Author: A.T.

It’s a big deal that Joe Biden has led NATO’s reinvigoration and expansion to include Finland and now, it seems, Sweden.

It should be heartening to anyone, Republican or Democrat, who wants to live in a peaceful, largely democratic world.

And did you notice that unemployment has been under 4% for 17 months now — the longest stretch in more than 50 years?

Or that inflation has fallen for 11 months in a row — back to where it was after 8 years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency — and is getting ever closer to where it needs to be?  Used car prices fell 4% last month alone, down 10% year over year.

DNC Treasurer Virginia McGregor:

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While the GOP is running across the country taking credit for legislation they didn’t support when it was up for a vote and hoping people will be distracted by the micro issues they keep trying to bring to the forefront, Democrats are focused on the macro issues. Inflation is down, job creation is up, and our country is getting back on track.

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Oppenheimer — the film that will get you back into the theater: July 21.

And speaking of movie theaters, APE ($1.91) — the intrinsically ever so slightly more valuable twin of AMC ($4.39) — will almost surely be converted into AMC shares fairly soon, at which point there will be just one set of shares — AMC — and one stock price.  Just where that price will settle, and then move over time, will be interesting to watch.  Having bought our APE last November at around $1.05, I’m comfortable hanging on for a while to see what happens.  (Famous last words?)

Either way, I’m going to see Oppenheimer.

Why liberals protesting cluster munitions for Ukraine are wrong.

Executive summary: The reason so many countries ban them is that the unexploded ones can later kill or maim civilians — in this case, Ukrainians — long after the war is over.  Max Boot argues that if, knowing this, the Ukrainians have decided they must use them anyway, despite the risk to their own people, it is their decision to make, not ours.

The blame for their use, really, falls not on us, or even on the Ukrainians, but on Putin for launching his invasion, committing countless war crimes, and firing his own cluster munitions (which are leaving far more “duds” unexploded on Ukrainian soil than ours will).

Biden acknowledged it was a difficult decision, but I think made the right one.

It’s a little embarrassing that my best investment — ever — was in a deeply sophomoric musical about 52 dead nuns (poisoned by tainted vichyssoise, so the surviving nuns had to put on a talent show to raise the money to bury them), called Nunsense.  It played throughout the world and spawned spin-offs that included Nunsense A-Men (the all-male version), Nuncrackers, and Meshuggah-Nuns.

The creator of all this silliness, Danny Goggin — a boyish 34 when I invested, now a boyish 80 — tells the tale here.

Fun.

Linda Greenhouse reviews John Roberts’ 18-year regime.

Sad.

Depoliticize the Court!

The Laptop — How Credible Are Giuliani, Et Al, Really?

A former Republican Congressman suggests there may be less here than the Right would have us think.

I’m not sure it’s worth the full 7 minutes, but you’ll get the gist pretty quick.

However the laptop stuff turns out, Hunter Biden has no role in the Administration, so who really cares?  (Versus, say, Jared Kushner and his deal with Qatar.)

Here’s 4 minutes on the Republican front-runner. who actually was the previous Administration and plans to be the next one.  So we should care a lot.

President Biden, by contrast — for all the Right makes of his occasional stumble — is all the things you’d want in a President: thoughtful, wise, and steady.  Watch this past weekend’s interview with Fareed Zakaria and see if you agree.

Sorry to give you so many links.  Take the rest of the week off.

Not original with me, but true:

We’ve had 46 Presidents.

They’ve been indicted on a total of 71 felony counts.

Here’s how it breaks down:

Presidents    # of Felony Counts

1-44                           0

45                              71

46                              0

Most Republicans think Ronald Reagan’s economy was terrific.

After 8 years of his magic, the unemployment rate was 5.3% — versus today’s 3.6%.

Inflation was the same 4% that it is today.

So Joe Biden’s economy is perhaps even more terrific?

A perpetually surprised media isn’t doing its job, argues Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post:

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You might find it remarkable that outlets touting their economic foresightedness and keen analysis could be continually surprised about the economy’s strength after 29 consecutive months of job growth, inflation steadily declining, durable goods having been up for three consecutive months, 35,000 new infrastructure projects, an extended period in which real wages exceeded inflation and outsize gains for lower wage-earners. It’s as though outlets are so invested in the narrative of failure and imminent recession that reams of positive data have had little impact on their “narrative.”

Part of the problem might be the media’s preference for political horse-race coverage over events on the ground. “What do voters think?” (about what? about the media’s own negative spin on the economy?) replaces “What is going on?”

