Read This Book February 12, 2021February 12, 2021 Not “Steal This Book,” Abbey Hoffman’s famous act of rebellion that I just started for the first time a minute ago, fifty years late, when I went to grab the link for this sentence (Chapter One: Free Food) and down upon which I now frown. I’m all for free food and clever writing, but larceny and theft . . . not so much. And not “Buy This Book Or We’ll Shoot This Dog,” a threat that — thankfully — is all bark and no bite. This book: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson, a #1 New York Times best-seller rated five stars on Amazon. (An absorbing listen, as well.) You may have skipped it — like me until recently — thinking it sounded a little heavy, and, well, I already get it. But it’s heavy in the most important way. And there’s so much I didn’t know. Caste should be required reading for every high school senior . . . not to mention liberal Boomers like me. And libertarians. And independents. And Christians. And Republicans. It could not be more relevant to the crossroads at which we find ourselves today. Oprah and 21,000 Amazon reviewers can’t be wrong. Go for it. Have a great weekend. Abe Lincoln would have turned 212 today. And it’s 2/12/21!
Peter Piper Ficked A Feck Of Fickled Feffers February 11, 2021February 10, 2021 Sorry about yesterday’s BONUS link — COVID-appropriate speech modification. It involved downloading a file that failed some of you. This link goes straight to YouTube (but lacks the rather enjoyable audience reaction). Feter Fifer ficked a feck . . . How long will you live? (With some suggestions for living longer.) Other than making us rich, here’s why ParkerVision’s lawsuits matter: South Korea Leads World in Innovation as U.S. Exits Top Ten. Think about that! The land of of Ben Franklin and Bell Labs and Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers and Steve Jobs — no longer in the top ten for innovation? Maybe innovative little companies like PRKR should be protected by a workable patent system. With luck, the various juries will agree. Judges — as previously noted — may also start swinging back the little guy’s way. We’ll see. I so hope people — especially young people — have been watching the Impeachment Trial. As America decides whether to go fascist, as Germany and Italy once did, or instead to renew its commitment to free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power, as a majority of us seem to want to do . . . . . . but about which Republican Senators and Representatives are unsure, as they voted to overturn the results of the election and seem now to think Trump did nothing impeachable . . . . . . we are watching history play out. It is momentous. Of even greater consequence than the Super Bowl.
I’m Betting On 17 Republican Senators February 10, 2021February 10, 2021 Three short books speak to me as we watch impeachment and contemplate the allure of the white supremacist authoritarian Proud Boy “Camp Auschwitz” Big Lie future that has gripped so many of our fellow citizens: > The Order of the Day. (“Winner of the 2017 Prix Goncourt, this behind-the-scenes account of the manipulation, hubris, and greed that together led to Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria . . . offers a dire warning for our current political crisis.”) > Donbas: The True Story of an Escape from the Soviet Union. (“The almost unbelievable, but true story of a teen-age boy’s survival and triumph over hardship in a Russian slave labor camp — ending in a breathtaking escape.”) That he ultimately owned a club in Greenwich Village is beyond crazy — or is it? At our best, America welcomes people yearning to breathe free. As rough as many Americans have it these days, Donbas reminds us how much spectacularly worse it could be. > Man’s Search for Meaning. (“Internationally renowned psychiatrist, Viktor E. Frankl, endured years of unspeakable horror in Nazi death camps. During, and partly because of, his suffering, Dr. Frankl developed a revolutionary approach to psychotherapy . . . the most significant psychological movement of our day.”) How great to live in a country (these books remind us) where no man or woman is above the law . . . where every man or woman has the right to vote . . . where free and fair elections result in the peaceful transfer of power (“the core of democracy’) . . . and where, for the most part, outstanding people of competence, integrity and good will are attracted to public service. A majority of Republicans in Congress have lately been voting on the side of the Proud Boys Big Lie crowd. But now that even Trump’s own impeachment lawyer concedes Trump lost the election — that Trump misled millions of good Americans into believing it was stolen and that if they loved their freedom they had to fight like hell to overturn the election — will those Republican senators say, “enough!” and do themselves proud? Probably not.* But maybe.** BONUS COVID-appropriate speech modification. Two minutes. Try hard not to laugh. * PredictIt gives conviction a 4% chance. ** I took those odds.
