. He has encouraged authoritarian movements elsewhere, abetted Putin’s ruthless war, vandalized the international economic order and threatened NATO’s existence. Why should our allies trust us? Why should any enemy respect us? The worst of it is the repudiation of the bedrock American faith that ours is a nation of laws and that no one is above them. 

 A Reckless Supreme Court 

The Age of Trump has coincided disastrously with a Supreme Court majority predisposed to inflating the presidency at the expense of Congress, the Constitution and the public. Chief Justice John Roberts’ ghastly opinion that a president cannot be prosecuted in connection with his official acts has emboldened Trump with a frightening sense of unaccountability. Together, Trump, Roberts and the spineless Republican majority in Congress have exposed a potentially fatal weakness: The Constitution is only as effective as the good faith of those elected to uphold it. America desperately needs a Congress able and willing to restrain the tyrant and to impeach and remove him. That, right there, is the overarching issue of the midterm elections.' 

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com. 

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It is clear that the only way to get rid of Trump, his ideas, and his followers will be on Election Day when voters can get the job done as the above editorial points out. The bullets of madmen, the words written or spoken by journalists, and demonstrations on the streets are not enough. It is totally up to YOU to get it done on Election Day. Big job, but you can do it! 

JL 

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Sports Gambling’s Back in the News 

The presence of sports gambling sites (Draftkings, Fanduel, MGM, etc.) on the internet creates legitimacy for the kind of betting that once used to be, and which still may be, illegal, and what once required contact with a neighborhood bookie. So we shouldn’t be surprised that some athletes can be bribed to affect the outcome of games where big money is at stake. With college athletes being paid through ‘legitimate’ NIL schemes, they are no less motivated by money than are professionals, and ignore the fact that what they do may be illegal. After all, they may think that if it’s all over TV and the internet, it must be okay. 

If someone wants to place a bet, they should go to a brick and mortar physical casino with a ‘sportsbook,’ where there usually is some measure of State regulation. That regulation may or may not be extended to online sports gambling sites also run by such regulated casinos, like MGM’s or the ones run by the Hard Rock Casinos in Florida. Bribery is less likely to occur in baseball where many variable factors come into play, but basketball, football, ice hockey, and of course horse racing are ripe for such dishonesty, where a slight reduction in an athlete’s intensity can mean many dollars to bettors.

Newspapers and websites regularly provide the ‘line’ for such events, usually a handicapper’s opinion, and believe me, such advice is not intended for those playing in moneyless or penny-ante ‘fantasy’ leagues. 

Horse racing odds remain a possible exception. The ‘morning line,’ while still determined by handicappers, is replaced by race time electronically by the actual amounts of money wagered in a regulated pari-mutual system at a racetrack or in its satillite betting ‘parlors.’ Still, however, a jockey can always let up just a bit on using his whip in the homestretch. 

When there is a scandal, blame those who opened the door to supposedly legitimate, but unregulated, wagering sites online. As I pointed out, some atheletes may think that because they are all over TV and the internet, they must be okay. Come to think of it, the people behind some of the unregulated online wagering sites might be the same people to whom those neighborhood bookies of years ago passed on those wagers (the expression was ‘laid off’) involving the risk of having to make giant payouts to a winner and which they knew they could not personally bankroll. (In the insurance industry, this practice is known as ‘reinsurance’ and is totally legitimate.) In wagering, those who collect the ‘vigerish’ really don’t care who the winner is so long as they can collect their cut off of the top. 

JL 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri 

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com. 

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them. 

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com , or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting. 

Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com 

 

More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors. Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations. 

Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. 

After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. 

Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. 

JL 

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January 14, 2026 - Hackers, the Coming Explosion, Will the Guilty Remain Around, and a little Economics

       

See item below suggesting somethint to chew on

                                                        

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Hackers Among Us 

On two occasions within the past few weeks, I have received emailed invitations to non-existent parties that were really ‘phishing’ expeditions by scammers who had hacked into the supposed party-giver’s email lists where my email address appeared. I opened neither. 

 If you get such an invitation, do not open it without first confirming its authenticity with a carefully phrased phone call to the person involved or someone close to them. If it smells fishy, it probably is. 

The internet will never fully replace the telephone or the United States Postal Service. 

JL 

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 A Very Serious Question – Where Will You Be?

Jackspotpourri definitely has a point of view. But it also wonders what can be done to remedy obvious problems and challenges in our culture. How long do you think Americans will just sit on their hands doing nothing? When will they decide that it is worth putting their lives on the line? That is beginning to happen in Minneapolis where the number of ICE invaders, operating far, far, beyond the purpose of that agency, 'Immigration Control and Enforcement,' actually exceeds the size of that city’s police force. 

