May 28, 2025 - About Trump (who else?), Paywalls, CIT Action, and TACOs (not the kind you eat)

 

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Heather Cox Richardson's 'Letters from an American' Takes a Good Look at

• Words to West Point’s Graduates from Our Country’s Most Famous Draft  Dodger (the guy with bone spurs),
•  His Sullying the Sacred Ground at Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day, and
• Litigation Against the Trump Administration 

On May 26, the good professor from Boston College reported: 

‘President Donald J. Trump’s erratic behavior was on display this weekend in two public speeches: one to this year’s graduates at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and the other at Arlington National Cemetery. While both speeches are traditionally nonpartisan, Trump indicated he would make them partisan when he wore a red MAGA hat at West Point.

The president began both speeches by sticking to a script but then veered off course. At West Point on Saturday, his speech went on for over an hour. He attacked diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and said: “The job of the U.S. Armed Forces is not to host drag shows to transform foreign cultures, or to spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun,” he said. “The military's job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime, and any place.” (In fact, the mission of the Department of Defense is “to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”) 

Trump veered off into immigration and a chat about golf, then repeated a story about William Levitt, a real estate developer whose post–World War II housing developments became synonymous with suburbia, that he had told at a 2017 Boy Scout jamboree. On Saturday, Trump talked about Levitt becoming “very rich, a very rich man, and then he decided to sell. And he sold his company, and he had nothing to do. He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife. It didn’t work out too well, but it doesn’t—that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you. A lot of trophy wives. It doesn’t work out. But it made him happy for a little while, at least, but he found a new wife. He sold his little boat, and he got a big yacht, he had one of the biggest yachts anywhere in the world. He moved for a time to Monte Carlo, and he led the good life, and time went by, and he got bored and 15 years later, the company that he sold to called him, and they said, ‘The housing business is not for us.’ You have to understand when Bill Levitt was hot. When he had momentum, he’d go to the job sites every night, he’d pick up every loose nail, he’d pick up every scrap of wood, if there was a bolt or a screw laying on the ground, he’d pick it up, and he’d use it the next day and putting together a house.”

After his speech, Trump skipped the traditional shaking of each graduate’s hand, left the ceremony, and flew to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. 

At Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, the president veered off into a dig

Arlington National Cemetery (photo by me
when I visited there several years ago.)

at his predecessor, President Joe Biden, then noted that he, Trump, will be president for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And, he added, “Most important of all, in addition, we have the World Cup and we have the Olympics. Can you imagine [if] I missed that four years? And now look what I have. I have everything—amazing the way things work out. God did that, I believe that too.” 

Trump’s social media account was similarly inappropriate. His message on Memorial Day—a solemn day to honor those American military personnel who died in service to the country—began: “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS….”

But that message quickly took a turn toward his recurring attacks on judges. Trump claimed that “CRIMINALS AND THE MENTALLY INSANE” are entering the United States “THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDER AND RAPE AGAIN—ALL PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL.”  

In February 2024, almost a year before Trump took office the second time, the country’s 23 Democratic state attorneys general began preparing for a second Trump term. They listened to what he was saying on the campaign trail and read the plans in Project 2025, then wrote potential lawsuits against what he might try to put in place. Once he took office, they hit the ground running, banding together when they could to file lawsuits to bring the president’s unconstitutional and illegal actions before courts. 

And they are not the only ones. On Friday, Alex Lemonides, Seamus Hughes, Mattathias Schwartz, Lazaro Gamio, and Camille Baker of the New York Times listed the many lawsuits against the Trump administration and noted that as of May 23, at least 177 rulings “have at least temporarily paused some of the administration’s initiatives.” 

Those include cases involving the administration's attempt to fire large numbers of federal employees unlawfully, freeze federal funding required by Congress, refuse to recognize birthright citizenship, hand power to the “Department of Government Efficiency,” dismantle government agencies, take away civil rights from transgender Americans, revoke environmental policies, and use the federal government to punish individuals or organizations. 

