January 9, 2024 - Four Political Questions, Rarely Discussed Truths, the Diet Bowl, Loyalty, and More

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 Four Questions

One - How many million American voters do you believe fail to recognize the dangers to representative democracy as we have known it in this country since 1789 presented by Donald Trump and by those Republicans hanging onto his coat-tails who blindly follow him, hoping to end up in Congress or on a public payroll somewhere?

Two - How many million American voters, dependent upon TV and the internet for news now that newspapers are dying, do you believe understand that Donald Trump is not just a defeated (he still won’t admit it four years later) former president running for that office again, but someone who wants the power of a dictator for himself and for whatever Republican, Libertarian, or Fascist follows him in office, should he win election in November?

Three - How many million American voters do you believe think the lies that come out of the mouths of Donald Trump and those that support him are just normal, meaningless, political statements made in the heat of a campaign and that those warning the nation of the danger he and his Republican followers represent (like this blog) can be ignored because they are just playing the same political game that he is playing?

Four - How many million American voters do you believe dismiss the charges brought against Donald Trump in Federal, New York, and Georgia courts as just mere politics, a ‘weaponization’ of our legal system against Trump?

My guess, recognizing that Trump received about 70 million votes in losing in 2020, is about that number, perhaps a few less.  And that is terrible.  What are you going to do about it?  The nation’s future is in YOUR hands.  

Don't miss the cartoon further on in this posting!  

JL

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Rarely Discussed Truths

When Donald Trump talks about mass deportation of immigrants, some of whom he recently referred to as ‘vermin,’ retribution against those who have not shown loyalty to him and using the military and the Department of Justice to carry out his punishment of them and those behind any civil or criminal charges against him, you get a picture of who he really is.  And it is not a nice picture.  It is that of a tin pot dictator.

But that picture appeals to a significant number of Americans who, although they will not readily admit it, includes those who feel that our government spends a disproportionate amount of its tax-funded resources to benefit people of color who number only between 13% and 14% of our population, and that too many of its decision-makers are Jews who number only a little more than 2% of our population. 

Trump claimed that there were 'fine people on both
sides' in the 2018 Charlottesville rioting giving credibility
to racists and antisemites like this fellow.  I worry
about those that are not so public in their feelings.

They don’t come out and say these things. They don’t boast about their racism and antisemitism in public, but that’s what they mean when they talk of ‘welfare queens’ and disparage ‘Critical Race Theory’ and ‘Diversity-Equity-Inclusion’ ideas without even attempting to understand them, and repeatedly refer to our country’s ‘Christian’ founding, exemplified by the current House Speaker who puts his evangelical religious beliefs ahead of the Constitution that he is sworn to uphold.

And of course, these folks always vote Republican.  These are rarely discussed truths.

JL

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The Diet Bowl!

Okay, we know that the top college football team in America belongs to the University of Michigan which defeated the University of Washington on Monday evening.   In about a month, the Superbowl will crown the top team in the NFL.  But it will be almost two months until the NCAA’s college basketball ‘March Madness’ takes the stage.  And the flowers will be blooming all over this country and Canada before the NBA and NHL champions are crowned.

What is the sports enthusiast to do between these playoff events?  Well, I have an idea:  The Diet Bowl!

The four finalists will be Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, GOLO, and that old standby, Weight Watchers.  Each will name a team of a man and a woman in their thirties, each about 150 pounds overweight but otherwise healthy.  During a five-week period, each will follow their teams’ regimens, weighing in at the end of each week on national TV. The team that loses the most weight after five weeks will be crowned the Diet Bowl champion.  (It might be a good idea to ban the losers from TV advertising for six months.) 

Online wagering on this competition will be available each week in States where sports betting is legal, with odds being monitored and calculated on a ‘pari-mutual’ basis by a consortium of Las Vegas casinos, with about ten percent of the total amount wagered nationwide being taken off the top and donated to a recognized charity such as the American Heart Association. 

Any takers?  Or are you content with watching Ball State shoot baskets against Toledo in the MAC or re-runs of Michigan beating Washington?  Hey, baseball spring training games start at the end of February!

JL

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A Recent Posting Supplemented

Coco Gauff

When I suggested back on December 29 that the water in Palm Beach County might be the reason so many great athletes come from hereabouts, I named a few (Lamar Jackson and Trey Turner).  Of course, we must add tennis champion Coco Gauff to that list … and also a significant number of NFL linemen from high schools out in the Everglades whom we just take for granted. 

JL

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Loyalty Defined

An old business associate of mine often referred to the willingness of  clients and customers, well-served for years (and athletes) to switch to a competitor when a better deal turned up, and pointed out that, ‘loyalty is just a word in the dictionary between lox and lozenge,’  And that is true! 

