December 21, 2025 - Our Indefensible President plus My Take on Venezuela

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Our Indefensible President 

Read the news, any news, (pick your source) printed or electronically, with or without the benefit of Artificial Intelligence, digest it, and see if there is any justification for anyone in this country continuing to support the President.  

We didn’t need the words of Susie Wiles, Trump’s Chief of Staff, to alert us to these problems; but they help. I still can't figure why she sat for lengthy interviews with Vanity Fair magazine. Did a guilty conscience seize control of her brain?

Just listen to what Trump himself says and does in regard to Venezuela, use of our military attacking drug-running boats mislabeled as threats to our country, use of National Guard troops against civilians, his ignoring Constitutional rights, his crude and insensitive remarks concerning the Reiner murders, his weakening of long standing relationships with our allies accusing them of ripping us off, his disrespect for judges and court orders, his illegally using the Department of Justice as a tool with which to attack those who have opposed him, and also what his appointees, such as Hegsted, Noem, and Miller, encouraged by him, say and do. 

Added to this is the Administration’s non-compliance with the Congressionally-passed and Presidentially-signed legislation demanding full release of documents concerning the Epstein scandal. Even explanations of their many, many redactions, as permitted by that legislation, were non-existent or fuzzy at best. Of what are they afraid? Or more specifically, what is the President afraid of?

All that is left when their unsubstantiated surface arguments are peeled away from these things are pathetic, ignorant, people making excuses for their incompetence at best, but more likely following a hidden un-American, fascistic agenda. Look to Russell Vought, Trump’s Director of Management and Budget, for more about that; he puts the reactionary philosopy of the Heritage Foundation which he headed above government’s role in serving the needs of the American people. 

Even with Susie Wiles strangely opening the eyes of Republicans in government, getting Trump out of office will still be necessary and remains a very difficult task in solving America’s problems. 

It is reassuring to read what Paul Krugman, Simon Rosenberg, Heather Cox Richardson and others are writing (please check out their sites) but that isn’t enough. Your personal involvement is required.  Professor Richardson reminded us in her December 18 posting about what Thomas Paine wrote during the darkest days of the American Revolution in his pamphlet, ‘American Crisis.’ Looking around should make it clear that we are today in similarly dark days.  Please check it out by CLICKING HERE or copying and pasting https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-18-2025

on your device’s browser line. 

Quoting Paine, 'This is not the time to be just a ‘summer soldier.’ Applicable today is his caution that ‘tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.’ When dealing with such 'tyranny,' the Latin phrase ‘Semper Sic Tyrannis’ comes to mind. 

Here is an AI-sourced explanation of it: 

“Sic semper tyrannis is a Latin phrase meaning "Thus always to tyrants," signifying that tyrants will always meet a bad end, famously used by John Wilkes Booth after assassinating Lincoln and serving as Virginia's state motto, symbolizing resistance to oppression. While often interpreted as "Death to tyrants," its literal translation implies a just, inevitable downfall for those who abuse power, echoing ancient Roman sentiments.’ 

John Wilkes Booth and his murderous Secessionist backers went overboard with this. Its ‘literal translation’ of a just and inevitable downfall is far more applicable today. 

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The 2026 mid-term elections are approaching. The American people, in sufficient numbers, must be convinced to rid Congress of legislators who still support the President. Another impeachment, this time successful, may be in the cards. Of course, that would leave us with Vance and the House Speaker in line for the presidency. That is why your personal involvement is required. 

But please remember that Trump won a majority of electoral votes as well as a plurality at the polls nationwide only a year ago. He won’t just go away on his own. In his usual ‘lying mode,’ he made a crude appeal the other evening saying things are just fine, will get better, and if you don’t agree with that, blame it on his predecessor and the dirty non-white immigrants he let into the country. Some believe him. 

Do what you can. Your efforts will be needed to get the nation back on the right track, where our government is ‘of the people, for the people, and by the people’ once again. The nation cannot afford just ‘summer soldiers’ in today’s ‘American Crisis,’ where the foes of democracy are not the British and their Hessian hires but greedy and insidious domestic villains. 

JL 

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Let’s Talk About Venezuela and Oil 

It’s hard to pull it all together, but this is the way it seems to appear to me. Others may see it differently. That nation’s presidente, Nicolas Maduro, is a long-serving, dishonest, cheating, cruel dictator, the legitimacy of whose election to office is highly questionable. 

