Philip Roth's Passing, the Forty Percent, a History Lesson and a Foreign Policy Dream

Thoughts on the Passing of Author Philip Roth

Though I didn’t know Phil Roth personally, a connection existed between us in that we both were graduated from Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ, in 1950 and in that we had several common acquaintances.   Of course, along with many raised in the Weequahic 'Section' (See the map below.  Newark natives use that word, 'section' instead of the word “neighborhood” … it’s sort of a password to one’s Weequahic authenticity), we were very familiar with the setting of many of his novels and were often able to identify similarities with real people we may have known, Swede Mason appearing as Swede Levov in “American Pastoral” as an example.

My graduation was in June of 1950.  Phil’s was in February of that year.  
We ought to have been in the same graduation class (Phil was nine months younger than me), but I suppose somewhere along the line he was in a combined class  

 

composed of ultimate February and June graduates which moved on at its higher level. That occasionally occurred at Peshine Avenue School where I went and I assume the same thing happened at Phil’s elementary school, Chancellor Avenue.

We both entered Newark College of Rutgers University in September of 1950. (At the end of the year, Phil transferred to Bucknell University and I transferred to Rutgers main campus in New Brunswick.)  We both were in the same freshman English class in the building on Washington Place, facing the southern border of Washington Park. Our instructor was a Ms. Weir, as I recall, and I seem to remember her as being a graduate of Smith College.  I don’t remember any hints of Phil’s future accomplishments showing up in that class.

A few years later, after college and military service, I recall having a few beers in a bar on South Orange Avenue in Newark, not far from the campus of Seton Hall University.  Present were Jerry Lechter (whom I have entirely lost touch with) and a friend of his, Bob Heyman, who knew Phil quite well.  I have since become somewhat reacquainted with Bob who has retired to South Florida.  Anyway, “Goodbye, Columbus,” Phil’s first novella (along with a few short stories) was just being published.  I distinctly remember Heyman cautioning us not to reveal the real characters upon which those in “Goodbye, Columbus” were based, since it was supposed to be original fiction. (Of course, all fiction comes out of an author’s experience, so there’s nothing wrong in using real people as patterns for fictional characters.)  The best man at my wedding, now deceased, had identified the girl in “Goodbye, Columbus” (Brenda Patamkin) as a fictionalized version of someone named Mackie, whose last name I don’t recall.

Incidentally, at about that time, I went into a local bookstore in downtown Newark to purchase a copy of “Goodbye, Columbus.”  Apparently, there had been a book signing there a few weeks earlier and the first edition copy I bought carried Phil’s autograph in it.  A few years later I lent the book to someone who never returned it to me.

A few years later, I encountered Phil on a Pennsylvania Railroad (one of the predecessors to Amtrak) train heading to Trenton or Philadelphia.  I cannot recall why I was on the train, but Phil, with whom I had a brief conversation, was heading for Princeton, where he had something to do with the University.

As for Phil’s using local Weequahic names for characters in his book, I do believe there was a very minor character named Jack Lippman in one of his early novels, possibly the very boring “Letting Go.”  I once checked it out but see no need to attempt to do that again.

                                       Back in the old days, I-78 wasn't there, but Hawthorne Avenue was.

Most recently, over the past few years, I have reconnected with a friend from elementary and high school days who has also retired to South Florida, Howard Silver.  Howard was very close with Phil over the years, had maintained that closeness and has passed on information about him to me, particularly articles in the New Yorker which Phil urged be read.

That’s about it.   Phil led his life the way he wanted to and accomplished greatness.  He has left a tremendous heritage to all of us, particularly those who hail from the Weequahic Section of Newark. And I do believe it is a Jewish heritage, because Phil’s works were all about a quest for truth about the human condition, and there is something religious about such a mission.
Jack Lippman

That Forty Percent

There are letters to the Editor of many newspapers.  There are numerous opinions voiced on the internet.  Journalists write about it daily and are interviewed as part of “panels” on TV news shows.  And except for the acknowledged mouthpieces fronting

for the administration and the President on Fox News (and those who get their information exclusively from Fox), most agree about the President’s unfitness for office.

But people like to hear voices and read words reinforcing their thoughts and that is why approximately 40% of the American population support Donald Trump and all that he stands for.  That is the way they believe and his agreement with that reinforces their conviction.  I have referred to such people as being gullible and have lost at least one friend when I implied that in most cases, their gullibility is grounded in stupidity.

