Run Don’t Walk – Tonight, Even – To . . . February 14, 2016 . . . Michael Moore’s new film, “Where To Invade Next.” Is it 100% balanced? No. But funny, eye-opening, powerful, INFORMATIVE, deeply well-intentioned, and IMPORTANT. Bring the kids. Bring your right-leaning-but-also-well-intentioned uncle. And then get all your friends to get all their friends to get all their friends to see it.
What I Did For Love February 12, 2016February 11, 2016 This is your Valentine’s Day column. (Sunday is Valentine’s Day!) Monday there will be no column. It’s President’s Day! The stock market will be closed! (For your President’s Day column, please see yesterday — conservative David Brooks on our wonderful President.) And who knows whether there’ll be any columns the rest of the week either. I’ll be in Canada! At TED! Which is why Wednesday I pitched the TravelPass feature you should definitely activate if Verizon is your wireless provider. (And a reason to switch, if it’s not.) But — are you still with me? — this is your Valentine’s Day column: The cast of Hamilton performing What I Did For Love 40 years after A Chorus Line debuted on the same stage. # And, while we’re at it, remember The Only Relationship Guide You’ll Ever Need: “Be nice to each other (as I’m sure you already are) and find humor in the compromises (as I’m sure you already do) — they’re worth it.” That’s it.
David Brooks Will Miss Obama February 11, 2016 I love this, though it is too tough on Hillary and Bernie. (To read those parts, you’ll have to click.) I am so proud of our President. From conservative columnist David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, to which you should subscribe: As this primary season has gone along, a strange sensation has come over me: I miss Barack Obama. Now, obviously I disagree with a lot of Obama’s policy decisions. I’ve been disappointed by aspects of his presidency. I hope the next presidency is a philosophic departure. But over the course of this campaign it feels as if there’s been a decline in behavioral standards across the board. Many of the traits of character and leadership that Obama possesses, and that maybe we have taken too much for granted, have suddenly gone missing or are in short supply. The first and most important of these is basic integrity. . . . He and his wife have not only displayed superior integrity themselves, they have mostly attracted and hired people with high personal standards. . . . Second, a sense of basic humanity. Donald Trump has spent much of this campaign vowing to block Muslim immigration. You can only say that if you treat Muslim Americans as an abstraction. President Obama, meanwhile, went to a mosque, looked into people’s eyes and gave a wonderful speech reasserting their place as Americans. He’s exuded this basic care and respect for the dignity of others time and time again. Let’s put it this way: Imagine if Barack and Michelle Obama joined the board of a charity you’re involved in. You’d be happy to have such people in your community. Could you say that comfortably about Ted Cruz? The quality of a president’s humanity flows out in the unexpected but important moments. Third, a soundness in his decision-making process. Over the years I have spoken to many members of this administration who were disappointed that the president didn’t take their advice. But those disappointed staffers almost always felt that their views had been considered in depth. Obama’s basic approach is to promote his values as much as he can within the limits of the situation. . . . President Obama may have been too cautious, especially in the Middle East, but at least he’s able to grasp the reality of the situation. Fourth, grace under pressure. I happen to find it charming that Marco Rubio gets nervous on the big occasions — that he grabs for the bottle of water, breaks out in a sweat and went robotic in the last debate. It shows Rubio is a normal person. And I happen to think overconfidence is one of Obama’s great flaws. But a president has to maintain equipoise under enormous pressure. Obama has done that, especially amid the financial crisis. After Saturday night, this is now an open question about Rubio. Fifth, a resilient sense of optimism. To hear . . . Trump, Cruz and Ben Carson campaign is to wallow in the pornography of pessimism, to conclude that this country is on the verge of complete collapse. That’s simply not true. We have problems, but they are less serious than those faced by just about any other nation on earth. People are motivated to make wise choices more by hope and opportunity than by fear, cynicism, hatred and despair. Unlike many current candidates, Obama has not appealed to those passions. No, Obama has not been temperamentally perfect. Too often he’s been disdainful, aloof, resentful and insular. But there is a tone of ugliness creeping across the world, as democracies retreat, as tribalism mounts, as suspiciousness and authoritarianism take center stage. Obama radiates an ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance that I’m beginning to miss . . . Oh, and he also steered us back from the brink of global depression, killed Bin Laden, and stuff like that.
