Under Oath: The Hunter Biden Story August 4, 2023 “Lock her up,” Trump often exhorted. If his followers believed that was appropriate, given her behavior, then surely he must be locked up, because what he did was orders of magnitude worse. What she did? Move on, folks: nothing to see here. Not with Benghazi — nine Republican-led investigations found her innocent. And not with the emails — even though she made a mistake. There was no indictment of Hillary when Trump controlled things — much as he would have liked to see one — because there was nothing to indict her for. What he did? You could see what he did on TV. You can see Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy and Lindsey Graham, among so many others, laying the blame directly at his feet. You can listen to his “perfect call” warning Georgia’s Secretary of State of criminal charges if he didn’t find Trump 11,780 more votes. You can read the transcript of his “perfect call” linking Congressionally mandated aid to Ukraine to getting dirt on his political opponent. You can read the latest indictment. Now he’s out on bail, indicted in New York, in Florida, in DC, and, soon, in Georgia. Because — under oath — his own people provided evidence that led grand juries to indict him. He broke his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Attempting a coup is a direct assault on the Constitution. “But what about Hunter Biden?” his admirers retort. Because surely if Hunter is guilty of something, his father must be, too. And if his father is guilty of something, then Trump must be innocent! Or, if that’s not what they’re arguing, then what they must be arguing is that two wrong do make a right. I.e., that there can be no proceedings against Trump unless someone also indicts Joe Biden. And Joe must be guilty because Trump says so over and over! (And when has Trump ever not been truthful?) Behold “the Biden crime family.” The wife who teaches community college. The husband who rides Amtrak. The son who died. The other son who has addiction problems and played on his father’s name to enhance his career and fortunes (which is entirely legal — George W. Bush is one of myriad examples that spring to mind). Sounds like a major crime family to me. But now comes the real story, under oath, from an insider as close to the goings-on with Hunter and Joe as you can get. And here it is. Spread it around. Turns out, Joe Biden did nothing wrong.
THIS Is The Case August 3, 2023August 2, 2023 Staging a coup is a serious crime even if it fails. It’s worse than paying someone to take your SATs or raping women or lying about hush money; worse than lying to banks or defrauding consumers or misusing a charitable foundation; worse than cheating on your taxes or bankrupting businesses (which is not illegal at all) or cheating at golf (also not illegal); worse than colluding with Russia or obstructing the investigation thereinto (1,000 former federal prosecutors of both parties say that one is massively illegal); worse than stealing top-secret documents, lying about having them, and refusing to give them back. This Is the Case, argues Tom Nichols in the Atlantic. This is the moment that will decide our future as a democracy. Trump is accused of multiple conspiracies against the United States, all designed to keep him in power against the will of the voters and in violation of the Constitution. . . . . . . Republicans now, more than ever, face a moment of truth. They must decide if they are partisans or patriots. They can no longer claim to be both. . . . The indictment handed down today challenges every American to put a shoulder to the wheel and defend our republic in every peaceful, legal, and civilized way they can. According to the charges . . . the alleged plot inside the White House was not merely to invalidate an election; it included the possibility of unleashing the American military against its own people. Worth reading in full. Then helping, if you can, with time or with treasure.
Finally! August 2, 2023August 1, 2023 We all know he’s guilty, it’s just that a lot of people don’t care. Like Trump, they wanted to see him hold onto power . . . and plan to help him once again. What better way to own the libs? But as you read the indictment, note that it’s not liberals whose words and actions are cited, but those of his own people. On a related topic, let’s talk prison reform. Not because I can imagine his serving time any time soon — though he should — but because I’ve been meaning to share these two links for a while: > California’s free prison calls are repairing estranged relationships and aiding rehabilitation. > Planting seeds of the “Scandinavian model” in America: “California to transform infamous San Quentin prison with Scandinavian ideas, rehab focus.” Both come from the Los Angeles Times (I had to pay $6 for a six-month subscription to see the second one, but it was quick and easy, with a link to cancel that I pasted into my calendar if I don’t want to renew at $4/week in January) . . . . . . and both make great sense.
