Author: A.T.

PREVENTING ELECTION FRAUD . . .

. . . is hugely important to Republicans despite it’s being of no consequence, as it is vanishingly rare.*

But!

When laws are broken on behalf of Trump . . . even when it results in death and global condemnation . . . well, that’s different.  Witness the pardoned January 6 felons.

Or, Tuesday night, one of Trump’s final “truths” of 2025, as reported by FOX’s Denver affiliate:

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President Donald Trump is ending 2025 wishing “only the worst” for leaders in Colorado in response to the imprisonment of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is behind bars after being convicted for her role in a 2021 election security breach.

In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, the president called the democratic Governor Jared Polis a “scumbag” and the republican District Attorney Daniel Rubenstein “disgusting” for not making efforts to release Peters.

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“May they rot in hell” Trump concluded in the spirit of the holidays.

For the indicted war criminal Putin, by contrast, who helped elect him, he had nary a bad word all year.

*I asked Copilot whether that was a fair characterization and was told, “Yes — based on the best available data, voter fraud in the United States is vanishingly rare.  Even the Heritage Foundation’s own database shows extremely low rates.  Heritage — a conservative think tank that actively looks for fraud — has compiled decades of cases. In Arizona, over 25 years, with 42.6 million ballots cast, Heritage identified 36 cases of fraud.  In Pennsylvania, over 30 years and 100+ million votes, Heritage found 39 cases.”

Even if you assume only 1 instance in 1,000 is ever reported, it’s still statistically insignificant.  Thirty-nine thousand cases out of over 100 million votes is nothing — especially when you consider that as much voter fraud crimes may be committed to favor Republicans as Democrats — if not more.  Like this one, for example.  So they likely largely cancel each other out, bringing that 39,000 back down to just a few thousand . . . out of over more than 100 million.   

When you think of how hard it is to get legitimate voters out to vote, imagine how hard it is to get ineligible people to risk deportation or prison in order to cast an illegal vote.

Wishing you and yours health, happiness, and a great New Year ahead.

WE’RE #1

In the number of billionaires, certainly, and in obesity, gun ownership, gun deaths, incarceration, medically-related bankruptcies and military spending; but last among wealthy nations in health care, 23rd in happiness, 63rd in life expectancy, and — by some measures — 55th in freedom of the press.

Will China Beat Us In The Race To Clean, Limitless Energy?

It sure seems that way.

Trump’s 2017 inauguration signaled the end of “the American Century” — more or less exactly on time, when you think about it: almost exactly a century after we entered World War I and became ever stronger and more globally dominant.

We may now be in the early years of the Chinese century.  If so, not only do we have to hope we and the Chinese find ways to get along well, but that we and all nations find ways to get along well with AI.  That AI can somehow be designed to treat us humans more nicely than we have treated lesser species . . . or even some of our own.

WHAT MATTERS TO AMERICANS

An important chart from the Wall Street Journal, courtesy of Andrew Yang’s New Year’s message:

But we’re America.  We can come back.  The first step will be the mid-terms less than a year from now, when, with your help, the blue wave will continue to flip pro-Trump seats back toward democracy, civility, science, and other things most Americans agree on.

Like affordable health care, a woman’s right to control her own body, an end to the tariffs we’re forced to pay on imported goods, universal background checks, taxing income from wealth at the same rate as income from work, funding the IRS adequately to collect taxes due from large corporations and billionaires — and, let us not forget, the rule of law.

Erasing the Verdict: The Ongoing Shock of Trump’s Cocaine Kingpin Pardon

Yikes!!!!!

