Author: A.T.

But first . . .

OPRT

The annual meeting is scheduled for Friday at 11am EDT.  I missed this press release last week; but if you own OPRT and missed it, too, take a look.  If you haven’t voted your shares, or you voted them for management, or you can’t remember whether you voted, I urge you to follow the ISS recommendation and vote AGAINST management.  It’s not too late to cast or switch your vote.  (Check your email for the subject OPORTUN, which was likely sent by your broker.)

It will be interesting to see what the stock does if management wins (I think it could still be $12 in a year) . . . loses (it could be $12 next week and $30 or more in a year or three) . . . or settles with the dissidents in advance of the meeting (someplace in between?).

All this, of course, with money you can truly afford to lose.

A CRUEL AND BRUTISH NATION

“I’d like to punch him in the face,” said our bone-spur president, who has condemned millions to die by cutting off Congressionally appropriated aid.

Check out the conditions at “Alligator Alcatraz” — to the extent you even can.

According to Gallup, this is not what most Americans want.

Indeed, most Americans, I think, would like us to be seen as — and actually to be — a big-hearted, generous nation (within sensible, practical limits).

Almost no Americans are communists.

But more Americans are socialists, to one degree or another, than they realize.  They support public schools.  They support Medicare and Medicaid.  They support public roads and public police forces and public fire departments.  They support a graduated income tax and Social Security and food assistance for children living in poverty.

Many of these good people look to Jesus for guidance on what kind of lives to lead.

They would surely agree with this graphic:

The important thing, 2000 years later, is to attach the word “democratic” to “socialist.”

Jesus would have been horrified by the cruel, brutal, un-democratic socialist regimes in Russia, North Korea, and elsewhere.

Democratic socialist countries (including the U.S., with its public schools, roads, social safety net, etc.) embrace well-regulated capitalism and, especially, allow the people to hold their leaders accountable in free and fair elections.

So the graphic above could be one to cut and paste as you pursue your DIS-disinformation efforts . . .

. . . along with these two that I have previously shared:

And now . . .

A (Surprisingly) Revealing Conversation With DNC Chair Ken Martin

BONUS

Hey, Cowboy (90 seconds) — posted a few months ago at “n0twoke” (whatever that is).

But first . . .

Some will decry this powerful 30-second spot.  (But have they read Project 2025?)

Others will share it widely.

Your call.

SQNS

Rob N.: “The original purchase price you cited as ’55 cents’ is misleading.  In October 2024 my 2000 shares became 800 shares with a reverse split.”

→ Yikes!  You’re right!  Sorry:  Adjusted for the split, it’s up not from 55 cents but, rather, from $1.38.

I sold much of mine yesterday between $3.90 and $5.40.

NOOM

NOOM is not a stock symbol, it’s the weight loss / fitness / health app I have on my phone that I forgot to tell you about at the end of yesterday‘s VERU anecdote.

They’re related:

> VERU, because it has a drug in development that could solve the muscle-mass-loss problem some people on Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro experience . . . which could make us shareholders rich.

> NOOM, because — if you prefer not to go the drug (or personal trainer) route — you may find, as I have, that Noom works, too.

And as someone once (shallowly? imperiously?) said: You can never be too rich or too thin.

Even if that’s not true, most of us are in no danger of being either.

I’ll get to whether to sell SQNS (it tripled this week) and to an amazing WEIGHT LOSS speculation (and to an effective weight loss strategy) . . .

. . . but first:

Anyone blocked from reading The Apprenticeship of Frank Yablans should now be able to reach it.  (Thanks, Brian!  Thanks, Way Back Machine!)

Anyone not yet using AI — it’s truly amazing — could do worse than to sign on to chatbotapp.ai for $59.99 a year.  It gives you access to a whole bunch of different AIs all in one.