But it is the judicial orders and decisions concerning immigration that Trump and his administration are most vocally attacking. Their primary focus is on Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was rendered to the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador on March 15 in what the administration at first called an “administrative error.” Nick Miroff of The Atlantic recorded that when Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit to get him returned, lawyers at the Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security quietly tried to secure his safety and bring him back to the United States. But White House officials saw the case as a way to challenge the ability of the judicial branch to restrain presidential power. As Miroff writes, “Abrego Garcia’s deportation…developed into a measure of whether Donald Trump’s administration can send people—citizens or not—to foreign prisons without due process.” 

They began to insist—without evidence—that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, a drug dealer, a terrorist, and a human trafficker. Despite orders from courts right up to the Supreme Court to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, they have publicly insisted that Abrego Garcia will never return to the United States. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a white-nationalist nativist, has said that the administration is thinking about suspending the writ of habeas corpus, which would permit the government to throw people in jail without charge or trial. The Constitution specifies that Congress alone can suspend that writ. Their attacks seemed designed to convince Americans that judges insisting on the rule of law are backing violent criminals. That, in turn, seems designed to encourage MAGA loyalists to threaten judges. And they are. 

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that a security committee at the judicial conference, the body that makes policy for federal judges, has floated the idea of creating an armed security force apart from the current U.S. Marshals Service that operates under the Department of Justice. Judges have expressed concern that Trump and loyalist Attorney General Pam Bondi might withdraw protections from judges who have ruled against the administration. Conservative judge J. Michael Luttig noted: “It is an extraordinary and unprecedented development in American history that the Nation’s Federal Judiciary would have to consider having its own security force because federal judges cannot trust the U.S. Marshal’s Service under this President and his Attorney General. They cannot trust this president and this Attorney General to ensure their protection.” He continued: “I had to admit that, given the continuing unprecedented and vicious personal attacks and threats on the federal courts and federal judges by the President, Vice President Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Donald Trump’s Cabinet and senior White House advisors, I would never rely upon the U.S. Marshal’s Service for my protection, were I still a sitting federal judge. How could anyone?"

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Thank you, Professor Richardson!

It appears to me that when the courts, as the vast majority of them are doing, rule against some of the actions of the Trump administration, the losers in court turn to disparaging and insulting the judges. And when a court’s ruling requires enforcement by the Department of Justice, how do you stop that Department from ignoring the judge’s orders, as the Trump loyalist Attorney General the the FBI’s head are likely to do? 

 Now that you’ve read Professor Richardson’s May 26 posting, …. What are you going to do about it? Sit there and twiddle your thumbs? 

JL

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Teasers and Paywalls 

There are quite a few news sources on the internet, but many of them, after attracting your attention with a headline and/or a picture, provide a paragraph of so of their story, but then ask you to ‘upgrade’ to read the full story. This usually costs a few dollars a month, helping to keep the site financially solvent. 

The daily news sites of CNN and MSNBC don’t do this and provide the full stories of the news they headline. I recommend them. While Timothy Snyder’s postings and those of Heather Cox Richardson and Paul Krugman are among those asking you to upgrade, they still provide a lot of information to those who access them ‘for free.‘ I used to pay $5 monthly to get Richardson’s full “Letters from an American’ but find the free version quite adequate. 

Many newspapers have such ‘paywalls’ or limit the number of articles available at no cost, primarily because newspapers, a staple of an earlier age, have financial problems. Because I am old-fashioned enough to subscribe to the Palm Beach Post’s print and email editions in the old-fashioned way, I don’t have a problem getting to their articles, and I pay $4 a month for full access to what the New York Times posts online. I think that is a tremenous bargain. 

Sites like ‘The Free Press’ and that of the Washington Post, however, leave the reading dangling in midair after a few paragraphs unless you pay to cross their ‘paywall.’  The site of the liberal Israeli daily, Haaretz, also features ‘paywalls.’  There’s a really inexpensive one-year digital subscription for the Washington Post now available which gets you through their ‘paywall’ but with the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, playing footsie with Donald Trump (remember the Post endorsed no one in the 2024 presidential race), and some of their now disgruntled staff quitting, I don’t know if that’s worthwhile. 

