October 8, 2025 - Not an NFL Football Fan, Tilly, Homeless Housing, and Missing Gas Stations

 

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'Sissy Football' in the NFL 

President Trump has no great love for the NFL. Lately he has criticized the new kick-off rules initiated last year, intended to lessen injuries, as making it ‘sissy football.’ 

Back in 2017, when he objected strongly to some players not standing for the National Anthem as a political protest against supposed racism in this country, he added his dislike of penalties to those remarks according to reporting by ABC and ESPN at the time: ‘Trump also said referees are "ruining the game by calling 15-yard penalties for ‘beautiful’ tackles’ ... and went on to say that “stiffer penalties are ruining the game … Today if you hit too hard, right, they hit too hard. Fifteen yards, throw him out of the game." I suspect he was referring for penalties for intentional ‘targeting’ by tacklers.

The President prefers professional wrestling, a theatrical artificial sport where rules don’t mattter, to professional football where breaking the rules results in penalties, and sometimes even throwing a player out of a game. That’s very understandable because his administration breaks rules established by our Constitution all the time and manages to evade penalties for doing so. 

I wonder who the real ‘sissy’ is, getting a vicarious thrill from others’ violence. Somehow, I preferred the touch football played on the lawn in Hyannisport by the Kennedys. 

JL 

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Who is Tilly Norwood? 

Tilly exists only in Artificial Intelligence. She was never born and is only the product of the coding that AI required. 

Let’s start with Maureen Dowd‘s New York Times column of October 4 which points out the danger of our abandoning a world based on reality with an artificial one created by Artificial Intelligence. Ms. Dowd starts in the world of entertainment, but it just a tiny leap from there to other media and evntually to everything else in our lives. To read her column, Click Here or copy and paste https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/04/opinion/ai-hollywood-tilly-norwood-actress.html on your device’s browser line. 

 It leads me to wonder, for example, about our how our human bodies can survive when they don’t get the same real physical nourishment from a mouth-watering AI-created dinner as they might do from a real one. 

Both (and perhaps Tilly) can make your mouth water, but that’s where the ‘artificial’ part of AI comes in and its illusion ends. 

We live in a real world. Those who choose to live in a world created by AI instead should seek professional help in the real world, perhaps to which AI can lead them. 

JL 

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Housing the Homeless 

In many editorials, letters to publications, and opinion pieces, I frequently read that the solution to homelessness is providing more affordable housing. Plans for residential structures often specify a certain number of units intended for such ‘affordable’ housing. 

Usually, however, such housing is intended for lower-paid public employees and other workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. As well-intended as such planning is, it fails to address the problem of homelessness. 

An unanswered question is how many of those sleeping in parks and in other public areas, and on the streets or in cars, have any source of income enabling them to ‘afford’ such ‘affordable housing’ at any price, however minimal it might be. 

Solutions to homelessness should be directed to solving that problem rather than providing affordable housing for those who lack the income to even take advantage of such solutions. 

JL 

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A Question 

In photographs of Palestinians in Gaza seeking to flee to safer areas, mixed in with images of the vast majority fleeing on foot, some photographs occasionally include those in automobiles or trucks, even as recently as earlier this year. 

Fleeing Gaza - From New York Times - March 2025

One thing that puzzles me is where the gasoline stations are where these vehicles get their fuel.  And how do they obtain it.  I never see them in the photographs.

JL 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri 

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is 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. 

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

More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email. Be aware that when I open that email, I take these steps: 

 1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or two emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Most are from vendors which I may have used years ago. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them. 

 2. I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criteria are whether or not they end up asking for donations or if they are no more than advertisements. I ignore most of these ‘Promotion’ emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the two or three dozen other emails which I will actually open. 

 3. Then I read my email. 

Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine (or other search engines) where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so.

Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than the AI summary. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. 

Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. 

JL 

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October 3, 2025 - Another Viewpoint, A Look at the Second Amendment, the Generals Listened, Some Personal History, and a Change in Jackspotpourri's Emphasis

 

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Enough is Enough and Perhaps Too Much 

When I was a kid growing up in Newark, in the 1930s and 1940s, the prime source of news in our apartment was the Newark Evening News (which ceased being published in 1972), a copy of which my father brought home every evening, and which we all read. 

The ‘News’ carried all the national and international news, provided by its own reporters throughout New Jersey, and in Washington DC, as well as that from the national wire services (the Associated Press, United Press International, etc.). Its news might be a day or two old, but that really didn’t matter to us. Of course, it covered State and local news, including sports, thoroughly. 