Anyone with an email list — or looking to spread a little DIS-disinformation on rightwing websites — should consider cutting, pasting, and sharing these two graphics:

Anyone who’d like a little more ammo in this regard can thank Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund (sister to Americans For Tax Fairness) for these links:

[1] Trump ‘big beautiful bill’ gives top 1% biggest tax cuts in these states
[2] Sanders points to Nebraska medical center closure after GOP bill passes: ‘Dark day for rural America’
[3] Based on new CBO findings the number of uninsured resulting from the Senate bill is nearly 17 million — more than the 16 million whom CBO found would lose coverage under the House bill.
[4] Ten Bizarre Things Hidden in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill

(And to remind you . . . if you do go on rightwing sites, I don’t think it would hurt to let people assume you’re one of them — maybe you sign on as @iLUVamerica1776 — and to ask how they think you should respond to this stuff.  By looking to them for guidance, you might get them to read it . . . and thereby perhaps plant a seed of doubt.)

Anyone on yesterday’s weekly Indivisible call, came away with at least these three ideas:

1. Collectively, we CAN reverse the cycle of anticipatory obedience.
2. Collectively, we CAN shatter the aura of inevitability.
3. It’s up to us (in this case, me) to invite all our friends (in this case, you) to join the calls, find their local Indivisible chapter, or form one of their own.

Anyone who missed that call can watch the whole thing here.

Anyone who bought SQNS for perhaps as low as 55 cents a share when suggested here less than a year ago (though most of us paid more) probably noticed it tripled in the last three days, touching $4.90 in after-hours trading.  I’ve sold a good bunch and hope to sell more today if the rally (madness?) keeps running . . . which could leave me feeling rotten if it turns to be the next GameStop or AMC and soars to $70.  But those meme stocks were propelled by short-sellers covering.  I’m not sure, but I can’t imagine there was a large short interest in SQNS.  And the reason this stock is booming (as best I understand it, which may not be very well) is that it sold a zillion new shares at $1.40 or so, borrowed an equal amount of money that it will have to pay back in a few years, and is using it all to buy Bitcoin.  The bet (though not stated this way) seems essentially to be that Trump will so weaken faith in the dollar and so cave to the interests of his crypto mogul pals (he is now a crypto mogul himself, so has a vested interest arguably at odds with America’s interest) that Bitcoin will continue to soar . . . so that the $1.40 it raised, plus the $1.40 it borrowed, to buy $2.80 of Bitcoin, is now worth even more than the $4.90 someone paid last night just before midnight (or else why would he or she have bought it?).

I’m oversimplifying, but you get the gist.  Yes, the company still has its actual business, which may one day be profitable.  But it’s now basically just a levered bet on Bitcoin.  You could buy $2.80 worth of Bitcoin for $2.80; or you could buy it, via SQNS, at $4 or wherever it opens for trading this morning.

I may be missing something here.  And Bitcoin could double or triple or tentuple over the next three years until the cash SQNS borrowed comes due, in which case its shareholders will make out great.  But if you buy some SQNS tomorrow at $4.75, it may be from me.

VERU

A lot of people I know have lost a lot of weight recently.

I was talking with one of them — who absolutely didn’t need to lose weight but injects himself with Wegovy or one of the others anyway.  He’s down from 159, I think he said, to 135.

“Apparently,” I told him, “some of the weight people lose on these things is muscle mass.”

“I know!” he said.  “I’m going to the gym more than ever, but it’s really hard to put on muscle.”

I told him that we own shares, you and I — with money we can truly afford to lose — in a company (VERU) developing a drug that seems to solve about 97% of the muscle-loss problem.”

And that, unlike two of its potential competitors, it’s taken as a pill rather that intravenously or by injection.

“Oh my God,” he said, “where can I get it?!”

“It’s not on the market yet and may never be.”

“Can I get into a trial?”

“I own a lot of shares but not that many.”

Yet based solely on his reaction, with some of my SQNS profits, I bought more.

The Economist:  ICE’s Big Payday Makes Mass Deportation Possible:

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For more than a month Los Angeles has been subject to countless immigration raids. Certain places are regular targets: car washes, Home Depots, bus stops, street markets. One video taken in the Ladera Heights neighbourhood shows federal agents pinning Celina Ramirez to a tree. They are wearing bullet-proof vests, masks, hats and sunglasses to hide their faces, and guns strapped to their sides. Ms Ramirez had been selling tacos near a Home Depot. The agents shove her into a van, deploy tear gas at onlookers who were recording the encounter, and race off.

