Author: A.T.

Hidden Shame

EPSTEIN

In the files released so far (where are the rest?), his name appears more than 38,000 times.  Why are they heavily redacted?  What are they hiding?  Is it possible there’s something shameful that even MAGA supporters could not abide?

DELANEY

By and large, Trump’s detention centers, like Delaney Hall, are not housing “the worst of the worst.”  Most have no criminal record, many are children, some are American citizens.  Why is the Trump regime denying members of Congress, governors, lawyers and the press access?  What are they hiding?  Is it possible the conditions and injustices are too shameful for even MAGA to abide?

(Meanwhile, the cruel, unChristian mass deportation program is costing taxpayers a ton while weakening Social Security.)

YANG

The shame here is inequality.

Sure, if you’re born to wealthy parents you deserve a better life than someone born poor.  (But do you really? And how much better?)  And sure, if you’re born with the DNA for exceptional intelligence or looks or athletic prowess, you deserve a vastly better life than someone born with more typical, let alone sub-optimal genes.  (But do you really? And how much better?)

(As long-time readers know, I once asked Warren Buffett why he’s a Democrat.  He introduced me to John Rawls’ “Veil of Ignorance” — the thought experiment where you’re in the womb, about to be born but don’t know whether you’ll be black or white, rich or poor, male, female, or intersex, straight or gay, etc., etc. — and you have the power to determine what kind of social structure you would like to be born into.  Health care only for the rich?  Medicare for all?  Medicare for all with the right to buy a “first class overlay”?  Etc.)

Ronald Reagan launched the current binge of ever-widening inequality and exploding National Debt, amplified by George W. Bush and now Trump.

It threatens to grow even worse with AI.

Andrew Yang has spent a decade addressing this issue, first with The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future and yesterday, when he argued that we should Tax AI, not humans.

Have a great day.

 

Looted

Remember when it was shameful to tell a lie?

He lies about everything.

Republicans are okay with that somehow, but Mika isn’t having it (8 must-watch minutes).

Remember when it was shameful to protect pedophiles?

Trump won’t comply with the law he signed that passed 427-1 in the House and unanimously in the Senate.

He is above the law.

BONUS

Trump: What’s the Deal? (Full 1991 BANNED Documentary)

“He is a con artist.” — Marc Rubio

“We must put an end to this lunacy.” — also Marc Rubio

 

 

Platner, Collins, VERU, And An Important (Overlooked) Step On The Road to Autocracy

SUSAN COLLINS : BRETT CAVANAUGH

More on the Graham Platner race here.  Must-watch if you’re undecided (7 minutes).  We’re gonna win.

YOUR PLATNER RESPONSES

At one extreme and the other:

Clare D.:

Have you seen Democrats can do better than Graham Platner. They must demand he drop out. It’s pretty devastating.

Peter S.:

I am so pissed at Democrats attacking him when Trump just brushed it off as locker room talk about saying on tape he would just “Grab em by the pussy”, dozens of women accusing him of harassment or worse, raping his first wife, —-ing a porn star while Melania was pregnant and paying her hundreds of thousands in hush money, walking in on teen girl pageant contestants naked on purpose and being mentioned more than any other person in the Epstein files who’s now desperately burying the files, and distracting from it by starting a war. None of that was disqualifying and yet they’re going to crucify Platner for consensual sext messages with adult women? He should make this very point. This is the same disgraceful treatment they gave the great Al Franken. Kirsten Gillibrand [cannot be forgiven] for what she did to Al. And any Dem who attacks Platner is almost as bad. Granted, Platner’s peccadillos are worse than the absolute NOTHING Al did, but still on a scale of Al’s being a 1 and Trump’s being 100, Platner is maybe a 5. Rally around him. He’s not a perfectly groomed lifetime striver for political office but what he says and believes and how he expresses himself like a real person is exactly what the Democratic Party needs more of in spades.

VERU

The stock that some of us first bought around $5.40 opened at $2.18 Thursday, traded as high as $7.33 on news that Veru had signed a deal with Novo Nordisk — to test the effect of taking its drug enobosarm alongside Wegovy — and closed the week (in after-hours trading) at $3.15.

The hope is that anyone taking weight -loss drugs like Wegovy may one day want to take enobosarm as well to reduce the loss of muscle mass.  It could be huge — or just fade away.  Did I mention that this is a stock to buy only with money you can truly afford to lose?

BONUS

Donald Trump just tripled the size of his personal army inside government. It was illegal.

 

Heather Cox Richardson

PRIDE

It’s June.  Chris Gallant, running to flip NY-1 blue, here tells that part of his story (90 seconds).

OSSOFF

Such a contrast with Mike Johnson (140 seconds).

PULTE

Charlie Sykes:

On Tuesday we learned that the Pentagon has hired a convicted January 6 rioter for a sensitive counterterrorism job. . . .

That story was overshadowed by Trump’s appointment of MAGA-loyalist Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence. But the two stories are related, because, as Derek Thompson wrote, they are an indication that we have entered “Late-stage Kakistocracy” — the “phase of democratic decline where the regime starts running out of people who will work for it, and so the folks who aren’t qualified for their current positions are promoted to even larger positions for which they are even more unqualified.”

Under the law that established the DNI, appointees are required to have “extensive national security expertise.” Pulte, who heads up the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has none. He has no background in either intelligence or law enforcement. . . .

