Author: A.T.

Fun, Fun, Fun — Meet Elvay

I’m 274 days into learning Spanish with Duolingo.

I can now say “I need to buy three pretty new green dresses.”

Also: “Feliz Navidad.”

This made me laugh (20 seconds).

A friend sent me this (60 seconds).

It’s not Christmas related — except that it is: because it’s joyful.

Plugged yesterday but worth repeating: the Bank of Dave, a true-ish story that Frank Capra would surely have loved, now streaming.

A couple of years ago I linked you to my friend Marc Fest’s widely lauded Elevator Pitch training.  You might still want to check it out.  What’s a few hundred bucks if it makes you more effective at selling whatever you’re selling, be it a new venture, surgical equipment, your school board candidacy, or the charity dearest to your heart?

Now comes Elvay –much the same thing, from the same guy, but only $9.95, enabled by artificial intelligence.

Cheaper than a martini, and if you don’t need any help selling yourself or your idea, what a gift for your kids or your sales force or someone you mentor.

 

A Sackful Of Gifts . . .

. . . starting with the best Twelve Days Of Christmas ever.

Enjoy!

You’ve seen Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life.  Now streams the Bank of Dave, a true-ish story Capra would surely have loved.

Also of possible interest this time of year: Tim Alberta’s 60-second message to fellow Christians.

There was a low-budget film back in the mid-Fifties, whose name I can’t recall, where humanity is about to destroy itself in nuclear holocaust and all the world’s smartest thinkers have gathered to come up with a way out.  They eventually throw up their hands and, as a last resort, feed the problem into one of those massive new machines called “a computer.”

After several minutes’ blinking and beeping, it spits out the 10-part solution, which one of the actors, grabbing the tape, reads aloud as the music gradually swells. “Thou shalt not kill,” it begins . . . and goes on from there.

In real life, of course, far from solving mankind’s most devastating conflicts, religion has caused many of them.  Still, it’s a scene that has always stuck with me — brought to mind just now when I read this:

Google revealed in April that one of its quantum computers had solved a problem in seconds that would have taken the world’s most powerful supercomputer 47 years.

Twenty years ago, I wrote “Google is everything” and days later linked to Tom Friedman’s, Is Google God?

Well, hello: the singularity draws ever nearer.

And finally — because hunger and misery don’t stop for Christmas — Tom Friedman again: It’s Time for the U.S. to Give Israel Some Tough Love.

 

Must Read Or Listen

Tuesday, Bonnie Bossert suggested I read Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.

Now that I have (with my ears at 1.25X speed, which took a quick round-trip flight to DC and one power walk), I can confirm it is a MUST READ.

I’m pretty sure you will find yourself wanting to share it with everyone you know.

Please do.

“Drown the government in a bathtub?”  Turns out: They may not need the bathtub.

And, yes, I’m mindful Monday is Christmas.  As long-time readers know, I love Christmas.  Not for the religion of it — although I do think Jesus was one of the two greatest Jews who ever lived, the best little boy in the history of the world, basically, yet one whose teachings seem largely to have been lost on many of his worshippers (see, for example, the millions of Klansmen-and-women whose story Egan tells, above) — but for the spirit of Christmas embodied in so many beloved songs and movies that celebrate love and family, peace and goodwill, hope and charity and the wonder in a child’s eyes.

May yours be merry and bright, in the words of Irving Berlin (Israel Beilin), even if the chances grow slimmer each year it will be white.

 

But Can You Blame Them?

I opined in September that CREW would win its suit to keep Trump off the ballot — yesterday, it did — and that “when it gets to the Supreme Court” — as it shortly will — “at least five Justices will vote to affirm.”

We’ll soon see.

Justices who do vote to uphold Colorado’s decision will be risking assassination — that’s the world Trump has given us (“hang Mike Pence!”) — so they may not have the courage.  But Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment seems clear.  You can’t incite a mob to attack the Capitol with the goal of overturning what your own appointee has told you is the most secure election in our nation’s history . . . watch gleefully for three hours as it does . . . and then, under the terms of Section 3, hold office again.  Let alone be deemed to have fulfilled your Oath of Office.

Those who say the Court shouldn’t decide whether Trump can be president, the people should, may be forgetting that the people did — by a margin of 7 million.

If the Court does uphold Colorado’s decision, and with it, the Constitution on which our republic rests, the Secretaries of State elsewhere may have an easier time following suit.

And, no, the attack on the Capitol didn’t “just happen.”

