* * * *
The Dilemma Facing Democrats
Here’s the dilemma that liberals, usually Democrats, face in winning over conservative and middle-of-the-road voters.
Our election campaigns are pivoting more and more around four issues:
(1) A woman’s right to choose to have an abortion,
(2) Doing something about gun violence,
(3) Protecting voters rights, and
(4) Historical truths being removed from curriculum and books used in our schools.
Of course, there are other issues involved in elections, but these four are the ones that usually provide enough of a margin to determine who wins or loses an election to Congress or a State legislature.
The position of liberal Democrats on these issues is clear: Pro-Choice, Gun Control, Making Voting Easier, and Teaching the Truth, however uncomfortable it might be.
It is relatively easy to convince some Republicans and some independents to agree with some of these liberal Democratic positions. What is difficult is getting them to agree with liberal Democratic positions on all four of these issues.
Even if they agree with the Democratic position on all but one of them, their opposition on that one issue, be it abortion rights, gun control, voting rights, or what is taught in schools, can be so firmly imbedded in their minds that it is sufficient to prevent them from supporting the Democratic positions, with which they very well might agree, on the other three issues.
And that one issue that keeps them voting for backward-looking right-wing candidates is not always the same issue. It might be any one of the four issues mentioned above, depending upon what group of voters is involved: younger voters, older voters, men, women, urban dwellers, rural dwellers, wealthier people, poorer people, religious believers, non-believers, homeowners, renters, union members, mothers, etc., etc.
That is the dilemma Democratic strategists face in getting votes from a public that might actually agree with 75% of their agenda!
JL
* * *
It’s Our Flag Too!Those working to destroy democracy in the United
States always wrap themselves in the flag displaying it prominently, leading
the unsuspecting to sometimes associate it with, and give a measure of
respectability to, their heinous political agenda.
What kind of message were the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists transmitting as they waved ‘Old Glory’ (along with the repulsive Confederate ‘Stars and Bars’) as they smashed their way into the Capitol? And I cannot figure out why the trucks of the contractor that collect my trash twice a week, and the shirtsleeves of some similar workers, also have an American flag on them. Some baseball teams also feature an American flag patch on their uniforms and many college football teams have a little American flag decal on their helmets. Are they trying to tell the fans that patriotism is part of their program so it deserves their support, particularly if the other team perhaps doesn't show any overt signs of patriotism? I wonder why they need to do this? I think it cheapens the level of dignity the American Flag deserves, as exemplified in the lyrics to our national anthem.
The American flag belongs to all of us. It should be displayed on all schools and government buildings. A flag on your house or lawn is fine but it is overdoing it to display it clipped to a side window of your car, in the same manner one shows their allegiance to a pro football team or a college. Does that imply that those who don't display a flag on their car are less patriotic? I think not.
 |
| Overdoing Patriotism or Maybe Trying to Avoid a Ticket from a Conservative Cop. |
It should not, however, be displayed nor associated with any commercial enterprise to entice customers by suggesting that the business is a patriotic one and deserving of your patronage because of that. Nor should it be used to give legitimacy to lies.
The American flag is not the exclusive property of
political speakers and demonstrators of any particular persuasion. All can proudly broadcast their message
while displaying it respectfully. Sidewalk
orators in New York City’s Union Square have always been able to stand on a chair,
with the American Flag affixed to it, and speak their piece. But if their message consists of lies, it is
an insult to our flag.
JL
*
* *
Time for Diane to Leave
I join with Congresswoman
Alexandria Octavio-Cortez, and others, in asking ailing Senator Feinstein to
resign so that she may be replaced by a Democratic appointee. Many of President Biden’s judicial
appointments are stalled because of her absence from Senate Judiciary Committee
hearings.
