April 29, 2025 - First Democratic Hat in the 2028 Ring, Reagan was Right, Our Youthful AG, Pain, Impeachment, and More

 

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Governor Pritzker Got it Right! Read What He Said Right Here

Last week, Illinois Governor Jay Pritzker rallied
Democrats at a New Hampshire fund-raising event

Before you turn in for the night, check out Heather Cox Richardson’s April 28 posting on her daily ‘Letters from an American’ by copying and pasting https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your browser line, or by just CLICKING HERE.  She reports on what Pritzker said.

JL 

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‘Forever Young’ – Trump and Reagan Represent Different Parties 

Here’s a message for those who think of Ronald Reagan’s presidency as a time in the past when America was great and say so by wearing hats emblazoned ‘Make America Great Again.’  Because not too many of these folks follow Jackspotpourri, I recommend that you pass this on to any of them you might know! 

In 1989, on the last day of his presidency, in his last speech, President Ronald Reagan recalled what someone had once written to him: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.” 

Well, that wasn’t exactly true, but the ‘Great Communicator’ was on the right track when he continued: 

“We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.” 

Today’s Republicans, who started restricting immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, attain new levels of hypocrisy every day, closing that door bit by bit, losing America’s leadership in the world, as they ignore these words of their idol, Ronald Reagan, and turn instead to  Donald Trump. 

JL 

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A New Low Reached in Attorney General’s Office – She Thinks ‘Judges are Deranged’

The other day, Attorney General Pam Bondi talked on the Fox News Channel about the arrest of a local judge in Michigan who enablied a defendant appearing before her for a minor infraction to leave the courtroom via a ‘juror’s corridor’ to avoid ICE agents waiting in the hallway to arrest him as an illegal alien. 

“What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” Bondi said. “The judges are deranged is all I can think of.  I think some of these judges think that they are beyond and above the law. They are not, and we are sending a very strong message today … “ 

Though it was something Bondi didn’t concern herself with, there are a couple of judges on the Supreme Court to which that might apply. SCOTUS Justices are not above the law; in fact, one of them was once actually impeached. Bondi might consder going after Justices Alito and Thomas who clearly place themselves in that category. 

And come to think about it, if thinking that one is above the law warrants prosecution, isn’t that part of President Trump’s thought processes as well? Yup, but his three appointments to the SCOTUS brought him immunity from prosecution for laws he breaks in carrying out his ‘official’ duties. Don’t stay up nights trying to define ‘official’ though. It is whatever he says it means.

Bondi

There is something known as the Constitution that the Attorney General should study while waiting for her next hair coloring retouch. C’mon, she’ll be 60 in November, an age when all unfaded blond hair is as suspect as are the President’s sometimes orange, sometimes graying, locks! It is not the color of hair that matters. It is what is within the head atop which it grows that counts. JL 

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Pain Causes Voters to Change 

Somewhere in the previous posting of Jackspotpourri, the following comment was included: ‘The pain Americans are, or will be feeling, must be turned into reasons to turn Republican voters into Democratic voters. That’s what FDR did.’ 

Think about that for a moment. How long must we wait for that to happen again? The President’s irrational tariffs, for example, add up to these painful truths for Americans: 

• Financial market instability decreasing the value of all investments especially retirement savings in IRAs and 401K plans, 

 • Higher retail prices on imported items (look at the appliances in your home, the labels on the clothing you wear, and the furniture in your living room … much of which is imported), 

 • Empty shelves in stores once loaded with imported items, and ‘dollar stores’ (where poorer people seek bargains) totally disappearing, 

 • Unemployment in industries dependent on what were once less costly imported parts and even raw materials. 

This is what higher tariffs, hastily imposed, without logic or careful thought, are causing. And of course, the nations upon whose exports we impose higher tariffs do not hesitate to reciprocate with their own tariff incresases on what we export to them! 

But there’s more! Besides tariffs, consider the uncontrolled actions by an Executive Branch intent on reducing taxes paid by the wealthy and some businesses, tax reductions to be achieved by reducing government spending for services, passed by Congress over the years, historically provided to retirees and working people, like you!  Just pick up a newspaper, any newspaper, and read all about it! Or try to reach Social Security, IRS, or Medicare by telephone (which are, incidentally, among the imports which tariffs will make more expensive). 

Federal funding of research to cure diseases is being put on a back burner while disaster relief, environmental protections, and seeing that we have decent local schools is turned over to woefully ill-prepared State governments. 

And the regulatory abilities of Congressionally-created agencies like the Federal Communication Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Federal Aviation Administration are being taken away or shrunken despite the real needs they fill, adding to the public’s pain. 

In normal times, the place to fight these kinds of things would be the courts. The Constitution calls for a ‘separation of powers.’  When the Executive Branch attempts to violate that separation, encroaching upon the powers of the Legislative Branch, going far beyond its duty of ‘executing the laws,’ a constitutional crisis arises and the Judicial Branch ought to step in. 

But these are not normal times. Congress meekly agrees to whatever the Executive Branch wants, and judges are constantly being harassed by the Executive Branch. Our government seems to operate as if the rule of law did not exist, carrying out daily unconstitutional measures, even defying court orders from judges who attempt to follow the laws. And the Supreme Court’s role, at the top of the Judicial Branch, is limited because of its politicalization.

Is all of this enough to bring about enough pain to Americans to turn Republican voters into Democratic voters? It did in FDR’s time. It should today or will very shortly! 

