Reading Suggestions
If you had difficulty reaching the article from the ‘The Free Press’ that I referenced in the preceding Jackspotpourri, you can find it at https://www.thefp.com/p/poetic-justice-for-jay-bhattacharya or try CLICKING HERE. (I find that providing a link to ‘The Free Press’ content is difficult on Jackspotpourri.) I do not agree with the article, but that doesn’t keep me from passing it on.
Making up your mind requires exposure to different views. Here are some reading assignments for you to try to fit into your week ahead.
Heather Cox Richardson doesn’t hesitate to clearly state her views in her ‘Letters from an American’ dated December 4. Check it out at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ or CLICK HERE. … and don’t miss her December 6 posting commemorating the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. outlining the struggle between democracy and fascism. As I just wrote, making up your mind requires exposure to different views.
Professor Timothy Snyder, who has written a lot about tyranny and about freedom wrote about dictatorships (Dictators for a Day) in his December 4 ‘Thinking About … ‘ posting regarding the attempted coup in South Korea. Check it out at https://snyder.substack.com/ or CLICK HERE. And while you’re there, read his December 7 savaging of the prospect of Tulsi Gabbard being made CIA chief.
And finally, to help you make up your mind is this December 5 opinion piece from the New York Times by Carlos Lovada. Check it out at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/opinion/trump-wins-harris-loses.html or just CLICK HERE. The piece’s title ‘Stop Pretending Trump Is Not Who We Are’ almost gives its content away.
JL
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George Soros, a Target of Antisemitism
Here’s a ‘Your Turn’ piece from the Palm Beach Post’s Opinion page on December 4. It’s about time someone wrote about this.
Attacks on George Soros Pander to Antisemitism
Contributor - Roger Buckwalter (a retired Jupiter journalist)
“Let’s take a look at George Soros. He’s a 94-year-old American businessman and philanthropist who was born in Hungary. His net worth is said to be $9 billion, and with that wealth he supports numerous liberal candidates and causes.
Soros created the Open Society Foundations, which fund international civic groups that promote justice, education, public health and a free press. He backs progressive criminal law reforms and programs for underprivileged children.
He donates to many candidates seeking office, from district attorney to president, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. In the 2022 midterm elections, he gave more than $128 million to the Democrats.
And one more thing: Soros is Jewish.
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| George Soros |
That last attribute, coupled with his activism, has made him a reviled object, a dark manipulative figure for antisemites and other unscrupulous opportunists who have wielded his name as a cudgel in political campaigns and at other times.
An email from Donald Trump depicted Soros in front of a communist flag as a puppeteer pulling strings on Biden, who says “I take more orders than I ever did.” It’s similar to a 1940s Hungarian cartoon showing a Jewish puppeteer holding the strings on European royalty and other satraps.
Reactionary provocateur Glenn Beck also used the puppeteer image, calling Soros a “puppet master.”
Trump slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who secured indictments of the former president, as “hand-picked and backed by George Soros.”
Saying a politician is “Soros-backed” has become a familiar right-wing slur – inferring that Soros’s donations are more significant and malevolent than other large, unpilloried contributions to those politicians.
After one of Trump’s social media postings about Soros, a respondent declared that “Trump named the immigrant Jew.” Rudolph Guiliani and others have called Soros the “antichrist” and cartoons show him with exaggerated stereotypical “Jewish features.”
Former Trump staffer Fiona Hill testified at a Trump impeachment hearing that Soros antipathy is the “new Protocols of the Elders of Zion” – referring to an infamous antisemitic forgery that purported to show a Jewish plot for world domination.
Tycoon and Trump minion Elon Musk compared Soros to a Jewish comic book villain as “the man behind the curtain” and claimed that “Soros hates humanity.”
And on and on.
All these vile defamations echo longstanding antisemitic canards that Jews, especially wealthy ones, are part of a hidden international conspiracy to control global economics and politics – that from the shadows they pull the strings which determine what their non-Jewish puppets must do. It’s a longtime staple of the far right – setting the stage for persecutions from “restricted” neighborhoods to pogroms to the Holocaust.
