April 19, 2026 - Clowning Around, Peace With Iran and Hezbollah, More on AI, and Thoughts from the New Yorker's Editor

 

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Sending in the Clowns 

I fail to understand why the United States sends relateively inexperienced negotiators to whatever meetings take place to resolve the war President Trump started with Iran. 

Presidential son-in-law and investor Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff lack the bargaining skills to carry out high level international negotiations as well as sufficient knowledge of the history of the issues involved. Success in the business world, or friendship with Donald Trump, does not justify their role in these meetings, whenever they resume. 

Even Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio lack all of the necessary skills and deep knowledge required when dealing with trained professional diplomats representing other countries, including of course, Iran. They need experts sitting at their side at the table. I am not certain that such expertise is available to them. 

When the United States competes in international athletic events, we try to send our best and most qualified to represent our country. We have such people available in the world of diplomacy. Unfortunately, often they turn out to be government employees (as diplomats usually are) and using them is difficult because Republican leadership, leaning in a libertarian direction, seems to think government is the enemy, not the friend, of the people. And those who come from the academic world might not profess loyalty to the Administration. So we send in amateurs which is little better than ‘sending in the clowns,’ a decision made by the chief clown himself. 

JL 

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Is Peace in Sight? 

If we are to believe what their respective governments tell us, the Strait of Hormuz ought to be open, and cease fire talks between the United States and Iran proceeding now that Israel and Lebanon are now talking to each other.

But each side, however, puts its own spin on to what it agreed, providing them with ‘wiggle room.’ I still wish we had better negotiators involved than those described above. 

Right now, the United State Navy is still chasing down shipping all over the world that has Iranian connections and blockading Iranian ports by air, which acts have moved Iran to once again close the Strait of Hormuz, now renamed by them as the Strait of Iran. 

And israel is supposedly only targeting Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, but they are still difficult to separate from other locations there. By the time you are reading this, these things may have changed … again. 

JL 

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Continuing Research into Artificial Intelligence 

The previous posting of Jackspotpourri suggested keeping up with articles concerning Artificial Intelligence. Those interested in doing so might start by clicking here or copying and pasting https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50/ on their device’s browser line. 

This Forbes Magazine article is a summary of the businesses actively involved in Artifical Intelligence’s development. Anyone who does anything on the internet should be familiar with tools such as Claude and ChatGPT and what has been going on with Anthropic, the developer of Claude. This article may provide a starting point for those who want to do more than just scratch the surface of information technology. 

JL 

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Comments from New Yorker's Editor

Originally written ten days earlier, the following piece by New Yorker magazine editor David Remnick appeared in its issue dated April 20. (That magazine dates its issues at least a week ahead so that they appear to be current when made available for purchase on newsstands.) 

Trump’s Strategic and Moral Failure in Iran 

From the first day of his Presidency, Trump has posed an emergency to both his country and the world - By David Remnick April 10, 2026 

“Not many years ago, a ruthless man with an uneasy mind took power in his country and created a cult of personality. In the center of the capital, he erected a gold statue of himself that rotated with the sun. 

He stashed billions in a foreign bank. He closed the academy of sciences, the ballet, the philharmonic, the circus, and all provincial libraries. His autobiography became the nation’s spiritual guide. He banned dogs from the capital for their “unappealing odor.” He renamed the months: January for himself, April for his mother. He was fond of melons. The second Sunday of August became National Melon Day. Such was the world of Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan’s leader from 1985 until his death, by cardiac arrest, in 2006.

For the Turkmen people, there was nothing comical about life under his dictatorship. He barred dissent and packed his jails with prisoners of conscience. The only consolation was that he could not impose his grandiosity on the globe. 

Donald Trump, by contrast, has, from the first day of his Presidency, posed an emergency to both his country and the world, even as he has ceaselessly invoked the language of “emergency” to inflate threats, suspend norms, and expand his own power. 

A decade ago, he was already making statements that flouted the ordinary standards of adult behavior. When it came to North Korea, for example, he alternated between cooing words of affection for Kim Jong Un and issuing taunts that mixed nuclear brinkmanship with masculine insecurity: “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” 

Trump embodies the notion that, with age, you become what you always were, only more so. In the final days of the 2024 campaign, he met with the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. When asked whether he would deploy the U.S. military if China, under Xi Jinping, were to blockade Taiwan, Trump replied, “I wouldn’t have to, because he respects me, and he knows I’m fucking crazy.” 

