Author: A.T.

Bob Miller: “It’s been 50+ years since I read The Ugly American, but I’m pretty sure that the ‘ugly American’ referred to is exactly who we DO want to emulate. The book was about an ugly man who did good in a Southeast Asian country, in contrast to the American diplomatic corps. The sense of the expression was later changed in common use to what we understand now.”

☞ Oops.  It’s been 50+ years since I didn’t read it, I guess.  Somehow, the picture of the boorish American tourist leaped out from the title and burrowed out a little place in my brain.

These go back to before the election,  but I never got around to posting:

From @LOLGOP:

I’ve been waiting for 7 years for Obama to take my gun and all I got was a job, health insurance and marriage equality.

and

We’re a nation of people who fled guys like Donald Trump!

Also from Twitter, via the New York Times: The 331 People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete List.

Which has only gotten longer.

Jeff Cox: “In Las Vegas, Penn and Teller did, and probably still do, a trick like the lottery ticket.  Before the show, they invited people to walk onstage and sign a sealed envelope which later held a piece of paper on which was written a passage randomly chosen from a book passed about the audience.  My guess is a small ink jet printer is hidden inside, behind the flap in the wallet, behind the board to which the envelope was attached.  Another hypothesis is that magicians have learned how to hop in and out of parallel universes, but I never can understand Stephen Hawking’s books well enough to know if that is even possible.”

Carroll Webber: “My theory is that he has a hole in the edge of his shoe and an elastic string from his belt and under his pants to that hole, a closable hole in the stage floor, and a confederate under the stage with a lottery ticket with numbers whited out.  Once the final number ‘2’ is spoken, the confederate adds that to the other numbers he’s been typing.  After Nate stands over the hole in the floor, the confederate can stick the folded ticket to the end of the string, to be pulled up and palmed, and finally substituted for the ticket in his wallet.”

☞ Well, you’re both right that he cheats — it’s not real magic.  That much we know.  One of you sent me the real answer, which is along the same lines, but made me promise not to share it.  Don’t hate me.

I understand (sort of) why Putin would want to weaken the bonds between America and Europe, weaken NATO, and destabilize Europe.

But why would we?

This was a good week for the KGB.

Angela Merkel (via CNN):

“The times when we could completely rely on others are, to an extent, over,” Merkel said at a campaign event in Munich.

She didn’t mention Trump by name in the speech but alluded to the US President’s first foreign trip, where he lambasted NATO allies for their defense expenditure and also labeled Germany “very bad” on trade.

“I experienced that in the last a few days, and therefore I can only say that we Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands, of course in friendship with the United States and in friendship with Great Britain and as good neighbors wherever it is possible, also with Russia and also with all the other countries,” Merkel said.

“But we need to know that we have to fight for our own future and destiny as Europeans.”

Readers of a certain age will remember 1958 multi-million copy bestseller The Ugly American.  Just who we don’t want to be.  Check out “Donald Trump sparks fury in Montenegro after ‘humiliating’ country’s prime minster by shoving him out of his way at G7 summit.”

Newsweek:

White House Excludes Gay First Spouse of Luxembourg From Photo Caption

The White House Facebook page failed to acknowledge First Gentleman of Luxembourg Gauthier Destenay, married to Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, in a post featuring the spouses of world leaders attending this week’s G7 summit in Sicily. The photo caption included the names of every other spouse, all of them wives, beginning with: “First Lady Melania Trump poses with Belgium’s Queen Mathilde, center, and other spouses of NATO leaders.”

Could we please not make gay people invisible again?

Here’s a cartoon that lays out our four health care options.

The best — that all the other advanced nations of the world have settled on, basically: Medicare For All.

John Kasley:  “Medicare For All won’t happen in 2018 or 2020, but the name or term should be appearing in hashtags and occasional footnotes so the public becomes accustomed to hearing it.  Democrats need to toss it into a paragraph here and there without any accents, as in, ” . . . unlike Medicare For All, or any other plan that was suggested.”  Or, “The ACA is not all things to all people, and it is certainly not Medicare for All.”  Or, “National Health Service, or Medicare for All, is hardly a new concept.”  It doesn’t have to appear everywhere, everyday, but I had suggested quite a few years back that we name the recession The Bush Recession, and the Dems missed that branding opportunity.  It cost us dearly.  Donna Brazile tried to use it, but it needed more widespread implementation, and she was fighting against George Will.  Medicare For All gives us a countercurrent to the GOP plans for sacking the Treasury to benefit the very few and stripping protection from the rest of us.

