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Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Monday, February 17, 2025

February 17, 2025 - Vance's Religious Views on Foreign Aid, Our Poisonous DOJ, and a Historic Lesson from Professor Snyder

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Caution! - (Repeated from earlier Jackspotpourri postings) 

Make of this what you wish: In today's political climate, it might be personally dangerous to write specifically about certain topics, and all members of the staff (at present, just me) at Jackspotpourri are aware of that. No one wants the DOJ chasing after them, and lawyers are expensive. Sometimes leaving certain things 'unsaid' can be more effective than saying them. We must learn to 'read between the lines.' 

Jackspotpourri rarely quotes the often hysterical Michael Moore and will not now, but his posting dated February 14 at  michaelmoore@substack.com (‘Overwhelm, Overreach, Overthrown’) approaches the kind of thinking I feel must still be left ‘unsaid.’ 

 * Abide! 

 JL 

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Not being a Catholic, I apologize if I have missed some of the subtleties written about in the religious matters mentioned below.

                                                           * *

Ordo Amoris’ - the Order of Giving Love or Giving Charity 

Without getting too far into theology, be aware that Vice-President Vance, who converted to Roman Catholicism in 2019, recently loosely quoted Saint Augustine’s philosophy included in his ‘City of God,’ that after loving God, one’s love and charity should then be primarily directed to those nearest to them, first to their family and then to neighbors, starting with the closest ones and then proceeding to ones at a greater distance

Centuries later, another Catholic theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his ‘Summa Theologica,’ pursued this same idea further and went on to suggest that one’s love and charity might in some circumstances be directed toward others in need, even strangers, rather than being entirely based upon one’s relationship or proximity to them. 

Although Vance, in an interview with Sean Hannity, mentioned St. Thomas Aquinas as his point of reference, his actions seem to more reflect that of St. Augustine.  

From what I read in the news, Pope Francis is getting involved in this matter, with a letter to American bishops addressing the order, or priority, that acts of love or charity should take (in Latin, ‘Ordo Amoris’), criticizing the United States’ stated intention to deport great numbers of illegal immigrants. 

(The full text of the Pope’s letter can be found at https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2025/documents/20250210-lettera-vescovi-usa.html . )

Vice-President Vance and Pope Francis

The Pope's letter
 to the U.S. bishops on Feb. 10, noted that
 'the true 
ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we
discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good
Samaritan’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds
 a fraternity open to all, without exception.' 
 
This would seem to take issue with the vice-president's
comments that more narrowly defined intended recipients of one's love or charity.

                                                              * *

Vance used his view to frown on foreign aid, which the president and ElonMusk are trying to reduce by attacking the government’s Agency for International Development (USAID), and that criticism included religious organizations providing such aid.  

I recognize that there may be some waste there, possibly unavoidable, involved in providing such aid throughout the ‘Third World.’ I feel, however, that does not warrant destroying that agency, which has done a lot of good in underdeveloped nations since its inception in 1961, when it combined several existing agencies trying to fill that need and prevent these countries from drifting into Russia’s orbit. The task at hand is to fix USAID and not to destroy it!  Go tell that to Vance, Trump, and Musk! 

An excellent article on the Pope’s clarification of ‘Ordo Amoris,’ from the Cincinnati Enquirer, carried in most Gannett newspapers, (printed locally in the Palm Beach Post) can be found by CLICKING HERE or copying and pasting https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2025/02/11/pope-francis-ordo-amoris-jd-vance/78413300007/ on your browser line. 

Vance, whom I consider to be a fool, should keep his religious views to himself. Today, Russia and China stand ready to step in should we decide to limit our aid to nations benefitting from USAID, but this appears to be a bit beyond Vance’s grasp, who is ready to love or provide charity to his neighbor who lives across the street (and who votes) before sharing it with others in Africa, Asia, or wherever, who might have equal or even greater need for it. 

It also puts Vance, along with Elon Musk, in the spotlight, enabling Donald Trump to say ‘Who, me? These guys say and do these things on their own; Don’t look at me.’ 

JL 

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The Malodorous Smell of ‘Eau des Republicans’ 

This week, the incompetence of the stumblebums who are running the Republican administration in Washington is being highlighted in the Department of Justice by its being caught flatfooted trying to kill a federal grand jury’s corruption indictment against New York City’s mayor in exchange for his possibly being politically valuable in the future. That’s what you are smelling. 

Thus far, six long-time, career federal prosecutors, (both in New York and in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Unit in Washington) along with the interim Federal Attorney for the Southern District of New York, temporarily appointed by Donald Trump, had voiced their intention to resign, refusing to go along with this scheme. They know that following the administration’s orders to kill the grand jury’s indictment make a mockery of the rule of law and might even get them disbarred. 

The instructions to destroy any evidence of what occurred at the meeting where this was discussed adds to the stink surrounding this incident and itself warrants a grand jury investigation. Lawyers customarily take notes at meetings (that’s why those large lined yellow pads are called ‘legal’ pads) and being told to destroy any such notes alerted them to the evidence of illegal acts they might contain. 

Trump’s new Attorney-General, Pam Bondi, doesn’t seem bothered by this, her Florida background having trained her well in circumventing the ‘rule of law,’ as an acolyte of Ron DeSantis. The directions at the meeting to drop the case reportedly came from Emil Bove, formerly Trump’s lawyer in his New York trial for falsifying business records and recently rewarded with his appointment as Deputy Attorney General.  Please continue to hold your nose.