There is a limit to the toleration of domestic problems, most of which can be traced to President Trump's desire to be a dictator like his buddy Vladimir, well described in the nation’s newspapers, in TV news, and online in postings such as those of Simon Rosenberg’s ‘Hopium Chronicles,’ Barbara Walters’ ‘Here Be Dragons,’ and Heather Cox Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American,’ before there is an explosion. Check out all three! 

Where will you be when it happens? And will you be part of it? 

JL 

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Procrastination

Don’t put off until ‘later’ what you could do ‘right now’ because ‘right now’ is probably what was yesterday’s ‘later.’ 

JL 

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Something to Chew On 

When something occurs to me, I suspect that I am not the only person who might be harboring such thoughts. They float around and are grasped by perhaps many of us independently. Here’s one to chew on. 

Without listing or enumerating them, President Trump is doing some pretty awful things. All seem to be directed on consolidating the nation’s political, military, and economic power with him, his closest associates, and family. He is not doing it all at once but incrementally, often with others acting for him, like JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem or Stephen Miller. 

He might take a step forward but when he senses resistance, he follows it with half a step backward, just to keep his followers and likely successors in line, but his aims remain the same, the personal accumulation of power. The point is that he fully knows that what he is doing is borderline illegal, probably unconstitutional, and even criminal in nature. 

Anyone behaving in that manner should know that they ultimately will be caught and punished for their actions. That is why many assassins and mass murderers take their own lives.  Doing so might be unnecessary if for other reasons, they do not expect to still be alive to pay the price for what they are doing. At the President’s advanced age, that is a reasonable assumption to make. (It also might be a good argument for imposing age limits on those holding public office.) 

On top of that, if his physicians have given him a more specific timetable concerning his health, that would be more in line with his not fearing having to bear accountbilty for his actions. By that unknown date, he knows that he won’t be around, so what does he have to worry about. Would anyone expecting to live for more than just another year or two behave the way President Trump does? I don’t think so. And those who will be around to succeed him are fearful of opening their mouths about what he will leave for us all. As I said, this is something to chew on. And spit out. 

JL

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Economics 001- From Craftsmen to Employees 

As mankind emerged from caves and tents, there was no such thing as getting a job. No one worked for anyone else; everyone did their own thing. The hunter killed game, the weaver wove cloth, and the tinsmith made utensils. When there was more work than they could handle, they took on one or more apprentices to whom they taught their skills, and who helped them until they went out on their own, but were never considered the employees of the craftsman to whom they were apprenticed and with whom they perhaps lived. 

Eventually the skills of craftsmen became divided into separate tasks, which were assigned to others, a new class of workers who were paid for their labor. Unlike apprentices, they never were involved with the finished product, but only ‘employed’ with a piece of its creation. As tools and machinery developed, the tasks of these workers changed and with what was called the ‘industrial revolution,’ sometimes disappeared entirely. 

Eventually, the vast majority of workers became such employees, paid by and dependant on the entrepreneur who hired them, initially former craftsmen themselves. Soon such entrepreneurs came to include investors whose hands never got dirty and whose only involvement was financing what became a businees. 

Outside of this framework developed ‘professions’ in which those with sufficient resources, expertise and training practiced medicine, law, accounting, banking, teaching and such disciplines. Usually they did not hire employees. They did, however, if their workload demanded it but the independence of such professionals did not extend to any such employees they might hire. 

As the number of employees grew, such workers recognized the strength of the roles they played and formed unions or turned to governments to protect their interests, which were centered on the nature of their ‘jobs’ and the remuneration they received. These alliances sometimes worked and sometimes failed, as they became enmeshed with politics. 

Today, some employees take on the identity of ‘independent contractors,’ giving them more independence than someone who merely has a job. In doing so, they give up the security, however minimally guaranteed, that a ‘job’ would provide. That’s where we are today. 

Employment now comprises working in separate segments of businesses run by entrepreneurs, such as sales, engineering, and manufacturing, as well as in ‘services’ where no tangible products are involved. They can be as varied as were the jobs provided centuries ago when the creation of things left the hands of individual craftsmen and were passed on to employees. 

JL 

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Fifteenth Century Punishment Revisited 

For art connisseurs, this is a full depiction of the ‘Hell” portion of Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights,’ a Fifteenth Century triptique which you can visit at the Prado museum in Madrid. The version used in the previous Jackspotpourri suggesting the possible future of President Trump’s soul cut off the bottom portion. 

The two other panels of the triptique pictured such
'delights' more favorably, if not lewdly, in a style made
famous centuries later by Jeffrey Epstein

JL 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com. 

