Author: A.T.

The final episode of this riveting five-part podcast doesn’t drop until tomorrow (Wednesday), but you will be blown away by what Rob Reiner and Soledad O’Brien have assembled.

I guess I should wait for the final episode before writing this; but based on the first four, I can’t imagine any other conclusion.

Listen.

The devil:

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Mike Johnson claims to hate the devil. Maybe he should look in the mirror
As a Christian minister, I believe in God and the devil — and I know whose side today’s pious Republicans are on
By Nathaniel Manderson

. . . Here’s the truth: There is evil in this world. That is evident to anyone paying attention, and for the most part I see it in people who loudly claim to be pure and good. You can certainly find that hypocrisy on the “liberal” side as well, but honestly it’s more common among the evangelical leadership, whom I know very well. Jesus gave his sternest warnings against the religious hypocrites of his day — those who misuse the word of God to oppress or subjugate people and restrict their rights. Jesus knew, as we must know too, that the real evil, the genuine devil, is often found in the pulpit. The devil has many followers. He sells many books. He runs for president. He misleads God’s people. . . .

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The deep blue sea:

What sea level rise will look like in cities that have hosted climate summits

The pictures are worth the click.

Progress is being made — e.g., Brazil launches $204 million drive to restore Amazon rainforest (no need to click; the headline says it all) — but, as argued recently in the L.A. Times, Solving climate change will have side effects. Get over it.

The devil and the deep blue sea are related only because the Speaker of the House — who can block just about anything — believes in the devil but not in the need to confront climate change.

What we need, 11 months from now — desperately — is a deep blue wave.

1.  Barack Obama rightly called Bill Clinton “the Explainer in Chief”; but what he explains here is every bit as clear and important.  Three minutes.

2. Gore won Florida, and thus the Presidency, by more than 40,000 votes if you count for Bush the 35,000 who punched his chad but also wrote his name — the voter’s attempt to be doubly certain his or her vote was cast for Bush — and the 80,000 where the same was done for Gore.

There were likely other reasons Gore won Florida, but that one was dispositive — or would have been, had Florida’s Secretary of State not been appointed by Bush’s brother and not been simultaneously in charge of the election and co-chair of the Bush campaign.  She threw out those “overvotes” because “the intent of the voter could not be discerned.”

(In Texas, where Bush was governor at the time, all such votes were ruled valid, as common sense suggests they should be.)

Fairly counted, Gore won both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

There’s nothing to be done about that now except to turn out a massive blue wave in November.*

Yet it is worth noting that had Gore been inaugurated, there would have been no war in Iraq (indeed, very possibly no 9/11 in the first place), no right-wing Supreme Court (and thus no gutting of the Voting Rights Act or President Donald Trump) . . . women’s reproductive rights would still be protected by Roe . . . we’d be eight years further along combatting climate change . . . the assault weapons ban might not have been allowed to expire . . . and on and on.

3. So did Hitler.  “And now we know how he did it,” says Thom Hartmann in this 12-minute video . . .

. . . which follows all too persuasively the Robert Kagan piece offered Friday: A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable.*

If you think Hartmann is unfair or goes too far in a few places, I would agree with you; but in the main he is spot on — and he doesn’t even mention the book of Hitler’s speeches Ivana Trump said he kept by his bedside.  When asked about this in 1990 by Vanity Fair‘s Marie Brenner, he told her it was not a book of Hitler’s speeches, it was Mein Kampf.  (Oh, swell.) But in fact it was My New Order, a book of Hitler’s speeches.

Have a great week.

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*If you’re in a position to help, click here.  And/or volunteer with Field Team 6, Vote Forward, Working America, and your local chapter of  The League of Women Voters.  

And just by reading an article like this — A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable (only in German) — and then joining with millions of others to make sure the would-be dictator was soundly defeated at the polls.

“There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States,” argues Robert Kagan in the Washington Post, “and it is getting shorter every day. So why is everyone behaving like normal?”

Read it and let me know what you think.

Never have, never will.

I’m afraid of snakes, spiders . . . undomesticated animals of any kind, really . . . hate bugs and poison ivy, fear getting lost, require modern plumbing, broadband, and abundant ice.