We have seen far too little coverage of the economic transformation in little towns, rural areas and aging metro centers brought about by new investment in plants, infrastructure projects and green energy related to the Chips Act. . . .

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So far.

The once-Grand Old Party overwhelmingly favors him to reflect their values.

Who wants their kids to grow up to be like Barack Obama (“be kind and be useful”) — or Joe Biden — when they can grow up to be like Donald Trump (“I’d like to punch him in the face”)?

Japanese firm believes it could make a solid-state battery with a range of 745 miles that charges in 10 minutes.

And not just any Japanese firm — Toyota.

Perhaps not great for Tesla or General Motors, but potentially great for the planet.

We have all the energy we need, virtually free, from the sun.

Not just for cars; for everything.

And we have the technology.

All we need to solve now, as President Clinton used to say so often near the end of his presidency, is the oldest problem of all.  Not splitting the atom or mapping the human genome or landing men on the moon.  Just this: learning to live with each other.

Thom Hartmann asks at Raw Story:

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What would America be like with ‘Dear Leader’ in 2024?

NBC News reported this week that Trump is not only still leading the GOP field, but that his margin is growing:

. . . Another national survey, reported by NBC on Monday, shows a tossup in a Trump-Biden matchup; Biden’s small lead is within the margin of error.

All of which raises the question: what would America be like if Trump or a similarly fascist Republican were to take the White House in 2024? What would the dire warnings about American fascism, were they realized, mean in real life?

Louise and I have been in Spain all this week while Jefferson Smith fills in for me on my radio/TV show, and we’ve learned more than a little that might answer those questions.

Most Americans, when they think of fascism, think of goosestepping Nazi soldiers and death camps, and believe that system of government was totally crushed by the Allies in 1945 at the end of World War II. But Spain was fascist right up until dictator Francisco Franco’s death in 1975 at the age of 82.

There are still many people here in Spain who regard the Franco time fondly; if you were on his side, supported his Falange party — later called simply “The Movement” — or were assiduously nonpolitical, life could be relatively normal.

. . . most people simply avoided politics back during Franco’s time — and are still, to this day, reluctant to discuss the horrors of his regime.

. . . If you weren’t political, life went on like in much of the rest of “free” Europe. People worked, went to theatre and dance clubs, raised their kids, vacationed, cared for pets, engaged in hobbies, fell in love or got divorced: as long as Franco’s regime wasn’t mentioned in a negative light, life was good.

Like in most fascist or neofascist countries through history and today the wealthy were the most well taken care of, but even working people and the poor enjoyed a reasonable social safety net. In 1942, Franco mandated a national healthcare insurance program, for example, and throughout his reign expanded the number of hospital beds and clinics across the country; in 1951 he led a movement through much of the Spanish speaking world to establish what something like American Social Security.

If you spoke out against his fascist movement job opportunities vanished, you could be imprisoned, or even “disappeared,” as happened to tens of thousands. One of the people we spoke with here told us how the media was entirely in the bag for Franco with pro-fascist slogans and news shorts airing constantly, along with commentary praising him even interspersing music and programs on radio and TV.

Trump and his followers have given us numerous insights into how he’d transform American society to resemble something like Franco’s regime. Like with Franco, loyalty to Trump and his cult was a far more important factor in rising through the ranks of government and even private industry.

Trump has promised — most recently just a few weeks ago — that he would use the awesome police powers of the federal government to target his political enemies for persecution, imprisonment, and possibly even death.

Several former DOJ officials, men Trump has suggested could lead the agency if he again becomes president, have endorsed stripping our federal police agencies of their independence and making them armed factions of Trump’s movement.

Republicans don’t talk about it out loud very much, unlike Nixon’s man G. Gordon Liddy, who used to love on fascism back in the day when he signed memos using Hitler’s SS symbol. But MAGA Republicans have a model for a future America and it grows both closer and clearer every day.

What could it be? What would it look like? How will it most likely come about?

First, and essential to American fascism, Republicans envision a strong-man Leader who will hold power for as long as he (it’s almost always a “he”) chooses, with the transition to the next Leader determined by The Leader himself.

This has been the primary characteristic of every fascist-type of government to emerge in the 7000-year written history of the modern world.

When Trump was running for re-election, at rallies in both Nevada and Wisconsin, he came right out and said that not only would he win the 2020 election but that he’d also be re-elected again in 2024 and 2028. He was dead serious.