What makes him a ‘player’ is that Venezuela sits on a very large reservoir of petroleum, a card which he plays for all that it is worth. It once was managed by American oil companies which profited greatly from controlling it. In 2007, Maduro expropriated the assets of these companies and nationalized their operations, resulting in his controlling this resource, with Chinese influence replacing those of the United States. Trump claims that Maduro stole our oil, but it was never ours to start with. I doubt that our President has the brains to understand that.

Maduro uses Venezuela’s oil to secure medical, security, and many government services from more technically-advanced Cuba which lacks its own oil and is not that far away. That’s easy because both countries are more or less Communist dictatorships. 

As for the rest of their oil, Venezuela peddles it all over the world, including to China and India, even supplying the Middle East in defiance of American sanctions there, particularly those on Iran and Russia . In exchange, it receives whatever it needs to function as a nation that Cuba can’t provide. In this way, Venezuela can tell the United States to go fly a kite. 

In addition to oil, Venezuela is also in the drug business, serving the same customers who purchase its oil. Trump claims that Venezuelan drug smugglers are terrorists, supplying the American street market with fentanyl, the most addictive and fatal drug available. That isn’t true. Chiefly, Venezuelan smugglers deal with cocaine, and it is questionable as to how much reaches this country from Venezuela, Europe and Asia being the locales of their usual customers. 

There is an active, ongoing, relationship between the tankers carrying Venezuelan oil to its purchasers and the drug smugglers. Transfers of drugs are typically handled by small boats, usually headed for tankers at sea or in near-by ports, such as those in neighboring Surinam, where they can be rerouted but these drugs are not specifically destined for the United States. These are the small boats that we are presently blowing out of the water, and where our Armed Forces have actually seized tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, actions that are being challenged as illegal or un-Constitutional by many Americans, in and out of office. 

Oil is sometimes transferred from one tanker to another while at sea, and efforts to hide the tankers’ identity and destinations are common. Whatever fentanyl gets into the United States seeps through the supposedly closed border with Mexico or is smuggled onto our lengthy Pacific coast, nowhere near Venezuela. The United States has blown up boats there too, far from Venezuela. 

So when Trump pretends he is battling Venezuelan narco-terrorists trying to poison Americans, that charge is just not so, despite their still being up to no good.  I believe that the military and naval forces he is amassing to make that phony point are really there to enable American companies to regain the profits they made from their former control of Venezuelan oil. It’s no secret that the United States has been negotiating to accomplish this with a Maduro who is willing to sit down and talk with us but his price has been too high.

Trump may contemplate his military removal and regime change there to get the job done. Who would replace Maduro is uncertain because all of his potential successors are equally corrupt and require the support of the Venezuelan military from which that country’s leadership traditionally comes. There really is no support among any of them for Venezuelan Nobel Prize winner Maria Machado, a fan of President Trump, who probably has the people’s support.  That’s what I think is going on with Venezuela. Confusing, isn’t it? 

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 local daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors. Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations. 

Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine 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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December 15, 2025 - Again Gun Violence, Back to Politics, Reachers & Grabbers, and the Worst of Trump's Administration

 

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My Gun Violence Tee Shirt 

I have a tee shirt from a demonstration a few years ago reading ‘Grandparents Against Assault Weapons.’ I make it my business to wear it whenever there is a mass shooting, and sadly, I put it on this past weekend. 

In addition to the tragedy in Australia, recent acts of gun violence in this country once again draw attention to the Second Amendment to the Constitution, that reads as follows:

 

"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"

Misinterpretation of the it, ignoring its first thirteen words, was established by a misguided Supreme Count’s 2008 decision, D.C. vs Heller, allowing the proliferation of weapons so that citizens might keep them for purposes of self-defense. I believe that history will look very unfavorably upon the late Justice Antonin Scalia who wrote the opinion in that case. 

Though not the Court’s intention, this resulted in putting weapons into the hands of mentally disturbed individuals as well as those who would use them illegally to further causes in which they believe, such as antisemitism, opposition to parts of our economy or social structure, or even personal grudges. 

The Constitution is not intended to protect such individuals from prosecution for violations of laws against gun violence, but that is the door opened wide by that 2008 decision.