A Sharper Mind February 9, 2021February 8, 2021 Tom Brady’s been using BrainHQ for quite a long time now. Check out this old story (thanks, Google). And this new one (thanks, Bob Fyfe), wherein coach Tom House talks about his old pal Hank Aaron and his more recent pal Tom Brady. Brady, House says, isn’t quite as quick on his feet as he was eight years ago, “but his mind is actually sharper.” I harp on BrainHQ because “a mind is a terrible thing to waste” — whether it be the mind of a child needlessly kept out of school or the mind of an adult needlessly missing the chance to lower his or her risk of Alzhemer’s. A 10-year study of 2,800 patients found that doing just 14 hours of BrainHq reduced the incidence of dementia by 48%. Presumably, doing more than 14 hours would have reduced it even further. My own goal: 15 minutes a week (130 hours over 10 years). As Tom Brady’s experience suggests, there are benefits to a sharper mind beyond simply reducing the odds of developing dementia . . . though for me, that’s motivation enough. (Well, and that I own a sliver of BrainHQ.) I cede the balance of my time to the Impeachment.
Lowering The Temperature February 8, 2021February 8, 2021 How does a 43-year-old beat a 25-year-old at the Super Bowl? BrainHQ. He swears by it. For those of us not in the NFL, Brain HQ has been proven in a 10-year, 2,800-patient study to slash the odds of developing dementia. How did we make it through January 20? The secret, bi-partisan campaign to save democracy, as reported in Time: . . . This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.” That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures. . . . How do we heal? We can’t just write off tens of millions of people who believe Trump “won by a landslide” and that they are fighting to save America from pederasts and cannibals. Nor can we write off the tens of millions who see those tens of millions as kooks — they know Trump lost, they know schoolchildren were massacred at Parkland, they know Jewish space lasers are not the cause of wildfires — but who believe they are standing up to an evil thing called “socialism.” Socialism — better rebranded Capitalism-Plus — includes public roads and schools and sewage systems . . . fire departments and unemployment insurance and Social Security and Medicare . . . and, in places like Canada and Europe, free health care and longer vacations. So it’s not a matter of good and evil nearly so much as a matter of degree. Some roads and bridges should perhaps be privately-owned, with tolls. Should we move in that direction, as we did with privatizing prisons? I would argue it was a terrible idea to privatize prisons; but this isn’t the stuff of good and evil so much as of discussion, study, debate, and compromise. Where “socialism” is evil is where it’s led to totalitarian abuses* — in the former Soviet Union and China, Cuba and North Korea, say. Which is why Democrats — though they do favor a higher minimum wage and affordable health care — exchange no love letters with Kim Jong-Un and oppose torture. But is it evil to have standards for safe, clean drinking water? To enact a minimum wage that would reduce the need for social welfare while invigorating the economy? (Have you finally read Nick Hanauer’s letter to his fellow zillionaires?) You can argue around the edges — are we going too far in requiring people to wear seatbelts? are we setting speed limits too low? But these aren’t matters to elicit bloody assaults on the Capitol or split families apart at Thanksgiving. We on the left and in the middle have so much persuading to do that I again want to commend to you The Science of Reasoning With Unreasonable People Finally, if you have 14 minutes, enjoy Seth Meyers’ recent Closer Look. He takes his time getting to the main event, but comedic genius can’t be rushed. *It’s not just socialism that can go awry. Plutocrat-backed nationalism can lead to totalitarian abuses, too, as in Russia today or Germany and Italy in the last century.
You Really Got A Hold On Me February 5, 2021February 4, 2021 GameStop wasn’t just little Robinhooders — at all. High-testosterone hedge-funders were likely the main players. CTHR, mentioned yesterday, beat earnings expectations, sending the stock back up in after-hours trading. I’m in no rush to sell the remainder of my shares, though they almost surely won’t triple again in the next year as they have in the last. Sculpture! Under three minutes. (Thanks, Alan!) Smokey Robinson! His life and music in 90 minutes — as told by the man himself. Ray Charles! Diana Ross! Berry Gordy! Marvin Gaye! Aretha! All while walking 5.8 miles (if my iPhone is to be believed). Audible rocks. You know this song. Have a great weekend.
