Author: A.T.

Pulling out of TPP, as Trump just did, is a huge win for China, a major, major loss for us.  Fareed Zakaria explains why, here. Maybe there’s still some way to rescue this, but I don’t see how.

Talk about self-inflicted wounds!

(Had Hillary won, I think she would have extracted exactly the sort of face-saving improvements Fareed describes and then seen President Obama’s extraordinary accomplishment through to fruition.  Take at least the first couple of minutes to watch.)

And speaking of President Obama’s accomplishments, take 16 minutes to be immensely proud of your country and our immediate past President. I’m trying to get the transcript to print and frame.

The Dutch are among the world’s citizens trying to make sense of what’s happened. I think they inherited the happy gene, too, because they had some fun with it — here (four minutes).

A lot of people have been wondering how a country that votes more Democrat than Republican can have fallen entirely under Republican control — and what to do about it.

Even some Trump voters who find themselves about to lose their health insurance or their mortgages $500 a year more expensive, or who value honesty, may now be wondering.

One man who’s been thinking about this more than most is David Brock, in his youth a right-wing hit man, who this past weekend convened in Miami a remarkable gathering of Democratic donors strategists, and elected officials.

It was called Democracy Matters 17.

Here’s how he kicked it off.   Must-reading, in my view:

Good morning, and welcome to Democracy Matters 17.

How’s everyone feeling?

Actually, that’s the wrong question. One thing I’ve learned these last two months is to just say ‘good to see you.’ Because no one’s feeling particularly good these days, least of all today.

I’m certainly not.

I’m profoundly disappointed with the election result. After all, I’ve been a Hillary booster for 20 years – ever since I rejected the right wing lies about her. For those of you who don’t know the story, in the mid-1990s, a conservative publisher hired me to write a hit job on Hillary as First Lady. [He had previously written hit jobs that helped confirm Clarence Thomas and nearly derailed Bill Clinton. — A.T.] But, after months of research, I ended up concluding that Hillary is a fundamentally good person with strong values. Given that the book came out months before the 1996 presidential election, my Republican audience was none too pleased.

No, mine was an act of apostasy to the conservative movement, and I was quickly ex-communicated from what Hillary correctly called the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.’ After an intense period of self-reflection that culminated in my 2003 memoir, ‘Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative,’ I reengaged. And for the last 14 years, I’ve worked for progressive change in America.

So, like all progressives, I’m deeply disappointed. But I want you to know that I’m not disoriented about what happened in the election. And I’m not disoriented about how best to forge a path forward– for our country, for our party, and for our movement.

And for that, I have many of you in this room to thank. After a bad night, a few swigs of tequila, and more than a few tears, I bucked up and went to Hillary’s concession speech in New York. Some of you were there, and many of you came up to me and said things like: ‘we still have to fight’ and ‘what can we do.’

For the last two months, we’ve rethought and retooled our organizations for this unexpectedly awful moment. We’re already at work resisting Donald Trump at every turn and protecting and defending our shared values.

We certainly don’t have all the answers, but hopefully you’ll view this conference as a constructive, thoughtful, and politically savvy starting point.

In addition to all of you, I also want to thank the more than 250 mostly young people who work in our family of organizations and are busy holding down the fort in DC. Like you, they gave me the strength and focus to move forward. In fact, at our holiday party a few weeks ago, one Media Matters researcher told me that she had told her parents before the election that if Trump somehow won, she’d flee the country. But surveying the damage after the election, she decided that her work at Media Matters mattered more than ever –her work was too important to our country’s future to leave. She decided to stay at it—to keep fighting for what’s right.

We’ve spent a lot of time these last two months looking back, to develop a shared, data-driven understanding of what worked well and what didn’t, because understanding what happened is fundamental to effectively moving forward.

That’s why today’s program begins with a couple of panels featuring Democratic all-stars like my longtime friend and the original architect of the War Room, James Carville, who will examine the recent election. It’s a painful but essential process. While we’re absolutely going to move forward, we’re not going to forget what happened.

We’ll remember James Comey and the Clinton-hating traitors inside the FBI. Virtually every day, we’re confronted with more hard evidence that Hillary had an electoral majority on the day Comey issued his letter, and that he stole the election. Period. End of story.

We’ll remember the Russians. It’s a frightening world in which mixing the FBI’s abuse of power with the Kremlin’s criminal hacking and vicious propaganda efforts yield the election of Putin’s puppet, Donald Trump.

We’ll remember the union-busting in Michigan and Wisconsin that delivered those states to Trump, and the Republican voter suppression efforts in Wisconsin and North Carolina that did the same.

We’ll remember the purveyors of fake news. Tomorrow morning, we’ll hear from James Alefantis, the courageous owner of a local Washington, DC pizzeria, who fell victim to a deluded online conspiracy theory involving Hillary, John Podesta, me – and a fake child sex ring. You’re going to hear a lot of tough talk at this conference about taking on Trump, including from me, but I learned from Pizzagate that when cultural resentment and pure evil are countered with love and community, truth does win and good can triumph. Our progressive community is strong and it will endure.

We should not expect any different from the sleaze merchants of the alt-right, but we should expect more from the mainstream media. They obsessed over Trump’s every Tweet while sabotaging Hillary’s chances—all in the name of some perverted notion of “parity,” the virtuous-sounding news term for false equivalence. Tomorrow, we’ll have a group of esteemed journalists on hand —including Pulitzer Prize-winner David Cay Johnston— to talk about what went wrong in campaign coverage and the right way to cover Trump.