At the last minute, the DOJ finally got a prosecutor, one about to retire, to ask the court to drop the case. He agreed that it really should not be killed but acted only to protect the careers of his colleagues who were willing to tender their resignations. We have yet to know how the judge will act on his motion.

Meanwhile, a Stanley Steemer unit has been hired to get rid of the stink permeating the entire courthouse building where this took place. 

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And the beat goes on .... In Jackspotpourri’s previous posting on Monday, it was pointed out that ‘there is a limit to the amount of the illegal and/or unconstitutional acts of the administration and the president that Americans can stomach’ and that ‘the courts are not ignoring them either!’ This rottenness in the DOJ only adds to the instances addressed in that posting. 

Trump and the corrupt administration he brought with him, loaded with inexperienced, clumsy, and inept appointees, are blithely strolling down the road to self-destruction, as they cut jobs and services in order to reduce taxes for the very wealthy. Many of the misinformed who voted for him (farmers, small business owners, employers of immigrants, etc.) are coming to realize that his programs, such as tariff increases, will impact them negatively.  It even may be that Red States will be taking it on the chin more so than Blue States!  It may take time but ultimately it will reach that point. 2026 cannot come soon enough.

Heather Cox Richardson’s posting (Letters from an American) dated February 15 (CLICK HERE or find it at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/) alerts Americans to the continuing dangers of Trump and those he appoints, who apparently still object to the Federal government’s gaining precedence over that of the States, as determined, but unfortunately not permanently, by the Civil War and the administrations of both Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt.  Trump's ascendency is just another challenge faced by democracy, another battle to be fought in that war that the compromises built into the Constitution and its Amendments have not solved.

                                                          * *

Besides the Vice-President (who is busy alienating our European allies), the ever-present Rasputin-like Elon Musk, and the bumbling Secretary of Defense, it looks like we are now getting Cabinet-level appointees heading up Health & Human Services, the FBI, and our Intelligence services, all of whom are thoroughly unqualified for their positions, but who have pledged their loyalty to the president, and not necessarily to the Constitution.  This will not end well, but fear not. The nation will survive if we just ….  Abide! 

 JL 

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 1938 and 2025 

It’s a long piece but Yale Professor Timothy Snyder’s ‘Thinking About …’ dated February 14 provides a historic comparison of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Ukraine today. Unfortunately, its academic approach makes it far too demanding to be understood by President Trump and most of his appointees, probably including the Secretary of State. But still, find the time to CLICK HERE to access it or copy and paste https://snyder.substack.com/ on your browser line. 

JL 

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Trivia 

It has come to my attention that the Republican National Committee is preparing to get rid of the elephant as that party’s symbolic animal. They plan on replacing it with a fox, celebrating their party’s goal of admitting that voracious predator to the nation’s henhouses, where it can proceed with the Heritage Foundation's agenda of Project 2025 (or worse). 

JL 

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 * When I use the expression ‘abide,’ more fully explained in Jackspotpourri’s January 15, 2025 posting, I mean to ‘endure adversity, but not to yield to it.' (But even the limits of that are beginning to come into sight.) 

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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. 

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. Bear in mind that the population of Florida is constantly changing and many newcomers are not familiar with Jackspotpourri. 

 JL 

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Thursday, February 13, 2025

February 13, 2025 - Lincoln, a Dog Show, and of course, Politics

 

Caution! - (Repeated from earlier Jackspotpourri postings) 

Make of this what you wish: In today's political climate, it might be personally dangerous to write specifically about certain topics, and all members of the staff (at present, just me) at Jackspotpourri are aware of that. No one wants the DOJ chasing after them, and lawyers are expensive. Sometimes leaving certain things 'unsaid' can be more effective than saying them. We must learn to 'read between the lines.'
*Abide! 
JL 
                                                     * * * 
Happy Birthday, Abe! 



Celebrating the February 12 birthday of America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, here is historian Heather Cox Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American’ dated February 11. Read it, copy it, and send it to your friends, especially the ones who have forgotten what America is about. (See if you can identify today’s version of ‘that same old serpent’ that Lincoln talks about in the closing paragraph of what follows.) 

 “On February 12, 1809, Nancy Hanks Lincoln gave birth to her second child, a son: Abraham. Abraham Lincoln grew up to become the nation’s sixteenth president, leading the country from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865, a little over a month into his second term. He piloted the country through the Civil War, preserving the concept of American democracy. It was a system that had never been fully realized but that he still saw as “the last, best hope of earth” to prove that people could govern themselves. 

  Lincoln grew up in rural poverty as wealthy enslavers took over prime land in his family's home state of Kentucky and pushed them across the Ohio River to Indiana, where Nancy Lincoln died. From there, they moved on to the frontier state of Illinois, where Abraham sowed seed, hoed fields, grubbed roots, cut trees, made fences, and harvested crops both at home and for farmers to whom his father hired him out for wages, for the elder Lincoln never managed to get his feet under him after leaving Kentucky. In 1831, finally an adult, Abraham set out to make his mark in the world, as did thousands of other young men in his dynamic era. But making it on his own wasn’t much easier for the young Lincoln than it had been for his father. 

