Author: A.T.

James Carville: Three Reasons I’m Certain Kamala Harris Will Win

I’ll add a fourth: we just have to.  We can’t let the light go out on the democracy that so many died to create and defend.

Geraldo Wishes He ‘Bailed’ on Ex-‘Hangout Buddy’ Trump ‘A Lot Sooner’: ‘So Disappointed In My Kind of Blindness’

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“When push came to shove, he was revealed by his own actions to be exactly the person that his critics were saying that he was,” [Rivera] said.

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I hope you saw Kamala on CNN last night.  She was so, so good.

Not perfect, as her supporters and critics will note for one reason or another.

But — and here’s the point — twice as good as you or I would have been (well, I, anyway) and a thousand times better than the alternative.

She will make a great president.

Help!  

(And yes, help!)

THANK YOU!

I’ll get to that for those who don’t own these stocks.

But first:

PRKR closed at 69 cents last night, up from 16 cents in August.  It’s tempting to take a quick quadruple; for those of us who first bought shares nearly seven years ago at $1, it looks a little different.  On the one hand, there’s been huge dilution, as the company issued zillions more shares to raise cash to stay afloat.  On the other hand, a great many more phones have now been sold with Parker’s technology inside, and a great deal of interest has accrued on whatever a jury might find has been owed over the 20 years the company believes Qualcomm (and other giants) have been using its patented technology for free.

(The one time Parker’s patent claim against Qualcomm did reach a jury, more than a decade ago, they unanimously awarded $173 million and the judge initially said that the companies would presumably be working out a licensing agreement for future sales.  Months later, though, he was somehow persuaded to throw the whole thing out.)

There’s much more to be said about this, but my bottom line is that, for now at least, I see more upside than down.  I’m holding all my shares.

BOREF traded zero shares yesterday on the news that former FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has joined WheelTug’s board.  (BOREF owns about half of WheelTug.)  After 25 years of your hearing from me about this stock, I guess you can be forgiven for not jumping up and down.  (It was around $3 then; it’s around $3 now.)  But to me, the news is hopeful.  Babbitt adds a lot of credibility.

Ryan S.:  “To get a sense of him, here’s an interview he did a while back.  His portion starts at 13:40, but I’ve linked to the spot where he refers briefly to ‘electric nose wheel’ technology.”

At $3, BOREF is valued at $15 million.  If Borealis is ever able to unlock the literally billions in annual savings to the airline industry its technology promises — a huge if — its reward could be a $1 billion market cap — $200 a share.  I’m not for a minute suggesting this will happen; it’s just why I own a ridiculous number of shares, purchased with money I can truly afford to lose.  (And with “limit” orders.  The stock trades so thinly, even a small “market” order could be filled at a much higher price than you expected to pay.)

Crazy speculations aside . . .

. . . what if you’d just like to vote for a party that can do okay with the economy and your portfolio?

A century of historical data shows that both the economy and stock market do far better under Democratic administrations than Republican.

That’s just true.  Look it up.

But what about now, under Biden?

And what about looking forward, under Harris?

I’ve previously noted that:

America’s economy is bigger and better than ever — The Economist. 

[It] has left other rich countries in the dust — also The Economist.

The U.S. economy is the envy of the world, but too many Americans have forgotten why — Philadelphia Inquirer

And I’ve linked to:

Economists Say Inflation, Deficits Will Be Higher Under Trump Than Harris — The Wall Street Journal

And I’ve urged you to share these must-watch 8 minutes with any business-minded folks who agree Trump is a horrible person but plan to vote for him anyway.

What I’d like to add today are these two follow-ons:

> This Economic Myth Needs to Go Away: 60% of Americans Are Not Struggling to Get By

(The much smaller percentage who are living paycheck to paycheck would be smaller still if we elect a president who cares about them.)

Indeed . . .

> Surprise!  Groceries are getting cheaper!

It’s one of the series of “good news” graphs you’ll find in the piece if you scroll down.

