Talk To Your Doctor About Impeachara March 17, 2017March 16, 2017 I assume you’ve already seen this two-minute drug commercial (“Impeachara”). And this one, for perfume, from Saturday Night Live (“Complicit”). But did you know that 83% Of America’s Top High School Science Students Are The Children Of Immigrants? That one’s not a joke. Not a joke either — the Republican push to forgo hundreds of billions of dollars in health care for the struggling in order to fund hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the rich. Or Trump’s pledge to eliminate the alternative minimum tax — a move that, had it then been in effect, would have cut his own 2005 tax bill by 90%. Or his plan to make America great again by slashing research — “Scientists Brace for a Lost Generation in American Research.” Or to slash the EPA — because who really drinks water or breathes air any more? And why believe General Mattis when he calls climate change a national security threat? How could any of this be happening? How could this man be president? Did you read yesterday’s absolutely must-read story?* That’s how. Have you seen “Spamilton“? Until this week, you could only see it in New York, but now you can see it in Chicago, too — and after reading this review, you will probably want to. (Full disclosure: I get a few pennies if you do.) Have a great weekend! *No? What is there about “must read” you don’t understand? (Here, insert a smiley face. You know I love you. But everyone needs to read this.)
Twitter Zombies Laying In Wait -- How Putin Mercer And Bannon Are Wrecking Liberal Democracy March 16, 2017March 15, 2017 Kris McCormack: “Here is an article about Robert Mercer, the money man behind Trump, and the person who introduced Cambridge Analytica to the Trump campaign.” It’s long, and you absolutely have to read every word of it. This is how Brexit happened. This is how Trump came within 3 million votes of Hillary. This may start wars, pit one community against another, shape your children’s future. . . . On its website, Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters – its Unique Selling Proposition is to use this data to understand people’s deepest emotions and then target them accordingly. The system, according to Albright, amounted to a “propaganda machine” . . . . . . “It’s no exaggeration to say that minds can be changed. Behaviour can be predicted and controlled. I find it incredibly scary. I really do. Because nobody has really followed through on the possible consequences of all this. People don’t know it’s happening to them. Their attitudes are being changed behind their backs.” . . . This week, Russia announced the formation of a new branch of the military: “information warfare troops.” . . . “Politics is war,” said Steve Bannon last year in the Wall Street Journal. And increasingly this looks to be true. . . . One of the things that concerns Howard most is the hundreds of thousands of “sleeper” bots they’ve found. Twitter accounts that have tweeted only once or twice and are now sitting quietly waiting for a trigger: some sort of crisis where they will rise up and come together to drown out all other sources of information. Like zombies? “Like zombies.” Many of the techniques were refined in Russia, he says, and then exported everywhere else. “You have these incredible propaganda tools developed in an authoritarian regime moving into a free market economy with a complete regulatory vacuum. What you get is a firestorm.” . . . But read it all.
Don’t Assume Bad Intent March 15, 2017March 12, 2017 From the age of 5 and for two decades more, she was picketing with the Westboro Baptist Church (God hates fags and Jews, etc.). But I’ll bet you’ll like her. And her TED Talk. And want to spread her message.
Trevor Noah: Born A Crime March 14, 2017March 13, 2017 Because Jon Stewart is about the sharpest, most righteous guy out there, his chosen “The Daily Show” successor a couple of years ago — the South African, Trevor Noah — had to be a pretty interesting character. But why him? What’s his story? Well, now I know — he just spent 8 hours telling me his story* . . . Trevor Noah: Born A Crime — and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Yours free if new to Audible.com. Or you could read it with your eyeballs, but you’d lose his amazing delivery. Either way: Don’t miss it. Or this piece in Foreign Affairs, “How America Lost Faith In Expertise,” by Tom Nichols, which begins: In 2014, following the Russian invasion of Crimea, The Washington Post published the results of a poll that asked Americans about whether the United States should intervene militarily in Ukraine. Only one in six could identify Ukraine on a map; the median response was off by about 1,800 miles. But this lack of knowledge did not stop people from expressing pointed views. In fact, the respondents favored intervention in direct proportion to their ignorance. Put another way, the people who thought Ukraine was located in Latin America or Australia were the most enthusiastic about using military force there. . . . *Only, I listened at 1.25X speed, so just 6.4 hours.