It is very important that voters should determine any candidate’s position on this supposed ‘right’ before voting for them in any election. Do not vote for any who agree with the 2008 misinterpretation, even if just out of party loyalty.

Tonight, I will hang up that tee shirt until next time. 

JL 

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Back to Politics 

Followers of Jackspotpourri know where I stand on political issues. 

I do recognize, however, that the majority of presidential electors indeed did vote to put Donald Trump, whom they represented on the ballot, in the White House in both 2016 and in 2024. I am not an ‘election denier.’ These elections were legal and within the framwork of the Constitution and its Amendments.

In 2024, Trump received more votes cast nationwide then did the Democrats although he did not win the popular vote eight years earlier. Of course, the popular vote does not matter; only the Electoral College matters. 

That the Ameican voters knew what they were doing is another matter entirely.  In my opinion, Trump and his supporters lied their way into office, dishonestly convincing the voters to put them there. Whether this was the voters’ intention or simply the result of their ignorance and gullibility is another question. 

The Founding Fathers gave us a Constitution that limited voting, regulated by the States, to a far greater extent than subsequent Amendments eventually allowed. This expansion of the electorate was seen as a good thing, and was, extending what the Declaration of Independence called ‘inalienable rights,’ but it also was an Achilles heel exposing our democracy to decision-making by many voters who didn’t know what they were doing. Most recently, it put Donald Trump and his supporters into office in 2016 and 2024. 

Now they are slowly waking up, with the help of what the President himself is saying, doing, and permitting to happen. I recommend checking out Simon Rosenberg’s ‘Hopium Chronicles,’ particularly his December 12 posting. Just Click here or copy and paste https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/ on your device’s browser line to do that. 

That’s in addition to Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s daily ‘Letters from an American’ dated December 11 where enough of Trump’s words are quoted to keep a team of psychiatrists busy for the next few decades trying to put a label on Trump’s symptoms. Just click here or copy and paste https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your device's browser line to read that.

Both Rosenberg’s and Richardson’s sites are available without a mandatory paywall, but there are ‘Pay For’ options available for both which enable subscribers to make comments and check out additional material.  I choose not to pay for them because my positions are already known on Jackspotpourri, and they mostly support the points Rosenberg or Richardson make so well anyway, so my two cents worth would be superfluous. 

To whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt from a recent Hopium Cronicle: ‘We don’t know when the fever is going to break, when the curtain will be pulled back from the Wizard, when people come to realize that the orange Emperor has no clothes, when we hit our “have you no decency, sir” moment but I feel like we are closer to that point today than we’ve ever been. Choose your own way of describing it - ebbing powers, lame duckery, the circle of defiance is growing, courage is contagious, - whatever we call it feels like this dynamic is growing more powerful. The bottom line - Republicans are growing weary of defending the indefensible. Trump has gone too far, done too much harm to the country, farmers and small businesses are struggling, prices just keep rising, and our health care system is breaking. He’s been far too corrupt and venal, is in clear physical and cognitive decline, is selling out our allies and emboldening our adversaries, lawlessly abandoning the Constitution, waging war against communities across the country, and even tearing down the East Wing to build himself a fucking gilded, imperial ballroom. And voters are pissed, Trump’s approval has cratered, Republicans are getting blown out everywhere. It’s an unbelievable and dangerous shitshow, and even Rs, as we’ve been seeing in recent weeks, are starting to buckle - for taken together it is just too much. They can’t sell all this to voters. It’s become clear Trumpism isn’t working and in different ways all across the country Rs are starting to say enough. The regime is weakening and defiance spreading.’

Read on for more fuel for the fire which should be at least smoldering within you. The 2026 mid-term Congressional elections offer Americans the chance to put the nation back on the democratic track the Founding Fathers envisioned. Don’t mess up that opportunity. 

JL 

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Trump’s Worst Advisor

Even Worse Than Russell Vaught 

The smelliest piece of crap in the sewer that is the Trump Adminstration is Stephen Miller, his immigration advisor, The New Republic magazine recently included an article about him. He is about as un-American as one can be, but thinks, instead, that his sick views are America’s salvation. Click here or copy and paste https://newrepublic.com/article/204191/stephen-miller-maga-terror-state-dark-plot?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email on your device’s browser line to learn about this dangerous threat to the nation. 