JL 

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Donald Trump’s ‘Deportation Obsession’ 

If you are sufficient naïve to still believe that there is a spark of decency in the President, read Jonathan Blitzer’s piece included in the New Yorker magazine’s ‘Talk of the Town’ print issue dated April 28, 2025, and online a week earlier. Just CLICK HERE or copy and paste https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/28/donald-trumps-deportation-obsession on your browser line, and find out all about Donald Trump’s ‘Deportation Obsession,’ something that threatens all Americans, not just the possibly illegal immigrants you’ve been hearing about. 

JL 

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Jackspotpourri is Not Just Talking Big 

Back in its April 17 posting of Jackspotpourri, I suggested the impeachment of the President before his term was completed, to be accomplished by an alliance of Congressional Democrats, ‘traditional’ Republicans, and most importantly, the influence of the investment, banking and business communities, all of which recognize the damage President Trump is doing to them and the nation. Go back and read that posting. I meant it! 

Trump’s ‘making up’ a ficticious national emergency in order to justify his many unconstitutional acts (without his doing that, tariff policy for example, remains a Congressional function and due process remains protected by the Constitution’s Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments) should not go unpunished. We are not being ‘invaded by terrorists,’ as the President will have you believe. Peaceful demonstrators with mostly home-made signs are not a national emergency. 

History will be the judge of our 47th president, to borrow a line from Sir Walter Scott, at that time when he is returned to “the vile dust from which he sprung, unknown, unhonored, and unsung.’ 

JL 

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Let’s be Honest - Where the Money Comes From 

Many of the Democratic support groups that I know of, including the one in my own local election precinct, ‘pass the hat’ at meetings to provide funding for their activities. 

That doesn’t seem to be the case, however, with the individual ‘Indivisible’ groups that seem to be carrying much of the load for local Democraic groups today. The bottom line is that a lot of their funding originates with George Soros, through various grants from sources like the Open Society Foundations that he founded and which his wealth supports. It is difficult to fully document and trace the paths such funding follows but ‘experimental generative artificial intelligence,’ whatever that is, gives it a try. Check that out by copying and pasting https://www.google.com/search?q=open+society+foundation+-+indivisible+groups&oq=open+society+foundation+-+indivisible+groups&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRirAtIBCjI2NDU3ajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBaRHZBqLkJpz&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 on your browser line or by simply CLICKING HERE. Because this link consists of ‘artificial intelligence,' which Jackspotpourri avoids, it may not be totally accurate, but I suspect it is close to the truth. 

Certainly, there is nothing wrong in accepting financial support from one of Soros’ ‘Open Society Foundations’ to accomplish ‘Indivisible’ groups’ objectives. They don’t ask for anything in return. And Elon Musk and other billionaires donated far more to Trump’s continuing campaigning.

(Incidentally, Jackspotpourri receives no support, financial or otherwise, from any sources. Check out the comments at the close of this posting headed ‘Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri’ for information about my sources, where I frown on AI which by its very nature is anonymous.) 

JL 

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Governor Pritzker Got it Right! Read What He Said Right Here 

In case you ignored the first item on today's posting, here it is again.

Before you turn in for the night, check out Heather Cox Ricardson’s April 28 posting on her daily ‘Letters from an American’ by copying and pasting https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your browser line, or by just CLICKING HERE . She reports on what Pritzker said.

JL 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri 

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com. 

Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (currently the Palm Beach Post, a Gannett publication) and what appears in my daily email. Be aware that when I open that email, I take these steps. 1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or two emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them. 2. I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criteria are whether or not they end up asking for donations or if they are no more than advertisements. I ignore most of these emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the two or three dozen other emails which I will actually open. 

Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). I do not use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri because I am in the dark about the techniques used and possible sources AI has mined to develop them. Sources with their origin clearly identified to me still follow, and these are what I use in composing Jackspotpourri postings. (In doing searches on Google, I have found that these AI summaries can sometimes … but not always … be avoided by saying so in your search. For example, instead of searching for ‘FDR’s New Deal,’ I might search for ‘FDR’s New Deal – No AI.’ This is a work in progress.)

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. JL 

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April 25, 2025 - Antisemitism, a Published Letter, and a Democratic Dilemma

 

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A Letter Gets Printed 

My letter to the Palm Beach Post, mentioned in the preceding Jackspotpourri, was printed in their April 24 issue. That reached about 24,000 of their ‘print’ edition subscribers and many more who read it online. (Jackspotpourri is sent to about 80 email addresses, half of whom ignore it.) That’s why YOU should write letters to newspapers! 

JL

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New York Times Roundtable Musings 

On April 24, the New York Times ran an opinion ‘roundtable’ trying to figure how Democrats managed to come back to life in 1992 with Bill Clinton, after being hammered by Ronald Reagan and figuring out a way to do it again today.

Check it out at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/opinion/democratic-party-future.html or JUST CLICK HERE.  Here is my take on their discussion which I found disappointing. 

The pundits agreed with the obvious, that Democrats have lost the knack of hearing, listening, going to working-class people, and speaking the language that they understand. Beyond that, they came up with little new ideas other than to look at Democrats who have been successful in otherwise Republican States like Pennsylvania, Kentucky, or North Carolina, to see if their keys to victories there might be applicable nationally. Taking centrist positions might temporarily peel await a few G.O.P. votes but would not break us out of a periodic ping-pong style exchange of presidencies every few years between two parties that are about equal in size nationally, as well as in each of the so-called ‘battleground’ States. Other steps are necessary, the ‘roundtable’ agreed. 

