Author: A.T.

But first . . .

Jim Burt: “When you’re a fake Christian, you hire an AI artist.  Just be sure to tell him to double check the number of fingers.”

Also . . .

NEW YORK WEATHER

Also . . .

POSSIBLE SECOND THOUGHTS

And now!

Paul F. deLespinasse asks: Is It Time to Start Voting AGAINST Candidates?

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. . . Sophisticated voters understand that unless they consider both major party candidates equally bad, they should hold their nose and vote for the one they consider less bad. That’s what I did in 2004 when, as a lifelong Republican, I voted for John Kerry.

Since then I became a Democrat, and Kerry’s impressive work as green energy envoy has lifted his stock in my estimation. But that was how I saw things in 2004.

Even if one candidate seems slightly less bad, voters should remember that every little bit helps.

Many voters, however, cannot bring themselves to vote for the least onerous major party candidate. They support a third-party candidate or don’t vote, even if this increases the danger that the major candidate they like least will win.

Case in point: Former vice president Mike Pence announced that he will not support Donald Trump in 2024. But he also said that he will not vote for Joe Biden.

Despite all this, sophisticated voting apparently has been too painful for many thoughtful voters, exemplified here by Mike Pence.

A simple reform, however, could allow such voters to vote as if they were sophisticated. All that’s needed is legislation allowing voters to cast their votes either for a candidate or against a candidate, with the results for each candidate being the total votes for minus the total votes against.

This is not a partisan proposal. It would allow Mike Pence to cast a vote against Trump without having to vote for Biden. It would equally allow other people to cast a vote against Biden without having to vote for Trump.

Admittedly, it would have the same consequences, but that is exactly my point: Voters would be able to act as if they were sophisticated without actually having to be sophisticated. . . .

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The good professor (your fellow reader!) goes on to cover a few more points (e.g., what to do if both candidates score below zero?), but you get the gist.

It will presumably never happen — but I think it’s brilliant.

The Borowitz Report: Most Innocent People Try to Delay Trials, Experts Say.

What Freedom Will You Lose Next? — 30-second spot running in Arizona.

Lempicka, new on Broadway, is dazzling, funny, powerful — and apt.  Cabaret meets Sunday in the Park with George.  Or something like that.  Fascism, unimaginable at first, has a way of taking hold.

About which, ex-Republican Steve Schmidt makes the urgent case that, no, actually, democracy doesn’t “die in darkness” (though, unlike Schmidt, I love that Washington Post tag line) — It Dies At High Noon.

The good news:  For All His Bombast, Trump Is Plummeting – Financially, Legally and Politically.

And yet Mark Green paints a scenario in his forthcoming Inflection Election where — having lost the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and 7 million in 2020 — Trump could lose by 10 million in 2024 and still regain power.  And end the American experiment so many fought and died to preserve.

Help with time or treasure, if you can.

UPDATES III

Fred C: What about KLTR?

Frank A: UNIT?

Still holding both.

From the Economist: Britain is moving toward assisted dying.

So what about here?

No one should thwart the wishes of those who believe God’s plan cannot be meddled with.  If they don’t want pain killers, they shouldn’t be forced to take them.  If they don’t want chemotherapy or surgery, they shouldn’t be forced to endure them.  If they do want these things, they should get the best treatment possible.  All this — it seems to me — should be up to them.  

But by the same token — with appropriate safeguards — shouldn’t Americans be free to choose death with dignity according to more or less whatever exit plan they choose?

Even if they choose to go sooner than you or I might?

It’s about freedom as opposed to government control.

After all — Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

“Discuss.”

UPDATES II

Yesterday, I said I was still holding — with money I can truly afford to lose — CNF, HYMC, SQNS, BOREF, OPRT, ANIX and RNGE.

Some of you asked, what about PRKR and VNRX?  I’m still holding those, too!

A friend asked what I thought of this opinion piece in Tuesday’s New York Times:

Everyone Wants to Seize Russia’s Assets.  The Repo Act Is a Terrible Idea.

I think the writer is dead wrong.

It’s a great idea.