There were similar ‘local’ papers in other New Jersey cities like as Jersey City, Paterson, Trenton, Camden, and the cities ‘down the shore,’ doing the same job in their locales, but the ‘News,’ was New Jersey’s largest newspaper, its ‘paper of record,’ and actually the twentieth largest paper circulation-wise in the country in those days. 

Besides reporting the news, the ‘News’ and papers like it, had pages of classified advertisements, and a galaxy of features, mostly syndicated, including comics, homemaking, fashion, advice, entertainment, dining, cooking, puzzles, and even bridge. No one really cared about the editorial positions these papers took, except perhaps at election time. Supplemented by ‘beefed-up’ Sunday editions and an occasional magazine like ‘Life,’ the ‘Saturday Evening Post,’ or the ‘Readers’ Digest,’ this was sufficient to keep us, and most people, occupied and relatively well informed, without a great investment of their time. 

But after World War Two, things began to change. As newspaper readership declined, a process that continues today, driving many papers and magazines out of business, television and the internet arose taking their place. When the ‘Newark Evening News’ closed down in 1972, its role was taken over by its morning competitor, the ‘Newark Star-Ledger,’ with whom it shared a circulation of almost 400,000 at that point and to which it sold its presses. In early 2025, the ‘Star-Ledger’ itself ended its print edition and is now available only digitally. 

Another source of information in those days was radio, with occasional newscasts and commentators, in addition to fifteen-minute soap operas and a lot of music. To know what was ‘on the air’ from local stations and the ones in nearby New York City (or Philadelphia), one could refer to their broadcast schedules in the local newspaper, which still, in those days, remained the dominant source of news. 

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I still spend at least half an hour each morning over coffee with the delivered print edition of the South Florida SunSentinel which does a good job on local and State news, depending on the Associated Press wire service and occasionally the New York Times for national and international news stories. I glance at almost every article in that paper, even if I quickly move on the next one after scanning the first paragraph or so which determines if I will read more of a particular article. It’s a rare article that I read all the way to its end.

Their ‘non-news’ features are pretty much the same as what the old Newark Evening News carried years ago, but their editorial policy is a liberal one, unlike the solidly Republican positions of the old Newark Evening News. (It seems that when the government is a liberal one, newspapers tend to be conservative, and when government is conservative, newspapers become liberal, despite their ownership. More about this some other day.) 

I then sit down before my computer to check out what’s doing online and to see if there is any late news among my emails about events that may have happened after my ‘print’ newspaper went to press. 

I wonder, after breakfast, why I am investing so much time in doing that, after sitting down for thirty minutes with a real printed newspaper. 

(As I write this, I was interrupted by a four-foot long iguana leaping from a tree to the ground behind my patio. Getting up, I shouted out ‘Get Out of Here’ and it quickly scuttled through the hedges back to the canal with his buddies. Iguanas do understand English. Many Americans do not.) 

But getting back to my emails, I find little there of which I was not already broadly aware from my perusal of the SunSentinel. Just to be sure, opening the New York Times ‘Breaking News’ or ‘Morning Headlines’ emails usually confirms this, and Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s daily ‘Letters from an American’ (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/) sums up all of a morning’s loose ends. I will continue to season what appears in Jackspotpourri with sprinklings from these sources and recommend that others access them as well.   This might be a good moment to check out what Professor Richardson has to say today. Just visit the link shown above. 

As much as I would like to, this is a good excuse to not bother with the words and thoughts in the email postings of such savants as Timothy Snyder, Paul Krugman, Simon Rosenberg, Robert Reich, Barbara Walter, and many others, including the folks at ‘The Bulwark,’ the ‘Free Press,’ the ‘Gothamist,’ or the ‘Daily Kos, and network news summaries as provided by CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and Bloomberg. My conclusion is that doing so might be too great an investment of my time and attention. After reading the newspaper, the emails from New York Times and and Professor Richardson are enough. (Of course, if you’ve a lot of time on your hands, it cannot hurt to dig into what these other sources have to say.) 

In any event, future postings of Jackspotpourri will then be able to devote more space to my own thoughts rather than leaning on the postings of others. The internet is like a tree whose branches are laden with many fruits, but eating too many of them can make you sick. Enough is Enough and Perhaps Too Much. 

JL 

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 Another Viewpoint – Do You Agree? 

‘Another Viewpoint’ on the Opinion page of the SunSentinel on October 3 carried this piece by J.K. Amerson-Lopez, who was raised as a child in a family of American diplomats. Please click here to read it, or copy and paste https://enewspaper.sun-sentinel.com/shortcode/SUN315/edition/2f3c86a4-dd6f-40c4-81f8-421132e0da39?page=02c92f7b-9e3c-4ce3-b6e6-f518c1638bce& on the browser line of your device. It says what many of us are reluctant, or perhaps fearful, to say in public. 