My trusty old 1986 Merriam Webster ‘Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary’ (that replaced an earlier edition from my college years) does back up this witticism on its page 708 as reproduced below.

(The dictionary definitions above ran onto a second column on that same page.  I have taken the liberty of cutting and pasting the columns together.)

JL

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A Timely Cartoon Published on Monday

'Born Loser' cartoon (by Art & Chip Sansom) published Monday morning,  January 8,  in many newspapers before the Michigan-Washinton football game.  It really makes a statement, as good cartoons should.  

JL

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

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 annoughd 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. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.

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 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 comment from you.  Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you are now 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 the link to 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.

 

JL

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January 6, 2024 - An Anniversary, What President Biden is Saying, Words from Claudine May, Bret Stephens, Marc Thiessen, Archie Bunker, and the Challenge before the Supreme Court

 

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Today is the Anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol instigated by the losing presidential candidate.

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What the President is Saying

President Biden has started an ad campaign to counter the lies that Republicans spread in their efforts to replace our representative democracy with an authoritarian state.  Here’s the ad.  Just CLICK HERE or copy and paste https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opICiMkVhc4  on your browser line.  Pass it on!

Frankly, I would prefer a series of ads stressing specific issues such as abortion rights, gun violence, and voting rights.  It is true that ‘democracy is at stake’ but that won’t, in itself an abstract idea, attract voters. 

Also, for an excellent summary of President Biden’s remarks made near Vallley Forge yesterday concerning the dangers Donald Trump continues to pose to our representative democracy, copy and paste https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-5-2024 on your browser line to read Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s excellent summary of them or just CLICK HERE.

And while you’re in a ‘click here’ mode, take a look at conservative columnist Marc Thiessen’s recent column listing the ten best things he believes President Biden accomplished in 2023. Copy and paste https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/27/biden-best-policy-actions-2023/ on your browser line or just CLICK HERE.  They are very convincing.

He followed this up with another column listing what he believes to be the ten worst things the President did in 2023.  After all, Thiessen is a conservative, so this is as expected.  Find it at  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/29/biden-worst-ten-actions-policy-2023-missteps/ or just CLICK HERE.

I find the good things Thiessen credits to the President far outweigh the very debatable ‘missteps’ he attributes to him.  The bottom line is that President Biden is trying to make democracy work for all of us, while his likely opponent is working to replace representative democracy with an autocracy and is dragging the otherwise leaderless Republican Party along with him. 

I see immigration as the President’s most vulnerable issue.  (Theissen’s list of ‘missteps’ ranks it as number 4.)  President Biden must come up with at least some ideas leading to a solution to a problem that resulted in, according to an article in the New York Times, nearly 2.5 million people crossing our southern border in the fiscal year 2023, many of whom end up looking for help in northern cities, some sent there by Texas’ governor, and wreaking havoc with their budgets, despite some Federal aid.  

Pointing out the danger Republicans, and specifically Donald Trump, are to democracy fails to address the immigration issue.  In December, more than 10,000 migrants were intercepted at the southern border on some days, among the most ever, but that doesn’t happen every day and is just a drop in a bucket containing the two and a half million seeking entry last year.  Republican solutions to this problem like barbed wire, higher walls, and troops on the border are heartless, impractical, and contradict what has been part of the American dream since the nation’s founding.  But Joe Biden must come up with some ideas to counter these Republican ideas concerning our southern border.

What makes it worse is that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is willing to use proposing such measures as leverage to block needed legislation in other areas. 

Future historians may label this period as 'Democracy Running Wild' because only in a representative democracy is it possible to put into power those intent on destroying it.   It's sort of like a snake implanting its fangs on its own rear end, chewing away, eventually consuming itself.

The choice is yours.

JL

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Stress in Academia 

And here’s another link to check out.  The New York Times opinion column by Claudine Gay, the resigned president of Harvard University. included these words: ‘I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate.’

‘Neglect’ is the operative word in that sentence.  It is clear to me that such ‘neglect’ is the result of a weakness that comes with the unavoidable priorities that anyone, including Ms. Gay, bring along with them to their jobs, based upon their racial, ethnic, and religious heritages.  We are who we are and there is nothing we really can do about that, other than recognize who we are. 

Such weaknesses, and they include those of traditional ‘white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant males,’ as well as members fitting into other possible ‘profiles,’ cannot just be checked at the door to the office.  They come with the person put into that office, but that should not prevent them from doing an excellent job in carrying out the duties of their position.  When they manifest themselves in the kind of ‘neglect’ Ms. Gay admits to, they should be quickly corrected, and that is what she attempted to do.