This is a different age, more malignant that what Ronald Reagan represented. My take is not to look back to how Bill Clinton managed to break the mold, but rather to be looking on how to emulate how FDR accomplished it. 

Roosevelt inherited an economy destroyed by a lack of regulation that Donald Trump hasn’t yet reached but is trying hard to attain. Ultimately, Trump will be proven to be no better than Herbert Hoover.  I hear that some want his visage added to Mount Rushmore.  He would be fortunate if the restrooms there are named after him.  Of course, there would be 'pay toilets' there from which he would profit.

The pain Americans are, or will be feeling, must be turned into reasons to turn Republican voters into Democratic voters. That’s what FDR did. But clearly, a new approach is necessary. It won’t ‘just happen’ automatically. 

JL

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The Hate That Came to the Governor's Mansion 

Damage to Pennsylvania Governor's Mansion

By Michael A. Cohen, MSNBC Columnist - April 20, 2025 

(One of the States mentioned above, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, provides a residence for its governor on the second floor of their ‘Governor’s Mansion’ in Harrisburg.  It contains gathering rooms and a museum on its first floor.  It was that building that was attacked a little over a week ago by an arsonist. MSNBC Columnist Michael A. Cohen ties that attack to antisemitism. Read on!) 

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“On Saturday night, on the first night of Passover, an armed intruder hopped a gate at the residence of Pennsylvania’s Gov. Josh Shapiro and set fire to the building. It appears he did so because Shapiro is Jewish. 

According to call logs provided by Dauphin County authorities, Cody Balmer told a 911 dispatcher less than two hours after he allegedly set the fire that “Shapiro needs to know that he ‘will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,’ and he needs to stop ‘having my friends killed’ and ‘our people have been put through too much by that monster.’” Shapiro, of course, has no control over Israel’s war in Gaza, and accusing him of culpability for crimes committed by other Jews, halfway around the world, is the definition of antisemitism. Few would consider this even a controversial statement. 

But here’s one that might ruffle a few feathers. Balmer’s particular pro-Palestinian rhetoric didn’t simply appear out of thin air. Targeting Shapiro because he’s Jewish is disturbingly similar to certain pro-Palestinian activists calling Shapiro “Genocide Josh” last summer and advocating against him as Kamala Harris’ running mate. It’s little different from anti-Zionist activists targeting Jewish-run businesses in the U.S., Jewish American leaders and Jewish institutions because of their views on Israel. They are two sides of the same coin — manifestations of modern antisemitism. It is essential to note that there are caveats to this argument.  Anti-Zionist activists didn’t burn Shapiro’s house and try to kill him. Degree matters — as do actions. Moreover, Balmer, according to his mother, suffers from profound mental illness and has a lengthy criminal record. 

Still, Balmer’s particular pro-Palestinian rhetoric didn’t simply appear out of thin air. His specific criticisms of Shapiro bear striking similarity to accusations made by anti-Zionist activists that the governor is aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza. Last summer, critics of Shapiro’s bid to be Harris’ running mate argued that he “stands out among the current field of potential running mates as being egregiously bad on Palestine.” A group of progressive activists calling themselves “No Genocide Josh” urged Democrats to pass over Shapiro for the No. 2 nod. A now-defunct website of the group argued that it was in the Democratic Party’s “best interests” that the VP nominee “support the majority of Democrats and Americans who want social and economic justice for workers and an immediate ceasefire in Palestine.” 

But Shapiro’s views are practically interchangeable with those of other prominent Democrats, including his rivals to become Harris’ 2024 running mate. Like the eventual VP pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, or Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Shapiro supports a two-state solution and the creation of a Palestinian state. He has also been far more personally critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he called “one of the worst leaders of all time” and said of him he “has steered Israel in a wrong direction, and made Israel less safe and made their future less bright because of his leadership.” (For Kelly’s part, he attended and applauded Netanyahu’s speech to Congress last year when many other Democrats in attendance wouldn’t, while Walz barely mentioned the prime minister’s name during his time as the Democrats’ VP candidate.) Yet, no one called Walz “Genocide Tim” or Kelly “War Crimes Mark.” 

Shapiro has even offered rhetorical support to those protesting Israel’s policies in Gaza, noting “it’s right for young people to righteously protest and question those issues.” Underlying the criticisms of Shapiro is the unstated idea that Jews cannot be objective when it comes to Israel — a charge once explicitly lobbied against Catholic politicians, including John F. Kennedy — or that American Jews are as loyal to Israel as they are to the United States.

The suggestion of dual loyalty has haunted Jews for generations, but such scurrilous accusations from self-proclaimed progressives are all the more concerning. The left has long partnered with Diaspora Jews in fighting racial, ethnic and religious discrimination. At a time when the president of the United States regularly traffics in antisemitic tropes — and his first term in office was marked by a significant rise in antisemitic incidents — the support of the left is more essential than ever. (Even with Trump out of office, the number of antisemitic incidents in America continued to rise, even before the war in Gaza began in late 2023.)  

Criticism of Israel is fair game, but lumping in American Jews with the actions of their co-religionists in Israel is not. To those rightly rushing to condemn Balmer’s alleged crime, the same unequivocal force needs to be directed at those who traffic in the seemingly more benign but just as dangerous antisemitism — even when it comes from their own political camp. 