Here is a Christian Perspective, titled “Trump’s Budget: ‘Compassion for Taxpayers.’”

. . . Referring to Trump’s cuts to the federal food stamp program, Rep. Harold Rogers, a Republicans from Kentucky said, “These cuts that are being proposed are draconian. They’re not mere shavings, they’re deep, deep cuts.”

Mulvaney says he’s received lots of questions about “compassion”. He says, “Compassion needs to be on both sides of that equation. Yes, you have to have compassion for folks who are receiving the federal funds, but also you have to have compassion for the folks who are paying it.” . . .

Right?  Think of it from the billionaires’ point of view.  Yes, it transfers $900 billion over a decade from those in need to the affluent few, but what a burden that lifts from their overtaxed shoulders! How it will uplift their souls!  Isn’t this what Trump was elected to do?

Jim Burt: “The estimable Nancy LeTourneau at the Washington Monthly writes:  ‘The tax cuts for the uber wealthy are breathtaking. The top 1% will get a $250,000 tax cut per year. But the 400 richest Americans who make over $300 million per year will each get a tax cut of at least $15 million annually.’

“Supposedly, this bounty — little more than a rounding error when considering an annual income of $300 million and up — will encourage the plutocratic class to increase investment so much that increased economic growth will generate several times its weight in increased tax revenue . . . enough to pay for the tax cuts and eliminate the deficit.

“This fantasy is based on the so-called ‘Laffer curve,’ brain child of economist Arthur Laffer, who drew a graph on a napkin (without benefit of actual study, research, or mathematics) showing tax revenue from increased economic growth outstripping revenue loss from tax cuts, thus ‘justifying’ the Reagan and Bush tax cuts responsible, along with other short-sighted policies, for about 2/3 of the existing National Debt.

“The sole historical example of this approach ever working is found in the Kennedy Round of tax cuts, which reduced the maximum marginal rate on income from 90% to 70%.  The effective top marginal rate, because of loopholes and various tax avoidance shenanigans, was well short of 90%; but theoretically, at least, cutting the maximum rate from 90% to 70% trebled the net that a very wealthy investor could expect to obtain from investment.  This was enough to lure substantial sums from unproductive tax-dodges into productive investment, especially in plant and equipment for which the Kennedy Round also provided an accelerated-depreciation benefit, and tax revenue did increase in the aftermath of this rate cut.  Reagan’s first cut in the top rate — from 70% to 50% — had negligible effect on productive investment.  Subsequent tax cuts have fiddled at the margins, reducing revenues and ballooning debt with no noticeable effect on economic growth.

“The Trump budget doesn’t even pretend that the ‘take’ of the very wealthy will be enticingly large compared to the riches already flowing their way (what’s an extra $15 million on top of $300 million?), so it stretches credulity to suppose that the Koch brothers are going to be induced to open up previously buried coffee cans full of new investment.  It will, however, give them enough additional money to buy some more legislators and elections.”

How.  Does.  He.  DO this?  If you have a theory, please let me know.  (Thanks, Mel!)

And now . . .

The reason I got the DNC gig in the first place is that in 1996, a relatively small amount of money found it’s way into DNC coffers that, in a perfect world, the DNC would have detected had originated in China (not with the American donors through which it was funneled) — and rejected.

When this eventually came to light, a new set of DNC officers was installed.

It was not acceptable for even a small amount of foreign money to slip into our system — lest it theoretically help one candidate beat the other (though Clinton beat Dole by 379 to 159 in the Electoral College, and with 8 million more popular votes, so this tainted cash was clearly not decisive) . . . or lest it influence the recipient’s foreign policy (which assumes the candidate would be told of the crime, which I highly doubt; and that, if told, he would sell out America’s interests after winning reelection, out of gratitude, which I totally doubt).

Still, mistakes were made and heads rolled.

Here we are 20 years later, in an election that turned not on 8 million votes but on a hair (Clinton needed 77,744 more votes, on top of her 3 million-vote lead, to win the Electoral College) — that was the first difference.