If you spend a few minutes navigating the internet with a ‘search engine,’ you will discover that there are ways to get around these ‘paywalls’ if you try hard enough. For example, there’s a trick that enables one to read full articles from the Atlantic magazine, and from the New Yorker magazine, beyond the three that publication generously makes available to non-subscribers. Good Luck!

JL

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TACOs and the CIT 

Before you check out Paul Krugman’s May 28 and 29 postings by CLICKING HERE or copying and pasting https://paulkrugman.substack.com/ on your browser line, you should know that the financial marketplace’s up and down gyrations are the result of its reacting to the President’s usually unpredictable and irrational actions, now commonly referered to there as ‘TACO’ (‘Trump Always Chickens Out’) trading. When asked about this, the President called it ‘nasty.’ 

And for those who were not aware of it, for many years, we have had a specialized court known as the ‘Court of International Trade’ (once known as the Customs Court), called the CIT for short, which has condemned Trump’s tariffs as illegal.   

Read Krugman’s May 28 and 29 postings, but then, …. What are you going to do about it? Sit there and twiddle your thumbs? 

 JL

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Housekeeping at Jackspotpourri

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

In addition,  I would be particularly interested in hearing from anyone in any of the following categories who support President Trump and those in Congress who vote to bring his ideas to fruition, and who would like their views included on Jackspotpourri: 

• Senior Citizens 

• Others on Medicare or Medicaid 

• Veterans 

• Persons of Color 

• Latinos 

• College Students 

• Those Considered to be part of an LGBTQ community. 

• Members of Particular Religious Faiths 

They must have their reasons. I would appreciate those responding including their primary sources of news (Newspapers, TV Channels, Internet sites, etc.).

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. 3. Then I read my email. 

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. Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the results of my initially having accessed Google (or any other search engine) for information. Contrary to the AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information, yourself or something else (AI), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. (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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May 26, 2025 - Medicare, Lettuce, Liz Truss, Newspaper Stuff, Floods in N.C. and a Book Review

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Medicare’s Annual Wellness Visits 

Many seniors covered by Medicare are puzzled when their visit to their primary physician is limited to his or her going over their blood and urine laboratory studies and inquiring as to any questions or concerns the patient might have … but without examining the patient in any manner whatsoever. (A medical assistant might have preceded the visit by taking the patient’s blood pressure.) 

This might leave the patient dissatisfied with the physician, but this is all that Medicare’s Annual Wellness Visit provides for! 

A more detailed visit, or referral to a specialist, would have to be ‘problem directed’ or involve various levels of ‘decision making’ if the primary physician found them necessary. And Medicare provides for different payments to physicians for such ‘problem directed visits’ that is greater than the payment for ‘Annual Wellness Visits.’ A review of summaries sent to those on Medicare might be revealing as to what Medicare was billed for by physicians for specific visits. 

I had changed my primary care physician after two years of at least quarterly visits during which he never came near me with a stethoscope or made any pretense of examining me (except for on my very first visit). 

His office did perform studies such as EKGs and various Ultrasound tests, (perhaps justifiable as ‘problem directed’?) which he told me were normal for me, but there really were as no further examinations by him. His favorite comment was ‘You have no reason to panic, until you see me panicking.’

Ultimately, I switched primary care physicians when he decided to have two levels of patients, those just on Medicare and those willing to pay an additional annual fee to become his ‘concierge’ Medicare patients. That was the last straw. 

I had asked him what would be the difference between his treatment of patients in these two classes. In reply, he then pointed out, as an example, that if he saw the need for referral of a ‘concierge’ patient to a specialist, he would make arrangements for an appointment with one, speak to the specialist, and forward all the patients’s records records to the specialist. ‘Non-concierge’ patients, on the other hand, would just be provided with the names and phone numbers of several specialists and be told to contact them. Needless to say, I have not seen nor spoken to that primary physician since that conversation. 

Here’s a piece published in numerous newspapers (I saw it in the Palm Beach Post) which touches on this problem. 

Dr. Keith Roach is on the staff at New York City's Cornell Presbyterian Medical Center.