Conservatives like to ascribe blame for antisemitism to the anti-Zionist left. Liberals often place blame squarely at the feet of Trump and other far-right groups. The reality is that antisemitism is prevalent in both camps, even if both right and left-wing leaders are loath to point fingers at their political allies. 

Antisemitism is arguably the oldest and most enduring form of ethnic and religious discrimination. It is civilization’s first major conspiracy theory. Since antisemitism is so prevalent and often misunderstood, there is an even greater danger in singling out Jewish politicians for their views on Israel or Jewish administrators at public universities, or protesting Jewish restaurants, hospitals with Jewish names, or Jewish places of worship, and calling for bans on Jewish religious organizations, like Hillel. Doing so risks turning Jews at large into targets of those aggrieved by the situation in Gaza.

Pro-Palestinian activists will argue that such public demonstrations represent a small fringe, but that’s all the more reason to ostracize and exclude those who would turn their attacks on Israel against Jews in America. Jews need and deserve not nitpicking over what is and isn’t antisemitism, but rather full-throated condemnation, even if the hate is emerging from one’s own political camp. Criticism of Israel is fair game, but lumping in American Jews with the actions of their co-religionists in Israel is not. 

As we saw this week in Pennsylvania, when such ideas enter the public discourse, the impact can be deadly.” 

Michael A. Cohen is a columnist for MSNBC and a senior fellow and co-director of the Afghanistan Assumptions Project at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He writes the political newsletter Truth and Consequences. He has been a columnist at The Boston Globe, The Guardian and Foreign Policy, and he is the author of three books, the most recent being “Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans.” 

JL

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Government Poking its Head into Areas They Should Stay Away From

More easily to grasp than Michael Cohen's sometimes complicated reasoning reproduced above, is something that appeared on CNN’s online ‘Five Things AM’ of April 25.

‘Employees at Columbia University and Barnard College were stunned this week after receiving text messages from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requesting that they complete a survey that asked if they were Jewish, Israeli, had Jewish/Israeli ancestry or practiced Judaism. The text messages, which were sent to the staffers’ personal devices, were part of a federal investigation into workplace practices at the schools. Since returning to office, President Trump has taken aim at higher education institutions under the auspices of fighting antisemitism. Some staffers said they were rattled by the questions and the method of communication. Others were upset that the schools had given their personal contact information to the government.’ 

Their standard reply to the EEOC should be ‘So long as this is still the United States of America, this is none of your frigging business!’ 

Regardless of the stated purpose of such a request, it smacks of the kind of information antisemites gather to ultimately use to attack Jews. While the President is not overtly an antisemite, they are not absent from his Administration. Don’t ignore that back in November of 2022, Trump hosted white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, for lunch at his Mar-a-Lago home. 

Trump’s willingness to associate with figures who have repeatedly spread antisemitic and white supremacist tropes remains deeply concerning, particularly since he is back in the White House.

If such a survey is indeed necessary, which I feel it is not, it should be run by organizations within the Jewish community and not the government. The task of fighting antisemitism by the government can be pursued without officially gathering such information. It smacks of what the Nazis did with such informaion in Germany once they came into power, and we all know where that led. 

Once again, ‘EEOC: Listen Up! So long as this is still the United States of America, this is none of your frigging business!’ 

JL 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri 

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com. 

Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (currently the Palm Beach Post, a Gannett publication) and what appears in my daily email. Be aware that when I open that email, I take these steps. 1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or two emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them. 2. I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criteria are whether or not they end up asking for donations or if they are no more than advertisements. I ignore most of these emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the two or three dozen other emails which I will actually open. 

Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). I do not use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri because I am in the dark about the techniques used and possible sources AI has mined to develop them. Sources with their origin clearly identified to me still follow, and these are what I use in composing Jackspotpourri postings. (In doing searches on Google, I have found that these AI summaries can sometimes … but not always … be avoided by saying so in your search. For example, instead of searching for ‘FDR’s New Deal,’ I might search for ‘FDR’s New Deal – No AI.’ This is a work in progress.)

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.

JL 

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April 21, 2025 - Pastor Niemoller, Tariffs, a Letter, and Old North Church 250 Years Ago.

 

“And There Was No One Left to Speak Out For Me” 

I had planned on including a piece in today’s Jackspotpourri about German Pastor Martin Niemoller and the famous poem he wrote after World War Two. Instead, here’s a column written by Barbara McQuade from the Palm Beach Post’s Opinion page of April 18. The author says it far better than I can. 

But first, here is what Pastor Niemoller wrote: 

“First they came for the Communists 

  And I did not speak out 

  Because I was not a Communist, 

  Then they came for the Socialists 

  And I did not speak out 

  Because I was not a Socialist 

  Then they came for the trade unionists 

   And I did not speak out 

   Because I was not a trade unionist 

  Then they came for the Jews 

   And I did not speak out 

   Because I was not a Jew 

   Then they came for me 

   And there was no one left 

   To speak out for me.” 

This poem has been reproduced in many settings, one of which is engraved on a monument in the Holocaust Memorial Garden of the synagogue to which I belonged back on Long Island.   Read on!                                                        

President Trump’s lawlessness creates a danger for every American 

Barbara McQuade - Op-ed contributor (Palm Beach Post) 

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.' So begins a poem written by Martin Niemöller, a German pastor who initially supported the Nazi party, and later spent eight years in concentration camps. His words resonate today as President Donald Trump pushes the limits of his authority to deport immigrants. He seems to be counting on the fact that undocumented immigrants from Latin American countries lack public support, and so no one will speak out for them. But the case creates a danger for every American. 