Compare And Contrast July 31, 2023July 30, 2023 CONTRAST #1: Trump talks; Biden delivers (30 seconds). CONTRAST #2: We want to make it easy to vote; they want to make it hard (e.g., Texas) — and to make administering elections fairly hazardous (e.g., Arizona). If you care about women’s rights or gun safety . . . about delivering rural broadband or revitalizing our C-minus-rated infrastructure . . . about confronting climate change or preserving democracy . . . this stuff should matter a million times more than whether the NCAA guidelines on trans women in sports are sufficiently stringent. But that’s our challenge: getting people to focus on what’s important. And awakening more voters to the fact that — CONTRAST #3 — the economy does better under Democrats than Republicans. And the stock market — CONTRAST #4 — does much better. But because Republicans will try to distract voters with stuff that should matter a million times less, indulge me on two of them: > Trans girls in sports. Did you even know the NCAA has guidelines? The once-Grand Old Party never mentions it. For high school sports, policies vary all over the map and I happily concede reasonable people can disagree on how this should work. But reasonable people might also disagree about whether whether 140-pound 12-year-olds should be allowed to play football. The median 12-year-old American boy weighs 89 pounds. Why is he — or even his 125-pound classmate — at less of a disadvantage against the 140-pounder than is a 12-year-old girl on the field hockey team playing against a trans girl? The trans girl may (or may not) be stronger or faster or heavier than the others — but someone has to be. Why can it never be a trans girl? Or, as above, a 140-pound 12-year-old boy? My own preference would be to leave this to local officials who strive to be fair and who care about all children — including trans children. Adults who love their trans children, I believe, are more to be admired than adults who hate or disown or otherwise discriminate against trans children. My two cents. Republican leadership may disagree. But wherever you stand on this issue, it’s one-millionth as important as the issues the once-G.O.P. hopes to distract us from. > Voter ID. Voter suppression has long been a key Republican tactic. An NRA card is fine, but not a university-issued student ID? A crime to supply water to voters standing for hours in line? Really? I can’t count the number of times people have asked me why, if you need photo ID to borrow books from a library, you shouldn’t need one to vote. That’s meant to be a conversation stopper, but actually it’s bogus. Library theft is an actual problem; voter ID fraud is not. Some people really do intentionally steal library books. Others don’t return them because — like practically all of us — they’re lazy or forgetful or tend to procrastinate. And/or because — once the books are overdue — they want to avoid fines. In short: there is a problem. The library card helps somewhat to mitigate it. With voting, there is no problem. The number of people who pretend to be someone they’re not and vote illegally is vanishingly small — and those criminals are at least as likely to be Republicans as Democrats, so the two vanishingly small numbers more or less cancel each other out anyway. The rightwing Heritage Foundation keeps a database of all proven cases of voter fraud and have come up with a headline number of 1,437. And yes, for every proven case there may be 100 that go undetected. But this database covers decades. During which time billions of votes have been cast. And it includes all kinds of voter fraud — not just identity fraud. And if you drill down on a state — Pennsylvania, say — you’ll see that (a) there have been just a handful of cases since 1994 and (b) Heritage does not report whether it was Democrats or Republicans who cheated. This may not always be knowable, but even where it’s not, it can usually be inferred. And I’m pretty sure that if the preponderance of the vanishingly small number of identity fraud crimes were committed by Democrats, Heritage would have added a “party affiliation” column to its table. Republicans know it’s not easy for people who can’t afford cars to get government issued ID’s, especially if they’re poor or housebound or working two jobs with no time to spare — and that such people are far more likely to vote Democrat than Republican. And that’s the reason they use the library card analogy to justify this unneeded barrier to voting. But wherever you stand on THIS issue, it, too, is one-millionth as important as the issues the once-G.O.P. hopes to distract us from. Have a great week.
World War I and Project 2025 July 28, 2023July 27, 2023 Was Gen. Mark Milley right last year about the war in Ukraine? A seemingly spot-on perspective. But so long as the Ukrainians want to fight, we should support them. Meanwhile, with Americans burning up this weekend and the increased risk of severe climate change (like: out-of-the-movies severe), our Republicans friends — who understand that fossil fuels and a burning planet are no more related than tobacco and cancer or than Trump’s January 6th rally and the innocent “tourism” that followed — have a plan to “block the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy; slash funding for the EPA environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting California’s electric car standards; and give Republican state officials more power to regulate polluting industries.” Stay cool. Help if you can, with time or treasure.
Crises! Lies! And A New Stock To Consider July 27, 2023July 26, 2023 Robert Reich lays out the Five Made Up Crises the right is using to distract voters from how well Bidenomics is working (inflation down! real wages rising! unemployment at record lows! factory-construction booming! 401k’s robust!) and what a terrible threat to democracy the right has become. It’s A New Kind of Fascism, writes this history professor in The Atlantic. “I’ve resisted using the word until now, but something menacing and novel is taking shape with the possibility of a second Trump term.” How is this even a possibility in America? Thom Hartmann explains how demagogues seize power. It’s scary, and it’s real, and we’re not going to let it happen. I know practically nothing about the Internet of Things, 4G, 5G, or the French company Sequans. But I’m betting Maria Marced does, or she wouldn’t recently have agreed to join the board. SQNS at $2.37 a share — only with money I can truly afford to lose.