  

If one wants to believe that immigrants are taking away jobs from hard-working Americans, that leaving the level of health care in this country to be determined by the free market pressures exerted by insurance companies and health care providers, that the freedoms allowed by reducing regulations on manufacturing, banking, finance and most businesses results in greater benefits for consumers and working people, that providing an economic safety net for those who are unable to climb the ladder of economic success merely serves to keep them permanently downtrodden, they have found a dear friend in Donald J. Trump.

  

If they believe that a woman’s right to an abortion should be determined by those who, in a country whose Constitution forbids laws respecting an establishment of religion, must defer to those whose personal religions frown on abortion, and if they believe that packing a weapon is the best way to avoid gun violence, Trump is their man.  After all, as the song goes … if you are old enough to remember it:

Drinkin' beer in a cabaret, And was I havin’ fun,

Till one night she caught me right,

And now I’m on the run!

Lay that pistol down, babe,

Lay that pistol down,

Pistol packin’ Mama,

Won’t you lay that pistol down!

Yep.  That’s the way real Americans solve problems in the eyes of many of that 40%.  And I don’t want to take away from the gullible and the stupid the right to think this way.  It’s their right.  

  

But once they have sworn their allegiance, their loyalty, to the orange-coiffed one in regard to these traditional right-wing positions, they are highly susceptible to other positions he might take, positions which put the country in great danger. 

  

One is treating relationships with North Korea as if it were negotiations with a used car dealer about the price of a low-mileage four-year old car.  

Another is messing with the fundamental groundings of our legal system, developed over the years through our Constitution and its Anglo-Saxon heritage.  You don’t force law enforcement agencies to reveal how they work up a case in order to prepare a defense for a potential future trial. That’s when the evidence is supposed to come out, at a trial or in pre-trial negotiations, not forced out prematurely thereby weakening it.   That Trump’s lawyers ignore this is an indication of the weakness of any defense they may be thinking of using when Special Counsel Mueller’s sure-to-be-damning report comes out.

  

All of this is made possible by the acquiescence of the Republican Party, the biggest A-holes of all, willing to kiss anyone’s backside for the votes of that 40% of Americans.
JL

Numbskull Quiz and a Foreign Policy Solution Which Won’t Happen

Who of the following is the bigger numbskull when it comes to formulating foreign policy?

1     President Trump

2     Vice President Pence

3     National Security Advisor Bolton

4     Secretary of State Pompeo

The answer depends on what day, or what time of day, you are seeking an answer.  None of them would qualify to formulate a coherent foreign policy for any third world country … such as Mali, for example.  Yet we permit them to do it for us.   Similarly, if any of them wanted to get an academic position teaching foreign policy, they’d be hard pressed to find a real college or university which would hire them on their merits. (On their reputation, maybe, but on their merits, never.)

But here’s a concrete suggestion as to how to remedy this situation.  It is quite obvious that the Republican nitwits in the Executive and Legislative branches of our government are unwilling, incapable or unable (maybe all three) of doing anything to put a stop to foreign governments interfering with our election process through clever manipulation of social media and other aspects of the internet. 

Such actions on the part of Russia influenced the 2016 election, no matter what the Republican nitwits say, and they will also influence the results of the 2018 elections.  Special Counsel Mueller will have more to say about this I am sure.  I am certain that Russian coders and hackers and those acting for them are already working overtime for the 2018 (and 2020) elections on this.  Congressional and executive branch inaction proves that we have no way of stopping them, but how about turning our continuing vulnerability into an asset?

Our present-day allies throughout the world (the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries, most of the rest of the European community, Australia, South Korea, Japan and most of Latin America to name a few) all know how much more realistic, effective and attainable our foreign policy would be if the Republicans were booted from control of both Houses of Congress later this year.

They can help accomplish this by interfering with our election process in the same manner that the Russians did in 2016 and are doing right now.  Our guard is down.  We are doing nothing to change things from what happened in 2016.  Our real allies and friends throughout the world should step up and use the internet and social media to influence our 2018 election.   It would be in their interest, and ultimately in the interest of the United States, if our friends stepped in and did this. 

It would counterbalance whatever the Russians are doing and honestly, aren’t  Emmanuel Macron, Theresa May and Angela Merkel more capable of formulating  foreign policy objectives more in line with what most Ameicans want than any of the nitwits presently in power in Washington? 

(You might note that I have excluded our friends in the Middle East from this list of countries we should be glad to see trying to influence our election.  Their self-interest, contrary to that of the countries mentioned above, is narrower.)

