* * * Caution! - (Repeated from some earlier postings on Jackspotpourri) … but with a very significant revision!
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.' But right now,
IT'S TIME TO STAND UP PROUDLY FOR AMERICA,
IT’S TIME TO SPEAK OUT LOUDLY FOR DEMOCRACY, and
IT’S TIME TO JOIN THE CHORUS OF ‘POSITIVE’ PROTEST THAT IS SPREADING THROUGHOUT THE LAND!
* * *
Standing up proudly for America means representing our nation to the world as still being a beacon of freedom, still being a land of opportunity, still being a place where individual rights are respected, and still being the best place on the planet to be! That’s why, despite the temporary ascendancy of threatening political powers in the United States that don’t fully subscribe to those meanings, it appears that almost everyone else in the world still wants to live here!
The rising opposition here to those dangerous powers is testimony to the resiliency of America, representing its ultimate strength.
Be proud of being part of that opposition, and let your friends and relatives know it! Stand up proudly for the America we still are, and will assuredly continue to be, once the threatening clouds dissipate.
JL
* *
You can help make those clouds disappear by SPEAKING UP LOUDLY FOR DEMOCRACY! And to enable you to do that, there is no shortage of material. Here are some starters.
President Trump, his unelected ‘advisor’ and bankroller, **Elon Musk, and many in Congress who blindly follow them break the law and violate the Constitution daily. Do not let them do this with impunity. Don’t let any of them get away with any of this! Become familiar with the Constitution. Become knowledgeable. Know what is going on!! ‘Call them out’ on every misstep they make!
Lower Federal courts have ruled against some of these unconstitutional or illegal acts, but ultimately, the Supreme Court will have its say, and I am not optimistic about that. At best, ‘delay or postponement’ is all that I expect from the SCOTUS. Their 2024 decisions illustrated how such ‘delay or postponements’ was sufficient to elect Trump to the presidency. This is all the more reason for you to speak out loudly.
Speak Out Loudly! Major government appointees all share one quality, loyalty to Trump, and otherwise are mostly unqualified for office, putting the nation at great risk. Example: Russell Vought, now head of the Office of Management and Budget, was the primary author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which basically said that government is a waste of time and suggested doing away with most of it. By getting rid of many of its employees, that goal is made easier for such critics of government! He’s a perfect example of letting a fox into the henhouse! Speak Out Loudly! Right now we have a non-believer in vaccines running the Dep’t. of Health and Human Services, at a time when measles is spreading in Texas and bird flu is rampant. Employees in the agencies that would address these problems and others on a day-to-day basis are being fired, among them the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responsible for the defense of the nation. ** Elon Musk seems to head a group called ‘Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) despite a little-known government minor official supposedly being nominally in charge of it, giving it a cloak of legitimacy.
Speak Out Loudly! Musk** had no business being at a recent meeting of Trump’s cabinet, let alone dominating it, which he did, with the President’s sleepily nodding approval.
 |
Now listen here, you guys ...
Hey, will someone wake up Donald?. |
Speak Out Loudly! Meanwhile, Trump is busy trying to slash Medicaid funding while saying he is not, getting rid of whistleblowers, offering a preposterous solution for the war in Gaza, is betraying Ukraine (losing us friends in Europe and Asia) out of deference to Russia. And I won’t even mention Greenland, Canada, and Mexico as places where his political and economic ignorance manifests itself, profound ignorance being a virtue of this administration. They repeatedly fire knowledgeable Federal employees and then try to hire them back because their knowledge does not go beyond what they see on FoxNews.
All of this is well documented in real newspapers like the New York Times, on MSNBC and CNN, and by columnists like Timothy Snyder, Heather Cox Richardson (both historians), Michael Moore, and many others, even Republicans like S.E. Cupp. The facts are there on a platter for you.
Speak Out Loudly! Our 47th president is also trying to select the journalists who regularly cover the White House, clearly a violation of the First Amendment. His DOJ is trying to extend his horrendous pardoning of the insurrectionist criminals who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to their other criminal acts, such as their possession of serious weapons, like grenades, that were waiting to be used at that time.
Speak Out Loudly! And the spineless Republican politicians who talked one way now do backflips in order to please the President, fearing a MAGA threat in a primary election. Most aren’t sure any longer whether Russia is an adversary or an ally, part of the chaos Trump cultivates because he likes it that way, keeping those that would oppose him off balance, confused as to what to attack first.
The truth is there for you to post on social media like ‘X’ or Facebook or via personal emails. Write letters to newspapers. Send postal cards and make phone calls. Go to rallies and meetings. Talk to people. Speak up at public forums like school board and local governing board meetings, and of course at elected Representatives’ town meetings.
Speak up loudly for democracy.
Sound off in places where your audience includes those who have been misled by misinformation. Point out how the Republicans’ reforms directly threaten them. You might convince some of them to open their eyes to the lawbreaking being carried out by those who were elected to office in November, 2024 by many misinformed voters, many of whom are now experiencing the political equivalent of buyer’s remorse. Many readily admit that their vote in November was NOT for what is going on now in Washington, including the dependence of the president upon **Elon Musk. The information is there. Use it.