Monroe had a doctrine; Biden could have one too:

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FROZEN ASSETS CAN +NEVER+ BE SEIZED

EXCEPT IN THE EVENT ONE NATION INVADES ANOTHER

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That would serve us in the present instance — diverting hundreds of billions of Russia’s reserves to defend and eventually help rebuild Ukraine — but also, in my view, and contrary to the writer of the opinion piece, in the long run, as well, strengthening the world order and our role in preserving it, without in any way damaging the strength of the dollar.

In the meantime, we need to send Ukraine ammunition immediately.  (Which, by the way, means sending cash to the American companies and their workers and shareholders who make what Ukraine needs.)

It’s unconscionable how, by delaying, the Republicans have played into Putin’s murderous hands.

BONUS

What He Means — 60 seconds from The Lincoln Project.

Willow’s Box — 60 seconds from the Biden/Harris campaign.

(Help?)

UPDATES

Among the speculations I’m still holding with money I can truly afford to lose: CNF, HYMC, SQNS, BOREF, OPRT, ANIX, RNGE.  Some nuttier than others, but none that I would sell here.  If you bought SQNS, you either made 18% in two weeks (you’re welcome) or are down 75% (oh God!).  The $3.03 tender offer Sequans received — which was fully funded in an escrow account and so seemed sure to go through — fell through.  (A loophole involving French tax law or something.)  I bought a bunch more yesterday at 55 cents because I think there’s a reasonable chance someone else may step in to buy it, if not at $3.03 then perhaps at $2 or $1, either of which would more than make me whole.  But zero is also a possibility, so, clearly, OWMYCTATL!

I’m in the midst of Jared Cohen’s Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House.

A thoroughly engrossing — fun! — way to learn about the increasingly short* history of our fragile democracy.

Jefferson (lots I didn’t know) . . . John Quincy Adams (an ineffective president who nearly drowned skinny dipping in the Potomac before dawn one morning, but an amazing Congressman and leader in his later years) . . . Grover Cleveland . . . William Howard Taft . . . Herbert Hoover . . . Jimmy Carter . . . George W. Bush . . . with some life lessons and inspiration thrown in.

I need three more power walks at 1.3X speed to finish — and can’t wait.

*Relatively speaking.  When, at six, I was taught the legend of Washington chopping down a cherry tree (and the importance of honesty) when he was six, our democracy was nearly 30 times as old as I was.  Today, it’s barely 3 times as old — and we have an increasingly demented ex-president out on bail running for president who cannot not tell a lie.   In case you can help, you know what to do.

You have to admire college kids’ empathy for the horror that innocent Palestinians have suffered and are suffering . . . though I’d give anything for them to read Palestinian-sympathizer Noa Tishby’s Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.

I’ve been railing against Netanyahu for some time (putting him on this list a year ago, for example).

That said, had the Gazans chosen to build a prosperous country after the Israelis voluntarily pulled out in 2005, and chosen to live in peace instead of building a 300-mile underground war machine with the stated goal of destroying its neighbor, none of this would have happened.

Indeed, it’s likely that because Israel and Saudi Arabia were close to a historic deal that would have included statehood for Palestine that Hamas chose to slaughter, rape, and kidnap more than 1,000 Israelis when it did, to derail that deal.

What must come out of this tragedy for the Israelis and Palestinians is an overarching peace deal, complete with the long-sought, long-offered two-state solution, internationally policed, and — someday — a couple of highspeed non-stop rail lines connecting Gaza to the West Bank, which would be about a 20-minute ride.

There is some hope that a deal will be made, with massive aid to help rebuild a prosperous Palestine.

But what do the kids who support the Palestinians think about Ukraine?

About Putin’s unprovoked invasion . . . its bombing of schools and hospitals . . . its planting of millions of land mines?

Surely they know Ukraine did not attack Russia as Hamas attacked Israel.

Yet if they support Trump (or some third-party candidate) in protest of Biden’s support for Israel, they are allying themselves with Putin against the innocent civilians of Ukraine.

Do they know that the only thing Trump touched in the 2016 Republican platform — the only thing that mattered to him — was the provision expressing military support for Ukraine.  Isn’t that odd?

Trump disclaimed any knowledge of that, blaming it on his campaign manager, Paul Manafort.  But even if that were true (the way it was true, say, that E. Jean Carroll was not his type), isn’t it odd that Manafort, with his ties to Russia, was selected as his campaign manager? Or that, even after having been convicted and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, Manafort would again be under consideration for a role in Trump’s campaign?

