Everybody Knows September 19, 2019September 19, 2019 This review of “Where’s My Roy Cohn” — opening tomorrow in New York and LA, and 100 other screens in the weeks to come — is almost lyrical . . . and is as compelling as the film itself. “Everybody knows that the dice are loaded,” sang Leonard Cohen, who died the day before Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, which he had confidently predicted. “Everybody knows the fight was fixed / The poor stay poor, the rich get rich / That’s how it goes / Everybody knows.” It’s hard to imagine a phrase more evocative of our era. Everybody knows that at least 22 women have accused the president of sexual misconduct, everybody knows that he lies compulsively, and everybody knows that he lacks the basic mental fitness for office. Everybody knows that the president is a racist and a xenophobe who draws fervent support from outright white nationalists. Everybody knows the seas are rising, and everybody knows it’s going to get much worse. Everybody knows, too, that the grotesque qualities embodied by the president are widespread among the Manhattan elite that tolerated and nurtured him, from the real estate sector to the tabloid press and from NBC to Fox News. Just like everybody knows that Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile, and everybody knew it when he was hosting VIPs at his Upper East Side mansion and on his private jet. Everybody knows that after his apparent suicide, most of his elite associates will escape any justice. That’s how it goes. This is the unspoken, and perhaps unintended, takeaway from Matt Tyrnauer’s new documentary, Where’s My Roy Cohn?, whose title is borrowed from Donald Trump’s reported exclamation after finding his then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions insufficiently loyal and ruthless. Tyrnauer, to judge from the quotes that he uses to frame his story, wants to cast Roy Cohn—the crooked New York lawyer whose sordid career was a common thread linking Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and eventually Trump—as the personification of evil. The word “evil” comes up a lot, and it certainly fits Cohn, with his dead eyes and manifest lack of empathy or scruples. Cohn, we’re told repeatedly, established the now-familiar playbook for all of the nastiest figures in American public life: Sidestep legitimate inquiries, always go on the offensive, attack the press, demagogue against minorities, make headlines, break laws, win at all costs, and shamelessly taunt the losers. Trump was merely his protégé. [10 paragraphs follow] Other reviews: “A rollicking, salacious documentary, fast and furious.” — Chicago Tribune “A haunting yet fair and humane portrait of an infamous figure.” — PARADE Not included in the film is this tidbit that comes from one of his cousins. It seems Roy’s mother Dara — a force — “over-shared” in front of her little boy the information that one of his testicles had not descended. I share — perhaps overshare — that with you because it’s hard not to wonder how deeply embarrassing he may have found that, and how it may have scarred him. Roy and I attended the same high school — he, 20 years before me — and though he must have been a lot smarter (he graduated from law school at 20), we shared a terrible secret: we liked guys. He would go on to deny that to his death; I would go on to blab it to the world — even the Vice President of China. Of course, I was oblivious to all this when, just turned 7, I watched my mother watching the Army-McCarthy hearings on our black and white TV. It had to be the most boring thing ever. Only now, after watching “Where’s My Roy Cohn,” do I realize those hearings stretched on for 36 days (!!!) and that the entire event seems to have been precipitated by then 23-year-old Roy’s love for David Schine. It’s crazy. How he, who was gay (and J. Edgar Hoover, who was gay), could have carried on their witch hunts, not just for communists but for homosexuals. “What a world.” Yet as the film makes clear, Roy had lots of fans and friends, straight and gay, from the mafia to the Oval Office (Nancy Reagan called to thank him for getting her Ronnie elected president). Two of them — exceptionally bright gay lawyers not mentioned in the film — were close friends of mine. “How can you be his friend?!” I would ask every time they told me some crazy funny story about Roy. They would just laugh and say, well, yes, we know, but he’s so amazingly smart and generous and fun. I met Cohn only once, at a large brightly lit gay party in Miami in the mid-80s. It was as brief as it was disconcerting. I grew up admiring the FBI, not the mob-connected. Now we have a President — Cohn’s protege — who’s long himself been mob-connected and whose enemy is the FBI. What a world. If you get these posts by email, you missed yesterday‘s on account of — sorry –“technical difficulties“.
