Year: 2017

This tells it all in under three minutes: Claire McCaskill on the “process” being used by “the world’s greatest deliberative body” to craft America’s health care system.  And how it differs from the process when Obamacare — flawed though it is — passed the Senate.

Watch.

My friend Seth Sikes killed in London earlier this month and will be at 54 Below in NYC this Saturday — invited back for the twelfth time (tickets here) — and up in Provincetown this summer.

But if Seth delights a crowd, that’s nothing compared to the way Trump delights his Cabinet. God, they love him. Their praise is positively fawning! The praise any good autocrat can expect from those who serve him.

(As recounted by David Margolick for the New Yorker, our leader may have gotten the hang of this from the birthday parties his mentor, Roy Cohn, used to throw.  Except that a great many people, including close friends of mine, truly liked the reptilian Cohn, and enjoyed blowing him encomia.  With Trump, I’m not sure Reince Priebus, et al, were having as much fun.)

This six-minute interview with Fareed Zakaria is Canada’s foreign minister’s thoughtful praise of America’s role in the world these past 70 years — for which she thanks us sincerely — and her lament at our having stepped aside.  Thoughtful and important.

It’s not the 1966 comedy, The Russians Are Coming!  The Russians Are Coming!, it’s the 2017 reality: the Russians are here.  According to all 17 of our intelligence agencies, they have deployed thousands of cyber-agents to disrupt our democracy and weaken the United States.

Our commander-in-chief doesn’t believe it and is doing nothing about it.

The attack — which would clearly seem to be working — is expected to be sustained, permanent, and to include as targets other liberal democracies as well, and the ties that have bound us together, like NATO and the UK’s inclusion in Europe.

Our commander-in-chief has shown no interest in doing anything about it.

Russia’s leadership does not trouble him.

A man who murders political opponents, murders journalists, lies to and steals billions from his countrymen is a man our commander-in-chief can respect. A man whose top aides our commander-in-chief can welcome into the Oval Office with great jocularity — his kinda guys! — while declining even to shake hands with Angela Merkel.

So forget for a minute whether he’s obstructed justice.  And forget for a minute whether he or his team have been or currently are in league with the Russians.  His campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was paid $10 million a year to, in his own words, greatly benefit the Russian government — but leave that aside for a minute, too.

We are under attack.  Our commander-in-chief doesn’t care and is doing nothing about it.

Why are 36% of Americans and the Party controlling the House and Senate okay with this?

Is it because we are about to have great health care at a tiny fraction — not just a fraction but a tiny fraction — of the cost?

Sorry.  Been busy raising money for the party that “believes in” climate change and a higher minimum wage and better relations with Cuba; and health care for all rather than tax cuts for billionaires, and allowing the refinancing of federal student loans at today’s low rates.

Oh: and repelling attacks by journalist-murdering Vladimir Putin.  An issue in which Trump has shown absolutely no interest.

How does this all end?

I am holding my SIGA.  Click here for their latest.

Hope to post more robustly soon.  Stay tuned.

Troubled by the state of our democracy?

Run for something.  If you’re a Democrat, this site proposes to train you, in the comfort of your own home, at your own pace, for free.

Though the stock market doesn’t reflect it, there is, in fact, much to be troubled about.

With the intentional help of a massive sustained attack by the former KGB, an unstable, incompetent, petty and petulant pathological liar, who for years kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside, came within just three million votes of a plurality in the race for President in 2016.

We all know the rest of the story, or at least much of it, as it has unfolded to date — we are soon to get GREAT health care at not just less than before, but at a fraction — no, a “tiny fraction” — of the cost.  The crowd on the mall at his Inauguration — as anyone could see — was by far the largest in history . . . and his Electoral College win was the largest since Reagan’s.  And now, as we go around the Cabinet, everyone confirms it: what a spectacular leader we have in this man.  He’s a smart cookie, like Kim Jung-Un; a strong leader, like (journalist-murdering, kleptocrat) Vladimir Putin . . . and on and on.

These are dangerous, potentially dark times for our country.  The folks who elected him were (mostly) not at all deplorable, any more than were the folks who elected a powerful German leader 80 years ago.  They were bamboozled.

But are we now more than a few inevitable terrorist attacks away from his declaring martial law?  Terrorist attacks that though tragic, for sure, might collectively cause loss of life equal to a week’s highway fatalities?

Might he actually fire Robert Mueller?  And if he does, will the Republican Congress — that stole the Supreme Court by not allowing a vote on Merrick Garland, and that blocked the American Jobs Act that would have put millions to work at good jobs rebuilding our decaying infrastructure — will that Republican Congress stand up to him?  Punish Putin?  Did the Republicans not forever pride themselves on being staunchly anti-Soviet?  Ah, but that was when Russia was communist.  Now that it is an oligarchy run by and for billionaires, it may be a different story.