JL 

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The Second Amendment Has Six Key Words 

Once again, let’s examine the language of the Second Amendment.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’ 

Note those six key words, ‘the security of a free State.’ One of the real, ususally unspoken, purposes of the Second Amendment included the right of those free States to be able to arm militias to oppose Federal troops if ever they were used against States to enforce Federal objectives. This culminated many years later in Secession and the Civil War, basically over the issue of the expansion of slavery. 

Here’s something to think about. Is it too far a stretch to consider that the Second Amendment suggests that States might use their militias (State National Guard units) to oppose any Federal troops President Trump sends into a free State to control opposition to his policies there, considering such an intrusion to be a threat to the security of that ‘free State’? Such States’ rights were why South Carolina’s militia fired on Fort Sumter back in 1861, the start of the Civil War’s hostilities. 

The problem today is that the States no longer arm their own militias, having given responsibility for that to the Federal Government in 1903. According to ‘AI,’ ‘The federal government began arming state National Guard units following the Militia Act of 1903. The law was a major step in transforming state militias into a federally regulated reserve military force. This change codified the National Guard's dual role, serving under state governors in peacetime and the president during national emergencies.’ Undefined is what actually constitutes a national emergency during peacetime. 

Whether the Commander-in-Chief’s authority over National Guard units supercedes the authority of those ‘free States’ governments within those States is a tricky Constitutional question. There are legal challenges to such presidential authority being made by State governments right now. As I said, this is something to think about. 

JL 

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Listen Up, You Guys 

Please read somewhere the remarks made by the President and the Secretary of Defense before this week’s gathering of all of our generals and admirals that the Secretary Hegseth had assembled for an unprecedented ‘pep talk.’

Pick your source; there are many online. I found that of the Associated Press useful. You can check it out by clicking here or copying and pasting https://apnews.com/article/trump-hegseth-generals-meeting-military-pentagon-0ecdcbb8877e24329cfa0fc1e851ebd2 on the browser line of your device . 

Trump's words were actually a campaign speech suggesting strongly that the military ally themselves with the presidency, for the good of the nation. 

His words were at best contrary to the way our military has behaved since its formation. They were un-American words and I suspect clear evidence to the assembled military leaders there that Trump is a wannabe dictator with no respect for the Constitution, advocating the use of armed forces against our civilian population. West Point graduate and Harvard-educated Democratic Senator Jack Reed commented that ‘even more troubling was Mr. Hegseth’s ultimatum to America’s senior officers: conform to his political worldview or step aside.’ 

After hearing his words, and those of Secretary Hegseth, I suspect many of the career officers there, those the President likes to refer to as ‘his generals,’ were questioning whether loyalty to their ‘commander-in-chief’ was contrary to their oaths all of them had taken to support and defend the Constitution. 

It should not be ignored that the President was visibly disturbed when his presence and remarks were not greeted with applause. Whether this moves them to some sort of action is another question. 

JL 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is 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. 

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

More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email. Be aware that when I open that email, I take these steps: 

 1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or two emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Most are from vendors which I may have used years ago. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them. 

 2. I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criteria are whether or not they end up asking for donations or if they are no more than advertisements. I ignore most of these ‘Promotion’ emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the two or three dozen other emails which I will actually open. 

 3. Then I read my email. 

 Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine (or other search engines) where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than the AI summary. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. 

Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. 

JL 

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September 24, 2025 - Kimmel, Food Insecurity, Controlling the Press, Cost of Visas, Prosecutors Who Won't Prosecute, and More

 

Late Night Report

If Tuesday night’s Miami Marlins – Philadelphia Phillies game hadn’t experienced about an hour delay during a heavy rainstorm in Philadelphia in the ninth inning and continued  on to a Marlins victory in the eleventh inning, I would not have still been up watching TV at 11:25 p.m. when the game ended. 

But some good came of that, since Jimmy Kimmel was due to return to his regular time slot at 11:30 p.m. after ABC and Disney changed their mind about buckling under to Trump’s FCC head who had never heard of the First Amendment.

 

Kimmel

 

What the heck, of course I stayed up another half hour to watch Kimmel’s opening monologue on ABC. (In a very funny skit, Robert DeNiro played the FCC chairman). If you missed it, check it out on You Tube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1tjh_ZO_tY   (It's all over the internet but try for a version that runs about half an hour.)

Kimmel’s language might have been less elaborate when he spoke of the right wing’s efforts to avoid being associated with the still-unknown motivation of Kirk’s assassin, but that doesn’t matter. Even lies are allowed under the First Amendment, so long as no one is hurt by them and they are not malicious, and Kimmel was certainly most gracious in his condolence message to Kirk’s widow. 