To read Ms. Gay’s opinion column from the Times, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/opinion/claudine-gay-harvard-president.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20240103&instance_id=111625&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=78918068&segment_id=154191&te=1&user_id=02fa158150d34dc186b01b1b8ec7a224 or just CLICK HERE. 

JL         

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But New York Times columnist Bret Stephens is less charitable to Ms. Gay than I am.  

In a recent column, he points out that colleges are places for learning and research and not social engineering.  He says, in trying to explain how Harvard reached this point, that ‘Where there used to be a pinnacle, there’s now a crater. It was created when the social-justice model of higher education, currently centered on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts — and heavily invested in the administrative side of the university — blew up the excellence model, centered on the ideal of intellectual merit and chiefly concerned with knowledge, discovery and the free and vigorous contest of ideas.’

His entire New York Times column can be found at   https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/opinion/harvard-claudine-gay-resignation.html or by CLICKING HERE.

Again, this is something about which one must make up their own minds.  How far can one go in defending the rights of the misinformed to poison the minds of the uninformed, considering that such rights are the same rights that permit truths to be spread as well, even in a hostile environment?

JL

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Correction: I was wrong! 

The expression ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you may end up somewhere else’ originated with Yogi Berra, and not Casey Stengel.  But after all, I’ve never been a Yankee fan anyway.  It is, however, in its nonsensical way, true.  It means that if you act without a goal or objective, what you reach might be a result that you never would have contemplated if you had bothered to think about it beforehand.

JL

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Sock-Shoe, Sock-Shoe or Sock-Sock, Shoe-Shoe?

In the old Archie Bunker TV sitcom (‘All in the Family’), there was a memorable episode where Archie (Carroll O’Connor) berated his son-in-law (Rob Reiner) about the way he put on his socks and shoes. Archie pointed out that putting a sock and a shoe on one foot first, and only then on the other foot, was dangerous!  When ‘Meathead’ asked why, Archie pointed out that if there were some kind of emergency, like a burglar or a fire, before he got the second sock and shoe on, he would be hampered by being barefoot on one foot, whereas if he put socks on both feet first, at least he would not be barefoot on one foot in dealing with an intervening emergency.  I think of this every time I put my socks and shoes on, of course usually following Reiner’s ‘Meathead’ method. 

                                              

JL

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The Supreme Court and Donald Trump

There will be millions of words written between now and next month when the Supreme Court comes down with its decision as to whether Section 3 of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment even applies to Donald Trump, whose former position of president is not specifically named in that Section’s language, although he did take an oath to defend the Constitution of which it is a part. 

While facing many charges for which he has been indicted federally, he has yet to be convicted of them, and some questions are still pending in Appellate courts.  That makes him ‘innocent until proven guilty.’   Only the most loyal of his supporters though, question the overwhelming evidence against him.  Our prisons are filled with many convicted on far less evidence.

But does this evidence justify removing him from State ballots used in selecting presidential electors?  Maybe?  Maybe not?  The core of Trump’s legal strategy has been to repeatedly delay all litigation until the nation is so close to Election Day, that eliminating him from ballots will be next to impossible.

The Supreme Court will try to find a way to avoid appearing partisan in their decision concerning Trump's appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision that indeed, even before any Federal conviction, accepted that he did engage in an insurrection, although they did not tie that to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, when they ruled against his being on the ballot in that State.  They believed there that the overwhelming evidence that Trump was involved in instigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection sufficed to remove him from the ballot.  Once again, let’s go back to that word I used in recent blog posting:  this is a real ‘clusterfuck.’  Any decision the SCOTUS makes will leave a lot of people unhappy.

 

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Right now, President Biden ought to be thinking about quickly appointing additional Justices to the Supreme Court, a move many were urging a few months ago.  It is not too late.

If the SCOTUS’ February decision gives a crucial boost to the credibility of Donald Trump’s campaign, that may still happen.  Such appointments might seem highhanded on President Biden’s part but they might be the only path to our preserving our democracy, presently being threatened by the candidacy of Trump, whose announced plans, if elected, are those of a dictator.

The appointments, the hearings, and the Democratic Senate’s confirmation of additional Justices can be completed before mid-Summer and a case to remove Trump from the presidential race brought before a new thirteen Justice court. 

I would hate to see things reach that point, but it might be necessary to preserve representative democracy in the United States.  Let’s see what the SCOTUS does in February, when they try to support the Constitution, preserve democracy, and avoid offending those who believe Trump’s lies.  I am not overly optimistic.

JL

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

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. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.