In a matter of months, the rest of the world has concluded we are not the America they could once look to.  Russia and China are filling the gap.  They are winning so much they may soon grow tired of winning.  How much further will we slide before, somehow (how?) we awake from this nightmare?

Could the Supreme Court at some point — just as they installed Bush in a “one-off” decision they explicitly said was the product of exceptional circumstances, that should not be relied on as precedent — find a way to interpret the Founders’ intentions as not to have included victory for the KGB against the will of a plurality of the citizenry?

Run for something.  This site proposes to train you, in the comfort of your own home, at your own pace, for free.

Did you know that New York City now has ferry service?  So on top of all the other things you can do here this summer, for $2.75 you can take the ferry from (say) Wall Street to Rockaway beach.  For another $1, bring your bike aboard.

Did you know that in New York City, the phone line 888-NYC-WELL is “your connection to free, confidential mental health support?”  “Speak to a counselor via phone, text or chat and get access to mental health and substance misuse services, in more than 200 languages, 24/7/365.”

And that the City has a comprehensive plan for mental health?

But that if you do encounter a citizen in distress, you can call 311 or text 311-692 to report it (unless it’s an emergency, of course: 911).  That number or website is a portal to everything from alternate-side-of the-street parking info to potential job information.

Click here for a ton of other programs — like Ladders for Leaders, if you’re in a position to hire a talented young intern.

The City is thriving, with its lowest unemployment rate — and highest high-school graduation rate — ever.

And more than 70,000 toddlers enrolled in universal — free — full-day pre-K.

And teensy-tiny Manhattan apartments you can rent for as little as $1,750 a month (which is why God invented Queens).

Harlem is hot again.  Brooklyn rocks.

Last year — 2016 — was the safest year in New York City history; and New York is the safest city in America.

Taxes are high, but do you know what?  Per Oliver Wendell Holmes (and common sense), “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”

Come visit!

I am a week late with this, but if you can find 20 minutes, every segment of this LAST WEEK TONIGHT is dead on. As is generally the case with John Oliver.

How about this: James Comey for President (since Elon Musk was born in South Africa); Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Al Franken to run the communications shop. (Or Al Franken for President, Tom Hanks for VP, Oprah — or Charlie Rose — for Secretary of State, Trevor Noah to run the press shop.)

I cede the balance of my time to John.

One of you writes: “Here is an article about the Republican plan for Kansas and its absolute failure.  Isn’t insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results?  Therefore, the current Republican administration is insane.”

Well, yes — if the Republican goal is to help the American people, broadly.

But what if the goal is to enrich the already rich, who largely control the Republican party?  They would like to see everyone do well — just as stock brokers would like to see their customers do well and chicken farmers would like to see their chickens not suffer.  But for many, that is not their first priority.  Their first priority, understandably, in many cases, is to see themselves do well, even if millions lose health insurance or clients have to pay high fees or chickens are treated like this.

Anyway, here’s how the article, from New York Magazine, begins:

As Voodoo Economics Collapses in Kansas, Trump Takes It National
By Jonathan Chait

In 2015, Grover Norquist, who has successfully defined unconditional opposition to taxes as the defining tenet of party orthodoxy, waxed enthusiastic about one state in particular that was leading the way for the nation. “Kansas is the future,” he told an interviewer. “Kansas is the model.” Kansas was the state where Sam Brownback, the former congressman who mentored a young staffer named Paul Ryan, implemented supply-side tax cuts that, Brownback promised, would usher in prosperity and fiscal stability.

Now Brownback’s tax cuts have failed so dramatically and incontrovertibly that . . . incredibly, a majority of the REPUBLICANS in both chambers of the state legislature voted against the tax cuts. In a new interview with Russell Berman, Norquist insists the failure in Kansas does not tell us much at all about anything.”If you’re a Republican looking for a model,” he says, “Kansas is not the model.”

One might think that the economists who designed this now-repudiated plan would have been cast out of the party, or at least embarrassed into rethinking their assumptions. Yet nothing of the sort has taken place. Stephen Moore and Art Laffer, the supply-siders who crafted the failed Kansas experiment, are also taking the lead in designing Donald Trump’s tax plan. Their op-ed urging the president to throw himself behind massively regressive, debt-financed tax cuts found its way into his hands. So profoundly did their argument impress Trump that he instructed his advisers to immediately release a tax-cut plan mirroring the recommendations made by the architects of the Kansas debacle. Now the machinery of government is in the hands of people determined to replicate a policy so unmistakably erroneous that the majority of their own party could no longer live with it.