His periodic comments are carried in many newspapers under the title of ‘To Your Good Health.’ To read it, just  CLICK HERE or copy and paste https://www.oregonlive.com/advice/2025/05/dear-doctor-whats-the-difference-between-a-regular-checkup-and-an-annual-wellness-visit.html on the browser line, up on top, of your computer. 

I suspect that some medical practices manage to include a more extensive examination in an ‘Annual Wellness Visit’ than what is described in the first paragraph above. This might include the physician listening to one’s heart and lung sounds via their stethoscope or manually palpating certain organs.

 It is conceivable that a primary physician might see justification for billing an ‘Annual Wellness Visit’ as a ‘problem directed’ visit based on a patient’s medical history, or on abnormalities in laboratory findings, for example, which over the years might even have remained unchanged and not involved problems or been otherwise connected to any symptoms. These still, however, might be considered by a conscientious physician to be a ‘problem,’ opening the way for a more comprehensive ‘problem directed’ examination. I suppose if such practices exist, it is a ‘judgement call’ on the part of the physician as to what he or she might be looking for. 

JL 

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Our Liz Truss Moment 

Paul Krugman’s May 21 posting on his Substack site included these comments on the international bond market: 

‘In other words, until now markets have believed that the U.S. has the resources to deal with its deficit whenever it musters the political will. And bond buyers have been willing to assume that we are a serious country that will eventually get its fiscal house in order. But markets’ patience with American dysfunction isn’t unlimited. 

Consider how quickly things went wrong for the UK. In 2022 Liz Truss, Britain’s Prime Minister, announced a “mini-budget” that involved cutting taxes and blowing up the budget deficit. Markets freaked out: long-term interest rates soared and the pound plunged. The tabloid The Daily Star famously set up a webcam showing a photo of Truss next to a head of iceberg lettuce wearing a wig, and asked which would last longer. 

The lettuce won, because Britain’s parliamentary system allowed it to get rid of a disastrous leader. We, unfortunately, can’t. 

So are we facing a Liz Truss moment in America? Long-term interest rates are close to their highest level in many years’ 

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In our Constitutionly-based system, we are stuck with Donald Trump until 2028, elected by a misinformed and misled voting public in 2024, seduced by lies and appeals to barely hidden bigotry. 

In a parliamentary system, he might right now be on his way out, just as the UK’s Parliament dumped Liz Truss during the fiscal crisis she brought on, more quickly that it took for the head of lettuce mentioned above to wilt. 

   

In the UK in 2022, their Prime Minister quit before the head of lettuce wilted.  But that can't happen here. If you wish, blame it on the Founding Fathers who devised our Constitution. 

          

We can remove him from the presidency during his four-year term of office only via impeachment or the 25th Amendment’s disabilty provisions! I believe It is worth a try. 

I suspect many Republicans agree but are afraid to open their mouths. Jackspotpourri went into this more deeply in its April 17 posting, easily accessed through the Archive off to the right. There is too much at stake. Not getting our fiscal house in order can destroy our nation’s economy and everything that depends upon it.  

The ability to borrow money on the international bond market at a reasonable rate is essential to any nation whose economy produces an annual deficit ... and you live in one.

JL 

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Another Reason to Read a Daily Newspaper 

Here’s a letter published in Friday’s Palm Beach Post (I have deleted the writer’s name). The criticism of our two Senators and the Congressman from the Northern part of Palm Beach County is well deserved. 

‘Proposed Medicaid cuts will hurt Floridians - The United States is the only industrial nation that does not have universal healthcare for its residents. Of the 10 wealthiest nations in the world, we are the only one not to provide universal healthcare. 

We have the most expensive medications. Our veterans and the elderly must wait weeks for medical care not performed in hospitals. And yet, Republicans in Congress are hellbent on cutting Medicaid and veteran hospitals. 

Their budget plan will cut healthcare for 7 million to 17 million people. Medicaid is the lifeblood for rural communities like Belle Glade and Pahokee. Millions of elderly and disabled Americans depend on the nursing homes financed through Medicaid. Cutting it will result in millions of people infecting others, closing facilities, and raising health insurance premiums. It is unconscionable that Sen. Ashley Moody now sanctions taking healthcare from the working poor, as does Sen. Rick Scott, the richest man in Congress because of the 'golden parachute' he received as CEO of Columbia/HCA after the company committed the largest Medicare and Medicaid fraud in U.S. history at the time. 

