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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.
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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. 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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