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Enough is Enough and Perhaps Too MuchWhen I was a kid growing up in Newark, in the 1930s and 1940s, the prime source of news in our apartment was the Newark Evening News (which ceased being published in 1972), a copy of which my father brought home every evening, and which we all read.
The ‘News’ carried all the national and international news, provided by its own reporters throughout New Jersey, and in Washington DC, as well as that from the national wire services (the Associated Press, United Press International, etc.). Its news might be a day or two old, but that really didn’t matter to us. Of course, it covered State and local news, including sports, thoroughly.
There were similar ‘local’ papers in other New Jersey cities like as Jersey City, Paterson, Trenton, Camden, and the cities ‘down the shore,’ doing the same job in their locales, but the ‘News,’ was New Jersey’s largest newspaper, its ‘paper of record,’ and actually the twentieth largest paper circulation-wise in the country in those days.
Besides reporting the news, the ‘News’ and papers like it, had pages of classified advertisements, and a galaxy of features, mostly syndicated, including comics, homemaking, fashion, advice, entertainment, dining, cooking, puzzles, and even bridge. No one really cared about the editorial positions these papers took, except perhaps at election time. Supplemented by ‘beefed-up’ Sunday editions and an occasional magazine like ‘Life,’ the ‘Saturday Evening Post,’ or the ‘Readers’ Digest,’ this was sufficient to keep us, and most people, occupied and relatively well informed, without a great investment of their time.
But after World War Two, things began to change. As newspaper readership declined, a process that continues today, driving many papers and magazines out of business, television and the internet arose taking their place.
When the ‘Newark Evening News’ closed down in 1972, its role was taken over by its morning competitor, the ‘Newark Star-Ledger,’ with whom it shared a circulation of almost 400,000 at that point and to which it sold its presses. In early 2025, the ‘Star-Ledger’ itself ended its print edition and is now available only digitally.
Another source of information in those days was radio, with occasional newscasts and commentators, in addition to fifteen-minute soap operas and a lot of music. To know what was ‘on the air’ from local stations and the ones in nearby New York City (or Philadelphia), one could refer to their broadcast schedules in the local newspaper, which still, in those days, remained the dominant source of news.
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I still spend at least half an hour each morning over coffee with the delivered print edition of the South Florida SunSentinel which does a good job on local and State news, depending on the Associated Press wire service and occasionally the New York Times for national and international news stories.
I glance at almost every article in that paper, even if I quickly move on the next one after scanning the first paragraph or so which determines if I will read more of a particular article. It’s a rare article that I read all the way to its end.
Their ‘non-news’ features are pretty much the same as what the old Newark Evening News carried years ago, but their editorial policy is a liberal one, unlike the solidly Republican positions of the old Newark Evening News. (It seems that when the government is a liberal one, newspapers tend to be conservative, and when government is conservative, newspapers become liberal, despite their ownership. More about this some other day.)
I then sit down before my computer to check out what’s doing online and to see if there is any late news among my emails about events that may have happened after my ‘print’ newspaper went to press.
I wonder, after breakfast, why I am investing so much time in doing that, after sitting down for thirty minutes with a real printed newspaper.
(As I write this, I was interrupted by a four-foot long iguana leaping from a tree to the ground behind my patio. Getting up, I shouted out ‘Get Out of Here’ and it quickly scuttled through the hedges back to the canal with his buddies. Iguanas do understand English. Many Americans do not.)
But getting back to my emails, I find little there of which I was not already broadly aware from my perusal of the SunSentinel. Just to be sure, opening the New York Times ‘Breaking News’ or ‘Morning Headlines’ emails usually confirms this, and Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s daily ‘Letters from an American’ (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/) sums up all of a morning’s loose ends. I will continue to season what appears in Jackspotpourri with sprinklings from these sources and recommend that others access them as well. This might be a good moment to check out what Professor Richardson has to say today. Just visit the link shown above.