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them. 

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com , or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting. 

Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com 

More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors. Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations. 

Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. 

After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. 

Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. 

JL 

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January 10, 2026 - Limits, Justice, Minneapolis, Brevity and Red Onions

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There are Limits 

I can’t get everything I want into a posting of Jackspotpouri. The last one stressed Trump’s illegal Venezuelan adventure, leaving little space to include his trampling upon the Constitution, his appointment of many unqualified sycophants like Robert Kennedy, Jr., Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, Kash Patel, Russell Voight, and Pam Bondi to crucial government positions, and applying the questionable ethics of crooked real estate developers to running our country. Things move so quickly these days making it impossible for an occasionally produced blog like Jackspotpourri to keep up. So for those omissions, I apologize. 

It’s up to you to personally keep up with what is going on each day by reading reliable daily newspapers, their online versions, and watching honest telecasts. 

Meanwhile, I have sent an email to my two Senators regarding the President’s Venezuelan adventure. (My Representative in the House need not be convinced) It read as follows:

 ‘Senators Moody and Scott: Please remember that it is the job of Congress to authorize military action by our Armed Forces, and not the President. In the absence of someone attacking us, actions to enforce our laws or court decisions should not be carried out by military force. The Executive Branch must not be allowed to seize the powers of the Legislative Branch of our government. Read Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution. This is a time to put country before party.’ 

I know they don’t read such communicaions, but they do count them, recognizing they come from voters. Here is some contact information for Floridians. Please use it. 

Senator Rick Scott: (202) 224 5274, https://www.rickscott.senate.gov/contact/contact 

Senator Ashley Moody (202) 224 3041, https://www.moody.senate.gov/contact-us/ 

 JL

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Fifteenth Century Justice 

On the fifth anniversary of the insurrection and invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when Trump’s supporters fought to keep the count of electoral votes from being carried out, many of them, claiming to be acting on his behalf, commited acts of violence for which they were charged, convicted, and imprisioned. 

Re-elected in 2004, Trump has pardoned them and on Tuesday, they celebrated and demonstrated in Washington. This was disgusting. Trump has attempted to rewrite history, claiming they were merely peaceful and patriotic demonstrators and not following his directions. The millions of Americans who witnessed his remarks immediately beforehand, and the ensuing invasion of the Capitol, and the attacks upon its police defenders saw what was happening on TV and know better. 

They know that Trump is a liar, as he has been throughout his life, in business and in government. It is an expression I am reluctant to use, but our president is and always has been a piece of shit, the aroma and presence of which have fatally infected the Republican Party. 

Despite my views, I wish President Trump a long and healthy life, but eventually, he will pass into history. At that time, he will pay the price for his lifetime of lying and dishonesty as his soul goes straight to Hell, believed by many to be the ultimate destination for those like him. 

Donald:  Please take notice.  Here's a portion of Hell, as depicted by Hieronymus Bosch in his
 "Garden of Earthly Delights' at about the beginning of the Fifteenth Century. 
Part of a triptique, it hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid.

                                                            

JL

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Can’t Say Your Weren’t Alerted Department 

Take a look at the very small print in the oval label just below this bottle’s neck and then check out the vegetable pictured on its big label. Despite this, this is a pretty good product at a fair price in some stores. 

JL 

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Minneapolis ICE Wednesday Morning Shooting

To figure out what really happened, I’d like to see creditable diagrams of the positions of all of the vehicles involved during the incident, the kind any insurance company would want to study before paying a claim. 

But from what I saw from the videos on TV, an ICE vehicle was stuck, spinning its wheels on the ice, and had to be pushed to get it moving. This put it in the way of a vehicle to its left either standing still or driven by a woman who was then trying to avoid the freed ICE vehicle which was now hurtling forward. The woman had been parked there partially obstructing the street, supposedly to monitor ICE activities in her neighborhood, a not uncommon activity in that Minneapolis neighborhood. 

To aid in freeing the ICE vehicle from its skidding, an ICE officer on the scene had asked the woman to get out of her car. She refused, resulting in another ICE officer deciding that the woman was ‘weaponizing’ her vehicle by refusing to get out of her car, adding that she was attempting to run him down. On the contrary, videos indicate that the beginning of movement of her vehicle was her attempting to back it off from the scene. He opened fire on her, fatally wounding her, leaving her unresponsive and her car uncontrolled, crashing into some cars parked nearby. 

More or less, that is what occurred within a very few seconds. More videos shot by the phones of those on the scene are appearing daily, as requested by local and State authorities who have been denied access to the Federal investigation’s results. 