Smile – A Great Travel Tip February 10, 2016February 10, 2016 Donald Trump will not be President of the United States. Details to follow. From the CBS Evening News: a six-year-old orphan on a mission to make you smile. Too schmaltzy? Here’s something more practical, if you ever leave the country (as so many claim they would if he were): Using your phone when you travel is a nightmare — or has been, up til now. Even if you remember to buy the extra international packages in advance of your trip, you very quickly find yourself exceeding the data pack age you bought, and constantly have to re-set your roaming options because they turn themselves back on whenever the phone restarts . . . and you get these crazy bills and want to kill yourself until you realize how much your loved ones would miss you and that, after all, we have hot water. But still have to pay the bill. Well, AT&T still does it that way, but Verizon now has TravelPass! It is so great: for just $2 a day in Canada or Mexico and $10 a day in 65 other countries — and only on days you actually use it — you are charged for service exactly as if you were still home in the U.S. It is so much simpler, so much cheaper, so much less a rip-off. Thank you, Verizon. (The only simpler thing would be if they added it to everyone’s plan automatically. But there are limits to corporate kindness. So you do have to sign up for it, one time. Until then, or if you have AT&T, the crazy expensive nightmare still applies.)
An Easy Way To Cancel Stuff February 9, 2016February 8, 2016 Have you been paying monthly for stuff you just never get around to canceling? Or forgot you even were still paying for? I wasted nearly $500 on e-fax alone this way. Enter TrueBill, as described here and here. (Thanks, Brian!) Find your provider below and TrueBill does the rest. Free. No, Norton Antivirus is not on the list — some things are just impossible. But look! There’s Time Warner! Imagine the time you’ll save not having to “listen carefully as the options have changed” and then waiting on music hold for the next available representative. (“We are [as always] experiencing unusually high call volume.”) Even if you’re not ready to give TrueBill read-only access to your financial statements, these links could be helpful, as in many cases they tell you how to cancel “manually.” 1&1 Internet 123Loadboard 15Five 24 Hour Fitness 750 Words ABC Mouse Accountable2You Activity Rocket Ad-Free time Adobe Acrobat Pro Adobe Creative Cloud ADT Security Affirm Airbrake Alfred Algolia Alliant Energy Allstate Alterra Amazon Cloud Drive Unlimited Amazon Kindle Unlimited Amazon Prime Amazon Web Services Ambassador American Express Annual Membership American Express Card Payment American Express CreditSecure American Home Shield American Utility Management Ameriprise Life Insurance Ancestry Animal Jam Annual Membership Fee AnyPerk Anytime Fitness appFigures Apple Music Arcadia Power ArtSnacks Aspire Resources Student Loan Assurant Assurant Health Atlassian AT&T Audible Audi Financial Babbel Backblaze Balsamiq Bamboo HR Bank of America Privacy Assist Basecamp Batchbook B&B MUSIC LESSONS BB&T Mortgage Beachbody Beauty Bar BeenVerified Bench.co Bespoke Post Betterment BGE Birchbox Blades of Green Blue Apron BofA Credit Card Payment Boingo Wireless Bombfell Boomerang for Gmail Bounce Energy Box Brainstorm Internet Buffer BugHerd Bugsnag Cake Marketing Calendly Capital One Credit Card Payment Care.com CareFirst CBS All Access Central Security Group Charter Communications Chartio Chase Credit Card Payment Chewy.com Autoship ChildFund International CircleCI Citibank Credit Card Payment CitiMortgage ClassMarker ClassPass ClickFunnels Clinton Foundation Clockwork Jiujitsu CloudFlare Club Penguin Club W Code42 Code Climate Code School Comcast ComEd Compassion International Compose ConEdison Consumer Reports Covenant Eyes Coveralls Cox Communications Crashplan CreditExpert CreditReport.com by Experian Cricket Wireless Crossfit Active Performance Crunch Gym Crunchyroll Culligan Water of Los Angeles Customer.io Delighted Department of Education Student Loan Desk.com DigitalOcean DIRECTV Dish Network Disneyland Annual Passport DNSimple Docker DocSend DocuSign Dollar Shave Club Doorman DreamHost Dreamstime Drip Dropbox Dropcam Nest Cam Dungeons & Dragons online