Sure, our constitution says a president can only serve two terms: so did the Russian constitution, until Putin got it amended. Trump was planning the same, and his followers were — if the response at the rallies when he announced it is any indicator — ecstatic at the prospect.

That single strongman Leader, and his hand-selected toadies at every secondary or tertiary level of government, is the key to understanding everything else that happens when a country flips from democracy to oligarchy to fascism.

For example, in a fascist state the way that you as an average citizen ensure your own advancement and economic, personal, and political security is by sucking up to that one man (albeit often through one of his factotum’s). You either become an acolyte/follower or you find yourself on the outside looking in.

If you think this sounds extreme, just look at today’s Republican Party, which has become the prototype for how these MAGA Republicans will reinvent the United States if they gain power.

Liz Cheney spoke against Trump, and the Wyoming GOP expelled her while Trump supported a primary challenger. Four Republicans who voted to impeach Trump faced such a backlash that they decided to retire from politics: Adam Kinzinger, Anthony Gonzalez, John Katko, and Fred Upton.

Not only is fealty to The Leader required for political advancement, it’s also a requirement for individual economic advancement. Employers eager for state contracts or The Leader’s endorsements of their products or services demote or fire those insufficiently loyal to The Leader.

Psychologist Dr. Bandy Lee was fired from Yale University for writing that Trump was dangerously mentally ill. Schoolteacher Leah Kinyon was fired from her job for saying that “I hate Donald Trump. … He is a sexual predator. He’s a literal moron.” Juli Brisker was fired from her job with government contractor Akima for giving Trump’s motorcade the finger.

Rebekah Jones was fired by Ron DeSantis for telling the truth about his covering up Florida Covid statistics. Florida’s Orange County Health Director Dr. Raul Pino was removed for encouraging his staff to get vaccinated.

When companies defy The Leader they are brutally punished, as DeSantis is doing right now to Disney and the Tampa Bay Rays. Soon companies don’t even try to stand up to The Leader, including media companies.

And now Trump mini-me DeSantis has signed legislation giving him the authority to “hold accountable” college professors, reviewing their politics every five years so those who aren’t totally on board with his agenda can lose tenure and be fired. The headline at Salon says it all:

“DeSantis signs bill requiring Florida students, professors to register political views with state: Universities may lose funding if staff and students’ beliefs do not satisfy Florida’s GOP-run legislature.”

You end up doing things on The Leader’s behalf, whether you’re supporting his party, working at a private corporation, or engaged in the nonprofit sector like teaching at a university or medical center.

Defying or challenging The Leader brings opprobrium; supporting The Leader is the path to career advancement. The Trump White House and DeSantis Governor’s Office are filled with examples.

Everything is done for The Leader because The Leader is the state. The state and The Leader have become one.

If you challenge The Leader, you’re challenging the state, and that’s treason. As Marjorie Taylor Greene said of former speaker Pelosi:

“She took an oath to protect American citizens and uphold our laws. And she gives aid and comfort to our enemies who illegally invade our land. That’s what treason is. And by our law, representatives and senators can be kicked out and no longer serve in our government — and it’s a crime punishable by death”.

Whatever the Leader says becomes the law. This is called “rule by decree” and it’s where every fascist in history – including those for the thousands of years before Mussolini “invented” the word – has ended up.

The power to rule by decree goes back to the days of kings and is also embedded in our laws about the president’s emergency powers. Trump came close to invoking it with an “emergency declaration” when he lost the election. General Flynn begged him to do it and “temporarily suspend the Constitution.”

It now appears that the reason Trump was showing classified Iranian battle plans to reporters at Bedminister was to trash-talk General Mark Milley as “revenge” for Milley’s refusing to use the military like Flynn wanted to complete the January 6th coup.

Next time, he won’t be so restrained and he will have surrounded himself in advance with people like Flynn who will make it happen.

Yet, while it will change how power is distributed in our government, things will still look much the same, just like during Franco’s reign here in Spain.

If a fascist like Trump or DeSantis rises to power again in the United States, there will still be all the trappings of democracy.

The House and Senate, state houses and governors, bureaucracies and political systems will remain intact. Everything looks normal on the surface.

But when you peel off the top layer, you discover that all of those people in all of those offices, whether elected or bureaucratic, are serving only one principle and one person and that is The Leader.

Be they governors, secretaries of state, United States senators, members of the US House, state representatives, or even a part-time guy working at a polling place in Michigan, they might get a call at any time from The Leader demanding that they do something for him, whether it’s legal or not.

