04-16-2023 - Results of Civil War, Declaration of Independence, Gerrymandering, State Legislatures, Abortion and the Supreme Court, and Christianity

 

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A Reminder to the Good Citizens and the State Governments of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia:

These are the words of the Declaration of Independence:  ‘all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed’ 

These are the words that resulted in thirteen British colonies declaring themselves an independent nation in 1776.  Eighty-five years later, you, the Confederate States of America, attempted to deny these words and rebelled against the nation’s government.  A terrible war was fought and you lost.  Let me repeat that:  YOU LOST!  As difficult as it might seem, get that through your heads!  You started it and YOU LOST! 

That should never be forgotten.  It is tragic enough that your secession has been mostly forgiven.  It should be taught in your schools that ‘all men are created equal’ and that governments derive their just powers ‘from the consent of the governed.’  And that means all of the governed.  It is time to stop attempting to deny and rewrite the spirit of those words through political chicanery of which the prime example is gerrymandering.  Never forget that you tried to do that a century and a half ago with guns and YOU LOST!  Do not attempt to do it now in State legislatures.

JL

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Gerrymandering

Like it or not, we have a ‘two party’ system.  The party in power can draw district borders in the State legislatures it controls to give to one party majorities in those State legislatures as well as in the House of Representatives in numbers significantly beyond the percentage of a State’s voters that supported that party.  That is undemocratic.  That is ‘Gerrymandering’ and is a way of tearing fair representation apart.

It is done by squeezing the ‘other’ party’s voters into one or more illogically laid-out districts so their influence in the districts where they would normally belong is diminished.  That’s what gerrymandering does:  fixing the district borders so that the resulting composition of a legislative body is unrepresentative of the population.  It is wrong regardless of which Party does it when they have the opportunity.  (The process is named after Founding Father Elbridge Gerry and the resemblance of the shape of the  district involved ending up looking like a salamander.)

District borders must be drawn in a non-partisan manner.  And when they are, as is the case in some States, that State’s legislature, governor, or courts should not have the power to invalidate them.

JL

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State Legislatures as Foes of Democracy

Read more about how State legislatures are turning out to be foes of democracy, gerrymandering being only one of their tools.  See the New York Times article on this by clicking here or visiting https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/tennessee-house-republicans.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230413&instance_id=90088&nl=the-morning&regi_id=78918068&segment_id=130299&te=1&user_id=02fa158150d34dc186b01b1b8ec7a224

Tennessee is not the only place this is happening and it is very dangerous.  In many States, the legislatures are about to flush democracy down the tube.  In some, like Florida, they already have.

JL

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The Supreme Court, Abortion Drugs and Senator Feinstein

Contradictory lower court decisions regarding availability of the drugs necessary for non-surgical abortions will bring the matter before the same Supreme Court that invalidated Roe vs. Wade last year, leaving abortion legislation to the States.  From the above articles about State legislatures, we know about the dangerous directions where that can lead. 

I do not anticipate any radical change in the Supreme Court’s position on abortion, other than a short postponement of making a decision on these drugs. Therefore, it is crucial that the President expand the Court so that it is more representative of the people’s views on this issue by appointing several additional Justices.   Quickly.

They must be approved by the Senate, where the Democrats have a slim majority.  Right now that majority is not always available due to the illness of the Senate’s oldest member, California’s Diane Feinstein.  She will not run for re-election in 2024 but her presence is needed now to expand the Court.  Even now, many of the President’s judgeship appointments are on hold in the Judiciary Committee because of her absence.  I believe that she should immediately resign and be replaced by an appointee to be made by California’s Democratic governor Newsom to fill her seat until 2024. 

Expansion of the Supreme Court is the key to preserving abortion rights for women.  (And passing gun control legislation as well!)  But that can cause problems too, for Democrats.  Those two issues, if wedded to SCOTUS expansion, might jeopardize the Democratic Party’s chances in 2024, risking the votes of those who might feel Court expansion is a step too far.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt threatened SCOTUS expansion during the 1930’s but never went through with it.  This is an area where compromises should be made, but one must trust anyone with whom a deal is made … and few Republicans are sufficiently trustworthy in my opinion.

It is conceivable, once Feinstein is replaced, that the threat of expansion of the Supreme Court might suffice to soften its position, and possibly that of some State legislatures.  But that is a gamble on which I do not think the nation should hang its hopes. 