Earth Link Eat This Much EBMUD Education for Just Peace eFax EPB Fiber Optics Epoch Payment Solutions Equifax Credit Services Equinox eRenterPlan Esurance Europ Assistance USA Identity Protection Everhour Evernote Everybody Fights Examine.com Expensify External transfer fee Extra Space Storage EZ Pass Maryland Facebook Advertising Fancy Hands FasTrak FastSpring Feedly Fifth Third Bank Mortgage Filepicker *FINANCE CHARGE* Firebase Five Four Club Flinto Fluid UI Ford Credit FreeCreditReport.com FreshBooks Frontend Masters Frontier FullContact FullStory f.y.e. Backstage Pass VIP GameFly Geek Squad GEICO Get 10,000 Fans GetResponse Giganews Github GoDaddy Domain Name Hosting Gogo Inflight Internet Gold’s Gym Google AdWords Google Apps for Work Google Contributor Google Drive Storage Google Express Membership Google Maps Engine Pro Google Play Music Grasshopper Graze Great Lakes Student Loan Greenpeace USA Green Tree Financial Bill Payment GrooveBook Groove Music Guardian Property Management Handy Harvard Business Review [Kindle Edition] Harvest HBO Now Healthy Paws Pet Insurance Heap Analytics Hello Bar HelloFax HelloSign Heroku Hightail (formerly YouSendIt) HipChat Hiver Homebox Home Depot Project Loan Honda Finance Hootsuite HostGator HubSpot Hulu Hyundai Motor Finanace Ice Mountain/Ready Refresh Water Delivery IconFinder iContact Identity Guard ILovePDF indeed Infiniti Financial Services Instant Checkmate Instapage Instapaper Intercom INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTION Intuit Quickbooks Online InVision iPhone Upgrade Program Ipsy Iron.io iweb Japan Crate Jazz JustFab Kadira Kaiser Health Plan Dues Keep the Change Kissmetrics Kiwi Crate LA Fitness Laughing Squid LeadPages LegalZoom Le Tote LevelUp Lever Lexington Law Lexus Financial Services Bill Payment Liberty Mutual Librato LifeLock LinkedIn Link Texting Linode Litmus Live Fit Gym Lob Loggly LogMeIn LoopNet Loot Crate Lynda.com Macy’s Card Maid Bright Mailchimp Mailgun Mapbox Mapline Match.com MBNA Credit Cards Bill Payment Media Temple Meetup Meldium Metromile METTAGROUP Me Undies Microsoft Office 365 Mixpanel Modulus Morningstar Premium Membership MotionMail Mouseflow MoveOn.org Civic Action Moz Mozy M&T Mortgage MyFax myFICO Name.com Nation Builder Nationwide Pet Insurance NatureBox Navient Nest Netflix NeuroFuse New Relic New York Life New York Sports Clubs New York Times New York Times Digital Nicely Noted Nimble Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp Bill Payment Nootrobox npm Nutshell Office Vibe OKCupid Olark OneDrive Ontraport Ooma Opstarts Optimizely Optimum Outbrain Overplay Pacific Gas and Electric Company Pagerduty Panda Pow Pando Pandora PaperPlane.io Papertrail Parse Patreon PAYPAL INST XFER Pepco PersistIQ PG&E Phone Power Photobiz,com PicMonkey Pingdom Pivotal Pixton Planet Fitness Playbook HR Plex Pluralsight POPSUGAR Must Have Potter’s Violins Privy Prodigy Game Progressive Insurance Project Fi Promoter.io Protect America Public Storage Punchbowl Put.io Quickbooks Payroll Rackspace RadPad (Rent) RCN Rdio Rebtel Recently Reddit Gold Referral Candy RelateIQ Rentometer Rent the Runway Rhapsody Ricky’s Right Signature RingCentral Ring Video Doorbell Rise Rocket Lawyer Roku Subscriptions Rollbar Safeco Insurance SallieMae Autopay Sallie Mae Bill Payment SaneBox Sauce Labs Search Man Segment Semaphore SEMrush SEM Rush Sendgrid Sentry Sheer Cover Shoedazzle Shopify Shopify Purchase Sidekick by HubSpot Sierra Pacific Federal Credit Union Signpost Silverton Condominiums SimpliSafe SingleHop SiriusXM Skillshare Skype Slack Slackline Slideshare SlimWiki Sling TV SmartyStreets Snapy Sonar Sonic Sound Cloud Soylent Spotify Spreedly Sprig Go Sprint Long Distance Sprint Wireless Sprout Social Squarespace Stamps.com State Farm StatusCake StatusPage.io Stitch Fix Streak Strikingly Stunner of the Month Stunning Surf Easy SurveyGizmo SurveyMonkey Tagless Style Terminix The Ladders The Noun Project The Olympic Club The Wall Street Journal [Kindle Edition] TIDAL Time Warner Cable TiVo T-Mobile TorGuard ToutApp Toyota Motor Credit Corp Transunion Travelers Insurance Treehouse Trello Trulia TSheets Tweetfull Twenty20 Twilio TxTag Typeform UberConference Unbounce Unfollowers United Barbell University Accounting Service Up All Night Upcase USA for UNHCR UserVoice Valpak VASA Fitness Verizon Verizon Wireless Vinyl Me, Please Visual Website Optimizer Vivint Volkswagen Credit Vonage VPN.ht Wall Street Journal Washington Gas Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission Webpass Weight Watchers Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Wells Fargo Student Loan WeWork When I Work Windstream Communications Wingify Wistia World of Warcraft WP Engine Wufoo Xbox Live Xero Yard Strength Yelp for Business Owners YMCA YouTube Red YouTube Red YuppTV Zapier ZeeMaps Zendesk Zenefits ZeroLag Zillow ZipRecruiter Zirtual Zopim
