Year: 2018

Frank Rich begins:

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If you were standing in the smoldering ashes of 9/11 trying to peer into the future, you might have been overjoyed to discover this happy snapshot of 2018: There has been no subsequent major terrorist attack on America from Al Qaeda or its heirs. American troops are not committed en masse to any ground war. American workers are enjoying a blissful 4 percent unemployment rate. The investment class and humble 401(k) holders alike are beneficiaries of a rising GDP and booming stock market that, as measured by the Dow, is up some 250 percent since its September 10, 2001, close. The most admired person in America, according to Gallup, is the nation’s first African-American president, a man no one had heard of and a phenomenon no one could have imagined at the century’s dawn. Comedy, the one art whose currency is laughter, is the culture’s greatest growth industry. What’s not to like?

Plenty, as it turns out. The mood in America is arguably as dark as it has ever been in the modern era. The birthrate is at a record low, and the suicide rate is at a 30-year high; mass shootings and opioid overdoses are ubiquitous. . . . Today’s America is . . . marked by fear and despair . . . akin to what followed the crash of 1929, when unprecedented millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes after the implosion of businesses ranging in scale from big banks to family farms.

It’s not hard to pinpoint the dawn of this deep gloom: . . .

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Frank pinpoints the financial crisis.

Which makes sense.

(And it’s definitely worth reading the whole piece. “Trump’s nationalistic right-wing populism, which scapegoats immigrants and minorities to deflect rage . . . is nothing new.” “That hastening concentration of American economic power wasn’t fully understood by most Americans then, and neither was Gatsby, which was published to disappointing sales and reviews in 1925. It’s almost too exquisite an irony that just two years later, the budding real-estate developer Fred Trump would be arrested at a Ku Klux Klan riot in Queens, not far from Tom Buchanan’s home in Fitzgerald’s fictional Long Island enclave of East Egg. The rest is history inexorably leading America to this dark place . . .”)

But to find the dawn of our deep gloom, I would go back further, to the widening inequality that Ronald Reagan kicked off with his massive tax cuts for the rich, his union busting, and his demonization of government.  All three began the slow decline of the American middle class.

It’s not that Reagan was entirely wrong —

> The 70% top federal tax bracket was too high.  It’s just that Reagan (and then Bush 43 and now Trump) overshot the mark in lowering it.

> Union abuses were widespread (just as are abuses throughout the business world).  It’s just that Republicans have tilted the balance too far in favor of management.

> Government did suffer from inefficiencies and fraud (as did and do the private and nonprofit sectors).  But Republican politicians never rail against businesses that pollute and defraud  . . .  or non-profits that spend barely half your contribution on their mission (or that buy $20,000 buying portraits of themselves, half going to the artist for six minutes “work,” at a dinner the namesake of the foundation was paid to hold at his golf club).  No, Republican politicians focus only on government fraud and abuse.  Public servants are the bad guys; capitalists like Wilbur Ross — a $120 million grifter — and his ilk are the good guys.

But I digress.  Read Frank’s piece.

And note that this “booming” economy is simply the continuation of the truly remarkable Obama economy, whence 90% of the gains of the last 8 years arise — and that Obama and his administration rescued the world from an imminent global depression even as he left Trump a National Debt back to shrinking relative to the economy as a whole.  A positive trend that Trump’s Republicans have now reversed.

As an SPRT shareholder, I was pleased to see that cash remains at about $2.60 a share (so you get the rest of the business for about a dime), and sales are up and marginally profitable.  Who knows what will happen; but if the business itself were ever valued at 1 times sales plus that $2.60 in cash, we’d have (roughly, vaguely) a $6 stock, up from the $2.85 and $2.16 we paid.  So I hold on.

Michiko Kakutani, writing in The Guardian:

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Two of the most monstrous regimes in human history came to power in the 20th century, and both were predicated on the violation and despoiling of truth, on the knowledge that cynicism and weariness and fear can make people susceptible to the lies and false promises of leaders bent on unconditional power. As Hannah Arendt wrote in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Arendt’s words increasingly sound less like a dispatch from another century than a chilling description of the political and cultural landscape we inhabit today – a world in which fake news and lies are pumped out in industrial volume by Russian troll factories, emitted in an endless stream from the mouth and Twitter feed of the president of the United States, and sent flying across the world through social media accounts at lightning speed. Nationalism, tribalism, dislocation, fear of social change and the hatred of outsiders are on the rise again as people, locked in their partisan silos and filter bubbles, are losing a sense of shared reality and the ability to communicate across social and sectarian lines. . . .