Any public figure who’s heavily involved in politics and other causes, which Soros is, can be legitimately criticized – and for Jewish figures that’s not automatically antisemitic (or racist, homophobic or misogynist, depending on the target). But when the criticism, as it is in Soros’s case, follows age-old calumnies of antisemitism, then that familiar bigotry is clearly raising its ugly head.
In criticizing Soros-funded candidates or causes, why is Soros singled out as a devil when those recipients are surely also funded, often heavily, by other, non-Jewish unvilified donors? Why is there an implication that something intrinsic about the trait of one particular donor irredeemably taints a candidate, official or movement? The answer is plain: Soros is a prominent Jew, whereas other, ignored donors are not. It’s the same old prejudice, the same appeal to dark impulses by those who – if they’re not overt antisemites – know or care nothing about history and are amorally willing to grab any expedient to further their interests.
Soros should be commended for funding worthwhile candidates and causes that foster progressive values. And he should not reduce those efforts. We need more people like him.
The thinly veiled antisemitic attacks are not just tough political rhetoric. They’re virulent expressions of hate that have no place in any civilized society, especially one that purports to uphold egalitarian ideals. They discredit not Soros but everyone who hurls them and accepts them. They should be loudly denounced by every decent person who believes in our ideals, who truly believes in America.”
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Newspapers ... YES!
Followers of Jackspotpourri should know that I feel that too many Americans are dependent on TV and the internet for information, ignoring the crucial role our disappearing printed newspapers have played throughout our history.
The column appearing above is a fine example of what newspapers can include, that you might not find elsewhere. I hope its content motivates you to pass it on.
I won’t burden Florida readers with links to them, but this particular Opinion section (December 4 issue) in the Palm Beach Post (They have an Opinion Section daily, except on Mondays and Tuesdays) also contained three thoughtful ‘Letters to the Editor,’ dealing with theocracy in Texas, equal justice for all, and Pam Bondi, besides syndicated columns by Robert Reich, Jonah Goldberg (both via the Tribune Content Agency) and the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell. All three are well worth your reading and you can ‘google’ their authors’ name to find links to what they are writing for newspapers.
Read a newspaper every day, either in its printed form or its online version, rather than depend on ‘internet only’ or TV news sources. Without doing so, you are incomplete, and really, unable to fairly make up your mind about the issues challenging the world around you.
JL
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Murder in NYC
While anything I post about the murder of the United Health Care CEO in Manhattan will be stale by the time you are reading it, here are my thoughts from what I have seen on the news, in newspapers, on TV, and online. (I prepared this particular item on 12/5/24 at about 1:00 p.m.)
1. The words ‘delay’ and ‘deny’ reportedly written on the shell casings found at the murder’s site seem to indicate the assassin was not a hired hitman, but someone who personally felt that the company treated him or a relative unfairly. These words tentatively rule out that the killer was a dissatisfied company shareholder, or any hired killer. A ‘pro’ wouldn’t bother with that.
2. By now the police should be comparing records of those individuals with denied or delayed UHC claims with nationwide data of those licensed to own firearms. The killer might be in that category, and his documented fumbling with the weapon’s silencer, suggests that his skills were not as professional as those of a paid hitman would be.
3. Documentation that the killer had stayed in an inexpensive hostel suggests he was not a wealthy person, and not a New Yorker, and probably someone who arrived in New York by bus. They probably are now looking at videos taken at Port Authority Bus terminals along with gun license records and denied claims.
I am a UHC policyholder, having a costly Medicare Supplement policy with them, not one of their much less expensive and more restrictive Medicare Advantage (Part C) policies, which might offer them a greater opportunity to ‘delay’ or ‘deny’ claims. That is where investigators are probably now looking, examining all recent contested claim decisions.)
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
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Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.
JL
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