Author: A.T.

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.

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!

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.

Liz Cheney’s book just came, so I’m going to play hooky and dig in.

But FYI —

Elon Musk is going down a conspiratorial rabbit hole and taking X with him.

Trump on Hannity’s show: 24 false or misleading claims in 5 minutes.

OK, I give up. Use the damn dishwasher.  Turns out, doing so can save water and energy.  And try running your washing machine on “cold.”  Likewise.  Plus a few other appliance-related tips as well.

From Fast Company: The best Apple product you aren’t using costs just 99 cents.  “Apple’s Hide My Email service protects your inbox from spam and shields your personal data from hackers. Here’s how to start using it now.”

Palestinians and Israelis have a common enemy: Hamas.

“We’re condemned to suffer because of this stupid organization,” says one.

This was posted back in January by the Center for Peace Communications:

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. . . The gulf in living standards between Hamas leaders and ordinary Gazans has grown increasingly conspicuous in recent years. In 2019, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh moved to Qatar with his family, while the group’s deputy leader Khalil al-Hayya relocated to Turkey soon after. Since then he has visited Gaza only twice. Fat’hi Hamad, another senior Hamas official, now also resides in Istanbul, often flying to Beirut for meetings in luxury hotels. More than a dozen other high-ranking Hamas officials have followed suit. This exodus has not gone unnoticed. According to Azmi Keshawi, Gaza analyst at the International Crisis Group, “Ordinary Palestinians see that Hamas… [is] living in these comfortable zones where they are no longer suffering and seem far from the Palestinian cause and issues.”

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This was posted last week: What Ordinary Gazans Think About Hamas.

Worth the watch.

(Starts 1:20 in, after the ad.)

Mark Cuban’s Latest Recommendations.

For your reading pleasure.

Meet this 17-year-old prosecutor.

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. . . By early 2019, he had passed all the CLEP exams and could start applying to law school while he finished eighth grade.

“At first it was very intimidating — I had zero knowledge about the law,” Park told The Washington Post. “But now, I pretty much have a 10-year head start. That’s like living 10 years extra. I value that over the traditional high school experience.” . . .

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I just had to share this.  (Thank you, David.)

And finally, on the off chance you’ve missed this, or an opinion piece like it:  University presidents flunk the humanity test.

As Bill Maher has pointed out over and over, many campuses — and others — are way too woke when it comes to “trigger warnings” and “microaggressions.”

Yet when it comes to genocide — whether of Muslims, Jews, whites, blacks, or anyone else — that needs context before a determination can be made?

Have a great week.

Specifically:

The top 1% of American earners now control more wealth than the nation’s entire middle class. — USA Today.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but high among them is that every Republican since Reagan (except Bush 41) has cut taxes for the rich, while Republicans in Congress have worked to protect those gains when Democrats held power.

Higher income and estate-tax rates, combined with fewer loopholes, would still allow the rich to get richer and live wonderfully well . . . which is fine by me (not least because I am one of them) . . . but begin to shift the balance back toward something many would consider more reasonable and — for society and the economy as a whole — more healthy.

To make the point, imagine a world in which all income and capital gains above $1 million were exempt from tax, and in which there were no inheritance tax.  It doesn’t take an economist to calculate that the wealth gap would grow even wider.

Conversely, imagine that taxes on all income and inheritance above $1 million were 90% with no loopholes — and that it were enforced.  It doesn’t take an economist to calculate that the wealth gap would shrink.

Either extreme would be a disaster.

> The former could lead to a feeling of victimhood — that the system is rigged — and to the rise of a ruthless demagogue (who alone can fix it).

It’s happened before.

> The latter could lead to a flight of capital and entrepreneurial talent — and a sapping of incentives — that would hurt us all, not just the top 1%.

So most people agree that the best balance lies someplace in the middle.

Many of us believe that the top 1%, through their outsize influence on both parties, but on the Republican Party in particular, have skewed the balance too far in their own favor.

That’s why we see the solution lying not in the election of a demagogue, but in the re-election of a progressive, with a progressive Congress.

Who — as a bonus — believe in the need to confront the climate crisis, the need for sensible gun safety regulation, the right of women to make their own health care decisions, the need for comprehensive bi-partisan immigration reform, the rule of law, the separation of church and state, and the peaceful transition of power.

Have a great weekend!

We all know negatives about Elon Musk — lots of them.  But I found the full 90-minute Andrew Sorkin interview really worth the listen.

He is, after all, not only the richest human on the planet, but arguably the most influential.  Or surely in the top ten.  And he would like to see our species survive.

Did you find 90 seconds yesterday to watch Liz Cheney with arch-liberal Rachel Maddow?

Here’s six minutes with arch-conservative Joe Scarborough.  Had the impeachment vote been a secret ballot, she says, her colleagues would have found the courage to kick him out.

And no, she says; in our talk of the existential threat to democracy, she says, we are not catastrophizing.

That graphic is not from her.

(And if I had created it, it would have read “the 82-year-old Democrat who’s doing a great job.”)

But these are the stakes.

This is truly for all the marbles.

Cheney is not asking us to risk our lives, as, she says, some in Congress now fear they would be doing if they defied Trump.

She’s just asking our help to keep him — the twice-impeached, four-times indicted, adjudicated rapist who loves autocrats and kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside — from destroying the democracy that you and I and she hold dear.

We need your vote.

We need your money.

We need your time.

And I would ask that you send her book to all your Trump-leaning friends and relatives. “I hate to impose on our nearly 40 years’ friendship,” I wrote one of mine, “but can I ask you to read this?  And then call to discuss?  Love you lots . . . ”

We’re gonna win!

. . . which you can buy for them here.

. . . or at least to watch her and policy-nemesis Rachel Maddow, here (90 seconds).

Shame on MSNBC for not making the entire interview available free and without restriction.