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Looking at Some Older Postings on JackspotpourriHere’s an item that was part of Jackspotpourri’s posting on April 27, 2019, still during Trump’s first presidential term. It consists of the lyrics of a song I had heard somewhere. (It is too good for me to have written it) and It is reminiscent of the kind of folk music with political messages popular in the middle of the last century:
"The Ballad of “Cheatin’ Donald”
(Sung while strumming a guitar (or at least pretending to). Chorus is sort of like “Davie Crockett.” Verse is something like “Sweet Betsy from Pike." In today’s musical environment, it might fit in with rap or hip hop as well.)
Oh, he cheats on his taxes, he cheats on his wives,
But the hammer of justice never arrives,
He don’t pay his bills, he’ll fight you in court,
When you try to collect, the amount he wuz short.
Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game
Do things his way, or you’re right out the door,
The rule of law, he prefers to ignore,
To Liberty’s gates,
He’ll add ste-el locks,
That’s what he learned,
From watching Fox.
Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game
To keep his guys happy, he’s got all the tools,
So long as they let him, he makes all the rules,
They buy into his big song and dance,
Blaming their pain on those damn immigrants.
Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game
The problems of plain folks,
He’s good at ignorin’,
Like health costs which are, eternally soarin’,
But give him a despot,
With ty-rannical power,
To be his buddy and before whom to cower.
Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game
He pours it on thick, like with real estate,
Though it involves, our nation’s fate,
But sooner or later,
Our laws he’ll obey,
Or get himself locked up at, Gwan ton a mo Bay.
Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game
Oh, he’ll cheat on his taxes,
He’ll cheat on his wives,
Till the day that hammer of justice arrives,
I don’t give a damn, what will be his fate, but I only hope that,
It won’t come too late!
Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game
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A posting a week ealier on April 20, 2019, included the following:
Early Warning and Not About Hurricanes
‘It will be too late to save democracy in the United States if we reach the point where a Trumpian Executive branch has so manipulated the Department of Justice and its Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other Federal law enforcement agencies, that they become tools of the Administration’s political agenda. Such an occurrence would amount to a disregard of our Constitution and would be possible only with the acquiescence or impotency of the Legislative and Judicial branches of our government. If this politized control ever extended even further and involved the armed forces, the game would be over … and Americans would be wise to consider emigration, if it were still possible, to friendlier democratic nations where they might seek asylum. Scary, isn’t it. That’s why your political involvement is necessary today to prevent this from happening.’
And I wrote that over six years ago!
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While You’re Looking at Older Postings, check out March 24, 2017’s extremely lengthy and meandering Jackspotpourri posting for another song or two and a link to what JD Vance’s 2016 book, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ is about. In view of Donald Trump’s instability becoming more noticeable each day, we can’t ignore the fact that JD is presently our Vice-President.
It is easy to get to that posting by clicking on the archive over to the right, first the year, then the month and you can get all of that month’s postings.
I apologize for the length of that posting, but I was about to go on a vacation and tried to squeeze as much as possible into it, adding what I now see as a lot of extraneous material, but give it a shot. I can see now that was a mistake.
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 any 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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