Of course, the Democratic Party should not be involved in encouraging this foreign interference in our elections as the Republicans are accused of doing, by some, in 2016.  That would be illegal.  Democrats know this.   But if it happens, without their being involved, it would be good for their party, and ultimately the nation.

JL

 
Things Really Do Not Change

A respected New York newspaper editorially posed this rhetorical question: “Who would have believed that in this land of liberty, all the powers of our national government would be usurped by a single man, possessing no one qualification for … trust, and who, like a maniac, or a driveller, should make it his daily pastime to tear our constitutional charter into rags and tatters, and trample the rights of the people under his feet.?”

 

Is this the New York Times writing about Donald Trump?  No way!  It’s the Whig New York American back in 1833 ranting about Andrew Jackson.

The Whigs, who opposed Jackson, cautioned voters that “If by your votes you concede the powers that are claimed, your president has become your monarch!”  But the disparate ideologies which kept the Whigs from being truly united against Jackson’s populist Presidency still couldn’t stop Jackson’s Vice President from succeeding him at the end of his term in 1836.  Hope we do better in 2018 and 2020 than the Whigs did in 1836 in their battle against what they considered a corrupt White House.

 

As an aside, were I around in those days, I would have voted for Jackson in 1832 and for his successor, Van Buren, in 1836.  They more or less would appeal to today’s Democrats.  I am not too sure what I would have done in 1828, when Jackson was first elected. That was the most important election in American history, the first one where a vastly increased number of voters (about 1,155,000) exerted a greater influence than the propertied classes which had dominated prior elections.  (In 1824, four years earlier, the total Presidential vote was less than a third of the 1828 number, about 350,000.)  And it has been fun ever since.

  

Nobody is perfect, and Andrew Jackson’s horrendous persecution of Native Americans cannot be ignored nor forgiven.  Further, his opposition to private banking has been mistakenly associated with anti-Semitism because some bankers were Jews.  Jackson would have opposed the private Bank of the United States, even if it were run by Martians because it enabled the moneyed and propertied classes to dominate the economy, to the detriment of working people and farmers, his populist base.

 

Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump can both be called populists. Yes, there is a similarity between Donald Trump’s core of support and the base upon which Andrew Jackson depended.  Jackson’s base, it appears to me, consisted of workers and small farmers for whom he worked hard by opposing high tariffs and the private Banking system.  Jackson wanted them to have a greater participation in the nation's economic growth.  Trump’s similar base, on the other hand, has been duped into thinking he loves them.  In reality, he serves the business interests and the wealthy part of the Republican Party, the present-day version of those Jackson opposed, private bankers and high tariff-loving domestic manufacturers.

(Historical Note:  If you slept through this in high school, be reminded that the Federalists, the party of the Founding Fathers, were fading into oblivion by the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century.  The opponents of the Federalists, mostly inspired by Thomas Jefferson, called themselves “Democratic Republicans,” but really were not particularly “democratic” and in fact, leaned toward a landowner-based conservatism. From Jackson onward, however, the Party became more democratic and farmer/worker-oriented and even dropped “Republican” from its name. And that is the way it has stayed.  Those "Democratic Republicans" who were more conservative, like Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, smoothed over their very significant differences and became the Whig opposition.  But this mishmash of leadership couldn’t hold their act together and ultimately, some of the political descendants of these Whig opponents of the Jackson Democrats formed what is today’s Republican Party, finally electing a President, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860.)

JL

Bonus Feature

If any of you have any doubts about the depths of rabble-rousing dishonesty to which the low-life individual presently occupying the White House has sunk, CLICK HERE to read Frank Cerabino's column from Sunday's Palm Beach Post.  It should resonate with Floridians as well as those who have lived on New York's Long Island. (If Clicking doesn't work for you, just copy and paste this on your browser line:

https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/cerabino-palm-beach-county-has-immigrant-story-fitting-for-president/tMsSabf3ZsklxOqsfLhMXP/ ) 

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Jack Lippman 

An "Extra" Posting (News Moves Very Fast, Folks)

The "End Game Continues"

How often on a TV show, or in a movie, when a crime is committed in the big city do the cops seek out their contacts in the communities involved, or even in the underworld, to help solve the crime?  Informants are usually available to help, sometimes out of the goodness of their hearts, and sometimes in the hope of, or in gratitude for, lenient treatment for their past  and possible future transgressions or those of close relatives.

And this extends to the national scene as well, where our intelligence and counter-intelligence operations depend upon the confidentiality of similar informants to protect our national security. 