There will still be opposition parties and political candidacies in a Republican fascist America, although if any of them seriously challenges The Leader or shows the ability to disrupt the status quo, they’ll be discovered to have a secret drug habit or get imprisoned for corruption or other made-up charges.

Nobody will really notice, though. People will just shrug their shoulders and assume another crook got caught. The swamp is being cleaned up.

The prosperity of the company you work for will depend in part on how well it supports the politics of The Leader. Today we see this writ large in Russia and the GOP’s new role model, Hungary.

The Leader helps a few dozen oligarchs he knows are loyal to him seize control of the nation’s major industries, and every smaller company in each of those industries must directly or indirectly answer to that oligarch.

Those who fail to are bought out, shut down, or simply cannot find customers or supplies because nobody will do business with them.

The industry where this is most visible at first is the media.

Some media organizations will be absorbed by the government itself, as Putin has done in Russia; others will be bought out and run by the Leader’s oligarch buddies, as is the case today in Hungary and Turkey (among others).

Soon opposition voices vanish from all but the most obscure media, and those few opposing voices that are tolerated are pointed to by the Leader as proof the nation “is still an open democracy.”

Jews and people of color may find a rougher time maintaining a job or staying safe from vigilantes, abuse, and discrimination but white conservatives will be just fine, particularly white conservative men. The majority of Americans, so long as they pay attention to football instead of politics, won’t even notice how the nation has changed.

There will still be Christmas parties, although people celebrating Hanukkah or Muslims praying may want to pull the shades closed.

Hate crimes and murders by vigilante groups start happening with such frequency that the media doesn’t bother to report them anymore.

Within a few years a little bit of every business activity in the country ends up in The Leader’s pocket. And The Leader uses that revenue to enrich himself, his inner circle, and those who are part of his military entourage, his private military.

That’s right: The Leader’s private military.

It’d be put together like what Ron DeSantis is organizing in Florida right now, a state-sanctioned militia that answers only to The Leader, in this case DeSantis. Trump tried the same in 2020, flying 700+ Customs and Border Protection and other federal officers into Portland where they hit the streets without identification on their uniforms to beat and kidnap people protesting George Floyd’s murder.

When the private militia is created at the federal level it’ll become a substantial national military force with hundreds of thousands of soldiers under The Leader’s direct command. Hitler’s was called the SS and answered only to The Leader himself. Mussolini and Franco had theirs, as Putin, Erdoğan, el-Sisi, bin Salman, and others do today.

Citing “national security,” The Leader’s private militia will have an undisclosed and therefore vast budget. Outside of times it’s called on to intimidate people or make a public display of power, it’ll largely operate in secret.

Its members won’t have to obey the law because, as agents of The Leader who’s above the law, they are, too. If they have to kill somebody, there will be no investigation unless it’s to cover up the crime. If they need to make somebody disappear, that person disappears. At first it’ll be done by stochastic terrorism: lone wolf actors not directly connected to The Leader but answering his general call to punish political evildoers.

Just ask Nancy Pelosi or Mike Pence.

The Leader’s oligarch buddies and their media machine, along with his well-indoctrinated followers, promote a law-and-order crime ideology that results in high levels of incarceration, heavily militarized police, and a disregard for the general rights of the average citizen, particularly racial and religious minorities.

As “future dystopian” as all this may sound, there are more governments in the world run this way today than there are democracies. It’s “normal.”

Once established it’s almost impossible to dislodge without a crisis like the death of The Leader or an actual revolution. Just ask any Russian. Or Spaniards who were alive in 1975.

Some of the governments around the world that are structured like this were democracies that turned fascist, like Russia, Turkey, and Hungary. But many have been this way for centuries, including the hereditary kingdoms in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

So, how do the democratic countries that make the transition to fascism allow that to happen? And what is life like in those countries, both during and after the time that it’s happened?

We can’t say we weren’t warned by our own people, our own politicians, the most senior members of our own institutional power structure.

In a speech that was hysterically criticized by Republicans and Fox “News“ pundits, President Obama in December of 2017 came right out and said it:

“You have to tend to this garden of democracy, otherwise things can fall apart fairly quickly. And we’ve seen societies where that happens.”

Yes, the former President of the United States invoked Nazi Germany six years ago while Donald Trump was President, adding:

“Now, presumably, there was a ballroom in Vienna in the late 1920s or ’30s that looked and seemed as if it ― filled with the music and art and literature and the science that was emerging ― would continue into perpetuity. 

“And then,” President Obama said, “60 million people died. And the entire world was plunged into chaos.”