  He settled in the town of New Salem, a village of about a hundred people on a bluff above the Sangamon River, where he failed as a storekeeper, then cobbled together various jobs, eking out a living splitting rails and making deliveries. Government appointments, first as a postmaster and then as a surveyor, kept him afloat and made him well enough known that in 1834, voters elected him to the state legislature, and he was on his way to prominence. 

  Lincoln’s time as a young man on the make had made him think hard about the relationship between Americans and their government. In his era, elite southern enslavers insisted that government had no role to play in the country except in protecting property, a concept of government that permitted them to amass fortunes thanks to the labor of their Black neighbors. But Lincoln had watched his town of New Salem die because its settlers—hard workers, eager to make the town succeed—could not dredge the Sangamon River to promote trade by themselves. Lincoln later mused, “The legitimate object of government is ‘to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves,’… as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.” 

  Once elected to the presidency, Lincoln joined with members of his new Republican Party to make the government work for the American people. They created national money and the income tax. They took land from speculators and gave it to men willing to farm it. They established public colleges to enable poor men to get an education, the Department of Agriculture to make sure poor men had access to good seeds, and transcontinental railroads so poor men could both get to western lands and get their products back to eastern markets. And they used the power of the federal government to end human enslavement in the United States except as punishment for crime. A generation later, under Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, progressives at the turn of the twentieth century expanded on Lincoln's understanding of the role of government in supporting the American people. In that era, corrupt industrialists increased their profits by abusing their workers, adulterating milk with formaldehyde and painting candies with lead paint, dumping toxic waste into neighborhoods, and paying legislators to let them do whatever they wished. Those concerned about the survival of democracy worried that individuals were not actually free when their lives were controlled by the corporations that poisoned their food and water while making it impossible for individuals to get an education or make enough money ever to become independent. 

  To restore the rights of individuals, progressives of both parties argued that individuals needed a strong, active government to protect them from the excesses and powerful industrialists of the modern world. Under the new governmental system that Theodore Roosevelt pioneered, the government cleaned up the sewage systems and tenements in cities, protected public lands, invested in public health and education, raised taxes, and called for universal health insurance, all to protect the ability of individuals to live freely without being crushed by outside influences. Reformers sought, as Roosevelt said, to return to “an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” 

  In the 1920s, the idea that the government should be run as a business eclipsed Roosevelt’s progressive government, but after the Great Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s offered a “new deal for the American people.” That New Deal meant that the government would no longer work simply to promote business, but would also regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure. World War II accelerated the construction of that active government, and by the time it was over, Americans quite liked the new system. After the war, Republican Dwight Eisenhower embraced the active government. He explained that in the modern world, the government must protect people from disasters created by forces outside their control, and it must provide social services that would protect people from unemployment, old age, illness, accidents, unsafe food and drugs, homelessness, and disease. He called his version of the New Deal “a middle way between untrammeled freedom of the individual and the demands of the welfare of the whole Nation.” One of his supporters echoed Lincoln when he explained, “If a job has to be done to meet the needs of the people, and no one else can do it, then it is the proper function of the federal government.” Both Republicans and Democrats embraced this idea, which became known as the “liberal consensus.” In the second half of the twentieth century, they expanded the role of government to protect civil rights, the environment, access to healthcare and education, equal opportunity in employment, and so on. 

  But those who objected to the liberal consensus rejected the idea that the government had any role to play in the economy or in social welfare and made no distinction between the liberal consensus and international communism. They insisted that the country was made up of “liberals,” who were pushing the nation toward socialism, and “conservatives” like themselves, who were standing alone against the Democrats and Republicans who made up a majority of the country and liked the new business regulations, safety net, infrastructure, and protection of civil rights. That reactionary mindset came to dominate the Republican Party after Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980.   

  Republicans began to insist that anyone who embraced the liberal consensus of the past several decades was un-American and had no right to govern, no matter how many Americans supported that ideology. And now, forty-five years later, we are watching as a group of reactionaries dismantle the government that serves the needs of ordinary Americans and work, once again, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of an elite. 

  The idea of a small government that serves the needs of a few wealthy people, Lincoln warned in his era, is “the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” 

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Before we leave Professor Richardson, please remember to check out her thoughts every day at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ . Sign up for it there so that her prior evening’s writings show up each morning in your email. You can just CLICK HERE.  Its basic version (which is all I have right now) is free. Today’s posting (dated Feb. 12) deals with what amounts to Trump’s handing over the presidency to Elon Musk. 
JL 
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Jackspotpourri is ‘Going to the Dogs 

With college and NFL football finished until late August, and baseball Spring training still weeks away, and not much interesting happening on the hockey and basketball scenes, other than guesswork about who will dominate ‘March Madness,’ I spent some time this week watching the 149th annual Westminster Dog Show on TV from Madison Square Garden.  It’s really a big deal, Manhattan’s Empire State Building being illuminated with the Show’s purple and gold colors. 

This Show is very important for the breeders, owners, and handlers of these elite members of the canine world, their royalty going head-to-head in sort of their own World Series or Super Bowl. The Show divides about 200 breeds of dogs into seven groups (Herding dogs, Working dogs, Sporting dogs, Non-Sporting dogs, Terriers, Hounds, and Toy dogs) and selects the winner in each group after a handler runs them through a less than one minute routine. Many of the competing dogs are prior dog show winners and have been there before. They are pros. 

