Take a moment to think about how you
feel about the following issues:
- The right of women to make
their own decisions regarding abortion.
- The right of school
districts to make their own decisions regarding curriculum, textbooks and
teaching methods.
- The intervention of
government into what is taught about American history in order to avoid
offending anyone’s sensibilities.
- The continuing loss of life
in the United States because of gun violence, enabled by a gross misinterpretation
of the Second Amendment on the part of the Supreme Court.
- Whether there is any
justification for doubt as to the results of the 2020 presidential election.
- Limitations on voting
locations, early voting and mail-in ballots that reduce the number of voters.
- State-manipulated voting
districting that results in reducing the ‘representativeness’ of our system of
representative democracy.
- The undemocratic basis for
determining the composition of the United States Senate and of the Electoral
College (which determines the presidency), loaded numbers that were established
as a compromise in 1789 to get the Constitution ratified.
- Long-established practices
and customs that result in discrimination or a loss of freedoms or
opportunities because of color, religious belief, or ethnicity.
- · Regulation of public and
private practices that contribute to changes in our climate and resulting
catastrophic events.
- The Federal government's responsibility to see that all Americans, regardless of age have access to adequate health care.
- Continued support of Social Security and Medicare.
- Regulation of the private sector, including the investment marketplace, to assure that individuals do not suffer so that others might succeed.
Consider the positions taken by
Val Demings, Charlie Crist, Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis on these issues. Ignore ‘attack’
commercials found on television and the internet, regardless of whom they
attack and from whom they come. Seek
out their positions. Then decide how
you will vote on November 8. And don’t
keep your decision to yourself. Let your
friends, relatives and neighbors, some of whom may be ‘fence-sitters,’ know so
that they just might follow your example.
JL
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How Good is Your Vision?
Test your vision. Can you see Jupiter, Florida, from my front lawn? I cannot. It is only 35 miles away to the north, but thus far no one has been able to see it from here. But anyone who looks eastward in the sky in the early evening this week from anywhere around here can easily see the planet Jupiter, sitting there 377 million miles away, provided there are no clouds getting in the way.
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| Jupiter, from my front lawn on 8/29/22 at 10:40 p.m. after I put the trash out for the next day. |
JL
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Thoughts About the DFP (defeated former president)
And now, it appears that the DFP is going to waste some more valuable time between now and the election, during which the forces of truth will be further delayed in making more public their case against the DFP's cadre of liars, by playing around with the idea of a court-appointed ‘master’ for a week or so. After that, he’ll come up with something else, possibly a painful recurrence of his bone spurs diagnosed by Florida’s Surgeon-General, Dr. Ladapo.
His attorneys, and his
supporters, want full transparency of the details on which the warrant to enter
Mar-a-Lago and retake possession of government documents illegally stored there
by the DFP was based as well as the affidavit concerning
that warrant. The fact that he had no
right as a private citizen to possess them, and his repeated failure to give them back to the
government, suffices to constitute his violating the law, without law
enforcement needing to reveal their content. That is enough. These lawyers know very well that such
transparency would endanger many individuals, here and overseas, involved the
nation’s intelligence apparatus as well as in our court system, and they will
not get it. That’s why the redactions in
what was released were made. These attorneys are just ‘showboating’ for his
followers.
In effect, the DFP's legal team wants access to the evidence which will likely be the
basis of a prosecution’s potential case.
Once there is an indictment and a trial, they will get it, but they are
not entitled to it beforehand. No
football team allows their opponent’s defensive coach access to their locker
room before the game. Only when they are
on the field will they see what they are up against. Until then, they can just guess. They well
know that. More ‘showboating’ by
lawyers.
At a minimum, those attorneys
working for him deserve disbarment, because they know better, as do Senators
and Representatives supporting him. After his ultimate indictment, he’ll
probably turn to a public defender, not being able to find any other lawyer
stupid enough to take the case of a hopelessly guilty client who ignores what attorneys
tell him to say and to do and who doesn’t pay his legal bills anyway. After
it’s all over, his friend Lindell will probably be willing to give him a job
stuffing pillows in Minnesota and he can move in with Ivanka and Jared once
they’re settled in their new digs in the trailer park, having blown all their
cash on legal fees themselves.
JL
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Calling Out Our Semi-Fascists
Boston College historian Heather
Cox Richardson’s daily newsletter, ‘Letters From an American,’ hit the nail on
the head the other day regarding having the guts to speak the truth. .