Twenty percent of ABC’s stations, those controlled by right wing Trump loyalists like Sinclair and Nexstar, refused to carry the show, in which Kimmel didn’t hesitate to criticize the President. At best, they are an example of media sources that do not fully understand the First Amendment. 

Kimmel’s return, the result of public and media support for him, may mark a change in the unwarranted acceptance of Trump’s misuse of the presidency, to which far too many corporations, businesses, educational institutions, media sources, and law firms have spinelessly succumbed, disregarding the Constitution. I hope that change expands and continues. 

 It looks like the American people have a louder voice than the foes of our democracy. One might not agree with Kimmel, but real Americans defend his right to say what he believes. Kimmel’s return included a clip showing Texas Senator Ted Cruz, with whom Kimmel rarely agrees, making that point. 

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And here’s what had been already scheduled to appear on Jackspotpourri today. 

Often, Jackspotpourri’s content seems to become stale from the time I type it until its appearance on the blog a few days later, but I feel that this piece by Heather Cox Richardson still is worthwhile. So here goes: 

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America’s Democracy is at Stake 

Let’s start with Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s September 22 ‘Letters From an America’ posting (released the preceding evening). You might not bother with a link so here it is verbatim. Every word is included.

It's very frightening stuff! What’s at stake? America’s democracy! (I’ve used some color in a few places for emphasis.) The President is attacking democrcy on many fronts. Taken together, they add up to a fascist dictatorship. 

‘Letters From an American’ isn’t the only place on the internet where he is being taken to task; many sites ranging from the Daily Kos to the New York Times’ columnists are criticizing him, but Professor Richardson’s column is a great example, touching many areas that Trump contaminates. Nevertheless, such criticism can cause him to redouble his efforts to destroy American democracy as rapidly as possible.  That doesn’t change what Professor Richardson wrote about, appearing below, and in her other posts. Read them, and other commentators on the political scene, each day!

'September 21, 2025 - Appearing September 22.

Heather Cox Richardson - Letters From an American

“On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics postponed the release of the annual report on consumer expenditures—a key report for understanding inflation—without explanation. The BLS has been under stress since President Donald J. Trump fired its head, Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, after the July jobs report showed far weaker hiring statistics than expected as well as a downgrade for previous months. Officials at the BLS said the new report will be “rescheduled to a later date.” 

This weekend, Dan Frosch, Patrick Thomas, and Andrea Peterson of the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is ending its annual report on household food security. Those reports began in the 1990s to help state and local officials distribute food assistance. Last year’s report found that 18 million U.S. households experienced food insecurity during 2023. In a statement, the Department of Agriculture said: “These redundant, costly, politicized and extraneous studies do nothing more than fearmonger.”

Colleen Hefflin, an expert on food insecurity, nutrition, and welfare policy at Syracuse University, told the Wall Street Journal reporters: “Not having this measure for 2025 is particularly troubling given the current rise in inflation and deterioration of labor market conditions, two conditions known to increase food insecurity.” Whitney Curry Wimbish of The American Prospect reported last week that food banks across the country are seeing more visits even as immigrants are staying away from them out of concern that their information might be shared or that Immigration and Customs Enforcement might show up. Nutrition scholar Lindsey Smith Taillie of the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health told the reporters: “I think the only reason why you wouldn’t measure it is if you were planning to cut food assistance, because it basically allows you to pretend like we don’t have this food insecurity problem.” The budget reconciliation law the Republicans passed in July cuts funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by about 20%, or $186 billion through 2034, the largest cuts to SNAP in its history. This news got less attention last week than the administration’s apparent determination to silence its critics. 

Although, as Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times pointed out on Thursday, Trump promised in his second inaugural address to “immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America,” what he appeared to mean was that he intended to free up right-wing activists to spread disinformation about elections and Covid-19. Now, in the wake of the murder of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, as Peter Baker pointed out today in the New York Times, the administration has cracked down on the media and political opponents under the guise of tamping down words that could cause political violence. 

But, as Baker notes, Trump is making it clear that he is trying to stop speech that criticizes him and his administration. Last week alone, he called for people who yelled at him in a restaurant to be prosecuted and for comedians who made fun of him to be taken off the air, and he sued the New York Times.

On Friday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that covering the administration negatively is “really illegal.” He went on: “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.” As Baker notes, Trump’s chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, who wrote the chapter of Project 2025 that covers the FCC, has complained that many broadcasters have a liberal bias and that they do not serve the public interest as the FCC requires. 

That attempt to control information is showing clearly at the Pentagon. In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threw out long-standing media outlets who had been covering the Pentagon, including NPR, the New York Times, and NBC News, and brought in right-wing outlets including Newsmax and Breitbart. On Friday the Pentagon said it would revoke press credentials for any journalists who gather information, even unclassified information, that the Pentagon has not expressly authorized for release. 