What we’ll remember most of all is the segment of the electorate that, in 2016, still won’t pull the lever for a woman in the top job … a woman who was one of the most qualified, dedicated, committed, forward-thinking and honorable people ever to seek the presidency of the United States.

Later this afternoon, we’ll discuss the impact of the election on women’s rights—and on future electoral prospects for female candidates in a culture still besieged by sexism and misogyny.

Looking in the mirror, I’ve been one of the few Democrats to publicly question our party’s strategies and tactics. Despite our loyalty and dedication, this is an election that we lost, not that Trump won.

Before I offer some insights from my vantage point, I want to share with you what one Republican strategist recently told me in private: It’s nearly impossible to run a successful campaign against crazy.

The reality is that we Democrats showed up for a boxing match, and Trump was wrestling the whole time. This election was a black swan event – random, with catastrophic consequences – and with as many and varied valid explanations as there are people in this room.

Before I turn this over to our veteran campaign strategists, I’d like to offer a few cautionary notes.

The widespread conventional wisdom is that Hillary was a bad candidate with no message. That’s just a lazy excuse for real analysis. We had a candidate, after all, who staged a fabulous convention, won all three debates, and won the popular vote by 3 million. Hillary’s progressive idealism was on full display in everything from her plans to reshape the economy in a deep and transformative way to her full-throated advocacy of abortion rights and gun safety to her ongoing dialogue with Black Lives Matter. Hillary went for it. And she still lost.

The media tells us that economic anxiety in white America propelled Trump’s candidacy. There’s some truth here, but the data tell a much more nuanced story.

Most people earning less than 50,000 a year voted for Hillary. The median income of a Trump voter was $70,000—well above the national average. Clinton won majorities among voters who said the economy was their top issue in nearly every swing state, including across the Rust Belt. There is no evidence that Trump supporters were disproportionately poor or working class.

Something else was happening. As Monica Potts has written in The Nation, this election was more about cultural identity than economic anguish. Pew research found that the most reliable predictor of voter behavior was not economic attainment but rather educational attainment. Call it the Abigail Fisher coalition: Trump rallied voters who feel that everyone else gets a leg up: women, African-Americans, immigrants—everyone, they think, but themselves.

Do the election results mean that Democrats must double-down in the old Rust Belt states of the Mid-West? Well, as Governor Granholm movingly said last night, these areas must not be neglected. But a renewed effort there should be in addition to a well-financed progressive push that strengthens our foothold in states of the future like: Arizona, Texas, and Georgia, all places where Hillary outperformed President Obama. Let’s not over-react and over-learn our lessons here.

What do you think the conversation in the media would be if some 70,000 votes had gone the other way, Hillary was President and Trump was sent skulking back to Trump Tower? We’d be reading about how the Democrats were the new majority party, while the Republican Party was in shambles.

Don’t be too quick to believe the reverse: We Democrats aren’t as broken as the media would have us believe.

Consider this: We need to flip 26 seats in 2018 to take back the House majority. Hillary won 25 House districts currently held by the GOP,   many by wide margins.

The bottom line is this: I don’t believe Democrats are suffering from an identity crisis. The things we stand for are right, and they’re true. I’m not into apologizing for who we are.

I believe we Democrats are suffering from a crisis of competence. Progressive politics in America is an organizational disaster. We’re going to hear a lot over these next two days about the critical need to build up progressive power in states, including from former Attorney General Holder. We are in a very deep ditch here. Why? Our party leaders were asleep at the wheel for a decade as Republicans were on a Red March through the states. Trump was merely the unwitting beneficiary of years of conservative plotting: They made major investments, built impressive infrastructure, dominated local media and nurtured a talented farm team—and they made record gains.

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee needs an overhaul, and our state parties are hurting, too. Over lunch tomorrow, we’ll hear from the candidates for DNC chair about their plans to right the ship.

But let’s not forget that Republicans are suffering several crises of their own making, beginning with Trump’s crisis of legitimacy.

There’s an opportunity to leverage these Republican crises — but we have to be canny and tenacious about it. Donald Trump very well could be the worst thing that ever happened to the GOP – if we work at it. As for conservative ideology, it’s in such dire straits that Trump campaigned and won the Presidency by abandoning its core tenets. That division in their ranks will be a gift that keeps on giving as Trump attempts to work with the GOP majorities in Congress.

Let me shift now to the meat and potatoes of what I want to talk to you about this morning. Progressive donors contributed 75 million dollars to our family of organizations in the 2016 cycle, and you deserve an honest explanation about what the heck happened with each effort, efforts that, collectively, failed to deliver the result we all wanted.

The day after the election, I moved swiftly to commission candid look-backs in both of our big organizations that were involved in the election, and I want to share the results with you today.

At American Bridge, our job was to run the opposition research effort on Trump for third party groups, unions and other SuperPACs operating independently of the campaign, and we did our job with hyper-competence and verve. American Bridge succeeded in defining Trump. According to exit polls, fewer than 4 in 10 voters had a favorable opinion of him.

Only 35 percent said he has “the temperament to serve effectively as President.” Fifty-eight percent of voters said they would be concerned or scared of a Trump presidency. And those negatives have stuck with Trump, plaguing him through his Presidential transition.

