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| Benjamin Franklin |
That conflict is being racheted up right now with some members of Congress suggesting that government employees, including the armed forces, might consider disobeying instructions and orders found to be illegal by the courts. Not backing down, the President has termed that to be sedition, punishable by death. The Supreme Court might, or might not, be willing and able to resolve this conflict. I have my doubts.
JL
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Strength Replaces Weakness
Simon Rosenberg’s ‘Hopium’ Chronicles posting on November 20 included the following summary of the President’s woes:
“We Are Strong Now, And He Is Weak - Looking back at the past month we’ve had a remarkable series of big wins - the US Senate voted to roll back Trump’s terrible tariffs; an enormous blue wave swept across the country two weeks ago, giving us election victories of all kinds, everywhere; polling now makes plain that Trump took a huge hit during the shutdown, which helped contribute mightily to our big election wins; we restored our margins with young people and Hispanic voters in NJ and VA, a potentially ominous development for Republicans next year; his redistricting gambit has both failed, and blown up in his face; the entire Congress turned on him, and forced him to release the Epstein files that he’s been suppressing for months despite clear promises to release them; his illicit campaign to prosecute his political enemies has begun to unravel; his already terrible poll numbers have fallen even further, the battlefield has shifted by 8 + points towards the Dems since 2024, Dems are starting to open up sturdy leads in party ID and the generic ballot, and the Senate - not just the House - appears to be in play; it is not clear a diminished Mike Johnson retains control of the House; powerful Republican opposition leaders have begun to emerge; House and Senate Rs are now at war with one another, and the whole DC GOP thing has begun melting down as the undeniable stench of Trumpian failure becomes impossible to ignore.”
JL
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Important Thoughts from Josh Marshall
Josh Marshall, in his Talking Points Memo column of November 18, seems to recognize, where he writes in his ‘backchannel,’ that Trump will get more reckless as his power, well described above by Simon Rosenberg, ebbs:
“A few TPM readers responded to yesterday’s post about Trump as the “weak horse” arguing that Trump’s waning power makes him more dangerous, not less. I agree. Mostly. What’s “more dangerous” is a subjective question, with different kinds of dangers, different time horizons. Overall it’s clearly a good thing since Trump’s loss of power and the eventual defeat of his movement are good things. Though that’s far from a certainty, it is getting more likely. But Trump won’t go quietly. We know that from Jan. 6. No president wants to see their popularity wane or the loss of power that goes with it. But Trump’s binary mental world puts a sharper, more draconian focus on everything. In his world, you are punishing or the punished, dominating or the dominated. Loss of power means personal political peril. That’s how it works in his own head, and to a significant degree Trump’s own actions have made that all-or-nothing world a reality around him.”
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Marshall’s message is clear. The now unpredictable man in the White House, already speaking of opposition as sedition, has become a danger to the nation because of what he is capable of doing, as well as what those he has put into power are similarly capable of doing.
Beware of them all!
JL
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Government Of the People, By the People, and For the People
November 19 was the 162nd anniversary of President Lincoln’s address at the dedication of the National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA, site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Lincoln connected the Civil War to the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence, stating that the nation was "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
This was contrary to those who looked to the Constitution with its careful language catering to the propertied classes, rather than to the Declaration of Independence, as a guidepost for the nation to follow. Even today, there are those who would reverse Lincoln’s populist orientation. Most claim to be Republicans.
JL
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Remember Kate Smith? Not a Patriot!
Irving Berlin may have written the magnificent anthem, ‘God Bless America,’ but it was Kate Smith who sang it beautifully as we entered World War Two, inspiring the entire nation.
Smith, who was a bit overweight, was the ‘Fat Lady’ referred to in the phrase, ‘The game ain’t over till the Fat Lady sings.’ Part owner of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team, she sang it at the conclusion of every home game either in person or from a recording. It also was played for Yankee fans at Yankee Stadium.
But things are not always what they seem. It turns out that Smith was a bigot, with a capital B, and even made a popular recording of a race-baiting song explaining ‘That’s why darkies were born.’ No patriot was she!
In those days, remember, it was acceptable to be a bigot. The armed forces were still segregated and Jews and Blacks weren’t accepted at Ivy League colleges.
But that changed, starting when President Harry Truman integrated the armed forces and the country started to become awakened (is that being ‘woke’?) to its injustices, culminating in the Civil Rights act of 1964. In 2019, the Philadelphia Flyers got rid of a statue of Smith, erected at their rink about thirty years earler and the Yankees even replaced Smith’s recording of ‘God Bless America’ at their games with versions by other artists.
Here are the lyrics to ‘God Bless America,’ as rewritten by Irving Berlin in 1938 from an earlier version. Note the isolationist tinge to the rarely sung opening verse. Even Irving Berlin was not terribly bothered by those ‘storm clouds’ that included Kristallnacht and continued persecution of Jews in Germany.
"While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.
God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her,
And guide her,
Thru the night
With a light from above.
From the mountains,
To the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam,
God bless America,
My home sweet home.’
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, then 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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