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A Warning to Democrats
Unemployment might be down, and the economy might be stronger, but many of those who are sharing in the fruits of such favorable trends remain unhappy.
They see the crappy, unsatisfying, jobs in which they are stuck as better than not having any job at all, but also as something to blame on President Biden’s administration. Conceivably, with absolutely no good reason to do so, they will end up voting for the Trump/Vance ticket rather than for Kamala Harris.
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| Not my first choice as a job |
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| but maybe better than this |
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| or this! |
Democratic strategists must figure out a way of addressing this problem. They should start by making a list of the crappy jobs they themselves would not consider taking, nor steer their family members toward. It would start with fast-food franchises, the staffing of most retail establishments, and the housekeeping chores in hotels and health care facilities. These folks must be given strong reasons for voting Democratic. They must be given hope for greater, more fulfilling, opportunities. Are you listening, Kamala and Tim?
JL
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Gun Violence ... Again
After two attempts on his life with the kind of weapons intended only for military use, I hope former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump will get behind national gun control legislation.
He ought to personally ask the three Supreme Court Justices he put on the SCOTUS to take action to reverse D.C. vs Heller, the decision that puts weapons in the hands of anyone who wants them.
That ‘right’ is guaranteed by their 2008 misinterpretation of the final fourteen words of the Second Amendment. Sunday’s incompetent and unsuccessful assassination attempt would not have even occurred (nor would the earlier one in Pennsylvania) had not the D.C. vs Heller decision enabled the assassin, whatever his motives were, to get his hands on an assault rifle, which he abandoned when he became aware that his presence had been discovered by a Secret Service agent whose gunshot was directed in his direction. An alert passer-by, seeing him fleeing and jumping into a parked car, captured his license plate with her cell phone.
In dealing with gun violence, just forget about ‘mental problems’ or ‘ego-hungry copycats’ as being causative, and ‘thoughts and prayers’ being an acceptable response. Guns are what kill people and they must be immediately regulated by Congressional action on a national basis. Why? It will take forty or fifty years to repeal the Second Amendment and replace it with one reading something like this:
‘The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, for the purpose of hunting, sporting activities, and protection of one’s domicile or business, shall not be infringed.' There’s nothing wrong with that language, unless of course one has an armed insurrection in mind.
The Second Amendment has to be changed. That is what has to be done, but we cannot wait that long. These guns must be taken off of the streets, out of unlocked cabinets in homes, out of the gun stores, out of the gun shows, and out of circulation, while still protecting our ‘right to keep and bear arms’ (as the Second Amendment says) in the manner the revised Amendment language above suggests, before they fall into the hands of any of the hundreds of thousands of unbalanced Americans, or misguided zealots.
When? Right Now!
The public agrees that the use of a potentially killer drug like fentanyl must be regulated. The Food and Drug Administration does that, considering it to be a ‘controlled drug.’ There is no reason why killer weapons should not be similarly regulated by Congressional action until the Second Amendment is changed as suggested above.
When? Right Now!
Here are some numbers to help you form your opinion:
• According to the United States Census, the nation’s population is about 335,000,000.
• According to registrations in all 50 States, there are about 276,000,000 private or commercially registered automobiles in the United States, evidence that all are regulated in some manner.
• According to the Ammo.com website, there are 82,000,000 civilian gun owners in the United States who when taken together, own about 500,000,000 weapons, almost twice as many as the number of registered vehicles in this country. Because of the absence of effective State regulation, only about 6,000,000 of them are registered in any manner.
Check this out by visiting https://ammo.com/articles/how-many-gun-owners-in-america#:~:text=Based%20on%20NICS%20background%20data,least%20one%20firearm%20in%202023 or by CLICKING HERE.
And while on this subject, here’s former FBI Deputy Director Frank Figliuzzi’s take on this crucial subject. Copy and paste https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/happened-trump-yesterday-result-deadly-lax-gun-laws-rcna171256?cid=eml_mda_20240917&user_email=033d2070fe1faa4dfea53a4950e7d0ed837513fd06d41e88f2d7b6b7c74af785 on your browser line or CLICK HERE.