The most reprehensible though is Rep Brian Mast, an Army veteran who lost both his legs while serving in Afghanistan, declaring, 'I am committed to working with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to cut spending and responsibly shrink the size of our federal bureaucracy.' Cuts that would deny military veterans the services and resources he has enjoyed.’ 

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The legislators mentioned in the letter hold office only because of the grossly misinformed and misled voters who in 2024 cast their ballots for Scott, Mast, and for the Governor who appointed Moody when ‘Little Marco’ Rubio, ignoring the insults Donald Trump had thrown at him over the years, was sufficiently spineless to accept the job as his Secretary of State, necessitating his resignation from the Senate. 

Blame for these legislators rests, if only partially, on those voters who do not read a local, daily newspaper and haven’t a clue as to who the Republicans budget-cutters they put into office really serve … and friends, it isn’t those same voters! 

Bargain rate subscriptions to local newspapers like the Palm Beach Post, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and even the Miami Herald are available at their websites, and all provide a decent amount of national and international news as well as the more local news you won’t find in the New York Times.

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Incidentally, my letter to the Palm Beach Post, mentioned in the May 21 posting of Jackspotpourri, was printed in that newspaper’s May 24 edition.  

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About Opinion Pieces:  When you read an ‘opinion’ piece in any newspaper, it is important to identify from where the writer is coming. Journalists, although they may have strong opinions, are engaged in reporting and writing ethically about things as they see them. This also applies to writers from the academic world who don’t hesitate to voice their opinion. This warrants your giving more credence to what comes from the pens of these sources, even when you disagree with it, than opinions of writers who are full-time employees of organizations dedicated to certain goals and however much expertise they might possess, are little more than mouthpieces for their employers’ views. 

JL 

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Flooded Out? - Blame FEMA!

Check out Heather Cox Richardson’s May 23 posting (https://substack.com/@hrichardson) to see how massively misinformed Trump’s supporters in flood-ravaged western North Carolina are, and the real harm they are doing to themselves by swallowing Republican lies, convincing them that FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), part of the Department of Homeland Security, is the cause of their problems and would best be done away with. 

This is no longer a political problem; protecting and saving human lives are at stake, but since when have Republicans really cared about that? 

JL

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A Book Worth Reading, or Re-Reading 

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s monumental ‘The Age of Jackson,’ winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History back in 1945, eighty years ago, expounds ageless ideas. Rather than go into the details of the book, here are two quotes that should let you know what it is about. First is a dedication at the very start that quotes Nineteenth Century historian and politician, George Bancroft: 

“The feud between the capitalist and the laborer, the house of Have and the house of Want, is as old as social union, and can never be entirely quieted; but he who will act with moderation, prefer fact to theory, and remember that every thing in this world is relative and not absolute, will see that the violence of the contest may be stilled.” 

Each of the book’s 37 chapters is prefaced by a brief paragraph hinting at what that chapter will be about in much greater detail. Here is the author’s such paragraph introducing the book’s final chapter: “XXXVII – Traditions of Democracy:  The tradition of Jefferson and Jackson might recede, but it could never disappear. It was bound to endure in America so long as liberal capitalistic society endured, for it was the creation of the internal necessities of such a society. American democracy has come to accept the struggle among competing groups for the control of the state as a positive virtue – indeed, as the only foundation for liberty. The business community has been ordinarily the most powerful of these groups, and liberalism in America has been ordinarily the movement on the part of the other sections of society to restrain the power of the business community. This was the tradition of Jefferson and Jackson, and it has been the basic meaning of American liberalism.” 

Between these two quotes are about 577 pages of American History which are just as pertinent today as they were in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth decades of the Nineteenth Century. Although electronic media did not exist in those years, the proliferation of political opinion, mostly in newspapers and other journals, probably exceeded what is available today on TV and the internet!  And what transpired in Congress and in government agencies was meticulously documented.  Schlesinger makes great use of these sources. 

