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 

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

Believe it or Not – My 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. 

                                                         

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(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 

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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 

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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. 

 

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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 

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(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 

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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

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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. 

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*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

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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 

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