If that doesn't happen, and rapidly, I believe that Supreme Court expansion is the only way to go while it still is possible.  

It may not be after November, 2024, when many Democratic Senators in otherwise Republican States are up for re-election.

JL

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A Difficult, but Necessary, Word to Eliminate

One word that should be eliminated from all political dialogue is ‘Christian.’  

The First Amendment prevents Congress from making any law ‘respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise.’  That’s great!

But Christianity keeps getting involved in today’s politics. 

Too many Americans believe that because most of the Founding Fathers were Christian, that Christianity has a priority over other religions in this country.  It does not.  We are not a 'Christian country.'  Celebrating Christmas and Easter does not make us one.  And the mention of 'Nature's God,' a 'Creator,' or 'Divine Providence' in the Declaration of Independence does not!  The existence of a 'National Cathedral' in Washington, D.C. doesn't either.  It is totally privately funded.

It is an insult to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and those believing in other faiths, and of course to Atheists and Agnostics, to include 'Christian' in political dialogue as an adjective.   

Nominally, more Americans claim to have some degree of faith in some variety of Christianity than in any other religion, but that does not make this a Christian nation.  In Europe, this is not the case where ‘Christian’ is often tacked on to the name of political parties to give them greater support.  This is not so in the United States and never should be.  

The catering of Republicans to Evangelical Christians, the basing of one’s stand on abortion rights on a theological position, and efforts to support religious schools with taxpayers’ money are all un-American.  Legislation in these areas flirts with the ‘establishment’ of a religion as prohibited by the First Amendment.  They have no place on our political spectrum.

I would go so far, if I had my way, to ban, or even remove, quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament in public buildings.  And that includes the Capitol.  They belong in houses of worship but not in houses of government.

 JL

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Housekeeping

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 . ) 

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. 

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.   I think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.

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 envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, (it looks like this:  ), you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses, along with a comment from you, each of which will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the ‘sidebar’ features such as access to the blog’s archives.

Either way will work, sending them that link, https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I recommend sending them the link. 

Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. 

                       

        Have a nice day.

 

04-10-2023 - Not Quite a Turning of the Tide, a Tee Shirt Message, Nightcrawlers, Words from London, and Publicity

 

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Is the Tide Turning?

The turning of the tide against the foes of democracy that is occurring in Wisconsin and Michigan where voters are beginning to see the light is still the exception rather than the rule. The New York Times story the other day on the Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice election reports this good news.

"MILWAUKEE — The commanding victory on Tuesday by a liberal candidate in a pivotal race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court showed the enduring power of abortion rights and issues of democracy as motivators for Democratic voters, as well as a continuing struggle among conservatives to put forward candidates who can unite Republicans and win general elections.

The liberal candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, swept onto the bench by 11 percentage points, a staggering margin in an evenly divided battleground state that signaled just how much last summer’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade has transformed American politics.

The Wisconsin race centered squarely on abortion rights and political representation: Judge Protasiewicz all but promised voters that if they elected her, the court’s new 4-to-3 liberal majority would reverse Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban and overturn the state’s famously gerrymandered, Republican-friendly legislative maps."

But this is not yet sufficient cause for nationwide rejoicing. Too many States, like Florida and many others, still remain places where democracy comes to die, places where the Achilles heel of democracy enables the election of those who assist in its suicide by voting for candidates who oppose voting rights, women’s rights, gun control legislation, universal health care, the government’s economic ‘safety net’ and who ignore the truths of American history.  Much work remains to be done.  

An excellent example besides Florida is the State of Tennessee, where the State Legislature just threw two Black Democratic Representatives out of their seats in the legislature because of what they decided was their overly ardent support of restrictions on gun ownership.  (Tennessee was the site of the most recent school massacre.)  This is nothing new.  It goes back to the Civil War, a conflict in which the losers ended up not losing all that much, other than the lives of hundreds of thousand soldiers in gray. 

The secessionists who betrayed the Union were mostly forgiven in an effort to negate their secession and officially preserve the Union, Lincoln's original reason for going to war, before stopping the expansion of slavery became the war's prime mission.   This 'forgiving' was accomplished by a flawed Reconstruction of the South in that it allowed the seceding States to return to their antebellum position, with only three Constitutional Amendments standing in their way, obstacles that State governments might find ways to attack.  The birth of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws were the result.  What they lost on the battlefield, they won back through political horsetrading in the presidential election of 1876.  Officially, slavery was dead, but its economic replacement was no great improvement.