Not incidentally, the rise of a class of industrial and shop workers in America during this period, having secured voting rights despite their possessing neither property nor wealth, heralded the contributions of labor to the nation’s economy and was catered to by mostly insincere politicians and Parties who were not at all eager to bring about changes in whom the government favored. Ideas connecting human labor with the creation of wealth were already prevalent in the United States, even before Karl Marx wrote about them in Germany in the 1850s, as were efforts by the business and banking communities to oppose them during ‘The Age of Jackson.’ 

It was an environment of a growing nation struggling internally to deal with physical expansion and the continued existence of slavery under the guise of preserving the rights of States. This ultimately led to the Civil War. 

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(I want to point out that Arthur Schlesinger has been faulted for not writing about Jackson’s support of slavery [he ‘owned’ many] and his mistreatment of Native Americans, dark issues which might have had something to do with his ability to remain popular with the common laboring man and farmers who sometimes saw these attitudes to be to their advantage. In addition, Jackson had their support because of his successful efforts to end the private banking system which favored the wealthy, businesses, and the newly emerging corporations of that era.

Although he was succeeded in 1836 by his Vice-President, Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s popularity did not suvive the unification of his opponents into what became the Whig Party, which soundly trounced Van Buren in the 1840 elections. The two presidents elected by the Whigs (William Henry Harrison in 1840 and Zachary Taylor in 1848) both died soon after being elected and were succeed by their vice-presidents (John Tyler and Millard Fillmore); the Whigs were never really able to replace the conservative Democratic Party that survived ‘The Age of Jackson’ and did not stand in the way of the Civil War.) 

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. 3. Then I read my email. 

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. Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the results of my initially having accessed Google (or any other search engine) for information. Contrary to the AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information, yourself or something else (AI), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. (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 

                                                        * * * * 

May 21, 2025 - Two 'Fun' Pieces, Presidents Accepting Gifts, Those Who Sound the Alarm, and a Letter about Israel

                                                                   *   *   * 

The Sky is Falling

I was about to recommend Heather Cox Richardson’s May 16 posting on ‘Letters from an American’ but decided it would be more fun to refer you to the story about what happened when Henny-Penny thought the sky was falling. It covers the same territory as Richardson does. Just CLICK HERE or copy and paste https://americanliterature.com/childrens-stories/henny-penny-the-sky-is-falling on your browser line. 

In your daily lives, try to do better than did Henny Penny, who was satisfied just to lay an egg, similar to how the Democratic Party as presently constituted is behaving. 

JL 

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More Fun 

After that, if you’re still in the mood for more fun, here’s a recent column by the Palm Beach Post’s Frank Cerabino. (I had previewed it the other day with a few of you.) 

‘If Casey DeSantis finds God at Waffle House, maybe she’ll be our next governor’ 

Frank Cerabino - Palm Beach Post 

"Casey DeSantis needs to get to a Waffle House and wait for divine intervention. It’s the only way to save her faltering, yet-to-be-announced campaign for governor.  Allow me to explain: 

It wasn’t that long ago that Florida’s First Lady, the most likeable DeSantis, seemed a sure bet to succeed her husband, the perpetually aggrieved Ron, who is whining down his time in office as a term-limited governor. Casey DeSantis is a more natural politician and a mother of three young children. She also weathered a bout of cancer that included six rounds of chemotherapy, six weeks of radiation and three surgeries. “Through God’s grace, I’m here,” she said. 

To give her some gravitas, the former TV news anchor had a resume booster she could hype on the campaign trail. She became the face of Hope Florida, a non-profit community welfare organization created to shuffle Florida’s poor away from existing public services and towards church groups willing to help them.

From 'hopeful' to 'hopeless' with Hope Florida 

But being the architect of Hope Florida went from a highlight to a liability after revelations that $10 million the state received as an overpayment from a Medicaid provider got funneled to Hope Florida, instead of state coffers, and ended up paying for ads against last November’s recreational marijuana ballot amendment.