Hegseth has been on a crusade to figure out who is leaking negative stories about him and defense issues under his direction, and he seems to have decided to try to stop their publication rather than the leaks themselves. Although Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell called the changes “basic, common-sense guidelines to protect sensitive information as well as the protection of national security and the safety of all who work at the Pentagon,” Washington Post reporter Scott Nover noted that this position is a “sharp departure” from decades of practice. Until this year, the Pentagon held two televised question and answer sessions a week (and, in my observation, the journalists who covered the Pentagon were excellent). The National Press Club also weighed in on Friday’s changes. “If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting,” said club president Mike Balsamo. “It is getting only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American.” 

On Friday the Pentagon referred to the White House questions about a strike on a third Venezuelan boat that Trump announced on social media. “On my orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump posted. Trump said three men, whom he called “narcoterrorists,” were killed. He said the military showed him proof that the men in the boats were smuggling drugs, but he has not shared that evidence with lawmakers or the public. As Lara Seligman reported in the Wall Street Journal on September 17, military lawyers and officials from the Defense Department are concerned that decision makers in the Pentagon are ignoring their warnings that the administration’s strikes on the vessels Trump claims are bringing drugs to the U.S. are illegal. David Ignatius of the Washington Post recalls that when he took office, Hegseth purged from the military the judge advocate generals, who are supposed to advise leaders on the rule of law and whether orders are legal. In February, calling the top lawyers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief,” he fired them. Earlier this month, he announced he was moving as many as 600 JAG officers to serve as immigration judges. 

Also on Friday, Trump announced that companies employing skilled workers who hold temporary H-1B visas would have to pay a $100,000 fee for their entry into the U.S. beginning Sunday. This set off a mad scramble as workers outside the country on business trips, vacations, or family visits rushed to get back into the U.S. before the new rule took effect. Not until Saturday did the administration clarify the new rule does not affect those who already hold visas. 

Friday was a busy day. Trump also told reporters in the Oval Office that he wanted the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, “out” after Siebert declined to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued the Trump Organization for fraud, for allegedly committing mortgage fraud. Siebert also declined to prosecute former FBI director James Comey, who refused to kill the investigation into the relationship between members of the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives, for allegedly lying to Congress. Siebert was Trump’s own pick for the job and is a well-regarded career prosecutor. As legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted in Civil Discourse, Siebert managed to win the support of both the Virginia Republican Party and the senators from Virginia, both of whom are Democrats. His refusal to prosecute indicates there was not enough evidence to convict a defendant; Vance notes that’s the standard a prosecutor must meet to seek an indictment. On Friday night, Seibert resigned. On Saturday morning, Trump posted on social media: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!” 

In the evening, he posted on social media a missive that appeared to be intended as a direct message (DM) to Attorney General Pam Bondi. It read: “Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’... We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT.” 

In other words, Trump wants to use the power of the government to punish those he considers his enemies. As Joyce White Vance puts it: “Let’s be clear about what Trump wants. He wants to turn us into a banana republic where the ability to prosecute people becomes a political tool in the hands of the president. That means he wants to exercise the ultimate power to put down any opposition to his rule.” She recalled the comment attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet secret police under Stalin: “Show me the man and I’ll find the crime.” 

A report from Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian of MSNBC yesterday showed what a politicized justice system looks like. They reported that FBI agents last year caught Tom Homan—now Trump’s “border czar”—on video accepting $50,000 in cash from agents posing as business executives after he promised he could help them win government contracts for border enforcement in a second Trump administration. The FBI had opened an investigation after someone told them Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for contracts under a future Trump administration. After obtaining the evidence, the FBI and the Justice Department waited to see whether Homan would provide the aid he offered once he joined the new administration. But the case stalled as soon as Trump took office, and after FBI director Kash Patel recently asked for a status update on the case, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation. The reporters say that when asked about it, the White House, the Justice Department, and the FBI all dismissed the investigation as politically motivated and baseless. 

While Trump tries to silence his critics, Russia is taking advantage of U.S. inaction to test the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. On Friday, three Russian jets entered the airspace of Estonia. Italian fighters stationed in Estonia as part of NATO’s new Eastern Sentry operation responded and forced the Russian jets out. As Poland did last week after Russian drones and jets entered its airspace, Estonian officials requested consultations with the North Atlantic Council under Article 4 of NATO’s treaty. High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, who hails from Estonia, called Russia’s incursions over Estonia an “extremely dangerous provocation.”