God Save The Queen; The Queen Save The U.K. September 18, 2019 Following up on Monday . . . Paul deLespinasse: “Here is my take on Brexit, which also supports a second referendum, perhaps initiated by Queen Elizabeth II.” It makes so much sense.
Better Than Recycling September 17, 2019September 15, 2019 I have a July 4th party with a lot of red Solo cups. I don’t recycle them; I rinse and reuse all summer, and the next. No one has died yet. Don’t recycle: reuse. Fresh Direct used to deliver groceries in nine million recyclable cardboard boxes a year. Last year they switched to these reusable bags. Don’t recycle: reuse. (Better still, of course: don’t use at all. I.e.: Don’t buy what you don’t need.) Here’s the argument. Our well-intentioned recycling, they say, is not very effective. On a related note . . . Why DO Republicans hate renewable energy? . . . All one has to do is look at the sixty-seven recent environmental regulations that the Trump administration is rolling back. Or the fossil fuel appointees of the current administration. All it takes is a look at the actions by special interests and the results in states around the country. The Simple Case for Renewable Energy . . . The amount of sunshine striking the earth for one hour has the potential to power the earth for a year. The costs of solar and wind have dropped dramatically over the last ten years. Wind is now cheaper than coal in $ per kilowatt hour and solar is reaching parity with natural gas. More than that, it is clean. “Who want’s the alternative, dirty polluting fossil fuel?” We have come to a point when the era of fossil fuels is coming to an end. Our proverbial car is in the garage with the motor running and the door closed. We have reached the limits of our atmosphere and water, and can no longer use them as garbage dumps for carbon without huge and catastrophic consequences. For example, The Guardian reports, “Artic ice melt could trigger uncontrollable climate change at global level.” . . . Lastly, renewable energy is now creating more jobs than fossil fuels. Solar energy jobs are growing 12 times as fast as the US economy. . . . “Right now, clean energy jobs already overwhelm dirty fuels in nearly every state across America,” Sierra Club executive director, Michael Brune, [has] said. “These facts make it clear that Donald Trump is attacking clean energy jobs purely in order to boost the profits of fossil fuel billionaires.” . . . According to a recent Pew Research poll approximately 86% of Americans want more wind and solar. This includes voters identifying themselves as conservative or right leaning. . . . . . . A report by The Rolling Stone, The Koch Brothers’ Dirty War on Solar Power, says, “… the birth of Solar poses a grave threat to those who profit from burning fossil fuels. And investor-owned utilities, together with Koch-brothers-funded front groups like American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), are mounting a fierce, rear-guard resistance at the state level – pushing rate hikes and punishing fees for homeowners who turn to solar power. Their efforts have darkened green-energy prospects in could-be solar superpowers like Arizona and Nevada. But nowhere has the solar industry been more eclipsed than in Florida, where the utilities’ powers of obstruction are unrivaled.” . . . In support of these actions, in 2016, utilities, coal and oil companies have more than 1770 lobbyists on Capital Hill and spent $275.8 million to get over $37 billion in subsidies as well as favorable laws. Globally, this number is much higher. The IMF reports the oil industry may receive up to $5.3 trillion in subsidies globally. . . . Not included on the negative cost side of any equation are the hidden costs of climate change running to hundreds of billions of dollars. Consider the increased costs from recent hurricanes and California wildfires as one example. . . . [Many, many, many more paragraphs follow — which may be forgiven, as what’s at stake here is the habitability of our planet.] We are all connected. Savor the earth. Hobie, L. Hobart Stocking → Long-time readers may recall this 2007 post touting solar energy (but suggesting — with tons of caveats — shorting First Solar, then $281, now $64) . . . and harkening back to the solar-energy cover story New York Magazine let me write in 1974. We’ve been at this a long time. And have come a long way! My electric bill at the beach this summer has run $12.88 a month (a base administrative fee), for zero kilowatts supplied. The sun did the rest. Oh! And can I say one more thing as summer winds down? Did you click that red Solo cup link above? It’s a lot more fun than you might imagine.
