Author: A.T.

Well, it took 8 years longer than the author of Dow 40,000 predicted in 1999 . . . but sure enough, Friday: Dow closes above 40,000 for first time ever.

Trump, by contrast, predicted — over and over — that if we elected Joe in 2020, we’d “have a crash like you’ve never seen before.”

And since we’re mixing stocks and politics, I’d remind you that if you’d sold your Berkshire Hathaway at $126,183 a share when Warren Buffett was 82 — the age Joe will be when he wins in November — you would have left an awful lot on the table.

BRKA shares closed at $629,375 Friday.

Warren is 93.

It’s not calisthenics.

It’s judgement — and assembling a great young team beneath you to do most of the work.

There is some reason to think RFK Jr. will take more votes from Trump than from Biden — e.g., here — and my gut has always told me that’s true.

Biden voters see Trump as the ultimate threat to everything they care about, from climate and reproductive rights to decency and democracy itself.  So, whatever their reservations, they are less likely to throw their vote away on Kennedy, I should think, than would be Republicans who — while they might never vote blue — don’t want chaos, either.  Time will tell.

But what of Jill Stein?

In 2016, Dr. Stein got 1% of the vote.

Had most of her Michigan and Wisconsin votes gone to Clinton instead, Hillary would have been President, the Supreme Court would today slightly left, Roe would remain the law of the land, huge tax cuts for the rich would not have been ballooning our debt, and our allies would not today be terrified Trump could actually win.

And now she’s running again.

So I drafted the kind of speech I hope she’ll give before early voting begins:

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THANK YOU FOR COMING TODAY.

I AM RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT BECAUSE NEITHER TRUMP NOR BIDEN SHARES OUR GREEN AGENDA.

I WOULD MAKE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN EITHER OF THEM.

AND EVEN THOUGH I WON’T WIN IN NOVEMBER, MY HAVING RUN AND YOUR HAVING SUPPORTED ME WILL HAVE SERVED TO BUILD OUR MOVEMENT SO THAT ONE DAY WE CAN.

IT WAS ACTUALLY THE REVEREND THEODORE PARKER IN 1853 WHO FIRST OBSERVED THAT THE ARC OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE IS LONG, BUT THAT IT BENDS TOWARD JUSTICE.

YOUR SUPPORTING ME LENDS YOUR WEIGHT TOWARD BENDING THAT ARC.

BUT HISTORY ALSO TELLS US HOW BADLY IT CAN WOBBLE ALONG THE WAY.

AND WE CAN LEARN FROM THAT.

INDEED, TO MAXIMIZE OUR CHANCE OF SUCCESS, WE MUST LEARN FROM THAT.

TWO DOZEN YEARS AGO, THE COUNTRY FACED A CHOICE BETWEEN AL GORE – WHO, IMPERFECT AS HE WAS, CARED DEEPLY ABOUT CLIMATE — AND THE FAR LESS PROGRESSIVE GEORGE W. BUSH.

+OUR+ CANDIDATE THAT YEAR, RALPH NADER, WAS INSPIRATIONAL, UNCOMPROMISED BY SPECIAL INTERESTS, A BRILLIANT ADVOCATE FOR EVERYTHING WE STAND FOR.

AND AT LEAST RELATIVELY SPEAKING, HE GOT A LOT OF VOTES – 97,488 IN FLORIDA ALONE.

BUT WITH THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT, WE KNOW THAT — EVEN AFTER THE REPUBLICANS OUTRAGEOUSLY THREW OUT 45,000 SO-CALLED OVER-VOTES (WHERE VOTERS HAD MADE IT DOUBLY CLEAR THEY WANTED GORE, AND SO WERE DENIED THEIR VOTE) — BUSH WON FLORIDA BY ONLY 537 VOTES.

AND WITH FLORIDA, THE PRESIDENCY.

WHICH GAVE US THE WAR IN IRAQ,

AND THE RIGHT-LEANING SUPREME COURT THAT GAVE US CITIZENS UNITED AND GUTTED THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT AND OVERTURNED ROE.

SOME PEOPLE TRY TO BLAME THAT ON RALPH.

I DON’T.

HOW COULD HE POSSIBLY HAVE KNOWN THAT IF SOME TINY FRACTION OF HIS 97,488 FLORIDA VOTERS HAD HELD THEIR NOSES AND VOTED FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS, AS MANY SAW GORE, EVERYTHING RALPH AND YOU AND I CARE ABOUT WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SO TERRIBLY SET BACK?