The MAGA coalition has long countenanced Trump’s bigotry and cruelty. But now, with the repeated violations of an America First foreign policy, his poll numbers have plummeted. Since returning to office, Trump has ordered military strikes on Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, and Iran, and has felt little need to provide a coherent rationale for any of them.

According to reporting by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, of the Times, Trump and his national-security advisers gathered in the Situation Room on February 11th to listen to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, argue for a coördinated attack on Iran. Even though the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, made their reservations plain—Rubio called Netanyahu’s talk of regime change “bullshit”—Trump blundered ahead. And, as in the days of the Turkmen dictator, everyone fell into line. 

But when the Iranian regime failed to collapse or capitulate, when Netanyahu’s prediction of a national uprising failed to materialize, Trump turned to threats of war crimes and genocide against the very people he claimed to be helping liberate: ‘A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?’ 

These were not the words of a strategist. They were the words of a maniac. And they had a galvanizing effect, though hardly in the way Trump might have intended. Some of his erstwhile acolytes—Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones—seem to have woken up to how dangerous he has always been. 

Yet around the Cabinet table, at Mar-a-Lago, and in the Republican caucus on Capitol Hill, it is gospel that his deranged threats forced a ceasefire and scored a major victory. The President’s war, though, seems poised to achieve little that was not already available through prewar diplomacy, or through some renewed version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A., the Iran nuclear deal secured by the Obama Administration. In fact, the original sin of this disaster was Trump’s abandonment of that deal, in 2018. For all its limits, it had stalled Iran’s march toward an atomic weapon.

But Netanyahu, long eager for a full-scale war against Iran - aimed not only at its nuclear program but at its proxies, such as Hezbollah - shrewdly played on Trump’s vanity and his contempt for Barack Obama. Trump destroyed the J.C.P.O.A. with nothing to replace it. So the war stands as a strategic failure and a moral calamity. The ceasefire is already fragile. “The whole point of this exercise was supposedly to advance the cause of freedom in Iran,” Karim Sadjadpour, a Washington-based specialist on the country, said. “To go from ‘help is on the way’ to ‘we are going to wipe out your civilization’ is strategic malpractice.” 

 According to Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert who formerly worked in Israeli intelligence, Trump’s principal envoys to the region, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, almost certainly misread Iran’s capabilities and intentions. “This is a colossal disaster and should never have happened,” Citrinowicz said, noting that it will “haunt the region and world for many years to come.” I

In the opening days of the war, the United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and wiped out much of Iran’s defense and intelligence leadership, apparently believing that the regime would somehow give way to “moderates” and “pragmatists.” Instead, the theocracy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remain in place, equally radical, equally repressive, and more determined than ever to acquire the ultimate deterrent: a nuclear weapon. Why give up that pursuit, as Libya did, and leave yourself exposed, when you can, like North Korea, achieve it and deter attack? Trump has gone far toward shattering what’s left of America’s global stature. 

His preposterous bluster about Greenland, Cuba, and NATO has undermined the postwar alliance. He has humiliated and betrayed the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky. And all the while Vladimir Putin, who aims to press Ukraine for still more territory, and Xi Jinping, who keeps Taiwan in view, watch the spectacle of Donald Trump for what it reveals about both his instability and the cratering credibility of American leadership. 

In the midst of the war, Trump released plans for his Presidential library. Its centerpiece will be an auditorium with an immense gold statue of himself. Whether it will turn with the sun is not yet known.” 

 (Published in the print edition of the April 20, 2026, issue of the New Yorker with the headline ‘Global Threat.’) 

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In my opinion, it is up to Rubio, Ratcliffe, and Caine, as well as any others present at that February 11 meeting in the White House’s Situation Room, to recognize that they had been misinformed and misled by Netanyahu and Trump and to lead an effort, directed primarily at Republicans, to remove Donald Trump from office, using whatever means is available to accomplish that most quickly. He must go! 

Whoever succeeds Trump is certain to be a great improvement over a president who actually boasted to the Wall Street Journal two years ago (see above New Yorker article) that the president of China respects him because ‘he thinks that I’m fucking crazy.’ If that’s the self-image Trump is content to project, we have great reason for concern. Being thusly detached from reality is not a virtue. It is that simple. 

 He is, as Remnick puts it, a ‘Global Threat.’