Some of you might be thinking: ‘So what? Trump won anyway.’ That’s obviously true, as strong undercurrents of resentment politics, a revolt against so-called Political Correctness, and an inchoate desire for change simply overwhelmed the negative portrait of Trump we successfully painted.

But there’s a rub. The Clinton campaign, the TV advertising fund Priorities USA and American Bridge were all operating from the same anti-Trump, poll-tested playbook. We wanted voters to understand three things about Trump.

One, that he is temperamentally unfit to serve and, thus, that a Trump Presidency is a mortal danger to the country. Two, that Trump is too divisive to lead America in the 21st century–he’s sexist, racist, xenophobic. Three, that Trump is a fraud and a con-man, only in it for himself. Put differently, Trump is not just a sexual predator, but also an economic predator. American Bridge did prodigious research proving all three points.

Top strategists, however, chose not to push the third, reasoning that Trump was already too well-branded as a successful businessman to be presented as Don the Con, I will remind you that Mitt Romney was also well-branded as a successful businessman — until he wasn’t.

Bridge amassed reams of evidence of Trump screwing over average Americans, but as we did no paid advertising, we were only able to shop these stories in the press. Much of the public never heard the devastating personal testimonials of Trump’s treachery and greed collected by Bridge, which, in retrospect, might well have moved some of the working class white voters we needed in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Did Hillary’s own campaign rob her of the only anti-Trump argument that would have opened up the all-important economic issue to her advantage? That’s the inescapable conclusion.

Media Matters, our media watchdog, had the toughest challenge this cycle of all our groups. We scored some wins and made measureable progress. There was our successful campaign to get TV news shows to ban the practice of allowing Trump to call in on a whim. We shamed the press into fact-checking Trump. And we were the first to expose the rise of the proto-fascist, alt-right media machine.

But the reality is that we were never going to overcome the powerful commercial interests of the press that drove it to wantonly and uncritically cover Trump’s reality TV shenanigans. As Les Moonves, the President of CBS said in a telling moment of candor, “Trump may not be good for America, but he’s damn good for CBS.”

Unlike most everyone else, Media Matters didn’t miss the rise of fake news. We saw it happening, but by the time we determined who was behind it, it was too late to effectively counter.

We have spent countless hours since the election thinking about how to combat fake news, and you’ll be hearing tomorrow from Angelo Carusone, our digital media guru who we recently named the new president of Media Matters. He’ll tell you about the strategies and campaigns we’ve devised, and report to you on the solid progress we’ve already made, including the critical role Media Matters played in forcing Facebook to address the issue.

Media Matters matters more than at any time in its 13 year history. For the first time in American history, a Presidential administration has a minister of disinformation operating from the West Wing with ties to an alt-right media empire that is nothing more than a pro-Trump propaganda machine. Facts are now an endangered species in our public discourse, with half the country prepared to believe something is true just because the President says it’s true. And with a president who is a pathological liar, that’s an existential threat to democracy. It may be fashionable to say that facts don’t matter anymore, but I’m here to tell you that Media Matters won’t stand by and watch facts go extinct. Nor will we let Trump legitimize discrimination, destroy our environment, or roll back equality for gay and lesbian Americans.

Next up, American Bridge.

Despite his Twitter braggadocio, Trump has no mandate for his regressive plans. Trump has the legal authority but we, his opposition, have the moral authority—and the moral responsibility—to resist Trump’s dangerous policy ideas, his corrupt deals and his bad actor nominees—so far a governing team of right-wing zealots, predatory billionaires and unqualified wackos.

That’s why American Bridge has established a new War Room for Trump research, communications, rapid response and new technology tools. We’ve already begun an intensive effort to watchdog the Presidential transition, and we will soon be monitoring the personnel, policies and practices of the Trump Administration. You’ll hear much more about this at lunch from Jessica Mackler, Bridge’s president.

Our goal is to hold President-elect Trump to his post-election promise of unifying the country and being the President of all Americans. When he does, we’ll say so. Unfortunately, after running the most dishonest and divisive campaign in the history of American politics, his statements can’t be taken at face value.

Our Democratic values are the view of the majority of the country. This effort will focus on defending those values, fighting hard when they’re under assault and protecting them at all cost. American Bridge will ensure that Trump is accountable, transparent and held in check. At lunch today, you’ll also hear from former chief of staff to Vice President Biden Ron Klain, Chicago Mayor and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and Maya Harris, Hillary’s domestic policy adviser, on what to expect in Trump’s first 100 days.

American Bridge has already set up a world-class vetting operation, the largest in the Democratic Party, to investigate the records of some 1,200 potential Trump nominees to federal office. We do this with eyes wide open. Even if most of the nominees are eventually confirmed, by making the confirmation process as painful as possible, for every moment the Administration spends on defense, we’re educating Americans on what this administration is about. And we’re making it harder for them to enact their nefarious agenda.

We’re also analyzing Trump’s policy agenda to illustrate its impacts, especially on working families, women, immigrants and people of color.

American Bridge will communicate its findings to Congress, the news media, progressive allies and to the public directly, including, critically, a targeted campaign to reach Trump’s own supporters on social media and through paid advertising.