Then, the seven group winners compete for the ‘Best in Show’ award, though this final judging is no real competition because each of the seven have different attributes and talents, noteworthy perhaps only in their ‘group.’ It’s sort of like comparing apples and oranges, so this final judging seems to be more subjective than objective. 

The 2025 ‘Best in Show’ title went to a Working dog, Monty, a Giant Schnauzer, who had won the Working dog group title for the past three years and I guess whose time had come for the big prize. 

Monty finally measured up!

It had been 21 years since a Working dog won ‘Best in Show’ in the Westminster. Second place went to a hound, Bourbon, a nine-year-old Whippet coming out of retirement, and who resembled the many racing dogs now unemployed because of the shutting down of many dog tracks out of compassion for these creatures. 

What surprised me was the quiet manner in which these animals sat, held on a short leash by their handlers, awaiting their turn before the judges, not paying any attention to each other, just a few feet apart, and avoiding the biological activities with which anyone who has ever walked a dog is familiar. I don’t know if this was accomplished by diet or drugs, but the floor of Madison Square Garden remained pristine throughout the competition.  Perhaps what appeared on TV was edited. 

Although the ‘Best in Show’ winner was a 'Working' dog, much of the Show’s audience seated down-front in the Garden, many in formal attire, did not seem to be the kind of people who ever did any kind of ‘Working’ whatsoever. Their generous applause seemed to represent a longing for the human royalty or nobility that has disappeared over the past centuries but remains celebrated in the canine world by dogs like Monty, who probably doesn’t do very much ‘Working’ these days either. 
JL 
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Illegal, Unconstitutional, but Who Cares 

It is easy to find numerous examples of ‘the new administration, specifically President Trump, performing acts that are illegal and/or unconstitutional. Just pick up a newspaper or watch TV news shows on any channel other than Fox News. The lower courts are filling up with cases objecting to such acts. 

The administration broadly hints that it might disregard some court decisions ruling against some of its firings, refusals to act on legislation passed by Congress, including spending allocated funds, or even changing the structure of government, ignoring the rule of law on which our government is based. 

It's okay to be frightened by this! Why?

It amounts to a constitutional crisis.  Our government is based on checks and balances among its legislative, executive, and judicial branches, established and written into a Constitution in 1789 and occasionally amended since then. Ignoring this three-way balance creates a constitutional crisis.  One branch cannot be superior to the other two as the president seems to claim the executive branch is, of which he is the head. 

In ‘Banana Republics,’ usually the military plays a role in resolving these problems. Fortunately, in the United States, the ‘rule of law’ prevails instead, with our courts filling that role, but they must not hesitate to act. 

If the Supreme Court, where these matters will ultimately end up, disagrees with some of the President’s actions, what will he do? The longer it takes for this issue to come before the Supreme Court, the more difficult it will be to deal with such a constitutional crisis. Meanwhile, our posture should be to 
*abide for as long as possible! 
JL 
                                                        * * * 
What Happens when No Candidate Wins a Majority of the Electoral College 

There has been a lot written about the undemocratic nature of the Electoral College in which each State has the number of electors equal to the number of members of the House of Representatives it has, plus one for each of their two Senators. This puts ‘a thumb on the scale’ for States with small populations, each of which gets two electors regardless of their populations, in addition to one for each of their seats in the House Representatives. 

I doubt that this inequity will ever be remedied. Amendments to elect the president by national popular vote have been suggested for over two centuries and have gotten nowhere. This goes back to the days of the Founding Fathers who peddled compromises in order to get the Constitution ratified by the necessary nine of the thirteen original States. 

But there is another inequity less spoken of that warrants change. If a candidate for president doesn’t secure a majority of electoral votes, one more than half of them, the Twelfth Amendment sends the election to Congress, where the House of Representative selects one of the three top candidates to be president, and the Senate selects one of the top two candidates to be vice-president. In both of these deliberations, each State has only one vote, regardless of its population. That is not particularly democratic. 

The problem, though, is that the Twelfth Amendment doesn’t go into how that one vote per State is determined, leaving it to each State’s delegation to work that out. It gets more complicated if there is a tie at that point in either of these Houses of Congress. For the solution, read the Twelfth Amendment and hope it never happens. Really, the Electoral College needs to be eliminated or at least modified to better reflect the nation’s population. Remind your grandchildren to tell their children about this because I don’t see it happening within this century. 
JL 
                                                          * * * 

Where Loyalty is a One Way Street 

Republicans, especially President Trump during his 2024 campaign, did not hesitate to equate the benefits favored by Democrats to serve the needs of the people with ‘socialism,’ as practiced in the autocratic, if not totalitarian, states from which many here, particularly from Latin America, had fled. 

Those in the United States who had managed to attain citizenship probably voted for Trump last year, and the rest, here illegally or with expired visas, still ardently supported him, misled into associating the Democrats with the Maduro-type socialist dictatorships to our South or in the countries Trump called ‘shit-holes’ while campaigning.  Let’s look at some facts. 