HE COULDN’T KNOW!

NOR COULD HE KNOW JUST HOW BAD THE RAMIFICATIONS OF A BUSH WIN WOULD BE.

BUT NOW WE DO KNOW.  AND WE KNOW THAT TRUMP IS EVEN WORSE THAN BUSH WAS.

SO NOW, WITH THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT, I ASK YOU TO ADOPT AN EQUALLY RIGHTEOUS – INDEED, ARGUABLY MORE RIGHTEOUS – STRATEGY:

IF YOU LIVE IN A DARK BLUE OR DARK RED STATE, FOR GOD’S SAKE VOTE FOR ME! 

VOTE GREEN! 

WE NEED TO SHOW WE ARE HERE, THAT WE CARE, AND THAT THERE IS A BETTER PATH.

BUT IF YOU LIVE IN A PURPLE STATE, LIKE PENNSYLVANIA OR WISCONSIN OR MICHIGAN OR – YES – FLORIDA, VOTE FOR BIDEN.

IDEALISM HAS ITS PLACE:  AND THAT PLACE IS DARK BLUE AND DARK RED STATES.

BUT THE TRUE IDEALIST IS COMMITTED TO A BETTER, FAIRER, KINDER, GREENER MORE DECENT WORLD – AND THERE’S NOT A SINGLE GREEN PARTY MEMBER AMONG US WHO DOESN’T SEE TRUMP FOR THE NIGHTMARE HE IS AND WOULD BE.

OR WHO WANTS REPUBLICANS IN CHARGE OF THE HOUSE OR SENATE.

SO I SAY AGAIN: IF YOU LIVE IN A SWING STATE, VOTE BLUE.

IT IS THE GREENEST THING WE CAN DO.

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I am told by someone way more plugged in than me that Dr. Stein will never give a speech like that.

But if she is truly green, how can she not?

Now: does anyone have an email address for Cornel West?

Here’s most of what we need to know about those magic pills — and the tens of millions who struggle with obesity.  In most cases, it’s not their fault.

An enlightening read.

(Meanwhile, investors expect airline profits to rise as passenger weight declines . . . but knee-and-hip replacement profits to decline.  Not to mention snack food profits. As a nation in five years, we may weigh three or four billion pounds less.)

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Andy Borowitz urges Steve Bannon to adopt a more original salute.

 

Watch!

The world is going to be so different so soon.

Dare we hope AI’s multiplying power will be harnessed to produce widely shared happiness, avoiding the pitfalls?

That strikes me as something of a longshot.

As President Clinton said so frequently (paraphrasing from memory) — “Isn’t it amazing?  We’ve landed on the moon. We’ve split the atom.  We’re mapping the human genome.  We’ve solved all these incredibly complex problems . . . and yet the one problem we can’t seem to solve is the oldest problem of all:  just learning to live with each other.”

But what other shot do we have available?

And what social systems will work best in tomorrow’s world?

Autocracy?  Monarchy?  Democracy?  Communism?  Unfettered capitalism?  Well-regulated capitalism?  Socialism?  Democratic socialism?  Darwinism?  Tyranny?  Anarchy?

How about primogeniture, where all wealth passes to the first-born male?

(In this X-rated clip early in “The Gentlemen,” streaming on Netflix, Freddy — the eldest son — reacts to the reading of his father’s will.  After 600 years of primogeniture, the family’s 15,000-acre English estate is going to his younger brother.)

Should wealth that is the product of thousands of years’ work, struggle, suffering, and genius be concentrated among just a lucky few while billions struggle to make ends meet?

Which is not a bad segue to Joseph Stiglitz’s opinion, published Monday:  Time is up for neoliberals: Democracy requires a new, progressive capitalism.

Maybe in a few years we can just ask A.I. all these questions — and feel comfortable relying on her answers.  Or just watch her head explode.

TEN MINUTES . . .

I’ve written about this before:

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Ultimately, the solution to our country’s toxic polarization is a combination of open primaries, ranked choice voting, and easy voting-by-mail.  Candidates will no longer be able to win their party’s nomination by appealing to the most ardent on the right or left.  Instead, they’ll have to appeal, also, to the broad, often-more-sensible center. Over time, compromise and comity could once again become the norm.

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Andrew Yang’s just-released 10-minute TED talk does a really good job of making the case.

It worked in Alaska — with more states on the way.

Watch!

MEANWHILE . . .