Tony Blair On Brexit September 15, 2019September 13, 2019 But first: Ed Costello: “Trump Administration Bars Access to Immigration Tent Courts. No public/press in a COURT? Am I the only one freaked out by this?” → It’s what Jesus would have done. Just as He would have separated children from their mothers, cut taxes on the rich, cut aid to the poor, shunned Medicaid expansion, tossed paper towels to hurricane victims, mocked the disabled, despoiled the planet, sided with dictators, advocated torture, used his fame for personal enrichment, defended torch-carrying white supremacists, and ordered Maria Isabel Bueso — invited here when she was seven to help medical researchers — to leave the country and die. (Watch.) I would argue that Putin — definitely not Jesus — is winning. Among his goals: destabilizing our democracy, weakening NATO, weakening the European Union, weakening the U.K. He’s making big progress on all those fronts. The U.K. is in such a mess. If you’re interested in the details, watch or read former prime minister Tony Blair. Basically, he argues a “no deal” hard Brexit would be a disaster. And a general election is not the way to reassess the popular will. Needed instead is a new referendum on the kind of Brexit, if any, the people want, now that, three years on, they’ve had more time to think it through. (My suggestion: offer three or four alternatives, ranging from hard exit to the deal/s Theresa May worked out to “remain” and use ranked-choice voting to determine the result.)
Patience, Jackass, Patience September 13, 2019September 13, 2019 Big news for Borealis shareholders at the end of this post. Bill Shust: “I’ve read TOIGYEN four or five times since the 1980s. Way back then you were praising inflation-adjusted Treasuries. Is there some place you have a chunk of investment today squirreled away against inflation’s possible return?” → Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities — TIPS — were a terrific buy when they were first issued, yielding as much as 4% on top of inflation. Today, with the yield below 1%, they still have some advantages, especially in tax-deferred accounts, but are far less compelling. So what else? Real estate could eventually rise with inflation . . . though inflation-caused high interest rates could hurt real estate first. Same with stocks: as a class, they have been a great long-term inflation hedge. But as a class, they don’t seem cheap today; and inflation, with the higher interest rates inflation brings, could knock them down first. Most of my money is in highly illiquid private deals, many of which fade into dust, but a few of which, with time, do okay (Honest Tea was one) – entirely independent of inflation or the stock market. One I had held for 15 years . . . that I thought had gone bust and had lost track of and written off . . . sent its investors an email not long ago saying that this was different from the email they had sent us the previous week (really? there had been a previous email?) and something different we needed to sign. I figured, oh well, they are finally going bankrupt and I have to sign something, so I went hunting around for that previous week’s email. Sure enough. There it was. It turned out to be an email — Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect (annoyed yet?) . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect (this better be good!) . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . Scroll down for effect . . . — saying they had sold the company for a quarter billion dollars. Mine was a very small slice; but it was still a twenty-fold return. Patience is my middle name. Speaking of which, slavishly loyal readers may recall the ‘patience, jackass, patience’ story that so convulsed my brother and me, aged 11 and 7, and that became family lore. (What family doesn’t have its lore?) After an endless shaggy-dog buildup . . . the jackass asking the camel for water and the camel responding ‘patience, jackass, patience’ and the jackass asking the camel for water and the camel responding ‘patience, jackass, patience’ and the jackass asking the camel for water and the camel responding ‘patience, jackass, patience’ . . . my dad finally fell for it and asked my brother to get to the point – and my brother responded, ‘patience, jackass, patience‘ as he, and then I, wide-eyed with disbelief, burst into laughter (joined soon by my mother and, eventually, Dad). Current stocks I’ve suggested for which patience might someday pay off — but which you should own only with money you can truly afford to lose — include CNF, SPRT, PRKR, and, yes, BOREF, first suggested in 1999. After the close of trading yesterday, they issued this spare but significant press release: “GIBRALTAR, Sept. 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — WheelTug plc, a subsidiary of Borealis Exploration Limited (OTC Markets: BOREF), announces that it has entered into a definitive agreement with a third party for an investment expected to bring its eponymous aircraft system into service, subject to FAA certification and other factors.” Rather cryptic, but I sure wouldn’t sell any shares, on this news. There’s still much that could go wrong! But it sounds as though they may have secured the funding they need to see this through. Which means I’m not the only one foolish enough to bet fairly big bucks that there could be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Here’s how I argued 14 years ago (!!!) that the shares could be an interesting speculation even at $100, let alone the $12 they were then or the $6 they are now. And here was the column from five years ago where I showed how, with varying assumptions, the “true value” of the shares could range from $2.79 to $338. (The next day, one of you produced a spread sheet into which you could plug your own assumptions and see the share price those assumptions supported.) So, like those hoping for exit visas in Casablanca, we wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Who knows? We might yet make it to Lisbon, and from there, on to the New World. Have a great weekend.