Dumb Money February 4, 2021 Is Biden golfing today? This same day four years ago marked the first of Trump’s 298 taxpayer-funded golf-club days.* Of CTHR’s rise I wrote yesterday: “I have no idea what’s going on.” Here’s what was likely going on: Tuesday’s “Dumb Money Live.” (Thanks, Brian!) I’m thrilled they’re enthusiastic about the company and its fake diamonds. I am, too. (“Diamonds are ridiculous,” you will read on page 36 — for free, if you use Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature.) But with CTHR having tripled in less than a year, the fellow who says he just bought $150,000 worth may well have bought some of it from me. As this was money I could truly afford to lose — and as now I had three times as much of it (without having to worry about taxes, because the shares I sold were in my IRA) — I turned around and bought more ANIX, up 25% or so from where we bought it a year ago, but still one of those swing-for-the-fences investments you know I find it hard to resist. Investments like PRKR, that was up another 9% yesterday. Is all this getting too easy? One sober-minded pro, Howard Marks, offers this perspective. Bottom line: he doesn’t know. Me neither. So I’ve set aside a decent amount of cash, earning next to nothing, in case amazing opportunities arise, as periodically they seem to do. *Even if you never sank a putt in your life. you’d enjoy Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.
Look Who’s Got The Happy Gene February 3, 2021February 3, 2021 “Sunshine” — if you’ve ever seen Barney Frank on TV — is likely not the nickname that first leapt to mind. Indeed, I’ve had the privilege of knowing the former chair of the House Financial Services Committee for more than half a century and can’t imagine there was a time anyone ever called him that — unless ironically. Which makes Barney’s inaugural column in The Hill this week all the more noteworthy. He is optimistic: . . . I believe the outcome of Donald Trump’s malign, ridiculous assault on the election results is evidence not of the fragility of our democracy but of its durability . . . Things are looking up. Or maybe I just feel that way because: > PRKR jumped another 23% yesterday, quadruple its price from five weeks ago (but don’t sell much if you bought it with money you can truly afford to lose because there’s a reasonable chance of good news in May, in their trial against Qualcomm). > CTHR jumped 40% yesterday, much of it in after-hours trading, to triple its price last March. I have no idea what’s going on, but something seems to be — it traded more than 5 million shares, 25 times its daily average. Time to lighten up, I guess. Monday, I linked to a televangelist who couldn’t stop laughing at the preposterous notion Biden had won. Here’s a question: Reforming the God vote: Can evangelical Christians be redeemed from bigotry and hatred? (And here’s a suggestion: Don’t try to change someone else’s mind. Instead, help them find their own motivation to change. A good read.)
Brain Teaser: An Impassioned Plea February 2, 2021February 2, 2021 But first: PRKR closed at $1.33 last night, up tenfold in 14 months. I’ve sold 10% (no taxes in an IRA) but plan to buy back on dips. Success in its May court case could loft the stock above $5. It could thus trade toward $2 as the trial approaches and more people decide to gamble on its outcome. Second: This much-shared story from the New York Times — 77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election. And now the brain teaser. In a recent IPSOS poll, fully 83% of Americans — and 64% of Republicans — were good with President Biden’s “prohibiting workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” It was his most popular of the 14 first-week presidential actions polled. (Just 27% of Republicans were okay with our rejoining the Paris Climate Accord.) It’s amazing how far we’ve come on LGBT issues. With that background . . . Pennsylvania state rep Brian Sims gave “the most important speech of his career” last week. “Non-discrimination came up for the first time in nearly eight years and I begged my colleagues to support it.” Watch the speech and then try to guess the outcome. What was the final vote? (Hint: there are 203 members of the Pennsylvania House.) Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down. “In the end,” Sims reports, “every Democrat voted yes and every Republican voted no.” The measure was defeated. Fearful of a primary challenge from their right, elected Republicans often seem to be more extreme and unyielding than their constituents. On a lot of topics — like insisting that climate change is a hoax and that Trump won by a landslide — they seem to mis-lead rather than lead. Which leads me back to 77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election. Riveting.