Miller graduated from Duke University eighteen years ago. He was a columnist for that school’s newspaper and made a national reputation defending their lacrosse team that had wrongly being accused of rapes, but that doesn’t excuse his later malignant ideas. They were probably nourished by his objecting to Duke’s usually liberal approach to social problems, a strange position for a Jewish student at a school with a primarily gentile student body.  It would seem to be that his remedy for being a victim of bigotry was to become the biggest bigot possible himself! 

JL 

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Reachers and Grabbers 

Some of us are old enough to remember the days before supermarkets took over the sale of groceries from mom and pop stores which had far less shelf space. Some items were stored on upper shelves in those stores and to get them, the grocer would use a device to reach and grab them between its claws for the customer. 

These days, you don’t see them in stores much any longer but such devices are still around and useful, especially for senior citizens, particularly those who try to avoid bending over. An internet search for ‘reachers and grabbers’ will provide sources for the many varieties of them available. I prefer to purchase the ones I use from a Harbor Freight store where they are less costly and quite adequate for my needs. 

I keep them standing in a corner in my kitchen, my bathroom, my library, and my laundry room. They’re great when, for example, you have to pick up a sock or shirt that falls from the load you are manually moving from the washer to the dryer. 

They also can serve as a weapon. Even though I take serious steps to keep insects out of my house, on extremly rare occasions (at most once every few months) I do run into a sizable roach when I wake up in the the middle of the night with reason to visit the bathroom or the kitchen. There it sits, never expecting the lights to be turned on in wee hours of the night, illuminating its nocturnal domain. 

Seizing the nearest ‘reacher,’ I try to grab the insect and drop it into the toilet, which I then flush twice. Sometimes, however, it resists my efforts, in which case I use the ‘reacher-grabber’ to try to chase it into a corner where it might be easier to capture. I might even resort to squashing it by stepping on it. I keep a second set of flip-flops handy enabling me to step into a clean pair while I wash the bug’s remains from the bottom of the one I use to demolish it. Most of the time, however, the ‘reacher and grabber’ suffices to serve as the executioner, after which it can be cleaned off. 

If you liked this bit of information, I am ready to proceed with the story of my success with ‘ant traps’ which can be entertaining as well as useful. 

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.  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. 

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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December 9, 2025 - Foreign Policy Switcheroo, Today's Battlefield, a Warning from a Bank, and a Disturbing Short Story

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A Big Change in Our Foreign Policy – Very Bad News for the World 

The National Security Strategy document released by the U.S. government last Friday suggested that our counfry will back away from the global alliances formed in the wake of World War II and called for making sure the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the organization that has opposed first Soviet and now Russian aggression since 1949, doesn’t continue to expand. 

The administration’s document calls for a world dominated not by a rules-based international order in which countries must respect each other’s sovereignty, but by a few major powers that control weaker nations in their sphere of influence. Doesn’t this mean that Europeans and other U.S. allies fear that they can no longer trust the U.S.?  Yes, it does. 

Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk posted on social media: “Dear American friends, Europe is your closest ally, not your problem. And we have common enemies. At least that’s how it has been in the last 80 years. We need to stick to this, this is the only reasonable strategy of our common security. Unless something has changed.” 

Well, something has indeed changed, allowing some officials in the Russian government to suggest that “these adjustments in that United States’ National Security Strategy document that we’re seeing...are largely consistent with our vision.” That, friends, is an understatement. In fact, they could have been written in Moscow. 

Moscow, Seat of Russia's Government 

 JL 

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Where the Battlefield Is 

Americans should accept the fact that the unconstitutional and probably illegal behavior of President Trump and those he has appointed will continue so long as the Supreme Court, politicized by his appointees, and his support, although somewhat shaky, in Congress exists. 

Don’t expect things to get better until the Republican Party, as it now stands, is driven into oblivion. Court orders will continue to be ignored or appealed by them.  Democrats, who are far from perfect themselves, must make sure that sufficient voters’ rights, already under attack by Republicans, remain in existence in all fifty States in order to accomplish that in the 2026 elections. 

That is where the battlefield is right now. 