As reported yesterday:  

Jan. 6 Rally Organizers Lied About Plan to March to the Capitol, Report Finds

. . . On Jan. 4, Kylie Jane Kremer wrote in a text message: “POTUS is going to have us march there/the Capitol.” She added: “It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the National Park Service and all the agencies, but POTUS is going to just call for it ‘unexpectedly.’” . . .

Worth reading in full.

(But can you blame them?  If you’re trying to stage a coup, you have to be deceptive.  Read Liz Cheney’s book.)

Finally, from Vanity Fair: Mike Johnson Wrote the Foreword for a Racist, Homophobic, Anti-Poor Book That Endorsed Pizzagate and Denigrated a Prisoner of War. He says he never read the passages in question and “strongly disagrees” with them.

Also worth reading in full.

(But would someone please remind Vanity Fair that it’s “foreword,” as I’ve corrected it here, not “foreward,” as headlined and in the body of the piece?)

If I don’t see you before Monday — I may be taking a couple of days off — please have a great weekend and a Christmas filled with love, peace, and goodwill.

 

An Opportunity?

If you bought some OPRT with money you could truly afford to lose, as suggested here, here, and here, and here, you’re either a little behind or ahead depending on what you paid.  (I’ve paid as much as $5.98 for a little and $2.33 for a lot.  It closed at $3.19 yesterday.)  And you may want to watch this video.

Executive summary: There’s a clear path to a triple or tentuple, though obviously no guarantee.

Bonnie Bossert:  “Have you read this?  Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.   Scary parallels to today.”

I have not — but it gets a lot of stars.  I plan to listen.

Which of these FDR-created Democratic socialist things would most Americans want to ditch if they had the chance: the minimum wage? unemployment insurance? the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)? the Securities and Exchange Commission? Social Security?

And how about earlier socialist programs like public schools, public roads, and public libraries?  Or later ones like Medicare?   

Just saying.

 

Calling ALL Patriots

A recent survey found that 64% of former Republican Congressfolk believe Trump’s insistence he won in 2020 threatens our democracy.

So why is Liz Cheney one of the very few speaking out?

Her just-released memoir begins:

This is the story of the moment when American democracy began to unravel. It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize. It is the story of the most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office, and of the many steps he took to subvert our Constitution.

Most people on the left and the right believe themselves to be patriotic Americans.

Those who disagree with Liz Cheney owe it to themselves and to their country to hear her out.

Because, as her preface continues:

The end of this story hasn’t yet been written. The threat continues. The outcome now is in the hands of the American people and our system of justice. The methods Donald Trump is using to undermine our democracy are not unique to him. I saw authoritarian leaders use many of these same tactics in Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and across the Middle East when I was working for the US State Department. History is full of similar examples in countries around the world, but never in the United States – until now.

She concludes:

It is up to each one of us to take seriously our obligation to safeguard the miracle of American freedom. We must abide by our duty to the Constitution, and demand that our political leaders do the same. Politicians who minimize the threat, repeat the lies, or enable the liar are not fit for office. Most importantly, we cannot make the grave mistake of returning Donald Trump – the man who caused January 6 – to the White House, or to any position of public trust, ever again.

If Trump voters conclude she’s lying or misinformed or misguided or merely overwrought — so be it.  But it would be an act of true patriotism on their part — and courage — to read or listen to her story.

 

Your Republican House At Work

Dana Milbank nails it: Worst. Congress. Ever.

Worth reading in full.

(In case it’s behind a paywall and you don’t already subscribe to the Washington Post, it’s less than a dollar a week. “Democracy dies in darkness” — let’s keep the lights on.)

Also . . . Why Trump Won’t Win.  “His threats to democracy make him dangerous. They also make him a weak candidate.”

These of us who care about democracy — from A.O.C. on the left to Liz Cheney on the right — just have to keep our eyes on the prize and lean in.

Fri, Dec 15, 2023, 5:12 PM EST: Dow hits record high as stocks cap longest weekly winning streak since 2017

Mexico didn’t pay for the wall, he alone couldn’t fix it, and no . . .

. . . the stock market didn’t crash.

 

The Good News

I hate ads where the voice-over is ominous.

It may have begun way back in 1974 with the tag line for a movie called It’s Alive.  (“There’s only one thing wrong with the Davis baby — IT’S ALIVE!”)  With its follow-up tag line: “Save your screams until you see its face.”  (This was one ugly baby.  It killed seven people by the time it was three days old.)  Okay, okay — here’s the trailer.  And here’s a 20-second promo.

