The DNC And Forest Fires July 26, 2026 DNC Chair Ken Martin has made errors (who among us has not?), his handling of the “autopsy” being the most visible. And he apparently slammed his phone down on a subordinate’s desk (or did he throw it?) after a frustrating fundraising call. You know all that if you read Inside the Phone-Throwing Drama at the Troubled, Broke Democratic Party in Sunday’s New York Times or this echo piece in the Bulwark. But which would you rather have: a DNC with lots of cash in the bank or a DNC that puts cash to work almost as fast as it comes in to build the infrastructure for big Democratic wins 100 days from now and again in 2028? To the Times‘s credit, it did include a link to Ken’s view: The DNC Is Building a Democratic Party That Can Win the Moment and Win the Future. If you’ve donated (thank you!), and/or are considering doing so, you should read it! Whether Ken remains chair for two months, two years, or ten, it would be beyond self-defeating to deprive the DNC of adequate funding. ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES Public Land Warriors: Over the last year, roughly a quarter of the Forest Service’s 30,000 employees were [let go]. Now, thousands more are being handed relocation orders. Campgrounds will close, trails will crumble, high fuel loads near communities will go unaddressed—making wildfires infinitely harder to fight. And when things inevitably start going wrong on the ground, the politicians like Senator Mike Lee who manufactured this crisis will throw up their hands, declare the federal government incompetent, and demand these public lands be sold off to private industry. The only thing that can prevent our forests from being mismanaged to the point of a fire sale is the organized, overwhelming outrage of the American people. Or — hey! — let’s kill two birds with one stone: Vote overwhelmingly for a Democratic Congress and President and, in the not-too-distant future, competence and capacity (and integrity and sanity) will be restored to everything Trump has degraded or destroyed.
Must Read July 24, 2026 Thom Hartmann puts it into such clear perspective: The Fourth Assault On American Democracy. Because I know you care about our country, I urge you to take 5 minutes to read it.
The Equally Passionate But Less Fraught Graham Platner July 23, 2026July 23, 2026 But first . . . Does Trump’s not releasing the Epstein files as required by law make the 38,000 times his name appears any less concerning? He’s accused of abusing a 13-year-old! How about his starting a disastrous war? Or alienating all our allies? Or starving children, the elderly, veterans, and the disabled? Is that a concern? Heather Cox Richardson: The front page of yesterday’s New York Times featured some of the 440,000 Americans from Arizona alone who have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits . . . Those Arizona residents include Dee McDonald, a 65-year-old cancer survivor who weighs 69 pounds and skips meals to feed her three teenaged grandsons. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins celebrates the cuts, claiming the program is rife with fraud. Like other Republicans, she cites error rates. But error rates usually reflect mistakes in classification numbers by caseworkers, not fraudulent use of services. . . . I was on a zoom with Troy Jackson yesterday, the presumptive Democratic nominee to defeat Susan Collins and help flip the Senate 102 days from now. He’s Graham Platner without the tattoo or the sexting — former President of the Maine Senate, yet about as plain-spoken and worker-friendly as you can imagine. I maxed out on the spot. Help if you can. And join today’s 3pm Indivisible call. BONUS The DNC Is Building a Democratic Party That Can Win. Lend your support.