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 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 comment from you.  Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you are now 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 the link to 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.

 

JL

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January 3, 2024 - Six Hundred Hits, Toyotas, Fireside Chats, Two Very Important Columns, and Stormy Weather

 

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 Almost 600 First Day Hits!

The last posting of Jackspotpourri (Dec. 29, 2023), the one that included New Year’s greetings and my thoughts on nouns being used in place of adjectives to make something sound pejorative, attracted almost 600 viewers within its first 24 hours of being posted!  Almost all of them were from the United States, too. 

I usually post about a half a dozen myself as I develop a blog’s content (they’re not supposed to show up in the count, but they do anyway, even when I follow the Google Analytic rules about counting ‘hits’), but that is still an enormous number, including those who showed an interest piqued by my email alert or who clicked on a link to Jackspotpourri that had been forwarded to them.  

Strangly, there was no corresponding increase in those asking to be added to that list receiving email alerts for each posting, so that 600 number might be an error of some kind.  We'll see.  But meanwhile, it makes me proud of the blog anyhow.

Usually, I am happy when I can confirm that about three or four dozen of you have chosen to view my output.  Keep it up.  I will try to deserve your doing so.

 

JL

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Should We be Boycotting Toyota?

Houtis Driving Toyotas in Yemen. - These are the terrorists
attacking shipping in the Red Sea using the Israeli-Hamas
war to gain support among other Arab extremists.

If you follow the pictures and videos covering the Israeli-Hamas war, and other struggles in the Middle East, it seems that terrorist militants  usually seem to be driving around in Toyota vehicles.  Even the Houtis in Yemen, pictured above, drive them. 

That is no accident.  ISIS and other Muslim terrorist groups seem to favor Toyotas and have no difficulty in obtaining them.  Check out an article on this which can be found at https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Wild-Blue-Yonder/Article-Display/Article/3600155/toyotas-and-terrorists-why-are-isiss-trucks-better-than-ours-said-the-american/ or just CLICK HERE. There are several more informative links to be found there.

Back in the late 1930’s and during World War Two, many Americans of Jewish faith avoided Ford products because of Henry Ford’s overt antisemitism and friendship with Adolf Hitler. 

The world-wide distribution system for Toyota vehicles is difficult to get a handle on, but right now, I personally wouldn’t purchase one … or a Lexus either (Forgive me for hanging on to my five-year-old I-300 model) which they also manufacture.  The Totota/Lexus people know who their terrorist customers are!  They should do something about it.  Or their non-terrorist customers should.

JL

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Joe Biden Ain’t FDR

Despite favorable statistics regarding employment and inflation, as well as government support and encouragement of infrastructure and economic projects benefitting all Americans, Republicans keep telling lies about the ‘recession’ we are in. (Interest rates are another problem but they too will be improving shortly.) There are always people who will believe lies.

President Biden lacks the communicative skills that enabled Franklin Delano Roosevelt to reach the public with fireside chats, but he must find a way to get his message out.  More than just his words, FDR proved through his comforting fireside chats that as Professor Marshall McLuhan proclaimed, the ‘medium is the message,’ The good economic news is a message something that President Biden must learn to better get across to the public.

FDR spoke, and ...

America listened.  The 'medium was the message,'
bringing the White House into the living rooms of
Americans.

JL

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Two Important Columns and Possible Stormy Weather for Democracy

Immigration as an issue in the 2024 presidential race just won’t go away.  Columnist Mary Sanchez fears that the defeated former president’s tirades on immigrants will lead him back into the White House, where he can finally become the dictator he has boasted that he would be at least on his ‘day one’ in office.  

While we were taught in childhood that ‘sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never harm you,’ Trump’s appeal to the gullible contradicts that.  Read her full column at https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/mary-sanchez-the-problem-isnt-trump-and-his-tirade-about-immigrant-bloodlines/ or by CLICKING HERE.  (You can skip her column if you are among those very rare Americans who are neither descendants of immigrants nor immigrants themselves.)

Another column to check out is that of conservative Ross Douthat whose recent New York Times piece seems to argue that taking the defeated former president off of the 2024 presidential ballot in some States would ultimately do greater harm to the Constitution by basing such an action on Article 14’s Section 3, than is the prospect of defending the Constitution by broadly defining ‘insurrection’ to get him off of the ballot.  Too many seem to swallow what I believe is Douthat's tortured reasoning, and even that of the sources he quotes.  Check out the Douthat column at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/23/opinion/colorado-ruling-trump.html  or by CLICKING HERE.  