Perhaps coincidentally, the New Yorker magazine issue from which the above article is reproduced also included a lengthy review by critic Louis Menand of a book about the end of the lost Vietnam war, a point at which all the United States was doing was attempting to ‘save face.’ It seems to me, right now, that is the same thing that we are attempting to do in our misguided war against Iran. 

JL 

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You Want Evidence? 

 And speaking of Trump’s alternate reality, economist Paul Krugman addresses it truthfully in his posting dated April 18. To read it, click here or copy and paste paulkrugman@substack.com on your device’s browser line.

And then, if you need further evidence of the President’s illegal activities, and those of his appointees, check out what Professor Heather Cox Richardson has been writing and documenting with links to her sources in her ‘Letters from an American’ by clicking here or copying and pasting https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your device’s browser line.  

In her past few postings there, she touches a lot of bases, too many to list here … so take advantage of the suggested links. Do not remain confused by the alternate reality in which Donald Trump dwells. 

Don’t try to find some relief in the comic pages either. 

So long for now. 

 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.

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More on the Sources of Information in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘printed’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals. 

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 emails, 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. 

Following 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. 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.   Always!!

  

JL  

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April 15, 2026 - Florida Stuff, Hungarian Election, Miami Marlins, and Artificial Intelligence Warning

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Starting With Florida Tonight

Florida's Capitol Building

While there’s a lot to be aware of on the international scene (the continuing Iranian conflict and its spread into Lebanon, its on-off negotiations, its dispute as to who actually can control the Strait of Hormuz, and the defeat of strongly pro-Trump and pro-Putin Viktor Orban in Hungary by a more democratic centrist), we should not ignore what are, at least to Floridians, significant local problems. 

With that in mind, as well as G.O.P. efforts to make it more difficult for Americans to vote, let’s start with SunSentinel Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet’s column from Sunday’s newspaper, both printed and online. Its final paragraph offers a suggestion to the State’s usually downtrodden Democrats. So let’s focus on Florida for a few minutes. 

Cost of living is Democrats’ best argument 

By Steve Bousquet | South Florida Sun Sentinel - April 11, 2026 at 8:38 AM

“The race is on. Democrats running for Congress, state Legislature and other offices are frantically raising the millions they will need to pay for a barrage of mailers attacking their Republican rivals this fall. Like everything else in Florida, those mailers are expensive, and Republicans can answer more forcefully because they have vastly more to spend. 

But here’s a way for Democrats to make their case to voters and save money. Forget the glossy card-stock mailers with distorted images, designed to make your opponent look like an ax murderer. You really want to scare voters?

Simply download a new report by the business-backed research group Florida TaxWatch. Its title is “Cost of Living in Florida: A Mid-Decade Check-In.” 

It’s packed with numbers, a TaxWatch trademark, so it’s a bit dense. But it still packs a punch. “Florida has held the nation’s highest residential home insurance premiums since 2020, averaging $2,794 per year through (September) 2025 — a 63 percent increase since 2020,” the report says. “Average asking rents climbed from 16th-highest nationally in 2020 to 6th-highest by 2025, reaching $2,208 per month.” 

On and on the TaxWatch report goes, listing higher and higher costs of housing, groceries, rent, utilities and child care. Property taxes keep rising. Factor in inflation, TaxWatch says, and costs “have begun to reach astronomical levels.” A TaxWatch graph (shown above) shows how prices in South Florida are outpacing Tampa Bay and the southeastern U.S. It’s a grim picture in a state where Republicans have been in control for 30 years. 

“Not only has Florida become incredibly expensive compared to the rest of its region, but also compared to itself just five years prior,” TaxWatch reports. “Living in Florida is becoming more expensive year by year.” The report is online at floridataxwatch.org/Research/Full-Library. 

TaxWatch simply amplifies what we already know: Florida has become truly unaffordable and, by implication, Republicans won’t address it. (“State policy must step up,” the report says, which is TaxWatch-speak for Republicans are failing.) In fact, the GOP has made things worse, with tax policies favoring corporations over working people, a refusal to expand health access through Medicaid and keeping some of the lowest unemployment benefits of any state. 

In about a week, Gov. Ron DeSantis will call the Legislature back to work for his version of a “mid-decade check-in” — a rigged redrawing of political boundary lines to help keep the Republicans in control of Congress at a time when Democrats are gaining traction in Florida. Fixing the economy won’t be on the agenda. Again. 