Of the pardoned former Honduran president’s brother, Tony:

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Just eight days after [Lopez] helped convict Tony Hernández, a surveillance camera on the wall of the prison captured the following scene: López, in a white T-shirt and black shorts, was talking with the prison warden and a guard in a hallway. As they chatted, another guard wearing a black mask approached a side door with a key and opened it. The guard stepped aside to let six men burst into the hall. One pointed a submachine pistol at López and quickly fired at least a half-dozen shots at close range. As the trafficker lay facedown on the floor, clearly dead, the gunman fired what appears to be at least 20 more shots at López’s lifeless corpse, most of them in his head, painting the white cinderblock wall red. Another of the men dropped to the floor and began stabbing his corpse with a machete-like knife. Finally, the man began to saw at the bottoms of López’s legs, as if trying to remove them.

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The story reads like a novella.

The absolute least of it:

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[Former President Hernandez] continued to court Trump’s favor even after his brother’s guilty verdict. The following spring, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the US Food & Drug Administration publicly rebuked Trump’s claim that hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial medicine, could effectively treat the virus. Hernández seized an opportunity.

“Well, I never spoke to a scientist,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “but I will tell you this: I did speak with the president of Honduras, just a little while ago. I didn’t bring it up—he brought it up. He said they use the hydroxychloroquine, and he said the results are just so incredible, with the hydroxychloroquine. Check with him. Call him. The president of Honduras. A really nice guy.”

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As to the pardon (in tiny part):

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Although the investigations into Hernández, as well as the conviction of his brother, happened under the first Trump administration, the family and their backers leaned into the idea that his prosecution was a Biden-Harris conspiracy. In June, Roger Stone on his podcast interviewed Shane Trejo, a conservative activist and leader of the Third Term Project, which aims to extend Trump’s presidency beyond the constitutional limit.  A pardon, they agreed, could be a political masterstroke that could tank the political influence of Hernández’s leftist successor and delegitimize her entire party.

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So much more to it, if you like crime novels.  Just totally yikes.

But first . . .

JON STEWART

Nails it (42 seconds).

PROJECT 2029

Yesterday I posted South Park’s Project 2029 (30 seconds).

Peter S.: “I [bleep]ing love South Park. My additions: Make DC and PR states . . . Pass universal online voting using block chain for verification . . . Start universal basic income based on need, funded by taxing the 1% and richest corps and honor and celebrate those richest individuals and corps for their generosity and contributions to the welfare of the nation and for leading the way to a future when AI and robots replace most of the existing jobs and professions and fund the liberation from daily toil for humans . . . Abolish Gerrymandering and the electoral college . . . Pass Medicare for all with Plan F Medigap included eliminating deductibles and copays . . . Develop passively safe nuclear power . . . Phase out non-biodegradable plastics . . . Massively fund renewable energy sources and research on a scale equal to fossil fuel funding and subsidies over the last 100+ years . . . Remove every trace of the name Trump from everywhere it’s been added . . . Investigate and prosecute the most egregious violations of law by his administration . . . Reverse all RFQuack Jr changes . . .”

→ Giving new definition, perhaps, to the phrase “easier said than done.”  Yet you can just feel the excitement of the age that is dawning and the need to think smarter than “drill baby drill” with everything renamed for Trump.  (Stalin took over in 1924.  By 1925, he had renamed a city “Stalingrad.”)

One of the worthy non-profits I’ve touted here from time to time is the Amazon Conservation Team.

For those of us who don’t think climate change is a hoax, and that biodiversity is important, it’s heartening to see what they’ve accomplished since founding 29 years.  This year-end thank-you note will give you an idea:

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Deep in the Brazilian savanna, on the southeastern edge of the Amazon rainforest, is a village called Ulupuene. The Amazon Conservation Team first began our partnership with the Wauja people in this territory 21 years ago, working with them to map important cultural sites and preserve their cultural heritage. This year, members of our staff had the opportunity to make the very long journey to this special place along the Bakiri River once again, and it highlighted how longstanding partnerships, led by those who have called the Amazon home for generations, offer hope for saving it.

Over the decades, we supported the Wauja in establishing native gardens for food and medicine. When nearby agricultural runoff threatened their water supply, we supported them in building a well. After devastating fires in the region a few years ago, which are becoming more common due to climate change, we worked with the Wauja to rebuild traditional structures and provided resources to create a professionally trained volunteer indigenous fire brigade.

