* * *
Frankly, I would
prefer a series of ads stressing specific issues such as abortion rights, gun
violence, and voting rights. It is true
that ‘democracy is at stake’ but that won’t, in itself an abstract idea,
attract voters.
Also, for an
excellent summary of President Biden’s remarks made near Vallley Forge yesterday
concerning the dangers Donald Trump continues to pose to our representative
democracy, copy and paste https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-5-2024 on your browser line to read Professor
Heather Cox Richardson’s excellent summary of them or just CLICK HERE.
And while you’re
in a ‘click here’ mode, take a look at conservative columnist Marc
Thiessen’s recent column listing the ten best things he believes President
Biden accomplished in 2023. Copy and paste https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/27/biden-best-policy-actions-2023/
on your browser line or just CLICK HERE. They are very convincing.
He followed this
up with another column listing what he believes to be the ten worst things the
President did in 2023. After all,
Thiessen is a conservative, so this is as expected. Find it at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/29/biden-worst-ten-actions-policy-2023-missteps/ or just CLICK HERE.
I find the good
things Thiessen credits to the President far outweigh the very debatable ‘missteps’
he attributes to him. The bottom line is
that President Biden is trying to make democracy work for all of us, while his
likely opponent is working to replace representative democracy with an autocracy
and is dragging the otherwise leaderless Republican Party along with him.
I see
immigration as the President’s most vulnerable issue. (Theissen’s list of ‘missteps’ ranks it as
number 4.) President Biden must come up
with at least some ideas leading to a solution to a problem that resulted in,
according to an article in the New York Times, nearly 2.5 million people crossing our southern
border in the fiscal year 2023, many of whom end up looking for help in
northern cities, some sent there by Texas’ governor, and wreaking havoc with
their budgets, despite some Federal aid.
Pointing out the
danger Republicans, and specifically Donald Trump, are to democracy fails to
address the immigration issue. In December, more than 10,000 migrants were
intercepted at the southern border on some days, among the most ever, but that doesn’t
happen every day and is just a drop in a bucket containing the two and a half
million seeking entry last year.
Republican solutions to this problem like barbed wire, higher walls, and
troops on the border are heartless, impractical, and contradict what has been
part of the American dream since the nation’s founding. But Joe Biden must come up with some ideas to
counter these Republican ideas concerning our southern border.
What makes it
worse is that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is willing
to use proposing such measures as leverage to block needed legislation in other
areas.
The choice is
yours.
JL
* * *
Stress in Academia
And here’s another link to check out. The New York Times opinion column by Claudine Gay, the resigned president of Harvard University. included these words: ‘I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate.’
‘Neglect’ is the operative word in that
sentence. It is clear to me that such
‘neglect’ is the result of a weakness that comes with the unavoidable
priorities that anyone, including Ms. Gay, bring along with them to their jobs,
based upon their racial, ethnic, and religious heritages. We are who we are and there is nothing we
really can do about that, other than recognize who we are.
Such weaknesses, and they include those of
traditional ‘white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant males,’ as well as members fitting
into other possible ‘profiles,’ cannot just be checked at the door to the
office. They come with the person put
into that office, but that should not prevent them from doing an excellent job
in carrying out the duties of their position. When they manifest themselves in the kind of
‘neglect’ Ms. Gay admits to, they should be quickly corrected, and that is what
she attempted to do.
To read Ms. Gay’s opinion column from the Times, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/opinion/claudine-gay-harvard-president.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20240103&instance_id=111625&nl=from-the-times®i_id=78918068&segment_id=154191&te=1&user_id=02fa158150d34dc186b01b1b8ec7a224 or just CLICK HERE.
JL
But New York Times columnist Bret Stephens is less charitable to Ms. Gay than I am.
In a recent column, he points out that colleges are places for learning and research and not social engineering. He says, in trying to explain how Harvard reached this point, that ‘Where there used to be a pinnacle, there’s now a crater. It was created when the social-justice model of higher education, currently centered on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts — and heavily invested in the administrative side of the university — blew up the excellence model, centered on the ideal of intellectual merit and chiefly concerned with knowledge, discovery and the free and vigorous contest of ideas.’