Tennessee still hates the Federal government even though without FDR's Tennessee Valley Authority, they wouldn't have sufficient electrical power and there would be no water with which to flush their toilets.  The University of Tennessee marching band features big bass drums labeled 'The Pride of the Southland.'  Other than Jack Daniels whiskey and the music coming out of Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee doesn't have anything to be proud of, and too many of its citizens translate 'Southland' as meaning the defeated Confederacy.

In resolving this challenge, we cannot go back 150 years to undo the mistakes made after the Civil War.  We must do so by going forward, inspired by the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address.

And those words, that governments ‘derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.' as the Declaration of Independece reads, must be validated by concrete actions. As a start, we must use what remains of democracy as an antidote to two poisons that it has allowed to exist, undermining the 'consent of the governed,' the cloture rule (allowing filibusters) in the Senate and the nationwise process of political gerrymandering.  Both are legal and they should not be.

Much of this will end up before the Supreme Court, the politicization of which has besmirched it.  Right now, two conflicting lower court decisions concerning drugs used to effect non-surgical abortions will end up there.  This may be the time for the President and the Democratic Senate majority to act to expand that Court so that it might better reflect 'the consent of the governed.'   There is nothing in the Constitution to prevent that from taking place.

JL

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A Shirt With a Message

The other day, I went food shopping wearing an old tee shirt from a demonstration four years ago after the Parkland school murders.  The legend on it read “Grandparents Against Assault Weapons.’  Several shoppers complimented me on it and agreed.  My reply to them was to ‘make sure you vote for candidates who support gun control.’  I dared not to suggest to them that the only real solution, as pointed out a week ago in this blog, is the repeal of the Second Amendment.  That is the only way to end gun violence. 

JL

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 From the blog’s Annals:

                    The Grove Ridge Nightcrawler

Jack Lippman

The other evening, when taking a stroll to the end of my street and back, something I should be doing more often, I encountered a worm, the kind some people call nightcrawlers, trying to make its way across the sidewalk from the grass strip along the street to the lawn in front of a house.  I decided that if, on my return trip, I found that it had not succeeded, I would give it a hand.  A few minutes later, heading back, I stopped at the house where I had seen the worm and it was nowhere to be seen.  It had successfully completed its journey.

A few minutes later, almost back to my house, I encountered another worm engaged in the same task and not making very much progress.  Knowing that I had resolved to assist the first worm on its journey, which I never had to do, I wondered if it would not be appropriate for me to live up to my resolve by helping the second worm.  My conscience would not let me off the hook so I bent over and picked it up, and tossed its wriggling body onto the grass and dirt it was seeking to reach. 

Homo sapiens has been the dominant species on our planet for many thousands, if not millions, of centuries.  But that wasn’t always the case.  Before us, many varieties of life forms from miniscule amoebas on up to massive dinosaurs were the chief residents of the planet.  It would be presumptuous of our species not to believe that eventually, another species, finding the planet’s changing environment more hospitable, will succeed us.  It might be ants or grasshoppers or some species yet to evolve, unknown today.  It might even be the creatures we call annelids, segmented worms or nightcrawlers or their evolutionary descendants.  I hope that if that happens, they remember that back eons before, I gave one of their ancestors a hand crossing a concrete sidewalk.

JL

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The Route to an Orange Jumpsuit 

Marty London is retired from a very successful legal career.  He posts on his ‘occasional’ blog on current affairs from a legal perspective.  I suggest that you check out his posting of April 6 by clicking right here or visiting https://londonsbh.blogspot.com/ .  He doesn’t much agree with Manhattan DA Bragg, and finally concludes by saying that ‘one way or another, we are going to put Trump into an orange jumpsuit, but it ain't gonna be because he got laid and lied about it.’  Read how he comes to that conclusion.

JL

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Even Bad Publicity is Good Publicity

Followers of this blog may note that other than its inclusion in quotes from other sources, the name of the country's forty-fifth president never appears.  He is usually referred to as the 'defeated former president.'  That's because any mention of him, even truthful revelations of his perfidy, gives him the opportunity to respond, despite the dishonesty of his words.  To his  followers, that doesn't matter.  Let them read about him elsewhere.

