There is only one overriding issue right now, encompassing much of what has been appearing on this blog. That is how to defeat Republicans on Nov. 8, less than 19 weeks from now. The future of democracy in the United States is at stake.
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To win in November, Democrats must capture the votes of women and persons of color, groups whose interests Republican actions consistently oppose, including the preservation of both abortion rights and voting rights. Any member of these two groups who fail to
vote in November would not be part of a solution to our problem. They
would BE part of the problem! |
JL
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Independence Day – July
4, 1776
This weekend celebrates Independence Day. The Declaration of Independence starts off with these words:
“When in the Course of
human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of
the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires
that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Read the entire Declaration at your leisure this weekend. You can find it at https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript, or just by CLICKING HERE. Compare the grievances the colonists had against George III with today’s grievances against our defeated former president and some of his supporters in Congress and high in State governments.
The Declaration erred
in regard to the ‘certain inalienable rights’ it laid out in that those held in
slavery were denied them. This was
corrected 89 years later by the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and is now celebrated on June 19, the
day in 1865 when that correction was made evident to many freshly emancipated
slaves in Texas. In the minds of many Americans, that is still a work in
progress.
Have a Happy Fourth of
July and be careful if handling fireworks!
Stay safe and drive carefully.
JL
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Women’s Votes on November 8 Mean Everything
With all of the commentary and TV ads standing up for
abortion rights for women that were recently diminished greatly by the Supreme
Court in their decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, one
word is usually missing. That word is ‘vote.’
There is an election in less than nineteen weeks in which women
can go a long way in correcting this injustice by voting against all Republicans at
local, state, and national levels, who with very rare exceptions, support the
Supreme Court’s decision. Right now,
there are almost 90 million women registered voters. Over 80 million voted in
the last presidential election and over 60 million usually vote in
non-presidential election years. That is
real power.
It
is absolutely essential that all women who disagree with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision
which placed abortion regulation with the individual States, rejecting the legal
precedent established by Roe vs. Wade in 1973, translate that disagreement into
VOTES
On November 8
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I would like to see a ‘tag line’ or a reminder on every
pro-choice ad and tacked onto every demonstrator’s sign reading “Vote Pro-Choice on November 8.” The latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll
indicated enough opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision to guarantee defeat
for most Republicans supporting it, but only if women voters throughout the country translate
their emotions into votes.
This was encouraged by President
Biden’s statement that "voters
need to make their voices heard," calling on them to elect candidates that will restore the
right to an abortion at the congressional and local level. He added that "this
fall Roe is on the
ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty,
equality, they're all on the ballot."
Women don’t need the President to remind them of something
they already should know. I repeat,
VOTE
On November 8
JL
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‘Hatikvah’ vs. ‘Die Moldau’
Have you ever noticed the similarity between the melodies of
the Israeli national anthem, ‘Hatikvah,’ and the symphonic poem, ’The
Moldau,’ written by Czech composer
Bedrich Smetana in 1874? Some claim that
a Romanian immigrant to Palestine, Schmuel Cohen, borrowed Smetana’s melody as
music for ‘Hatikvah,’ a Hebrew poem by Naftali Imber. Not so.
(Dah, Dah, Dah, Daaah, Dah, Daah ... Daah, Dah, Dah, Da, Daaah ... Daah, Dah, Da, Dah Dah ... Dah, Dah, Daah, Dah, Daah.) I bet you are humming it right now!
That melody had been kicking around for hundreds of years, most often associated with a Gypsy tune called ‘Cart and Oxen.’ Some even trace it back to a Sephardic prayer spread during the Diaspora. Anyhow, it was that long-existing tune of ‘Cart and Oxen’ that Cohen used and not Smetana’s parallel adaptation of it.
Meanwhile, over the centuries, it had also spread to Italy
via the Diaspora or the wanderings of Gypsies. Heard In that country, it stuck in the
mind of a visiting child prodigy studying music there. His last name was Mozart
and he took it back to Vienna with him.
I don’t believe he ever used it, but it sounded good to Smetana, who heard it there and was looking for a nationalistic, patriotic melody to use in his symphonic poem
about what was to become Czechoslovakia. He included it in a much larger suite as ‘Die
Moldau,’ that region’s major river.
So it looks like ‘Hatikvah’ and ‘Die Moldau’ are actually cousins, related to each other through ‘Cart and Oxen.’ During the British mandate in Palestine, the Jewish radio stations were not allowed to play ‘Hatikvah,’ recognized as the anthem of Zionism. So they played ‘Die Moldau’ instead and that well served their purpose.