Notes: 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg3xrrzdr0o https://www.axios.com/2025/09/19/bls-cpi-report-inflation https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/21/trump-usda-hunger-report-food-insecurity/ 

https://www.wsj.com/economy/trump-administration-cancels-annual-hunger-survey-ca3d3793 

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/10/trumps-big-beautiful-bill-cuts-snap-for-millions-of-families.

html https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/17/dhs-calls-media-and-far-left-stop-demonization-president-trump-his-supporters-and https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/business/media/trump-kimmel-cancel-culture-free-speech.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/us/politics/trump-media-news-free-speech.

html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/us/politics/trump-free-speech.

html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/09/19/pentagon-hegseth-press-unauthorized-material/ 

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-lawyers-raise-concerns-over-trumps-drug-boat-strikes-b8327a5c https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/19/hegseth-national-guard-military-lawyer-purge/ 

https://abcnews.go.com/International/3-killed-3rd-us-strike-alleged-drug-boat/story?id=125757014 

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-carried-out-3rd-fatal-strike-on-alleged-drug-smuggling-boat-in-the-caribbean-trump-says https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers/ 

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-raises-fee-h-1b-visas-100000-rcna232525 

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/trump-h1b-visa-fee-travel-tech-workers-india-china-immigration-rcna232695 

https://prospect.org/health/2025-09-17-more-americans-going-hungry-worst-still-to-come/ 

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/donald-trump-h1b-visas-overhaul-00574345 https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-attorney-plans-resign-amid-pressure-trump-after/story?id=125750006 

https://abcnews.go.com/US/friend-former-fbi-director-james-comey-subpoenaed-federal/story?id=125666973 "

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These ‘notes’ Professor Richardson appends to her thoughts are there to show that she just isn’t making this stuff up. 

 And she didn’t get near the lies being sold to the American public by Health (?) and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz about vaccinations! If you value your health and that of your family, ignore anything they say and trust what your personal physician advises. Please! Believe me, Tylenol or acetaminophen (which the President was unable to pronounce) is not associated with autism. (Try ‘a-set-o-MIN-o-fen’) 

And finally, a word about Attorney-General Bondi. She got her law degree from Stetson University’s Law School, ranked as number 99 among American law schools by US News & World Report, in a tie with three others. I wonder to which other ones she even applied. She is no more an independent voice as Trump’s Attorney-General than she was in that same position in Florida, obedient to Governor DeSantis. She doesn’t know that an Attorney-General is the people’s lawyer, and not the President’s. 

I hope all of this serves to awaken those who do not understand the great threat to our democracy posed by the wannabee-dictator in the White House, those in Congress who support him, and those who, for a variety of reasons, voted for him. 

Even at the massive funeral service for Charlie Kirk, while his widow spoke of love and forgiveness, Trump used the occasion to attempt to mobilize those loyal to him against the rights for which many Americans, including Kirk, have fought and died. Quite simply, Trump is a disgrace to the presidency. I amend that. He’s a disgrace to the nation (period). 

JL 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri 

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is 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. 

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

More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email. Be aware that when I open that email, I take these steps: 

 1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or two emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Most are from vendors which I may have used years ago. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them. 

 2. I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criteria are whether or not they end up asking for donations or if they are no more than advertisements. I ignore most of these ‘Promotion’ emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the two or three dozen other emails which I will actually open. 

 3. Then I read my email. 

Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine (or other search engines) where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than the AI summary. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. 

JL

                                                            * * * *

September 19, 2025 - First Amendment Rights, Originalism, the Second Amendment, Political Truths, Artificial Intelligence, and Dragons

 

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First Amendment Rights Endangered 

Search anywhere you choose on the internet for news of Jimmy Kimmel’s cancelllation by ABC. He joins Steve Colbert as victims of those in power in Washington who believe firmly in free speech only if what is said agrees with the President and those he appoints, often with the approval of a supine Congress, fearful of primary challenges from the right. 

When Tucker Carlson and Heather Cox Richardson seem to agree with one another, it is time to distrust the President and his actions in regard to the First Amendment. Check her comments dated September 18 at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ 

JL 

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How Originalism Killed the Constitution

A radical legal philosophy has undermined the process of constitutional evolution, and Harvard Professor Jill Lepore has written about it in the Atlantic. The writers of the Constitution went to great pains to keep it from being a static document but one that would be adaptable to change through a very demanding amendment process. 

Not doing that would mean sticking precisely to the Constitution’s language, a position known as ‘originalism.’ The chief modern advocate of this was the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who is responsible for an ‘originalist’ misreading of the Second Amendment causing thousands of deaths through the unregulated proliferation of weapons. More about that follows. 

Justice Scalia - Is there blood on his hands?