None of this is to say we should tell unhappy voters that they’re wrong to be unhappy.  We should tell them we feel their pain — because Kamala, being an empathetic human, who grew up poor, actually does — and we should show them how we’re going to take the country to ever better days, as Presidents Clinton and Obama did, as President Biden has, and as Vice President Harris will.  She has plans!  Not just concepts of plans — plans.

BONUS

Can you spot the celebrity ‘deepfakes’ in a new ad warning against election disinformation?

I went to the opening of Sunset Boulevard Sunday.

The New York Times hated it:

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Despite Norma Desmond, who famously declares in the film “Sunset Boulevard” that it’s not her but “the pictures that got small,” the opposite is true on Broadway these days. In musicals especially, video and projections have grown ever more dominant. Perhaps it is not so much an irony as an inevitability, then, that at the St. James Theater, where a revival of the musical based on “Sunset Boulevard” opened on Sunday, the pictures — live video streamed onto an LCD screen more than 23 feet tall — are so big they almost blot out the show below.

But alas, only almost.

For despite many fascinating interventions by the director Jamie Lloyd and his technical team, and the fact that it is based on one of the greatest of movies, the musical remains too silly for words. In that sense, and others, Norma would have loved it.

Which isn’t praise . . .

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The Daily Beast and most others loved it:

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[The] audience, to varying degrees of whooping, standing, hollering, and applauding — well, lost its damn mind.

It wasn’t just Scherzinger mega-fans in thralls of ecstasy. As Norma and as herself, Scherzinger ignites multiple blazes of originality, mischief, wit and drama in the stupendous revival of the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical (St. James Theatre, booking through July 6, 2025). The show—with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton—transferred laden with awards from London’s West End and opened on Broadway Sunday night, directed with a magnificent witch’s brew of winking satire, absolute dead-seriousness, and stark elegance by Jamie Lloyd.

Lloyd’s show is a meta-piece of theater in the most pleasurable, least grating of ways—based on Billy Wilder’s classic 1950 movie, it is its own homage to the power of movie-making using the most inventive of theatrical techniques that in other productions (video design and cinematography are by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom) can be intrusive and annoying. Here they are vital additive, witty, and complementary, and marry theater- and film-making gorgeously. The shadows of film noir and the stark beauty of black and white photography and movies assume a striking immediacy of animated light and shadows right in front of us.

. . . The clamorous ovation at the end of this superlative show—the perfect mix of bombastic and restrained, the most fun a tragedy could ever be—says it all. It is not the usual Broadway standing ovation: polite and dutiful. It is not even the appreciative and happy standing ovation: heartfelt and feelgood. This is something else. The whooping and applauding goes on and on, a wave upon wave of loud appreciation, no one in any rush to stop or leave.

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I loved it.

The connection to the election is simply the way two people, or sets of people, can see the same thing so differently.

To me, to many of you — and to people as diverse as Mike Pence, Dick Cheney, Bernie Sanders, Mitt Romney, Taylor Swift, Willie Nelson, Mary Trump, his former top general, his former chiefs of staff, his former press secretaries, and so many more — it’s screamingly obvious that America should not return to power a vulgar, lying, adjudicated rapist and convicted felon awaiting trial in three more-serious federal felony cases . . . who, after nine years, has a secret “concept” of a plan to improve health care, who publicly sides with Putin over the FBI, who won’t release his tax returns or medical records, who killed the immigration bill that would have fixed the border problem, and who sat watching TV for 187 minutes brushing off all pleas for help as his nation’s Capitol was under attack.

Are you kidding me?

And yet there are tens of millions of good Americans who love their country, love his show, and hope to see four more years of it.  (And would it be just four?  Term-limited autocrats find ways to extend their run.  Donald, Jr., anyone?)

Beating a demagogue backed by billionaires and by Putin — who murders journalists and opposition leaders and tens of thousands of Ukrainians to get his way — is no slam dunk.

Hard as it is to fully grasp when daily life goes on as usual (did you remember to pick up hamburger buns?  start the dishwasher?  put out the trash?) but the threat to us “enemies within,” to freedom of the press, to America’s ideals — and to the world order at large — is real.