Can You Spot The Flaw In Cruz’s Logic? February 6, 2016 TRUMP ‘Nuff said. But two tidbits anyway. A Book Review . . . Gary Belis panned The Art of the Deal way back in 1988: . . . everything you always suspected about the makeup of Donald Trump: the pomposity, the shallowness and above all, the need for more money, more toys and more attention. Which prompted the Donald to write Fortune suggesting Gary be fired for writing “the single worst review of a book in publishing history.” A Cartoon . . . Tom Tomorrow’s “Earther.” (See also, if you have time, from the current Vanity Fair: Buying an election is not as easy as it sounds. It seems Trump horrifies the Koch brothers, too.) RUBIO Did you see his Iowa victory speech? Marco thanked his lord and savior Jesus Christ for his third place finish and orated, with polished gravitas: Each generation before us sacrificed . . . and for over two centuries, each generation has left the next better off than themselves. Now the time has come for us to do the same. Now the moment has arrived for this generation of Americans to rise up to the calling of our heritage. Now the time has come for us to take our place and do what we must. And when I’m elected president of these great united states, we will do our part. We will accept further tax cuts. That last sentence I just threw in myself, because really, what sacrifice do Rubio and his fellow Republicans have in mind to make for future generations? Not addressing climate change? Not levying the taxes needed to revitalize our crumbling infrastructure? Rubio’s call to sacrifice sounded Kennedyesque — “ask not,” and all that — but I knew Jack Kennedy, Senator. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. And although that’s not actually true — I didn’t and he wasn’t (I was 16 in 1963) — Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy. CRUZ And neither is Ted Cruz. Here he is channeling Jack Kennedy — literally trying to do his voice — and, with it, the Kennedy family’s reaction. (They are appalled.) And here he is Tuesday at a New Hampshire town hall. I found myself wondering how many in his audience would see the up-is-down flaws in his argument. At the 2012 Republican Convention, he said, he spoke of how our National Debt had reached $16 trillion — up from just $10 trillion when one of his daughters was born. And afterwards I went back to my hotel room and began looking at Twitter (that was before Donald was tweeting about me everyday) and Paula Poundstone, the comedian, had apparently been watching that night. I guess she didn’t have anything better to do. She tweeted, “He said when his daughter was born the National Debt was $10 trillion. Now it’s $16 trillion. What the heck did she do?” The town hall laughed, and Ted went on to say that “just last week the National Debt crossed $19 trillion. In her short life — she’s seven — from ten to nineteen trillion. It is wrong. It is immoral. No generation in American history has ever done this to the next generation. And if we don’t stop it, young people are gonna spend their entire lives simply working to pay off the debts of their deadbeat parents and grandparents.” Powerful, no? (Leave aside that the Debt was ramped up from 30% of GDP to 122% — quite sensibly — to confront the Depression and win World War II. So, yes, it sort of does have precedent, and by the generation widely known and revered, actually, as “the greatest generation.”) And then he evoked “a movement of people furious with government of both parties … who got in bed with lobbyists and special interests and grow and grow and grow government.” “So what was the last time we broke the Washington cartel?” he asked the crowd. No one was quite sure, so after a pause, he told them: 