. . . ICE agents themselves are not all happy warriors. One former ICE official argues that working for the agency means angering half of the country all of the time. At headquarters, DHS leaders force employees to take polygraph tests if they are suspected of leaking to the media. Several career bureaucrats worry that the laser focus on immigration enforcement is detracting from counterterrorism, drug-smuggling or child-pornography investigations. Some are retiring early. “It’s very funereal most days,” says one former DHS official. “I think what’s happening at the department is making America less safe.”

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This is Trump’s America and now, because most of us live here, ours.

Leaving aside the fortune in tax dollars going to arrest Celina Ramirez, et al, and then to house, feed, and fly her somewhere — and leaving aside the sheer un-American cruelty of it all — undocumented immigrants are widely estimated to pay more in federal taxes than they receive in benefits.  Plus, whomever employers do get to pick the lettuce, wash the dishes, skin the hogs, and clean the toilets — good American jobs your son or daughter have up to now been boxed out of getting — will have to be paid more, which means the prices you pay will go up.

For more on this, and what YOU can do about it:

Indivisible’s Weekly Newsletter: the American Gestapo — and your weekly to-dos.

Rob F:  “I think it’s insane that ICE funding is more than triple the FBI and 62% more than the entire federal prison system.”

YOUR PUNCHLINES . . .

. . . to yesterday’s set-up:

“A twice-impeached bully (with more than half the Senate voting to convict), a cheat, a liar, a felon, and an adjudicated rapist walk into a bar . . .”

“Table for one, Mr. President? — Don S.

“Good evening, Mr. President.  What’ll you have?” — Ed. C.

“I’ll have what Epstein’s having.” — Michael K.

“Nice bar you have here.  Hate to see anything bad happen to it.” — Steve H.

. . . and breaks things, especially the mirrors, since he has no reflection. — Kathy M.

PAYWALL

Yesterday I posted:

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The Apprenticeship of Frank Yablans — just published 51 years after I wrote it.  It has zero relevance to the problems of the world.  (Which could be the best thing about it.)

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Some of you encountered a paywall, some did not.

I contacted the editor of Vox, which owns NEW YORK Magazine, who said those new to the site this month should be allowed in (so they can offer a subscription).  Maybe try again?  They’re working on making some articles free; if and when the tech team adds that capability, I hope to let you know.

I obviously don’t expect anyone to read all my posts, let alone click every link.

And yet I can’t resist:

1. The Apprenticeship of Frank Yablans — just published 51 years after I wrote it.  It has zero relevance to the problems of the world.  (Which could be the best thing about it.)

2. Why Democrats Need Their Own Trump — Mark Cuban, anyone?

3. 20 US Bishops Join Interfaith Letter Against ICE Funding Boost in ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ — sure, but 2 Corinthians! Hunter Biden’s laptop!

4. Is Mamdani A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing? — one of you sent this in response to the two links I shared in yesterday’s post.  I’d like to see Mamdani issue a point-by-point response.  My guess — just a guess — is that it would satisfy many of us though certainly not all.

One of the charges is that Mamdani said he would have the NYPD arrest Netanyahu if he came to New York.  This seems an extreme position to take — and I hope he would not actually do it — but it seems a little less extreme when you consider that Canada, Ireland, Switzerland, Spain, Holland, and Italy would apparently do the same thing.  I am totally on Israel’s side in the war against Hamas.  Hamas has destroyed Gaza despite having been given the opportunity in 2005 to build a prosperous, peaceful society.  Israel is absolutely not engaging in genocide, as I argued yesterday.  And yet it can also reasonably be argued without being anti-Semitic, I think, that some of the charges against Netanyahu may be warranted.

5. Is Netanyahu A War Criminal?

WRITE YOUR OWN DARK JOKE

“A twice-impeached bully (with more than half the Senate voting to convict), a cheat, a liar, a felon, and an adjudicated rapist walk into a bar . . .”

