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| Seeing is Believing |
It has been reported that pigs have been seen flying over some of the States of the old Confederacy (you know, the guys that temporarily lost the Civil War) where today’s Republican State legislators staunchly maintain that their revised Congressional district maps positively, definitely, absolutely, and certainly have nothing whatsoever to do with the racial makeup of the populations of the districts involved, and that’s beyond a shadow of a doubt.
JL
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‘You Elected Me So It’s Mine’
Pictured Above - Arena being built for UFC wrestling matches on White House South Lawn as part of 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, adjacent to the mostly demolished White House East Wing, where a massive ballroom is to be built. While Trump can’t manage the economy or a war he started with Iran, he is better with real estate, even that he doesn’t own. One observer commented that lightning attracted by this steel structure might be dangerous to attendees.
Check out Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American’ dated May 28 to find out how President Trump is treating United States government property as something that belongs to him, his personal property, and not merely entrusted to him during his term of office in the presidency. Click here or copy and paste heathercoxrichardson@substack.com up on your browser line for the details of this disgraceful state of affairs as well as the latest on Trump’s attack on the rule of law in this country.
JL
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Just Like Jackspotpourri Has Been Saying All Along
‘Deep Dive’ on the KOS website on May 29 concluded with these words polishing
off an article on the many entertainers who are cancelling out of Trump’s ‘Freedom250’ Anniversary programs (or their reincarnations) in D.C. (There are two such slates of programs; the official bipartisan ‘America250’ and Trump’s ‘Freedom250.’ Don’t confuse them.):
‘At the end of the day, Americans really fucked up when they elected this corrupt, evil wannabe dictator in 2024. Aside from the economic pain he’s inflicted with his illegal tariffs and boondoggle of a war in Iran, he’s now putting a gigantic damper on the country’s 250th birthday—which feels more like a funeral.
Just imagine the lineup we could have gotten if a Democrat won the White House.’
Whose fault is that? Are any of you looking in a mirror? Or at your blindsided neighbors?
JL
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Latest from Paul Krugman - ‘Pogroms – American Style’ and More
When a video posting says upfront that it will take 38 minutes to view, few people will watch it. Economics savant Paul Krugman should take note of this.
More readable is his free June 1 posting that likened Trump’s animosity toward immigrants to a pogrom. Check it out by clicking here or copying and pasting paulkrugman@substack.com on your device’s browser line to read it.
And while you’re in that ballpark, take a look at Krugman’s May 31 free posting in which he addresses the President’s mental illness, something of which all but the most naïve are well aware.
JL
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Learning Corner - Anthropology
With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, the word ‘anthropology’ has been thrown around quite a bit. Very simply, when you merge the biology of human beings with sociology, the study of groups, the result is anthropology. Still puzzled?
One Artificial Intelligence source offers this definition: ‘Anthropology is the scientific and humanistic study of humanity. It explores human biology, evolutionary history, language, and culture to understand what makes us human across time and space. It examines our species holistically, linking the social sciences, biological sciences, and humanities.’
By itself, the word ending ‘ogy’ or ‘logy’ refers to the particular science or subject, often in its Greek or Latin root form, that precedes it (examples: geology, neurology, etmology). As for the meaning of ‘anthropo,’ it is derived from the Greek word for humans or mankind.
Trying to properly define ‘anthropology’ is difficult. The phrase ‘humanistic study of humanity’ in the above definition becomes meaningless because of its redundancy, sort of like saying ‘hunger is feeling hungry;’ neither defines anything whatsoever.
JL
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Big Tax Savings for Floridians is BS
When 'termed-out' departing Florida Governor DeSantis tries to push through a tremendous tax savings bill for Floridian homeowners, he is playing games, promising it will lead to the ultimate elimination of property taxes. Now, who can oppose that?
The tax reductions this would bring about would greatly take away from town, city, and county agencies the financial resources to pay for the services they presently provide. This includes schools, police, fire departments, various health services, trash collection, roadways, and much more. But fear not. The State will find a way to pay for these necessities, once local government lacks the money to do so. Hurrah!
It’s a dream that the State will get the money for this from businesses and the very wealthy. Their accountants always find ways of getting around such taxation. Quite simply, those services will be greatly reduced or disappear entirely.
Equally important is the transfer the control of providing these services from locally elected government to State government, controlled by over-represented rural voters who don’t give a damn for local governments, often dominated by minorities or transfers from other States.
Ultimately, this will have to be voted on by the people of the State, but that doesn’t mean much since Republicans have a way of getting around that, as their positions on guns and Congressional district realignment proves. Keep your eyes open and read your local newspapers.
You could always move to another State. There are 49 of them.
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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