1980. Ronald Reagan. “And I’ll tell you, the Granite State played a critical role in making that happen.” Giving Reagan their votes. So if New Hampshire votes for Cruz, maybe, finally, he implied, we’ll get another Reagan who can keep from burdening future generations with immoral debt. Except of course it is Reagan, specifically, who sent our National Debt into orbit. Under $1 trillion when he took office — two centuries of accumulated borrowing — the Debt then represented just 30% of GDP. In 12 years of Reagan/Bush, he quadrupled it, to $4 trillion . . . then Clinton handed Bush 43 a surplus . . . but Bush 43 got the Debt growing again and handed Obama economic collapse and a $1.5 trillion deficit. So basically, Reagan — by massively cutting taxes for the wealthy, which Bush 43 compounded — set our Debt to growing faster than the economy, putting it on a trajectory to grow from 30% of GDP to 100% or so, where it is today. Only the Democrats — first Clinton and now Obama — turned that around. (Yes, we still have a deficit, so the Debt is still growing. But so did it grow in virtually every year from 1946 to 1980 also. But because the economy was growing faster, the debt in proportion to the economy as a whole shrunk back down from 122% to 30%. Until Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. That’s when we started borrowing from future generations and began a decades long shift of wealth to the top tenth of one percent.) It’s okay for the Debt to grow, so long as it’s generally growing slower than the economy as a whole. Which under Reagan and Bush it did not. But which under Clinton and now Obama, once they had time for their policies to take hold, it did and now again is. If the National Debt grew half a trillion a year for the next 100 years — while the economy grew at 4% a year (half real growth, half inflation) — it would reach $69 trillion a century from now! Ted Cruz could have a field day alarming people with that. Yet $69 trillion would represent only 7% or so of what would by then be a $960 trillion GDP. Like a $28,000 mortgage on a $400,000 house — not alarming or immoral at all, actually. What’s immoral is to borrow from future generations to slash taxes on the super wealthy.* What’s immoral is to borrow trillions from future generations to invade and occupy Iraq.** What’s immoral is to not borrow to put people to work revitalizing our kids’ crumbling infrastructure. But up is down these days in the Republican Party. You’re sick to death of my quoting Mitch McConnell — “by any standard Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country.” But here is a more recent example — Jennifer Horn, chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party, on TV Thursday night: “Americans are justifiably angry and frustrated after seven years living under, in my opinion, the most failed administration of my lifetime.” Really? More failed than, say, George W. Bush’s? Can she really believe this with gas at $2 and unemployment at 4.9%? Has she noticed how much more dead Bin Laden is under Obama than he was under Bush? How many fewer trillions — and lives — it cost us to get rid of Iran’s weapons-grade uranium than to get rid of the weapons of mass destruction a single-source code-named “Curveball” told us Iraq had? Has she noticed how well Detroit is doing? How much more affordable heating oil is? How much better millions of LGBT lives are — at zero cost to their straight brothers and sisters? Does she not think the hard-negotiated TPP is a major accomplishment (even if she doesn’t appreciate the importance of the climate change accords)? Really, Jennifer? Really, Mitch? Really, Ted? Really, Marco? Really, Donald? Really Fox? Really Rush? Rubio and Cruz speak really well and the Donald does good stand-up — “hey, folks; how ya doin’ tonight?!” — but Politifact notes that most of Trump’s statements are untrue. As are Rubio‘s and Cruz‘s. Does that matter at all? Great weekend watching: Thursday’s Clinton-Sanders debate. And set your TiVo for the next one, February 11 on PBS and CNN. *The 90% and 70% top rates of Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, and Carter were counter-productively high but Reagan / Bush 43 overshot in the other direction. **Wars are traditionally paid for by raising taxes, not cutting them.
