* * *
 |
| Attorney-General Garland |
Here’s a letter I sent to the Palm Beach Post the other day. I will let you know if they publish it.
‘Attorney-General Merrick Garland made a mistake when he appointed Robert Gur as a Special Counsel looking into President Biden's possible mishandling of documents when he left the vice presidency in 2016. He should have been aware that the ethics of some in the legal profession are far below those found in other professions, such as medicine, dentistry, teaching, and even the practice of cosmetology. Gur colored his report finding nothing worth pursuing further with his own political opinions, specifically those relating to President Biden's age.
'This is the same kind of thing that James Comey and Bill Barr, also lawyers, did in letting their personal political opinions put a negative slant on their reports on Hillary Clinton's emails and Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian involvement in our 2016 elections, respectively.
'That the Palm Beach Post periodically publishes lists of lawyers disciplined by the Florida Supreme Court for ethical violations indicates the existence of this problem in the legal profession, something I don't see regularly publicized for other professions by whatever agency is responsible for regulating them. Garland, a lawyer himself, should have known better.’
JL
* * *
The media (USA Today) report that ‘nearly
one in five Americans believe Taylor Swift is part of a 2024 plot to help Joe
Biden’ might be correct! Regardless of whether or not Ms. Swift's is part of it, I can at least confirm the existence of such a ‘plot’ or conspiracy
because I too am part of it!
We meet periodically to discuss how to get people to register to vote, to write ‘postal cards,’ to communicate with legislators, sign petitions, join ‘phone banks,’ and other activities that are part of the responsibility of being politically active in a democracy.
I now suspect that the strange lady showing up at some of our meetings, but not ‘signing in,’ wearing dark glasses and a Miami Dolphin jersey. intentionally to mislead us, might be Ms. Swift, while a stand-in fills her role in her world-wide tour.
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.
* *
(One final word to emphasize the non-partisan nature of
this blog: Encourage your
Republican friends to vote in person at their polling places on Wednesday,
November 6, 2024, a day set aside for Republican voters throughout the nation.)
JL
* * *
What’s Gonna Be, Gonna Be!
So here's my advice to Joe.
Face it. The two candidates for president on your ballot in November (excluding numerous third-party candidates who will never get an electoral vote, and just mess things up, possibly affecting the outcome in a particular State, …. so please ignore them) will be President Biden and his predecessor in office, Donald John Trump.
In my opinion,
anyone who votes for Donald does not care about the future of representative
democracy in the United States, but many millions will vote for him, for a
variety of reasons into which I won’t be going at this time. I think Joe Biden will be re-elected, but it
will be close.
My advice, which he has not solicited, to President Biden is threefold.
First, he must avoid taking overly strong
positions on issues which might lose him some votes. These include the Middle East, Ukraine, and
immigration, legal and otherwise, particularly at our Southern border. He must tread carefully in these areas, maintaining
his present positions, but not advocating anything monumental. The months
before the election are not the time for engaging in arguments, nor spending resources to point out that John
Donald Trump is mired in both civil and criminal litigation (for which he has
been indicted) that will apparently go on for many years. Biden need not expend any resources on
that. News media will do it
automatically, and for free.
I feel that
primarily, President Biden should make this election about the
nation’s continuing progress under his Administration (think the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPs
and Science Act, the Infrastructure & Investment Jobs Act and its resulting
job-creating projects, the rising stock market, and decreasing inflation.) But he should not ignore the destructive
potential of a second Trump term, using Donald’s own words. He should mix a little about the future with
a little about the past, enunciating his successes compared to Trump’s
failures. Most importantly, this requires him to TURN UP THE VOLUME.
Secondly, President Biden must light
a fire under Vice President Harris. When
a candidate for president is 81 years old, that automatically ups the
importance of the vice-presidency.
Kamala Harris must demonstrate her capabilities along with projecting an
image of strength as she did early in her 2020 campaign for the Democratic
presidential nomination. If it appears
that she is failing to do both very quickly, replacement on the ticket should
be considered.