The Madness Of Crowds February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 Before we get to GameStop, start with this: More than a third of Republicans believe the QAnon conspiracy that Donald Trump is waging a secret war against a shadowy cabal of paedophile cannibals is “mostly true” . . . So, for the record: > No Democrat I know has eaten children or worshipped Satan. > Though some Republicans deny it, the Parkland massacre — like the Holocaust — was real. > The 9/11 attackers really did crash American flight 77 into the Pentagon. > The Clintons did not murder John Kennedy, Jr. > I’ve met George Soros. He’s done more to champion freedom and democracy around the world than anyone I can think of. The idea that he used space lasers to light California’s forest fires is insane. As is the idea that someone who believes these things would have been endorsed by the leader of the Republican party; would have been elected; and would be appointed by her Republican colleagues to the Education Committee. The difference between our fringe and theirs is that our “fringe” fights (peacefully) to give the average American a better deal: Higher wages. Consumer protections. Health care. A habitable planet for their kids. Crazy s–t like that. Their fringe beats Capitol Police with American flags, wears Camp Auschwitz t-shirts, and seeks to murder the House Speaker and Vice President. To which their leader, watching gleefully on TV, eventually responds: “Go home. I love you. You are very special people.” Their fringe are evangelicals — especially the one African American in the crowd the camera dutifully zooms in on — who just laugh at the notion Joe Biden could have won. (WATCH!) Because who who better embodies Christ’s teachings than Trump? The first crowd madness we are living through is the madness of those who’ve been conned into believing Trump and Putin are the ones to be trusted — the good guys in this tale — while the 84 million who voted for Biden are somehow in league with the devil. [BONUS: Tips on deprogramming a QAnon cultist.] The second, shorter-lived and far less consequentional madness — which is not so mad at all, really . . . is the coordinated set of short-squeezes being played out on Wall Street these days. If they were literally coordinated, they would probably be illegal. (I’m pretty sure formally banding together to manipulate stock prices crosses some lines.) But for a crowd of small investors — followed by some big ones — to see the vulnerability of hedge funds’ large short positions in certain stocks . . . and then to bet there will be a short squeeze from which they can profit . . . is neither illegal nor “mad.” Unlike the crowds who blindly purchased shares in the South Sea Company centuries ago, most of today’s crowd buy GME, AMC, and the others knowing full well the underlying stocks are overvalued — but buying anyway in a game of musical chairs from which many, including friends of mine, have profited by getting out before the music stopped. (The music will stop. Those buying when it does will suffer huge losses. But the beauty of it, from the little guys’ point of view, is that most of those buying at the top will be hedge funds buying from them to cover their shorts.) The Robinhood crowd are, in many cases, “mad” — angry — that they’ve had such a rough go of it these past 40 years, as the richest of the rich just kept getting richer and richer still. But they are not “mad” — crazy — to feel this way . . . or to revel in this rare opportunity to profit from a loophole of their own. Short-selling is not evil per se; it can add to the rationality of stock prices. Short squeezes, probably do more harm, as there is nothing remotely rational about GameStop at $350 a share. But to the extent a load of little guys successfully exit with modest windfalls at the expense of the mega-wealthy . . . well, it’s a colorful, if haphazard, way to chip away all-too-slightly at the massive wealth inequality from which the U.S. economy now suffers. (Again: see Nick Hanauer’s letter to his fellow billionaires for how dangerous-to-democracy this inequality is.) The third madness of crowds relates to our response to COVID. The madness of people refusing to wear masks. The madness of our — largely alone — keeping schools closed as much as we have. The teachers unions’ understandably see their role as protecting teachers. Where are the children’s unions? Just open the schools, already, argues the Atlantic. “There’s little risk of coronavirus transmission in classrooms,” argues Mike Bloomberg. “There’s immense risk for students stuck at home.” (The qualifier, as always: protect high-risk teachers and staff! Have them remotely teach kids who can’t avoid close contact with high-risk adults.) Have a great, sane week.