Fact #1: Over three hundred thousand Venezuelans who were not citizens and had no other basis for remaining in the United States, were granted ‘temporary protected status’ (TPS) by President Biden and avoided the risk of deportation. Presently, for a variety of reasons, illegal immigrants from seventeen countries have such ‘temporary protected status,’ all of which the Trump administration is reviewing. 

Fact #2: Well, those ‘illegal’ Venezuelans have just learned what trusting Republicans, especially Trump, risks. He has just revoked their ‘temporary protected status’! They now face deportation. They seemed to have ignored how he screwed many of the contractors and vendors with whom he worked before he failed in the gambling casino business. With Donald Trump, loyalty is a one-way street. 

Fact #3: Besides the aforementioned Venezuelans, Donald Trump also is hurting many of the misled and misinformed who voted for him.  In his efforts to save money and reduce taxes for the very wealthy and corporations, President Trump is reducing our government’s role in aiding people to get done with government support what they could never accomplish as individuals. Healthcare is a good example. 

Inner-city minorities are not the only ones benefiting from such ‘safety net’ programs; many in ‘red’ States count on them too, possibly more than in ‘blue’ States. As consumer prices rise resulting from the president’s turning to higher tariffs as a solution to economic problems, a strategy with which few economists agree, the need for that ‘safety net’ becomes increasingly evident while Trump loyalists are busy shredding it. 

But there’s more going on, revealing the true nature of Donald Trump. His preposterous plan to take over Gaza and resettle its Palestinian population in Arab States that do not want them has firmly alienated the Muslim world against him and can scuttle the tenuous cease-fire and hostage exchange that has brought a glimmer of hope to the Middle East. Russia and China will gladly replace the United States as the benefactor (and weapons provider) for Jordan and Egypt if Trump insists on trying to leverage our present role there to force them to agree to his crazy plan for Gaza.  And you don’t have to read between the lines to sense his betrayal of Ukraine. 

Slowly but surely the world is realizing what a shallow phony Donald Trump is. Unelected advisor Elon Musk, whose presence partially shields the president from direct criticism, knows it and is trying to destroy the regulatory functions of our nation’s government as quicky as possible, striking while the iron is hot, and so long as he is in Trump’s favor. He knows that will not be forever.  Washington is littered with those who were once Trump’s buddies but who were ultimately dumped by him or quit on their own when they could take no more of his incompetence and insolence. There is a limit to the amount of the illegal and/or unconstitutional acts of the administration and the president that Americans can stomach. The courts are not ignoring them either! (See my remarks above about a pending Constitutional crisis.) 

Eventually, that iron will cool off, as more and more people in the United States and elsewhere are offended or hurt by the president of the United States and desert him. These include many Republican legislators, who only support him now because of his threats, spoken and unspoken, to run more MAGA-friendly challengers against them in primaries in their districts. 

Some of them may even grow spines but most of them are still reluctant to challenge him, and go along with his malignant agenda. That is a Republican disease.  Meanwhile, all we can do is to * abide for as long as possible! 
JL

 * When I use the expression ‘abide,’ more fully explained in Jackspotpourri’s January 15, 2025 posting, I mean to ‘endure adversity, but not to yield to it.' (But even the limits of that are beginning to come into sight.) 

                                                           * * * 
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. 

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. Bear in mind that the population of Florida is constantly changing and many newcomers are not familiar with Jackspotpourri. 
JL 
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Monday, February 10, 2025

 

Caution! - (Repeated from earlier Jackspotpourri postings) 

Make of this what you wish: In today's political climate, it might be personally dangerous to write specifically about certain topics, and all members of the staff (at present, just me) at Jackspotpourri are aware of that. No one wants the DOJ chasing after them, and lawyers are expensive. Sometimes leaving certain things 'unsaid' can be more effective than saying them. We must learn to 'read between the lines.' * Abide! 
JL 
                                                          * * * 

Let’s start with a change of pace: An effort at some original (?) science fiction. 

Believe it or NotMy Greenish-Blue Lights

In a supposed effort to display at least some awareness of the holiday season, I had purchased a couple of greenish-blue solar powered bulbs from a dollar store (actually a $1.25 store) and implanted them on either side of the front of my driveway. There they remain, lighting the way to my house for about four hours or so each evening after sunset. 

‘It’s February already, Jack! When are you going to get rid of your holiday lights?’ a neighbor asked. I replied that they were no longer ‘holiday lights,’ which they never really were, and gave him a more truthful explanation of what they actually are, which I will now share with you. 

Late last year, I repeatedly had a dream that I was being contacted by some breed of extra-terrestrial creatures. Not wanting to be labeled as a ‘nut job,’ and not losing any sleep over them, I kept the dreams to myself, but it appeared to me that ‘they,’ perhaps from reading my blog, ‘Jackspotpourri,’ considered me to be ‘sympatico’ to establishing a more specific relationship with extra-terrestrial lifeforms. 

One of them, pointing out that they shunned our planet’s daytime sunlight schedule, suggested I welcome them in the evening by marking my location with two greenish-blue lights (apparently their favorite color) in front of my house, identifying it for them. They would serve as a landing strip on my driveway for their spacecraft, just as an airport’s runway lights or illuminated channel markers in a harbor serve to guide those approaching them.  I complied with their request. 

