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Tale of Two Cities
Some Democrats, while pleased by their fine showings throughout the nation on November 4, keyed to both moderation and opposition to Trump, might be somewhat distressed by the election of leftist Social Democrat Mohran Mamdani as New York City’s Mayor.
In 2016, Londoners elected their first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, also a ‘soft’ left-wing Social Democrat, buoyed by the votes of that city’s working-class majority. Since then, he has moved toward the center and has been re-elected twice. Look for Zohran Mamdani, newly elected Mayor of New York City, also carried into office by working-class voters, to follow the same path. What it takes to govern differs from what it takes to be elected.
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| Khan and Mamdani |
If the buses and daycare are to be ‘free,’ and rents frozen, the costs involved in accomplishing these things have to come from somewhere, and saying just ‘increase taxes on the rich’ isn’t enough and can itself have serious economic results, including an exodus of businesses and individuals. Both Mayors recognize things like that.
Mamdani’s election, unfortunately, will give an unjustified talking point to some bigoted Republicans in the United States, including the President and his kind.
JL
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Voters Validate the President’s Plummeting Approval Ratings
But they still are not in the sewer where Tuesday’s election results suggest they are heading. Single digits! That’s how low the President’s approval ratings will have to sink before the still silent Republicans in Washington, most of whom really know better, turn on both him and on his appointees starting with the likes of Peter Hegseth, Stephen Miller, RFK Jr, and Russell Vought, who may be the worst one of them all.
Truth will triumph but not necessarily today. Democratic governorship sucesses in Virginia (expected), New Jersey (not even close, as was expected), and California redistricting aren’t quite enough.
The President claimed the Republicans’ sorry performance on November 4 was because (1) ’he’ personally was not on the ballot and (2) the government was still shut down, blamable on the Democrats. Both are very flimsy excuses but too many voters are still being conned by such Trumpian lies. Far too many!
If you want to know why the government is ‘shut down,’ look to both Houses of Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court, all of which are controlled by Republicans. They’re the ones who refuse to negotiate and the ones at which to point a finger.
How long do we have to wait before history assigns President Trump and such appointees to its dustbin (or to the Lincoln bathroom as described below)?
It appears that the lower his ratings sink, the greater Trump’s dependence on unconstitutional, law-breaking, and totalitarian measures becomes.
The nation’s armed forces, including State National Guards, Border Control personnel, and Immigration Control & Enforcement personnel, often masked to prevent identification, were never intended to be used against our civilian populations, unless an insurrection were occuring, which is happening only in the diseased minds of the President and those who are willing to march over the cliff into dictatorship along with him. Of that, we must be aware, and more importantly, afraid. Yes, afraid!
I fear that this will not end well. The best that we can hope for is that the refurbished White House ‘Lincoln’ bathroom, now redone in Trumpian marble and gold, has commodes wide enough to accommodate those mentioned above when the voters of the United States, including Republicans, finally wake up, and push the lever to flush all of them down. They reached for it on November 4.
And there’s so much more for which this irresponsible president is responsible: Rising prices and unemployment due to illegally imposed tariffs (Paul Krugman can explain that to you), alienating long-time allies, attacks on our best educational institutions, loss of government subsidies for those who cannot afford health insurance nor properly feed their families, castigating judges for doing their job, and of course, the destruction of part of the White House to be replaced by a garish ballroom to massage his insatiable and tasteless ego. And you cannot ignore the politically motivated pardoning of convicted criminals, including the mob he inspired to attack the Capitol in 2021 in an attempt to cancel a presidential election. Is there no end to it? Yet, he still has supporters. Unbelievable!
Concerned Americans should be aware of this. The old Boy Scout motto, ‘Be Prepared,’ applies today (even though that organization’s name has this year been changed to ‘Scouting America’).
‘Be Prepared.’
For precisely what, I am not certain, nor do I know what actions on your part, other than voting, ‘being prepared’ involves, but in any event, ‘Be Prepared.’
JL
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Recognizing our Non-Human Neighbors
Maybe it’s my imagination, but I see an increasing number of television commercials directed toward dogs and cats, rather than their human owners. Perhaps it is because we now recognize that ownership in any form of another living and breathing creature is slavery.
And if you look to the comic pages of your newspaper for wisdom, you will see that an increasing number of strips are devoted to such non-human creatures there too.
The religiously inclined might check out what was created on the fifth and sixth days of Genesis.
Homo sapiens was not always the dominant species on Planet Earth, and although that seems to be the case right now, that is no guarantee of its future pre-eminence. The odds are against it.
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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