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I usually post about a half a dozen myself as I develop a blog’s content (they’re not supposed to show up in the count, but they do anyway, even when I follow the Google Analytic rules about counting ‘hits’), but that is still an enormous number, including those who showed an interest piqued by my email alert or who clicked on a link to Jackspotpourri that had been forwarded to them.
Strangly, there was no corresponding increase in those asking to be added to that list receiving email alerts for each posting, so that 600 number might be an error of some kind. We'll see. But meanwhile, it makes me proud of the blog anyhow.
Usually, I am
happy when I can confirm that about three or four dozen of you have chosen to
view my output. Keep it up. I will try to deserve your doing so.
JL
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Should We be
Boycotting Toyota?
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| Houtis Driving Toyotas in Yemen. - These are the terrorists attacking shipping in the Red Sea using the Israeli-Hamas war to gain support among other Arab extremists. |
If you follow the pictures and videos covering the Israeli-Hamas war, and other struggles in the Middle East, it seems that terrorist militants usually seem to be driving around in Toyota vehicles. Even the Houtis in Yemen, pictured above, drive them.
That is no
accident. ISIS and other Muslim
terrorist groups seem to favor Toyotas and have no difficulty in obtaining them. Check out an article on this which can be
found at https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Wild-Blue-Yonder/Article-Display/Article/3600155/toyotas-and-terrorists-why-are-isiss-trucks-better-than-ours-said-the-american/ or just CLICK HERE. There are several more informative links to
be found there.
Back in the late
1930’s and during World War Two, many Americans of Jewish faith avoided Ford
products because of Henry Ford’s overt antisemitism and friendship with Adolf
Hitler.
The world-wide
distribution system for Toyota vehicles is difficult to get a handle on, but
right now, I personally wouldn’t purchase one … or a Lexus either (Forgive me for hanging on to my five-year-old
I-300 model) which they also manufacture.
The Totota/Lexus people know who their terrorist customers are! They should do something about it. Or their non-terrorist customers should.
JL
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Joe Biden Ain’t
FDR
Despite
favorable statistics regarding employment and inflation, as well as government
support and encouragement of infrastructure and economic projects benefitting
all Americans, Republicans keep telling lies about the ‘recession’ we are in. (Interest
rates are another problem but they too will be improving shortly.) There are always people who will believe lies.
President Biden
lacks the communicative skills that enabled Franklin Delano Roosevelt to reach
the public with fireside chats, but he must find a way to get his message
out. More than just his words, FDR
proved through his comforting fireside chats that as Professor Marshall McLuhan
proclaimed, the ‘medium is the message,’ The good economic news is a message
something that President Biden must learn to better get across to the public.
 |
| FDR spoke, and ... |
 |
| America listened. The 'medium was the message,' bringing the White House into the living rooms of Americans. |
JL
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Two Important Columns and Possible Stormy Weather for Democracy
Immigration as an issue in the 2024 presidential race just won’t go away. Columnist Mary Sanchez fears that the defeated former president’s tirades on immigrants will lead him back into the White House, where he can finally become the dictator he has boasted that he would be at least on his ‘day one’ in office.
While we were taught in childhood that ‘sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never harm you,’ Trump’s appeal to the gullible contradicts that. Read her full column at https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/mary-sanchez-the-problem-isnt-trump-and-his-tirade-about-immigrant-bloodlines/ or by CLICKING HERE. (You can skip her column if you are among those very rare Americans who are neither descendants of immigrants nor immigrants themselves.)
Another column
to check out is that of conservative Ross Douthat whose recent New York Times piece seems to argue that taking the defeated former president off of the 2024
presidential ballot in some States would ultimately do greater harm to the
Constitution by basing such an action on Article 14’s Section 3, than is the
prospect of defending the Constitution by broadly defining ‘insurrection’ to
get him off of the ballot. Too many seem
to swallow what I believe is Douthat's tortured reasoning, and even that of the sources he quotes. Check out the
Douthat column at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/23/opinion/colorado-ruling-trump.html
or by CLICKING HERE.
I disagree with Douthat. I believe the Supreme Court will be the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes 'insurrection' in today's terms, not those of the post-Civil War years or the First World War, when last they addressed that issue. Department of Justice prosecutor Jack Smith (actually the people's lawyer, and that means YOUR lawyer) believes that what the defeated former president did on January 6, 2021 indeed constituted aiding and abetting 'insurrection,' if not being even more closely tied to it.