I have had several ‘driveway’ visits with these extra-terrestrials but have never seen them. It turns out, as they explained to me, they are many thousands, if not millions, of times smaller than Earth’s inhabitants, invisible to our naked eye, but they would still continue to occasionally visit with me in my driveway if I did not mind. As proof that they were for real, they promised to keep weeds from growing between the pavers on my driveway, get rid of the ant hills there, and would make my lawn totally inhospitable to dogs seeking a place in which to relieve themselves. So far, they have kept their promises. 

Currently, my extra-terrestrial visitors are talking to me about political events occurring on our planet that are disturbing to them, particularly in the United States, based on their familiarity with the experiences of various lifeforms similar to Earth’s current ‘human’ inhabitants that they have witnessed elsewhere in the Cosmos, both in the infinite past and in the infinite future, a power they possess. Most of these experiences, they said, did not end well.

They have tried to explain to me that if one gets far enough out into the Cosmos, from where I believe these visitors come, there is no difference between the past and the future, a concept that I have difficulty comprehending, related to what is called the ‘Space-Time Continuum,’ in which what we know as ‘time’ is a further dimension determined by the revolution and relationship of planetary and other celestial bodies. 


Adding a fourth dimension, time, to the three with which we are familiar: height, width, and depth … can enable us to better understand the universe, but it requires some heavy duty thinking.  Pictured above is Albert Einstein whose Theory of Relativity you probably have heard of, but do not fully understand

I have no idea why these creatures have chosen me to be their avenue of communication with our planet, but I will try to keep you posted of any future developments of note through Jackspotpourri. 
                                                         
                                                          * * 
(Several science-fiction writers have used this theme, that visitors from space were very much smaller than human beings.   I recall one story of a group of friendly extra-terrestrial visitors who had landed in a puddle or birdbath no more than an inch deep complaining by radio that they had mistakenly landed their spacecraft in the middle of an ocean.) 
JL 
                                                         * * * 
Are the Administraton’s Critics Aiming at the Wrong Target? 

A lot of Democratic criticism seems to be aimed at Elon Musk, as two writers in the following pieces do, when the real culprits are President Donald Trump and the elected legislators who blindly vote for anything he requests or demands, some fearing to have to face a MAGA candidate in a primary. 

Trump and those legislators have to ultimately answer to the citizens of this country. Musk answers to no one, never runs for office, nor openly seeks legislative support. If he should succumb to the currently mounting criticism of his role, all Trump need do is join in that criticism and seek another adviser. Musk would not be the first trusted ‘advisor’ Trump has jettisoned, although he probably is the wealthiest. 

Right now the president is engaged, consciously or not, in changing the role of the presidency to something more to his liking, not even realizing that some of what he does or proposes to do is contrary to the Constitution. The only presidents who have gotten away with that in our history might be Andrew Jackson or Franklin Roosevelt, and Trump lacks the brains, real congressional and public support, and stature that either possessed. 

I doubt that Trump has ever studied the Constitution or understands it. Do you agree that criticism directed at Musk takes the heat off of Trump, where it should be directed? 

* Abide! (But keep thinking about what you can do about this.) 
JL 
                                                           * * * 
Advice to Democrats from a Conservative

Political commentator David Frum, once a speechwriter for George W. Bush, recently wrote that a real quandary arises for the Democrats as they try to recover from their election loss in November. He pointed out that Donald Trump is now better prepared to be president than he was for his first term, having developed strong alliances with billionaires and conservative politicians, but his present aggressiveness brings vulnerability along with it, and the Democrats don’t seem to agree on how to attack it. 

The best-organized Democratic interest groups, predominantly on the left, want to fight Trump on issues like Diversity/Equity/Inclusion, asylum for immigrants, continued support for Israel, and trans-athletes competing in girls’ and womens’ sports, etc., all of which are, unpopular, controversial choices for them, exactly the fights Republicans want. Democrats who want to fight on smarter issues like consumer prices, tariffs, climate change, healthcare costs, unemployment, support of NATO, preserving the Constitution, etc,. where Trump may be vulnerable tend to be less organized to fight the good fight. They seem to resemble chickens running around the barnyard with their heads cut off. 

Until that conundrum is solved, Democrats are disabled and Trump is empowered, Frum contends. 
JL 
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Wisdom from Heather Cox Richardson 

Here, in full, is Heather Cox Richardson’s Feb 3 ‘Letters from an American,’ dated February 3, published the following morning. It says a lot that cannot be ignored. 
 
                                                   * * * 
I’m going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change. But they are not doing that. 

Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes. 

The replacement of our constitutional system of government with the whims of an unelected private citizen is a coup. The U.S. president has no authority to cut programs created and funded by Congress, and a private citizen tapped by a president has even less standing to try anything so radical. But Republicans are allowing Musk to run amok. 

This could be because they know that Trump has embraced the idea that the American government is a “Deep State,” but that the extreme cuts the MAGA Republicans say they want are actually quite unpopular with Americans in general, and even with most Republican voters. By letting Musk make the cuts the MAGA base wants, they can both provide those cuts and distance themselves from them. But permitting a private citizen to override the will of our representatives in Congress destroys the U.S. Constitution. It also makes Congress itself superfluous. And it takes the minority rule Republicans have come to embrace to the logical end of putting government power in the hands of one man. 