President Biden’s calling MAGA Republicans ‘semi-fascists’ was such a gutsy
statement. Check it out at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-27-2022 or just CLICK HERE to read it.
It’s short and includes a meaningful history lesson.
JL
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A Need to Know
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| Where I Worked 65 Years Ago |
About sixty-five years ago, I had
a security clearance which entitled me to access certain classified information
about which I had a ‘need to know’ in order to do my job. On leaving the service, I was ‘debriefed’ at
which time I was told to forget anything in connection with that information,
as if it never existed, and of the severe penalties for not doing so. Why? I
no longer had a ‘need to know.’ This is
the hallmark of all security clearances, having a ‘need to know.’ Millions of
Americans who served in the armed forces, in government service and even in
parts of the private sector can tell the same story.
The DFP, on
leaving office, no longer had any ‘need to know,’ let alone maintain possession
of such classified information, which remained the property of the United State
government. This pathetic man’s
ignorance was manifested when he is reported to have claimed, in regard to such
documents, that ‘they are mine.’ I am
sure the National Archives would provide any documentation a former president
might need in writing a memoir, for example, but personally keeping such
documents is a crime, regardless of whether he was or was not ‘debriefed’ and
whether or not they were ‘classified.’
His claim that he ‘declassified’
such material while he still was president is ludicrous because there are
documented and established procedures for ‘declassifying’ classified information, none of which
were followed by him. Just saying that
he had the power to declassify them and indeed did so, is not enough. His attorneys know that. If the
penalties explained at any such ‘debriefing’ to anyone are to have any meaning,
they should be imposed upon the DFP.
JL
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We Cannot Rewrite History
Why aren’t Roger Stone and
Michael Flynn in jail? Both were
convicted, but the defeated former president had his puppet Attorney General
throw out the Stone conviction without any real justification, and Flynn was
ultimately pardoned. Similarly, Special
Counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusions regarding the defeated former president’s
possible collusion with a foreign power in the report that carries his name
were whitewashed by that puppet Attorney General.
If the DFP is ever indicted, convicted, and sentenced for crimes that he might have committed, will the miscarriages of justice and illegal acts he carried out while in office be reversible? Nope. How about the Supreme Court Justices who were nominated by him for purely political reasons, as recommended by the Federalist Society, whose ‘originalist’ doctrines have no place in a twenty-first century democracy? Nope. Will the belated awakening of that puppet Attorney General before the House Committee investigating the January 6 coup attempt lessen his complicity? Nope. Will the Republican Party that consciously chose to run a totally unqualified and dishonest presidential candidate in 2016 and 2020 on the basis of his salesman’s pitch, and those who voted for him, share accountability for the harm they have done to the nation? Nope. Historical events which unfortunately occurred cannot be erased. History is not like a filmmaker’s ability to reshoot a scene. Can we rewrite history? Nope. 'Revisionism' doesn't work. Eventually, reality always triumphs, and that's an argument for getting things right the first time around.
JL
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Student Loan Forgiveness and IRS
Agents
While I agree with the basic premise of the President’s proposal to forgive up to $10,000 or $20,000 (if involving a Pell grant) of student debt, its timing is horrible, typical of Democratic un-thought-out strategies. It should have been sat on until after Election Day.
It hands the Republicans an issue at a time
when most of their usual talking points are melting away, giving them something
more to talk about than Hunter Biden or Hillary Clinton in avoiding voicing too
active a defense of the DFP, a course which might ultimately
come back to haunt them, an embarrassment
as he is washed away in a tsumani of evidence.
Much safer is their providing the resources to hire more IRS agents to ferret out unpaid taxes. Republican liars are already claiming these agents will go after the middle class, an easily refuted charge. They will go after businesses and the very wealthy who frequently have been getting away with paying less taxes than you who are reading this, or even none at all. This was a smart move, and voters will recognize it.
Promising to forgive
student loans right before an election is not.
There’s a time for that, but it isn’t right now. That will lose more
votes on November 8 than it will gain.
JL
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America Afloat
(A poem that is always worth repeating in these blog postings. To learn more, visit this blog's posting of July 30, 2022, accessible from the Archives off to the right.) JL
'America
Afloat'
Jack Lippman
The greatness of America
Is
that it does survive
Attacks
upon democracy
Whose
flame it keeps alive.
The
laws that blossom from the words
The
Founding Fathers wrote
Still
serve us well today to keep
America
afloat.
This
doesn’t happen by itself,
We
cannot wish it true,
The
bottom line, my friends, is that
It
all depends on you.
JL
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That’s Not Enough!
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