JL 

                 

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The Second Amendment Was Originally About Militias … But That Has Changed 

A recipient of Jackspotpourri took my statement in the last posting that there were ‘no absolute political truths’ to amount to an endorsement of the ideas promulgated by the late Charlie Kirk.  

Not so! My statement included that such ideas should be dealt with in a non-violent manner. This may be the wrong time to point out that Kirk regularly excused the very same sort of violence that tragically ended his life, but it cannot be denied that in 2023, in supporting the Second Amendment, he is quoted as having said “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.” Words matter. 

Kirk believed the Second Amendment was there to guarantee individuals the right to gun ownership for self-protection as well as being a defense against government tyranny, rather than its clearly stated purpose in its original first thirteen words, enabling States to have armed recruits available to serve in their militias. 

Although this reduction of the Second Amendment to just its final fourteen words was approved by the Supreme Court in 2008 in D.C. vs Heller, I believe that is not what the Founding Fathers intended it to mean, or at least what it was for 219 years until 2008 when a politicized Supreme Court first decided that it was acceptable to ignore the Amendment’s first thirteen words (underlined below) in that decision. 

(The Second Amendment, in its entirety reads as follows: ’A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’) 

The late Justice Antonin Scalia’s tortured opinion, in effect cancelling the Amendment's first thirteen words, remains the basis for many laws regarding weapons today and has contributed to gun violence, allowing a proliferation of weapons in this country, and thousands of deaths. 

It is my hope that a future SCOTUS decision will return the Second Amendment to what it was about: arming State militias, the predecessors of today’s State National Guard units, something that is now a function of the Federal government and no longer a concern of individual ‘free States.’ 

That leaves the final fourteen words of the Second Amendment standing alone, a right that no one ever challenged, and never needed to be nor intended to be amended into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers, but which is now standing alone there preventing reasonable local ordinances concerning guns from being passed. (That was what D.C. vs Heller was about.) 

                                                      * * 

If my statement regarding there being ‘no absolute political truths’ was inaccurate, it was in that it did not mention that actually there are some self-evident absolute political truths that most Americans recognize, and these are that ‘all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ This is made clear in the Declaration of Independence and made into law in the Constitution. These words will outlive the present occupant of the White House. 

Meanwhile, we should join in recognizing that the acceptance of gun violence by some as an acceptable tool to advance their ideas is inexcusable, and that no American should ever be denied their First Amendment rights by bullets or other acts of violence, nor by words of condemnation by government officials. 

JL 

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Here Be Dragons 

When ancient mapmakers reached the limits of what was then human knowledge, they simply labeled such areas with the notation ‘Here Be Dragons.’ Professor Barbara Walter (San Diego State – Univ. of California) so labels her periodic journeys into the unknown where indeed, there may be dragons or similar dangers awaiting us. 

Her September 15 column appears below: 

Why the Killing of Charlie Kirk Feels Different It's a New Phase of Instability – Barbara F. Walter Sept. 15, 2025 

“I’m posting a bit earlier this week. This felt too urgent to hold back. Wednesday was the kind of day that rattles you. My phone lit up. My inbox filled. Emails came from every major outlet in the United States, from London, Sydney, Berlin. I even got an email from People magazine. Everyone wanted to know the same thing: was America sliding into political violence, even civil war? Something about this moment - the murder of Charlie Kirk - feels different. More dangerous. It wasn’t like this after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in July 2024. It wasn’t like this after Gabby Giffords was shot, or Steve Scalise, or Melissa and Mark Hortman. Those were shocking, tragic events. But the Kirk assassination has put the country on edge in a new way. The question is why. I think there are three reasons. 

1. Our Leaders are Reacting Differently. After high-profile attacks in the past, leaders across the political spectrum almost always responded the same way: they condemned the violence, urged calm, and asked Americans to come together. This time was different. Elon Musk declared, “The Left is the party of murder.” Laura Loomer demanded the government “crack down on the Left… no mercy.” Stephen Miller called on conservatives to “dedicate ourselves to defeating the evil that stole Charlie from this world.” Eric Trump described the assassination as having “awoken that sleeping giant of American conservatism.” Donald Trump called it a “dark moment for America,” saying it was proof that conservatives are under siege. In other words, the immediate response wasn’t about unity. It was mobilization. For the first time, mainstream MAGA voices turned a political killing into a rallying cry. And rhetoric matters. Political scientists have shown that when elites use violent or threatening language - especially when it comes from one’s own side - it increases public support for political violence. What shifted last week was the default script: no longer “thoughts and prayers,” but “prepare for battle.” That is a dangerous move. 