Do the kids who support Trump think, just because they won’t read the 199 pages of the Mueller report connecting Trump to Russia, or the subsequent 182 pages detailing his multiple indictable obstructions of justice that prevented even more damning information from coming out . . . that Trump isn’t a Putin ally?

If they care about the plight of the Palestinians — as we all should (and as Biden and his team do) — should they not be at least as concerned about the plight of the Ukrainians?  And protesting the Republicans in Congress who, at Trump’s insistence, have blocked desperately needed assistance for so many months?  Just as, at Trump’s insistence, they have blocked the solution to the border crisis?

Iran’s Supreme Leader, who, along with North Korea’s dictator, are supplying Russia with weapons to kill Ukrainians . . . and Putin . . . are thrilled so many well-intentioned American college kids are on Trump’s side, or Jill Stein’s side, or Cornell West’s side, or RFK Jr.’s side.

But if those students really care about the Palestinians or the Ukrainians (or the cost of college or the climate crisis or gun safety or reproductive rights or their LGBT friends or tax fairness or voting rights or continued prosperity*), they should be working to turn out a huge blue wave in November — and should be part of it themselves.

Volunteer!

Dip into your trust fund!

* Although last updated in 2016, it comes from Fox Business News.  And remains true today.

Re yesterday’s Ridiculously Simple Way To Save Half A Trillion Plastic Bags, a brilliant CEO me-mailed:

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Your post got me wondering: what would the impact be of not throwing out all our plastic bags?  According to my half-assed calculations, 100 billion plastic bags weigh about 55,000 tons.  Sounds like a lot until you realize that we throw out 268 MILLION tons a year.  So, how much should we be willing to spend to reduce garbage by 0.2%?  How much inconvenience and economic inefficiency should we bear for that goal?  But I guess we no longer believe in math when it comes to religious questions?

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I replied:

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I see virtually no cost in putting up a hook, and virtually no inconvenience in bringing a tote bag to the supermarket.

But I asked Alexa: “How much do 100 plastic bags weigh” (planning to multiply the answer by a billion).

She said (I kid you not): “A hundred plastic bags weigh approximately 600,000 metric tons.”

She also told me that each bag weighs 6 grams.  So then I asked her to convert 600 billion grams into tons. “Six hundred billion grams is about 661,400 short tons.”   Which is about 330,000 “real” tons — admittedly –still trivial compared to 268 MILLION TONS a year.

So then I asked her how much plastic we throw away each year.  She said: about 35 million tons.

My conclusion?  We are way overdue for lunch.  When are you free?

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Over lunch, I will presumably ask my friend to help save democracy — this will come as no surprise to you or to him — and he, being a libertarian who hates Trump but has little patience for what he views as wrong-headed liberal economics, may or may not chip something in out of friendship.  It will be a stimulating lunch either way.

In the meantime, I have little doubt, one or two of you will put some real effort into getting numbers we can rely on.  Alexa is a great resource (“Alexa: what time is the eclipse tomorrow?” “2:18pm”), but you guys are even better.

BONUS: FROZEN SPINACH

While we’re wandering through the WASTE NOT / WANT NOT aisle, tote bag in hand, I wanted to tell you that my ancient side-by-side refrigerator had an aneurism in December just as I was heading south for the winter.

The freezer side was not cold enough to freeze things; the refrigerator side, barely below room temperature.

I hate throwing things out — shopping bags, for example — but because today’s refrigerators are so much more efficient, and because the refrigerator repair estimate was “$575-per-hour plus parts” — if they could fix it at all — I figured: what the hell?  You only live once.

But it turned out the $1,199 replacement I coveted wouldn’t fit; and that even if I could find one that did, the current fridge is too big to remove.  Even with the doors off, it’s too wide to squeeze through the kitchen door.  “Well, how did they get it in there in the first place?” you ask. It is a mystery.  Best guess: it was there before the kitchen was remodeled with a narrower door.  Who knows?

So here I was four months later, back north, ready to confront the problem head on, which meant approving the $575-an-hour estimate, hoping for the best, and taking everything out of the freezer in preparation.

And that’s when I found three bags of Seabrook Farms microwaveable once-frozen creamed spinach stamped “sell by October 27, 2007.”