Musk’s team in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has taken control of the U.S. Treasury payment systems that handle about $6 trillion in annual transactions for the U.S. government, thus gaining access to Americans' personal information as well as information about Musk's competitors. From there, Musk claims to have been cancelling those transactions he thinks are wasteful. He claims, for example, to have “deleted” the popular Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Direct File system that enabled people to file their taxes online for free, without the help of paid tax preparers. Musk’s team apparently consists of six engineers, aged 19 to 24, who are taking control of the computers at government agencies. From the Treasury Department, they went on to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which receives foreign policy guidance from the State Department. Their breaching of the computers there compromises our national intelligence systems, which must now be considered insecure. From there, they went on to the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the federal government’s 7,500 or so buildings. Musk’s people sent an email to regional managers telling them to begin ending the leases on federal offices.

According to Chris Megerian of the Associated Press, the person in charge of that initiative is Nicole Hollander, who describes herself on LinkedIn as employed at Musk’s social media company, X. Today, according to an email sent to employees of the Small Business Administration, Musk’s people have gotten into that agency’s human resources, contracts, and payment systems. The Small Business Administration supports small businesses and entrepreneurs, and under the Biden-Harris administration, small businesses boomed thanks to small-dollar loans to women, Black, and Latino entrepreneurs. By this afternoon, Musk’s people were digging into the data of the Department of Education with an eye to dismantling it from the inside before Trump tries to shut it down with an executive order, although only Congress itself can shutter the department. 

According to Laura Meckler, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post, Musk’s DOGE staffers had accessed sensitive internal data systems, including the personal information of millions of students who are taking part in the federal student aid program. It is highly unlikely that Congress would destroy the Department of Education, so Musk and Trump hope to hollow it out from within. 

On a livestream last night, Musk said of his destruction of the federal government: “If it’s not possible now, it will never be possible. This is our shot, This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. If we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen.” 

Three federal employees unions are suing the Trump administration to stop Musk, and today, Democratic members of the House and Senate tried to enter the USAID building but were denied entry. Led by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Democrats condemned what Raskin called Musk and Trump’s “illegal, unconstitutional interference with congressional power.” “Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury,” Raskin said, “but you don’t control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does that—under Article I of the Constitution. 

And just like the president, who was elected to something, cannot impound the money of the people, we don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk. And that’s going to become real clear.” 

Senator Murphy said: "Let's not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk makes billions of dollars based off of his business with China. And China is cheering at [the destruction of USAID]. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our government right now is doing it based on self-interest: their belief that if they can make us weaker in the world, if they can elevate their business partners all around the world, they will gain the benefit.” Murphy continued: “But there’s another reason this is happening. They’re shuttering agencies and sending employees home in order to create the illusion that they’re saving money, in order to…pass a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations.” While Musk and his DOGE team are trying systematically to dismantle the government, today Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze trillions of dollars in grants and loans before DOGE got going. AliKhan said that by impounding funds—which Congress declared illegal in 1974—Trump’s Office of Management and Budget “attempted to wrest the power of the purse away from the only branch of government entitled to wield it.” It is Congress, not the president, that determines federal spending. 

Meanwhile, the elected president, Donald Trump, sparked a crisis last Friday when his White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced that he fully intended to go through with the trade war he had hyped on the campaign trail. Trump announced he would levy tariffs of 25% on most products from Mexico and Canada and of 10% on products from China, beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, in violation of the trade agreement his own team had negotiated during his first term. As soon as Leavitt announced the upcoming tariffs, the stock market began to fall, and by last night, stock market futures had fallen 450 points on the expectation of tariffs hitting at midnight tonight. Today, the stock market continued to fall. Even reliable Trump allies began to complain that the tariffs would raise prices. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called Trump’s tariffs “the dumbest trade war in history.” 

Today, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced that she and Trump had “reached a series of agreements” that would pause the threatened tariffs for a month. Mexico agreed to “reinforce the northern border with 10,000 elements of the National Guard immediately, to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States,” while the U.S. “commits to work to prevent the trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico.” When Trump announced their conversation shortly afterward, he omitted the part of the agreement that committed the U.S. to try to stop the flow of guns to Mexico. He also did not mention that, in fact, Mexico committed to putting 10,000 troops at the border in 2021. As Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post commented above a record of Mexican troop deployments: “Any news outlet reporting Mexico conceded anything to Trump to get him to delay tariffs has not done its homework. Trump boasts he got Mexico to commit to stationing 10K troops at our border. Apparently he didn’t realize Mexico already has 15K troops deployed there[.]” 

The crisis at the northern border worked out in a similar fashion. After conferring, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump announced a 30-day pause in the implementation of tariffs. Trudeau agreed to appoint a border czar and to implement a $1.3 billion border plan that Canada had announced in December. 

In other words, while Musk was causing a constitutional crisis, Trump created an economic crisis that threatened both domestic and global chaos, then claimed Biden administration achievements as his own and declared victory. The tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect as planned. China has promised to levy tariffs of up to 15% on certain U.S. products beginning a week from today. It also said it will investigate Google to see if it has violated antitrust laws.

Heather Cox Richardson 
                                                            *  *

(Professor Richardson provides documented citations for everything she writes on every one of her postings, even lengthy ones like this! 

For those who want a history lesson pointing out how those elected in November are intent on illegally changing our government and the Constitution upon which it is based, visit her posting dated February 9 by CLICKING HERE or copying and pasting https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your browser line. 