The warnings have been there all along. I wrote of this in 2005, quoting Mayer and going off on Bush and the PATRIOT Act as the prequel to fascism.

Americans have been shouting about it lately, in venues like The New York Times and Madeline Albright’s book and from legislators like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

And now the President of the United States warns Americans that a fascist movement within our own nation is at our door, and will either be soundly defeated in the next election or will seize power and end our form of government:

“What we’re seeing now is [either] the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden told a group of Democratic donors. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism.”

His comment got only a passing mention in the news.

But, still, how do we know? Is there a sudden proclamation by The Leader that the nation is now “officially fascist”?

After World War II, a Chicago reporter named Milton Mayer struggled to understand how Hitler was able to flip one of the world’s most stable democracies into fascism.

An American Jew of German ancestry and a brilliant writer, Mayer went to Germany seven years after Hitler’s fall and befriended 10 “average Germans,” asking each how the Nazis rose to power in an otherwise civilized nation.

His book, They Thought They Were Free, is his story of that experience. Intertwined through it — first published in 1955 — are repeated overt and subtle warnings to future generations of Americans: to us, today.

A German professor who made it through the war by avoiding politics told Mayer:

“But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jew swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose.”

In the next election, many of us will no longer be able to know if our voices, our attempts to vote, will actually decide who leads our nation.

Many Americans will show up at the polls to discover they are no longer registered to vote. Many of our mail-in ballots will be “challenged” by Republican vote observers and we won’t learn about it until after the election is long over.

Five Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that you can be purged from the voting rolls on a whim. In the majority of US states Republicans can take over electoral precincts, install their people (as we just learned they are doing right now) and run them under whatever rules they want.

Already in some states when the GOP inflicts 10-hour lines to vote on people in Democratic districts, for example, and you go to jail if you bring them water. If you make a mistake on your voting registration or ballot, or help another person register to vote, in multiple Red states the governors can choose to send you to prison for five years or more.

Somehow, of the many people from both parties who are busted for this, it seems only the Democrats end up going to prison.

And yet everything seems “normal.” As Mayer’s professor friend told him, when the Leader finally seizes control of all the levers of power from political to economic to spiritual, everything changes but everything also stays the same:

“The world you live in — your nation, your people — is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.

“But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed.

“Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.”

We’re already quite a ways down this road, which is why both our media and our democracy have been rated by numerous international groups as being “at risk” or similar designations.

Voter suppression, gerrymandering, the proliferation of phony media selling rightwing propaganda as “news,” armed militias on our streets (and the GOP recruiting them for “election monitors”) are the visible tip of the proverbial iceberg.

“How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men?” Mayer’s friend asked rhetorically.

And, without the benefit of a previous, recent, and well-remembered fascistic regime to refer to, Mayer had to candidly answer:

“Frankly, I do not know.”

That was 1954; this is 2023. We now know.

We know how the poisonous hate that animates fascism seeps into a society because we saw it ourselves during the 4 years of the Trump administration.

We’re watching it in Red states across the country as MAGA Republicans replace honorable Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

We know how easily a government can be toppled and how close we came on January 6, 2021: if just five Republicans hadn’t refused to go along with Trump we’d be in this fascist dystopia today.

MAGA Republicans across the country are calling for a Franco-like government as you’re reading these words. They believe so long as they’re loyal to Leader and Party everything will be good for them and theirs, and, generally speaking, they’re right.

As President Biden said last year:

“We can’t take democracy for granted any longer. … Make no mistake. Democracy is on the ballot.”

The only way we can avoid repeating the experience of Spain, Germany, Hungary, Russia, and Chile (among others) is to overwhelmingly repudiate — defeat — Trump’s and the MAGA Republicans’ movement at the polls.

And the first step to that is to wake up everybody we know.

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Pass it on.

If you’ve seen Leopoldstadt, we’re arguably someplace between Act III and Act IV — with the power to give the play a happy ending.

And if you can afford to help, click here.

Watch.

Turns out:

1. The gay couple who wanted a homophobic web designer to do their wedding page doesn’t exist.  But the Supreme Court chose to defend her against them anyway.  It was that important.

2. The private company cited for potential losses from Biden’s student-loan forgiveness order wanted no part of the lawsuit — and would arguably not have suffered a revenue loss even if the Court had not risen, unbidden, to its defense.

3. The Court ended affirmative action in universities — but not in military academies.  There, apparently, race can be taken into consideration.  For reasons that somehow don’t apply elsewhere.

Watch the clip and see what you think?

And then there’s this: Ethical rot and John Roberts’s indifference.