The pattern on display in Kansas has recurred over and over in Republican politics for more than a quarter century [and] has four steps: . . .

Read the whole thing!  Send it to your Republican uncle!

June is Pride Month and Trump has discontinued the White House Pride celebrations and Presidential Pride Proclamations that began in 1999 (suspended by Bush, resumed by Obama).  Instead, Trump will honor pride month today by speaking at an anti-LGBT conference for the Faith and Freedom Coalition, along with the famously homophobic James Dobson.

And just for fun?  If you didn’t have time to read How Trump Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money Into His Business in Forbes yesterday, watch Trevor Noah tell the story.

Have a great weekend.

He could walk down Fifth Avenue shooting people and no one would mind because, thanks to him, we’ll soon have great health care at a “tiny fraction” of the cost.  Like 10% of what we used to pay.

Sure he doesn’t pay income tax (though he did in 2005), and sure we’ll never see the returns he promised “absolutely” to disclose if he ran for president.  He can do pretty much anything he wants — if he’s remembered his Tic-Tacs — because the country is a mess, and he alone can fix it.

The deals he makes!  The lies he tells!  Mexico is paying for the wall!  The Saudis are buying $110 billion in American-made weapons!  (Well, no, actually, interestingly. they’re not).

And so what if he makes money off charitable events meant to benefit kids with cancer?  Click the link.  Not that you’ll be surprised.  For any other president, something like this would dominate the news.  Look what a $30,000 tax shelter called “Whitewater” did.  For Trump, there are five of these stories a day.

One of the kids at our summer camp had six toes on one foot, which — being horrible little kids — is pretty much all we focused on.  But imagine if we all had twelve fingers and toes.  Bye bye, base 10, hello base 12.

This is probably not how the creators of 12 x 12 x 12 had hoped I’d lead into my plug for their site, and someday if you’re unlucky I’ll expound further on the way we are genetically programmed to eschew “difference” — six toes on one foot!  It’s all we could focus on.  But for now, I give you 12 x 12 x 12.

Valerie C.: “I LOVE 12 x 12 x 12 … such a great idea. I loved choosing a cause close to my heart. Never had that experience before.”

12by12by12(SM) is a tool designed to give concerned people an opportunity to create hope and optimism during this time of turmoil and anxiety.

Here’s how it works: On the 12th of each month we will highlight one of the 12 important issue areas that are fundamental to the values upon which our country was founded. We’ll work to link you to multiple nonprofit organizations dedicated to that issue. And our portal will have constant access at all times to dozens of organizations working across all 12 issue areas.

We hope you’ll take the opportunity to learn about organizations that are new to you and to support those groups working on the issues that touch your heart.

Someone paid $1.9 million for this guitar.  What am I bid for a guitar hand-painted by Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul & Mary?  Seriously: if want to support the Democratic Party, what am I bid?  Me-mail me if you’d like to hear more.  Or want to buy it to auction off for your charity or cause?

Ah, irony.  A flood he describes as having been “of biblical proportions” destroyed the home of Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, who says God punishes gays with natural disasters.

Ah, sex.  So fraught.  From the Onion: Indiana Becomes Fourth State To Ban Great Sex.

And what about innumeracy?  Or a sense of proportion?  More than 100 Americans committed suicide yesterday, sadly, and nearly as many died in car crashes.  At least another 100 overdosed.  Thirty or forty were murdered.  In all: a couple of commercial jet crashes.

Yet that’s not what led the Nightly News.  Rather, both NBC and ABC led with a gendarme outside the Cathedral of Notre Dame who had been hit with a hammer by an Algerian who screamed “this is for Syria.”

This is not to minimize for a moment the terrorism that — tragically and maddeningly — has cost hundreds of American lives since 9/11.  (Spread over those five thousand seven hundred forty-seven days, perhaps one a month.)

But really?

Note that the gendarme will be fine; that this did not happen in America; and that the same White House that seeks to magnify the terrifying times we live in — where every billion times you leave your house you might confront a terrorist — seeks to cut $900 billion from the health care budget and slash cancer research.  Which will cause hundreds of thousands of needless American deaths.

. . . “I once asked a guy at [the National Institutes of Health] how much we should spend on preventing a disease that kills 6 per year, and he looked at me like I was crazy,” John Mueller, a foreign policy expert at the Ohio State University and co-author of the book “Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism”, told Business Insider in an email. . . .

So, yes, of course: we should continue to do every reasonable thing we can to prevent terrorism.  But we should also strive to keep things in perspective . . . which is the total opposite of what our petty, petulant, erratic, lying, bullying, narcissistic, vulgar, dangerous, ignorant President strives to do.*

*I know that sounds harsh.  But do any of those adjectives not objectively apply?