I disagree with Douthat.  I believe the Supreme Court will be the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes 'insurrection' in today's terms, not those of the post-Civil War years or the First World War, when last they addressed that issue.   Department of Justice prosecutor Jack Smith (actually the people's lawyer, and that means YOUR lawyer) believes that what the defeated former president did on January 6, 2021 indeed constituted aiding and abetting 'insurrection,' if not being even more closely tied to it.   

And hanging over this, Prosecutor Smith is also asking the SCOTUS to clarify the degree of immunity Donald Trump had, if any,  while he still was president as well as after he was replaced by the winner of the 2020 election, Joe Biden, from the charge of violating Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment. 

If the SCOTUS comes down with a narrow definition of 'insurrection' to apply to Trump, letting him off the 'aiding and abetting' hook, or decides that even if he violated Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment, he was and is immune from prosecution, democracy is in for some very stormy weather in this country and it might be a good time to check out your suitcases.  Remember the old Boy Scout motto, 'Be Prepared.'  Physically and emotionally.

JL

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Skip This if You Want To

I can’t seem to get off of the kick I was on in the last posting of Jackspotpourri concerning the ruination of college football by the ‘transfer portal.’  I promise that this will be my last venture into that morass until next December.

Here’s a letter (I don’t know if they’ll print it) I sent to the Palm Beach Post on that subject.  (Dan Wolken is a USA Today sports columnist the Post frequently publishes.)

In questioning the value of college football bowl games (Dec. 29 issue), sportswriter Dan Wolken paraphrases Ole Miss (and former FAU) coach Lane Kiffen as saying that he couldn't think of any other sport with a system where 'free agency' starts while the season is still going on.  I couldn't agree more with him.  Players entering the 'transfer portal' leave their teams playing with second and third-stringers in many of these money-making bowl games, especially in the quarterback position, cheating both their teammates and the fans. The major solutions Wolken discusses won't happen for years, but at least college football could start now by postponing their 'transfer portal' period until after the last of the bowl games are played.

In addition to the ‘transfer portal,’ the sport doesn’t seem to object to those players likely to continue their careers in the NFL from ‘opting out’ of post-season bowl games, out of fear of an injury affecting their career path. 

I would suggest any athletic scholarship aid to a student include a provision requiring that it be immediately fully returned (with interest) to the school that provided it if an uninjured player chooses to thusly ‘opt out’ of a bowl game. This would also apply to any ‘NIL’ money received due to the use of his (or her) name. image, or likeness in media advertising.  If players are being ‘paid to play, then ‘play they must,’ so long as they are healthy.

This problem isn’t just limited to quarterbacks.  Florida State’s 63 to 3 shellacking by the University of Georgia in the Orange Bowl was chiefly due to the ‘opting out’ of half a dozen NFL-bound FSU defensive backs.  This was in addition to the loss of their number two quarterback, who had replaced their injured starter, and who chose to enter the transfer portal last week because his starting role didn’t seem secure for next season, when the ‘numero uno’ quarterback was likely to return, along with a bunch of new aspirants for that role.

This type of ‘clusterfuck’ messed up many other bowl games that would have been far more competitive as well if the transfer portal and the ability to painlessly ‘opt out’ didn’t exist.  I hope this is the last year this foolishness is permitted. 

Rule changes are due immediately, and they should be made by the colleges themselves and not the business and media interests (like Capital One, Allstate, and ESPN) that profit greatly from the bowl games.  And to avoid mismatches (like Oregon vs Liberty in one of this year’s final bowl games prior to the actual bowl playoffs between the top four selected teams), ‘strength of a team’s schedule’ should be factored in as well.

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(A footnote:  That 63 to 3 score confirms the wise decision of the college football playoff committee that chose to exclude ‘undefeated’ Florida State from their final four-team playoff, prompting Florida's legislature, governor, and senators to complain without good reason about the ‘injustice’ perpetrated upon FSU, just as they routinely complain about abortion rights, history and books that offend them, and the skimpiest of gun regulations, also without good reasons.  Any of the four other teams in the playoffs, Michigan, Washinton, Texas, and Alabama, probably would have duplicated Georgia’s thrashing of the fatally weakened Seminoles by sixty points, cheapening the whole purpose of having the playoffs in the first place, which is to determine the ‘best’ major college team.  It is good that next year’s college playoffs will be expanded to a dozen teams, giving more worthy college teams a shot at reaching the pinnacle.  Delaying the transfer portal, eliminating the ‘opt-outs,’ and paying attention to a team’s ‘strength of schedule’ will guarantee an honest result.) 

And as I said, this will be my last venture into that morass until next December.      

JL

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

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. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.

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 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 comment from you.  Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you are now 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 the link to 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.

 

JL

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