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Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

February 20, 2024 - Donald John Trump, a Maureen Dowd Column, and Shootings at a Super Bowl Victory Celebration

 

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Kansas City Shooting and a Letter

Hal Habib, sportswriter on the Palm Beach Post, recently wrote about the shooting at the giant rally in Kansas City celebrating the Chiefs winning the in the Super Bowl a few days earlier, pointing out that gunshots are not uncommon at athletic events.  I wrote a letter to the Palm Beach Post, expanding on Habib’s remarks.  I will let you know if they publish it.  (I write these letters because if they publish them, they are exposed to almost 100,000 daily readers, far more than this blog is.)

 Anyway, here it the content of my letter.

‘Hal Habib's (2/18) article on shootings at athletic events touches on the broader problem of preventing gun violence.  It involves keeping people with dangerous histories from having access to guns, the difficulty of legislating simple reforms regarding purchasing, owning, and carrying weapons, and recognizing that belated 'thoughts and prayers' are no match for what a gun can do.  Most important of all is getting the Supreme Court to recognize that the Second Amendment's intention was merely to provide States with armed citizens to recruit into militias to counter what they feared most, the army of a Federal government opposed to individual States' rights, specifically the right to own slaves. I hope that it is only a matter of time until that Court reverses its 2008 decision in D.C. vs Heller, which has led to thousands of deaths in this country from gun violence.’

JL 

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Do Whatever the Hell They Want

Speaking at a rally in Conway, South Carolina, a week ago, Donald John Trump told a story to make a point, something that not necessarily had actually taken place, but illustrating how as president, he might have told a NATO member’s head of state that he would withhold U.S. help and “encourage” Russia to do as it wished with our NATO allies that do not contribute enough to military spending. Apparently, Trump often massages his ego with such imaginative fantasies.

“You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?” Trump recounted what he might have said, continuing his fantasy, “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.  You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.” 

    Yadda, Yadda, Yadda 

Avoiding paying his own bills, incidentally, is something, that Donald John Trump has spent a lifetime developing into a science.  Ask the local contractors and vendors in Atlantic City where Trump once ran a number of gambling casinos.  It is very difficult to fail in the casino business, where the numbers are heavily loaded against the customers, but Donald John Trump managed to do that.

Aleksei Navalny, Dead
in a Russian prison
The last thing the United States needs is a president who might tell the Russians to ‘do whatever the hell they want.’  Doing ‘whatever the hell they want’ includes bringing about the deaths of political opposition leader Aleksei Navalny and Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozin, both of whom gave Vladimir Putin reasons to want them out of the way, along with perhaps millions of other Russians whose names we will never see in the newspapers.

It's time for the American people and especially what is left of the Republican Party to separate themselves from Donald John Trump and all those who support him.  Anyone who votes for him, or follows his dictates in Congress, belongs either in a mental institution or in some other country, and that of course includes Tucker Carlson.

JL 

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A ‘Florida Fraudster' and a Russian "Killer

Plus a Trumpster's Reaction

I recently forwarded Maureen Dowd’s brilliant column on Donald John Trump and Vladimir Putin, (New York Times, Feb. 17)  to some on my contact list and included a copy to someone who I knew would disagree with it, a dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporter. 

Patti Davis, President Ronald Reagan’s daughter, recently recalled (in a piece originally appearing in the New York Times) that her father had pointed out to her that ‘dictatorships aren’t created by one person, they’re created by all the people who fall in line and say yes.’ That is perhaps why I forwarded Ms. Dowd’s column to someone who I know who has ‘fallen in line’ behind Donald John Trump’s litany of lies.

Because the Times sometimes has a ‘pay-wall’ making its content unavailable to non-subscribers, rather than providing a link that might therefore be useless to many, let’s start with the 'purloined' text itself of Ms. Dowd’s column.  Draw the blinds and read on:

‘The Florida Fraudster and the Russian 'Killer’

By Maureen Dowd in the New York Times (February 17, 2024)

“When I covered George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 1988, he was so eager to wrap himself in the American flag that he took us to a New Jersey flag factory. That way, he could claim that the G.O.P. was “on the American side” while caressing pieces of striped, red-and-white nylon.

At the time, it seemed like a cynical move by Republicans, trying to bogart patriotism. But at least they respected our country enough to try to monopolize its symbol.

That vanishing breed of Republican pledged allegiance to the American flag. Now Republicans pledge allegiance to Donald Trump’s ego. He has to be bigger than everything — even America itself.

“Bush wrapped himself in the American flag,” David Axelrod said. “Trump wants to wrap himself in the Mar-a-Lago flag.”

Just as Trump has remade the Republican Party in his own nasty and selfish image, he wants to remake America in his own nasty and selfish image.

Trump doesn’t seem to subscribe to any of the verities about this country. He doesn’t believe America is exceptional. He only believes that Trump is exceptional — an exception to all the rules that the rest of us live by.

If American laws get in his way — like counting votes to choose a president — he tries to smash them. He’s bigger than democracy, after all.

If American values get in his way — like our distaste for authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban — he mocks those values. When Putin and Orban flattered Trump, that seemed more important to the Mar-a-Lago megalomaniac than our nation’s proud history of facing down autocrats.