 If TaxWatch is not your thing, then cruise the website of the real estate industry, a bulwark of the Republican Party. A recent headline on realtor.com said: “Floridians Feel the ‘Sunshine Squeeze’: Nearly 50% Want To Move Due To Affordability.” Citing a widely reported FAU poll, the Realtors’ article began: “Living in Florida is becoming punishingly unaffordable.” This is from an industry whose members’ livelihood depends on making Florida as attractive as possible. 

If you’re not moved by the Realtors’ pitch, consider a third source: Florida’s senior U.S. senator, Rick Scott. The former “jobs governor” cited an uptick in Florida’s unemployment rate to 4.5%, two-tenths of a point higher than the national average, and a full point higher than a year ago. The state is losing jobs at a rate of 9,000 over a 12-month period. On social media, Scott sent a blunt message to DeSantis: “Florida shouldn’t be losing so many jobs, and we shouldn’t be surpassing the national unemployment average for the first time in years … A good-paying job is life-changing, which is why I’m concerned about this report. Florida shouldn’t be losing so many jobs, and we shouldn’t be surpassing the national unemployment average for the first time in years. Creating more jobs needs to be PRIORITY #1!”  

Seven months out, it looks like anxiety and frustration over the high cost of living could finally explode at the polls. Put me down as skeptical, because Florida Republicans have a registered-voter advantage over Democrats of 1.5 million, and Republicans are more reliable voters. Also, don’t discount Republican efforts to suppress the vote by denouncing or restricting voting by mail. 

Floriduh Voter

What’s more, in Florida, people too often maddeningly vote against their self-interest.  Rural, poor voters eagerly support candidates who flaunt their devotion to big-city business interests such as utilities or real estate developers. Still, economic worries can be a winning issue for Democrats. But criticism of the status quo isn’t enough; they need to propose solutions. At least merely recognizing the depth of the crisis will show empathy for people, which is far more than DeSantis and the Legislature have done. 

(Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240.) 

JL 

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Orban Defeated

The defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary’s election revealed that his government had been helping to fund CPAC in this country. It never was a secret that Orban had been at Vladimir Putin’s beck and call. 

 As the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) brought Orban’s Christian Nationalist flavor to the Republican Party, it also involved this hidden connection with Russia’s leadership. These were indeed strange bedfellows. 

Peter Magyar, likely to be the new Hungarian Prime Minister, is certain to put an end to this, turning away from Moscow, and it is hoped will introduce democratic reforms as did Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s in this country. Professor Heather Cox Richardson sheds some light on this in her ‘Letters from an American’ dated April 13 and 14 where what appear to be isolated events work together in the mosaic of history. Click here  or copy and paste https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your browser line for what amounts to a comprehensive history lesson. 

 JL 

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Marlins No Longer a Cable Choice 

The absence of Miami Marlins baseball from the Hotwire basic cable package that is provided to residents of my community, and other similar cable menus as well, bothered me for a while until I saw the pathetic attendance figures for their home games thus far this season, mostly below 10,000 except for opening day. Just because they’re winning some games, that just doesn’t warrant purchasing a ‘streaming package’ to see them. 

With such ‘minor league’ attendance numbers, its only a question of where and when they depart from Miami for greener (the color of money) pastures, so building temporary loyalties seems to be a waste of time. 

Meanwhile, the MLB channel, part of most basic cable packages, provides daily exposure of the rest of the major leagues, where Marlins fans, once the ‘Fish’ are gone, can find another team to root for, although seeing them every day still will require purchasing a streaming package.  But at least there will be loads of people in the stands, an uncommon sight at LoanDepot Park. 

My guess is that the Marlins will end up in Charlotte, Nashville, Portland or the San Antonio/Austin area of Texas within a few years. Whoever gets the Marlins, though, will have to build a stadium with a major league seating capacity, since none of these cities have one. My bet would be on Texas.

Montreal, a city that was once the home of the Expos (they moved to Washington in 2004) does have a major league size statium, but seems to be out of the race for a place where the Marlins might land because of its sorry experience with the Expos. If politics allowed it, Havana might be a good choice as well, but I wouldn’t bet on that. 