I’ll never forget the scene in Christopher Buckey’s Wet Work where the guy jumps off the boat into the Amazon to escape being shot and a candiru swims up his urethra sending him into such brain-exploding pain that he begs to be shot.  Something like that.  The specific memory fades, but my fear remains indelible.

My basic philosophy: “If it’s not paved, it’s not safe.”

That said, I’m gob smacked by the beauty and importance of the remote and untamed; and have long proudly supported the Amazon Conservation Team.

Each year they invite me to “Come on down!”

Each year I write my check with the memo: “Are you crazy?!”

But now we can travel down the Amazon just by clicking here.

CLARIFICATION

Yesterday’s post was accurate (I really did pay 18 cents for HYMC shares) but confusing (because it did not adjust for HYMC’s intervening 1-for-10 reverse split).

The stock is up 10-fold not because it’s up, but because it reverse split.

Post-split, my cost was $1.80, not 18 cents; and the stock is down from $160, not $16.

A COMMON ENEMY

Israel completed its voluntary withdrawal from Gaza on September 12, 2005, forcing all its citizens who were living there to leave.

The Palestinians continued firing rockets and devoted the next 18 years to building 300 miles of tunnels and underground weapons-manufacturing facilities with the stated goal of destroying Israel.

Can you imagine how much steel and cement and wood — and effort — that took?

More to the point, how different things would be if those same resources had been devoted to building a prosperous economy above ground?

Farms and schools and factories?  And good business and cultural relationships with its prosperous neighbor?

The Palestinians and Israelis have a common enemy: Hamas.

A TAX-SELLING OPPTY UPDATE

A couple of weeks ago, I bought more HYMC, at 18 cents [$1.80, adjusted for the subsequent 1-for-10 reverse split], down from its $16 high [$160]; and OPRT, at $2.50, down from $27. 

“The first has cash and gold that might (might!) prove to be worth a lot more than its debt,” I reported. “The second has been the victim of bad management that might (might!) get replaced with good management.”

My thought was, and is, that these stocks may have been unduly beaten down by year-end tax selling.

The update is that someone has gambled $7 million (that I hope he can afford to lose) on OPRT and yesterday filed this with the S.E.C.

Scroll down to “Item 4” for his rationale.  After reading it — you know I can’t resist these things — I bought more.

But first:

Republican Congressman Chip Roy.  An unmissable 31 seconds.

And also:

Did you see yesterday’s White House announcement of nearly 30 new actions to strengthen supply chains critical to America’s economic and national security?

“These actions will help Americans get the products they need when they need them, enable reliable deliveries for businesses, strengthen our agriculture and food systems, and support good-paying, union jobs here at home.”

Saturday, I suggested that government should be “competent, thoughtful, civil, collegial, law-abiding — democratic — and inspired to serve and improve the lives of its citizens.”

These actions are just the latest example of Team Biden’s past three years’ work do just that.

The job is definitely not done yet; things remain really tough for many. But it’s worth noting that we’re doing way better than the rest of the rich world.  And at least most Americans are better off financially now than before the pandemic.

Meanwhile (did you watch those 31 seconds?), the Republicans have been doing all they can to obstruct progress, to keep insulin prices high, keep assault weapons on the street, keep from solving the border crisis, and keep the IRS from collecting taxes owed by billionaires and corporations.

Not to mention Tommy Tuberville.

And now:

Paul London puts the new House Speaker’s economics into perspective.

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. . . What is scary about the new Speaker and the Republican Party in 2023 is how enthusiastically they are recycling 19th century ideas about the government’s role in the economy, and especially about government debt and spending. They are even spreading the view that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs that Simons and many Republicans would certainly have supported are “socialistic,” could be privatized, and therefore that spending for them should be cut back.

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The threats America faced back during the Depression were not socialist programs like public schools and public roads, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, but, rather, these guys on the right and these guys on the left.  Both extremes truly suck.  (Though it should be noted that those on the extreme left envisioned a utopia where everyone was respected . . . while those on the right envisioned a master race that would subjugate all others, exterminating some as needed.)

Anyway: read Paul London.

Highly relevant, as Republicans aim to “shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.”

Move to a blue state — or Japan.

Tom Hartmann Explains Why.