Our political strategy is straightforward. We aim to keep Trump unpopular through the 2018 mid-terms and the 2020 Presidential election. If Trump is unpopular, Democrats win. It’s as simple as that.

But the strategy of keeping Trump unpopular is more profound than partisan politics. A popular Trump is Trump unbound. We must keep Trump unpopular if we are to preserve the institutions of our democracy against a would-be autocrat. This is not partisan sour grapes. With Trump’s ascension, America faces, for the first time since 1860, a crisis of basic principles. Trump’s disgraceful attacks on our intelligence community, on civil rights hero John Lewis, and on the government ethics officer who dared to criticize him are surely just the beginning.

Let us be clear-eyed about what is happening to our country today. At the moment Trump takes the oath today, he is in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution as he arrogantly refuses to divest himself of his business holdings. If Trump is allowed to violate this law, then there is no law. Trump is talking about expanding libel law to criminalize journalism. What is to stop Trump from suspending habeas corpus or ordering mass detentions next?

I’m so pleased that we will hear more on the subject of historical analogues later this morning in a presentation from Russian journalist Masha Gessen.

Now, some will say our plans to resist Trump sound like obstructionism. Indeed, I predict the coming divide in the Democratic Party won’t be ideological so much as it will be between those who resist and oppose and those who accommodate and appease.

For example, there’s talk among Democrats of cooperating with Trump on an infrastructure bill. [I strongly agree, if we can get a real one. — A.T.] Let’s again be clear: Trump’s infrastructure proposal is a fraud! As fraudulent as Trump University. Besides, we can’t pass an infrastructure bill without seeing Trump’s tax returns, because we don’t know how he’d benefit financially.

Tomorrow morning you’ll be hearing from Senator Jeff Merkely of Oregon for an inside view f what we can expect from Democratic Senate Caucus efforts to oppose Trump.

Our message is simple: Trump’s Administration amounts to one broken promise after another, not just on draining the swamp, but about standing up for the little guy. This is not just about blocking and tackling. There is great opportunity for Democrats to foment backlash among some Trump supporters and win back their votes in 2018 and 2020. The early indications are that the GOP and Vice President-elect Mike Pence will take Trump decisively down the road of a very conventional, very conservative agenda rather than the more populist, anti-Establishment one that contributed to Trump’s GOP nomination and election.

This agenda is not remotely responsive to the needs of working-class families who, in this election, not entirely wrongly, saw a corrupt Republican-Democratic duopoly and sought the change that comes from throwing the bums out. Played right, in 2018 and 2020 we can flip the script. Now let me say a few words about tactics. I believe Trump is owed the same deference from us that he paid to President Obama in the birtherism smear.

Donald Trump famously threw out the political rulebook. If we are to succeed in this period, Democrats must suspend the normal rules of politics as well.

I’m sick and tired of the Republicans taking advantage of our fundamental decency. That ends today. These times require that Democrats go at the other side with both barrels. Democrats must learn to fight an unconventional war. We need to both box and wrestle.  [But, I would add and David would presumably agree, always stick to the truth as best we know it.  The truth is distinctly on our side. — A.T.]

Democrats must also quickly learn to be an opposition party. We won the most votes in this election, and we should act like it. If you ask me to name Trump’s biggest vulnerability, I would point to the issue of ethics in government. Trump dusted off Nixon’s twisted logic that “when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.”

Trump seems to think he gets to decide what’s right and wrong. But he doesn’t. The American people get to decide. It is our goal to persuade voters, including Trump’s own supporters, that his administration is shaping up to be the most corrupt since the days of Teapot Dome. From his new hotel in the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue to his massive overseas financial interests that can flourish or fail depending on U.S. government policy, he is laying the groundwork for a kleptocracy that would make Boss Tweed blush.

With so many opportunities for foreign governments and corporations to gain influence  over Trump, we are ready to hold Trump and his administration accountable to the Constitution, to federal law and to bipartisan traditions using every tool we have.

That’s where the non-partisan ethics watchdog, CREW, founded over 13 years ago by Norm Eisen, comes in. CREW uses litigation and ethics rules and regulations to go after corrupt politicians. For example, under the leadership of Executive Director Noah Bookbinder, last year CREW filed the IRS complaint against the Trump Foundation that triggered the penalty that led to overdue press scrutiny of his sham philanthropy.

Last month, Norm, who served as ethics counsel to President Obama, returned as chair of CREW’s board, and was joined by Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer, as vice chair. You’ll have the pleasure of hearing from Ambassador Eisen about CREW’s plans to increase its organizational capacity and budget immediately to meet the Trump challenge.

Tomorrow you’ll hear about our plans for our independent news site and social media platform ShareBlue, which we launched last spring and which, during the election season quickly garnered more than a million Facebook followers. Presenting ShareBlue is award-winning investigative journalist David Sirota, who just signed on to be our new CEO. David comes to the job after years of reporting on elected officials. His investigative series have resulted in governmental probes, legislative initiatives and even resignations. With outlets like NPR and even MSNBC under increasing pressure to normalize Donald Trump, we believe now is the time to produce original and aggressive reporting that scrutinizes political power in Washington, on Wall Street and in state capitals around the country. We will continue to influence the media and criticize it, but this play is about becoming the media, to show them how it’s done.

