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Our Indefensible PresidentRead 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
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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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