The rule of law  - When I served as U.S. attorney, I helped enforce immigration laws, but we were committed to doing so lawfully. Honoring the rule of law includes obeying orders of the judiciary, one of the three co-equal branches of government that checks the others. Allowing the executive branch to flout court orders undermines the legal processes that protect all of us. And if we permit lawlessness in deportations, what comes next? Take the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man the Trump administration admits was deported in error along with more than 200 others to a prison in El Salvador. After his family filed a lawsuit seeking his return, the government has taken the position that it is powerless to bring him back. This is the same government whose Secretary of Homeland Security was seen touring that same prison in late March while wearing a $50,000 watch. And the same government that hosted El Salvador’s president at the White House on Monday. The United States has agreed to pay $6 million to house prisoners in his country. During Monday’s Oval Office meeting, Trump mused aloud about even sending American citizens who were 'homegrown criminals' to the El Salvador prison. 

 

‘Any of us’  - On April 6, a federal district court judge in Maryland ordered the administration to 'facilitate and effectuate' the return of Abrego Garcia, and an appellate court later agreed, noting that the government 'can – and does – return wrongfully removed migrants as a matter of course.' Under the administration’s logic, the court wrote, 'the government could send any of us to a Salvadoran prison without due process, claim that the misstep was a result of ‘administrative error,’ and thereby wash its hands of any responsibility for what happens next.' On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld that decision in part, ruling that the government must 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador. The court remanded the case to the district court to clarify the meaning of 'effectuate.' That night, the district judge amended her order to remove the word altogether, clearing the way for the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Or so she thought. 

Changing stories  - Rather than bring him back, the government took the position — astonishingly — that to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia’s return, it need do nothing more than permit him to enter the country if he should manage to find his way to the border. Last Saturday, the government also represented that Abrego Garcia is no longer able to remain in the country, anyway, because he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which the Trump administration recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization, a claim Abrego Garcia denies and has had no opportunity to contest in court. In a hearing on Tuesday, the government again changed its story and claimed that Abrego Garcia was properly deported after all. In response, the exasperated district court judge accused the administration of 'gamesmanship' and issued an order permitting the plaintiff to take depositions and request documents to find out who is authorizing his continued confinement. On Wednesday, a different district court judge said he has probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt of court for willfully violating his order.

Everyone has rights  - Abrego Garcia, 29, may not be a sympathetic figure. He entered the country illegally from El Salvador in 2011 when he was 16. Eight years later, he was arrested by immigration officials while looking for work in a Home Depot parking lot, and was ordered deported. The government blocked his removal, finding he would face persecution if he returned to El Salvador, where his family’s business was extorted by a violent gang. When he was pulled over and arrested on March 12, he was married to a U.S. citizen with three children. He has no criminal record. His name appears in court records in a civil domestic matter that was dropped, and stands apart from the issue at hand: everyone’s right to due process, regardless of their alleged misconduct. But like anyone in the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, Abrego Garcia is entitled to constitutional protections, including due process, which means notice and an opportunity to be heard before our liberty can be taken from us. By spiriting him out of the country without either, he was denied that right. And if he can be denied that right, then so can any of us.

'And then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Barbara McQuade is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. She also appears frequently on MSNBC. 

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Historian Heather Cox Richardson goes over the same territory, and much more, in her posting dated April 20. Visit it by CLICKING HERE or copying and pasting https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your browser line.

She also points out that cracks and weaknesses in the President’s programs are beginning to appear even among the MAGA folks. 

There is hope, just as there was in 1775 when the colonists started the process to permanently rid themselves of a ‘king.’ That seems to be an unending task. Attributed to Thomas Jefferson and others, indeed ‘Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty.’ 

JL 

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It Started a Quarter of a Millenium Ago

This week marked the 250th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War with the battle of local Minutemen against British regular troops at Lexington and Concord. 

From school days, you probably recall Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s commemorative poem’s lines: ‘Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, T’was the eighteenth of April in ’75, there’s hardly a man who is now alive, etc. etc.’ 

Paul Revere and other riders were racing to advise the Minutemen of the route the British were taking from Boston to Lexington where they intended to arrest the 'rebel' leaders, after being given a signal from lanterns in the steeple of Boston’s Old North Church: ‘One if by land, and two if by sea … ‘ In commemorating that 1775 event, and relating it to 2025, the Old North Church was lit up again this week, but not with lanterns.  This message was briefly projected on it. 

JL 

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International Trade and Tariffs 

Paul Krugman recently wrote that international trade is not about what we can sell. The real issue is about what we need to buy. 

We (and others) buy some things we need from other nations because we cannot produce them ourselves less expensively or less efficiently than they can. But there are other things that other nations buy from us because we can produce them less expensively or less efficiently than they can. The delicate balance between the two positions, a nation’s ‘balance of trade,’ starts with what a nation needs to buy, which is more important than what they have to sell, which might be nonexistent or something nobody might need to buy from them. 