Meanwhile, her only real obstacle for the Republican nomination, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, a glib MAGA mouthpiece from Naples, won the all-important endorsement of President Donald Trump. 

Trump, who had a penchant for calling Florida’s governor “Ron DeSanctimonius,” launched DeSantis’ longshot campaign for governor eight years ago by endorsing him and calling DeSantis a “brilliant young leader.” But in the following years, DeSantis revealed himself as an abrasive guy with his own ambitions, a semi-loyalist incapable of achieving the Rubio level of emasculating, obsequious fealty that Trump required. 

So, Trump did something unusual. He endorsed Donalds for governor in February — even before Donalds announced that he would run for the office. “Byron Donalds would be a truly Great and Powerful Governor for Florida and, should he decide to run, will have my Complete and Total Endorsement,” 

Trump posted on social media. “RUN, BYRON, RUN!” Donalds got the “complete and total” endorsement. That’s the "top and best" kind from Trump. Five days after Trump’s premature endorsement, Donalds announced he was running. 

Lately, Donalds appears to be tidying up his personal history in preparation for next year’s election. 

Rep. Byron Donalds: 'The Lord spoke to me and said ... ' As a young adult, the now-46-year-old Donalds got arrested for distribution of marijuana and passing bad checks. He appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network recently to credit God for saving him from the path he was on in his younger life. 

It was while he was rolling napkins in 2001 at a Tallahassee Cracker Barrel, where he worked as a waiter, he said. “The Lord spoke to me and said, ‘Stop running from me,’” Donalds said, “and so it knocked me back.” 

The way Donalds tells it, there was a church bus full of women coming from a religious revival eating at the restaurant. He ran out into the parking lot, stopping them from leaving to tell them the Lord was speaking to him, Donalds said. “They pour out of the bus and they all pray over me,” Donald said. “And I gave my life to Christ in the parking lot of Cracker Barrel.” (As a side note, I too have been saved at the Cracker Barrel — but only from heart disease by passing up the country fried steak drenched in that gray goo that’s called “sawmill gravy.”) 

You see what Donalds has done here? He has engineered a clever reputation makeover by converting the crime-ing part of his life into a story about God saving him at the Cracker Barrel. 

OK, Casey DeSantis, you’ve got to respond. You can’t just let Donalds steamroll you by getting both Trump’s and God’s endorsement, a winning quinella in any Republican primary these days. Sure, Casey DeSantis beat cancer, but lots of people beat cancer. She needs a personal visit from God at an iconic Florida location. And Donalds has already beat her to the Cracker Barrel. Shucks! No epiphanies among the cinnamon brooms for her. No chicken ‘n dumplin’ revelations. She’ll have to find another spot, one without rocking chairs out front. 

It's Waffle House to the rescue for Casey DeSantis. I recommend a Waffle House. Any Waffle House. They’re all holy temples capable of Florida electoral miracles, as far as I can tell. 

People speak in tongues at the Waffle House, especially after closing time at the local bars. And the meek shall inherit the booth near the bathroom. Casey DeSantis should just grab a seat, order up some grub and wait for the Lord to show up amid the scattered, smothered, and covered hashed browns. If God is speaking to Donalds, They/Them will probably speak to Casey DeSantis too, especially if she’s down in the polls. It’s her only chance. Get thee to a Waffle House, Casey. Wait for a message from God and bring some Tums."

 (Frank Cerabino is a news columnist with The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network-Florida. He can be reached at fcerabino@gannett.com.)

 

JL

                                                           * * * 

Okay, Now It’s Time To Get Serious! Fun Time is over.

 

                                                            * * *

Let’s start with the Founding Fathers' Crystal Ball 

Here’s a quote from MSNBC’s Sunday Spotlight’s online posting: ‘The founders didn't anticipate the existence of planes, but they did foresee how foreign governments might try to corrupt an American president with lavish gifts. Not only did they write into the Constitution a ban on gifts or titles from foreign states without congressional approval, they also personally returned even small gifts from foreign governments rather than risk the appearance of impropriety or undue influence. Trump's desire to accept a $400 million jumbo jet from Qatar violates all of these principles, writes presidential historian Alexis Coe.’ 