Bye-Bye Miami . . . (and Fertile Deltas Everywhere?) February 4, 2016February 3, 2016 They’re spending millions to raise my street three feet so it doesn’t flood at high tide. Restaurants at whose umbrella-ed sidewalk tables I used to sit last winter are now three feet below-ground. The tables are still there, but now I sit at tire-level, as the cars go by above. Perhaps instead of a beautiful 900-mile wall that will somehow cost us nothing — Mexico will pay for it — we need to build a serviceable 6,000-mile dike. (I’m ignoring Alaska and the much scarier “second method” of measuring coastline, which for states like Texas and Louisiana is 10 or 20 times as long.) This article from two summers ago is worth a read if you live anywhere near anywhere. In part: . . . Nor will south Florida have to wait that long for the devastation to come. Long before the seas have risen a further three or four feet, there will be irreversible breakdowns in society, he says. “Another foot of sea-level rise will be enough to bring salt water into our fresh water supplies and our sewage system. Those services will be lost when that happens,” says Stoddard. “You won’t be able to flush away your sewage and taps will no longer provide homes with fresh water. Then you will find you will no longer be able to get flood insurance for your home. Land and property values will plummet and people will start to leave. Places like South Miami will no longer be able to raise enough taxes to run our neighbourhoods. Where will we find the money to fund police to protect us or fire services to tackle house fires? Will there even be enough water pressure for their fire hoses? It takes us into all sorts of post-apocalyptic scenarios. And that is only with a one-foot sea-level rise. It makes one thing clear though: mayhem is coming.” . . . “[I]f you have sea level rises of much more than a foot in the near future, when you raise the canal gates to let the rain water out, you will find sea water rushing in instead,” Kirtman said. . . . The problem stems from the top, Kirtman said, from the absolute insistence of influential climate change deniers that global warming is not happening. . . . “But global warming is occurring. That is absolutely unequivocal. Since the 1950s, the climate system has warmed. That is an absolute fact. And we are now 95% sure that that warming is due to human activities. If I was 95% sure that my house was on fire, would I get out? Obviously I would. It is straightforward.” This point is backed by Harold Wanless. “Every day we continue to pump uncontrolled amounts of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, we strengthen the monster that is going to consume us. We are heating up the atmosphere and then we are heating up the oceans so that they expand and rise. There doesn’t look as if anything is going to stop that. People are starting to plan in Miami but really they just don’t see where it is all going.” Thus one of the great cities of the world faces obliteration in the coming decades. “It is over for south Florida. It is as simple as that. Nor is it on its own,” Wanless admits. “The next two or three feet of sea-level rise that we get will do away with just about every barrier island we have across the planet. Then, when rises get to four-to-six feet, all the world’s great river deltas will disappear and with them the great stretches of agricultural land that surrounds them. People still have their heads in the sand about this but it is coming. Miami is just the start. It is worth watching just for that reason alone. It is a major US city and it is going to let itself drown.” The Republicans vying to lead the world scoff at such warnings. Cruz: “global warming alarmists are the equivalent of flat-Earthers.” Trump: “bull—-.” Christie: adamantly unconcerned (at 38:51). Rubio: “There’s never been a time when the climate’s not changing” — Florida’s junior senator opposes December’s Paris Climate Accord. And Florida’s Republican governor? He’s simply banned climate change. That should do the trick.
