* * *
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
* * *
“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 |
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
*
* *
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.”
* *
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
* * *
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
* * *
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
* * *
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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