Jobs and — Especially — Health Care March 12, 2017March 12, 2017 Just so it’s clear, “Trump’s” 235,000 net job increase for February is a tiny bit LOWER than Obama’s February increases in all but one of the previous five years. (Raw data, here.) Basically just a continuation of the economic success Trump inherited: 76 consecutive months of net private sector job growth . . . now, with February, 77. The real story is how Trump now accepts the numbers he once derided. (“Don’t believe those phony numbers when you hear four point nine and five percent unemployment, the number’s probably twenty-eight, twenty-nine, as high as thirty-five” — he’s “read as high as 42%.”) I watched Spicer live as he told the press what Trump, he said, had instructed him to say on this point: the jobs report “may have been phony in the past,” he laughed, “but it’s very real now.” Watch Lawrence O’Donnell put that laugh into context. Of course we shouldn’t take this man seriously. He’s an entertainer! A demagogue! A pathological liar! A national disgrace!* Have fun with it! And then there’s the health care farce. Paul Krugman rightly calls the Republican bill “so bad it’s awesome.” But most of the outrage misses the really big picture — just as that same really big picture was largely missed, in reverse, when Obamacare was enacted. The really big picture is that Obamacare is a major transfer from the wealthy, whose taxes it raised, to everyone else, in the form of health care you can no longer be denied if you develop a pre-existing condition or hit your lifetime cap. That may be terribly unfair to the wealthy and mega-wealthy, who now pay an extra $380,000 on every $10 million in dividends and capital gains they receive . . . but it goes a long way — to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars — toward providing free preventive care and subsidies to millions of Trump voters who previously could not afford coverage. The Republican plan cancels that wealth transfer. There’s been some focus on the paltry $40 million/year tax break it gives insurance executives — Outrage Over $400 Million Tax Break for Insurance Executives Under GOP Obamacare Replacement Plan. But $40 million a year? That’s barely a rounding error. The real story is repeal of the 3.8% surcharge on dividends and capital gains, saving tens of billions a year for people like the Kochs and the Trumps and the DeVoses and the Wilbur Rosses and the Carl Icahns and the Steve Bannons and the Gary Cohns and the Steve Mnuchins and the current and former partners of Goldman Sachs. (Most of whom are wonderful. I just don’t think they’ve been overtaxed. Even with the 3.8% Obamacare surcharge, today’s 23.8% top rate on investment income is lower than the 28% top rate in effect when Ronald Reagan left office. And it is well known Ronald Reagan was God.) So before descending into the weeds*, just ask yourself and your friends this: Obamacare shifts hundreds of billions from the wealthy and uber-wealthy to help people get health care. Should we reverse that? The Republicans say . . . yes! What do you say? *Obamacare’s weeds include lots of measures designed to bend health care inflation downward over time while improving care. And there’s evidence of some success. (“. . . The Kaiser study shows that average family premiums rose 20% from 2011 to 2016. That rate of increase is actually much lower than the previous five years . . . up 31% from 2006 to 2011 . . . and the five years before that . . . up 63%. . . .“) But Obamacare clearly need improvement — negotiations to lower drug prices, for example — and a sensible bipartisan debate would focus on that.
