Once a Real Estate Agent, Always a Real Estate Agent
President Trump is like a real estate agent, trying to keep both seller and buyer happy and enabling him to walk away with his commission.
Putin and Zelenskyy are his buyer and seller, or vice versa. Take your choice. His commission is a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize, and the monetary rewards into which he can parlay it.
So when he talks to his seller and to his buyer, he uses inferences, half-truths, hints at vague commitments on their parts and of other interested parties, that lead each to believe that the deal is about to be closed to their advantage. He comes close to, but not quite, lying to both of them, and when the truth finally comes out at the property’s closing, it is uncomfortable or even impossible for either or both to back out.
That is the game he is playing.
Not all real estate agents play that game but Donald Trump does! Historically, he has often come out the winner in such situations, with the buyers and sellers wishing they had never sat down with him in the first place.
But it looks like his is the only game in town.
Feel free to pass this on to both Putin and Zelenskyy, if you have access to them. If you don’t, try writing a letter to your local newspaper. Even if they don’t print it, numbers count and they value your opinion.
JL
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Big, Big, Numbers
The New Yorker magazine’s August 18 issue included a nineteen-page article on how President Trump is personally profiting from the presidency. Copy and paste https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08/18/the-number on your device's browser line or CLICK HERE to read it. If you get a third of the way through it, you’ll begin to get the idea.
The article, ‘The Number’ - ‘How much is Trump pocketing off the Presidency?’ is by Reporter-at-Large David D. Kirkpatrick and starts with this premise: ‘I decided to tally up the Trump family’s profiteering, including five Persian Gulf mega-projects, a luxury jet from Qatar, a sprawling resort in Hanoi, half a dozen projects peddling crypto, and MAGA merch.’
Kirkpatrick leaves the rest to you.
I gave up while trying to see where the borders between millions, billions, and trillions, were located.
JL
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TACOs
And speaking of the President, a financial analyst (The Financial Times' Robert Armstrong) recently labeled stock market instability as being due to frequent vacillations in Trump's tariff policy as the ‘TACO” effect, translated as 'Trump Always Chickens Out.’ Same thing applies to his policies regarding Ukraine and Gaza.
JL
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A Roadmap for Democrats
Here’s a direct quote from Professor Barbara Walter’s ‘Here Be Dragons’ posting dated August 20. Democrats must heed this advice! (I have forwarded it to my Congressional Representative and State Party head as well.)
‘A Roadmap for Democrats
1. Stop waiting for fairness. Assume Republicans will push every rule to its breaking point and have plans in place to counteract it.
2. Match them at every level. Run candidates everywhere, fund local races, and contest every office. Leaving down-ballot positions uncontested gives authoritarians control over how elections are managed and run.
3. Rebuild state politics. Republicans dominate redistricting, voting rules, and state courts because Democrats neglected state legislatures for decades. Democrats have to rebuild this infrastructure starting now.
4. Play offense. Defense won’t win this game. Democrats need to introduce ballot initiatives to expand voting rights, lawsuits to challenge partisan maps, create coalitions across rural and urban communities.
5. Talk dirty. Republicans win by framing the debate with bold, emotional language while Democrats get bogged down in nuance. Democrats need to strip away jargon, speak with force, and seize the narrative.
The Hard Truth: Democrats face a choice: fight back with every legal tool available or risk being remembered as the last generation to hold free elections in America. The Republican Party has been captured by leaders who no longer play by democratic rules. The only way to preserve democracy is for Democrats to be just as tough, just as imaginative, and just as unyielding.’
JL
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Take Your Choice
Whether you follow the thoughts of Heather Cox Richardson, Barbara Walter, Timothy Snyder, Paul Krugman, Rachel Maddow, James Carville, Mike Nellis, or any other knowledgeable commentator, they all seem to agree that President Trump is ignoring the Constitution and the rules of law in attempting to change the way our elections are run, always a State function, as well as the roles of many government agencies.
Knowingly or not, Trump is out to destroy democracy in America. We must remember, however, that while the Supreme Court has given him immunity from prosecution for ‘his official’ acts, they have not sanctioned those acts themselves! The Constitution will have the final say on that.
The National Guard units of our States and the FBI are not intended to be street cops chasing after civilians and the behavior of the Immigration Control & Enforcement agency, ICE, has been declared illegal by numerous judges, but the adminstration doesn’t seem to care.
The only support they have is from the misinformed voters who elect Republicans who appeal to their bigotry, a false understanding of American history and the ignoring of Constitutional safeguards including the First Amendment as well as those protecting due process under our laws.
Not thusly kneeling before the President guarantees a primary challenge ordered from the White House by one who many are sufficiently foolish to believe was put there by the Deity.
If you want to know how America got to this sorry state, check out Professor Richardson’s posting dated August 20 by CLICKING HERE or copying and pasting https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
on the browser line of your device. It is an exceptionally good "Letter from an American,' tying American history from the Civil War onward to today's headlines, and a great learning experience.
Where the nation goes from here is another question, one that only you can answer.
JL
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A Homework Assignment
Texas, where the Republican-dominated legislature and governor are ready to do whatever the President asks of them is the home of many, many, corporate giants.
Wikipedia lists 54 that are among Fortune Magazine’s top 500 major corporations, according to Axios. While many are petroleum-related businesses, you still may recognize some as household names.
Copy and paste https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/fortune-500-companies-in-texas-dfw-caterpillar-exxon-mobil-att-mckesson-tesla-oil-gas/287-ddce9682-46e8-4868-8eb5-9896f15f9ea4 on your browser line or CLICK HERE for a listing of most of them.
If you have the opportunity to do business with any of them, you might drop a line to their CEO telling them what you think of the behavior of the Texas legislature. And if you’re a stockholder, that would be even better. I’m sure each has a website with a contact address.
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com.
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More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) 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. Most are from vendors which I may have used years ago. 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 ‘Promotion’ 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 (or other search engines) 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). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than the AI summary.
I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence.
JL
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