The President of the United States, for reasons unknown but becoming increasingly and suspiciously incredulous, when made fearful by the proximity of such informants, is attempting to demand their identity in order to weaken the efforts of our law enforcement agencies to use them to protect our national security.  It is a case where those fearful of being accused of breaking the law, accuse the law enforcers themselves of breaking the law in doing their duty.  This is the last defense of the guilty.

Just as his gullible followers, he claims, would still be loyal to him if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, they are blind to The President’s disregard and disrespect for the intelligence and law enforcement communities, as personified by the Department of Justice and the FBI, and his profound ignorance of the roles of the institutions of our government.

Listening to our President and his supporters on this issue, we are reminded of a lesson attributed to many great teachers of the law, “When the law is on your side, hammer home the law.  When the facts are on your side, hammer home the facts.  When neither is on your side, hammer the table vigorously.”  The facts and the law will ultimately triumph and this entire disgraceful administration will be long remembered for serving to remind Americans of the continued need to fight for and to protect their government’s institutions.  Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

Appropriate to these thoughts are the concluding words of the second, not often sung, stanza of “America the Beautiful”: “America, America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm they soul with self-control, Thy liberty in law!”

Jack Lippman

HOW TO BE ALERTED TO FUTURE BLOG POSTINGS.

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Just send it to me by email at Riart1@aol.com.   YOU ALSO CAN SEND ME YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TO BE PUBLISHED IN THIS BLOG AS WELL AS YOUR COMMENTS AT THAT ADDRESS.  (Comments can also be made by clicking on the "Post a Comment" link at the blog's end.)

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HOW TO VIEW OLDER POSTINGS.                                                

To view older postings on this blog, just click on the appropriate date in the “Blog Archive” midway down the column off to the right, or scroll down until you see the “Older Posts” notation at the very bottom of this posting.  The “Search Box” in the right side of the posting also may be helpful in locating a posting topic for which you are looking.

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Jack Lippman 

The Sad Future of Reducing Gun Violence, an Apology, Trump's Counter-Attack and the Trouble with Publix

Sort of an Apology

I am really not very skilled when it comes to computer technology.  I can create documents and write things, I can send and receive email, I can create inserts for my documents on “Powerpoint,” I can store pictures I take and receive from others, I can pay bills through my checking account … and I can produce this blog.  That’s about it.  To me, my computer is basically a super typewriter and a way of sending and receiving mail.

Ten years ago, these were excellent skills, but today, they do not gain me entry into the field of social media.  I dropped out of Facebook recently because I felt it intruded on my privacy … but also, it was a cluttered, confusing mess of postings which in the final analysis, were a waste of time.  I am not on Twitter, Instagram nor other things like that because I am too busy with other things, like reading books, magazines, newspapers (real ones, not online versions), writing, occasionally painting and watching plain old fashioned TV, mostly news and sports. That’s about all I have time for, so excuse any technical shortcomings you might find in www.Jackspotpourri.com.  After that, I am maxed out.   (But please click on the ads.)
Jack Lippman

The Sad Future of Reducing Gun Violence

This is a very tough posting to write.  But what I am saying must be said.

Up to now, groups aiming to reduce gun violence have pushed for taking military style assault weapons out of the hands of civilians, primarily because such weapons have been used in mass killings, including those in schools.  Conceivably, such a ban might even be permissible under the Second Amendment as being unusual weapons, not in existence at the time nor anticipated by those who designed the Amendment.  That has been my position for what it is worth.

The school shooting at the high school in Santa Fe, Texas sheds doubt on this kind of thinking because the weapon used there was a shotgun.  

Shotguns are the most common weapon owned by civilians and have many acceptable uses, such as hunting, on farms and ranches and for home protection.  While they can’t fire with the rapidity of assault weapons, the can spray deadly projectiles with each squeeze of the trigger.  They did this in Santa Fe quite effectively.

So we are left with a problem.  It is estimated that there are about 310,000,000 people in the United States.  Discounting children under age 17, that leaves about 225,000,000 adults in this country.  There are at least that number of guns of all sorts in the hands of civilians. Americans have a right to have them according to the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

To deal with this problem without violating the Second Amendment, several approaches are available. They include “hardening” soft targets such as schools and theatre and concert venues with armed guards, metal detectors and armed faculty and staff.  They also include increased background checking, screening and waiting periods at the point of purchase of weapons, and that would have to include gun shows and personal private sales as well as weapons purchased over the counter in stores.  They include requirements that guns in families with children be kept in locked cabinets.  Finally, because those who carry out these acts are usually disturbed in some manner, vast increases in mental health screening, diagnosis and treatment are proposed to enable potential “shooters” to be identified and monitored, including those in school settings as well as those elsewhere in society, where far more shootings occur than in schools.