Weekend Watching – “I Love Wikileaks” March 10, 2017March 10, 2017 He’s gutted the State Department and installed Putin’s guy. (Trump had never even met Tillerson before coming within 3 million votes of Hillary. What a coincidence that we’d wind up with the only American Putin awarded the Order of Friendship.) “Gutting the State Department” doesn’t take long to say — just as “burning the library of Alexandria” is just a few words. But for so much institutional knowledge needlessly to have been lost? It is to cry. Watch Rachel explain. This is hugely consequential stuff. And speaking of Trump and Russia . . . the President apparently lied when he denied involvement in softening the Ukraine plank at the Convention. That’s a separate must-see clip. Watch! Oh! And that giant CIA dump from WikiLeaks which would appear to be a tremendous blow to our national security? There appears to be exactly one degree of separation between Donald Trump and Julian Assange. His name is Nigel Farage — sitting with the President at a small dinner a couple of weeks ago, visiting Assange in London Thursday. It comes around 16:30 into this 18-minute clip. As he was exiting the Ecuadorian embassy (Assange’s asylum for the past five years), Farage told a reporter he “couldn’t remember” why he’d been there. And White House press secretary Sean Spicer had no clue either (an amusing 60-second clip). But given Farage’s history with Assange, it was probably not to discuss coffee imports. “WikiLeaks. I love WikiLeaks!” — Donald Trump October 10th, 2016. How does this end well? With millions of new, high-paid jobs created by finally getting Mexico’s boot off our neck? USA TODAY: A Border Tax Could Make Your Next Car Cost $2,500 More DETROIT — Proposals for a border tax to pay for a wall with Mexico and encourage increased manufacturing in the U.S. would add hundreds to thousands of dollars to the cost of every car and truck sold here, including those assembled in American factories. There’s even a risk the tax could raise prices and reduce sales so much that the U.S. loses manufacturing jobs, according to the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association, the umbrella group for several supplier associations representing 1,000 companies. . . . I know we’re going to win so much we’ll get tired of winning, but so far the winners have been ISIS, whom he’s handed a “blessed” recruiting tool; China, to whom by abandoning the TPA he’s handed leadership in the Pacific region; and Russia, whose journalist-murdering dictator hopes to see Western liberal democracies thrown into disarray. (“What,” says our President. You think we don’t kill people?”) Have a great weekend.
Weekend Watching – “I Love Wikileaks” March 9, 2017March 10, 2017 He’s gutted the State Department and installed Putin’s guy. (Trump had never even met Tillerson before coming within 3 million votes of Hillary. What a coincidence that we’d wind up with the only American Putin awarded the Order of Friendship.) “Gutting the State Department” doesn’t take long to say — just as “burning the library of Alexandria” is just a few words. But for so much institutional knowledge needlessly to have been lost? It is to cry. Watch Rachel explain. This is hugely consequential stuff. And speaking of Trump and Russia . . . the President apparently lied when he denied involvement in softening the Ukraine plank at the Convention. That’s a separate must-see clip. Watch! Oh! And that giant CIA dump from WikiLeaks which would appear to be a tremendous blow to our national security? There appears to be exactly one degree of separation between Donald Trump and Julian Assange. His name is Nigel Farage — sitting with the President at a small dinner a couple of weeks ago, visiting Assange in London Thursday. It comes around 16:30 into this 18-minute clip. As he was exiting the Ecuadorian embassy (Assange’s asylum for the past five years), Farage told a reporter he “couldn’t remember” why he’d been there. And White House press secretary Sean Spicer had no clue either (an amusing 60-second clip). But given Farage’s history with Assange, it was probably not to discuss coffee imports. “WikiLeaks. I love WikiLeaks!” — Donald Trump October 10th, 2016. How does this end well? With millions of new, high-paid jobs created by finally getting Mexico’s boot off our neck? USA TODAY: A Border Tax Could Make Your Next Car Cost $2,500 More DETROIT — Proposals for a border tax to pay for a wall with Mexico and encourage increased manufacturing in the U.S. would add hundreds to thousands of dollars to the cost of every car and truck sold here, including those assembled in American factories. There’s even a risk the tax could raise prices and reduce sales so much that the U.S. loses manufacturing jobs, according to the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association, the umbrella group for several supplier associations representing 1,000 companies. . . . I know we’re going to win so much we’ll get tired of winning, but so far the winners have been ISIS, whom he’s handed a “blessed” recruiting tool; China, to whom by abandoning the TPA he’s handed leadership in the Pacific region; and Russia, whose journalist-murdering dictator hopes to see Western liberal democracies thrown into disarray. (“What,” says our President. You think we don’t kill people?”) Have a great weekend.