Your punchline, please?

But first . . .

ZOHRAN MAMDANI

If you happen to be a New York City voter, I think he deserves your consideration.*

> The anti-Semitism charge is bogus: witness this quick video from a young Israeli American.

> His inexperience and the impracticality of some of his proposals are real, but so are his talent, vision, energy and decency: see his appearance on Meet The Press.

Andrew Yang’s analysis, I think, is spot on: If elected, Mamdani will need to learn fast, adapt, and make really smart appointments.  And even then it will be a hugely tough slog.  This is New York City after all.  The mayoralty is never easy, even when there’s a normal president (like all those of my lifetime until now) who believes in common decency and the rule of law.

Mamdani says — and seems truly to mean — everyone is welcome in New York City.  (By contrast, Idaho bans ‘Everyone Is Welcome Here’ Classroom Signs.)  Given the unfortunate alternatives, and the badly needed excitement he’s generated among disaffected young people and almost everyone who meets him, I think he’s the right choice.

*The one important edit I would have made – she uses the term genocide, which is wrong. War crimes, arguably, which is bad enough — but genocide is the intentional extermination of a whole people (just ask the ghosts of 6 million Jews or 500,000 Rwandan Tutsis), which Israel does not now nor ever has intended.  All Hamas would have to do to end the nightmare is surrender — as Germany and Japan once did.  And all they would have had to do to avoid a single death was to accept Israel’s voluntary 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and build a thriving, peaceful society instead of an underground military complex bent on Israel’s eradication.

YOUR MONEY

Many — most? — U.S. stocks are overpriced.  One newsletter I read (without upgrading to the paid edition as of yet) is Slow Money by a devotee of Benjamin Graham (Warren Buffett’s mentor).

Among much else in this latest letter is the discrepancy between ADP’s gloomy employment data and Trump’s:

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For example, on Wednesday, payroll giant ADP announced that the private sector had lost 33,000 miles in June. A day later, however, the Labor Department reported that 147,000 new jobs were added that month, more than half of these in the private sector.

Is the economy really solid, then? Is the Trump Golden Age upon us? Are we not, as has been asserted here so often, trapped in a stagflationary vortex in which every penny of economic growth is borrowed—and then some? Well, the answers now depend on if you trust the government or the private sector. Of course I’d bet on the latter, because doing so would (finally) put me in the company of JP Morgan Chairman Jamie Dimon, who last month told analysts he doesn’t trust the official numbers . . .

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If you come to my site for occasional crazy speculations, consider James Scurlock’s for the opposite.

THAT CHERRY TREE

Invariably, after I post something, I have afterthoughts I wish I had included or things I had said more clearly.

The conclusion I now wish I had included yesterday (“The Most Popular Bill Ever Signed In The History Of Our Country”) would have read something like this:

The fever will surely break.  People will surely come to see that constant lying and disregard for the law works in North Korea and Russia (except for those who live there) and worked fine in 1930’s Italy and Germany (until it didn’t).  But constant lying and disregard for the law are not what we aspire to here.

Ever since biographer Mason Weems invented the myth of George Washington and the cherry tree, Americans have been taught that honesty and decency and responsibility are American virtues.  Humility, I would argue, is another.

One of the dozens of differences between Trump and George Washington is that where Trump invents his own self-aggrandizing myths — daily — George Washington never invented even that famous one.  It was added to the fifth edition The Life of Washington in 1806, seven years after his death.

Trump lied endlessly — and still lies — that Biden’s victory in 2020 was rigged.  Isn’t it odd, I suggested yesterday, that when Democrats were IN power, they were unable to rig anything and twice handed the presidency to Trump . . .

. . . but when they were OUT of power, they somehow made it appear Biden won by 7 million votes when “everybody knows” Trump won by a landslide?

Yes, Trump’s own chief of election integrity deemed it “the most secure election in American history,” yet he gulled many of his followers into shouting “STOP THE STEAL!” at every occasion, not least when they went to hang Mike Pence, thinking they were engaged in righting a grievous wrong when in fact they were committing one.

