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Reporting a Dragon Sighting
Professor Barbara Walter’s ‘Here Be Dragons’ posting of February 4 is headed thusly: ‘How Power Shifted to Money, Media, and Force.’ A key conclusion, that ‘power now flows to those who know how to game this environment,’ fits in well with the lengthy article on Tucker Carlson, access to which follows.
Right now, check out what Professor Walter has to say by clicking here or copying and pasting https://barbarafwalter.substack.com/p/voters-no-longer-run-american-democracy on your browser line.
JL
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Right Wing Extremism Enters the Mainstream
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| Tucker Carlson (as pictured in the New Yorker article |
If you want an understanding of how Republicans manage to get elected, check out an article in the February 2 issue of the New Yorker magazine. It appears on a page labeled ‘American Chronicles’ with the title ‘Fake News,’ written by Jason Zengerle. And it is not a quick read.
While it is about how Tucker Carlson attained dominance in the world of right wing media, and explains ‘how his contrarianism has swerved into openly racist and antisemitic tropes, and what this means for the future of right-wing media,’ it also provides great insight into the forces that propelled a talentless, yet popular, dummy like Donald Trump into the White House.
Carlson has been instrumental in moving extreme right wing ideas, including barely hidden antisemitism, and personalities, into the mainstream, where they do not belong.
Voters who believe in our democratic principles should be aware of what they are up against in the world of media, and this lengthy article might educate them as to where its sources, and money, are coming from. You just might be able to get the article by clicking here or copying and pasting https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/02/tucker-carlsons-nationalist-crusade on your device’s browser line. If need be, I have a copy of the magazine that I can lend to you.
JL
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From Where Do You Get Your News
Getting your news updates every day from the internet is NOT the same as having a printed newspaper, prepared by journalists, before you. Even online sites that such newspapers publish omit what you might read if you had the paper in its printed form in your hands.
And other alleged news sites, as distinguished from opinion pieces, are contaminated by mind-numbing junk, which sort of explains why we are becoming a nation of ill-informed dummies, who don’t realize they are electing dummies to office. Subscribe to a real newspaper, one you might accidentally spill coffee on!
JL
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Worthwhile Opinion Columns
Maureen Dowd’s February 7 New York Times column is not to be missed. Click here or copy and paste https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/opinion/trump-obama-apes-post-video.html on your browser line to read it.
Incidentally, when our ignoramus president refers to his ego, he misuses the word. What he means is his self-esteem, which he is beginning to recognize as needing fixing, creating a …
... PLUMBING PROBLEM
Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American’ postings dated February 5 and 6 comment negatively on the Administration in several areas, including funding the Department of Homeland Security, Trump’s continuing claim that the 2020 election was ‘stolen from him,’ the expiring nuclear arms treaty with Russia, the released Epstein files, and the strange and unexplained involvement of ‘classified’ intelligence operations into clearly domestic matters. The number of issues piling up are so many that they lessen the impact that a single one would have, keeping critics off balance. Check her postings out by clicking here or copying and pasting https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your browser line.
I liken the situations to which she refers to a stuffed-up toilet bowl that won’t flush properly until Democrats show up with a plunger. It would be nice if that happened in the mid-term elections, just nine months from now.
And speaking of those elections, our wannabe tyrant president is now trying to fool with them so that fewer people will get to vote, taking their operation away from the States, and enabling him to control the result. Of course, doing so would be unconstitutional, but that would be par for the course for him. Be alert and don’t allow your State to surrender its Constitutional rights regarding elections to the Administration.
As we claim to ‘Remember the Alamo’ (there were no survivors other than those few used as messengers), let’s ‘Remember January 6 and start using that plunger.
Be Alert!
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 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, 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 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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