And — the second — the extent of foreign meddling this time was way to deep for “meddle” even to be the right word.  The right word was attack.

It’s wonderfully disciplined and perhaps gentlemanly of almost all the talking heads to say, “not that Russian meddling affected the outcome of the election.”  But of course it almost surely did.  The Russians had thousands of agents working to tear down public opinion of Hillary Clinton.

Inside Russia’s Social Media War on America

. . . In 2016, Russia had used thousands of covert human agents and robot computer programs to spread disinformation referencing the stolen campaign emails of Hillary Clinton, amplifying their effect. . . .

And before you dismiss this as “re-litigating the election,” if you’re one of the 35% or so still pleased with its outcome, consider reading it anyway.

Most of this story is about potential future attacks:

. . . What chaos could Moscow unleash with thousands of Twitter handles that spoke in real time with the authority of the armed forces of the United States? At any given moment, perhaps during a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, Pentagon Twitter accounts might send out false information. As each tweet corroborated another, and covert Russian agents amplified the messages even further afield, the result could be panic and confusion.

For many Americans, Russian hacking remains a story about the 2016 election. But there is another story taking shape. Marrying a hundred years of expertise in influence operations to the new world of social media, Russia may finally have gained the ability it long sought but never fully achieved in the Cold War: to alter the course of events in the U.S. by manipulating public opinion. The vast openness and anonymity of social media has cleared a dangerous new route for antidemocratic forces. “Using these technologies, it is possible to undermine democratic government, and it’s becoming easier every day,” says Rand Waltzman of the Rand Corp., who ran a major Pentagon research program to understand the propaganda threats posed by social media technology.

Current and former officials at the FBI, at the CIA and in Congress now believe the 2016 Russian operation was just the most visible battle in an ongoing information war against global democracy. . . .

In one case last year, senior intelligence officials tell TIME, a Russian soldier based in Ukraine successfully infiltrated a U.S. social media group by pretending to be a 42-year-old American housewife and weighing in on political debates with specially tailored messages. In another case, officials say, Russia created a fake Facebook account to spread stories on political issues like refugee resettlement to targeted reporters they believed were susceptible to influence. . . .

Read the whole piece.

It’s fascinating and frightening, and anyone who loves America, whether on the left or the right — which is to say pretty much all of us — should be aware that right now, Putin’s winning.  Bigly.

Amazing three-minute video!  But it cuts off before the girl pufferfish arrives?  DOES his work get noticed?  And what about the ocean current destroying his creation?  And what does he EAT to fuel all this activity?  And if she does show up and they mate, what’s THAT like?  And where are his compatriots?  Is he too cool for school?

A few of the answers are here, but only a few.

And then there was Roger Ailes.  I’m not a big fan of speaking ill of the dead; but this guy did so much harm to our social fabric — right up there with Lee Atwater and Rush Limbaugh — that Matt Taibbi’s rant of remembrance may be worth sharing.

Doug:  “Thanks for the piece on Revlon and the update on other stocks. I’m wondering if you also still own AKBA, JNP, MRTX, CVV,SIGA, TTNP, and UTHR. Seems like a great time to sell if not.”

You have been reading this page for a long time!  For better or worse, I do still own AKBA, SIGA, and UTHR.

Donald Trump says Kim Jong-un is a “smart cookie”; James Comey is a “nut job.”

Think about it.

Der Spiegel says “Donald Trump has transformed the United States into a laughing stock and he is a danger to the world. He must be removed from the White House before things get even worse.”

I agree — but how dare a foreign power try to meddle with our presidency?  (Oh.  Wait. )

Can you find 12 minutes for this Closer Look?  Seth Meyers is terrific.  Laughter is the best medicine.

Along with climate change and maybe one or two others, the biggest theme we face, it seems to me, is how to organize ourselves to rejoice in — not implode over — the astonishing wealth and well-being technology is rushing to offer.

If there were a way to supply the nation with a reliable food supply with the toil of under 2% of the population instead of the 60% it once took — that would be good, right?  If there were an eco-friendly way to make beds and wash kitchen floors without human effort — that would be good, right?  (We’ll get to Mars long before we invent the self-making bed, but it’s still something to dream about.)