MAGA Gold July 26, 2023July 25, 2023 It’s dumb to buy gold — and a whole lot dumber to buy it this way, as so many MAGA Republicans have and do. Like Ed DeSanto, “a semiretired Florida medical coder and an avid right-wing radio fan.” . . . DeSanto’s $100,000 investment netted him just $53,000 worth of gold and silver . . . meaning the coins had been marked up 92 percent over the value of the metal. . . . The only surprise here is that Trump himself is not somehow in on the scam. But Giuliani and Ted Cruz are. So many fundamentally nice people have fallen so deeply into the right-wing’s alternative reality. One of them — a faithful reader — took the time to respond to yesterday‘s comment on APE and AMC. You may recall that it concluded: At what price the combined stock will trade after the two merge — and in the years to come — I have no idea. But I’d rather own nine-tenths of a share for $1.80 than a full share for $5.85. To which he responded . . . Or would you rather own nine-tenths of a Hunter artwork? . . . offering this clip from The Yeshiva World: ENDLESS SCANDALS: Joe Biden Appointed Buyer of Hunter’s Paintings to Prominent Position As President Joe Biden campaigned for the presidency, he promised to maintain an “absolute wall” between his official duties and his family’s private business interests. This pledge came into focus when Hunter Biden’s artwork debut in a New York art gallery in 2021 garnered attention with prices soaring up to $500,000. You can read the whole article, but the (unpaid) “prominent position” the buyer was appointed to was not ambassador to France, as you might expect, or Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. It was not head of the Federal Trade Commission, Chief of Protocol, or even Poet Laurate. No, it was a seat — one of 19 — on the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. It’s hard to get more prominent than that! What’s more, this “SCANDAL” was brought to light by “an explosive expose.” Or at least that’s how it seemed to my correspondent. He wasn’t interested in the weird mispricing of APE and AMC. He had no comment on the situation in Israel or the struggle to preserve our democracy we face here. And he certainly had nothing to say about this. What occupied his attention and he successfully brought to mine was the “explosive” revelation that a long-time Democratic mega-donor, who had overpaid for one of Hunter’s paintings, landed an unpaid seat on a commission that neither he nor you nor I nor almost anyone else had ever heard of. Welcome to the cult. BONUS Why All the stimulus was a good idea and not the cause of inflation.
Democracy Vs. Autocracy July 25, 2023July 24, 2023 Sunday’s first “Israel” post was quickly followed by a second, so if you missed it — and want to see the good that planting an olive tree, or a whole grove, could do (and how little it costs) — check it out. As you know, Israel took a giant step backward yesterday. Even so, a young Israeli friend writes: It’s a setback but I think/hope that we can leap out of it stronger and emboldened. The liberal secular public in Israel is galvanizing. The current head of the Mossad spoke to his employees yesterday and was quoted as saying: “if it comes to it I assure you I will stand on the right side of history”. All former heads of the Israeli defense apparatus are against this move. The name of the game now is perseverance – fighting on with no loss of enthusiasm! Nick Kristoff thinks It’s Time to Start Discussing the Unmentionable. Here at home, the same fight is underway: Autocracy versus democracy. A strongman who refuses to give up power, vows retribution, kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside, admires Putin; a demagog and a liar who assaults women and stiffs creditors, vilifies the press and the FBI, watches gleefully as rioters storm our nation’s Capitol refusing — for hours — to call them off; a bully and a narcissist who could walk down Fifth Avenue shooting people without losing votes. (“You’re damn straight he could!” shout his supporters when they read a sentence like that.) Versus a normal Administration that respects the Constitution, the rule of law, and civility; works long hours trying to make life better, safer, and healthier for its citizens and for generations to come. Jonathan Alter says 2024 should be about A, B, C, D . . . Abortion, Bidenomics, Climate, Democracy . . . but that the last of these is the one to emphasize. This is an election to decide whether we keep the world’s longest-running democracy — a beacon to the world — or watch the light go out. If you can help, click here. Barbenheimer‘s giant opening weekend pushed AMC stock up more than 30% yesterday, closing at $5.85, The nearly identical shares we own, APE, closed unchanged at $1.80. Fairly soon, the two stocks will be one and the same . . . although a lawsuit wound up changing the terms slightly: instead of each APE share converting into an AMC share, it will convert into just under nine-tenths of a share. At what price the combined stock will trade after the two merge — and in the years to come — I have no idea. But I’d rather own nine-tenths of a share for $1.80 than a full share for $5.85.