As much as I would like to, this is a good excuse to not bother with the words and thoughts in the email postings of such savants as Timothy Snyder, Paul Krugman, Simon Rosenberg, Robert Reich, Barbara Walter, and many others, including the folks at ‘The Bulwark,’ the ‘Free Press,’ the ‘Gothamist,’ or the ‘Daily Kos, and network news summaries as provided by CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and Bloomberg. My conclusion is that doing so might be too great an investment of my time and attention. After reading the newspaper, the emails from New York Times and and Professor Richardson are enough. (Of course, if you’ve a lot of time on your hands, it cannot hurt to dig into what these other sources have to say.)
In any event, future postings of Jackspotpourri will then be able to devote more space to my own thoughts rather than leaning on the postings of others. The internet is like a tree whose branches are laden with many fruits, but eating too many of them can make you sick. Enough is Enough and Perhaps Too Much.
JL
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Another Viewpoint – Do You Agree?
‘Another Viewpoint’ on the Opinion page of the SunSentinel on October 3 carried this piece by J.K. Amerson-Lopez, who was raised as a child in a family of American diplomats. Please click here to read it, or copy and paste https://enewspaper.sun-sentinel.com/shortcode/SUN315/edition/2f3c86a4-dd6f-40c4-81f8-421132e0da39?page=02c92f7b-9e3c-4ce3-b6e6-f518c1638bce& on the browser line of your device. It says what many of us are reluctant, or perhaps fearful, to say in public.
JL
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The Second Amendment Has Six Key Words
Once again, let’s examine the language of the Second Amendment.
"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.’
Note those six key words, ‘the security of a free State.’ One of the real, ususally unspoken, purposes of the Second Amendment included the right of those free States to be able to arm militias to oppose Federal troops if ever they were used against States to enforce Federal objectives. This culminated many years later in Secession and the Civil War, basically over the issue of the expansion of slavery.
Here’s something to think about.
Is it too far a stretch to consider that the Second Amendment suggests that States might use their militias (State National Guard units) to oppose any Federal troops President Trump sends into a free State to control opposition to his policies there, considering such an intrusion to be a threat to the security of that ‘free State’? Such States’ rights were why South Carolina’s militia fired on Fort Sumter back in 1861, the start of the Civil War’s hostilities.
The problem today is that the States no longer arm their own militias, having given responsibility for that to the Federal Government in 1903. According to ‘AI,’ ‘The federal government began arming state National Guard units following the Militia Act of 1903. The law was a major step in transforming state militias into a federally regulated reserve military force. This change codified the National Guard's dual role, serving under state governors in peacetime and the president during national emergencies.’ Undefined is what actually constitutes a national emergency during peacetime.
Whether the Commander-in-Chief’s authority over National Guard units supercedes the authority of those ‘free States’ governments within those States is a tricky Constitutional question. There are legal challenges to such presidential authority being made by State governments right now.
As I said, this is something to think about.
JL
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Listen Up, You Guys
Please read somewhere the remarks made by the President and the Secretary of Defense before this week’s gathering of all of our generals and admirals that the Secretary Hegseth had assembled for an unprecedented ‘pep talk.’
Pick your source; there are many online. I found that of the Associated Press useful. You can check it out by clicking here or copying and pasting https://apnews.com/article/trump-hegseth-generals-meeting-military-pentagon-0ecdcbb8877e24329cfa0fc1e851ebd2 on the browser line of your device .
Trump's words were actually a campaign speech suggesting strongly that the military ally themselves with the presidency, for the good of the nation.
His words were at best contrary to the way our military has behaved since its formation. They were un-American words and I suspect clear evidence to the assembled military leaders there that Trump is a wannabe dictator with no respect for the Constitution, advocating the use of armed forces against our civilian population. West Point graduate and Harvard-educated Democratic Senator Jack Reed commented that ‘even more troubling was Mr. Hegseth’s ultimatum to America’s senior officers: conform to his political worldview or step aside.’
After hearing his words, and those of Secretary Hegseth, I suspect many of the career officers there, those the President likes to refer to as ‘his generals,’ were questioning whether loyalty to their ‘commander-in-chief’ was contrary to their oaths all of them had taken to support and defend the Constitution.
It should not be ignored that the President was visibly disturbed when his presence and remarks were not greeted with applause. Whether this moves them to some sort of action is another question.
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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