This ‘balance’ is what Trump’s tariffs are attacking by making ‘buying’ more expensive and difficult, in the questionable hope that doing so will result in our developing the ability to ourselves produce what we buy from others more efficiently, doing away with the need to buy it from others, whom the President claims have been ‘ripping us off.’ In any event, imposing tariffs on what we buy from other nations is not a friendly act toward those nations. 

                                                        * * 

No nations today are totally self-sufficient. That is a dream. The day of the totally self-sufficient caveman ended when a hunter exchanged the extra meat from an animal he had killed for some fruit or vegetables from a neighbor who swapped some of the produce he had picked for stuff to fill his needs. Thus, the hunter didn’t have to learn to pick fruit and the fruit picker didn’t have to learn to hunt to get the stuff each needed. Both were happy buying from each other until the greedier of the two decided to go to war against the other, taking over its hunting grounds or vegetable patch, or inventing tariffs which at least initially, didn’t involve armed forces.

                                                          * * 

MSNBC’s Jen Psaki correctly quoted California’s Attorney General the other day, who pointed out that tariffs are the business of Congress, unless a President declares a national emergency. He has filed suit arguing that Trump is abusing the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to bypass Congress and impose tariffs unilaterally. As he put it, you can’t invent "bogus national emergencies" to grab power. Correct! 

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While Paul Krugman’s postings on the economy are sometimes a bit difficult to fully grasp  (at least for me), his April 21 posting (Trump’s Cultural Revolution - The first thing we do is we kill intellectual inquiry) is more to the point.  Check it out by copying and pasting 

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trumps-cultural-revolution on your browser line, or by CLICKING HERE.

JL                                                 

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My Keyboard Remains Active. So Should Yours! Here’s a copy of a letter I sent off to the Palm Beach Post after the recent fatal shooting at Florida State University. If they print it, I will let you know. 

‘There has to be some reason why shootings like those at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, and now at Florida State University continue to occur in Florida, while the State Legislature attempts to weaken the State's laws aimed at gun violence. I think it arises from a misinterpretation of the Second Amendment that even the Supreme Court has accepted, an interpretation that ignores that Amendment's first thirteen words, but allows its final fourteen words to stand alone, never the intention of those who wrote the Constitution; the right to bear arms was intended to arm State militias in the event of either Federal action against individual States or slave rebellions. How much innocent blood has to be shed before this misinterpretation, authored by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, is corrected?’ 

I’ll save you the trouble of looking up the Second Amendment’s language. Here it is. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." 

I feel the Amendment relates to protecting that right for the very specific purpose of enabling State militias to be able to recruit already armed people and was not intended to reinforce other existing reasons for people to continue to keep and bear arms.   The Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, each referred to something the government could not do, not to something it was being empowered to do!  Read it and make up your mind. 

JL

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri 

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com. 

Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (currently the Palm Beach Post, a Gannett publication) and what appears in my daily email. Be aware that when I open that email, I take these steps. 1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or two emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them. 2. I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criteria are whether or not they end up asking for donations or if they are no more than advertisements. I ignore most of these emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the two or three dozen other emails which I will actually open. 

Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). I do not use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri because I am in the dark about the techniques used and possible sources AI has mined to develop them. Sources with their origin clearly identified to me still follow, and these are what I use in composing Jackspotpourri postings. (In doing searches on Google, I have found that these AI summaries can sometimes … but not always … be avoided by saying so in your search. For example, instead of searching for ‘FDR’s New Deal,’ I might search for ‘FDR’s New Deal – No AI.’ This is a work in progress.)

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. JL 

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April 17, 2025 - An Alliance to Bring About Impeachment and All it Entails

                                                             

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Let’s pick up where we left off with that ‘BIGGIE’ in the Jackspotpourri published on April 9. Please go back and read it again. On most devices, it should appear a bit after this posting, and if not, just find it on the archives off to the right. 

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If we have reached the point where most thinking Americans agree that Donald Trump should not complete his term in office as our elected President, positive actions are necessary.  I feel that reasons for reaching this conclusion can perhaps come from diverse viewpoints. 

In all fairness, let’s start with what might be the possible views of those on the right.  Some of his most ardent supporters on the right, recognizing that a growing number of Americans very strongly oppose President Trump, as evidenced by the recent massive demonstrations throughout the land, feel that these protesters amount to a present danger warranting President Trump being allowed to loosen the Constitutional limits of presidential authority, claiming that he actually is defending and preserving the Constitution, permitting him to becoming what amounts to a 'benevolent' autocratic dictator instead! This would necessitate action or inaction (an action in itself) by both houses of Congress, and if contested, by the Supreme Court. 

Recognizing the time-consuming delays in doing it that way, with a semblance of legality, some very few extremists may just want to turn the country into a dictatorship with one fell swoop, overnight, and as the ancient Greeks did in times of stress, accept the rule of a ‘tyrant,’ who would be Donald Trump. 

Proponents of these approaches do not have enough supporters because too many Americans still claim to believe in the nation’s historic democratic principles. (Whether or not they do is another question.)  Therefore, those on the right seem to be willing to make this transfer from democracy to autocracy in bits and pieces and are quite willing to leave Trump as President.

That’s dangerous because many Americans do not pay attention to his individual acts and daily behavior and are unaware of such a gradual transfer from democracy to autocracy. 

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I believe that the real solution lies in the opposite direction, concluding that the preservation of democracy might be best accomplished by an ‘alliance’ of Democratic and ‘traditional’ Republican members of both Houses of Congress, together with the leadership of the investment, banking, and business communities, including the billionaires who had supported Trump, finding a way of getting him out of office before he completely destroys the nation, wrecking its financial and economic structure. 