JL 

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Beware of a Power-Hungry Artificial Intelligence 

It's unavoidable that the world we live in is eventually going to be dominated by Artificial Intelligence. A hint into that future is the pressure made by many banks and other billers that you go ‘paperless,’ trusting in their impersonal systems. 

Initially, AI is developed by human beings but eventually acquires the ability to create and re-create itself. Just like your children and grandchildren. To be one of these original inspired ‘human beings’ requires at least the veneer of doing something that benefits all of humanity as well as possessing a strong individual drive to do so. 

That drive can be nourished by the opportunity to acquire enormous and unbelievable amounts of money, but only up to a point. Beyond that, a growing sense of tremendous personal accomplishment is required to continue to fuel it. Acquiring the power to do that becomes an unending task of its own for Artificial Intelligence and its original human designers (if they still are around), even surpassing the quest for monetary rewards. 

To achieve that level of accomplishment, ethical compromises may have to be part of Artificial Intelligence’s structure, giving a higher priority to allowing, if not demanding, a continuing increase in its power to increase its accomplishments. AI has a built-in appetite, if not a hunger, for doing that. It’s sort of like eating cashews. Given a few cashews on a plate, can you eat only one?  Please try!

 Once Artificial Intelligence’s appetite or hunger for such power is satisfied, if ever that point can be reached, even the ‘human beings’ who developed it in the first place may have lost control of everything. 

Please pay attention to the increasing number of articles appearing in print or online dealing with the different approaches to AI being taken by the several companies developing Artificial Intelligence tools and their connections to the business community and government agencies.  Your future may be in their hands.  

 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 in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘printed’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals. 

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 emails, 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. 

Following 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. 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. Always! 

April 12, 2026 - Springsteen Speaks, Despot Riddance, Attacking Iran was Dumb, Cuba??, Melania??, and our Astronauts

 

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Bruce Springsteen Speaks Out 

Never one to ignore a pressing issue, Bruce Springsteen continued his current tour, inspired by Trump’s excesses, with a call to action, reported in Heather Cox Richardson’s April 10 ‘Letters from an American’ thusly’: “The pushback against Trump is spreading across the United States. Jess Craven of 'Chop Wood, Carry Water' today called out rock and roll legend Bruce Springsteen’s opening last night at his concert in Los Angeles: 

 “Good evening, Los Angeles,” he said. “Welcome to the Land of Hope and Dreams tour. We begin tonight with a prayer for our men and women in service overseas. We pray for their safe return. 

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll in dangerous times. We are here in celebration and defense of our American ideals, democracy, our Constitution, and our sacred American promise. “The America I love, the America that I’ve written about for 50 years, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration,” he said. 

“Tonight we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unrivaled corruption, resistance over complacency, truth over lies, unity over division, and peace over war.” 

Amen! 

JL 

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Getting Rid of Despots 

Professor Barbara Walter out at the University of California – San Diego points out that a despot can be driven out of power by three methods, foreign invasion, a popular uprising, or the resistance of a nation’s military forces. 

The first is unlikely to succeed in the United States because of its size. The second might be possible, but only along with the success of the third. 

That is why President Trump has been firing or retiring early so many high-ranking military officers. Check out ‘Here Be Dragons’ (the April 8 posting) by clicking here or copying and pasting barbarafwalter@substack.com on your device’s browser line to learn more about this. 

JL 

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Attacking Iran was a Dumb Move 

President Trump has not accomplished his goals in regard to Iran, about which he has been difficult to pin down to start with.  Despite a very tenuous ceasefire, Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz, still has their hidden stash of refined uranium, and still supports their allies in the region. And Israel doesn’t recognize that the supposed ceasefire fully includes its actions in Lebanon, where Hezbollah remains loyal to Iran. Israel seems willing to talk with Lebanon about that but meanwhile will continue to attack Hezbollah targets there. That doesn’t sound like a victory to me, despite our demolishing Iran’s army and navy and wrecking a lot of buildings in Tehran.

Bottom line is that attacking Iran was a very dumb move, accomplishing little or nothing. The story goes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sold Trump on the idea that a joint attack on Iran would successfully accomplish these goals, and the President was ultimately able to twist enough arms to get most of his initially dubious advisors to go along with the attack, a move which had been deemed unnecessarily dangerous by all of Trump’s presidential predecessors. 