In addition, the Senate would
then have the numbers to quickly confirm four new Supreme Justices to be
appointed by the President to correct the political imbalance on the SCOTUS
created by the defeated former president and prevent our already politicized Supreme Court from acting negatively regarding
an increase in the nation’s debt limit, an action to which the Biden
administration might possibly turn based on the Fourteenth Amendment. Such a move is what might bring that issue
before the SCOTUS.
That is why Senator
Feinstein, Governor Newsom, President Biden and the Senate must act
quickly! Very quickly!
Am I being overly optimistic
in hoping that just the mere threat of that happening might be sufficient to
accomplish an increase in the debt limit, clearly legal and appropriate according
to the 14th Amendment?
In addition, threatening to
expand the SCOTUS wouldn't hurt chances for gun control legislation, abortion
rights, and voters rights to pass as well. This is known as playing hardball, a
game Democrats can play as well as Republicans can.
JL
* * *
Democracy, The Hard Way
Democracy does not work when the voters are
uninformed or misinformed. The best illustrations of this can be seen in State legislatures and
governorships and are ultimately reflected
nationally in the undemocratic composition of the Senate and the Electoral
College.
Only when they experience Republican-induced pain and
suffering will the uninformed and misinformed wake up and at last vote in their
own interests in State elections. That
is getting there ‘the hard way.’ Once
again, recall the words of Tip O’Neill, ‘all
politics are local.’
JL
* * *
Another Shooting This Week, and This
Will Not be the Last One
The problem of gun violence will remain with us until the Second Amendment is repealed. For the umpteenth time, let me repeat that its obsolete language was only included in the Bill of Rights as a trade-off to get the support of the slaveholding States for the proposed Constitution in 1789. They feared Federal troops might be used to enforce anti-slavery legislation and wanted enough armed civilians to be around to be able to raise 'militias' to oppose them, as well as dealing with the very remote threat of slave rebellions which they exaggerated.
(The position of such States, threatening to
jeopardize the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, was not unlike the present attitude
of Republicans using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip.)
When the Civil War ended
slavery, that purpose of the Second Amendment, as a trade-off for support of the Constitution's ratification, vanished. Its continued existence opened the door to misinterpretation,
such as that of the Supreme Court in D.C. vs Heller in 2008 that in effect
cancelled out the Amendment's first thirteen words, leaving gun violence free
to grow unimpeded.
Once the Second Amendment is
repealed, those individual States that want to allow the limited possession of
registered and licensed weapons for hunting, sport shooting and business and
home protection, should be able to do so. Such language allowing that should be
included in any Amendment repealing the Second Amendment. I figure it will take about a few thousand
more unnecessary deaths for this to happen.
JL
* * *
Fox News, even ‘After Carlson,’ is Still a Menace
After the well-deserved and long overdue firing of
Fox’s racist anchor, Tucker Carlson, it is reported the network lost about 50%
of its viewers for his prime-time slot, important because 8 p.m. viewers
usually stick around for later anchors. Is
this good news?
Not really!
The other side of the coin is
that one can say that 50% of his viewers have strong enough racist views to
still stick with Fox at 8 p.m. each night, despite their idol being
dumped. After all, his exit couldn’t
have been for his racist views that were never a secret, but on the advice of
the network’s lawyers in view of still pending litigation. Apparently, racism on its own account doesn’t
bother Fox.
No matter how you look at it, Fox is the prime
source of the evil vibes too many Americans emanate. They still have Hannity, Ingraham, and Fox’s
lesser voices to poison their minds.
Carlson’s exile doesn’t change them.
JL
* * *
A Dystopian NoveI's Opening
Here’s a letter I just sent off to the Palm Beach
Post. Chances are that it will not be
printed, but I will let you know if it is.