While the motives of this investment/banking/business ‘leadership’ group might be selfish ones, they also recognize, despite his promise to lower their taxes, that the President’s economic programs, especially his simplistic and ignorant faith in tariffs, damage the economy in which these leaders exist, threatening their personal wealth, the successful operation of most large corporations, and destroying the Wall Street financial marketplace in which they operate as well. 

Their joining in an ‘alliance’ with Democratic and ‘traditional’ Republican members of both Houses of Congress, might look like an unhappy marriage, but together they can form a solid force sufficient to legally remove a sitting President.  And that’s where this is heading.

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I believe that more Americans support such an ‘alliance’ dedicated to seeing that Donald Trump does not complete his present term of office (more about how that would be accomplished in a moment) despite his winning the 2024 election, than support his staying in office and wrecking the country, a platform he did not run on. 

Action must be taken as soon as possible and be based not only on his tariff policy and its chaotic effect on the economy and upon domestic and international financial marketplaces, but also because of his disregard for individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution, his failure to execute existing laws, his illegal deportation policies, as well as his disregard and disrespect for ‘the Rule of Law.’ 

Remember, President Trump is a felon, convicted as such by the courts of the State of New York, and appears to be embittered toward our judicial system, as are many convicted and unrepentant criminals. That well describes the President of the United States and is a tragedy of almost operatic dimensions.

At this very moment, his lawyers are defying court orders regarding deportations in an environment where the Department of Justice, already under his thumb, is refusing or delaying carrying out the court’s orders. 

The question that the Supreme Court must eventually address is whether their decision last year that ‘presidential immunity from prosecution exists for actions related to his office’ extends to the ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ that will be part of any impeachment effort. The road to deciding that is a circuitous one, and their decision regarding ‘deportations’ will be a step along the way. 

This disrespect and disregard for ‘the Rule of Law’ on the President’s part has spread to his opinions of academics, law firms, science, media, and others in our society who do not agree with him. The misinformation he spreads have misguided too many Americans. That is how he got elected. 

                                                           * * 

But getting back to the ‘alliance,’ it might take the form of an ‘Alliance Committee’ and would transcend party politics, before and after removal of the President from office, up until the 2028 elections and those of 2032 if necessary, at which point it would be automatically disbanded. 

Such a Committee, the formation of which would be totally legal, would be no more a part of government than the Heritage Foundation’s ‘Project 2025’ or even Elon Musk’s self-named Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which is neither fish nor fowl, but certainly not an official government agency. The Alliance Committee’s recommendations would be purely advisory but passed on to Congress for action. 

Three Important Groups for the ‘Alliance Committee’ to Recruit: 

(1) It would be very important for a majority of the Supreme Court to be on board, agreeing not to disturb such an alliance, and what it might accomplish, for the sake of preserving the nation. This might result from an actual case coming before it or if the SCOTUS, without such a case, is asked to render an opinion on terminating a president’s term in office prematurely. They also could choose to just remain on the sidelines.

 

(2) To assure that removing the President from his position would not be opposed by military force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, already supposedly purged by President Trump, will nevertheless be urged to adhere to what they learned at West Point, Annapolis, or the Air Force Academy, pledging allegiance to the Constitution over the orders of a Commander in Chief. Our military forces were never intended to take arms against the nation’s citizens. They know that. The President does not. 

(3) Finally, and because they are often targets of the President and his spear-carriers, leaders of the scientific, academic, and legal professions and communities should have input into the ‘Alliance Committee’ if only to balance its obvious link to its leadership by members of Congress and of the investment, banking, and business’ world.  This would give the ‘Alliance Committee’ greater credibility among the American people. 

Without the support or at least the acquiescence of these groups though, the work of the ‘Alliance Committee’ would be delayed and become more difficult.

Here’s the Way the Process Might Work: 

Crumbling economic conditions, food prices, inflation, job loss, financial marketplace instability and unpredictability, reduced pensions, loss of traditional allies, disappearing Constitutional freedoms, abandonment of the ‘rule of law,’ etc. will have to have become sufficiently threatening to the American people so that the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES (where impeachments originate) and the SENATE (where impeachment is ‘tried’ and voted upon) WOULD EACH SUPPORT A SUCCESSFUL IMPEACHMENT REMOVING DONALD TRUMP FROM OFFICE. (See Article 2, Sec. 4 of the Constitution.)

And such an action by Congress would terminate the presidency of Donald Trump, with the backing of the nation through the ‘Alliance Committee.’ Hurrah! 

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After many years of ‘winging it,’ replacing a removed president, and what happens afterwards was finally clarified by the 25th Amendment to the Constitution in 1967.  CLICK HERE or copy and paste https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xxv on your browser line to read the text of the 25th Amendment. 

Such a removal by impeachment, requiring ‘conviction’ by the Senate, has never occurred, although presidencies have been terminated by a President’s death or resignation, or only briefly suspended during a President undergoing surgery. 

If an impeachment were confirmed by the Senate, the Vice President would succeed the impeached President and name a new Vice President who would require a majority vote in both the House and the Senate. 