JL 

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A Bank’s Warning 

A recent statement from my bank (I still get them via the U.S.mail despite the banks’ frequent self-serving urging to switch to emailing of statements, saving them a bundle of money) contained the following message: 

‘Artificial intelligence (AI) now makes it easy for scammers to produce fake yet convincing videos or calls from people you know to get you to act fast without verifying it ‘s real. Be wary of unusual requests – even from a family member or close friend. Look for deep fake red flags like robotic voices or unnatural facial movements. Always confirm identities, use codewords with loved ones, double check requests, and limit the personal information you share online.’ 

A word to the wise is, or should be, sufficient. 

JL 

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Recommended Short Fiction

The New Yorker magazine includes a bit of fiction in each issue, something that can be read and perhaps digested in twenty or thirty minutes. Sometimes I skip these pieces entirely or give up after a few paragraphs. Not so with ‘Safety,’ a disturbing story that appeared in their issue dated December 8, 2025. 

Click here or copy and paste https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/08/safety-fiction-joan-silber 

on your device’s browser line. to access it. 

I read it late in the evening and had difficulty falling asleep afterwards. It concludes with this thought from the storyteller: ‘There I was, on the train, ready to go on with my day. I was in two worlds at once, everything fine, everything unspeakable.’ 

Read it.  Fiction allows ideas to be transmitted that  might be awkward to present as fact.

 

JL

                                                   * * * 

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 so 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 

                                                          * * * *

December 4, 2025 - Frightening Things, A Story from the 1930s, and How to Watch Football

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Frightening Things 

There’s a lot of frightening stuff still going on these days! I hope you are paying more attention to them than our leader was at the December 2 Cabinet meeting. 

Photo from AOL.com

Consider the criminals masquerading as businessmen whom the President pardons or whose sentences are commuted. His release from prison here of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, convicted of major drug trafficking, is something even the Mafia couldn’t pull off. I wonder whether Trump will ultimately will end up living outside of the United States, primarily to avoid prosecution for the illegal things he has done, and continues to do.

Even Republicans are wising up to his almost infinite shortcomings. They include appointments based on loyalty to him rather than upon competence and law, and often dodging required Congressional approval through arcane technicalities. 

It is good to see that numerous judges are now ruling against the President’s appointments as well as blocking his attempts to criminalize normal behavior of those who oppose him. The days of the Executive branch’s ignoring the rule of law upon which the nation is based are numbered. 

And Congress is finally becoming aroused by the administration’s misuse of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and our Armed Forces on our cities’ streets as well as in the Caribbean Sea where we may have committed ‘war crimes,’ supposedly to curtail drug smuggling. 

Indeed, these are frightening things.  But at last, some rays of light are appearing.

And behind them looms Epstein’s ghost. 

 JL 

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A Headline in the Morning Papers 

Some months ago, I included this story in a Jackspotpourri posting, but here it is again. 

During the Great Depression during the 1930s, a businessman stopped each morning at the newsstand in the lobby of the office building where his office was. After paying for a newspaper that he looked at for no more than a second, he tossed it into a nearby trash can. Puzzled, the newstand operator eventually asked him why he did this day after day. ‘I’m looking for an obituary,’ he answered. “Oh,’ the newstand operator responded, ‘You’re looking in the wrong place. The obituaries are at the back of the paper.’ The businessman quickly replied, ‘Don’t worry, when this son of a bitch croaks, it’ll be all over page one!’ 

I am repeating this story because first thing each morning, when I check my emails, whether I am doing so purposefully or not, I am looking tor that same kind of obituary that the businessman was hoping for. I just can’t help my duplicating that 1930s’ businessman’s mindset. 

JL 

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Check Out ‘Letters from an American’ 

If you're not doing it already, take a look at Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s daily ‘Letters from an American,' particularly the most recent ones. (She usually posts these late the prior evening).  Just CLICK HERE or copy and paste https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on you device’s browser line. Unless you want to subscribe enabling you to comment, it is free, and includes links to many of the sources she quotes. 

JL 

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How To Watch a Football Game on TV 

Check the time online or in the newspapers and tune in (what an old expression that is) only in time for the final quarter or so. That’s all that matters. The first three quarters are meaningless. 

If you find that one team is more than two touchdowns ahead, switch to a game on another channel. If not, watch for the remaining parts of the game that really count in its waning moments (possessions and/or field goals) that can precipitate lead changes. 

 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 my email each morning, I take these steps: 

 1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or so 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 and newspapers, 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 and material derived from it.

 JL 

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