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The piece is called “The Death Of Truth: How We Gave Up On Facts And Ended Up With Trump.”

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. . . For decades now, objectivity – or even the idea that people can aspire toward ascertaining the best available truth – has been falling out of favour. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s well-known observation that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts” is more timely than ever: polarisation has grown so extreme that voters have a hard time even agreeing on the same facts. This has been exponentially accelerated by social media, which connects users with like-minded members and supplies them with customised news feeds that reinforce their preconceptions, allowing them to live in ever narrower silos. . . .

. . .  the algorithms of social networks – which give people news that is popular and trending, rather than accurate or important – are helping to promote conspiracy theories . . .

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It’s worth doing something about:

1. Join Team Blue.
2. CrushTheMidterms.  It even designs an action plan for you.
3. MobilizeAmerica.

No need to choose: sign up with all three.

And if you can — click here.

Have a great weekend!

He had a 4.16 GPA and was class valedictorian, but his parents kicked him out.  The world faces so many challenges — climate change; artificial intelligence; nuclear proliferation; a sociopath beloved by white supremacists — but the biggest, as illustrated in this story, may just be learning to love and look out for each other.

In the meantime, while we work that out:

1. Join Team Blue.
2. CrushTheMidterms.  It even designs an action plan for you.
3. MobilizeAmerica.

No need to choose: sign up with all three.

Spread the word.

And if you can — click here.

Now anyone can customize a Monopoly set.  And that’s nice.

But how great is this story?  (Thanks yet again, Mel!)

Starting  in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen found  themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and  the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate  their escape…Now  obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a  useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of ‘safe houses’ where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and  shelter.

Paper  maps had some real drawbacks — they make a lot of noise when  you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush.

Someone in MI-5 (similar to America’s OSS) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It’s durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever.

At  that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and  that was John Waddington, Ltd.  When approached by the  government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the  war effort.

By  pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly.  As it happened, ‘games and pastimes’ was a category of item qualified for insertion into ‘CARE’ packages’, dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war.

Under the strictest secrecy in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington’s, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were located.  When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.

As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington’s also managed to add: 1. A playing token containing a magnetic compass.  2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together.  3.  Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian and French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money.

British and American crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a ‘rigged’ Monopoly set by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the ‘Free Parking Square’.

Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POW’S who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets.  Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another future war.

The story wasn’t declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from Waddington’s, as well as the firm itself, were finally honored in a public ceremony.

It’s always nice when you can play that ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card!

Ah, World War II.  Remember when there were good guys and bad guys?  And we were the good guys?  And the fascists were the bad guys?  And then, later, the KGB?  And it was really, really bad to call journalists “enemies of the people,” let alone murder them?  Or to praise those who do?*

If you think it would be a good time to reinstate some checks and balances:

1. Join Team Blue.
2. CrushTheMidterms.  It even designs an action plan for you.
3. MobilizeAmerica.

No need to choose: sign up with all three.

Spread the word.

And if you can — click here.

*Or to mock disabled people or rip children from their mothers arms as they sought asylum?  Or to start trade wars?  Or even just to lie?

. . . is sitting in the Oval office.  (Not literally: he’s in New Jersey, golfing.)

Read the story of the voter-fraud commission here.  (And Dunlap’s letter, on which it is based, here.)

Even more important is this must-read history of Russian spying in the US.  The parallels between 1946 and 2018 are stunning and instructive.

It concludes:

. . . In the months ahead, Congress, and then the public, will learn the findings of Robert Mueller and his investigators regarding the Trump campaign’s actual relationship with Russia on its route to the White House. There will be unpleasant revelations, to be sure, but nobody who is familiar with the VENONA story will be truly surprised by any of it.

And then there is the story of KGB awareness of Trump (via its allied Czech intelligence service) beginning in 1977 — 41 years ago! — and how the Russian relationship began developing more than 30 years ago.  Did you know all this?  I didn’t.

Watch this trailer.  “Active Measures” opens August 31.

Russia is at war with us, and our commander-in-chief, a sociopath, is — at best — looking the other way.