If a presidential disability elevates the Vice President to the position of ‘Acting President’, and that disability becomes permanent, that too would cause a vice-presidential vacancy. Without a new Vice President being appointed by the ‘Acting President,’ after 21 days both Houses of Congress can proceed to select a new Vice President, but in such cases, two-thirds majorities would be required to proceed in that manner. Once a new Vice President is named and confirmed by Congress, the ‘Acting President’ becomes President. 

It is conceivable that a Vice-President, in line to succeed a successfully impeached or otherwise removed President might not want the job and having views similar to the removed President, might not want to jump from the frying pan into the fire, and themselves resign, throwing the choice of a President to Congress. 

There has been a lot written on this matter, and ‘Google’ searches about the 25th Amendment, or including the names of Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, or Gerald Ford might be educational. Of course, reading the actual Amendment is desirable. To do that, CLICK HERE or copy and paste https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xxv on your browser line, if you have not already done so.  Even oversimplified ‘AI’ summaries might be helpful. 

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If the ‘Alliance Committee’ and Congressional action succeed in their efforts to cut short the term of President Trump, Congress would want to forestall the recurrence of another Presidency with the same autocratic flaws Trump presents. That would mean their insisting that the new President accept Trump’s removal from office from office as a ‘fait accompli’ as well as agree to an immediate reconstruction of the Executive Branch of our government with a significantly strengthened system of checks upon the President, including a powerful ‘whistle blower' presence in its agencies and departments. This is where the acquiescence of the Supreme Court becomes important, and this will be the most difficult part of saving the nation from Donald Trump’s becoming a dictator. 

After the President is removed from office, whoever ends up as President would also have to, but only until the Executive Branch is reconstructed and operative, agree to temporarily limit his or her role as President to seeing that the laws passed by Congress are faithfully executed, as the Constitution requires, and to not initiate any actions that have not been previously discussed with the leadership of both Houses of Congress and informally agreed to by them, including cabinet and judicial appointments and budgets.

Initially, this would result in a short period during which the country would  have an interim government with only a ‘figurehead’ ceremonial president, with actual control of the government's executive functions resting with our two elected Houses of Congress.  Every effort should be made to make that interim period as short as possible.  Nevertheless, it would be an improvement over an autocratic President because it would put the government in the hands of the voters who elect both Houses of Congress, following the tradition of representative democracy, and take it out of the reach of a ‘wannabe’ dictator, who still thinks he is running a television show. 

In carrying this out, it must be continually kept in mind that before any of these actions, including changes which affect the Constitution’s Article Two (establishing the Executive Branch), take place, conditions will have to have deteriorated to the point where not only the House of Representatives and the Senate will take action by impeachment or via the 25th Amendment’s disability provisions but also, the Supreme Court, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have to be either openly agreeable to removing Donald Trump from office or be willing to stand by on the sidelines as that process advances through Congress as the only way of saving the United States of America from its self-destruction at his hands. That's a tall order, but a necessary one.

There must be no room for compromise, for as pointed out in the Jackspotpourri dated April 9, negotiations with Donald Trump are always losing propositions. 

The informal ‘Alliance Committee’ would automatically go out of existence after the 2028 or 2032 presidential election at the latest, there being no further need for it. 

While reconstructing the Executive Branch, putting a check on the President’s actions, will go a long way toward solving the problem of an autocratic President replacing our democracy, the Executive Branch must still retain sufficient independence to balance any anti-democratic excesses originating in Congress. The presidential ‘veto’ process and the rules for overriding it would be an example of this. 

Once a rebuilt Executive Branch is functioning, if necessary, changes in its structure can be documented as an Amendment to the Constitution and submitted to Congress and the States. But Amendments usually take years to be passed and to take effect. 

It would be important that no one be prosecuted during this period for their actions leading up to the removal of the President, or afterwards, and that the legal protections of the  First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights be specifically preserved. 

No one would be totally pleased with such a solution, but it would be better than letting the world’s oldest democracy go down the drain, as might be the unspoken intention of Donald Trump, or the result of his blind stupidity or incompetence, or the aims of some of those he appointed to key positions.

When the ‘inconceivable’ (the election of a truly unfit President whose actions can result in the nation’s demise) occurs, such a solution can be both ‘possible’ and ‘necessary.’ It appears to be the latter. 

                                                         * * 

And that is what I have to say, crossing boundaries that most politicians and pundits have up to now cautiously observed. Because these ideas may be incomplete and subject to criticism and revision, it is up to Democrats and ‘traditional’ Republicans elected to Congress, and the leadership of the of the investment, banking, and business communities, joined together on that ‘Alliance Committee,’ and ultimately the American people through their elected legislators to step up right now to get the job done.  It will not be easy and it will open a Pandora’s box. But I can do no more. 

Perhaps you can. 

 JL 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri 

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com. 

Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (currently the Palm Beach Post, a Gannett publication) and what appears in my daily email. Be aware that when I open that email, I take these steps. 1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or two emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them. 2. I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criteria are whether or not they end up asking for donations or if they are no more than advertisements. I ignore most of these emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the two or three dozen other emails which I will actually open. 

Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). I do not use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri because I am in the dark about the techniques used and possible sources AI has mined to develop them. Sources with their origin clearly identified to me still follow, and these are what I use in composing Jackspotpourri postings. (In doing searches on Google, I have found that these AI summaries can sometimes … but not always … be avoided by saying so in your search. For example, instead of searching for ‘FDR’s New Deal,’ I might search for ‘FDR’s New Deal – No AI.’ This is a work in progress.) 

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. 

JL

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