His entire New
York Times column can be found at
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/opinion/harvard-claudine-gay-resignation.html
or by CLICKING HERE.
Again, this is
something about which one must make up their own minds. How far can one go in defending the rights of
the misinformed to poison the minds of the uninformed, considering that such rights
are the same rights that permit truths to be spread as well, even in a hostile
environment?
JL
* * *
Correction: I
was wrong!
The expression
‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you may end up somewhere else’
originated with Yogi Berra, and not Casey Stengel. But after all, I’ve never been a Yankee fan
anyway. It is, however, in its
nonsensical way, true. It means that if
you act without a goal or objective, what you reach might be a result that you
never would have contemplated if you had bothered to think about it beforehand.
JL
* * *
Sock-Shoe,
Sock-Shoe or Sock-Sock, Shoe-Shoe?
In the old Archie Bunker TV sitcom (‘All in the
Family’), there was a memorable episode where Archie (Carroll O’Connor) berated
his son-in-law (Rob Reiner) about the way he put on his socks and shoes. Archie
pointed out that putting a sock and a shoe on one foot first, and only then on
the other foot, was dangerous! When
‘Meathead’ asked why, Archie pointed out that if there were some kind of
emergency, like a burglar or a fire, before he got the second sock and shoe on,
he would be hampered by being barefoot on one foot, whereas if he put socks on
both feet first, at least he would not be barefoot on one foot in dealing with
an intervening emergency. I think of
this every time I put my socks and shoes on, of course usually following
Reiner’s ‘Meathead’ method.
JL
* * *
The Supreme Court and Donald Trump
There will be millions of words written between now and next month when the Supreme Court comes down with its decision as to whether Section 3 of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment even applies to Donald Trump, whose former position of president is not specifically named in that Section’s language, although he did take an oath to defend the Constitution of which it is a part.
While facing many charges for which he has been
indicted federally, he has yet to be convicted of them, and some questions are
still pending in Appellate courts. That
makes him ‘innocent until proven guilty.’
Only the most loyal of his supporters though, question the overwhelming
evidence against him. Our prisons are
filled with many convicted on far less evidence.
But does this evidence justify removing him
from State ballots used in selecting presidential electors? Maybe?
Maybe not? The core of Trump’s
legal strategy has been to repeatedly delay all litigation until the nation is
so close to Election Day, that eliminating him from ballots will be next to
impossible.
The Supreme Court will try to find a way to avoid
appearing partisan in their decision concerning Trump's appeal of the Colorado
Supreme Court’s decision that indeed, even before any Federal conviction, accepted
that he did engage in an insurrection, although they did not tie that to
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, when they ruled against his being on the
ballot in that State. They believed
there that the overwhelming evidence that Trump was involved in instigating the
January 6, 2021 insurrection sufficed to remove him from the ballot. Once again, let’s go back to that word I used
in recent blog posting: this is a real
‘clusterfuck.’ Any decision the SCOTUS
makes will leave a lot of people unhappy.
*
*
Right now, President Biden ought to be thinking
about quickly appointing additional Justices to the Supreme Court, a move many
were urging a few months ago. It is not
too late.
If the SCOTUS’ February decision gives a crucial boost
to the credibility of Donald Trump’s campaign, that may still happen. Such appointments might seem highhanded on President
Biden’s part but they might be the only path to our preserving our democracy,
presently being threatened by the candidacy of Trump, whose announced plans, if
elected, are those of a dictator.
The appointments, the hearings, and the
Democratic Senate’s confirmation of additional Justices can be completed before
mid-Summer and a case to remove Trump from the presidential race brought before
a new thirteen Justice court.
I would hate to see things reach that point,
but it might be necessary to preserve representative democracy in the United
States. Let’s see what the SCOTUS does
in February, when they try to support the Constitution, preserve democracy, and
avoid offending those who believe Trump’s lies.
I am not overly optimistic.
JL
* * *
Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
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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
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Again, I urge you to forward
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JL
* * *
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