But thus far, there is no video evidence of such ‘weaponizing’ as the ICE shooter is shown walking away, after his firing at the woman’s car, apparently neither injured nor threatened by her vehicle, her only act being her refusing another ICE officer’s request to get out of her car and starting to move it out of the way. The woman was fatally wounded and it was reported available medical assistance was not permitted to approach the wounded woman who died at the scene.

That is what I conclude happened, but the event is still under investigation, but unfortunately only by Federal agencies, who will not share their information with local or State agencies. Homeland Security Secretary Noem’s explanation and that of President Trump, totally backing the shooter’s story, was not the full story or perhaps even any part of it. It was fiction, of the self-serving genre practiced by members of the Trump administration. The President, believing what he wanted to believe, even suggested that the woman backed her vehicle over the ‘fallen’ ICE agent’s body, which of course never happened as numerous videos document. 

Years ago, when roads were slippery, drivers installed chains on their rear wheels to maintain traction on the ice. That probably would have avoided this entire tragic incident. I agree with Minneapolis officials who said that ICE personnel on that city’s streets are the cause of the problem and shouldn’t be there in the first place. 

The officers of ICE (Immigration Control & Enforcement), at present our largest law enforcement agency, do not receive the thorough training that regular law enforcement agencies provide for their personnel. Such training includes specific rules as to when to shoot someone and when not to, specifically to avoid situations like this; this incident clearly was in the latter category. All of ICE’s personnel are not fully trained to make these kinds of decisions. 

In the absence of any evidence that the ICE officer was harmed, threatened, or endangered by any of the deceased woman’s actions, he should be charged with murder, but a conviction is unlikely. Even if there were one, the President would probably pardon him. 

JL 

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Second Amendment Involvement in MN? 

One of the purposes of the Second Amendment was to enable individual States to arm themselves with militias, whose role would include opposing what they considered to be illegal acts, affecting the rights of States, by the Federal government. It reads ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’ Those militia continue to exist as State National Guard units. 

When Minnesota’s governor authorized the Minnesota National Guard to assist local law enforcement in keeping the peace, ‘necessary to the securityof a free State,’ a power he shares with the president, does he envision an eventual armed shootout between his State’s Guard and ICE, a Federal entity? I hope not.

Some ICE personnel are also members of that State’s National Guard and might have difficult decisions to make. I hope things do not reach that point. It’s something to think about. 

And while you’re thinking about that, check out Professor Timothy Snyder’s January 9 column (‘Thinking About …’) by clicking here or copying and pasting https://snyder.substack.com/on your device’s browser line. It's a good one.

JL 

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About Brevity 

Shakespeare has Polonius advise his son, going off to college, that ‘brevity is the soul of wit’ with words that were not very brief. (Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2).

My letter published in the SouthFlorida SunSentinel on January 7 took that advice and was a brief one, as follows: ‘On Sticking With Trump – The real tragedy of the current occupant of the White House is that millions of Americans are sufficiently gullible, ignorant or bigoted to have voted for him and still support him.’ 

 A brief letter, yes, but I still owe readers of Jackspotpourri a further explanation and shall try to remain brief in doing so. If I had put all of this into the letter, it probably would not have been published, the editors obviously appreciating its brevity. 

 (1) Believing that the January 6 demonstrators were merely peaceful and patriotic tourists visiting the Capitol, and that Trump’s Venezuelan adventure is not about oil requires such gullibility. 

 (2) Not knowing for what the United States fought in 1776, 1861, and in two World Wars requires such ignorance, and 

 (3) Routinely accepting the presence of admitted racists, using immigration reform as an excuse, as a legitimate part of Trump’s support requires such bigotry, even though not often readily admitted by the bigots themselves. 

JL 

                                                           

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri 

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com.

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them. 

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com , or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting. 

Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com 

More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘paper’ newspaper (the South Florida SunSentinel which frequently carries articles from the New York Times and the Associatd Press), and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors. Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations. Besides these sources, 

I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. 

Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. 

 JL 

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January 6, 2026 - Venezuela and an Anniversary

 

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An Anniversary

Lest we forget, today is the anniversary of the attack on the nation's Capitol building in 2021 by right wing militants encouraged by the defeated candidate for the presidency, Donald Trump, to prevent the counting of the electoral votes.  This marked the descent of the United States of America to the status of a Banana Republic.

JL

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Trump's Venezuelan Adventure

Four years later, he was legally elected.  

Now that our president has used our armed forces to seize the Venezuelan dictator, what does he plan on doing with him? Normally, in a situation like this, once a ‘democratic’ government would be established in Venezuela, Maduro would be turned over to it. But really, there is no such government acceptable to us on the horizon. Trump says there is, but that ain’t so! He seems to think the world is as dumb and gullible as the Republicans whose Party he allegedly heads. 