But as we rush toward a world where fewer and fewer human hours are required to supply the basics of a middle-class existence — where energy from the sun is virtually free, dramatically lowering the cost of everything and computers can do almost anything humans can do, but better and faster, without sleep — what will most people do?  How will they find purpose in life?  How will everyone get to share in the amazing world that the struggling and suffering of ten thousand generations of their ancestors have suddenly made possible, without many being made to feel useless and undeserving, while a few live like masters of the universe — and believe their good-fortune is not just self-made and well-deserved but over-taxed?

It is to ponder such questions that I commend “The Meaning of Life in a World Without Work” from the Guardian.

Have a great weekend.  (Don’t work too hard.)

It seems odd to talk about anything other than how we take the ball back from Vladimir Putin, for whom every day seems to be a new first and ten.

But life will go on, the globe will continue to warm, the seas will continue to rise, so here is the TED Talk I told you about — unlocking the climate puzzle.  It’s a brilliant free-market approach with real voter appeal.  Who doesn’t want to get a $2,000 check every year?

Meanwhile, Revlon was written up in Barron’s this past January as an enticing buy at $32:

. . . One top holder, Chris Mittleman, chief investment officer of Mittleman Brothers, thinks Revlon can command a multiple more in line with its peers’. He thinks the stock is worth $76—an enterprise value of 13.5 times his 2017 Ebitda estimate of $500 million. While the discount may persist as long as Perelman controls the company, Mittleman contends “that doesn’t mean the stock can’t rise dramatically while maintaining the discount.”

In the past six years, Revlon has grown revenue 51% and Ebitda 60%, by making market-share gains and acquisitions. In September, Revlon paid $900 million for cosmetics maker Elizabeth Arden, which has struggled in recent years as its celebrity fragrances have become less popular with consumers. The deal is expected to generate substantial synergies . . .

I didn’t buy, though I did go see War Paint, the Helena Rubinstein / Elizabeth Arden (and slightly Charles Revson) musical on Broadway. I once wrote a book about this world.

Well, here we are five months later and Revlon is around $20, down from $32, so at this price I did buy some.  You never know.  If not $76, it might get back to $32.

I continue to hold, among others, GEC, SPRT, HD, BKUTK, PRMRF, and of course (with money I can truly afford to lose) BOREF.  But for the most part, I wouldn’t think this is a time to rush into the market.

Give it up for Richard Cohen in the Washington Post:

Trump doesn’t embody what’s wrong with Washington. Pence does.

When history holds its trial to account for the Donald Trump presidency, Trump himself will be acquitted on grounds of madness. History will look at his behavior, his erratic and childish lying and his flamboyant ignorance of history itself and pronounce the man, like George III, a cuckoo for whom restraint, but not punishment, was necessary. Such will not be the case for Mike Pence, the toady vice president and the personification of much that has gone wrong in Washington.

On any given day, Pence will do his customary spot-on imitation of a bobblehead. Standing near Trump in the Oval Office, he will nod his head robotically as the president says one asinine thing after another and then, maybe along with others, he will be honored with a lie or a version of the truth so mangled by contradictions and fabrications that a day in the White House is like a week on LSD.

I pick on Pence because he is the most prominent and highest-ranked of President Trump’s lackeys. Like with all of them, Pence’s touching naivete and trust are routinely abused. He vouches for things that are not true — no talk of sanctions between Mike Flynn and the Russians, for instance, or more recently the reason James B. Comey was fired as FBI director. In both instances, the president either lied to him or failed to tell him the truth. The result was the same: The vice president appeared clueless.

I don’t feel an iota of sympathy for Pence. He was among a perfidious group of political opportunists who pushed Trump’s candidacy while having to know that he was intellectually, temperamentally and morally unfit for the presidency. They stuck with him as he mocked the disabled, belittled women, insulted Hispanics, libeled Mexicans and promiscuously promised the impossible and ridiculous — all that “Day One” nonsense like how the wall would be built and Mexico would pay for it.

I also have little sympathy for Sean Spicer, who plays the role of a bullied child. Trump routinely sends him out to lie to the American people, which he has done ever since his insistence that the inaugural crowd was bigger than the photos showed. He persists at his job even though Trump broadly hints that he will soon fire him. When Spicer is gone, he will be easily replaced. Washington is full of people who have no honor and no pride, either. 