Ulupuene is a bright spot in the Amazon, literally during our visit, we saw that the forest around the village is vibrant and diverse compared to the desert of ever-encroaching soybean fields you’ll find across the region. But Ulupuene is just one example of what’s possible. With your generosity, we have created hundreds of bright spots just like this one, always in collaboration with communities, from the rainforests to the coasts.

Nearly three decades of groundbreaking work can only be hinted at through a few numbers:

• 3 million acres of indigenous reserves created or expanded
• 8 million acres zoned to protect isolated indigenous peoples in national parks and reserves
• More than 150,000 baby sea turtles hatched through Ancestral Tides, a marine conservation effort uniting communities from Mexico to Costa Rica
• 60 community rangers trained and 7 ranger posts established across Suriname’s vast rainforests
• More than 100 million acres of ancestral rainforest collaboratively mapped

Thank you for standing with us. Together, we are building healthier ecosystems, resilient livelihoods, stronger rights, and thriving cultures. Our shared imagination and commitment can guide us toward a more hopeful future for tropical forests, for our planet, and ultimately for ourselves.

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Those who do think climate change is a hoax . . . or who don’t but want to be inspired by a heroic 77-year-old with a heart transplant . . . could do worse than to watch a documentary called Canary (as in: the coal mine).

It which scores 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and can be seen here, for free.

And/or watch a 10-minute preview on The Daily Show, here.

Have a great week.

Before you invest the time and money to read Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds . . .

. . . watch 3 minutes of this author interview to see whether it grabs you.

It grabbed me.

If you haven’t already listened to David Litt’s It’s Only Drowning, I have what may be an even better suggestion:

Listen to his Thanks, Obama first.  So fun.

Then listen to It’s Only Drowning, which may be even more fun having gotten to know him as a novice White House speechwriter.

Project 2029, via South Park (30 seconds). 

Might need a little refinement (and bleeping), but you can’t beat the energy.

I love Christmas and I love America.

AMERICA!

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The New Colossus
by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

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Is there anything more beautifully American than that?  (Other than “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?)

The current administration, with Republican assent, has rewritten its last lines to read:  “Send not your poor, your garbage (etc.) . . . for if they come, we will greet them with unspeakable cruelty” — as documented in this “60 Minutes” exposé Team Trump blocked from airing Sunday. 

If you have time for context (and if that bootlegged copy hasn’t been blocked, too, by the time you click), start here instead.

CHRISTMAS!

I have loved it for as long as I can remember.  Not for its religious aspect . . . I’ve never believed He walked on water (or that Moses got God to part the Red Sea or that Santa Claus is real) . . . but for its spirit of love and kindness, generosity and joy, innocence and wonder.

A friend’s holiday card wished me “love, peace, and kindness” and chose this sonnet as her text:

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Love is Not All
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

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Wishing you, too, dear readers, love, peace, and kindness.

YET MORE FUN WITH HYMC

Up another $2.50 to $27.  If you sold some HYMC 25 January 2028 calls Monday at around $14.50, as suggested yesterday, consider replacing them with the newly-added January 2028 37 calls that give someone the right to buy your shares for $37 instead of $25.  I did that, taking a $2 loss on the 25’s . . . but giving my shares $12 further to run before being called away.

If HYMC were above $37 by the time the calls expired, you’d have that $37 plus the $14 or so from selling the calls . . . so $51 in all on your original $2.50 investment.  If HYMC somehow drops to zero (which seems unlikely), you’d still have the $14 or so for which you sold the calls.

But first . . .

THE TIDE IS TURNING

Gavin Newsom and Tim Miller (60 seconds).

WHY I VOTED FOR TRUMP

“Because I Was an Idiot” (60 seconds).

(To learn who “Donna” is, click here.  It’s blood-boiling.)

And now . . .