It turns out that they were correct and the President and Bibi were wrong and aside from physical damage and a diminution of its armed forces, Iran is actually better off than they were before the attack, finally gaining full control of the Strait of Hormuz (which they didn’t have before), and also being able to paint the United States as an aggressor nation, willing to attack civilian targets such as water and power sources, illegal acts.  And Iran’s theocratic dictatorship, however battered but still able to execute any number of dissenters, seems to have survived. 

Unfortunately, the influence of Netanyahu upon Trump will end up as an argument by antisemites, many of whom do not distinguish being Jewish from supporting the State of Israel. 

President Trump has suggested that he might turn to an easier challenge to keep the spotlight away from shining on his possible relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein. We wonder why presidential spouse Melania Trump recently went far out of her way to specifically deny any connection with Epstein. What thus-far-unrevealed act motivated her to do that? We await her other spike heeled shoe to drop, recalling Shakespeare’s widowed and guilt-ridden Queen Gertrude making excuses to her dramatist son Hamlet, on seeing a suggestive and damning play he had written in which ‘The lady doth protest too much.’ 

Right now, ‘Liberating’ Cuba, an ‘excursion’ more like his Venezuelan success, would fill the bill for Donald Trump. He very well might succeed in doing that, claiming to be divinely destined to be the second coming of Che Guevara, who by sheer coincidence conveniently shared a common birthday with Donald Trump, June 14! Are Cubans gullible enough to believe that?

With Trump having taken Venezuela out of the Cuban equation, Cuba has become more directly dependent upon Russia, and even upon China. The United States certainly should not have wanted that to happen. Or is that too much to expect of the President’s thought process. Cuba has always presented a lot of economic and political challenges, most of which have not been solved, regardless of who were in charge there. 

JL 

                                                          * * * 

Artemis ll a Success So Let’s Cut Space Programs 

Euphoria is not permanent

The national euphoria resulting from the accomplishments of the Artemis ll mission will not deter the administration from trying to cut its spending on such space programs that support ‘science,’ something Trump & Co. do not appreciate nor understand. The administration’s stupidity is not limited to its foreign policy in the Middle East. 

Click here or copy and paste https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/apr/11/artemis-ii-nasa-budget-cuts#:~:text=Even%20as%20Integrity%2C%20the%20mission,cut%20for%20space%20science%20initiatives on your device’s browser line to learn more about this. 

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 in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘printed’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals. 

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 emails, 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. 

Following 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. 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. Always! 

JL 

                                                            * * * *

April 8, 2026 - Trump's Bluff, Reasons to Sideline Him, and Some Thoughts from Professor Snyder

                                                   * * * 

Right Again

T.A.C.O.

In response to a follower of Jackspotpourri’s concern over the danger to the world of Trump’s ultimatum discussed below, I replied on Tuesday afternoon that although most of my next blog posting (which you now are reading) had already been prepared, I might have to modify it a little, but I fully expected the President to 'T.A.C.O.' (Trump Always Chickens Out) on this threat as he has done on so many others. 

He is backed into a corner and flailing around seeking an exit ramp, where there is no believable one available. I was correct, but how many times can he get away with this without paying the price of some way being evicted from the White House? 

JL

                                                    * * * 

He Has ‘Lost It’ 

Take note of what our legally elected president posted on Sunday. (See below. It follows in purple lettering.) I think it is suffiecient evidence for the members of his cabinet, the leaders of both major parties in Congress, and the entire Supreme Court to drag him out of the White House, feet first if necessary, and deposit him in the mental illness section of Walter Reed Hospital. This is the purpose of the 25th Amendment to our Constitution. Heads of State with all of their marbles do not talk or act this way! 

The first thing his replacement should do is get rid of the non-diplomat businessmen (golfing buddy Witkoff and son-in-law Kushner) he has negotiating an end to this war and turn that task over to professional diplomats, if any remain in the employ of our government. These two are just interested in ultimately making a buck out of this war. 

                                                         * * 

Among the many media sources, in print or online, reporting the President’s foul-mouthed threat was Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s April 5 ‘Letters from an American’ posting. Find it there or almost anywhere else. It read: “At 8:03 this morning, Easter Sunday, President Donald J. Trump’s social media account posted: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*ckin’ Strait, you crazy b*stards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP” 

And then Professor Richardson added that “In The Guardian last Monday, Sidney Blumenthal noted that Trump “has declared ‘victory’ more than eight times,” says he has “won” more than ten times, and said Iranian forces have been “obliterated” or suffered “obliteration” more than six times. Blumenthal noted Trump is now threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power grid and has used the words “decimate” or “decimation” at least six times.”  Please add ‘redundancy’ to the President’s galaxy of shortcomings. 