Showdown Time For Israel July 23, 2023July 23, 2023 Conservative columnist Max Boot: Israel’s biggest security threat is Benjamin Netanyahu. . . . [He] doesn’t seem to care that his policies are undermining Israeli democracy . . . Like Trump, he seems to care about nothing but holding onto power . . . President Biden, a true friend of Israel, has been trying to warn Bibi off the destructive path he is on — but to no avail. . . . Unfortunately, Biden’s positive influence is being diluted by Bibi’s fervent Republican supporters, who ridiculously accuse Biden of being anti-Israel. Republicans seem as eager to enable Netanyahu’s assault on Israeli democracy as they are Trump’s assault on U.S. democracy. . . . Worth reading in full. (What’s that? You don’t have a few bucks to subscribe to the Washington Post? “Democracy Dies in Darkness!”) Even more important, Tom Friedman: Only Biden Can Save Israel Now. . . . Mr. President, when we met last Tuesday and you gave me your very measured statement urging Netanyahu not to “rush” this legislation through without “the broadest possible consensus” — which he so clearly does not have — it came as an electric shock to the Israeli political system, dominating the news for several days. It was such a shock because a vast majority of Israelis believe — rightly — that you are a true friend and that your advice came from the heart. But I’m afraid this Israeli government needs another dose of your tough love — not just from your heart but from the heart of U.S. strategic interests as well. Because Netanyahu is plowing ahead despite your urgings. Despite a warning from more than 1,100 Israeli Air Force pilots and technicians that they will not fly for a dictatorship. Despite an open letter signed by dozens of former top security officials, including former heads of the Israel Defense Forces, Mossad, Shin Bet and police beseeching the prime minister to stop. Despite Israel’s top business forum warning of “irreversible and destructive consequences on the Israeli economy.” Despite fears that this could eventually fracture unit cohesion in the base of the Israeli Army. And despite a remarkable, largely spontaneous five-day march by everyday Israelis from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the likes of which had never happened before. . . . . . . If I may suggest, Mr. President, what is needed is that your secretary of state, your secretary of defense, your Treasury secretary, your commerce secretary, your secretary of agriculture, your U.S. trade representative, your attorney general, your C.I.A. director and your Joint Chiefs call their Israeli counterparts today and let them know that if Netanyahu moves ahead — without a consensus, fracturing Israeli society and its military — it will not only undermine the shared values between our two countries but also do serious damage to our own strategic interests in the Middle East. And U.S. interests are very much our business. Because as the Knesset moves to vote on this issue on Monday, something very important could break in Israel and in our relationship with Israel. And once it’s gone, it will never come back. I hope that it is not already too late. . . . Also worth reading in full. (What’s that? You don’t have a few bucks to subscribe to the New York Times?)
More Than An Olive Branch July 22, 2023 But before we get to that, some reading suggestions . . . Sweat is a prize-winning play so powerful that reading it as I just did — with my eyes, not my ears — may actually beat seeing it on stage. More time to stop and reflect on what these characters are going through. I can’t begin to do it justice. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by contrast, is Bill Bryson’s memoir about growing up in the 50’s, and how amazing America was back then, even without the polio vaccine, Novocaine, widespread air conditioning, the Internet, frequent flier miles, index funds, or iPhones. (What am I leaving out?) Like everything Bryson writes (most recently plugged: One Summer: America, 1927): fascinating and fun. If you’re looking for a short page-turner before Jack Smith’s “January 6” indictment is released, try his current indictment — a 10-minute read about Trump’s theft of documents, refusal to return them, and lying about having them. And for something heartening and even shorter: Morgan Stanley credits Biden’s leadership with “much stronger” than expected GDP growth. Inflation has fallen for 12 straight months, real wages are rising, predictions of an almost certain recession are being walked back — you knew all that — but did you know this? In the four years of Donald Trump’s administration, total spending on manufacturing facilities grew by five percent. During the first two years of Biden’s administration, manufacturing investment more than doubled, and about 800,000 manufacturing jobs were created. These remarkable results are the outcome of Biden policies, including the Inflation Reduction Act and its green technology provisions, the infrastructure bill, and the CHIPS Act. — Robert Reich And now the olive branch. I am strongly pro Israel . . . anti Netanyahu‘s attempt to destroy Israeli democracy . . . pro the Palestinian people. Read Israel: A Simple Guide to The Most Misunderstood Country on Earth to see how one can be all three — and why many superbly well-meaning American college kids (and others) have it wrong. In any event, here is a new, non-political, peaceful, productive way to help: Treedom For Palestine. Not just “an olive branch” — a whole olive tree grove, if you’re wealthy enough to sponsor a whole farm, or else what works out to $24 a tree. Have a great week.