Press reports have suggested that our aim with ShareBlue is to create a “Breitbart of the Left.” That’s wrong. What we are doing is creating an answer to the Breitbart on the left. The distinction should be obvious, but let me be clear: we aren’t getting into the fake news business. At ShareBlue, we’ll always stick to the facts.

I’m going to end with a quote that has given me comfort since the election.

It’s from a 1780 letter written to a fellow revolutionary who was considering “retiring into private life.” The staunch abolitionist Samuel Adams implored him to reconsider:

“If ever the time should come,” he wrote, “when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”

You hearty souls at this gathering—YOU are our experienced patriots. Retirement is no option. We need you to support this work, not just financially but with your deeds, your spirit, and, importantly, your ideas. So please view everything you are about to hear as a work in progress.

Quite simply, your country needs you if it is going to survive intact.

Thank you for joining us here in Miami. We’re gonna show America that we truly are stronger together.

If all goes according to plan, I am out in the middle of a large warm body of water this week.

So I’ll spare you my take on the inauguration — a landslide of an inauguration, with more people attending than any previous inauguration in history.  Period.

Yes, Obama’s astonishing 1.8 million-strong first inauguration (or whatever it was; that’s the figure that sticks in my head) was the previous record-setter . . . and on a frigid day that would have kept any sensible person away.

But this president’s inauguration blew even that away.

You doubt that?  It comes in a clearly considered prepared statement — not an off-the-cuff tweet — straight from the top, to correct reports by the dishonest media.  You shouldn’t trust the media (other than Breitbart and the National Enquirer); you should trust the Trump White House. Period.

(You still doubt it?  Just look at the photos!  Eevn more striking on my computer screen than viewed on TV.)

John Blevins: “You should share this PBS program, Divided States Of America, with your readers so they can understand what happened.”

OK.  I will.  But I’m still marveling at those crowds.  Which were even more remarkable when you consider that DC hotels were not full (as I can ruefully attest, having been stuck with a non-refundable room no one wanted to take off my hands) and when you consider, also, that 96% of DC locals — who’d have found it easiest to attend — were Hillary supporters.  And even with all that working against him, Trump drew a larger crowd to cheer for him in person than to any previous inaugural address in the history of the republic.

Period.

[UPDATE: Just watched today’s press briefing.  Spicer did much better.  Let’s hope it continues.]

Our new President and Republican Congress have their work cut out for them.

We should help where we agree with their goals; fight respectfully and effectively where we don’t.

Susan Rogan — “a retired university librarian who is an information and fact-checking geek” — posts a daily list of action steps and tips to help us do just that.

For example, 14 items from one day earlier this week. (If you will be marching anywhere this weekend, here is some good advice about protesting with children.)

Sign up?

On this question of legitimacy referenced yesterday, Bob Miller responds: “The birthers who tried to discredit Obama had no evidence of anything – it was a fantasy made up by unstable people, including Donald Trump. No investigation was begun by the FBI or anyone else because nothing was ever produced to indicate it was anything other than a racist slander. On the other hand, members of Donald Trump’s staff had contacts with a foreign enemy government before the election, and the best intelligence available is that Putin directed a campaign to assist him. Whether Trump is legitimate or illegitimate is yet to be adjudicated. If he was the knowing recipient of Russian assistance [while suggesting it may have been the work of some 400-pound guy on his bed], he would be beyond illegitimate.”

Fred Campbell:  “You wrote that Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘would have been appalled today at the illegitimacy of our incoming president.’  You know this is not true.  You are acting no better than the birthers that tried to discredit Obama.  I voted for Hillary as well but we have to admit we lost.  There are only certain ways Trump would be an illegitimate president: (1) He is not qualified.  Although he appears to be a pompous ass, he certainly meets the qualifications set out in the Constitution.  (2) Voting was rigged.  There have been no credible accusations that any ballots were tampered or any precincts hacked.  (3)  You can hate on the Electoral College all you want but it’s laid out in black and white print. . . . You wrote several columns throughout the last eight years ripping into people for attacking and trying to delegitimize our President.  Now you are doing the same.  I don’t like it either but it’s time to fight his policies and stop whining.”

☞ I totally agree on #1, #2, and #3 and don’t think I said otherwise. But I disagree that John Lewis is (or I am) acting no better than the birthers who tried to discredit Obama.

Leading the charge to delegitimize Obama for being born in Kenya — based on NOTHING credible and with NO practical worldwide consequence even if it HAD been true — is different from raising alarms with regard to a sustained, coordinated, unprecedented attack on our democracy by ex-KGB agents that it now seems, based on both circumstantial evidence and some serious albeit not yet confirmed investigative work, Trump may even have been aware of, that could destabilize the world order.

No?

That said, unless or until he is impeached or resigns, he will be our president and we should all hope for his success — I do — and support initiatives he may undertake that we believe are constructive.  I disagree with my friends who argue we should block essentially everything he tries to do — even things we previously supported — as the Republicans did with Obama. As is well known, this was their explicit strategy to try to keep Obama from having a successful presidency.)  First of all, it is a horrible, virtually treasonous thing to do, if you ask me, flouting the will of the people and needlessly hurting the entire country.  But second, we Democrats would just  not be very good at it.  Where we failed miserably at directing the nation’s justifiable anger over Washington’s gridlock at the G.O.P., where it belonged, does anyone doubt the skill and impact with which Trump and the Republicans would — rightly — pin the blame on Democrats?