And Democracy, once lost, is nearly impossible to restore.

Help!  

And yes, money can still be used effectively.

We’re gonna win!

NEWSFLASH

Former FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has joined WheelTug’s board of directors.  Presumably, he thinks WheelTug has potential.

“I’m sure you’ve seen this,” I wrote a very smart, upstanding New Yorker I’ve known since high school:

Trump Fixates on Arnold Palmer as ‘All Man’ in Showers During Profane Rally

“I have,” he replied.  “He is not my idea of a good candidate, but at least he is willing and able to speak off the cuff. Let me know when Vice President Harris speaks unscripted so I can react to it.”

“Listen to her on Fox or Howard Stern,” I wrote back.  “No Teleprompters.  Yes, Trump’s comfortable saying anything off the cuff – “vermin,” “s–t Vice President,” “General Millie is an idiot,” etc. etc. But he killed the immigration bill that would have fixed the border problem.  His Project 2025 is a fascist blueprint.  His own vice president, his own chiefs of staff, and hundreds more of his own people are warning us urgently not to let him back in office.  Has anything like that ever happened in American history?  Or, really, in ANY country’s history?”

So far, no reply.

If we all do something, we’re gonna win — early signs are good.

But beating a demagogue backed by billionaires and Putin (Russia goes all-out with covert disinformation aimed at Harris, Microsoft report says) — who murders journalists and opposition leaders and tens of thousands of Ukrainians to get his way — is no slam dunk.

Seriously: do something. And yes, money can still be used effectively.

Thank you!

Prices are too high.

Trump vows to make them higher, via across-the-board tariffs.

And by putting low-wage workers into camps to be fed and deported at taxpayer expense so they can be replaced by higher-wage workers.

Harris would do neither of those things.

Trump has plans to make like easier for billionaires.

Harris has plans to make life easier for average Americans.

I’m terrible at making predictions, as you know well.  A quarter century ago I wrote about “A Stock That’s Surely Going to Zero” — and it still hasn’t.

But who cares?

Of more importance is when Trump assures Americans that if they elect Joe Biden “the stock market will crash.”

Well, they did, and it didn’t — it keeps setting new records.

It’s worth noting:

America’s economy is bigger and better than ever — The Economist. 

[It] has left other rich countries in the dust — also The Economist.

The U.S. economy is the envy of the world, but too many Americans have forgotten why — Philadelphia Inquirer

They’ve forgotten at least in part because they haven’t adequately shared in the prosperity.  But it’s Republicans, not Democrats, who are mainly responsible for that.  Republicans focus on tax cuts for corporations and the rich and starving the IRS so they can’t be properly audited.  Democrats focus on things like affordable healthcare, child tax credits, and consumer protection.

The economy and average Americans — and investors! — do better under Democrats than Republicans.

So if the economy’s your issue (or climate or infrastructure or reproductive freedom — or the immigration bill Trump killed that would have solved the border crisis — or gun safety or democracy or just plain old sanity-and-civility) . . . well, you know — do something!  We’re gonna win!

PRKR

Best video series ever?  For those of us who own PRKR it could be.  Click here to see the first episode.

WHINY

If you don’t like this short video, blame Jimmy Kimmel.

GRIFT

The curious hunt for the company behind Trump watches.

Give!  (Yes, we really do need more money.)  Help!  (Most come back saying canvassing is actually fun!)

Whatever happens, you’ll always know you took a stand against Trump’s Project 2025.*

*About which, of course, he claims to know nothing.  Just as he claimed not to know Lev Parnas (boy, did he ever know Lev Parnas!), or anything about the payments to Stormy Daniels, or to have hidden top secrets documents from the FBI — and on and on and on.   

‘Off the charts’: How Trump tariffs would shock U.S., world economies

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Americans would be hit by higher prices for grocery staples from abroad, such as fruit, vegetables and coffee. Domestic firms dependent on imports would need to either figure out new supply chains or raise costs for consumers. U.S. manufacturers would almost certainly see sharp declines in orders from abroad as foreign nations impose retaliatory tariffs.