A Word To White Supremacists September 12, 2019September 12, 2019 Here. What if we had a president or vice president or attorney general who made such a powerful statement? Hats off to Northern Ohio U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman. Three perfect minutes. Oh! And remember when we had a president like this? (And a first lady like this?) To get another extraordinarily decent, thoughtful couple leading our country and showing the world the better angels of our national nature, click here. (See how easy it is to fundraise? Almost anything comes back to our urgent need to get the country back on track.)
Have You Actually LISTENED To Ilhan Omar? September 11, 2019September 10, 2019 But first: have you seen Valerie Plame’s 80-second announcement video? The thing is, you will love it and be moved immediately to send money. Which is great, if you send just a tiny bit. But note that she’s running against other Democrats in a heavily Democratic district we are likely to win no matter what; and that it’s the Senate and White House, not the House, we have to win. So as awesome as she is — and she is –this is another example of a place we have to be ruthlessly logical. Want to help with that? Here’s the case for chipping in to the broader effort rather than individual charismatic candidates like Valerie Plame . . . and perhaps fodder for your own fundraising: OVERALL STRATEGY PUSHBACK – AND ANSWERS WHAT YOUR MONEY GOES TO FUND JUST VENTING HOW YOU CAN HELP And now, Ilhan Omar. What part of her op-ed from a few months back do you find scary or alien or offensive? Why would anyone want to “send her back” to Somalia? To me, her words fall well within the bounds of thoughtful, constructive, deeply-American discourse. We should be proud to have her in Congress, even where we disagree with her — and scared and horrified to have a deeply-un-American lying* fascist* sociopath* in the White House. *Look up those terms — lying, fascist, and sociopath — and tell me what parts of their definitions he does not fit. You will really have to stretch to come up with any.
History’s Not Kind To The Guys Who Held Mussolini’s Jacket September 10, 2019September 9, 2019 Have you read American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump? A compelling, alarming and scoop-heavy history of the fall of the party of Lincoln. — The Guardian Although Alberta is clearly not an admirer of the President, he is not unsympathetic to the voters who have embraced him and their feelings of resentment toward what they see as an increasingly liberal culture. — The New Yorker It is less about the daily mayhem in the White House than about the unprecedented capitulation of a political party. — The Washington Post . . . when Ted Cruz told his aides during the primaries, “History isn’t kind to the man who holds Mussolini’s jacket,” he surely had no idea what lay in store for him. — New York Magazine I’ve not yet read it — just finished listening to Admiral William “Make Your Bed!” McRaven’s wonderfully uplifting Sea Stories — but am struck by the clarity of that line: history isn’t kind to the guys who held Mussolini’s jacket. Centenarian Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote this in 2007, when he was barely 88: “PITY THE NATION” (After Khalil Gibran) Pity the nation whose people are sheep And whose shepherds mislead them Pity the nation whose leaders are liars Whose sages are silenced And whose bigots haunt the airwaves Pity the nation that raises not its voice Except to praise conquerers And acclaim the bully as hero And aims to rule the world By force and by torture Pity the nation that knows No other language but its own And no other culture but its own Pity the nation whose breath is money And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed Pity the nation oh pity the people who allow their rights to erode and their freedoms to be washed away My country, tears of thee Sweet land of liberty! → Ever so much more relevant today. Jim Burt: “Workers and farmers of America, Donald Trump and his whole party are shaking your hands while picking your pockets.”