As long-time readers know, this is just the sort of thing I love.

Though no longer frozen, each pouch was still vacuum sealed.

I ate them over three successive days while we waited for the GE replacement parts to arrive.

Delicious.

Nine hundred forty-seven dollars and twenty-one cents later, frozen is once again frozen, cold is once again cold, and all is right with the world.

Have a nifty, thrifty week.

Waste not, want not.

Waste impoverishes us all.

Alexa tells me we use 100 billion in the U.S. alone.

We do this mainly because we either forget to bring a bag from home when we go to the store, or we’re not coming from home.

So the store gives us a bag for our stuff, or a few bags, which we take home and throw out, even though most are eminently reusable.

Even if you’re of a mind to see them reused, stores typically won’t (or legally can’t) take them back (could the plastic-bag lobby have had anything to do with that law?).

But how about this?  A stick-on hook outside the store, near the door, maybe like these that cost less than a buck each.

Without even telling the store (plausible deniability!), you’d stick one up and hang a few bags on it, to get this started.

Just above the hook, you’d tape a little TAKE ONE! sign that says, basically:

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Forget to bring your tote bag? 

Take one of these . . .

. . . and next time, bring two or three for the hook. 

We waste 100 billion plastic bags in the U.S. each year. 

Save the planet!

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It could take a little while to catch on, but where’s the downside?  Stores shouldn’t hate your hook — it could save their buying thousands of bags each month.

Some might even give you permission to put the hook INSIDE, protected from the elements.

Or — wonder of wonders — install an official Tote Hook themselves!

Remember take a penny, leave a penny dishes back when there were pennies?

These would be take a tote, leave a tote hooks.

I pile up 50 or 100 indestructible Fresh Direct delivery bags each year that, for legal reasons, Fresh Direct can’t accept for reuse.  But I’m certainly allowed to put one under my arm when I go to the supermarket or the hardware store or the liquor store.  If there were TAKE ONE TOTE HOOKS nearby, I could just hang up my extras and feel good about it.

No one would be forced to use a “previously owned” plastic bag or tote bag or Fresh Direct bag.

But wouldn’t you grab one from the hook?

Don’t you think this could catch on?

A tote-ally painless, essentially effortless, no-cost way to save perhaps half of the trillion plastic bags humans waste worldwide each year.  Maybe more.

BILLIONAIRE BONUS

Paul Krugman ponders Why Some Billionaires Support Trump.

He ends with this:

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. . . I’d also speculate that even billionaires who recognize Trump’s authoritarian leanings probably imagine, if they think about it at all, that their wealth will protect them from arbitrary exercises of power.

They should — but won’t — learn from the experience of the Russian oligarchs who helped put Vladimir Putin in power. They eventually discovered that once you’ve installed a dictator, your wealth isn’t the shield you might have thought it was and you may still find yourself sent to Siberia. And before you say that such worst-case-scenario thinking can’t possibly apply in America, bear in mind that the Trump alarmists have mostly been right and the apologists have mostly been wrong; I’m old enough to remember when Trump’s former acting chief of staff wrote that “If He Loses, Trump Will Concede Gracefully.”

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So if you’re a billionaire — or even just a deci- or centi-millionaire — read the whole piece and then, perhaps, click here.

Have a great weekend.

A Study in Senate Cowardice, Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece in the Atlantic, begins:

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In late June of 2022, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump-administration aide, provided testimony to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. This testimony was unnerving, even compared with previous revelations concerning Donald Trump’s malignant behavior that day. Hutchinson testified that the president, when told that some of his supporters were carrying weapons, said, “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away.” He was referring to the metal detectors meant to screen protesters joining his rally on the Ellipse, near the White House.

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A short, gripping read.

Because what’s really at stake in November, when we say . . . “democracy is at stake” . . . is whether we’re going to live under the rule of law — imperfect as our justice system is — or under the rule of fear, as they do in “democracies” like Russia or North Korea, both of whose leaders Trump admires.  Putin wins the popular vote by a landslide, as Trump claims to have done, except that if you run against him, he murders you; and if you protest his war, you go to prison for 15 years.  It’s even worse in North Korea.  It’s Stalinesque.