* Abide! (But keep thinking about what you can do about this.) 
JL 
                                                        * * * 
Wisdom from Catherine Rampell 

The Palm Beach Post’s Opinion page published the following Washington Post column by Catherine Rampell on February 7, in the space usually reserved for the paper’s Editorials. (Rampell is a Palm Beach County native.) Here it is in its entirety. 

"The ‘Adults’ in Trump’s Cabinet Misplace Spines

Many of President Donald Trump’s appointees have been unqualified, ethically conflicted cranks. A few, though, were supposed to be competent. Responsible, even. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a respected hedge fund manager, was considered a relatively traditional pick, allowing him to clear his confirmation vote with the help of 16 Democrats. Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly sailed into his Cabinet post with unanimous support from his former Senate colleagues. Yet, two weeks in, they have both turned out to be spineless cowards. 

Both are complicit in the dismantling of the government and shredding of the Constitution. They have potentially compromised classified data, threatened Congress’s power of the purse, and handed over the nation’s checkbook to an unelected oligarch. For months, Elon Musk, who is neither an elected official nor even reportedly a paid government employee, had been demanding access to Treasury’s sensitive payments system. This is the system that issues Social Security checks and Medicare payments and makes good on all the bills our government legally owes to contractors (including, incidentally, some of Musk’s rivals). It is largely automated, with only a few career officials having access to it. That’s for good reason: Maintaining undisrupted continuity of Treasury cash flows and debt payments is critical for operational reasons, as well as constitutional ones. (The Constitution forbids defaulting on federal debt obligations.) 

The payment system also contains private and classified data, which makes it a cybersecurity target. The operatives in Musk’s 'Department of Government Efficiency' demanded control anyway. The most senior career civil servant at Treasury, then-acting secretary David A. Lebryk, refused. The White House ordered Lebryk placed on administrative leave – on Bessent’s recommendation. Instead, Lebryk resigned after serving 11 treasury secretaries in Republican and Democratic administrations, without issue, since 1989. Then, on Jan. 31, the newly minted treasury secretary granted Musk’s deputies access to the federal financial plumbing. Musk has suggested he plans to unilaterally block payments to recipients he dislikes, such as for faith-based organizations helping refugees. 

Where are all those 'constitutional conservatives' in Congress – the ones who appropriated funds for these commitments, and whom the Constitution says control power of the purse? What happened to the Treasury pick whom markets supposedly could trust? 

This pattern of events might sound familiar to anyone following the collapse of U.S. diplomatic relations and soft power under Rubio’s watch. When he was a senator, Rubio repeatedly praised the U.S. Agency for International Development, an independent agency that receives foreign policy guidance from the secretary of state. Rubio lauded USAID’s global work fighting infectious diseases, aiding hurricane victims and providing humanitarian assistance to victims of brutal communist regimes. He publicly urged his colleagues to 'recommit to supporting critical programs' through USAID. Yet when Musk went nuclear on the agency, the just-sworn-in secretary remained silent. Last weekend, USAID’s website went offline. The blackout initially appeared to be part of Trump’s broader purge of government data – but then Musk vowed to shutter the agency entirely, apparently with Trump’s blessing. Meanwhile, representatives of the Department of Governmental Efficiency pushed their way into the agency and demanded access to personnel files and security data, 'including classified systems beyond the security level of at least some of the DOGE employees,' NBC News reported. On Monday, Rubio belatedly announced that he was taking control of USAID, assuming it continues to exist. Meanwhile, Rubio has nothing to say about Trump’s decision to strip legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans who have been living and working in this country lawfully. The 'adults in the room' sometimes failed in Trump’s first term. Now, they’re not even pretending to try." 

Catherine Rampell, Columnist 

* Abide! (But keep thinking about what you can do about this.) 

JL
                                                   * * * 

The Times Speaks Out 

The Editorial Board of the New York Times published an opinion piece on February 9, urging Americans ‘not to tune out,’ from the president’s illegal acts, providing many good reasons for us not to just sit on our hands. Check it out by CLICKING HERE or by copying and pasting https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/opinion/trump-musk-public-attention.html on your browser line. It is a bit more aggressive than Jackpotpourri’s recommendation to ‘abide,’ footnoted throughout this and earlier postings. 

                                                     * * *
*When I use the expression ‘abide,’ explained on Jackspotpourri’s January 15, 2025 posting, I intend it to mean ‘to endure adversity, but not to yield to it.’ 

But I also recognize that eventually there may come a time when ‘abiding’ is inadequate, particularly if the opposition to the president’s unconstitutional and illegal acts, as described in the third paragraph of the New York Times piece linked to above, fall short of providing solutions. 
JL
                                                          * * * 
A Question

I wonder how many senior citizens who are supporters of the present Administration in Washington would be agreeable to receive their Social Security payments in some sort of crypto currency.  Annual Social Security benefits total about 1.5 trillion dollars. Using crypto for them would save the government a lot of real money and enable enormous tax reductions to be effected for the very wealthy and some corporate entities. I suspect it also would precipitate a revolution. 
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. 

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. Bear in mind that the population of Florida is constantly changing and many newcomers are not familiar with Jackspotpourri. 

JL 

                                                           * * *