  JL

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Housekeeping

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 . )

 

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. 

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it too!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, (it looks like this:  ), you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses, along with a comment from you, each of which will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the ‘sidebar’ features such as access to the blog’s archives.

Either way will work, sending them that link or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.  It's your choice.  Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. 

         

 

        Have a nice day.

04-05-2023 - Indictment, Switching Parties, Gun Violence, and Another Letter

A  Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

It is impossible not to read about the indictment of the defeated former president elsewhere. I am certain you have already done so. A picture, however, is worth a thousand words. Here he is, minus his usual bravado, entering the courtroom to hear the specifics of his indictment by a Manhattan Grand Jury. Expect similar facial expressions as activity in regard to other litigation involving him progresses. But remember, the wheels of justice turn slowly. The next court activity on his Manhattan indictment is scheduled for December 4. Have patience.

 

JL

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A ‘Way Out’ Solution for Democrats

It’s clear to me that despite internal squabbles between its progressive left and its hopefully (or hopelessly) centrist base, the Democrats are not the ones who are jeopardizing democracy in the United States.  It’s the Republican Party at all levels that caters to those who do not believe in the rule of law, and those who represent the dangers bigotry and selfishness present to democracy. 

The solution to our nation’s problems rests with the Republican Party, not the Democratic Party. That’s why true reforms in areas such as women’s rights, voting rights, gender equality, environmental protection, and health care do not happen in the manner the majority of Americans favor.  While not a majority of their party, there are enough right-wing Republicans eager to block such legislation, and the rest of them dutifully go along with them bringing about long-term harm to the nation. 

Here’s a ‘way-out’ solution, Democrats!  Consider changing your party registration!  And if your do, besides registering as a Republican voter, attend meetings, speak up, and fight for nominees who believe in serving the people and not those who have swallowed right-wing lies.  Once within the G.O.P., try to make that party hew closer to what the majority of the American people want.

Fight to return the Republican Party to those who would emulate Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and not the libertarian poseurs from the far right who have captured that party and sold it to the wealthiest of Americans and selfish business interests, who would really prefer a tax-free anarchy.  And if such a reborn G.O.P defeats Democrats, it will not be a tragedy.

Each Republican victory over hapless Democrats locally and Statewide moves me closer to becoming one, with the above strategy in mind.  (I am presently an NPA voter … No Party Affiliation … having given up on the Democratic Party in Florida.)

JL

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Working Toward Second Amendment Repeal

The previous blog posting pointed out that the only real solution to gun violence and mass shootings is repeal of the Second Amendment.  Since posting it, I have ‘googled’ the many excellent organizations dedicated to promoting gun control legislation and fighting gun violence and found, to my amazement, none specifically working for repeal of the Second Amendment, which is in my opinion, the core of the problem.  

When oncologists battle cancer, they don’t concentrate on the areas to which the malignancy has metastasized.  They look for its origin, its source.  And that is why the Second Amendment must be repealed.  It is the reason that gun violence is allowed to exist in this country.  

Certainly, assault weapon bans, insisting on raising the age of purchasing guns, measures to identify likely ‘shooters’, regulating what goes on at ‘gun shows,’ and fighting personal ‘carry’ laws are helpful, but they lack the teeth that repeal of Second Amendment would bring about.  Re-read what I posted a few days ago.  That is the real answer.  

If any of you know of an organization that is working toward repeal of the Second Amendment and not just nibbling around the edges of gun violence, please let me know.  The lives of American school children depend on it.

JL

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Another Letter

Here’s the text of a letter I just emailed to the Palm Beach Post.  I doubt that it will be published but here it is anyway.

‘A Democratic legislator in Tallahassee was recently reported as commenting in regard to some of the Governor's programs that 'Florida is the place where freedom goes to die.'  If that is indeed the case, its demise can be attributed to the Achilles heel of the democratic process whereby the election of those willing to assist in its suicide is made possible.’  

JL

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Housekeeping

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 . )

 

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. 

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it too!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, (it looks like this:   ), you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses, along with a comment from you, each of which will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the ‘sidebar’ features such as access to the blog’s archives.

Either way will work, sending them that link or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.  Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. 

                                  

        Have a nice day.