We shouldn’t pack or stack the Court.

It’s already packed and stacked.

Dramatically!

Six to three in favor of the party that has LOST the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections!

Rather, we should UNpack it.

UNstack it.

DE-POLITICIZE IT (as outlined here).

Long-suffering BOREF shareholders will have noticed the stock is back to where it was when I first wrote about it 24 years ago.

And yet its main asset, WheelTug, continues to inch forward.

Writes CEO Isaiah Cox:

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Airports Are Starting to REQUIRE WheelTug-Compatibility

This is big news, and the culmination of many years of effort by the Airports team that Jan spearheads:

Mumbai Airport is putting WheelTug Compatibility in their list of Requirements for new systems to be installed at the airport!

From page 12 of this document:

<< The system shall be forward compatible to the regulations and technology in
development as far as practicable, such as the recommendation of DGCA/ICAO in
use of colours, symbols, and graphics to depict guidance information to aircraft, or
aircraft that are fitted with Wheeltug System parking (near) parallel to the terminal
building so as to use two PBBs for faster turnaround. >>

And we understand that every Adani-managed airport (including the new Mumbai) will have those same requirements!

This means that the Visual Docking Guidance Systems will support the WheelTug Twist out of the box going forward. And once it works at one airport, it can readily be done at all!

To my mind, this is the definitive answer to the question: What do Airports Think?

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Needless to say, I’m relieved that you and I bought shares only with money we could truly afford to lose.

But who knows?

It could still happen.

And at Monday’s $3.35 a share (valuing all of BOREF at $17 million), it can’t possibly fall by more than another 100%.

It’s called blanket ballots / ranked-choice voting and it leads through Alaska.

(Add vote by mail, to increase voter participation in primaries, and you have the complete package.)

As we celebrate our democracy tomorrow, what more important focus than moving to de-polarize our society?

We have so much in common!  That’s where our emphasis should be placed.

Have a great Fourth.

“You butter your pizza?” marveled my astonished friend.

“I do.”

“Is that a thing?  Does anyone else do that?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Can I tell people?”

“Hey, in Joe Biden’s America, people are free to butter their pizza if they want!” I said. “And, yes, you can tell people.”

Of course, it was “fake butter.”  (And thin-crust bacon-chicken-topped pizza that I wouldn’t have bought myself, but couldn’t resist once offered.)

It’s about freedom!

Speaking of which . . .

Isn’t it interesting how, when it comes to gender-affirming medical care, Republican governors and legislatures across the country — who claim to believe in personal freedom — have felt the need to overrule the wishes of minors and their parents and doctors and psychologists?  These are tough, very personal decisions that Republican officials believe they should make.  Never mind what the American Medical Association says, or what the families want, or what their doctors advise.

Fortunately, federal judges have been stepping in.  Some of them, Trump-appointed.  All over the country.

Republicans suck.  (Not Republican voters; the hundreds of Republican governors and legislators who have imposed these bans.)

I have to say I don’t think it’s nearly as clear-cut whether a web designer should be forced to design a website celebrating something she believes defies God’s will.  The couple should surely be free to marry, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails — that’s the big deal here and a million times more important.  Unlike Dobbs, or the Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act, this week’s decision didn’t strike me as indefensible or particularly consequential.

Also a million times more important is what the President had to say in Chicago Wednesday, abridged here:

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[Here’s my] economic vision for this country: an economy that grows from the middle out and the bottom up instead of just the top down.  When that happens, everybody does well.  The wealthy still do — (applause) — everybody does well.  The poor have a ladder up, and the wealthy still do well.  We all do well.

This vision is a fundamental break from the economic theory that has failed America’s middle class for decades now.  It’s called trickle-down economics — fundamental economics, trickle-down.  The idea was — it’s the belief that we should cut taxes for the wealthy and big corporations — and I know something about big corporations; there’s more corporations in Delaware incorporated than every other state in the union combined.  I want them to do well, but I — I’m tired of waiting for the trickle-down.  It doesn’t come very quickly.  Not much trickled down on my dad’s kitchen table growing up.

And it’s a belief that we should shrink public investment in infrastructure and public education — shrink it; that we should let good jobs get shipped overseas.  And we actually have a tax policy that encourages them to go overseas to save money.  We should let big corporations amass more power while making it harder to join a u- — a union.

I meant what I said when I said I’m going to be the pro- — the most pro-union president in American history.  And I make no apologies for it.  (Applause.)

