Author: A.T.

Decades ago I shared a beach house where, per House Rules, we split weekend food and beverage expenses evenly.

It fell to me to do the tally each Sunday afternoon.

One weekend it came to $62.40 a head.

I checked my math and made the announcement.

“Sixty-two dollars and forty cents?!” moaned Luis Sanjurjo, may he rest in peace.  “But I only had one yogurt!”

He’d been out house-hopping all weekend — no one disputed that — but rules are rules.

We laughed, he cried — and paid up.

That wildly expensive yogurt came to mind just now when, with Palm Sunday and Easter in the air, one of you kindly shared: Splitting the Bill at The Last Supper (42 seconds).

However they wound up splitting it (and whatever your religious beliefs — I have none), Jesus’s teaching were clear.

Love thy neighbor, judge not lest ye be judged — basically, be kind and help those less fortunate.

He was so badly treated, you might expect to see, “I’d like to punch him in the face” someplace in the New Testament (“Two Corinthians” maybe?) but no.

Instead, Jesus was the original bleeding-heart liberal.

Where Biden is a pretty serious Catholic and empathetic family man, Trump is an irreligious bully.  For him, white Christian nationalism is all about the white part.  He loudly advocated the death penalty for five innocent black teenagers and, even after they were proven innocent, refused to express remorse.

Yet millions today identify as Trump-loving white Christian nationalists.

This New Report Suggests the Election Need Not be Played Out on Christian Nationalist Terms.

Biden’s Done Playing Nice With Netanyahu — Politico.

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After decades of building a “close, personal” friendship with Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden has had it with the Israeli prime minister. Now he’s hitting him hard — and it may be working.

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Schumer’s speech — a long but really thoughtful episode of The Daily.

Well worth the time.

BONUSES

+ George Santos is now running for Congress as an Independent because he finds the G.O.P. too “embarrassing.”

+ Mike Gallagher is timing his resignation for next month, ensuring his Republican seat will go unfilled until January.

+ A special election April 30 is likely to fill a vacant seat with a Democrat, at which point the House will be 217-214.

+ It’s likely no House Republican will have the courage to switch parties.  But if three more followed Ken Buck (this past Friday) and Mike Gallagher (next month) and resigned, the House would be tied 214-214.  (Imagine the two sides agreeing on a Speaker.)

And if none of that happened but all the Democrats showed up to work one day when a few Republican House members were out sick . . . well, we live in interesting times.

Help if you can.

Former Bain consultant Daniella Ballou-Aares worked for corporate clients on three continents but now runs the Leadership Now Project, comprised of business leaders committed to saving American democracy:

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So a few years ago, I was catching up with a friend from business school, a Turkish executive who, on the surface, seemed to be thriving.

She had a great career, a beautiful family, and she was just one of those people who seemed to have it all together. But in reality, she was struggling.

The Turkish government had started going after business leaders whose views it disagreed with. Some of their companies had been shut down. Others were in jail.  And she was scared.

And she felt guilty because she and everyone she knew had stayed out of politics. They had focused on building their companies and raising their children, and now they were paying the price.

As she left, she said to me with urgency, “In Turkey, we’re in season 10 in this series we call ‘The Demise of Democracy.’ In the US, you’re in season three.”

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That was a few years ago, before she founded Leadership Now.

Read or watch her TED Talk.

Help, if you can.

ASSISTED SUICIDE

He did it.  Right on time.

So sad; but so much more humane than what he watched his mother go through — and what most Alzheimer’s patients and their loved ones go through.

Hal Malchow: R.I.P.

Putin will be doing all he can — again — to elect Trump.

Liz Cheney will be doing all she can to stop him.

She disagrees with Biden on tons but believes all that really matters this November is preserving democracy.

She’s right.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s former editor-in-chief:

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America Isn’t Nazi Germany, but It Looks a Little Like 1933

To be clear, I don’t think . . . America is walking into a replay of 1933 . . . [but] we can see in contemporary extremists of both left and right echoes of the tactics the Nazis deployed—especially the way in which they mobilize language.

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A long thoughtful piece.

He works pretty hard to call out the left as well as the right, this being the Journal; but stops short of asserting moral equivalency.

It’s hard, after all, to equate . . .

“Folks, we are the United States of America!  And there is nothing beyond our capacity — nothing! — if we do it together” . . .

. . . with the rhetoric of carnage, grievance, vermin, and retribution.

Or maybe it’s Hungary that the Republican Party, now officially a Trump family affair, hopes to emulate.

Heather Cox Ricardson here reports on Victor Orban’s recent visit.

To Mar-A-Lago, of course, but also to the Heritage Foundation:

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. . . The tight cooperation between Heritage and Orbán illuminates Project 2025, the plan Heritage has led, along with dozens of other right-wing organizations, to map out a future right-wing presidency. In Hungary, Orbán has undermined democracy, gutting the civil service and filling it with loyalists; attacking immigrants, women, and the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals; taking over businesses for friends and family, and moving the country away from the rules-based international order . . .