“If an author were to write a
dystopian novel today, something like 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' 'Fahrenheit 451,' 'The
Handmaid's Tale,' or 'Brave New World,' they might start off with a paragraph
like this explaining how it all started:
"Legislators served up measures that make it much more difficult to get an abortion ... and easier to impose the death penalty. They loosen gun regulations, outlaw certain medical care for transgender minors, force transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding with their birth sex, provide taxpayer-financed vouchers for any student to attend a private school and crack down on drag shows. Tougher penalties for illegal immigration, limits on diversity programs on university campuses, and a ban on socially conscious investing by the state and local governments also sailed through supermajorities in the House and Senate."
But such an author wouldn't have to make up
these things. They are a direct quote from the Post's front-page article
on May 6, describing the actions of Florida's State legislature.”
JL
* * *
Well, It’s May,
and as Promised, the Original ‘Chrissy
Frost’ Stories are Back!
All eight of
them, originally included on this blog back in 2017 recounting the story of a
Florida entertainer, are now re-appearing on the blog. Together they form what
might be a novella, entitled ‘Time After Time – The Crissy Frost Story.’
Here are the third
and fourth stories, chapters, or whatever you
want to call them. The remaining four
will follow over the next few postings.
The first and second stories appeared in the last posting. If you missed them, just go back and check
them out. They should be read in order,
as you would read a book.
* * *
Chapter 3: The Tin Bell – A Chrissy Frost Story
(“Chrissy Frost” is an entirely fictitious creation. My apologies go to anyone who might happen to
share that name, and I know there are some of you out there.)
Jack Lippman
Narrow escapes were
common in Chrissy Frost’s family. Many,
many years ago in seventeenth century England, a distant ancestor of Chrissy’s,
Rufus, an itinerant troubadour, was kicked in the head by a horse. He lay unconscious for days with a barely
detectable heartbeat and breathing too weakly to fog a mirror held up to his
nostrils. Finally, after several weeks
of being comatose, the local bailiff declared him to be dead. The family scraped up enough for a simple
wooden casket into which they shoved his body and dumped it into a hole six
foot deep. As the laborers shoved dirt
on top of the casket, the sound of a bell tinkling was heard. In those days, putting a small tin bell into
caskets was standard procedure.
Historians have estimated that about a third of those declared to be
deceased in those days were really not, so this was an excellent practice. And for Rufus, it certainly was. Hearing the
bell, they quickly lifted the casket out of the hole and pried it open. There was Rufus, reclining with his arms at
his side, smiling, and asking what the hell was going on. That was indeed a narrow escape, all the more
fortunate because embalming was not a common practice in those days either. Rufus went on to be appointed as troubadour
to the King’s Court, an honor comparable nowadays to winning an Emmy, where he
served until 1655 when Oliver Cromwell had him beheaded.
More recently,
Chrissy’s grandfather, an unemployed London clarinetist, was told there was an
opening in a cruise ship’s orchestra. He
went for an audition and did just fine, except for the fact that the bandleader
was an anti-Semite. The family had not
yet changed its name to Frost and the bandleader just didn’t want Chaim
Finkelstein as part of his orchestra.
Chaim became so enraged when some musician friends told him why he
hadn’t gotten the job that he ran right down to the docks fully intending to
punch the bandleader in the nose.
Unfortunately, when he got there, he found that the Titanic had already
sailed. Whew, that was a close one, he
thought when he read the papers a week later.
Well, Chrissy’s family
moved to the United States, but the narrow escapes continued. Her father had put most of his savings, as
well as those of his elderly parents and his uncles and aunts, who trusted him,
into the stock market which was producing tremendous returns at the time. He even had put all of the funds of the
synagogue of which he was the treasurer into his personal market account too,
an act which was highly irregular if not illegal. One day, finishing lunch in a Chinese
restaurant, he cracked open the fortune cookie the waiter had left on the table
with the check. On one side it read “You
are a wise man.” On the other it said
“Learn Chinese: Word for today is ‘Mai’
which means ‘sell.’” So he took a cab to
his stockbroker’s office and told him to sell everything. He did and the next day, October 29, 1929,
the stock market crashed, big time!