FUN WITH HYMC

HYMC jumped 50% yesterday to $24.50, up nearly 8-fold since suggested in June.  Rather than sell shares, I sold more calls, as described Sunday — this time for $14.50 each.  They give the buyer the right to buy my shares for $25 anytime until January 21, 2028.

The buyer is betting the stock may be above $39.50 by then, after which his having paid $14.50 for the right to buy it at $25 ($39.50 in total) won’t look so dumb.  Indeed, if the stock were $60 or $80 by then, it would look downright brilliant.

And I’m not sure the buyer won’t be right.  Which is why I’m keeping a good bit of my position without writing calls against it.

After all, look at it this way:

When AMC paid $27.9 million for 2.34 million shares at $10.70 each, it wasn’t doing it out of the kindness of its heart; it was taking a considerable risk in hope of considerable return.  (It also got warrants to buy an additional 2.34 million shares for an additional $27.9 million, which sweetened the deal.)

Now, nearly three years later, HYMC stock is more than double what AMC paid — and the warrants to buy more at $10.70 mean that, all told, AMC has pretty close to a quadruple.*

But wait!

When AMC took this gamble, perhaps hoping to make 10 or 15 times its money, gold was around $1,900 an ounce.  Today, it’s $4,400 . . .

. . . which is more than “more than double” $1,900 when you take into consideration the cost of mining each ounce.

If that cost is $900, then the net profit per ounce AMC might have been shooting for would have been $1,000 ($1,900 less $900).  Now, it would be $3,500 ($4,400 less $900) — three and a half times as much.

Plus, as noted Sunday, there’s the recently reported silver.

So — while none of this is really “analysis,” it’s just fun — if you figure AMC hoped to make $200 million on its $27.9 million gamble back when gold was $1,000 net of costs . . . might it now fairly hope for three and a half times that kind of profit? $700 million?  Even more?

For its $27.9 million investment to be worth $700 million, the 4.68 million HYMC shares it bought (and would own if it exercised all its warrants) would have to be $150 apiece — not yesterday’s $24.50.

I’m not for a moment suggesting or predicting that.  I know virtually nothing about mining gold, let alone where the prices of gold and silver will be a year or two from now.  Indeed, it’s just when I start to giddy about something that the top may be at hand.

But I like to think whoever bet $14.50 a share yesterday that HYMC will be meaningfully higher than $39.50 by 2028 will prove to have been spectacularly right.

BONUS: REMEMBER CIVILITY?

A former president and first lady.

*Sharp-eyed readers will note that AMC sold some of its holdings this month before much of the run-up.  To keep the math simple, I’ve ignored that.

I was hoping not to like Rachel Maddow’s new podcast, Burn Order, because who has the time, right?

Plus, we all know about the Japanese internment and that, in retrospect, it was a mistake.

Well, I have bad news: Burn Order is riveting.  And relevant.  

The good news is that it’s just six episodes that, at 1.3X speed, will go by very fast.

I can’t imagine any Republican senators will listen, let alone Stephen Miller or Tom Homan or Kristi Noem; but, boy, should they ever.  It’s their story.

While we’re on the subject, here is a piece on what it’s like to be detained by ICE, written by Trump’s former fixer.

It begins:

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Four people died in ICE custody this week, proving the cruelty isn’t the arrest itself — it’s the neglect, indifference, and silence that follow once the doors lock.

I’ve been out of federal custody for a while now, but the memories don’t fade. They wake you up at night like a phantom pain from a limb you didn’t even know the government could amputate. Since my release from FCI Otisville, I’ve been very clear about what it means to be a human warehoused by the United States government. . . .

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Don’t miss Burn Order.

As my mother used to say, “Let it be a lesson to us all.”

CHINA

From the Economist: 

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China proved its strengths in 2025—and Donald Trump helped

The extraordinary thing is that Mr Trump has played into Mr Xi’s hands, both with his tariffs abroad and his wrecking-ball at home.