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This builds on yesterday’s Wall Street Journal assessment: If the economy’s your issue, Kamala’s your man. (So to speak.)

Which just builds on this ‘“must-watch 8-minute clip” posted yesterday that I still hope you find time to watch and share.

DO something!

BONUSES

New FTC ‘Click-to-Cancel’ Rule Marks Latest Pro-Consumer Win

(Question: Is it Marxist to make it easier to cancel unwanted subscriptions?)

CARVILLE: Winning Is Everything, Stupid. 

(If you don’t have time to watch, reading this review may be nearly as fun.)

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

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Economists Say Inflation, Deficits Will Be Higher Under Trump Than Harris

Most economists think inflation, interest rates and deficits would be higher under the policies former President Donald Trump would pursue in a second administration than under those proposed by Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a quarterly survey by The Wall Street Journal.

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So if you don’t like inflation: vote Harris.  

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“If the tariffs work the way economists think they work, I think people are in for a very nasty surprise,” said Philip Marey, senior U.S. strategist at Rabobank.

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If you’re worried about deficits: vote Harris.

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. . . The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Trump’s plans would widen federal budget deficits by $7.5 trillion over the next decade, more than twice the expected increase under Harris.

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If you hate that Trump killed the bipartisan immigration bill that would have solved the border crisis: vote Harris. 

That one’s not part of the Journal article, but we can’t possibly say it too often:  It’s Trump’s border crisis now.  He has needlessly, selfishly prolonged it in order to win the election and shut down the criminal cases he will otherwise almost surely lose.  It’s not unlike the way we now know Reagan’s team persuaded Iran not to free the hostages on Carter’s watch, even though that meant longer captivity for them.

RACHEL

These 8 minutes are must-watch for business-friendly folks like my friend Peter, who grants that Trump is “a truly horrible person” — his words — but plans to vote for him anyway.

I’m hoping watching this may help to persuade him at least to stay home.

Do something!

We are the underdogs, but we are going to win.

> See how you can volunteer.  You’ll get all the support you need to feel comfortable.  

> Give 15% more than you already have, because that’s (roughly, vaguely) what I figure the campaign can use effectively in these final 21 days (if all our donors do it) to compete with Trump’s lies, Putin’s disinformation, and Musk’s $240 billion.

Share these 30 seconds with your Republican friends.

The mayor joins more than 100 former Republican national security officials . . . more than 200 Republican administration alumni . . . Trump’s own top general (“no one has ever been as dangerous to this country”) . . . and so many others (his own former chiefs of staff!  his own former press secretaries!) . . . in endorsing Kamala Harris.

Nothing like this has ever happened in American history.

The people who know him best — his own uber-loyal vice president! — are warning the country not to let him anywhere near the Oval Office again.

Give!

Volunteer!

We’re the underdogs, but we’re going to win.

His own top general calls Trump “fascist to the core.”

“No one has ever been as dangerous to this country,” he says.

That strikes me as more important than the price of eggs — important though that price is.

His team and their 922-page plan may be even more dangerous.

Here’s an arresting 30-second summary: Project 2025: They Mean It!

Here: a guide to its provisions.

Share either or both widely, because they really do mean it.

It’s not just Dick Cheney — who went so far as to condone torture to protect America — who now goes so far as to endorse a Democrat.  It is, as well, hundreds of former Trump appointees and millions of traditional Reagan, Bush, McCain Republicans like this one.  His own vice president warns against voting for him.

Trump is liar, a sociopath, a narcissist, a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, the sole reason the border crisis has not been resolved . . . and the founding fathers’ greatest fear: a demagogue.

He kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside.

He faces three devastating federal indictments.

No one has ever been as dangerous to this country.

Don’t just sit there — DO SOMETHING.

President Obama’s Pittsburgh speech.  So, so good.

Howard Stern’s Kamala Harris interview.  So, so good!

Our Class, on East 13th Street, closing soon.  Based on an all-too-true story, summarized here.  I can’t stop thinking about it.  Language like “vermin” has no more place in 2024 America than it did in 1935 Poland.