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'Here Be Dragons' QuotedTuesday’s Jackspotpourri pointed out that the Administration’s efforts to keep a watchful eye on the President’s critics would be a big job because most Americans, from what all of the polls show, are included among the President’s many, many millions of critics.
The ‘Here Be Dragons’ posting on May 6 reiterated this point when UCSD Professor Walter wrote that
‘Trump may have ICE. He may have detention centers. He may have the legal framework to call you a terrorist for disagreeing with him. But Americans have the numbers. And if they choose to use them - peacefully, persistently, and in overwhelming force - no executive order can make that disappear. Orbán learned it the hard way. So will Trump, if Americans decide to show up.’
Read her full warning-laden May 6 posting by clicking here or copying and pasting https://barbarafwalter.substack.com/ on your devices browser line.
JL
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Call It What You May – I Call it TACO
According to the Administration, the ‘war’ with Iran is over, and whatever hostilities remain are separate, defensive actions. The New York Times headlined this on May 6 thusly: ‘White House Insists Iran War Is Over, Even While Missiles Fly.’ I just see it as another example of the President’s repeated TACO (Trump Again Chickens Out) strategy.
Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s May 5 ‘Letters from an American’ quotes the President’s announcing on social media that:
“Based on the request of Pakistan and other Countries, the tremendous Military Success that we have had during the Campaign against the Country of Iran and, additionally, the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement with Representatives of Iran, we have mutually agreed that, while the Blockade will remain in full force and effect, Project Freedom (The Movement of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz) will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and signed.”
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| Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth standing behind the Liar-in-Chief |
Just more TACO, TACO, TACO … hiding self-contradictory gibberish! (Incidentally, the above direct social media quote from Trump contains about fifteen words starting with capital letters instead of lower-case letters, something our poorly educated President seems to think makes his lies more palatable. Whatever tuition Trump’s parents paid to send him to a private military academy was a waste of money.)
JL
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Your Healthcare in the Spotlight
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| Krugman |
Paul Krugman’s very detailed postings (free on weekdays, mostly requiring a subscription on weekends … although sometimes available a few days later for free) is embarking on a series pointing out that our nation’s healthcare should not be left to the private economy.
Check him out by clicking here or copying and pasting https://paulkrugman.substack.com/ on your device's browser line to get a Nobel prize winner’s views on this subject that concerns YOU.
JL
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Superpower Suicide
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| Snyder |
Professor Timothy Snyder explains what it takes to be a ‘superpower’ and suggests that our failure to measure up to such standards is why we are losing the war with Iran, and are otherwise a nation engaged in committing suicide, at least as a ‘superpower.’ (This is not a quick read, but give it a try.)
Copy and paste https://snyder.substack.com/ on your browser line to read his May 9 posting or just click here.
JL
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Maxing Out Your Credit Cards - No Problem
Some folks aren’t bothered by their ‘maxing out’ the funds available to them from their credit cards, nor the unpaid interest piling up on them. They just apply for another credit card or two and start the process over again.
That is until that day when they find that real banks will no longer want them as customers and that no new credit cards are available to them. Then, they no longer are particular as to the sources of their money, calling them either creditors or more politely, investors. And even better, they start positioning their money not in traditional currencies, like dollars, but in barely understood ‘crypto currencies.’
Shortly before his re-election in 2024, President Donald Trump, then a civilian while Joe Biden was still president, founded a crypto currency trading firm, World Liberty Financial, along with members of his family and some others including Steve Witkoff, one of his present ‘negotiators’ with Iran. This better hides the amount and sources of his money, something hidden in the crypto world.
That’s good for him, but not for American taxpayers whose payments in real dollars to the IRS go toward reducing taxes on the very wealthy and corporations favored by the President.
JL
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Corruption Running Amok
And those unaware of the corruption within the Trump administration had better check out this item from the Bulwark’s May 9 posting. Click here or copy and paste
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/corruption-is-the-iceberg-that-will
on your device’s browser line. It will lead you, even if you are a Republican, to make some decisions about the sordid presidency of Donad Trump.
JL
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Redistricting Congressional Districts
When Republican strategists realized that the 2026 mid-term elections were likely to give the Democrats a majority in the House of Representatives and also cause a change in the projected 2028 presidential Electoral College, they set to work to remedy this by instituting illegal redistricting of Congressional districts.
They started in Texas only to have the Democrats retaliate in California. Litigation concerning new districts has been piling up in several States, and a recent summary of these extra-legal redistricting efforts can be found by clicking here or copying and pasting https://ballotpedia.org/Redistricting_ahead_of_the_2026_elections on your device’s browser line. The numbers seem to change on a daily basis.
Most recently, a Virginia court ruled against a redistricting map that favored Democrats that had been narrowly approved in a referendum. The battle goes on, with the Constitution being ignored. Check it out as your right to vote is being diluted by politicians who have no respect for laws.
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 in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘printed’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals.
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.
Following 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.
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. Always!
JL
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