Vast Masses Of Filth September 8, 2019September 8, 2019 We are under attack by Russians intent on weakening our democracy. Trump welcomes that, making the heart and soul of his presidency a wall to protect us from desperate Hondurans seeking to clean our toilets and pick our tomatoes. So how did I miss George Will’s review earlier this summer of Danny Okrent’s The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America? Better late than never: . . . [Late in the 19th century] racist thinking about immigration saturated mainstream newspapers (the Boston Herald: “Shall we permit these inferior races to dilute the thrifty, capable Yankee blood . . . of the earlier immigrants?”) and elite journals (in the Yale Review, recent immigrants were described as “vast masses of filth” from “every foul and stagnant pool of population in Europe”). In the Century monthly, which published Mark Twain, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, W.E.B. Du Bois and H.G. Wells, an author informed readers that “Mediterranean people are morally below the races of northern Europe,” that immigrants from Southern Italy “lack the conveniences for thinking,” that Neapolitans were a “degenerate” class “infected with spiritual hookworm” and displaying “low foreheads, open mouths, weak chins . . . and backless heads,” and that few of the garment workers in New York’s Union Square “had the type of face one would find at a county fair in the west or south.” . . . Theodore Roosevelt, who popularized the phrase “race suicide,” wrote to a eugenicist that “the inescapable duty of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world, and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.” Woodrow Wilson warned against the “corruption of foreign blood” and “ever-deteriorating” genetic material. . . . Four years before the 1924 act, 76 percent of immigrants came from Eastern or Southern Europe. After it, 11 percent did. Some of those excluded went instead to Auschwitz. Some Americans today — many of them “very fine people” in Trump’s view — think, Yes! We never should have let all those Jews and Italians in. Jews will not replace us! We never should have allowed freed slaves to vote, they think. So they keep devising ways to make it difficult. But most of us read this history and think — Wait! What planet were Americans ON a century ago? Was America ever really this backward? Most of us favor the sort of sensible, welcoming, bi-partisan, comprehensive immigration reform the Senate passed 68-32 in 2013 — that House Republicans would not allow to come up for a vote. Here’s hoping most of us vote next year, however difficult Republicans try to make it; and that those votes get accurately counted, however hard the Russians try to hack our democracy.
The Roots Of All Evil — And One Good Solution September 6, 2019September 5, 2019 NADER. Tragically, there was a great and idealistic man whose stubborn egotism gave us the war in Iraq and the right-leaning court that gave us Citizens United and gutted the Voting Rights Act, which gave us Trump and ended The American Century. All Nader would have had to have done was take 20 minutes three days before the election to call a press conference exhorting supporters in solid red or blue states to vote for him, for sure, but in states like Florida and New Mexico to vote for Gore. COHN. Roy Cohn was Senator McCarthy’s right hand man — and Donald Trump’s mentor. Sony Pictures Classics Where’s My Roy Cohn opens in New York and LA September 20 and “a theater near you” soon thereafter. “Endlessly fascinating. Impossible to look away.” — The Hollywood Reporter. “A comprehensive portrait of evil incarnate.” — Vanity Fair. “An origin story for today’s amoral political landscape, its marriage of incisiveness and timeliness should make it an indie hit this fall.” — Variety. Watch the trailer? BIDEN. Any of our candidates can win if we all work toward that goal. (One crucial piece: funding the early organizing — now — that will snowball into a massive blue turn-out next fall.) I know several of them personally and believe that — in different ways and for different reasons — they’d all be pretty great. I’m 110% for whichever one wins the nomination. But because Joe is the current the front-runner, I was heartened to see him do so well in his three segments Wednesday night on Colbert — here, here, and here. He is the exact opposite of Roy Cohn and Trump, decent and honorable to the core; and he is willing to compromise in pursuit of progress, where Nader, tragically, was not. Have a great weekend!