So Peter Stolz suggests we chant REPEAL THE STEAL non-stop between now and the mid-terms, referring to his Big Ugly Bill that will rob the hungry of food, deny the sick health care, and add trillions to the National Debt — all in order to help billionaires and millionaires.

They presumably won’t repeal it.

And have designed it so that much of the steal only begins to hit after the mid-terms . . .

. . . but REPEAL THE STEAL, Peter argues, should be part of a constant drumbeat.

Let me know whether you agree.

That’s what he called it Friday, “adding for emphasis,” as CNN reports, “this is the single most popular bill ever signed.”

He may as well have added, “anywhere in the world at any time in history.”

He obviously knows he’s lying — and all his MAGA folks know it, too, even if they don’t fully realize just how unpopular the bill is — and they brush that aside.

Yes, sure (I mean, duh!), the President of the United States is a congenital liar and pathological narcissist.  So what?

Like the membership he shares with Abdullar the Butcher, with Earthquake, and with George “The Animal” Steele in the fake wrestling Hall of Fame, it’s all just a show.

It’s entertaining!  

(Well, maybe not to those who’ve already died with the wood-choppering of USAID . . . or to the millions who will lose their health insurance and see their rural hospitals disappear.  But who really cares about them?)

Trump had the largest inaugural crowd in the history of the country!

He won the popular vote in 2016 (which he lost by 3 million) by a landslide!  And by a landslide again (though he lost by 7 million) in 2020!

(Isn’t it odd that when Democrats held power, they chose not to rig the elections of 2016 and 2024 and, instead, handed the presidency to Trump; but that when Trump held power, Democrats were somehow able to deny him the re-election that “everyone knows” he won by a landslide?)

Who cares about honesty or integrity anymore? 

Or ethics or due process or the rule of law or the separation of powers — or kindness or competence?

Certainly not the man whom many believe God sent to save America.

(See: The Gospel Of Trump: “Trump is no longer merely supported by religious voices. He is becoming the religion.”)

Who cares about adding trillions to the National Debt to enrich billionaires?

Certainly not the Republican Party.

(Many billionaires are wonderful — some are my friends — but they don’t need more money.)

The bill is horrible.  Even most of those cowed into voting for it know that.

In the words of Trump’s biggest donor: “It is insane.”

(See How Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Will Make China Great Again.)

BONUS

Trump Kicks Off Celebration of America by Declaring His Hatred for Democrats

I’ve been listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Unfinished Love Story about the Kennedy and Johnson years.

The dignity.  The decency.  The higher purpose.  The seriousness of purpose.  The moral clarity*.

And now Trump.  It is to weep.

Yes, sure, it’s funny to read how Trump cheated at golf; funny to hear Charlie Sheen’s cufflink story.  He’s a rogue!  The king of bankruptcy!  (Not so funny if you’re the contractor who hasn’t been paid.)  He sells steaks and Bibles and grabs women by the pussy — a man’s man with a bone spur inducted into the fake wrestling Hall of Fame.  A felon, a showman — fun! — in ways Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden — the other presidents of my lifetime — never were.

And I’m all for fun.

But as leader of “the free world”?  By which is meant the world that rejects autocrats rather than exchange love letters with them . . . rejects autocrats rather than aspire to their unchecked power . . . rejects autocrats rather than trust them over America’s own intelligence agencies . . . rejects autocrats rather than take their side over an invaded nation struggling to remain free.

The dreadful bill Trump signs today is the worst possible way to celebrate July 4th.

Steve Benen writes: “Many Americans may be surprised by just how horrible the Republicans’ megabill is.”

But what really stands out in his piece is that — as with much else Trump has done — when people are told the facts, many simply refuse to believe they could be true.  What Trump and his cowed Congress have done is so unbelievably bad, people literally don’t believe it.

Worth the read.

The bottom line, it seems to me, is that you and I have a once-in-a-lifetime responsibility — to our Founders who fought for Independence, to our forefathers who fought the Nazis and the communists, to the rest of the free world that looks to us for leadership and partnership, and to generations to come — to do all we can peacefully to resist as Fascism in the USA Enters the Fifth & Final Phase.  Not just to watch — to resist.

