Author: A.T.

But first (and trust me, you don’t want to miss the bee-yuh):

My friend Peter Kinzler is seeking seven patriots.  To wit:

On June 1, 1950, Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith took the floor of the Senate to address what she described as “a serous national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear.”

Her concern was Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on American citizens as communists or fascists. Today, we face similar attacks on American citizens and institutions from a reckless president, but where is the Republican response?

With the support of six other Republicans, Senator Smith delivered a “Declaration of Conscience” criticizing the statements and tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Among Senator Smith’s indictment were the following points: . . .

As you’ll see if you read the full piece (the bee-yuh will still be hee-yuh), he quotes that declaration; identifies seven current Republican senators of conscience; and goes on to say:

. . . What [these] seven haven’t done is emulate Senator Smith by making it clear—together—that Trump’s actions represent a clear and present danger to our democracy, one that requires that they act on the premise that, “We are Republicans, but we are Americans first.” On the contrary, every one except Corker worked with Trump and voted for tax legislation that was crammed though the Senate without any semblance of normal legislative process.

If they act together, these Republicans can save the nation from Trump’s deepening autocracy. If they do not and American democracy goes down, it will be to their everlasting shame that they knew the danger but lacked the principles and courage to stand up.

December 15, the day the Bill of Rights was adopted 226 years ago, is rapidly approaching.  Wouldn’t it be fine if these seven honored the day by emulating Senator Smith and her six fellow Republicans with an updated Declaration of Conscience?

☞ Spread the word?

OK: Forget bitcoin (more on that soon) — he-yuh’s the alt-currency you can rely on.

(And if you enjoyed that, you might get a kick out of this.)

My ironic friend texted me this link with the heading: “But finally some good news.”

Have a great weekend!

My centrist friend Norm Ornstein, resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, co-wrote this for the New York Times Sunday:

In the past three days, Republican leaders in the Senate scrambled to corral votes for a tax bill that the Joint Committee on Taxation said would add $1 trillion to the deficit — without holding any meaningful committee hearings. Worse, Republican leaders have been blunt about their motivation: to deliver on their promises to wealthy donors, and down the road, to use the leverage of huge deficits to cut and privatize Medicare and Social Security.

Congress no longer works the way it’s supposed to.

. . .  If in 2006 one could cast aspersions on both parties, over the past decade it has become clear that it is the Republican Party — as an institution, as a movement, as a collection of politicians — that has done unique, extensive and possibly irreparable damage to the American political system.

. . . Mr. Trump’s election and behavior during his first 10 months in office represent not a break with the past but an extreme acceleration of a process that was long underway in conservative politics. The Republican Party is now rationalizing and enabling Mr. Trump’s autocratic, kleptocratic, dangerous and downright embarrassing behavior in hopes of salvaging key elements of its ideological agenda: cutting taxes for the wealthy (as part of possibly the worst tax bill in American history), hobbling the regulatory regime, gutting core government functions and repealing Obamacare without any reasonable plan to replace it.

This is a far cry from the aspirations of Republican presidential giants like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, as well as legions of former Republican senators and representatives who identified critical roles for government and worked tirelessly to make them succeed. It’s an agenda bereft of any serious efforts to remedy the problems that trouble vast segments of the American public, including the disaffected voters who flocked to Mr. Trump.

. . .

We have never suggested that Democrats are angels and Republicans devils. Parties exist to win elections and organize government, and they are shaped by the interests, ideas and donors that constitute their coalitions. Neither party is immune from a pull to the extreme.

But the imbalance today is striking, and frightening. Our democracy requires vigorous competition between two serious and ideologically distinct parties, both of which operate in the realm of truth, see governing as an essential and ennobling responsibility, and believe that the acceptance of republican institutions and democratic values define what it is to be an American. The Republican Party must reclaim its purpose.

India looks to save 20 billion rupees on airport taxiing . . . which may not be the most pressing thing on your mind, but now I probably have you wondering how much that is in dollars ($310 million), which I know because I asked Alexa.  I had previously asked her, with regard to the Pilgrims, “How long did it take the Mayflower to reach America?” and she said, “You are 234 miles from America [actually, I was in New York, so maybe she meant the real America] but I don’t know how fast you’re traveling so I can’t calculate your travel time.”

You know I don’t eat.  Saves time, saves money, saves the planet, good for health and weight, and much easier on the cows and chickens.  Especially the chickens.

That said, one has to eat something, and if you’re the kind of person who does, let alone “meals” (I graze), MealPal may be worth a look.