One can fairly argue, I think, as Fred does above, that “illegitimacy” is the wrong word to use. Martin Luther King, Jr., might well have chosen more judicious words, perhaps quoting exclusively from Republicans in characterizing the President elect.  But however he would have expressed himself, I do think he would not have been silent.  And I do think he would have been appalled.

Meanwhile: the beat goes on. Air Transat To Test Taxiing System That Could Save Costs, Bring Down Emissions.

Martin Luther King, Jr. — like John Lewis — would have been appalled today at the illegitimacy of our incoming president.

Rachel Carson would have been appalled at his choice to head the EPA.

(“In total, Mr. Pruitt filed 14 lawsuits challenging federal environmental regulations. In 13 of those cases, the co-parties included companies that had contributed money to Mr. Pruitt or to Pruitt-affiliated political campaign committees.”  Click here.)

And who wouldn’t be appalled at his plan to cut taxes on the wealthy* by repealing health care for so many others?

But before we get to the bombshell, another brief word about WheelTug.

WheelTug CEO Isaiah Cox has been invited to address the Cowen Aerospace Conference February 8, the fourth year he’s been invited back. As you can see, participants include GE, Boeing, FedEx, Lockheed Martin, and United Technologies.

With the FAA pre-certification agreement in hand, the vision of a “WheelTug future” where narrow-body jets routinely taxi out from the gate without waiting for a tug and can use both front AND rear doors — saving passengers 15 minutes per flight and allowing airlines and airports an additional 10% or 15% capacity without having to buy a single new plane or build a single new terminal — may seem a little less fanciful.

Shares in parent Borealis must be bought only with money you can truly afford to lose.** Even lottery tickets with great odds, as I believe this one to be, and as ridiculously many shares as I own, generally lead to a total loss of your money, as this one absolutely could. The fact that I’ve been saying this for a long, long time either means “there I go again” or “we’re actually getting closer.” I wish I knew which.

And now . . .

If you found it curious that the only part of the Republican Party platform Trump meddled with was the part chastising Russia over Ukraine (he had it removed) . . . or that the one topic on which Trump has been perhaps most consistent is his defense of Vladimir Putin . . . you’ll find this report to be a must read: Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s frustration as FBI sat on Donald Trump Russia file for months.  We have no confirmation the information in that now famous (or infamous) 35-page file is accurate.  But we know Christopher Steele is not some 400-pound guy sitting on his bed known for writing fiction.

We live in interesting times.

*From 18.8% to 15% on investment income in excess of $200,000 ($250,000 filing jointly); from 23.8% to 20% in excess of $418,400 ($470,700 joint) — so basically a $3.8 million tax break on each additional $100 million in dividends and capital gains that he earns.

**And (being very thinly traded) only with “limit orders.”

Tuesday is the deadline to send in your fourth quarterly estimated tax payment (if money is due). Here are the forms and instructions. You can skip this if you file your complete return by January 31.

Have you seen Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s battery-powered Mercedes?

Talk about “green”!

And while we’re at it, this has been circling the ether since at least 2013 but I just saw it now (thanks, Mel!):

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags are not good for the environment.

The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, “We didn’t have this ‘green thing’ back in my earlier days.”

The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

The older lady said that she was right — our generation didn’t have the “green thing” in its day. The older lady went on to explain:

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn’t do the “green thing” back then.

We walked up stairs because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the “green thing” in our day.

Back then we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day.

Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family’s $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before “green thing.” We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the “green thing” back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart ass young person.

We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off… Especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smartass who can’t make change without the cash register telling them how much.

How’s that for crotchety!

Good for this mythical young cashier for being concerned with the environment — but also for her mythical customer, who, unlike many, seems not to take for granted how much better and easier life has become.*

*Without our necessarily having become happier.  Discuss.

OK, I’ll kick it off:  I think happiness is more a function of “direction” than “amount.” The family finding they have to switch from flying private to merely flying first class, as they head off to Hawaii, may be less happy than the family that’s never been to Hawaii but are getting to go crammed into the back of the plane for nine hours in coach. We quickly come to take things for granted — was anyone happy before air conditioning? before cell phones?  “A luxury once sampled becomes a necessity.” So if you have to give your kid a car for graduation at all — and maybe you don’t — make it a safe but really old, crappy first car, so there’s  much — attainable — improvement to look forward to.  Although the Mercedes AA-class pictured above could be kinda fun, too.

Being the eternal optimist, I imagine pro-Israel Jared Kushner and pro-oil Rex Tillerson (no oil in Israel!) somehow brokering the impossible mid-East peace that — if ever attained — would solve so many of the world’s problems.

This is almost surely a fantasy.

What’s not a fantasy are the 63.7 million acres in Russia Exxon has rights to drill on . . . but is prevented by U.S. sanctions against Russia from exploiting.

(That’s more than double its drilling rights in all the other countries of the world combined.  The U.S. ranks second at 14 million acres, Canada third at 6 million.)

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson testified yesterday he was unaware of any lobbying Exxon might have done to lift the sanctions, and when confronted with signed disclosure forms confirming that Exxon did lobby on this topic, he noted — quite remarkably I thought — that those forms left open the question whether Exxon was lobbying for or against the sanctions. (Just as NRA lobbying disclosure forms don’t specify whether they are lobbying for or against gun safety measures.)