Another approach, which I haven't heard much about yet, might be to attempt to modify the “gun culture,” the routine acceptability of civilians having weapons, which pervades American society.  It starts with toys.  Check out the toy shelves in Target and Walmart stores and you will find “toys” intended for boys as young as age 3 which simulate weapons and have triggers.  It might be more than coincidental that toys intended for girls, with rare exceptions, do not include simulated weapons, and with rare exceptions, most mass killings are carried out by males, who have been raised in, and remain submerged in, our “gun culture.”  Something to think about.

Honestly, while these approaches have merit and will reduce gun violence to some extent, they are not the solution.  If mental health screening can successfully identify even one percent of our population as potential shooters, that would give us a pool of over two million Americans which would have to be monitored and followed closely on a daily basis.   And really, I believe that there are more than one percent with such problems.  That would be a impossible task.  And this would not include the quiet, silent disturbed ones harboring grudges and evil thoughts of which no one around them might be aware.  Odd behavior might be entirely innocent, but then again it might be an ominous warning.  Who can tell? 

They couldn't in Santa Fe.   They could in Parkland and it made no difference.

No, the solution does not rest in seeking to pick out potential shooters from a pool of 225 million Americans.  At great cost, that will be of minimal help.  The bottom line is that a solution rests with the weapons they use.  What it comes down to, and this would be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow, would be the repeal of the Second Amendment, or at least a drastic reinterpretation of it by the Supreme Court.  

 

We have national armed forces today.  There is a state component to them in the form of National Guard units, but these are really indistinguishable from the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marine Corps.  Therefore, there is no need for what the writers of the Second Amendment called “militias.” No one is going to “call out the militia” telling them to bring their guns with them.  The closest we come to that is activating National Guard units, and they don’t bring their own weapons from home with them.  Once that fact, and it is a fact, is accepted, the rest of the Amendment’s language isn’t worth anything.  Any interpretation of the Amendment by the Supreme Court to the contrary is wrong, and incidentally, covered with the blood of those massacred at Santa Fe, Parkland, Sandy Hook and elsewhere.  The Supreme Court is not God. Their decisions have caused deaths.  For those of you who are not familiar with it, here is the Second Amendment.  Read it.  Try to understand the words.  Pretend you are on the Supreme Court.

“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.”

Get it?  This right of the people to keep and bear arms was protected from being infringed upon because that was, back in 1789, a requirement in order to have a well regulated Militia, which was necessary for the security of a free State. 

That was written to appease some of these new “free States” (which up to then had been the thirteen colonies), particularly the ones where human slavery was part of their economies, and which did not trust the Federal government and wanted the ability to have their own militia, if it ever came down to needing one. Well it never did (until the Civil War), but certainly, “States” now neither have nor need “militias” any longer other than National Guard units so no one ought to object to the repeal of the Second Amendment.  It is that simple.  One cannot take the Amendment’s final fourteen words as gospel and totally ignore its first thirteen words, which is what most defenders of the Second Amendment do.   Once the necessity of the first thirteen words of the Amendment disappear, and they have, the rest is superfluous rubbish, except to the National Rifle Association, a lobbying group for the gun industry.  It’s written in English.  Read it!  Make up your own mind.  Pretend you are on the Supreme Court.

“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.”

Repealing the Second Amendment or waiting for the Supreme Court to drastically reinterpret it in a nation where there are probably close to 300,000,000 weapons in the hands of civilians would have to be done very gradually, over many decades of presidencies and sessions of Congress and State legislatures. 

Those who have a legitimate need for weapons for self-defense, hunting, farming and ranching uses and sporting activities would always be able to have weapons, but they would have to be licensed to do so.  Others would have to have good reason to possess weapons.  Yes, the NRA's fear that "They're coming to take your guns" will be partially validated.  So what.  Lives will be saved. Children will not be shot in schools.  Gradually, over the years, existing weapons would be “bought back” by the government at premium prices.  Ultimately, this is the way our country can reduce gun violence.

 

This is the only way we will reduce gun violence in this country and I confidently predict this process will be fully completed by the end of this century.  All readers of this blog posting will be dead by then. (Some of them will be silently watching from wherever they end up, depending on their religious persuasion.)  It will take that long.  Any other solution is delusionary, and sadly, a lot of blood is going to be shed before the country recognizes that.