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Republican truth tellers must speak up.

Jennifer Rubin argues that those who know him best have “a duty to warn.”

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Trump no doubt will continue to rage against his former advisers, despite his boast that he hired only the “best people.” But a unified and consistent effort from a substantial number of former high-ranking officials . . . could act as a powerful counterweight to the false equivalence that afflicts too much campaign coverage.

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Surely, people who love their country will take note.

Please: send to every patriotic Trump supporter you know.

This long piece may be of interest for two very separate reasons:

First: its political message. The country has become so polarized, Hal Malchow argues, that most political money should go to promote the Democratic brand, not individual candidates.

Second: what it says about our country’s barbaric end-of-life laws.

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Hal Malchow Is Going to Die on Thursday. He Has One Last Message for Democrats.

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Today is Wednesday.

But first . . .

These must-watch 3 minutes, wherein Bill Maher acknowledges Trump’s official takeover of the Republican party — he installed his daughter-in-law in as chair of the RNC (that part is real) — and then . . . well, watch.

Also fun, if you have time . . .

JB Pritzker: How to Spot an Idiot (3 minutes).

And:

Joe Biden hears from 7 presidents in preparation for the State of the Union (4 minutes).  Somehow I missed this at the time.

And now . . .

Jennifer Rubin lists Biden’s advantages over Trump.  (And then offers the transcript of an exchange between George Stephanopoulos and one of Trump’s supporters.)

There’s tons to be worried about.

Including third party candidates who, like Ralph Nader, are being incredibly reckless.  (Nader, disastrously, gave us Bush 43, and thus the war in Iraq, gigantic deficits, a near financial collapse, and the right-leaning Court that gave us Trump; who, in turn, gave us, among much else, the hard-right leaning Court that killed Roe.  Nader, alone, could have prevented all that just by urging his swing-state supporters to vote for Al Gore.)

But if we all keep at it, and keep our eyes on the ball, and give and volunteer, we’ll win.

Ukraine in context (30 seconds).  Trump dims the beacon of hope.

Even as he purposely prolongs the border crisis.

The bill to end that crisis had overwhelming support in Congress, but Trump ordered the Speaker not to allow a vote.

(And failed to solve it while in office.  Listen to Republican Freedom Caucus Policy Chair Chip Roy: “In 2018, we had the House, we had the Senate, we had the White House, and we had a bigger majority than we have today.  And we utterly failed to secure the border.  Totally dropped the ball.  Didn’t do it.“)

In case you can help preserve democracy and the rule of law . . . the decency and dignity of the presidency . . . the competence of the federal work force . . . our democratic alliances . . . the rights of women and minorities — and America’s indispensable role as a beacon of hope to the world — click here.

Have a great week!

Not quite three minutes.

Q-Anon meets Arthur Laffer.

And Kara Swisher’s just-published Burn Book: A Tech Love Story.

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“Nobody straddles the world of tech and media quite like Kara Swisher… This book isn’t just a juicy read, it’s also a valuable historical document, giving readers an inside look at the architects of some of the biggest tech moments of the last thirty years.” — TIME

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Publisher’s tag line:  A witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead. 

A quick read or 6-hour listen at 1.2X speed.

(Oh, and by the way?  “Al Gore did invent the Internet.  Kind of.  His exact words were: ‘During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.’  Absolutely true,” writes Swisher, who goes on to explain.)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! 

Marjorie Taylor Green has it right — amazingly (60 seconds).

Congressman Chip Roy on the House floor yesterday (30 seconds).

Lindsey Graham, of course (60 seconds).  I know I’ve shared that a million times, but I never tire of watching it.

And that old standby, Mitch McConnell (the first 15 seconds are enough if you don’t have two minutes).

There’s also this long (though incomplete) list — of anti-Trump Republicans, from his former lapdog Vice President and Attorney General to sitting and former governors, senators, representatives, and more.

Trump — famous for “neurotic projection” — calls Biden “the worst president in history.”

Yet the stock market hit a new high this week, anyone who wants a job can find one, wages are outpacing inflation, crime is falling, and the only thing now holding up border control is Trump.

Namely, his order that House Speaker Mike Johnson prevent a vote on the Senate’s bipartisan bill.

It would pass overwhelming . . . just as a 68-32 bipartisan Senate immigration bill would have passed in 2013 had the then Republican House speaker allowed a floor vote . . . but Trump wants the border to remain in crisis.  It’s his best chance to win reelection, shut down all the prosecutions he faces, pardon himself as needed, and — what perhaps most motivates him — rain down vengeance and retribution.

Have a great day.

In case you haven’t seen these two minutes.

In case you can help.