I think of Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, and Wilbur Ross, at Commerce. What possessed them to back Trump for the GOP nomination? Didn’t they know the sort of man he is? Did they think a lower tax rate and fewer regulations are worth risking American democracy and our standing in the world? When they watched the bizarre way Trump sacked Comey, were they proud of their candidate?

The swamp that Trump kept mentioning in the campaign is not really one of tangled bureaucratic mangroves, but of moral indifference. Washington always had a touch of that — after all, its business is politics — but Trump and his people have collapsed the space between lies and truth. The president uses one and then the other — whatever works at the time.

The president cannot be trusted. He cannot be believed. He has denigrated the news media, not for its manifest imperfections but for its routine and obligatory search for the truth. He has turned on the judiciary for its fidelity to the law and, once, for the ethnic heritage of a judge. Trump corrupts just about everything he touches. 

From most of the Republican Party comes not a whisper of rebuke. The congressional leadership is inert, cowed, scurrying to the White House for this or that ceremonial picture, like members of the erstwhile Politburo flanking Stalin atop Lenin’s mausoleum. They are appalled, but mute. They want to make the best of a bad situation, I know, and they fear the voters back home, but their complicity ought to be obvious even to them.

America is already worse off for Trump’s presidency. He was elected to make America great again, but his future is more like other nations’ sordid past. His own party has been sullenly complicit, showing how little esteem many politicians place in our most cherished values, not the least of them honesty and dignity. For all of them, an accounting is coming. When they are asked by history what they did during the Trump years, the worst of them will confess that they bobbled their heads like dumb dolls, while the best will merely say they kept their heads down.

Give it up, also, for David Brooks in the New York Times:

When The World Is Led By A Child

. . . There are three tasks that most mature adults have sort of figured out by the time they hit 25. Trump has mastered none of them. . . .

With a lead-in like that, I’m pretty sure I can count on you to read it all.

So how is it that the stock market has been so robust?  A lot of smart people seem to think — and I agree — there is more risk than reward in the market these days . . . and in the bond market and perhaps the real estate market.

I like to think most of the things I’m invested in are worth holding (famous last words), not least because much of what I’m invested in I basically have to hold: tiny stakes in private start-ups we hope will someday get bought by Johnson and Johnson or Google or somebody.  (Hey: Honest Tea got bought out by Coke.  It can happen.)

But if you’ve borrowed on margin to leverage your gains — for heaven’s sake pay off those loans.

And if you might have to sell stocks in the next two or three or five years to pay for necessities of one sort or another, consider selling that much of your portfolio now.  If the market just keeps going up and up, wonderful; the rest of your portfolio will do fine.  But markets generally do not just keep going up and up.

You’re going to hate me for this because — if it grabs you — there goes an hour of your otherwise well-planned day.  (Now who’s gonna take the dog to obedience school?)  But when I was sent this link last week . . .

Bill Clinton Didn’t Want His New York Times Crossword to Be Boring

. . . how could I resist?  (My dog went to collie heaven more than 50 years ago, so I had the morning free.)

When you finish, the screen suddenly changes to “ta-DA!” . . . and you can go back to your triumph and search for the Easter Egg.

When I found it, I almost started to cry.

Oh, to have this brilliant, competent, progressive, globally-respected man back helping humanity confront its urgent challenges.  Or, for that matter, to have his equally amazing wife or vice president in that role.

But — as President Clinton tells the Times — solving crosswords is meant to take your mind off  such cares . . . so forget all that and just get to work.

If you get stuck, scroll down . . .

. . . and further down . . .

. . . because I don’t want to ruin it for you if you don’t need hints . . .

. . . but I’m hoping you’ll find the Easter Egg, and who doesn’t need a hint or two? . . .

. . . okay: here’s one:  the capital of the Philippines is Manila, sure — but half a million Filipinos live in ILOILO CITY.  I hadn’t known that, but sure enough (2 down): it’s true.

. . .  click here if you’re stuck on 38 down.

. . . another clue for 9 across could be “sickle cell ——.”

. . . and (57 down) if you’re a fan of Chinese take-out, you’ve likely eaten his chicken . . .

. . . and if Kim Jong-Un goes nuts, you won’t want to be anywhere near 58 down, a city of more than 10 million souls.

If you’re still annoyed with me and have no further time to waste on this, click here for the Easter Egg (17, 35, and 57 across).