This is what concert pianist and musicologist
Astrith Baltsan told Ilan Evyatar, writing in The Jerusalem Post, in 2010. It was reprinted in ‘The Jerusalem Report’ on
July 9, 2018. For the full story, check
out
https://www.neaman.org.il/Files/Hatikva-The%20Real%20Story%20behind%20Israels%20anthem_20180709094501.208.pdf
JL
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The Women’s Vote, Rubio, and Demings
Val Demings, in her Senate race to defeat Marco
Rubio is wasting valuable TV time declaring that 'defunding the police is crazy.'
By doing so, she is playing the game on Rubio’s
home court, looking for centrist votes she'll never get anyway
and possibly alienating the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, whose
votes she must not take for granted. Playing offense wins ball games.
Playing defense doesn’t.
Instead, her resources would be better spent
publicizing Rubio’s voting against gun control legislation in a State where the Parkland and the Pulse shootings occurred, his going along with the Governor's
redistricting and voting reforms intended to reduce the voting power of persons
of color, and most of all, his position on the Supreme Court’s turning over
abortion regulation to the individual states.
Any woman or person of color who votes for Rubio
is out of their mind.
Demings should be
talking abortion, voting rights and gun control and let Marco try to answer
her, making him play ‘defense.’ He won’t be able to, and a majority of women, regardless of party,
want to show their opposition to the Supreme Court abortion ruling. A vote for Val
Demings does that! She ought to be riding that to victory in her Senate race.
My gut feeling is that Democratic Party
strategists aren’t bright enough to realize that. These were the geniuses who
didn’t bother to properly vet Gillum in 2018.” (I switched parties to NPA
months ago.)
JL
* * *
*
Crazy
Days
These are
crazy days that we live in.
A South
Florida SunSentinel editorial on 6/28/22 raised a question about those
witnesses who had told the Select House Committee investigating the January 6
insurrection about how they had resisted the illegal and probably seditious
acts that the defeated former president had asked them to carry out.
Unbelievably,
some still said that if he ran again, they would again vote for him! The editorial tried to figure out why. (If you wish, I will send you a copy of the
editorial.) That just doesn’t make sense
unless one is competing for the title of being the year’s biggest
hypocrite. These are crazy days.
Don’t try to
understand what motivates them. Simply, it might be that the nation is
suffering from being at the violent, splashing, confluence of the mighty rivers
of ignorance, gullibility, bigotry, and stupidity that merge into a raging
torrent speeding its way toward a dam that is broken, with only one leaky
life jacket in sight, and that is Election Day, Nov. 8. But it might be enough. That’s up to you. These are crazy days.
And try to Imagine
if such acts of sedition as revealed to the House Select Committee
investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection, including the latest from White
House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson, had taken place in Russia or China. At best, most of its perpetrators would be in
prisons by now, awaiting trials, as Alexei Navalny is today in Russia. If their acts had occurred in North Korea,
they probably would be dead by now. Those who choose to try to subvert our
Constitution and overthrow our government are very fortunate to live in the
United States where laws and lawyers permit them to get away with criminal acts,
at least temporarily. These are crazy days.
Impatience with the Attorney
General in indicting those responsible for January 6 is understandable. But the worst thing that can happen is an indictment and trial of the defeated
former president for his seditious acts, after which he is acquitted!
That would be
just another lost cause like the Mueller investigation or the two House
impeachments, swept under the rug. The AG knows the bar is set much higher for
evidence in a courtroom than in a Congressional hearing room or in the 'court
of public opinion.' The DOJ is waiting for those who had direct contact, one on
one, with the likely defendant, to try to 'flip' them to the prosecution’s side. The
increasing threat of their own imprisonment might cause such witnesses to do
exactly that, as Chairman Thompson requests at the close of each Committee
session.
Indeed, these are crazy days.
JL
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OKAY!
I’VE DONE MY PART BY PRODUCING THIS BLOG. BUT YOUR PART IS EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN MINE! YOUR JOB IS TO PASS IT ON TO OTHERS. MANY, MANY OTHERS!
Because of the advantage the Constitution gives to small, rural states in the Senate as well as political gerrymandering by state legislatures, the defeat of the foes of democracy in November must be overwhelming. It must not even be close!
Democrats must greatly increase their House majority and 'flip' at least a dozen presently Republican Senate seats. You can help them do that by forwarding this blog to as many friends and relatives as possible. That's Your Job:
"To Enable us to Remain a Democratic Republic and not Evolve into an Authoritarian State where women's rights and voting rights are suppressed."
It can be done! DO THAT BY SUGGESTING THAT THEY VISIT www.jackspotpourri.com. Give them that link.
A simple method might be to click on the little envelope at the bottom left corner of each posting. That makes it easy to forward a very basic, black and white, abbreviated version of the blog, but friends tell me it is really easier just to tell them to go to www.jackspotpourri.com. That way they get the full impact of the blog, including illustrations and color.
JL
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