Islamicide February 3, 2016February 2, 2016 How the Mullah Mafia Is Destroying Pakistan. So powerful. And of course, it’s much broader than Pakistan. Any religion taken to extremes becomes a scourge. My ideal world would stand on two legs: logic and the Golden Rule. Logic includes science. The Golden Rule includes everything from the Sermon on the Mount to the philosophy of John Rawls. For color and comfort and community, inspiration, and richness of feeling, my ideal would would embrace the wonderful stories and traditions it already does, that I, too, cherish. Just not taken literally. (What: are we crazy?) And do you know who should be the first to teach that distinction? Priests and rabbis and mullahs and monks and ministers and madrassas.
Pineapple Juice February 2, 2016February 1, 2016 I suggested UPIP at 77 cents in September and bought more at $1. In case you’ve noticed it at $9.70, don’t be impressed. It split 1 for 12. Which means we paid, adjusted for that, $9.24 and $12 for each share we now own. But Aristides’s Chris Brown thinks UPIP may be an even better bet now, having won some of its patent cases. It should be in the mid-$20s, he thinks, not least because it has NOL’s alone worth $12 a share (“net operating losses” from prior management — an accounting thing that can be monetized). With money I can truly afford to lose, I bought more. Jeff: “I used to be poor, but now I’m not. Should I choose a more expensive health insurance policy, because I can afford the premium; or a minimal policy, because I can handle the catastrophes?” ☞ I’d say go minimal if you feel you are generally healthy by nature/lifestyle/genes because (a) they’re not taking the risk as a favor to you (they expect to cover overhead and make a profit); (b) you’ll encounter less paperwork and frustration. Consider supplementing the coverage you do buy with a health savings account. And read How Not to Die . . . to need less health care in the first place. Friday was W.C. Fields’ birthday. Specifically, according to The Writer’s Almanac . . . . . . the birthday of the man who said, “Comedy is a serious business” – born William Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania (1880). He also wrote screenplays, including for the films The Bank Dick (1940), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), and You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939). He ran away from home as a child, stole to survive, got in a lot of fistfights, and was arrested often. He was a fabulously skilled juggler, and at 14 he honed his juggling act and joined the carnival. He went from juggling to doing a witty comedic routine, and then to acting in films. He toured a lot, and the more famous he became, the more he drank. When he was filming movies, he kept a flask of mixed martinis near at hand, referring to it as his “pineapple juice.” He often quipped about his drinking, saying things like, “Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.” And, “Everyone must believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink.” And, “If I had to live life over, I’d live over a saloon.” One day someone snuck into his trailer and replaced the martinis with real pineapple juice. Back from filming, Fields took a sip and, surprised, spit it out — then charged around the set yelling, “Who put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice??!!” (Thanks, Glenn. Thanks, Nat.)
Dark Questions, Dark Money February 1, 2016January 31, 2016 Have you seen the list of nihilistic password-recovery questions that’s going around? Examples: “What is the name of your least favorite child?” . . . and . . . “On what street did you lose your childlike sense of wonder?” Betty P.: “Per your suggestion, I printed out the Hamilton lyrics and downloaded the music. Bob and I listened to it FOUR times before we saw the matinee on Wednesday. And we are still listening to it in our heads. It made our ‘Hamilton’ experience magical!” ☞ Actually, you can save big bucks by not seeing Hamilton at all. Or at least until the next batch of regular-priced tickets is released for year-end 2016 / early 2017. Just see it “in your head,” as often as you want, free. It’s great treadmill music: be thrilled, inspired, and heart-healthy. But even as Hamilton describes the country’s contentious founding, so Jane Mayer’s Dark Money describes its more recent confounding — as sampled in this interview. How a tobacco-industry lawyer and a few wealthy right-wingers set out to undermine the intellectual class they saw impeding capitalism — professors, scientists, and such. And how the Koch brothers, whose dad co-founded the John Birch Society, currently lead that effort.