25th Amendment, Section 4 March 8, 2017March 8, 2017 For the first time in 70 years, the world finds itself without a leader. The consequences would seem to range from merely “bad,” if we’re fortunate, to something much worse. In truth, it’s hard to grasp that this is even really happening. That it’s not just a TV show. (What’s more, that it’s happening with a huge assist from our primary adversary of those past 70 years, Moscow.) (And that it’s happening, in a sense, as the culmination of work begun in 1958 when Fred Koch helped found the rabidly anti-communist John Birch Society.*) (And as questions about team Trump’s Russia connections are now joined by this must-read story of his Azerbaijani deal.) So how do we fix this? Do we wait for something truly awful to happen? Do we suffer a long, slow slide toward a long, drawn-out impeachment? Do we wait for the Captain Queeg moment that has surely crossed the brain pans of all my older readers, as it has mine? Or at some point possibly sooner rather than later do we rip the bandage off — real fast — as responsible Republicans invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution? That would be my preference. “Reckless, unhinged, and petty” are not what the world needs right now. *What irony, that two of the key forces that converged (along with others) to give us Trump would start from such polar opposite places — the Soviet Union and the John Birch Society. Though of course Soviet communism is long dead; Russia is a kleptocracy whose ruler may be nearly as wealthy as the Kochs. Not that the Kochs supported Trump directly — they opposed him in the primary, presumably agreeing with Colin Powell that he was “a national disgrace,” with Karl Rove that he was “a complete idiot,” with 51 former Republican national security officials that he was “dangerous.” But the work the Kochs had funded over the decades to help build Republican turn-out certainly made a difference in an election as close as this one, where Trump came within 3 million votes of his superbly qualified, steady, respected opponent.
Another Andrew March 7, 2017 We’re almost twins, Andrew Gillum and I — except for his being young, black and straight; his mom having driven a school bus; his becoming Tallahassee’s youngest city commissioner at 23 and mayor at 35 (now running for governor), my last election having been for high school class treasurer. If you have 5 minutes, watch Andrew’s story. I don’t take sides in Democratic primaries; but if Andrew wins, I’ll be with him all the way. “When We Rise” is the 8-hour ABC docudrama you missed last week that chronicles the equal rights movement Cleve Jones helped lead. Click here to watch it on YouTube. America’s capacity to overcome prejudice (“Irish need not apply!”) has never been better on display than here.
Brave New World March 6, 2017March 5, 2017 We hurtle toward utopia and Armageddon at ever increasing speeds. For Armageddon, start with the notion of an unstable North Korean dictator and an unstable American president — and note (as I’ve offered before): nuclear winter is not the solution to global warming. For utopia, how about this headline I missed in November: Tesla’s solar roof to cost less than a regular roof – even before energy production, says Elon Musk . . . Musk said during the meeting earlier this afternoon: “It’s looking quite promising that a solar roof [can] actually cost less than normal roof before you even take the value of electricity into account. So the basic proposition would be ‘Would you like a roof that looks better than a normal roof, last twice as long, costs less and by the way generates electricity?’ Why would you get anything else.” That’s including the labor costs and without subsidies for solar, Musk added. . . . Has there ever been a more exciting time to be alive? Nearly free energy is on the way, just as we already have nearly free communications (I can make a Skype call to China — a video call, no less — for free!). The implications — if we can learn to distribute the benefits — are spectacular. So far we seem to be solving the world’s technological challenges faster than its political ones. Although with this particular breakthrough, the gains are easily distributed to any homeowner with a roof, which is a good start. (Less good for coal miners, but we hope some at least can thrive installing roofs.)