Today is Labor Day
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| First Labor Day Parade on Sept. 5, 1882 Reaches Union Square |
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Life Saving Column from Maureen Dowd and Much More
You don’t have to read Maureen Dowd’s August 30 New York Times column, but you must absolutely forward it to anyone you know who has young children, including your own and your grandchildren. It might save a life! Find it at https://www.nytimes.com/column/maureen-dowd. Its title is ‘Vax Quack Lacks Facts.’ And guess who the ‘Quack’ is.
Also, because I don’t want to ruin anyone’s Labor Day, I won’t recommend their checking Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s August 29 column at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ . Her ‘Letters from an American’ of that date picks up where Maureen Dowd leaves off, describing the evils that pervade the entire Trump administration; they go beyond attacking vaccinations.
But I do definitely recommend that you read Professor Timothy Snyder’s Sept. 1 ‘Thinking About’ piece. Find it at https://snyder.substack.com/ under the title of ‘Look at My Works, Ye Mighty.’ It’s mighty serious business.
JL
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We Get Letters With Comments
A regular recipient of Jackspotpourri recently asked to be sent only ‘the right stuff’ and not what he considered ‘junk.’ I politely told him I could not do that. When you click on Jackspotpourri, you get the whole package.
He is a classic example of someone who wants decisions made for him by others, like those who get most of their information from FoxNews or other stops along the way down the right-wing rabbit hole, already pre-digested for them. We don’t play that game. Feel free to disagree, but don’t ask Jackspotpourri to do it for you!
Another recipient’s comment frowned upon Jackspotpourri aggressively ‘bashing’ Trump and his administration, as unnecessarily ‘polarizing’ opinion rather than encouraging ‘peacemaking’ and ‘solidarity’ among those with whom one disagrees as to the best way to reach what might be common goals.
JL
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‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’ Isn’t Synonymous with Assassination
Back in Rome in 44 B.C, his fellow Senators objected to the power grab being executed by Julius Caesar, so they murdered him.
Back in Washington in 1865, States-rightists and supporters of the defeated pro-slavery Confederacy believed that Abraham Lincoln was taking actions beyond those permitted to a president, resulting in their murdering him.
Subsequent assassination attempts, sucessful or not, might not have been so specifically motivated, but are part of American history.
Lincoln’s assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth, was reported to have shouted as he squeezed the trigger of his pistol, ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis.’ Literally, that translates as 'thus always to tyrants,' but in contemporary parlance (according to an Artificial Intelligence search), it can merely mean that tyrannical leaders will inevitably be overthrown in some manner or other'.
In fact, these words still appear in Latin on the official seal of the State of Virginia, where no one has been accused lately of using it as a basis for advocating a political murder.
Only mentally disturbed individuals consider such violence necessary. There is no sympathy for anyone who would act in that manner. Nevertheless, it holds true that ‘tyrannical leaders will inevitably be overthrown.’ And that can still be accomplished by legal means, provided by our Constitution and laws, including those concerning impeachment and the 25th Amendment.
Of interest is the following piece, received by me in connection with a request to donate to ‘Vote Vets.’ It clarifies a lot concerning presidential powers, as discussed above and more specifically, in the Jackspotpourri of August 29, immediately preceding this one. (On some devices, that posting will automatically appear following this posting.) General Eaton’s closing sentence makes a lot of sense to me:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Paul Eaton. Major General, U.S. Army, retired.
I want to try to impress upon you the significance of Donald Trump’s authoritarian decision to force the National Guard, and potentially the Active Duty United States Military, into law enforcement roles on American soil.
In short, the Military is not Donald Trump’s personal instrument. Commander in Chief he may be, but there are laws specifically aimed at restricting his personal direction of the Military for domestic purposes.
The most important of these is the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. It draws a clear line between domestic law enforcement and the Military, and prohibits the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement - except by acts of Congress.
These restrictions are not modern; they go back thousands of years. The term “Crossing the Rubicon” endures from Ancient Rome as the transition point from Republic to Empire. Roman generals were forbidden from bringing standing armies into Italy, past the Rubicon river. They understood the danger of a military force posed against civilian leadership.
When Julius Caesar invaded Rome at the head of his army, when he crossed the Rubicon, he committed a treasonous act. The rest, as they say, is history.
The United States Military is the strongest, finest armed force the world has ever known. Its purpose is to support and defend the Constitution and the people of this country, from our enemies, foreign and domestic. When the military is used on our own soil, there is great danger that the line between countryman and enemy becomes blurred. We are seeing this already with masked ICE personnel executing indiscriminate mass sweeps that, at times, include US citizens and legal residents. Sweeps that are at times, performed brutally.
This is a perilous moment, but I continue to have great faith in the fine women and men serving in uniform. They are our neighbors, sons, daughters, parents, and siblings. They love this country, and its people. They swear an oath to support and defend our Constitution, and they take that oath seriously.
But as Donald Trump purges principled and experienced leaders and attempts to bend the military to his will, we must face reality with open eyes.”
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com.
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
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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