If that’s not impeachable, what is?

His pace of falsehoods and misleading statements has accelerated.

The Russians are winning.

The Republican Congress just nixed $250 million to shore up state election protection efforts.

We are losing our country and losing the generally constructive world order our country worked so hard to help build.

THREE WAYS TO VOLUNTEER

1. Join Team Blue.
2. CrushTheMidterms.  It even designs an action plan for you.
3. MobilizeAmerica.

No need to choose: sign up with all three.

Spread the word.

If you can, click here.

You don’t think Americans can be fooled by the KGB or a circus barking sociopath into thinking crazy things?  Or even just by a clever prankster like the one I wrote about who made the shed in his back yard London’s #1-rated restaurant even though it existed for just one night and served frozen dinners.

Look at the crazy things Sean Hannity and his viewers believe — that Fox News itself debunks.

Look at what the QAnon nuts at Trump rallies believe — I’ll bet you didn’t know Trump and Mueller are secretly working together to take down a shadowy cabal of pedophiles that includes Obama, Clinton, and Tom Hanks.

It would be vaguely funny if Trump were not in fact President and Putin were not in fact attacking us — and winning.

People can be fooled.  Consider this very fun magic act (thanks, Mel!).

Do you believe this guy has supernatural powers?  No, like Trump, he’s just scamming you. The rather important difference being that everyone knows the magician is just doing an act . . . he makes no claims that he alone can fix it, or that he’ll get you great health care for a tiny fraction of the cost.  He’s just trying to entertain you, not destroy our democratic institutions.

THREE WAYS TO VOLUNTEER

1. Join Team Blue.
2. CrushTheMidterms.  It even designs an action plan for you.
3. MobilizeAmerica.

No need to choose: sign up with all three.

Spread the word.

And if you can — click here.

OMG, OMG, OMG — the new season of Better Call Saul starts tonight.  (Tomorrow night, if you’re reading this Sunday.)

I didn’t know Land O’ Lakes was a Fortune 500 company, but it is, and its new CEO, Beth Ford, is openly gay — only the third after Apple’s Tim Cook and Dow Chemical’s Jim Fitterling.  If you round up, 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs are now openly LGBT!

If you had told me in 1973, when I first wrote about this stuff, that the world’s first trillion-dollar company would be run by an openly gay man (or that the 44th President of the United States would be black) — or that one of the country’s three largest cooperatives would be run by an openly gay woman (or that I would prefer a thing called Smart Balance to actual butter, however stupid that might be) — I would have considered you unhinged.

But here we are.

It’s still tough for many to be openly gay — this study tells the tale.  But boy have we ever made progress. And at no cost to the taxpayer!

(If you had told me, further, we would win the first Cold War without firing a shot at Russia, but that Russia would be winning the second, having helped to elect a sociopath, I would have offered you three ways to fight back.)

Have a great weekend.

Check it out — I think you may be heartened.

Short form: The DNC has enhanced its voter file with the purchase of 94 million more cell phone numbers . . . has identified 25 million likely Democratic voters who are not yet registered . . . has funded registration of Puerto Ricans displaced to Florida and Pennsylvania . . .  is raising millions in small-dollar contributions directly for candidates in tough races (including special-election winners like Doug Jones and Conor Lamb) . . . is providing cybersecurity guidance to the state parties . . . and a lot more.

Most important (if you ask me): it is funding field organizers to engage the tens of millions who vote our way in Presidential years but normally sit out the mid-terms.  We don’t have enough money to reach them all, which is why I keep asking. (And thanking you the minute I see your contribution come thru.)

THREE WAYS TO VOLUNTEER

1. Join Team Blue.
2. CrushTheMidterms.  It even designs an action plan for you.
3. MobilizeAmerica.

No need to choose: sign up with all three.

Spread the word.

[HOUSEKEEPING: For those of you who get this post delivered by email (because you entered your email address in the box to the right), you’ve been getting them automatically, as soon as I click “publish.”  Now WordPress (or is it MailChimp?) no longer supports the plug-in that made that happen, so you may experience a delay.  My apologies in advance for any you don’t get in a timely way.]

1. Join Team Blue.
2. CrushTheMidterms.  It even designs an action plan for you.
3. MobilizeAmerica.

No need to choose: sign up with all three.

Spread the word.