JL

Trump's Counter-Attack

It’s a counter-attack on many fronts.  The President insists that it is, and always has been a witch hunt.   The latest attacks are on FBI investigations related to individuals having something to do with the Republican campaign and the Bureau's using its usual tools and methods of investigators.  That’s what law enforcement does when they believe a law has been broken. The attacks on the Special Counsel, his ethics, his background and his methods, accelerate daily. House Intelligence Committee Chair Nunes continues his partisan whitewashing of the President.  The integrity of the Department of Justice and its head by default, Ron Rosenstein, is questioned daily.  Sometimes-incoherent Rudy Giuliani keeps proclaiming that it all will be over soon since there is nothing to be revealed.  Fox TV and chief cheerleader Hannity is aflame nightly with weighty accusations which when put on scale, won’t move the dial an ounce.

If any of these arguments had any merit whatsoever, a normal government would turn them over to a “Special Counsel.”  Well, that’s where we are, gang.  We did that, appointing one a year ago, but the “government” doesn’t like where he is going.  It scares them.

 

ONE QUESTION REMAINS:  WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO HIDE, NECESSITATING SUCH A BROAD ATTACK AS DESCRIBED ABOVE?  It’s right out of Trump’s ghost-written book, “The Art of the Deal,” where Trump says that “when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard." THE ONLY POSSIBLE CONCLUSION IS THAT HE HAS SOMETHING DESPICABLE TO HIDE AND WHEN IT IS REVEALED, THAT WILL BE THE END.  AS IN A GAME OF CHESS, WE ARE NOW ENTERING THE “END GAME.”

(A random thought.  In history, when a bad ruler is gotten rid of, and severe punishment would seem to be out of the question, an alternative has always been exile.  [Napoleon ended up on St. Helena.]  Once we no longer have need for Guantanamo Bay as a facility for captured Islamic terrorists, it can be turned into a luxurious site for the exile of the 45^th President and those of his immediate family and associates who fear that the criminal justice system would put them in a less hospitable environment.  It might even be re-named Mar-a-Lago South, and catering would be permitted to keep the exiles occupied along with a mall of upscale shops managed by Ivanka.  Don Jr. could be in charge of the pool and the beachfront.) 

                                                                 The Beach at Guantanamo Bay

JL

The Publix Boycott - Read the Editorial

The big grocery shopping chain down here in Florida is Publix.   Last week, the Palm Beach Post published an editorial revealing Publix’s extensive support of a conservative Republican candidate for Governor, Adam Putnam.  I had seen some of his TV commercials and recognized that he is one horrible candidate.  (Right now he is Florida's Commisioner of Agriculture, a quite suitable job for one with great expertise dishing out bovine manure.)  Check it out by CLICKING RIGHT HERE.  

I have written to Publix telling them they have lost a customer.  They will probably lose many more.  Their cumulative donations to Putnam exceed $650,000, which is far, far more than the token donations some other grocery companies have given to their favorite candidates.  Pick your supermarket:  Walmart, Target, Winn-Dixie (if they still are in business), Aldi, Trader Joe, Fresh Market or Whole Foods.  Vote with your grocery dollar.  But stay away from Publix.

JL

HOW TO BE ALERTED TO FUTURE BLOG POSTINGS.

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Just send it to me by email at Riart1@aol.com.   YOU ALSO CAN SEND ME YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TO BE PUBLISHED IN THIS BLOG AS WELL AS YOUR COMMENTS AT THAT ADDRESS.  (Comments can also be made by clicking on the "Post a Comment" link at the blog's end.)

MOBILE DEVICE ACCESS.

DID YOU KNOW THAT www.jackspotpourri.com IS ALSO AVAILABLE ON YOUR MOBILE DEVICES IN A MODIFIED, EASY-TO-READ, FORMAT?   

HOW TO VIEW OLDER POSTINGS.                                                

To view older postings on this blog, just click on the appropriate date in the “Blog Archive” midway down the column off to the right, or scroll down until you see the “Older Posts” notation at the very bottom of this posting.  The “Search Box” in the right side of the posting also may be helpful in locating a posting topic for which you are looking.

HOW TO FORWARD POSTINGS.

To send this posting to a friend, or enemy for that matter, whom you think might be interested in it, just click on the envelope with the arrow on the "Comments" line directly below, enabling you to send them an Email providing a link directly to this posting.  You might also want to let me know their Email address so that they may be alerted to future postings.

Jack Lippman