Already in this country, you have to be somewhat brave to defy Trump — and he’s just a criminally indicted private citizen out on bail.

Imagine what it would be like if he were given the power to wreak his promised “vengeance and retribution.”

You have to be a little brave, if you’re a Republican, to cross Trump, especially if you can’t afford round-the-clock security.  He rules by fear.

We had a solution to the border crisis that would have passed Congress by a wide bipartisan margin, but Trump ordered it killed.  Trump needs the crisis for his campaign — needs “vermin” to rail against, just as another spell-binding orator did 90 years ago — and most Republicans in Congress are afraid to cross him.

You have to be a little brave, if you’re a poll worker or a judge or a witness or a CEO or an election official whom he might expose to the wrath of his mob.

And once the rule of law is replaced by the rule of fear, there’s no going back.  Just ask the Russians or the Haitians or the Venezuelans.

“It can’t happen here.”

Oh, but it can.

Please help if you can, so it won’t.

BONUS

The Great Struggle for Liberalism, by conservative columnist David Brooks, begins:

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In 1978, the Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave a commencement address at Harvard, warning us about the loss of American self-confidence and will. “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today,” he declared.

Today, those words ring with disturbing force. The enemies of liberal democracy seem to be full of passionate intensity — Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, campus radicals. Meanwhile, those who try to defend liberal norms can sometimes seem like some of those Republicans who ran against Trump in the 2016 primaries — decent and good, but kind of feckless and about to be run over.

Into this climate emerges Fareed Zakaria’s important new book, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash From 1600 to the Present. One of the powerful features of this book is that Zakaria doesn’t treat liberal democratic capitalism as some set of abstract ideas. He shows how it was created by real people in real communities who wanted richer, fuller and more dynamic lives.

His story starts in the Dutch Republic in the 16th century. The Dutch invented the modern profit-seeking corporation. The Dutch merchant fleet was capable of carrying more tonnage than the fleets of France, England, Scotland, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain and Portugal combined. By the 18th century, Amsterdam’s per capita income was four times that of Paris. . . .

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An interesting piece . . . about the importance of finding purpose in life.  And I just started listening to Fareed’s important new book.

DOUBLE BONUS

I saw SUFFS last night.  So good.  Grab tickets.

QUICK CLIPS

Two conservatives make the case for Biden (60 seconds worth sharing): “The nation can survive bad policy; we can’t survive a president who is willing to torch the Constitution.”

Chris Wallace asks Larry David about Trump (60 seconds).

Trump Doesn’t Want Nikki Haley Voters (But We Do) (30 seconds).

Lindsey Graham says it perfectly (60 seconds).

IRONY

You can’t be president if you were born in Canada and only moved here the following week, but you can be president if you’re a rapist who’s lied to the FBI, been twice impeached, plotted to overthrow an election, and sat idly by — for hours — while the Capitol was under a brutal attack for which you were “practically and morally responsible.”

I find some irony in that.

MILES

Bob: “Thanks yesterday’s tip about the Bilt credit card.  I looked but cannot find any mention of 60,000 bonus points.”

→ Oops!  Sorry not to be more clear.  It’s not a sign-up bonus; it’s the points you can get over the course of a year by paying your rent or condo charges via the card.

John: “Yes, the Bilt credit card does work for Condo and HOA fees — you just have to tell it to mail a check and do it enough in advance for the check to arrive on time. My wife is a master at this stuff and she set it up. BUT there are some hoops to jump through. You need to do 5 other transactions on Bilt each billing cycle or you don’t get points for the rent or HOA fees.  Also, on the first day of the month, you get double points on Bilt for every category (except rent or HOA fees). Since you need to do 5 transactions each billing cycle beyond rent or HOA, it makes sense to do them on the 1st. Gift cards bought from restaurants count. It’s a bit of work – it’s my wife’s part time job – but if you use the points it’s worth it.

PS – My book is now live on Amazon.

→ Thanks — and congratulations on the book!

Carl: “It’s a scam, just like your America-last communist administration.”

→ Carl is referring to what he calls “the small print” requirement to make those 5 other charges on the card each cycle.  But I’m pretty sure almost anyone charges 5 transactions a month — ranging from a cup of coffee to a couple of gallons of gas.  Hardly a high bar, even for communists who hate America.