Enjoy the burgers and watermelon.  Roast marshmallows.  But tomorrow make a plan (if you haven’t already, as many of you have) to do more than you ordinarily would.  For starters: resolve to be as annoying (if that’s possible) as me.

*Vietnam being the glaring exception.  But Johnson agonized over whether to surrender or escalate in ways one imagines our current president has never agonized over anything.

Jesus would have voted NO (60 seconds).

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“We Christians are called to do more than charity,” preaches James Talarico.  “We are called to challenge the systems that make charity necessary.”

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Senator Chris Murphy: 

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Within minutes of the bill passing, Lisa Murkowski told reporters, “My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet.” All reporting indicates that she was the final holdout that Republicans had to flip to yes, and now, she is saying that she doesn’t want this version of the bill to become law.

That’s bullshit. Her vote could’ve stopped this. They will all live forever with the horror of this bill.

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(“I guess they convinced Lisa Murkowski that this bill is good for the country by offering to exempt her state from what’s in it.” — Michael B., ‘ashamed former Alaskan’)

In case you don’t know how bad it is . . .

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An Ignominious Bill Passed By an Inglorious Body

The legislation Senate Republicans passed on Tuesday is probably going to kill a lot of people. . . .

And death doesn’t even capture the full impact of the bill, which thanks to Tuesday’s vote seems likely to become law.

. . . In trying so hard to shield the bill’s true nature from the public, Republican leaders may have also succeeded in hiding parts from their own members, who might not appreciate just how much some features of the bill undercut supposedly cherished MAGA goals like lowering the cost of living and making U.S. industry more competitive.

And that’s to say nothing about the disproportionate effects some elements of the bill will have on their own constituents. . . .

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But killing a lot of low-income people is not an overriding MAGA concern.

Witness their shutting down USAID (and the 80 years’ accumulated soft power it earned us across the world).

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Bush, Obama — and singer Bono — fault Trump’s gutting of USAID on agency’s last day.  

WASHINGTON — Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush delivered rare open criticism of the Trump administration — and singer Bono recited a poem — in an emotional video farewell Monday with staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Obama called the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID “a colossal mistake.”

. . . He credited USAID with not only saving lives, but being a main factor in global economic growth that has turned some aid-receiving countries into U.S. markets and trade partners. . . .

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One of you wrote yesterday to suggest we should all be out protesting the Republicans’ awful bill with STOP THE STEAL signs — “stealing” trillions from poor and middle-class folks and giving it to the rich.

Reverse-Robin Hood on steroids.

When I said I wished he’d come up with that sooner, in time for us to maybe do it, he pivoted to REPEAL THE STEAL.

If the bill does get signed into law before we can stop the steal, that should be an outcry that carries all the way through to November 3, 2026: REPEAL THE STEAL.  (Thanks, Peter.)

Yesterday’s link to The Economist rightly suggested — at least indirectly — that most U.S. stocks are overvalued:

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No one can predict if or when investors will lose patience, forcing interest rates much higher. Yet there must be a limit to the debt binge.

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Which prompted one of you to send me the conclusion of “Adam Smith’s” obituary:

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“We are at a wonderful ball where the champagne sparkles in every glass and soft laughter falls upon the summer air,” he wrote [in 1968] of a high-flying stock market in “The Money Game.”

“We know at some moment the black horsemen will come shattering through the terrace doors wreaking vengeance and scattering the survivors,” he continued. “Those who leave early are saved, but the ball is so splendid no one wants to leave while there is still time. So everybody keeps asking — what time is it? But none of the clocks have hands.”

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Mallory McMorrow on Trump’s horrible ugly bill: “Ninety percent of Americans will lose money over the next ten years in order to give the wealthiest ten percent more money.”

Republican Tom Tillis would rather give up his Senate seat than vote for the damn thing.

Two-thirds of Americans are against it — and almost all the rest don’t realize what’s in it.

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