Bill O’Reilly asked President Trump in 2017 why he respected Putin even though he was “a killer.”

“You got a lot of killers,” he replied. “What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

America the Beautiful, our Shining City on a Hill, is not so hot. Get in his way, and Trump will bust up institutions, trash courts, tear down cultural icons like Taylor Swift and egg on acolytes to storm the Capitol.

He doesn’t see America as the idealistic leader of the free world. He sees the world as “The Hunger Games,” as Axelrod put it. And frighteningly, Trump sometimes acts as if he prefers America’s enemies to America.

The former president shocked the world last weekend when he said at a rally that if NATO countries did not pay more for defense, he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to our allies. Biden called that “un-American.”

Trump’s bromance with the sociopathic Putin, unimpeded by Putin’s foul bid to swallow Ukraine, grew even more sickening with news that the Russian president’s most potent opponent, Aleksei Navalny, 47, died mysteriously in an Arctic prison — very, very suddenly, as high-profile Putin critics often do.

“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible,” President Biden said.

When a CNN reporter asked if Trump had a response to the heroic Navalny’s death, the Trump campaign pointed her to a Truth Social post that wasn’t about Navalny or Putin. It was about how awful America was.

“America is no longer respected,” Trump posted, “because we have an incompetent president who is weak and doesn’t understand what the World is thinking.”

This American Carnage garbage is how he bonds with his base, many of whom are deeply cynical about politics and government, seeing hypocrisy and conspiracies everywhere.

His hallucinatory worshipers admire him as a strongman, even when he’s shown to be liable for sexual assault and an aggrandizing con man whose real estate empire was a Potemkin village. On Friday, a New York judge ordered Trump to pay a penalty of $355 million plus interest and barred him from holding high-up roles at any New York business — including his own — for three years, saying about Trump & Company, “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”

The Renfields to Trump’s Dracula are also busy playing sycophants to dictators. At an Axios conference in Miami, Jared Kushner — who was festooned with $2 billion in Saudi investments after he left the White House — called Mohammed bin Salman a “visionary leader.” Asked about the crown prince’s complicity in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, Kushner replied with exasperation, “Are we really still doing this?”

Before Navalny’s death, Tucker Carlson — who scorned Ukraine’s desperate fight for its independence — cavorted in the Kremlin. His interview with Putin was so indulgent that even Putin complained of a “lack of sharp questions.”

In an interview with an Egyptian journalist, Carlson defended his decision not to ask Putin about freedom of speech or assassinations of his opponents.

“Every leader kills people,” Carlson said blithely, adding, “Leadership requires killing people, sorry.”

Will the craven Republicans ever stand up against autocracy — at home or abroad?

Navalny’s death at the hands of the murderous Putin has given momentum to the push for military assistance for Ukraine.

It’s the American thing to do.”

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Well,  as expected, my ‘Trump-supporting friend’ replied to me as follows: “Trump kept Putin on a string so he would stay in line & not go around the USA. But Trump is not in power now so Putin does as he wants.  Once Trump is back in office you will see Putin fall in line.”

Though I know it would not change him, I answered him as follows:
“You have it wrong.   Actually, it was Putin who kept Trump on a string with hopes of business connections in Russia and tried to get him to try to weaken NATO and ignore Russian aggression, in his attempt to restore what used to be the Soviet Union.  Putin did not attempt to 'go around the USA' but preferred to go 'through the USA’ via his 'friend' in the White House and his followers, like you.  But with Trump not  'in power,' his efforts become evident to all, lacking an American president who would ignore his invasion of Ukraine and continued murder of opponents. Stay well.”

Really, it does not pay to argue with these people. They cannot be changed and your time is too valuable in an election year to waste on them!

JL

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Voting by Mail – This is Very Important!

Florida voters have gotten used to voting by mail.  It’s safe and simple.  But just because you might have done it in the past does not mean you can automatically continue to do so.  Current State election laws require you to renew your ‘voting by mail’ status before the next election in order to receive a ‘vote by mail’ ballot.  

If you vote in Palm Beach County, do it right now by visiting https://www.votepalmbeach.gov/Voters/Vote-By-Mail or by CLICKING HERE   For those who do not want do it online, they can sign up for vote-by-mail by calling (561) 656 6208.  In other Florida counties, visit the website of your Supervisor of Elections or call them.

JL                               

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Sort of an Apology

In my previous posting on Jackspotpourri, I reminded Republicans to be sure to put it on their calendars to vote on the special day set aside for Republican voters in the forthcoming presidential election, November 6, 2024.  Of course, I was joking because that is one day after the real Election Day, long after the polls have closed. 

I am making this comment now because it occurs to me that anyone who believes what comes out of the mouths of Republican candidates is likely to believe anything, even my joke about the date of the upcoming election.  Take my word for it, Republicans, Election Day is November 5, 2024.

That will be a historic date for them, possibly the final appearance of the dying Republican Party on any meaningful ballot in this country.  And the G.O.P.’s funeral director will be none other than Donald John Trump. The Party’s pallbearers will be Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Greene, the governors of Texas and Florida, and if they don’t end up back in jail, the convicted but pardoned Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.

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, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them. 

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 brief comment from you.  Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. 

Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.

Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it, particularly if they are a registered voter.  This is an election year.  Spread the word.

 

JL

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