And hanging over this, Prosecutor Smith is also asking the SCOTUS to clarify the degree of immunity Donald Trump had, if any, while he still was president as well as after he was replaced by the winner of the 2020 election, Joe Biden, from the charge of violating Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment.
If the SCOTUS comes down with a narrow definition of 'insurrection' to apply to Trump, letting him off the 'aiding and abetting' hook, or decides that even if he violated Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment, he was and is immune from prosecution, democracy is in for some very stormy weather in this country and it might be a good time to check out your suitcases. Remember the old Boy Scout motto, 'Be Prepared.' Physically and emotionally.
JL
* * *
I can’t seem to
get off of the kick I was on in the last posting of Jackspotpourri concerning
the ruination of college football by the ‘transfer portal.’ I promise that this will be my last venture into that morass until next December.
Here’s a letter
(I don’t know if they’ll print it) I sent to the Palm Beach Post on that
subject. (Dan Wolken is a USA Today
sports columnist the Post frequently publishes.)
In questioning the value of college football bowl games (Dec.
29 issue), sportswriter Dan Wolken paraphrases Ole Miss (and former
FAU) coach Lane Kiffen as saying that he couldn't think of any other sport with
a system where 'free agency' starts while the season is still going
on. I couldn't agree more with him. Players entering the 'transfer
portal' leave their teams playing with second and third-stringers in many of
these money-making bowl games, especially in the quarterback
position, cheating both their teammates and the fans. The major solutions
Wolken discusses won't happen for years, but at least college
football could start now by postponing their 'transfer portal' period until
after the last of the bowl games are played.
In addition to
the ‘transfer portal,’ the sport doesn’t seem to object to those players likely
to continue their careers in the NFL from ‘opting out’ of post-season bowl
games, out of fear of an injury affecting their career path.
I would suggest
any athletic scholarship aid to a student include a provision requiring that it
be immediately fully returned (with interest) to the school that provided it if an uninjured
player chooses to thusly ‘opt out’ of a bowl game. This would also apply to any
‘NIL’ money received due to the use of his (or her) name. image, or likeness in
media advertising. If players are being
‘paid to play, then ‘play they must,’ so long as they are healthy.
This problem
isn’t just limited to quarterbacks.
Florida State’s 63 to 3 shellacking by the University of Georgia in the
Orange Bowl was chiefly due to the ‘opting out’ of half a dozen NFL-bound FSU
defensive backs. This was in addition to
the loss of their number two quarterback, who had replaced their injured
starter, and who chose to enter the transfer portal last week because his
starting role didn’t seem secure for next season, when the ‘numero uno’
quarterback was likely to return, along with a bunch of new aspirants for that
role.
This type of
‘clusterfuck’ messed up many other bowl games that would have been far more
competitive as well if the transfer portal and the ability to painlessly ‘opt
out’ didn’t exist. I hope this is the
last year this foolishness is permitted.
Rule changes are
due immediately, and they should be made by the colleges themselves and not the
business and media interests (like Capital One, Allstate, and ESPN) that profit
greatly from the bowl games. And to
avoid mismatches (like Oregon vs Liberty in one of this year’s final bowl games
prior to the actual bowl playoffs between the top four selected teams), ‘strength of
a team’s schedule’ should be factored in as well.
* *
(A footnote: That 63 to 3 score confirms the wise decision of the college football playoff committee that chose to exclude ‘undefeated’ Florida State from their final four-team playoff, prompting Florida's legislature, governor, and senators to complain without good reason about the ‘injustice’ perpetrated upon FSU, just as they routinely complain about abortion rights, history and books that offend them, and the skimpiest of gun regulations, also without good reasons. Any of the four other teams in the playoffs, Michigan, Washinton, Texas, and Alabama, probably would have duplicated Georgia’s thrashing of the fatally weakened Seminoles by sixty points, cheapening the whole purpose of having the playoffs in the first place, which is to determine the ‘best’ major college team. It is good that next year’s college playoffs will be expanded to a dozen teams, giving more worthy college teams a shot at reaching the pinnacle. Delaying the transfer portal, eliminating the ‘opt-outs,’ and paying attention to a team’s ‘strength of schedule’ will guarantee an honest result.)
And as I said, this will be my last venture into that morass until next December.
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
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.
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, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells
and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or
by providing a link to that address in your email to them. I
think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.
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 comment from you. Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you are now reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the 'sidebar' features such as access to the blog's archives.
Either way will work, sending
them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or
clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I
recommend sending them the link.
Again, I urge you to forward
this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.
JL
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