My predecessor enacted the latest iteration of a failed theory.  Tax cuts for the wealthy.  It wasn’t paid for, and the estimated cost of his tax cut was $2 trillion.  Two trillion dollars.

Now Republicans are at it again, pushing for tax cuts for large corporations and the wealthy and adding trillions of dollars to the deficit.  Trillions.

Folks, let me say this as clearly as I can: The trickle-down approach failed the middle class.  It failed America.  It blew up the deficit.  It increased inequity.  And it weakened our infrastructure.  It stripped the dignity, pride, and hope out of communities one after another, particularly through the Midwest, Western Pennsylvania, and heading west.

People working as hard as ever couldn’t get ahead because it’s harder to buy a home, pay for a college education, start a business, retire with dignity.

The first time in a generation, the path of the middle class seemed out of reach.  And I don’t think it’s hyperbole; I think it’s a fact no matter whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, or an independent.

I knew we couldn’t go back to the same failed policies when I ran, so I came into office determined to change the economic direction of this country, to move from trickle-down economics to what everyone in the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times began to call “Bidenomics.”

I didn’t come up with the name.  (Laughter.)  I really didn’t.  I now claim it, but they’re the ones that used it first.

I got asked by a press person this morning, getting on the helicopter in Washington, why — “When I asked you about Bidenomics a long time ago, you said you didn’t know what it was.”  I said, “I didn’t name it Bidenomics.  I didn’t realize the economists in the Wall Street journal did.”  But I think it’s a plan that I’ll — I’m happy to call it “Bidenomics.”  (Laughs.)  (Applause.)

And guess what?  Bidenomics is working.  When I took office, the pandemic was raging and our economy was reeling, supply chains were broken, millions of people unemployed, hundreds of thousands of small businesses on the verge of closing after so many had already closed — literally, hundreds of thousands on the verge of closing.

Today, the U.S. has had the highest economic growth rate, leading the world economies since the pandemic.  The highest in the world.  (Applause.)

As Dick said, with his help, we created 13.4 million new jobs.  More jobs in two years than any president has ever — (applause) — made in four — in two.

And, folks, it’s no accident.  That’s Bidenomics in action.  Bidenomics is about building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down.  And there are three fundamental changes that we decided to make with the help of Congress and been able to do it: first, making smart investments in America; second, educating and empowering American workers to grow the middle class; and third, promoting competition to lower costs to help small businesses.

Here’s what I mean by all this.  Under trickle-down economics, it didn’t matter where you made things, as long as you helped the company’s bottom line, even if that meant seeing jobs and industries go overseas for cheaper labor.  Supply chains and key products moved overseas.  Entire towns and communities were shut down, hollowed out.  I mean literally hollowed out.

All over the country, parents have to say to their — and many of you and all elected officials heard people tell you this — had to say to their children, “Honey, I lost my job.  We can’t live here anymore.  We’ve got to move.”

Trickle-down also meant slashing public investment on things that helped drive long-term growth and helped America lead the world in innovation.  We used to invest 2 percent of our gross domestic product in research and development.  By the time I came to office, that was down to 0.7 percent.

We used to be number one in the world in research and development.  That’s what we were known for.  Now we rank number nine in the world.  China, decades ago, was number eight in the world.  Now it’s number two in the world.  And other nations are closing in fast.

We used to have the best infrastructure in the world — roads, bridges, et cetera — but then we fell to 13th.  How can you have the best economy in the world without the best infrastructure in the world?  How do you get product from one place to another?

I was out in Pittsburgh recently, the “City of Bridges” — bridges collapsing all over the nation.  You’ve seen on television railroad bridges collapsing.

Bidenomics.  We’re turning this around.  We’re supporting targeted investments.  We’re strengthening America’s economic security, our national security, our energy security, and our climate security.

I designed and we signed a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.  It’s already announced — I heard some of the speakers before touting some of it.  It’s already announced 35,000 projects across the country.

Think of it this way: Nearly a century ago, Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Act brought electricity to millions of Americans in rural America.  Seventy years ago, Dwight Eisenhower launched the Interstate Highway System.

That’s what the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law does.  It will be for our kids and grandkids, only bigger.

Just last week, we announced our plan to bring affordable high-speed Internet to every home in America, every small business in America.

And to no one’s surprise — (applause) — and to no one’s surprise, it’s bringing along converts.  People strenuously opposed, voting against it when we had this going.  They were — this was going to “bankrupt America.”

Well, there’s a guy named Tuberville — a senator from Alabama — who announced that he strongly opposed the legislation.  Now he’s hailing its passage.  Here’s what he said: Quote, “It’s great to see Alabama receive critical funds to boost ongoing broadband efforts.”  (Laughter.)