Many believe that the New York “business records” charges now playing out in in court would not have been brought against anyone but Trump.

And that’s probably true.

But there’s a reason.

It’s that mischaracterizing a hush-money payment as a legal expense to spare embarrassment — or even to cheat on taxes — is not something of great consequence . . . whereas doing it to become President of the Unted States and change the course of history is — and something no one but Trump has ever done.

Yes, it would have been better if Al Capone had been tried for murder instead of tax evasion.

So, too, if Trump could be timely tried for lying to the FBI about documents he claimed not to have had and then worked to conceal.

Better still, if he could be timely tried for attempting to overturn an American election.

He seems clearly guilty of both.

But given that he appointed judges (one in Florida, three to the Supreme Court) seemingly intent on dragging those cases out long enough for him to shut them down once reelected, we have to take what we can get — if we get anything at all.  (It’s not easy to get all 12 jurors to agree; and not enough if only 11 do.)

TWO to watch these Republicans.

Then one more to share with everyone you know.

Have a great week!

I hand the microphone to Nick Kristof (one of my heroes):

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More than three-quarters of Americans say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. . . . Instead of a City on a Hill, we feel like a nation in despair — maybe even a planet in despair.

Yet that’s not how I feel at all.

. . . I emerge from years on the front lines awed by material and moral progress, for we have the good fortune to be part of what is probably the greatest improvement in life expectancy, nutrition and health that has ever unfolded in one lifetime.

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Worth reading in full.

Have a great weekend.

Oh, wait!

What Trump Promised Oil CEOs As He Asked Them To Steer $1 Billion To His Campaign

The headline says it all.

If only we had the video tape.  What an ad that would make.

RNGE

A sharp-eyed reader asked why I had sold my entire holding of 333,333 shares, as per this filing Wednesday.

I have not.  These were shares bought direct from the company which the company is now in the process of registering with the S.E.C. so that they can be freely sold someday.  I have no intention of selling them any time soon.  Also, the form should have reflected the substantially larger number of shares I had previously bought on the open market.  I’m not selling those, either.

As noted in the past, this is a speculation, to be undertaken only with money you can truly afford to lose!

BATTERIES
Storage Prices Coming Way Down — making wind and solar all the more economical.

BEES
Honeybees Invaded My House and No One Would Help — good news, because it turns out honeybees are not on the brink of extinction.

BIDEN
Georgia ex-Lt. Governor, lifelong Republican: “I’m voting for a decent person I disagree with on policies over a criminal defendant who has no moral compass” (30 seconds).

BONUS
Biden v. Trump on Health Care (30 seconds).

The rule of law — and democracy — are mortal.

We’ve already begun losing the rule of law.

Democracy is already faltering.

Rachel Maddow grabs us to make sure we’re paying attention.

“Democracy is losing the propaganda war,” writes Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic:

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Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.

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And boy are they succeeding.  Not reading her piece — or watching Maddow — won’t make these huge threats any less real.

All we need do for democracy to triumph is win big in November.

Help?  Volunteer?

Unlike the Germans and Italians who freely elected wannabe dictators (who then soon were) nearly a century ago, we have the benefit of hindsight.  We can see what happened.

[If Monday’s short post — Part II of “Should Joe Debate?” — arrived garbled, as it seems to have for some of you, please try again.  It’s been fixed.]

Everyone agrees our Southern border is in crisis.

Only Trump stands in the way of fixing it.

Rosa DeLauro is mad as hell (60 seconds).

Everyone knows Trump is guilty of trying to overturn a free and fair election . . . and of stealing government documents he lied to the FBI about not having.

Thanks to Merrick Garland, those cases may never come to trial.

Bill Maher is mad as hell (7 cathartic minutes).

And then there’s Gaza.

So much reason to be mad — and cry.

If only Hamas had accepted Gaza’s 2005 victory — Israel’s unconditional retreat — and built a prosperous society instead of an underground war machine (60 seconds).

Hamas hiding among and below innocent women and children, intentionally causing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians to die, is beyond horrible — but not genocide.*

Because yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, it’s worth remembering that the Brits basically carved out a Jewish state after two-thirds of Europe’s Jews were purposely exterminated.  That’s genocide.

*About 2 million Palestinians live in Gaza, 2 million in Israel (as citizens, 10 of them in the Knesset), and 2 million-plus in the West bank.  Because Hamas has used Gazans as human shields, one-third of one percent of the Palestinian civilians in the region have died.  Again: beyond horrible.  But not genocide.