You sign up for either 12 or 20 lunches a month (or, now, in some cities, dinners), at a rate ranging from $5.19/meal in Miami to $6.39/meal in cities like New York, Boston, DC, and San Francisco.

No beverage; but you get a full hot lunch or dinner (and plastic utensils and a napkin).  Not bad for $6.39.  I just watched a friend eat his moules frites from Café Tallulah — $24 plus tax and tip if he had sat there to eat it instead of coming by my place — and because he couldn’t finish it all, I made out like un bandit. 

Plus, he got a beer from my fridge that cost him nothing (and me, just a buck) instead of $8.

Each night (or early the day-of), you peruse nearby restaurants to see what’s offered — no choices or substitutions, but a wide variety of chefs — and click to reserve one.  Then just drop in at lunch time, give your name, grab your bag.  No lines.  No cash register.  Real fast.

And you might want to have a Heineken with that.  I guess it’s five years old, but have you ever seen this ad? (Watch all the way to the end.)  Thanks, Mel!

Not me!  But how can one not be excited by this: a 90-day journey to Mars in 2024.  Less time than it took the Mayflower to reach Cape Cod (all things considered) — and with comforts and luxuries of which the Pilgrims could never have dreamed.  (Thanks, John!)

Back here on Earth . . .

Rex Tillerson has largely destroyed the State Department — a huge win for Vladimir Putin and his fellow murderous autocrats around the world.

But the Republicans in the House and Senate don’t seem to care.

They are making America great again by making health insurance less affordable, higher education less affordable, inequality more pronounced, our National Debt needlessly higher . . . all the while letting our infrastructure crumble.  An almost certain prescription for progress and prosperity.

It’s almost funny.  As president, we have a genuine fake-wrestling hall of fame inductee.  As secretary of state, we have a genuine Russian Order of Friendship Medal recipient.  The latter calls the former “a fucking moron.”  The former calls the latter “an idiot.”

Maybe it’s time to remind you of my fantasy:

My fantasy — and it is only that — is that some crisis a month or three down the road triggers a lawsuit that can only be decided by the Supreme Court.  And that that Court, though captured by the right, somehow finds the fundamental patriotism and fairness to say something like this:

“Seventeen years ago this Court faced a national crisis and — in a ruling it went out of its way to brand as non-precedential — made a tough and widely criticized call that, in effect, gave George W. Bush the Presidency and, as it happened, the opportunity to appoint two of us to this body.  Last year, the Senate made the unprecedented decision not to allow the President to fill a vacancy on this Court, on the grounds that the will of the people as expressed in 2008 and 2012 did not give him that authority — the Senate needed to see how the people leaned in 2016.  As we now know, the people — not the Electoral College, the people — leaned toward the Democratic candidate. 

“Today we face a new crisis.  In developments that have been building all year, it has become clear that the 2016 election results were interfered with by a massive Putin-directed thumb on the electoral scale — a thumb the existence of which the Trump team long denied knowledge of but of which we now know they were well aware.  In that context, we have been called upon to overturn the 2016 result as tainted, and to order a workable mechanism by which the country can move forward and regain its footing. 

“We hereby direct former presidents Obama and Bush, acting in concert, to recommend to this Court, in the shortest time possible, an interim president and vice president to serve out the remainder of this presidential term — or a shorter term if a majority of the House and Senate shall call for an earlier election.”

Or something like that.  And Barack and George, very different people but both sane patriots, would perhaps recommend to the Court Joe Biden and Mitt Romney; the Court would approve; and most of the nation — not having attained anything like great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost — nor remotely to have tired of “winning so much you’ll get tired of winning” — would breathe a huge sigh of relief.  As would the world.

Or they could just give it to Hillary, who did get more votes despite it all; but Putin/Trump have been so effective at getting people to misperceive her (she is wonderful and would have made a great president), it could fail to give the same sense of closure.

Just sayin’.

You absolutely don’t want to miss this TED talk.

You will learn why we age, and how you might extend your “health span.”

This is not hokum: this is Nobel-prize-winning science combined with wisdom and grace.

Your readership extends my telomeres.

Seriously: don’t miss this one.  It’s fascinating, wise, and free.

The tax bill, meanwhile — horrifying, unwise, and a trillion dollars shy of being free — passed the Senate before it could even be typed, let alone read.

Does Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski still think the Senate is “earning back its reputation as ‘the world’s greatest deliberative body’?”

Just because she got a provision added that opens the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling?

That gets her vote for this dreadfully wrong-headed tax bill?