. . . [His] attack on science will impede American innovation.  Framed as an effort to eliminate inefficiency and woke ideology, his efforts have curbed financing for vital research. His hostility to foreign scientists, especially ethnic Chinese ones, [has also hurt].  China has already benefited.

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COCAINE

I’m no fan.  I tried it a few times but was lucky — I didn’t love it.  It didn’t grab and ruin my life as it has so many.

That said, I think it should be legal.  (Shouldn’t Americans be free to drink or smoke, or even do coke, in their pursuit of happiness, if they want to?)  And that attempting to transport it from Venezuela to Trinidad for eventual export, presumably, to the U.S. should not be punishable by death-without-trial.

Legalizing coke is understandably controversial.

But the death-without-trial for Venezuelans part?  It blows my mind that House and Senate Republicans are fine with that (or pretend to be).

HYMC

A lot of our speculations crater (see, for fun, Google Puts and Soap Slivers from 20 years ago).

Others, like PRKR, ANIX, OPRT, CNF, UNIT, RNGE, VERU — even BOREF, I guess — “remain to be seen.”

But every once in a while we get lucky.  The latest example: HYMC, which reached $17.11 in after-hours trading Friday — up from $3.20 when suggested six months ago; $2.20 a couple of years before that.

By now, I’ve sold about half in my tax-sheltered accounts — though it’s certainly acting as though it wants to go higher, and very well may.  Not only is it “a potential gold mine” — literally — with the price of gold more than double what it was when we first started buying . . . it now seems also to be a potential silver mine, with the price of silver also going through the roof.

This recent HYMC write-up offers fair market valuations ranging from $4 to $40 a share, so what it’s currently worth seems to be anybody’s guess.

I haven’t sold any in my taxable accounts, but Friday I sold some “covered calls” against about a quarter of my position.  Specifically, calls that paid me $778* each and gave some nameless faceless buyer the right to “call away” from me 100 shares at 25 a share anytime between now and January 21, 2028.**

Let’s say you gambled $2,500 to buy 1,000 shares a couple of years ago.  It’s grown to $17,000.  Now, worried it might drop — but not eager to pay tax on the gain or miss out on possible further gains — you don’t sell.  Instead, you “write covered calls” on those 1,000 shares at $8.  You get $8,000, and here’s what could happen:

1.  HYMC goes to $60.  Whoever bought those calls from you at 8 is pretty happy.  He limited his risk to $8 a share, in case HYMC collapsed; and he had to pay you $8 for the right to buy your shares from you at the $25.  But that left him with a $27 long-term gain in a year or two on an investment of just $8.  But you’re not miserable, either.  Instead of selling your 1,000 shares today for $17,000 you got paid $25,000 for them — and got an $8,000 premium (taxed as a short-term gain) — all on a $2,500 bet (made with money you could truly afford to lose.

2. HYMC never gets much higher than $25 (so is unlikely to be called away), but limps across the finish line on January 21, 2028, at exactly $25.  He loses everything, but you — you lucky bastard — wound up with $33,000 (before tax, if in a taxable account) on a $2,500 investment.

3. HYMC has fallen to 9 by January 21, 2028.  You keep the $8,000 and either sell the stock, if you want to, or hold it and are not much worse off than you are today (though in a taxable account you’d owe tax on that $8,000) — and it still might go up to $25 or $60 or who knows.

The only way this can work out badly is for HYMC to crater.  Even then, you’d keep the $8,000 — not the worst result on a $2,500 bet.

*No tax is due on that $778 until the calls are exercised or expire, or I buy them back for less than I was paid. 

**Because these are long-term calls, they “suspend” the holding period of the underlying shares . . . but that’s not an issue for me, because I have already held them more than a year.  If you’re thinking of writing calls against shares in which you have a short-term profit, the IRS will “stop the clock” on those shares if the calls you write have a long expiration date or are “deep in the money.” Not the end of the world, but something to consider.

AND A HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE TO ALL

45 seconds!