Whom You Admire Says A Lot About Who You Are July 22, 2026 Trump admires Putin. (See: Trump calls Putin ‘genius’ and ‘savvy’ for Ukraine invasion.) He writes love letters to Kim Jong-Un. (See also: Public Executions, Forced Labour Camps: Kim Jong Un’s Worst Brutalities.) He kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside and told his chief of staff that “Hitler did some good things.” A lot of us admire Barack Obama and John McCain. Trump loathes Obama and calls McCain a loser. He admires dictators and belittles democracies. Canada is on his s–t list, as we — thanks to Trump — are increasingly on hers. Does it trouble Carl that he supports a guy who admires Putin but not Obama? Someone who cheats at golf, cheats on his wives, cheats on his taxes (well, we won’t know that for sure until the audit is complete — he’d really like to release his returns as soon as it is, though he did sue the IRS for $10 billion for leaking them early) . . . who flouts the emoluments clause of the Constitution, obstructs justice, and sat for hours watching the Capitol being stormed without lifting a finger to call off his mob? Whom he later pardoned en masse? Trump’s war with Iran — like Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — took just days to succeed. Except that in Putin’s case, the three-day blitzkrieg has turned into a four-year war that’s crippled Russian’s already pathetic economy (see: Endgame: Russia’s war economy hits its limits) and killed or wounded more than a million of its people. And in Trump’s case, the war he assured us would be a two- or three-week total success has turned into a five-month-and-counting total disaster (see: Everything Trump Touches Dies). For us, for our allies, and for the whole world. Except maybe China. (See: The Iran war is a gift to China — Fareed Zakaria.) We have to massively win the House and Senate 103 days from now. Join Indivisible. Support the opposition. And . . . read Paul Krugman! Oy, Canada. BONUS Trump on Pelosi. BONUS BONUS The National Anthem as sung at the World Cup Final. I feel better now.
Tax The Rich? July 21, 2026July 21, 2026 There’s a lot of talk about raising taxes on the uber-wealthy. But wait — the top 1% pay 40% of all the taxes! Well, as it happens — yes and no (75 seconds). People will pay anything to avoid paying income tax. Miami’s Metro Area Is Now More Expensive Than New York This chump actually moved back from Florida to New York, despite the tax bite. He thinks really rich people should pay more tax — but be thanked and celebrated for doing so. BONUS Republican Senator Thom Tillis on Trump’s bogus Save America Act (8 minutes). Or take 10 seconds to grok this cartoon.
Pie In The Sky Speculation . . . July 19, 2026July 19, 2026 But first . . . LARRY DAVID IS BACK Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness streams on HBO Max. KRUGMAN ON CRYPTO From his conversation with Dennis Kelleher: There is no legitimate use case for crypto. They’ve had 18 years to come up with one. They keep throwing things up like “an inflation hedge” or “source of stability.” Every one of them has turned out to be baseless. The only real use for crypto is tax evasion, money laundering, and crime. It’s the preferred mechanism of choice for global terrorists, sex traffickers, and rogue nations like North Korea and Iran. You have to ask yourself why crypto has basically hijacked the political agenda of Washington. It’s because they followed the Sam Bankman-Fried model of buying bipartisan support by spending hundreds of millions of dollars in campaigns. And this is the astonishing thing, Paul, that people don’t know. . . . THE KING’S SPEECH III 75 seconds — completely insane. A VIEW FROM AUSTRALIA Duane Proctor: “This Australian’s reply to Trump’s rant about NATO not being there for America is perfect.” Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can’t cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage. You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven’t even been convicted of anything. They’re just too poor to make bail. Your life expectancy is going backwards. You’re the only developed nation where that’s happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba’s. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker’s stock to your mates. Your minimum wage hasn’t moved in 15 years. You’ve got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn’t attack you. And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again. And you’re calling Greenland poorly run? Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no. ‘NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.” When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn’t even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years. And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess. So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. BEWARE THE LETTUCE And the measles and the polio. Firing thousands of competent professionals turns out to have come with a cost (60 seconds). BEWARE THE RIGHT ‘Hondurasgate’ . . . former president Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) and current leader Nasry Asfura can be heard discussing a scheme orchestrated by leaders of the international far right to destabilize progressive governments in Latin America. . . . JOH, pardoned by Trump despite facing drug trafficking charges in the United States, allegedly played the key role in financing Asfura’s victory in the latest Honduran elections, with Trump’s backing. Furthermore, JOH is said to have pushed for the assassination of Marlon Ochoa . . . Although Hondurasgate has a highly domestic dimension within Honduran politics, its regional and international implications should not be underestimated. The recordings reveal that JOH was allegedly organizing a disinformation campaign with financial support from Argentine president Javier Milei, aimed at destabilizing the political climate in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, countries governed by progressive forces. . . . At 90, Trump could rule over the U.S., Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Central and South America. King of the Western Hemisphere! BEWARE THE LEFT I Watched the DSA Go Crazy. The Democrats May Be Next. Vermont and New York City notwithstanding — and not totally terrible places to live or visit, if you ask me — I think the fears expressed here are (wildly) overdone. But I learned troubling things about some Democratic Socialists that I had not known. In America there should be room for misguided Leninists and Trotsky-ites (and room, on the right, for racists, homophobes, misogynysts, and anti-Semites). Freedom of thought. There’s a tiny bit of this stuff on the left (can you name a single prominent Leninist or Trotsky-ite? even one?), though perhaps more than I realized . . . and a huge amount of it on the right. CHRB Still digesting 143 pages — the length of which alone makes me nervous. I now think I’ll probably just take my $25 August 31 — holding my breath that it really comes — and enjoy the win. But we have time to decide. If I change my mind, I’ll let you know. And now! (Are you still here?) . . . RNGE — MY PIE IN THE SKY So, look. You know I have the happy gene and you know I am frequently wrong. And you know you should purchase RNGE only with money you can truly afford to lose. But here’s why I sold none when it jumped from 15 cents to 94 cents earlier this month, and why I’m not concerned that it’s fallen back to 66 cents and may fall further. It went up on two substantial pieces of news I’ve posted before. But what’s it worth? Who knows? So I think some new people bought on the good news . . . while those of us who owned it at much lower prices watched it go up and up . . . why sell while it’s soaring? . . . but then when it seemed to peak and plateau, decided to take profits. I almost sold some myself. Now that it’s been falling (about 10% Friday on very light volume), I think potential buyers are waiting to see how low it will fall and where it will bottom out, giving them a better chance to get in. But its more than a lottery or musical chairs here. This isn’t crypto — there could be real value here. Imagine — and here is my pie in the sky — that RNGE and its partner find a giant company in search of the perfect site for a data center. RNGE seems to have one. Imagine, further, that the giant company signs a lease that nets RNGE and its partner $50 million a year, so $25 million each. In the world of multi-billion-dollar data centers, could that be the right ballpark? Could the prospect of $25 million a year more or less forever be worth $250 million? That alone would be triple RNGE’s current market cap. But what if their experienced new hire is successful in developing a community of homes and businesses on their thousands of acres that would surround the giant data center? That could be worth a lot, too? And what if their 100,000 acres of mineral rights turned out to have some value? And what if this is just the first of — say, totally pie in the sky — four such reclaimed coal mines RNGE were able to repurpose in much the same way over the next five or ten years. All told, could RNGE support an $800 million market cap by then? About 10X where it is today? As I say, this is nothing more than unfounded, back-of-the-envelope, pie-in-the-sky day dreaming. But it’s fun. Have a great week. Join Indivisible. Don’t let Trump win.