**For those who are interested, Elon Musk, born in South Africa, became a Canadian citizen through his mother, a Canadian. He studied in the United States, admitted on a student visa that allowed him to work in areas associated with his studies, which he did, starting several technology companies with his brother. He continued doing this for several years after he was no longer a student and has even admitted he was in a ‘gray area,’ immigration-wise, during that period. He ultimately became a naturalized American citizen, but it seems that for a time until that point, he was an illegal immigrant, just like those his buddy, Donald Trump, is striving to deport using military transportation and facilities. It’s a fascinating story available by CLICKING HERE or copying and pasting https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/29/us/elon-musk-immigration-gray-area-cec/index.html on your browser line. But as my late Hungarian mother-in-law used to say, ‘With money you get honey.’
This might be an opportune time to point out that today’s techno-billionaires, like Musk, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg, believe their brainpower makes them something special and entitles them to throw democracy under the bus, as the industrial and banking ‘robber barons’ of the late Nineteenth Century tried to do in their day until Theodore Roosevelt stopped them. (Okay, in the absence of buses in those days, they might have envisioned throwing democracy under horse-drawn street cars.)
Even worse than those ‘robber barons,’ whose prime interests were acquiring money and power, the techno-billionaires, while not adverse to making money, aren’t really concerned with that so much because they already have limitless amounts of it and the power it purchases, but instead are focused on the perfecting and triumph of technology as ends in themselves, running society ‘automatically,’ and don’t give a darn about democracy, the nation, or its citizens. They are a far cry from Bill Gates. With ‘Artificial Intelligence’ taking charge, they believe, who ‘needs people’? (Apologies to Barbra Streisand for that one, if any of you reading this are old enough to remember her.) ‘Tech Support,’ as plastered on Musk’s tee shirt pictured above will replace them.
But don’t get too wrapped up in this when you speak up loudly for democracy. It might prove a distraction.
* *
But once
you have STOOD UP PROUDLY FOR AMERICA, and SPOKEN
OUT LOUDLY FOR DEMOCRACY, the next
step is to JOIN
THE CHORUS OF ‘POSITIVE’ PROTEST THAT IS SPREADING THROUGHOUT THE LAND!
JL
* * *
Joining that chorus of protest doesn’t come easy. But there is a road to getting there. Here are some guideposts along that road.
(If
age, or health, or other circumstances slow you down in proceeding along that
road, that’s okay too. At a minimum, the following should point you in the
right direction. Do what you can.)
· First of all, Democrats should forget about the
2024 elections. The Democrats could have won
Congress and the presidency, but they blew it by running a campaign that lacked
a compass. (‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up somewhere
else,’ … a Yogi Berra quote that well describes what happened.) That should
have taught them to not make the same mistakes again now, in 2026, and in
2028. Their ‘Identity’ politics centered
on protecting every American’s individual right to make choices in many areas,
including and beyond women’s rights, while legitimate and highly desirable, do
not on their own attract enough voters to win elections. More basic appeals to working people and
their families do work. Voters are interested in rising prices, affordable
health care, job opportunities, law & order, and whom to blame for whatever
bothers them!
· Remember that even though there is much to
criticize about Trump and Republicans at all government levels, in talking or
writing ‘politics’ don’t concentrate on that. Why be hostile? Be Positive. Point out that you are talking about, in simple terms,
the importance of a government OF the people that recognizes that it is a
government doing things FOR the benefit of the people, and most importantly,
a government run BY the people they vote
into office. Right now, make a list of things your government does for the benefit of the people. (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, regulation of foods and drugs, protecting the environment, disaster relief, national parks, interstate highways, transportation safety, regulation of financial activities, student loans, medical research grants, etc. etc.) This role of government in serving the people is sometimes
ignored when people who weren’t even on the ballot like Musk and Vought end up running
government. That is wrong, and what the
nation faces today.
Consider making donations to individual
candidates who are dedicated to getting rid of the current G.O.P. majorities in the
House, the Senate, and in many Statehouses. They don't have to be big ones. Every dollar counts. But don't donate to all of them! Some have
little chance of winning so don’t waste your donations on them. That would be an unwise use of scarce
resources. The same goes for donations
to an entire group of a Party’s candidates, some of whom don't stand a chance. (Right
now, I am donating to former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger’s November 2025 race
for the Virginia governorship, which she has a good chance of winning, setting
an example for the entire nation for the 2026 mid-term elections.) Those are the kind of donations that will count!
Cultivate relationships with individuals and
groups who think as you do, so that your ideas can bounce off of them, and
visa-versa, improving both yours and theirs.
· Become active in your local Democratic Party
organization. Be willing to ‘knock on
doors.’
Become active in local ‘non-political’ civic organizations.
That’s it. Sounds simple
enough but it isn’t. But it is the best
way for you to
JOIN THE CHORUS OF ‘POSITIVE’ PROTEST THAT IS SPREADING
THROUGHOUT THE LAND!
(and I guarantee that every time you encounter a disenchanted
2024 Trump voter, and there are many, you will feel personally rewarded.)
JL
* * *
* Don’t miss Maureen Dowd’s latest column about Trump, Zelensky, and Putin. Just CLICK HERE or copy and paste https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/opinion/trump-is-rootin-for-putin.html on your browser line. And of course, please read Heather Cox Richardson’s posting dated February 28 on the same subject. CLICK HERE or visit https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ directly. Both columns provide all the more reason for you to Stand Up for America, Speak out for Democracy, and Join with those Protesting the evils now emanating from Washington each day. For the first time in my memory, Americans can justifiably feel ashamed of their president and begin to examine the shortcomings of the democratic process that actually put him in the White House. AND YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. JL
* * *
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.
A 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.
J
No comments:
Post a Comment