If you can find the time, it’s laid out by Rachel Maddow in fascinating detail here.

But first . . .

This press release just in.  Borealis subsidiary WheelTug has received FAA sign-off on its certification plan, as noted yesterday in Aviation Week and AirInsight.  No guarantee of FAA approval, or ultimate commercial success, but an important milestone.  If WheelTug could be capturing $50,000 a year in net profit from installation on 10,000 aircraft six or eight years from now (who would want a jet that can’t back out from the gate on its own?), that would be half a billion in annual profit.  With 5 million shares outstanding, parent Borealis is currently valued at $30 million. As always: a speculation to be made only with money you can truly afford to lose; and — being thinly traded — only with “limit orders.”

And of course . . .

The President’s Farewell Address . . . exactly the grace, wisdom, clarity, inspiration, and dignity we have come to expect.

And the hearings! (I had not known about Jeff Sessions and hitching posts.)

And the news of intel Russia may have on the President-Elect but chose not to share with WikiLeaks.

It looks as though there may be things to write about all month.

But not today.

Today, for those with time to meet him . . .

My Uncle Charley was born on this day, January 11, in 1888 — remarkable for two reasons.  First, how could I possibly have an uncle born 129 years ago?  Second, how could I possibly have so little musical talent?

Charles Previn had dozens of movie credits as composer or music director, 7 Oscar nominations (one win) and more. Wikipedia credits him with overseeing hundreds of films at Universal and notes that he’s not just my uncle (a fact inexplicably overlooked), he’s André Previn‘s uncle.

André — “considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world with his notable contributions to classical music, jazz, and opera” — sports four Oscars and ten Grammys.

I’ve never met my cousin André — let alone had “my dinner with André” — but I sure knew Uncle Charley.  He was crazy about me, and I was pretty crazy about him, when on his occasional trips to New York he’d come for dinner.

He was basically retired (though working on a “grasshopper operetta”) and I was basically in high school. He was filled with enthusiasm, terrible puns, and affection for us all, including his sister, my grandmother.

Only years later did I realize he must have been gay.

That “valet” he traveled with, always assigned an adjacent room?  Well, you get the picture.

So on the occasion of what would have been his 129th birthday, I want you to meet him at a time in his life he hadn’t arrived at Universal or gone on to conduct the orchestra at Radio City Music Hall — yet was already quite well known.

You’ll find him on page 61 of the January 1935 issue of a 10-cent magazine popular then called Radio Stars with the caption: “Charles Previn and the Countess Albani, who sings with his orchestra” under the headline SHOULD BACHELORS HAVE BABIES . . . ?

Find the text below . . . or page through the whole magazine, not least for the ads.  (“Reduce your waist and hips 3 inches in 10 days with the Perfolastic Girdle . . . or it will cost you nothing!”)

How astonished — and pleased — Charley might have been at the way life turned out for his young nephew, and other latter-day bachelors.

SHOULD BACHELORS HAVE BABIES . . . ?
CHARLES PREVIN, SINGLE, WANTS TO BE A DADDY
By Elizabeth Walker

HAVEN’T YOU often read stories about husbandless air divas and screen queens, aspiring to have babies? But do you recall a single instance of an unmarried king of the kilocycles. wanting to be a daddy? Yet Charles Previn, the dashing and debonair orchestra leader of NBC’s Sunday night Silken Strings hour, if he has his way, may soon become radioland’s first bachelor father.

Perhaps, it sounds like a press agent yarn, this story of an A.B. from Cornell, who gave up professoring to pound a piano in Tin Pan Alley, became conductor of a series of Broadway musicals, wielded the baton at St. Louis’ world- famous summer opera for five years and is now searching for a son.  A small boy on whom he may lavish all the love and luxury of which an Ace of the Air is capable. But it isn’t. And I’ll tell you why.

Lunching with him the other day in the stately mid – Victorian dining room of the Medinah Athletic Club in Chicago, where he resides, the conversation veered naturally to a discussion of a story in the morning news-

papers. It was a front page account of how one of the Windy City’s packingtown princesses and her wealthy broker husband were seeking twins to adopt.

“I don’t believe I would want to adopt twins,” thought- fully observed the master melodist.

“No, I wouldn’t think you would either,” a third person at the luncheon table cheerfully jeered. “Even half a twin would be one too many for a bachelor.”

“Why do you say that ?” demanded Maestro Previn, annoyed, and, before the other could explain, he began giving all sorts of reasons why an unmarried man should phosphoresce among court-made papas.

[You can hear the Melodious Silken Strings program Sundays at 9 p.m. EST on the following NBC stations: WJZ, WBAL, WMAL, WBZ, WBZA, WSYR, WHAM, KDKA, WGAR, WJR, WLW, KWCR, KSO, KWK, WREN, KOIL, WKY, KPRC, WENR, WTAR, WPTF, WRVA, WWNC, WJAX, WIOD, WFLA, WAVE, WSM, WSB, WMC, WJDX, WSMB, WFAA, KTBS, KTHS.]

FINANCIALLY, a bachelor is capable of providing a good home and educational advantages for an adopted child, the college-bred ork leader asserted hotly. With no wife to divert him, he has more time. more thought, more money and more affection to give.  And who doubts, but that an unmarried man, who volunteers for fatherhood, should make a better parent than a married one who has it thrust upon him.