Commentator Simon Rosenberg’s latest posting initially summed up the situation in its headline reading ‘Is Trump in Charge of Venezuela? The Maduro Government Say No. What the F-ck is Going On?’ 

Additional commentary on what’s going on, which is still in flux, can be found in the substack postings of Professor Timothy Snyder and Professor Heather Cox Richardson and in many other places, onlne and in print. Start off with Professor Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American’ dated January 4 by CLICKING HERE or visiting https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ You don’t have to select a ‘paying’ option to read it. Interesting is that Richardson quotes Simon Rosenberg reflecting an inbreeding among those criticizing President Trump. 

A solution using a hemispheric organization like the Organization of American States won’t work either because some of its members, for various reasons, still support Maduro, or at least oppose the actions of the United States bombing the country and seizing him in Venezuela. To them, that smells like an exercise in imperialism which they abhor. The same goes for the United Nations, where Maduro has friends and allies, specifically Cuba and Russia, and where Trump’s action is a violation of the UN’s charter. I believe the United States offered Maduro the opportunity of a very comfotable exile which he laughed off, incorrectly hoping we would not pursue him further.

Sending American troops there to temporarily govern the place will eventually lead to an Iraq-style tragedy, since their army’s loyalties are unknown; the American public will not stand for members of its armed forces being used, and potentially killed, to satisfy Trump’s ego. 

There are parallels between Venezuela and Iraq.  Both sit on large oil reserves.  Our involvement in both situations involved lies.  In Iraq, it was 'weapons of mass distruction' that never existed.  In Venezuela, it is their non-existent strategy of smuggling drugs into the U.S.

One thing is clear. Trump’s Venezuelan adventure has demolished whatever credibility he had among the nations of the world, making him no different from the leadership of recognized dictatorships like Russia, China, or North Korea. He is a burden on our presidency. Americans just do not behave that way….. So, 

The best thing that could happen right now would be for President Trump being eased out of office via the 25th Amendment or a lightning-fast impeachment, either of which would require strong and immediate Republican support. 

This would leave any successor with the choice of either justifying or or undoing the great harm to the nation, including this particular adventure in Venezuela, that Trump has brought about. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left by Trump to ‘run Venezuela,’ seems content to let that country run itself so long as they stick to some yet undefined guidelines we would provide, primarily dealing with petroleum and drug manufacturing and their distribution. I don’t hear too much about installing democracy. 

This difference in emphasis between Trump and Rubio may be an acceleration of a hoped-for drifting away from the president by some Republicans, necessary to remove him from office. Dealing with a less deranged successor would be easier than dealing with Trump. It occurs to me that capturing Maduro, legal or not, moves the spotlight from other issues such as how Americans pay for healthcare, inflation, and the Epstein documents, all of which bother Trump. Venezuela doesn’t leave much space left in the news for them, but they don’t go away, as Donald hopes they would! 

We cannot forget that such harm to the nation cannot be entirely attributed to President Trump. It was carried out with the support of voters whose profound ignorance and gullibility the Founding Fathers and the writers of subsequent Constitutional Amendments never anticipated. 

Today’s best news is that It appears that Trump’s support at home is finally waning, even in the supposedly independent States which were supposed to be a balance to a strong central Federal government. Even Marjorie Taylor Green, resigned from Congress, has become critical of him, along with others far on the right. But that isn’t happening fast enough. 

Legally removing President Trump would be preferable to leaving the present situation to work itself out with the passage of time. Even American petroleum companies, logically the chief beneficiaries of Trump’s seizure of Venezuela’s government, are being skittish about backing him in what is an illegal action, unacceptable to the rest of the world. 

And we cannot count on Maduro’s allies sitting idly by either. They can easily recruit ‘volunteers’ if we put boots on the ground to carry out Trump's plans, whatever they may be.   Such thinking is far beyond the limits of Trump’s ego dominated brain. Meanwhile in Moscow, Vladimir Putin is doubled over in laughter, Trump’s imbecility having given legitimacy to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. And I won’t even mention China’s eye on Tawain. 

But right now, the job is to get Donald John Trump out of the presidency, and harmlessly esconced at Mar-a-Lago. Then and there, as a carefully watched civilian, he can do no further damage to the nation, becoming no more than another of Florida’s tourist attractions, like Disney World or the acclaimed Weeki-Watchee Mermaid show. 

JL

                                                           * * * 

Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri 

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com. 

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them. 

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com , or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting. 

Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com

More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors. Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations. 

Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. 

Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. 

JL 

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