Something must be done to address this problem and if you ask 'When?,' I reiterate ...... Right Now!
Of course, Republicans placing the blame for these assassination attempts on Democratic campaign rhetoric is ludicrous. But please understand that almost everything Trump, Vance, and their supporters claim is similarly ludicrous with their expectation that voters might believe it! Haitians in Ohio are not eating neighbors’ pets and Kamala and Walz are not Communists, etc. unless the folks who are fed these lies want to believe them, and that is a bigger problem.
JL
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Exploding Pagers
Let’s get one thing straight. Those in Lebanon with cell phones are not having them blow up in their hands.
It appears that because of the lack of security on cell phones, members of Hezbollah, designated as a terrorist organization since 1997, have chosen to carry pagers instead, obsolete for the past quarter century, and other old fashioned, low-tech, two-way communications devices, to attempt to evade Israeli interception, and are the ones who are at risk of being killed or injured when these devices, apparently successfully hacked by Israeli intelligence, explode. Some may even have been altered at the time of their manufacture.
But remember that we’re not talking about cell phones. It’s the pagers and ‘walkie-talkies, the latest devices of choice for Hezbollah terrorists, that have been turned into bombs by hackers, supposedly Israelis.
It seems to be a matter of Hezbollah members and supporters jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Their only communications alternative would seem to be handwritten notes, transported by supposedly trustworthy human hands, or perhaps by carrier pigeons.
JL
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All About Tariffs
Donald Trump is a big fan of tariffs. He feels we can penalize foreign countries by putting a tax, or a tariff, in items they export to the United States. There are two advantages to this, the second of which I doubt has ever entered Trump’s mind, something probably taught at Wharton on a day he cut classes.
Here are the two supposed advantages of tariffs.
(1) The money collected as tariffs paid by foreign manufacturers of imported items can be used as a supposedly painless way to help fund our government’s activities. The flaw in this argument is that the tariff the foreign manufacturer pays will ultimately be included in the price Americans pay for the imported item, which amounts to a hidden ‘sales tax’ for which they are charged. That’s not painless.
(2) Tariffs, as explained above, raise the price of imported items, and can encourage Americans to purchase comparable items made in the United States if available, the price of which should be lower than the imported item, the cost of which would be inflated by a tariff. This might significantly decrease the importing of the foreign-made items, and turn out to be a boon for American manufacturers of comparable items. While this might create jobs and increase the nation’s gross national product, it would not pour money into the Treasury as would a tariff, which amounts to a consumer-paid sales tax. Trump seems to miss this latter argument about it being a boon to American manufacturers, which might actually be to his advantage.
JL
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Follow Heather
After you finish reading Jackspourri today, I suggest you take a few minutes to visit Boston College professor Heather Cox Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American.’
Day after day she presents a historian’s extremely knowledgeable perspective on the news. Her posting dated September 20, for example, describes all that is wrong with the Electoral College, the means by which our president is chosen, and how it got to be that way.
Just copy and paste https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your browser line or just CLICK HERE.
(and as for the Electoral College, I believe that the only way to negate its 'thumb on the scale' flaw is an overwhelming Democratic victory in the 'battleground' States.)
It would be a good habit to check out what Dr. Richardson has to say EVERY DAY. It’s free, although you can subscribe at $5 monthly if you want to engage in commentary with other subscribers. (I no longer do that as it just takes up too much time. I’d rather play ‘Wordle’ each morning once I’ve checked out the New York Times and what Heather has to say.)
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
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.
Strange “Hits’! The large number of those accessing Jackspotpouri from Singapore and Hong Kong has somewhat lessened. I suspect that the Chinese are playing around with internet transmissions, possibly to try to identify who is reading them.
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.
Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it, particularly if they are a registered voter. Election Day is drawing nearer! Spread the word.
JL
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