[But] Pulte has the one qualification that Trump is now demanding: As he scrapes the bottom of his barrel, the president is looking for appointees ready and willing to abuse the powers of government to punish his enemies. In Pulte — as in Todd Blanche and Ken Paxton — he has found the whole package. Pulte proved his willingness to use his position to help Trump target NY AG Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff and others. Nothing has come of the cases, but it was the malice that counted. Now he gets to use the resources of the nation’s intelligence community to pursue that agenda.

HCR

I could listen to historian Heather Cox Richardson all day — and will, if and when my application is approved.

(I’ve applied for 4 extra hours in every 28-hour day that no one else gets but me.)

But I did find 50 minutes Tuesday to listen to this one.

If you do, I think you may find yourself subscribing to her channel, as more than a million of us have.

EPSTEIN

Any news?

 

Items That Have Caught My Eye

So PRKR had its oral argument yesterday, and the stock — which had jumped 50% Friday in anticipation, from 20 cents to 30 cents — fell 50% in disappointment, from 30 cents to 15 cents.  As I understand it, nothing conclusively bad happened; just nothing conclusively good.  I still hope it may be $1.50 in a couple of years, but it was a lot more fun Friday than yesterday.

LEAVING MAGA

The billboards are multiplying.  Join the fun by chipping in.

WE NEED TO TAX BILLIONAIRES

A 47-page book.

Billionaires often pay a lower income tax rate than nurses, teachers and almost everyone else – sometimes close to zero. This isn’t tax evasion, it’s the system.

WE NEED TO REORGANIZE TOWARD UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME

There’s no stopping A.I. or robots.  That could greatly improve our lives if we learn to share the benefits.  But getting from here to there is likely to be extremely difficult, with lots of economic hardship and possible financial collapse along the way.  See Andrew Yang’s latest.

R.I.P. “60 MINUTES”

Dan Rather reports.

A FEW WORDS FROM 2015

The Iran Deal Trump Destroyed

 

PRKR Hopes

Long-time readers know that, where at first I wrote mostly about “Money and Other Subjects,” this page might now more accurately be titled “Let’s Save Democracy (and An Occasional Stock Tip).”

Plus, I’m only supposed to write five times a week (and technically only on days the stock market is open).  But as the stakes have grown ever higher, I sometimes post on Saturday and Sunday, too.

I should pay you overtime to read those, but the truth is that until BOREF hits (now 27 years and counting), I don’t have another dime to spare, so you’ll just have to suck it up for God and country.

This past Saturday was The Worst of the Worst.

Sunday was The Emperor and the Gladiators.  (Cage matches on the White House lawn?  Who is he — Caligula?)

Today:

PRKR

This longtime speculation — purchased only with money we could truly afford to lose — jumped 50% Friday, from 20 cents to 30 cents, in anticipation of today’s oral arguments in its long-running patent infringement case against Qualcomm.

ParkerVision hopes to be granted a jury trial, and, eventually, an award greater than the $173 million awarded in 2013 (not least given what will by then be close to 15 years’ continued infringement plus interest).  The judge who later vacated that 2013 jury award, the company believes, erred.

The stock could be $1.50 in a couple of years or zero.

I have high hopes.

We shall see.

BONUS

Trump’s name may come off the Kennedy Center. He could still destroy it.

The Trump takeover of the center was an early indicator of the president’s careless ambition, his contempt for precedent, decorum, symbols and nonpartisan institutions. His angry messages since the court ruling prove without a doubt what has been obvious all along: He never cared for the center, for the arts or culture. It was all about him, his name, his brand.

See also: Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever.

Have a great week.

 

The Emperor And The Gladiators

THE EMPEROR AND THE GLADIATORS

What better birthday present for Trump to give himself than cage matches on the White House lawn celebrating raw manhood, violence, combat, domination, submission, bloodlust . . .

. . . all the things that make white Christian nationalism (“I’d like to punch him in the face”) something Jesus might have had a hard time embracing but that would have excited Caligula.*

“Two Corinthians” notwithstanding, the brand of Christianity practiced by James Talarico and Oral Roberts grad Adam Hamilton — running for the senate from Texas and Kansas, respectively — seems more genuinely Christian than that practiced by Trump and the leaders of MAGA.

*”Caligula’s reign is historically associated with extreme indulgence in gladiatorial games, both as a form of entertainment and as a demonstration of power.” — Copilot

PUTIN MAY NOT BE WINNING

A white nationalist kleptocrat ruler like our own, Putin is winning:  He’s got Trump destroying American democracy and the post-war world order, while abandoning Ukraine.

But he could be losing, too: America is poised to save its democracy November 3; and the Ukrainians seem to be pulling off the impossible.

All this as Fear and distrust grip Russian society:

While 36.2% of respondents in October 2025 said Russia was moving in the right direction, this figure plummeted to just 10.5% in May of this year.

TALARICO ON VOUCHERS

YouTube followed that 1-minute Talarico clip I linked to above with this one (11 minutes).  Those who would paint him as “a radical lunatic” might watch and come to a different conclusion.

FOILING FASCISTS

With regard to Friday‘s item on Hitler in Los Angeles:

Bridget S.: “I’m helping on a documentary on Leon Lewis, one of the Hollywood lawyers who organized a Nazi spy ring. It’s such incredible history: Traitors in Tinseltown.”

OUR CONCAVE PLANET – II

With regard to Friday’s must-see 45-second clip:

Peter S.: “Flat Earth idiocy is huge. Join Flat Earth Facebook group just to see how insane they are.”

> It has more than 100,000 members.

EPSTEIN

Any news?