This is just more proof that President Trump’s blatant disregard of the Constitution amounts to a ‘high crime and misdemeanor’ worthy of impeachment. The Constitution is quite clear in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 where it states that ‘No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.’ (For those who raise the question, Congress agreed to the acceptance of the Statue of Liberty and the Oval Office’s ‘Resolute Desk,’ both gifts of foreign nations.) 

I suspect there are many other such gifts that don’t make the headlines. But don’t ask the President’s appointees to go looking for them. 

Ignorance or illiteracy, two of the President’s qualities that many share with him, are not excuses for disregarding these words from the Constitution. But it’s about much more than just the illegal acceptance of gifts! Read on! 

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They are Sounding an Alarm 

Undeniably, Professors Heather Cox Richardson, Timothy Snyder, and Economist Paul Krugman are sounding an alarm about the dangers of the direction in which President Trump’s policies are taking us: abandoning old friends and allies for less trustworthy ones, catering to bigots, oligarchs and despots, ignoring or misreading the Constitution, and sacrificing ethical behavior for what looks like a good deal. 

Read their almost daily warnings on their Substack sites regarding the acts of our President and those who follow him. Jackspotpourri can’t include them all, but at least can point the way. You can access their postings at:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com  

https://snyder.substack.com

https://paulkrugman.substack.com 

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the vast majority of the letter writers (on their Opinion pages except on Mondays and Tuesdays) to the Palm Beach Post … as well as their occasional inclusion of columns by USA Today columnist Rex Huppke (on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social.) 

No one can claim that they’re being blindsided by Trump. The alarm bells are ringing all over the place! As an example, check out a recent (May 19) warning from Krugman. He entitled the piece                                                     

'The Attack of the Sadistic Zombies' 

and included as a subtitle, 'The GOP budget is incredibly cruel — and that’s the point’ and here it is for you to read. Just copy and paste https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/attack-of-the-sadistic-zombies 

on your browser line or just CLICK HERE

Krugman is sometimes hard to digest, but please, stick with this revealing piece. A past winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, his frequent postings attempt to make really complicated issues understandable. 

And if you don't bother to read it, at least be aware that Krugman closes his message with these words: "Inflicting harm on the vulnerable isn’t something they do with regret, it’s something they do with a sense of satisfaction. OK, I’ll probably get a lot of grief for saying that — but maybe not as much grief as I would have gotten a few months ago. For does anyone doubt that the people now running America are bullies completely lacking in any kind of compassion?  And why do bullies beat up people who can’t defend themselves? Because they can.” 

JL 

                                                        * * * 

A Letter Regarding Israel 

Here’s a letter I recently emailed off to the Palm Beach Post. I’ll let you know if they print it. You might not agree with me. 

‘In a recent ‘Your Turn’ Opinion column (May 17), Uriel Heilman mentions former Israeli Shin Bet head Ami Ayalon concerning the continuing conflict between Israel and Hamas. Although Heilman’s column does not specifically mention it, Ayalon has elsewhere favored a ‘two-state’ solution as part of the way to end that struggle, The problem is that the dateline of Heilman’s column reads ‘Modin, Israel. That populous Israeli city, where Heilman resides, is located on the West Bank, in territory that would be part of a Palestinian state in a ‘two-state’ solution. This may explain Heilman’s frustrations.’ 

Ayalon’s full thoughts appear in the April 11 edition of ‘Foreign Affairs.’ (Check it out at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/way-israel-truly-defeat-hamas-ayalon?utm_medium=promo_email&utm_source=lo_flows&utm_campaign=article_link&utm_term=article_email&utm_content=20250517 ) 

As for a ‘two-state’ solution, most of Israel’s religiously observant citizens oppose it while a majority of its not particularly observant citizens support it, according to recent surveys. 

JL 

                                                          * * * 

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. 3. Then I read my email. 

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. Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the more traditional results of my initially having accessed Google (or any other search engine) for information. Contrary to the AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information, yourself or something else (AI), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. 

(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 

                                                       * * * *