The King’s Speech – II July 17, 2026July 17, 2026 THE SPEECH Here it is in under 2 minutes. Mark Warner. THE THREAT Jamison Firestone’s Rule of Lies: My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption, and Murder in Putin’s Russia is at once amazing, engaging, important, tragic, true — and highly relevant to our situation today. It’s no coincidence Trump admires Putin, never says a bad word about him. Russia’s path from democracy to kleptocracy — it briefly had one after Reagan got Gorbachev to “tear down that wall” — and from a free press and the rule of law (at least somewhat) to jailing dissidents and the rule of lies . . . to a president for life surrounded by loyalists living, like him, lives of luxury while the masses struggle to get by . . . has so many parallels to the direction Trump has been taking us that it’s frightening. It shows us how a murderous thug leading his country to ruin could remain popular among millions of his countrymen . . . and what could eventually happen here. Trump could eventually walk down Fifth Avenue shooting people and not lose support if we don’t succeed in restoring checks and balances. I can’t recommend Rule of Lies highly enough. It even has a (relatively) happy ending. As will, I think, the drama we’re living through. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition! CHRB It appears we’re getting our choice: take the $25 per share August 31 that we were promised, on top of the $2.125/year we’ve been getting in dividends we’ve been getting all along (8.5% on $25, but since we paid more like $13.50, more like 16%) . . . or extend redemption for five years during which the promised annual pay-out will be 10% (or, if you want to think of it this way, more like 18.5% — though that’s not the right way to way to look at it in deciding what to do). The advantage of holding, other than what would appear to be a pretty safe 10% annual return, is deferring tax on the capital gain. In my IRA, where no tax would be due, I will likely cash in most or all my shares, in the hope — which may well be foolhardy — that I’ll be able to do even better than 10%. In my taxable account, I may hold some defer the tax . . . though the 10% would really be more like 5% on the margin, after federal, state, and city tax. (Though had I sold and been left with about $19 after tax, I’d be earning that 5% on the full $25, not the $21 or so I’d be left with after tax if I sold — so more like 6%. Better, but I’ll likely take my chances on doing better still.
The King’s Speech July 16, 2026July 16, 2026 Trump is expected to lay the predicate tonight for declaring a national emergency in the weeks leading up to the mid-terms, whereby to snatch electoral victory from what now seems ever more likely to be the jaws of resounding defeat. He won’t be talking about the brilliant success of his war in Iran (and how he plans to end it) . . . or about rising prices and a likely Fed rate hike before the election. He won’t be talking about the ICE murders or his total rejection of Ronald Reagan’s view of what makes America great. He won’t be talking about climate change (for those of us enjoying a “real feel” of 100° today, imagine it ten or twenty degrees hotter as he shuts down wind farms in favor of fossil fuel combustion) or the need to shut rural hospitals and cut off food assistance to hungry children, veterans, elderly, and the disabled in order to fund further tax cuts for billionaires. He won’t be talking about the billions he’s made since re-taking office or the Epstein files he campaigned on releasing. Apparently, he’ll be talking about how the 2020 election was stolen. (Oddly, on his watch as president.) And the need to assure it not be stolen again. When he won in 2016, while a Democrat was in the White House presiding over things, there was no foreign interference. (Russia? are you listening?) And when he won in 2024 (again, while a Democrat was in the White House pulling the strings), the election was legitimate. But in 2020? All Georgia needed to do was find him 11,780 votes! All he asked Mike Pence to do was to throw out the election results! All he asked his followers to do, some of whom, he knew, were armed, was to march to the Capitol and fight like hell “or we won’t have a country.” All he did — for hours — while they beat police and ransacked the Capitol for the first time since 1812, was watch on TV and rerun the most violent parts. His aim tonight I’m told will be, as I say, to lay the predicate — plant the seed — to get the conspiracy theorists foaming. To tell his MAGAns that honoring the will of the people — who clearly love what he’s doing! don’t we? — can only be achieved by changing the way we conduct elections. It’s crazy. More than 60 judges (62 out of 63, if memory serves, the lone exception being a technical footnote) — many of them Trump appointees — threw out all his claims of 2020 election fraud as unfounded. And yet he knows he won “by a landslide,” refuses to hire anyone who disputes his 2020 win, and is fast turning our precious, cherished democracy into a fascist kleptocracy. He will fail — as Orban did in Hungary, where the opposition landslide was just “too big to rig.” But it’s profoundly dangerous; and will only fail if we all lean in more heavily than we ever have before. I’m an investor in Just Ice Tea (justice tea — get it?) the successor to Honest Tea (get it?) — both of which sport little messages on the inside of the bottle caps. The one I’m looking at now, from an ice-cold bottle of Moroccan Mint, is a quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Stay cool.