A few days earlier, Trump posted this on his social media platform: “With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A ‘GUSHER’ FOR THE WORLD??? President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Note his odd use of ‘question marks’ in a statement that is not a question, enabling him to claim he never actually advocated this but it was just something he was thinking about. (Trump never paid any attention in school and was unaware of the existence of a ‘conditional’ tense. He could have replaced ‘can easily’ with ‘might easily’ or ‘could easily’ but he must have cut school the day they taught that.) 

 Anyway, this thought might have been a good idea to his investor-negotiators, Witkoff and Kushner, who have significant dealings with Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman. 

Does Trump expect anyone, including the Iranians, to take him seriously any longer?  Well, yes!  

                                        

Professor Timothy Snyder does! His ‘Thinking About …’ column dated April 7, dealing with the President's threat of genocide, follows.

.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

These are not the words of Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot, or Assad, or Putin. These are the words of the president of the United States, today.

Do not be distracted by circumstances. Of course there are emotions, personalities, politics, a war. None of this excuses that sentence. The reason we have a notion of genocide, and a convention on genocide, is to define certain actions as always and definitively wrong.

Are these “only words”? No, they cannot be “only words.” As any historian of mass atrocity knows, there is no such thing as “only words.” The notion of killing a whole civilization, once spoken, remains. It enables others to say similar things, as when another elected representative compared the entire country of Iran to a cancer that had to be removed.

Whatever happens tonight, the president, by saying such things, has already changed the world for the worse, and made acts of mass violence more likely. If we are Americans, he has also changed our country. He has changed us, because he represents us; we voted for him, or we didn’t vote and allowed him to come to power, or we didn’t do enough to stop him. These words are America’s words, until and unless Americans reject them.

Yes, there have been other genocides, and there are other politicians who endorse genocide. That makes the words of the president worse, not better. Yes, the United States has undertaken atrocities before. That makes it all the more important, all the more urgent, that we catch ourselves now. Neither the evil nor the good in our history determines who we are. It is what we do now.

If we do not say something ourselves about this horror, we allow ourselves to be changed.

Around the president there will be people, sadly, who work deliberately to normalize the language of genocide. There will be other politicians who find the right words to reject it. One can hope that there will be politicians who find the courage to remove the man who speaks genocide from office. And these words should lead to resignations by everyone who works closely with the president.

But we cannot count on politicians. This is ultimately up to us, the citizens: for our own sake, for the sake of the future of the country, for the sake of a possibility of new beginnings, we need to say something, to someone else, to ourselves: this is simply wrong.  

Whatever happens tonight, or any other night in this war, is now legally defined by the president’s statement. In the practical application of the law of genocide, the Genocide Convention of 1948, the difficulty is usually in proving “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Henceforth the intent is on the record, in the published words of the president of the United States and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces about the death of “a whole civilization.”

Article III of the Genocide Convention makes it clear that not only the person who issues the genocidal order is guilty. Genocide itself is of course a crime, where genocide means the intent that Trump expressed, and actions such as killing members of a group, causing members of a group serious harm, or “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” -- which would of course include actions such as destroying access to energy or water. But also defined as a crime are conspiracy to commit genocide, incitement to commit genocide, attempts to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide.

We all have good ethical and political reasons to reject the president’s words. But those who serve in government, and in the armed forces, have been placed under the legal shadow of genocide by what Trump wrote. To bomb a bridge or a dam or a power plant or a desalinization facility, very likely a war crime in any event, could very well have a different legal significance, a genocidal one, if it takes place after the expression of genocidal intent by the commander and head of state.

The concept of genocide was created by a survivor and an observer of atrocities, Rafał Lemkin, so that we could see ourselves, judge ourselves, stop ourselves. But genocide is not only a concept. It is also a crime under international law, signed by the United States in 1948 as a convention, ratified by the United States as a treaty in 1988. That makes the words I have quoted here the law of the land.

The president speaks genocide. And so we too must speak. Not only about crimes, but about their legal punishment..

                                                            * * *

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 in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘printed’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals. 

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. 

Following 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 identified, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary. 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. Always! 

JL                                                    *   *   *   *