Another narrow escape for a Frost family member.
If you sit down with
Chrissy, she will tell you about her audition for the lead in a Broadway show
that never took place back in 2001 when she mistakenly marked it for the wrong
day in her appointment book. She was
supposed to meet the producers at 9:00 a.m. in their offices on the 88th
floor of the World Trade Center on September 11, not September 12, as her
appointment book incorrectly read.
Another narrow escape.
Right before Chrissy
came to South Florida to cap off her career by becoming the Queen of the Condo
Circuit, she was booked to perform at several major venues in the Far East,
which was hungry for American talent, regardless of how stale it might be, and
by 2014, Chrissy was already pretty stale!
After being booed off the stage in Melbourne, she managed to put on a
pretty good show for a non-English speaking audience at a hotel in Bali in
Indonesia, but their failure to applaud convinced her to cancel her date in
Beijing. Anyway, she would have had to
fly to Kuala Lumpar in Malaysia to connect with a flight to the Chinese
capital, and that just looked like too much of a hassle for her, particularly
since she was still using a walker. So
she flew back to the United States, cancelling her tickets to Beijing on
Maylasian Air 307, which they are still looking for somewhere on the bottom of
the Indian Ocean.
In Chrissy’s
pocketbook, you will find a small tin bell.
She doesn’t know why she always carries it, but her father gave it to
her and told her never to go anywhere without it. His father, who had gotten it from his
father, had given it to him with instructions that it be passed on from
generation to generation. She had once
shown it to someone in an antique shop who told her it looked about three or
four hundred years old, and probably was of British origin.
* * *
Chapter 4
- The Good Life – A Chrissy Frost Story
(“Chrissy Frost” is an entirely fictitious creation. My apologies go to anyone who might happen to
share that name, and I know there are some of you out there.)
Jack Lippman
When
Chrissy Frost decided to keep her waning career as a vocalist going by becoming
the Queen of the Florida Condo Circuit, she had moved in with her widowed
sister-in-law, Stella, in her roomy home in Valencia Heights, a new 1,000
dwelling gated community at the edge of a swamp. It was supposed to be a temporary
arrangement, but 2,200 square feet, two bath rooms and three bedrooms proved
very adequate for both of them. And it was
nice to have someone to talk to once in a while, even though days might go by
without their seeing one another.
Chrissy’s
brother, Lou, had been a detective on the Jersey City police force. Five years before his scheduled retirement,
he was gunned down in a shoot-out with some trash who were attempting to rob a
gasoline station on the approach to the Holland Tunnel where he happened to be
filling up. His pistol was no match for
their assault rifles. But the settlement
from the Detective’s Benevolent Society, the city and an insurance policy he
had bought some years earlier left Stella well-fixed financially. Their only son, who she saw every two years
or so, lived with his family in Seattle where he owned a plant making expresso
machines.
Chrissy,
whose two marriages had ended in disasters, gave little thought to re-entering
the social scene, particularly among Palm Beach County’s numerous widowers and
occasional divorcees. Stella, on the
other hand, was a social butterfly. Her
relationships usually lasted no more than two or three months, but she was
rarely without a silver-haired or bald gentleman to convoy her around the
latest hot spots in Boca Raton, Delray or Palm Beach.
Her
latest, a sharp-dressing Italian-looking gentleman admitted to being in his
mid-seventies. When he came to pick
Stella up in his Bentley for an evening out, Chrissy would smile politely,
almost choking on the aroma of his cologne.
Rocky
Levine was his name, and as they chatted superficially one evening while
waiting for Stella to finish “dolling up,” she learned that at one time he had
been a professional wrestler, using the name “Young Sampson,” had been the
proprietor of numerous saloons up north, and now, he boasted, he was “living
very comfortably in Boca off of some wise investments he had made.”
“Gee,
I wish I had done that,” Chrissy said.