These would be such great days to be alive (today: telomeres! tomorrow: Mars!) had Putin — who murders journalists and political opponents — not so successfully destabilized our democracy and ended our world leadership.

Thanks to him, we have an unhinged, unfit president praised by Nazis, who lies preposterously and perpetually.

Never more than when he says the tax bill will “cost me a fortune, believe me.”

Call your Republican Senator/s (202-224-3121) and/or Congressperson (202-225-3121).  We just need a few of them to put their constituents ahead of their donors.

The last thing we should be doing is increasing the National Debt to lower taxes on the rich while our infrastructure continues to decay.  How is that smart or responsible in any way?

And no, it will not create jobs — it could well move more of them overseas.

OK.  Made your voice heard?

Now watch Elizabeth Blackburn’s wonderful TED talk.

But first — if you’re coming to New York, add Come From Away to your wish list.  A friend took me.  I wasn’t expecting much.  But guess what?  It’s terrific.  Filled with humanity and humor and foot-stomping energy. (And no annoying intermission to interrupt the flow — what a concept!) You will leave the theater feeling great.

Meanwhile, if you happen to be gay (or have lots of gay friends), see Bright Colors and Bold Patterns.  Again, I wasn’t expecting much. The website “trailer” didn’t grab me.

But the director is a friend, and both the Times and the New Yorker called it “hilarious” — so I got tickets.

Well!

It’s quite the one-man show!

You’ll swear you see four characters on stage the whole time.

And how odd to juxtapose that recommendation with this one, because my friend Richard Viguerie — king of right-wing direct mail — is staunchly anti-equality.  And most other things I care about.

We were once on a panel, back when Charles was alive and gays were not included in America’s hate crimes law and could not serve openly in the military — let alone marry — and I finally boiled it down to this: “Look, Richard.  You know me, you know Charles.  I know you like us and wish us well, as we do you.  And you know we pay our taxes as you pay yours.  So just tell me: If it were up to you, which rights would you allow us and which would you not?  May we live together?  Hold hands?  Sleep together?  Serve in the military?  You’re in charge. Just tell us.”

Richard squirmed.  His faith told him he couldn’t start allowing us rights because that slippery slope would lead to marriage and who knows what else.*

He said he wanted time to think about it.  We agreed that I’d ask him again the following year, which — given the vagaries of panel scheduling — I did not get to do.

Anyway, I happened to come across this 2016 interview on YouTube yesterday.  If your job involves marketing or direct mail — or you’d just like to put a human face on “the enemy” (because no one has done more than Richard to move America to the right) — watch.  He brims with energy and — in his way — good will.  But, oh, the harm his team has caused.  Never  more than this year.

Speaking of which . . . here is a report of the speech in which the President lied massively, blatantly, and consequentially for all to see — saying that he and his wealthy friends would be paying much more under the Republican plan than the relatively little they pay now.  It’s not a gray area; it is a knowing, enormous, colossal lie.  That he is not universally condemned for it by Congressional Republicans is appalling.  And scary.  And ominous.

Have a great weekend.

*Polygamy!  Bestiality!  And Gomorrah stuff like that. Like go-Moore-ah 32-year-old man molesting a 14-year-old and then running for Senate.

The tax thing is horrifying (see below) and could get voted on — even passed — today.  If either or both your senators is Republican, call 202-224-3121 to register your dismay.

1. Rachel’s Russia list.  You don’t want to miss this. As she says, the evidence just mounts and mounts.

2. Her visual explanation of the Republican tax bill.  (People protesting, “Kill the bill, not us!”)

3. Bernie’s letter:

Andrew –

For the past 40 years, the financial and political elite of this country have rigged the tax code to redistribute wealth and income to some of the richest and most powerful people in this country. The result: we are moving rapidly toward an oligarchic form of society in which the top 1 percent is doing phenomenally well, the middle class continues to decline and 40 million Americans are living in poverty.

And it will probably not surprise you to learn that just as our tax code benefits the wealthiest people in this country, it also benefits some of the largest and most profitable corporations in the world with a myriad of tax breaks, deductions, credits and other loopholes. As a result, one out of five large profitable corporations today pays nothing in federal taxes.

The current Republican “tax cut” bill, paid for by the Koch brothers and other billionaire campaign contributors, continues the push to make the rich richer at the expense of everyone else. It would raise taxes on middle class families making $75,000 a year or less and would throw 13 million Americans off of health insurance. And it would do all of these things to provide permanent tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and profitable corporations that ship American jobs to China while moving their American profits to the Cayman Islands.