Thirdly, if Donald John Trump
manages to win the election and Congress, both within the
realm of possibility, the future of our representative democracy
can only be saved by the Supreme Court. As an insurance policy to
protect the country should that happen, President Biden
should right now,
while the Democrats still control the Senate, nominate four additional Justices to
the SCOTUS, thrice corrupted with reactionary ‘originalist’ appointees made by
Trump during his administration, who view history through a rear-view mirror. This is permissible under the Constitution,
which is silent on the number of SCOTUS Justices, and once nominated, only
require a simple majority vote by the Senate.
I know President
Biden would be criticized for doing this, a purely political tactic, but it is
necessary in view of the dangers another term for Trump will bring: a national ban on
abortions, easy and simple access to weapons for every American, Department of
Justice prosecution of his political opposition, blindness to the effects of
climate change, freeing the very wealthy from paying their fair share of taxes,
and an end to regulation of major businesses and of our financial marketplaces.
3 + 4 = 7 > 6
Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Brown plus four new appointees will leave Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Chief Justice Roberts as a minority on the SCOTUS.
* *
Finally, as screwed-up, divided, and unpredictable as the American
voters are and have been, all
it takes is a crisis to bring them together. This unification occurred in 1776 (the crisis then was the refusal of the colonists’ British
‘masters’ to grant independence), again in 1861 (the crisis then was the secessionists’ determination to
expand slavery Westward), and in 1941 (the crisis then was
the desire of the Axis powers to rule the world).
You will note that about eighty years separated each of these
three crises. It has been about 84 years
since Pearl Harbor, so we are about due for another one.
Today’s crisis
is the threat to representative democracy in the United States posed by the
vast number of American people, not quite a majority, who have lost faith in
democracy and are willing to give an autocratic form of government, if not a
dictatorship, a chance. Donald John
Trump personally is not the threat representing this crisis. It is the American people who support him,
and who have mobilized the Republican Party as their tool, who are the threat. Some of their reasons to do so are malign.
Defeating them, or at least effectively dealing with their anger, will
be more difficult than defeating the Redcoats in the 1770s, Johnny Reb in 1860s,
or the Axis powers in the 1940s. The
nation’s motto, E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) demands unification at this
time.
Our best chance of achieving that without bloodshed, in addition to the
threefold advice I offer to President Biden in the paragraphs above, is
democracy’s giving the Republican Party enough rope with which to hang itself
in the full view of the American people.
JL
* * *
Suozzi Wins in New York’s Third C.D.
An Omen!
In his victory speech after
his winning election in New York’s 3rd Congressional district to replace a
disgraced, indicted, and expelled professional
Republican liar, Tom Suozzi (a former Democratic centrist congressman who had
given up his seat to unsuccessfully run in the Democratic 2022 primary for New
York’s governorship) identified specific groups, thanking his Jewish, Irish,
Italian, Black, Latino, Korean, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Japanese, and Chinese
supporters, to raucous cheers, for helping him win by an unexpectedly large
margin. Democrat Suozzi is also a former
Nassau County executive and Mayor of Glen Cove.
It was clear that the groups
that form Long Island’s traditional conservative Republican base were absent
from Suozzi’s list of those increasingly inhabiting and dominating the Third Congressional district. It sounded to me
like the resurrection of the alliances that kept the Democrats in power during
the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
And that is a good sign.
One bad sign, however, something that I have not seen reported in the media, was the brief attempt during Suozzi’s speech of a demonstrator with a Palestinian flag who attempted to push onto the platform but was quickly turned away. I witnessed the episode, which took no more than one or two seconds, on MSNBC, my source of viewing the speech delivered live. Suozzi, who must run again in November, should take note of this as also must President Biden.
In trying for a win in November, Republicans are not above using Biden's support, however hedged, of Israel's defensive war against Hamas as an issue. Remember that Donald John Trump has practically encouraged Vladimir Putin to attack NATO members who are behind on their dues. When you think that Republicans have sunk to the lowest levels possible, they always find something even lower to sink to. The 2024 General Election may be that party's last rodeo.
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
* * *
No comments:
Post a Comment