But all that stuff was meant to be funny.

This one —It’s America Or Trump — is not.  (“There’s only one thing wrong with the Trump candidacy: he really is an authoritarian bent on retribution.”)

So even if, like me, you would have omitted the line about “500,000 graves” and bristle at its tone — be alarmed.  Because as noted yesterday, they have a plan.

The good news is that we’re gonna win.

For one thing, we simply have to — just as we had to elect Georgia’s first-ever Jewish senator and its first-ever Black senator in 2020, implausible as that was.  (Thank you, Stacey Abrams, et al.)

Defeating Trump, by contrast, is anything but implausible.

We did it in 2020 . . . and that was before he had been adjudicated a rapist; before he had incited an attack on the Capitol and watched for hours without rising to its defense; before he had become the first ever president to be impeached twice, and before a majority of senators (but not the required two-thirds) had voted to convict.  Before his Justices had overturned Roe v. Wade.  Before he had been indicted four times for crimes ranging from stealing nuclear secrets to conspiring to overturn a free and fair election.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that the stock market is at record levels, unemployment at record lows, wages up, mortgage rates down, gas down, eggs down, infrastructure projects beginning to kick in . . . it’s still really tough out there for average folks (through no fault of Joe Biden) but he and his team have the economy firing on all cylinders, with brighter days ahead.

Virtually all Democrats — and patriotic Republicans as extreme-right as Liz Cheney — recognize that democracy itself is at stake.  Yes, there are tens of millions of Trump loyalists who don’t see it that way — or who do see it that way but like it.  But at the end of the day, there will be enough of us not only to win the popular vote, as we have in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections, but to win the Electoral College as well.

In case you can help, you know the drill.

BONUS

Guess whose book Amazon had on sale yesterday for a fifth the price (adjusted for inflation) at which it was first offered 45 years ago.  What a deal!

 

Project 25 And Your Dog

But first . . .

They subpoenaed Hunter Biden to testify.  He’s said sure — just so long as there are cameras and the whole world can hear what he has to say.  The Republicans have rejected that — they want it done in secret.  How come?  What does the Red Team have to hide?

Also . . .

Trump is asking the Supreme Court to rule that anything a president does while in office is immune from prosecution even after leaving office.  So under that standard, a president could walk up and down Fifth Avenue shooting people — or a particularly annoying visitor to the Oval Office — and never be subject to prosecution?

(If you ask me, the famous Justice Department memo saying that you can’t indict a sitting president is just that — a half-century-old memo.  But at least you can see some logic behind it.)

OK, now . . .

When Trump came within 3 million votes of Hillary in 2016 and was preparing to take office, he tasked Governor Chris Christie to prepare the “transition book” — a detailed plan for his first months in office, including a handful of qualified candidates for Trump to choose among for each of the hundreds of appointments he’d be making to staff his administration.  It was a huge amount of work, resulting in a 600-page tome.  According to Let Me Finish, Christie’s highly readable 2020 memoir, Trump never even looked at.  Just threw it in the trash.

Project 25 is ominously different.  A 900-page plan for a sweeping overhaul of the government, replacing everyone with Trump loyalists, dismantling the FBI, putting far more power in the hands of the wannabe strong man bent on retribution.  It will fundamentally change America — just as Trump’s pledge to appoint Justices only from the list prepared by the Federalist Society changed America (e.g., overturning Roe).  He honored that pledge, just as we should assume he will honor his pledge for retribution.

Project 25 is far more sweeping than what the Federalist Society prepared — and won’t get thrown in the trash if Trump wins.

If you haven’t already read the basics, this Wikipedia entry is a good place to start.

And then be one of the first to sign up with Stop The Coup 2025, a newly formed group of grassroots activists that plans to spread the word far and wide.

BONUS

A veteran Wall Street trader pal bought a bunch of VNRX in March around $1.60, thinking it could go to $20.  They have a cheap blood test that detects cancer in dogs even before symptoms appear, when the chances for successful treatment are best.

Who doesn’t love a golden retriever?

I bought some, too — and then more yesterday around 60 cents.

This could be a case of “good money after bad,” for as yet undisclosed reasons.  (No bad news has been announced . . . the stock has just been gradually declining from a high of $6 four years ago.)

Or — if I’m really lucky — people who paid $6 and $5 and $4 and $3 have gotten tired of waiting and are selling it before the end of the year to take their tax loss.

In case you join me down here (I see it traded at 55 cents after hours last night), promise me you will do so only with money you can truly afford to lose.