But let’s be clear. This legislation goes well beyond taxes. Its ultimate goal is to radically transform American society and the role that government plays in the lives of the working families of our country. This legislation will increase the deficit by at least $1.5 trillion over ten years. Mark my words. If passed, the Republicans will then rediscover the “deficit crisis,” and push aggressively for massive cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education – higher education in particular – nutrition, affordable housing and more. They will seek to undo every major piece of legislation passed in the last 80 years designed to help working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor.

This is the Republican plan. Huge tax breaks for the rich and powerful. Massive cuts to life and death programs for the middle class and working families of our country.

This is not moral. This is not what the American people want. This is not what our country and our pledge for “liberty and justice for all” is supposed to be about.

That is why I am going on the road this week to talk directly to working people in Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania about this disastrous piece of legislation. If we stand together – black, white, Latino, Asian American, Native American, male and female, young and old, gay and straight – we can defeat this horrific bill. But I need you to make your voice heard as well. We need to stand together.

Please sign my petition calling on Congress to REJECT the Republican “tax cut” plan that would take from the working families in this country to give a massive tax break to people and corporations who already are doing extremely well. At a time of grotesque levels of income and wealth inequality, we must not make a bad situation even worse.

Today in America, more than 40 million Americans, including 20 percent of all children, live in poverty. Many in extreme poverty. Almost 28 million Americans have no health insurance. Millions of bright kids can’t afford to go to college without facing a lifetime of debt. Seniors and disabled veterans are struggling to stay alive on inadequate Social Security checks.

Despite all of that pain, the greed of the billionaire class in this country knows no limits. No. We will not allow them to take away from those in need in order to give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the very rich.

Here’s a radical idea for my colleagues in the Republican Party: instead of just listening to the rich and powerful few in this country, maybe just maybe Congress should listen to the majority of the American people who want a fair tax system.

Maybe just maybe corporate tax reform should start by preventing profitable companies from sheltering profits in tax haven countries like the Cayman Islands.

Here is something you may not know:

A 2008 Government Accountability Office report found that 83 of the Fortune 100 companies use at least one offshore tax scheme to lower their taxes. A 2016 study found that one of every five large, profitable corporations paid no federal income taxes at all in 2012.

The practice of stashing profits in places like the Cayman Islands has become so absurd that one single, five-story office building there is now the official legal “home” to more than 18,000 corporations! Our tax code has essentially legalized tax dodging for large corporations.

We must stop this bill. We must stop the Republicans from moving this country into an oligarchy.

And that starts with all of us standing up, fighting back and making our voices heard. Three weeks ago progressives from coast to coast ran for office at the local and state level – and they won. We have to continue that progress and build on that momentum.

Please sign my petition calling on Congress to REJECT the Republican “tax cut” plan that would take from working families in this country all to give a massive tax break to people and corporations who already have it all.

Brothers and sisters. We must do exactly the opposite of what Trump is attempting to do. He wants to divide us up by the color of our skin, our gender, our religion, our sexual orientation or our country of origin. He wants us fighting with each other while Wall Street and the billionaire class laugh all the way to the bank.

Our job is to bring our people together around an agenda that creates an economy and government that works for all, not just the 1 percent. Defeating this terrible piece of legislation will be an important step forward.

This bill is a moral abomination. I hope you’ll add your name if you agree.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

Again: If either of your senators is a Republican, call 202-224-3121 — right now — to register your dismay.  If it’s the middle of the night, swell: you’ll get their voice mail.

The Republican tax bills would:

• Cut the tax rate on billionheirs — from 40% (already down from 55%) to ZERO.  This would help them — Trump’s kids would save billions — but do nothing for the bottom 99.8%, whose inheritances fall below the estate tax minimum.
• Hurt charities.  (Because the after-tax cost of bequeathing $100 million would jump from $60 million to $100 million. When something costs more to do, people do less of it.)
• Eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which would have saved Trump $20+ million in 2005, the one year we know he paid tax, but which would do nothing for most. (The AMT hits about 5 million of us, and is annoying, to be sure; but we need the revenue.)
• Keep the carried-interest loophole — a great gift to a few thousand very fortunate folks who pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries.
• Push US jobs and factories abroad (now there’s one you didn’t expect) as explained  by Bob Pozen here in the Financial Times.
• Balloon the deficit — and not for the purpose of revitalizing our infrastructure (something worth borrowing for, that would create good jobs) but, rather, to enrich the already rich — and the corporations that they own.
• Crimp badly needed spending, e.g., cutting $25 billion from Medicare next year alone. (How would that help Trump voters?)

And more.