When he paused for breath, the Jeering One observed cautiously : “You seem to have given the matter considerable thought.”

“I have,” replied Maestro Previn quietly. Then he told how for several years he has been on the lookout for a youngster whom he may endow with his name and bring up as his son.

WHY, one wonders, should a well -to -do bachelor with a taste for rare wine, orchidaceous women and world travel, con- sider complicating his easy and eventful life with a Little Stranger? What motives would impel a talented musician, whose work is admittedly his hobby, to disrupt the harmony of his present existence with childhood cries and nursery noises?

Those questions, when put to him across the luncheon table, the impresario of the Silken Strings hour answered simply, directly. “I’ve always been crazy about children,” he said, “Besides, a son would be a great pal.” 

Maestro Previn believes that when he finds the youngster whom he thinks Fate is reserving for him, whether that youngster is wrapped in rags and as bald and blind as the eagle atop our national standard, he’ll know it. And the child’ll know. And there won’t be anything more to it. Nothing, that is, but the thousand and one complications which he understands arise when a bachelor sets out to adopt a child.

Even when that fateful moment arrives, it is doubtful, however, whether ether-land’s most sportive symphonist will act spontaneously. There are still moments, he acknowledged with a deprecating shrug of his sleek tailored shoulders, when he is uncertain whether an unmarried man may rightfully aspire for fatherhood.

“When I think back over my own boy- hood,” he said reminiscently, “and remember how it centered about my mother, I begin to wonder. Have I the right to deprive a child of his chance for a normal home? Will the material things I can give him compensate for the absence of a mother? What do you think?”

I nodded my okay, thinking how easily he could remedy such a domestic abnormality. After all, eligible women willing to mother a man’s children are not scarce. And I couldn’t imagine a romantic riot like Charley Previn running up against a “No” woman, should he ever seek a maternal parent for his foster son.

Mediumly tall, with broad shoulders, dream-swept brown eyes, sun-swarthy skin and dark, wavy hair, his looks would melt any woman. And the majority of them would find him no less irresistable to listen to. His interests encircle the globe like a Dollar Liner, and include everything from the latest Maori colonization scheme in New Zealand and the Tennessee Valley plan, to college football, golf, radio and real estate. He loves good books next to good music. And when he is discussing the latter he is as apt to be talking about his friend, George Gershwin’s “Manhattan Serenade” as Wagner’s “Symphony in C.”  

STILL he’s never been married. He’s never been engaged. To quote him verbatim, he’s “never even proposed to a girl.”

“I’m not saying I’ve never been in love.” A quick shining smile sprang out of his eyes like a silver flash. But I’ve never been able to figure a woman out long enough to ask her to marry me.”

Like so many other modern young men who have worked out their own design for living, he turned down a fat offer to teach prep school boys how to scan French poetry and translate German prose, and embarked upon a job-hunting expedition along Tin Pan Alley. It wasn’t long until he landed a position, playing the piano in a music -factory, for which Earl Carroll was song-plugging. From pounding out the latest jazz he gradually advanced to the more dignified position of song salesman. 

 Then one bright autumn morning the producer of a musical show, playing the southern “sticks,” burst into the music publishing house employing him, and de-manded an orchestra leader. With a sly wink, the manager recommended Charley.

“Have you ever had any experience ?” the producer demanded.

THE college-bred Paderewski said he had.

But he forgot to add that the orchestra he had conducted was composed of Cornell students who volunteered their services for the University’s annual men’s musical show. Even so he got the job.

In the same way he won his first chance at stage directing. The manager of a light opera company whose orchestra he was conducting went a.w.o.l. and the owner of the production turned, distraught, to Charley. “Previn,” he groaned, “have you ever put on a musical show ?”

Again the A.B. from Cornell answered “Yes,” without bothering to explain that the musical show in question was one whose lyrics he had composed and which had been written and acted by his classmates at college. And for the second time, he won and held the job.

But Maestro Previn was not satisfied to go on wielding his baton in the back blocks. He wanted to be something more than a hinterland virtuoso. So he found himself a playhouse on Broadway and a play, and before he knew it, he was standing in the wings, watching his first operetta go into production. At last he was nearing his goal.

A five -year engagement with St. Louis’ world famous summer opera company was the turning point. From the Missouri metropolis, he went to New York’s Roxy Theatre. And, as anyone familiar with the airlines will tell you, from there it is only a step to Radio City.

He made his mike debut over NBC as master of the Camel Cigarette hour. During those sixty minute intervals, he not only produced radioland’s first revue, but widened the acquaintance of the dial-twisting public by. introducing it to such stage and screen stars as Mary Garden and Maurice Chevalier. Later he supplied the musical background for Count Von Luckner’s breath-taking sagas of the sea, and became one of NBC’s most popular sustaining artists. Last winter he organized his Silken Strings Ensemble.

Now that he has realized his boy-hood ambition, persons knowing him as one of those men who, once he charts a course, never wavers, are wondering aloud: “How long will it be until Charley Previn’s manhood dream comes true. and he becomes one, if not radio’s first, bachelor father?”

He never did.

I doubt the Ku Klux Klan Crusader did much to elect Trump, but the only large publication to endorse him, the National Enquirer, surely did. And continues to be his outlet. Its headlines are seen by the entire subset of Americans — not a small one — who buy food.

Click here.

It would be amusing if it were not real life.