2. Violence is No Longer One-sided. For decades, far-right extremists - white supremacists, militias, anti-government radicals - have carried out the vast majority of lethal domestic terrorism in the United States. They still account for most of it. But in recent years, violence from the far-left has begun to rise. We don’t yet know what motivated Tyler Robinson, or whether he was tied to either camp. But President Trump is already pointing to the murder as proof that the Left is surging in its violence and must be subdued. That is exactly the wrong way to contain violence. Domestic terrorism is a lot easier to control when it comes primarily from one direction, as it has for most of the last twenty years. Once both sides believe the other is targeting them, escalation is much more likely. The scholarly literature is clear: reciprocal violence - when each camp sees the other as an existential threat - sets off cycles of retaliation that are extremely hard to stop especially when people feel they need to act in self-defense. By framing conservatives as victims under siege, Trump is priming his supporters for violence. This is new and provocative. 

3. America’s Law Enforcement Leaders Aren’t What They Used to Be. The contrast with the 1990s is stark. Back then, militias were multiplying across the U.S., feeding off anger at the federal government. The breaking point came in April 1995, when Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children. Two things followed. First, Americans were horrified. Recruitment into militias collapsed. What had seemed fringe but tolerable now looked monstrous. Second, the FBI acted decisively. They infiltrated groups, prosecuted leaders, and shut down networks. Within a few years, extremist militias were in retreat. That kind of reversal would be almost impossible today. For three reasons. The first is cultural. Surveys now show that more Americans than ever believe political violence can be justified under certain conditions (if an election is stolen, if government overreaches, if their way of life is threatened). Support is no longer confined to the fringes. The second is technological. In 1995, McVeigh’s ideology spread through newsletters and gun shows. Today, extremists use YouTube, Telegram, and TikTok to radicalize millions in real time. And the third is political will. Donald Trump has no interest in curbing far-right extremism. On the contrary, he has excused it, encouraged it, and sometimes embraced it. Under his leadership, the FBI has been stripped of independence and expertise, its senior ranks filled with loyalists rather than professionals. Even if it wanted to act, the bureau no longer has the capacity to replicate its success of the 1990s. That is the difference between then and now. In the 1990s, Americans recoiled and institutions responded. Today, Americans are more polarized, extremists are more connected, and government is more compromised. That makes the threat of more violence bigger and harder to contain. 

Why this matters: Taken together, these three shifts explain why the Kirk assassination feels like a turning point. It is. The danger isn’t only the killing itself. It’s what might come after: political leaders fanning the flames, violence becoming genuinely reciprocal, institutions too weak or unwilling to step in. We can’t undo the violence, but we can decide whether it becomes the spark for escalation or the wake-up call to pull together. 

For a particular great podcast on this subject see Sarah Longwell’s interview with the wonderful Rachel Kleinfeld on The Bulwark. You can find it here: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/you-can-ramp-it-up-or-ramp-it-down.

'Here Be Dragons: Warning Signs from the Edges of Democracy' is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell 'Here Be Dragons: Warning Signs from the Edges of Democracy' that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.” 

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 Accessing the link with which Professor Walter concludes the above posting will make available to you links to the many, many, blogs, newsletters, and podcasts dealing with current events. Some are free to a limited extent. Most look for paying subscribers as well. They are tempting, but beware; you can spend the rest of your life reading them, forgetting about eating, or sleeping, etc..

JL 

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Artificial Intelligence Alert 

We all should be aware that Artificial Intelligence can impact almost everything in our economy and society that up until now depended on the knowledge and skills of individuals. How you engage in creating, making, selling, doing, teaching, etc., all functions that originate in your brain, will be significantly changed. 

 At first, ‘AI’ might seem to be an ally, a useful tool, but eventually your brain might no longer be necessary, nor possibly, even you. Think about it: all human knowledge available at the click of a keyboard to do whatever you and other individuals did yesterday all by themselves. And that includes selecting your government, your mate, and what to eat for breakfast today. 

An article in the New York Times on September 15 suggested ways of approaching this. CLICK HERE  or copy and paste https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/technology/what-exactly-are-ai-companies-trying-to-build-heres-a-guide.html#:~:text=The%20Promise:%20An%20Everything%20Assistant,to%20its%20Alexa%20voice%20assistant. on your device’s browser line for the good (or bad) news. 

JL

                                                        * * * 

Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is 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. 

 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 More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email. Be aware that when I open that email, I take these steps: 

 1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or two emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Most are from vendors which I may have used years ago. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them. 

 2. I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criteria are whether or not they end up asking for donations or if they are no more than advertisements. I ignore most of these ‘Promotion’ emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the two or three dozen other emails which I will actually open. 

 3. Then I read my email. 

Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine (or other search engines) where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than the AI summary. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. 

Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence.

                                                                *   *   *