It’s a little shrill in places (well, heck: it’s life or death, so perhaps that can be excused?) —

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While all this is shocking in aggregate, it shouldn’t surprise us that a political party that swears its first allegiance to billionaires and giant multinational corporations would choose money and profits over health and life.

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— but worth the read.

Also worth the read:

Two memoirs. Jann Wenner’s, Like A Rolling Stone, which I’ve been reading with my eyes; and Barbra Streisand’s, My Name Is Barbra, which I’ve been reading with my ears.  In both cases, occasionally asking Alexa to play the song they’re writing about.  If you’re 20 and your thing is Lil Uzi Vert, Wenner and Streisand may be lost on you.  But if you ever read Rolling Stone or are a person who needs people . . . dig in.

I was so carried away with Peggy Noonan’s column yesterday, I forgot to tell you that I’m grateful for your readership!

In an ordinary year, I might leave it at that.

I am grateful for your readership.

But everything is on the line over the next 12 months so it’s worth adding that I’m also grateful for patriots like Liz Cheney, Mark Milley, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, John Boehner, John Kasich, Barack Obama, Mary Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hillary Clinton, Cassidy Hutchinson, Brad Raffensperger . . . among so many others . . . and for the overwhelming majority of Americans who fought to preserve democracy 80 years ago, and the slim majority who fight to preserve it now.* 

You know what government should be?

Competent, thoughtful, civil, collegial, law-abiding — democratic — and inspired to serve and improve the lives of its citizens.

That said, take a minute to watch “normal versus crazy.”

*Click here to help.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

I was particularly struck by what two women I admire had to say in the Wall Street Journal.

First, Peggy Noonan: We Should All Give Thanks for Taylor Swift.

Infused with goodwill, a Noonan trademark; and beautifully written (another).

→ If you encounter a paywall, don’t despair!  The Journal seems to be running a Black Friday sale today — a year’s subscription for just $26 — 94% off!

Second, PEN America’s Suzanne Nossel: A Free-Speech Fix for Our Divided Campuses.

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. . . As the conflict continues in the Middle East, college students are alternately emboldened and alarmed, faculty are at loggerheads, donors are irate, and college presidents are embattled. But the crisis presents an opportunity. . . .

. . . Students and faculty alike . . . need to see that free speech is most valuable not as a weapon to wield against ideological opponents but as a tool in the search for common truths. Among top universities, the University of Chicago has taken a lead on these issues, making free-speech awareness a key part of orientation programs for undergraduates and law students and recently launching a new campus center to reinforce those efforts.

But free-speech education must not end there. Today’s students have come of age in the era of social media, where speech too often consists of short, angry ideological salvos. The speech promoted by engagement-driven algorithms is long on outrage and virtue-signaling, short on nuance, balance and basic politeness. . . .

. . . During the short years that students share meals, dorm life and classes with those unlike themselves, they need to be taught how to use the power of speech, how to listen and how to grasp and hold the complexities of a pluralistic society. . . .

Universities also need to reinforce the idea that hateful speech, though protected by the First Amendment, is still contemptible and thwarts reasoned discourse. . . .

Rather than shying away from uncomfortable subjects, professors should encourage students to hear out ideas that may be upsetting and learn how to regulate their own feelings and reactions. . . .

. . . Turning universities into thriving free-speech communities is not a matter of a one-time freshman orientation or, worse, click-thru online training. What is required is a whole-of-university approach, supported by donors and alumni. Presidents and provosts, student affairs offices, residential staff, faculty, administrators and even facilities and security personnel need to understand and embrace the norms and habits of democratic discourse. . . .

They also need to demonstrate the behaviors they seek to inculcate by ensuring that heterodox views are represented in academic departments, hosting debates between speakers who sharply disagree and facilitating meetings where contentious subjects are discussed. In recent days, some campuses and scholars have modeled this approach. The Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies departments at Dartmouth hosted joint events about the Israel-Hamas war, and the deans of the policy schools at Columbia and Princeton—one of them Israeli, the other Palestinian—wrote an essay together on how to keep dialogue going. . . .

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Worth reading in full.

Peggy Noonan concludes her column:

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Happy Thanksgiving weekend to the great and fabled nation that is still, this day, the hope of the world.

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Amen.