“I’ve never been able to save a buck, although I’ve always made a nice
living off of my voice. ‘Young Sampson,’
I like that,” she said, as Stella paraded into the room wearing a tight fitting
pink dress designed for someone at least one third her age.
Rocky
smiled. “Maybe I can help you, Chrissy.
I know a lotta good people,” he answered as he pecked Stella on the
cheek, taking her arm as they headed for the door. “See ya, later.”
On
the phone the next day with Herman Schultz, her old agent back in New York,
Chrissy mentioned Rocky and Herm indeed recalled “Young Sampson” and even
remembered having booked a couple of bouts for him in places like Elmira or
Utica where the rubes went for that kind of stuff in those days.
“But
how are you doing down there, Chrissy?” Herman asked. “I’ve been hearing good things.”
“Just
fine. I get a couple of bookings a week,
and at $5,000 a pop, I’m making it. You
should know that anyhow since I’m sure you’re getting a piece of the action my
agent down here is ripping me off for.
Yeah, all these folks want are the oldies. Thank God they don’t want rap or hop-hip.”
“It’s
hip-hop, Chrissy. But as for Rocky
Levine, or whatever he is calling himself these days, keep your eyes open. I hear he is ‘connected.’”
“Oh?
she replied. “Thanks for the tip. I remember that kind from Vegas. I’ll keep an eye on Stella.”
* *
The
idea of double-dating with Stella and Rocky had never occurred to Chrissy until
Rocky showed up one afternoon with Nutsy.
Turns
out that Nutsy, who came from the Bronx, which he pronounced as if it had two
syllables, was the guy who had set Rocky up with some of the wise investments
he had told Chrissy about when they first met.
Turns out they consisted of part ownership in a couple of massage
parlors and strip joints somewhere in Broward County and a “sober home” in
Delray Beach.
Nutsy
Buttsky, for that was his full name, explained to Chrissy what a sober home was
when she asked, never having heard that expression before. It turns out that sober homes are rooming
houses where recovering addicts stay, with their heavily padded bill being paid
by their rich parents up north, or more often by their insurance companies or
the government, while they go to private rehab centers in the area each day for
so long as their insurance lasts. Nutsy
proudly added that when sober home residents need to arrange for their rehab
treatment, the sober home is glad to refer them to one of the places that
provide it, usually the one that kicks back the biggest percentage of what they
get from the insurance or the government.
That was where the big money was.
But Nutsy didn’t drive a Bentley like Rocky did. His ride was a Maserati.
So
the two couples went out to dinner, and then went to a black dance club in a
part of Delray to which she had never been.
Nutsy was tall, good-looking, muscular and fun to be with and Chrissy,
for the first time since she had come to Florida, had a good time going out on
a date. But she knew, from what Herm up
north had told her about “Young Sampson,” and from the “investments” which
Nutsy wasn’t in the least reluctant to brag about, that both of them were
probably somewhere on the shady side of the law.
Chrissy
had gone out with Nutsy about a half-dozen times, sometimes along with Stella
and Rocky and sometimes just the two of them.
And she was having a good time.
Nutsy occasionally showed up at her performances and usually applauded
longer than anyone else in the audience until those sitting near him started
staring at him. He would eventually stop
clapping, but only after he stuck his tongue out at them or aimed an imaginary
pistol he formed with his fist and extended forefinger at them, but always with
a smile on his face. The relationship
wasn’t going anywhere, she knew, but she always had a lot of fun when he was
around. The two of them, along with
Stella and Rocky, were having a ball when they went out, hitting the hot spots
in Palm Beach County and even venturing down to South Beach occasionally. This was the good life.
Or
at least that was what Chrissy thought it was until that day when an Assistant
State Attorney for Palm Beach County left a message for her on her answering
machine.
JL
* * *
Housekeeping on the Blog
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 . )
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There’s another, perhaps easier, method of
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Either
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Again, I
urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from
reading it.
Have a
nice day!
* * *
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