So:

TAXES:  Aid the rich at everyone else’s expense.

HEALTH CARE:  Repeal it.  Sabotage it.  Roll back the tax on the wealthy that helps subsidize it.

CONSUMER PROTECTION:  Bludgeon it.

Watch Barney Frank explain. He challenges the CFPB critics to name one specific thing the CFPB has done in fighting for consumers that they wish it hadn’t.  They can’t.  Consumers like it when Wells Fargo is called to task for setting up millions of unauthorized accounts.  They like it when those who victimize unsophisticated borrowers are called to task.

CLIMATE CHANGE:  Deny it.

DIPLOMATIC CORPS: Decimate it.

ONGOING RUSSIAN ATTACK ON OUR HOMELAND: Ignore it.

Or, really, abet it.  Because the attack is designed to heighten the divisions in our society and to destroy trust in the institutions that make our system work — the free press, the judiciary, the electoral process, norms of common decency and mutual respect.

Trump may or may not have actively colluded with the Russians — I don’t know — but he is abetting all those goals and has already taken our national brand down from #1 in the world to #6.  In less than a year.

Is ignoring an attack from our chief adversary of the past 70 years not a form of treason?  Or does treason have to be as explicit as, say, revealing classified information to them in the Oval Office (oh, wait, he did that, too).

Is bragging about grabbing women’s genitals not some form of misdemeanor?

What about constant lying (albeit not yet under oath)?

Any issues with the emoluments clause?

Obstruction of justice?

I think you know where I’m headed with this.

Boo Boo was a bear.  (Click for the photo.)

My friend Danny Sebright, formerly of the Defense Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency, knows a thing or two about weapons.

I found his post affecting:

Facebook Friends, I post below with some amount of sadness and trepidation.  As you all know, I am not a big fan of “rants” on FB, whether they be about jobs, friends, politics, or each person’s latest malady or general state of malaise.  However, I feel that I am owed a rant this morning!

Boo Boo was legally shot by a hunter near my home in PA on Saturday!  Boo Boo visited my property on a regular basis over the last 12 months.  He was the sweetest, most gentle animal.  He occasionally “played” with a bird feeder or two, but let it be said that he was more afraid of me and my dogs than we were of him.

What is the purpose of killing a noble animal like this?  Certainly, the hunter who killed Boo Boo is not going to eat the meat.  Maybe he/she will make Boo Boo into a carpet, or stuff or mount his head on the wall.  But, why and for what purpose?

Is it the adrenaline rush that comes from killing a helpless animal when you know you are already at the top of the food chain in the animal kingdom?  Sort of pathetic when you use a high power weapon to track, hunt, and kill a defenseless animal.  Wow, is that called stacking the odds?

Or, is it a Napoleon Complex of trying to over compensate for your own small penis?  They have medical devices and implants these days that might do a better job of helping you make up for your own personal inadequacies.

God gave us the earth and everything on it to wisely use what we need and conserve the rest.  My father, who is a lifelong farmer, taught me to respect the land and all of the creatures who live on it.  Why is it that today so many are so fixated on needlessly raping, pillaging, and consuming all of the bounty and glory of God’s wonderful gifts to us?

And please, before any of you start with responses back to me of “over population” or of the importance of “thinning the herd,” just stop!  We would not be in this position to begin with if we as humans had not over-populated the earth, and, over the last 100 years had not caused significant impact to our climate and earth’s eco systems.

Hunters in my area:  get your license and kill a deer every year IF YOU MUST for the bounty of its meat on your table, but please let the rest of God’s creatures alone and try to learn to live with them in peace in this world.

Rant over:  I will miss Boo Boo every day!

As explained well here.  In small part:

. . . Trump is unquestionably unpresidential (this is the man who mocked a disabled reporter), but he’s nothing like Hitler. I encourage everyone to challenge and condemn the immoral and unfeasible ideas that Trump has, such as the proposal to deport 11 million undocumented migrants, but comparing Trump to Hitler is not only inaccurate, ineffective, dishonest, and dangerous, it also trivializes the tragedy of the Holocaust in the name of scoring political points. . . .

Right.

No question.

But to compare the nature of Trump’s appeal and his rhetoric to Hitler’s . . . and to note, as I have, repeatedly, that, according to his ex-wife, he frequently read from a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside . . . and to note his affinity for journalist-murdering dictators like Putin and Duterte . . . and to find it telling that he defended some “very fine people” among the white nationalists carrying torches in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” — well, it seems to me, these are data points that someone evaluating Trump’s world view and fitness to be president should take into account.