I Have No Excuse . . . July 15, 2026July 15, 2026 . . . for being nearly 11 days late with these first two, but the joy of having no advertisers or editor is that I can be as laggardly as I want. Like our friends (surely you have some) who send their holiday missives in February. And so . . . 1. Trae Crowder found it impossible to enjoy July 4th. Here’s why in under 3 R-rated minutes. 2. Trump will try to steal the mid-terms. Here’s how. Switching gears: YOUR MONEY I think oil prices — and thus inflation — and thus interest rates — will likely rise as Trump bumbles . . . and that the stock market will likely fall. (Needless to say, I’ve been wrong before.) Over the long run, the kinds of crazy speculations I’ve suggested should not be affected. ParkerVision either will or will not eventually see justice done — regardless. Anixa’s drugs either will or will not prove effective — regardless. Oportun either will or will not reach the kind of $3/share earnings per share over the next few years that would justify a much higher price — regardless. And so on. (It’s a long list. Even Borealis and WheelTug are still alive!) Whatever the broader market does, one or more of our speculations could jump 5-fold or 10-fold if we’re lucky. By contrast, it’s hard to picture Tesla, selling at 350X earnings and a $1.5 trillion valuation, having the same kind of upside. It is not the only company that knows how to make good automobiles and won’ be the only company competing to sell humanoid robots. And may not forever have a protector in the White House. CHRB Some of us bought it three years ago at $13.50 a share with the promise of about $6 in dividend payments, which we have received, and a $25 redemption at the end of next month. It’s so thinly traded by now that you can’t buy it (I tried yesterday). I’m not selling it, either. A friend who spoke with their investment relations person recently believes we will soon be offered our choice of redemption — $25 — or an extension of the deal. In my tax-deferred IRA, if we do in fact get this choice, I’ll likely take the money and run. In my taxable account, I may opt to continue to receive my $2.125 a year. For one thing, 8.5% isn’t a bad return. For another, extending my holding period means deferring taxes on the gain. Maybe my friend was misinformed and disaster looms; but I have the happy gene, as you know, so am thinking this could work out.
Well, He Went Out Big July 14, 2026July 14, 2026 And maybe that’s what Lindsey Graham wanted most of all — to be paid attention to. To be at the center of things. Not all the attention has been kind. A lot of it has been humorous. Some of it has been blunt. My friend Keith Boykin had this to say: “I’m not gunna do it,” he begins. “I’m not gunna stand here and pretend that Senator Lindsey Graham was a great and honorable man just because he’s dead — because he wasn’t. Lindsey Graham was a miserable evil warmonger with no principles.” It’s about as powerful a two-and-a-half minutes as you’re likely to see — worth your time. Some has even been musical. My friend Tym sent a recording of Lady Bug Death Drop. Younger readers may recognize the artist’s voice; I did not. I offer it not because I’m entirely comfortable with the mean-spiritedness of its lyrics — I am not — but because if younger readers do recognize the artist’s voice, they’ve been fooled. It turns out Tym did it all with AI. In a couple of minutes. Being of a certain age, I find that astounding. He simply prompted Gemini AI: I want to make a fun, joyful, and celebratory dark humor anthem about Lindsey Graham’s death on Suno. It should be in 90s house style, with ding ding the witch is dead vibes, crystal waters Sylvester inspired. Please draft a prompt for Suno for all the necessary fields. The title should be Lady Bug Death Drop with relevant lyrics. Gemini did; Suno (an AI that makes music) did the rest. If you were a Lindsey Graham fan, you can ask Gemini to write “RIP, American Hero” — perhaps with gospel and patriotic vibes, Kid Rock and Ted Nugent inspired. Suno will do the rest. Some of it has been appropriately respectful. Lindsey Graham R.I.P. – Robert Reich.