(The President makes the sign of the cross.)  (Laughter.)

We’re replacing every lead pipe in this country  . . . fixing crumbling bridges, upgrading our power grid, renovating our airports and ports.

Made in America.  Not a slogan; it’s actually happening.

We’re now investing in key industries of the future, making targeted investments to promote domestic production of semiconductors, batteries, electric cars, clean energy.

Under the trickle-down, the theory was that public investment would discourage private investment.  Give me a break.  (Laughter.)

We went to see a whole lot of major corporations and said, “Are you more or less likely to invest if the government invests?”  Overwhelmingly — they had it backwards — they said, “No, we’re more likely to invest if the government invests.”

Biden economics means the industries of the future are going to grow right here at home.  At home.  (Applause.)  I mean it.  Not a joke.

Under Bidenomics, we’ve already had over $490 billion in private investment commitments — $490 billion — from U.S. companies and companies around the world coming to the United States of America.

Working with our global partners, America’s investments in clean energy technology are going to reduce carbon emissions.  Wind and solar are already significantly cheaper than coal and oil.

And we used to be the center of building these solar panels.  We’re coming back and doing it again.  America is going to lead again.  (Applause.)

Look, it’s a win for the United States and a win for the world that builds on my decision to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement on the first day I came to office.  The first day.  (Applause.)

Remember “Infrastructure Week”?  Infrastructure Week became Infrastructure Week and week and week and week and week.  It never happened.  (Laughter.)

We got Infrastructure Decade done right off the bat.  (Applause.)

But in reality, construction of manufacturing facilities here on U.S. soil grew only 2 percent on my predecessor’s watch in four years.  Two percent.  On my watch, it’s grown nearly 100 percent in two years — 100 percent — (applause) — with the help of all the members of Congress who are here.  And I’m not being solicitous.

Look — Weirton, West Virginia: It used to — where a steel mill closed in the beginning of this century — in 2001 or -02, in that range.  It employed thousands — it had thousands of good-paying jobs that were lost.

But today, with the help from the Inflation Reduction Act, a new plant is being built, building iron-air batteries, which are going to help store energy.  These batteries are going to help store energy.  And it’s being built on the same exact site, bringing back 750 good-paying jobs, bringing back a sense of pride and hope for the future, for all the people or Weirton and surrounding areas.

The second big part of Bidenomics is empowering American workers.

When I took office, unemployment was over 6 percent.  With the American Rescue Plan, we’ve provided relief and support directly to working-class families.  Our economy came roaring back.  Unemployment’s been below 4 percent for the longest stretch in 50 years in American history.  (Applause.)

Pay for low-wage workers has grown at the fastest pace in over two decades. 

Job satisfaction, based on every poll, is at a 36-year high.  More people are satisfied with their jobs than any time in 36 years.

And the share of working-age Americans in the workforce is the highest it’s been in 20 years.

And we’re going to continue this progress by making sure every American has the training and education to participate in this new economy.

We’ve increased Pell Grants and made landmark investments in historic Black universities.

We’ve invested more in registered apprenticeships and career technology education programs than any previous administration in American history.

I’m determined to keep fighting for universal pre-K and free community college.

We’re also fighting to make childcare more affordable because we know one benefit is that it opens up significant opportunities for parents to be able to go back and join the workforce.  (Applause.)

The third part of Biden economics is promoting competition.  The cops are back on the beat enforcing anti-trust laws.

My administration is working to crack down on “non-compete agreements.”

These prevent 30 million Americans — from security guards to retail workers — from walking across the street to a same kind of business and getting a higher pay — getting 5 bucks more a week or 10 bucks more a week.

Non-compete agreements.  It’s one thing to have non-compete agreements when you’re dealing with trade secrets.  It’s another thing when you’re doing the same thing of flipping a hamburger, and you’re going to get five cents more by walking across the street to a different place.

Competition also means lowering costs for consumers.  Bringing down inflation remains one of my top priorities.

Today, inflation is less than half what it was a year ago.

We finally gave Medicare the power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices.  (Applause.)

Seniors on Medicare who were paying $400 a month for insulin last year are now paying $35 a month.  (Applause.)

Because guess what?  You know how much it costs to make that insulin?  Ten — T-E-N — dollars.  Package it, maybe 12 total.  And the guy who invented the insulin didn’t even ask for a patent because he wanted everybody to have access to it.

We’re just finishing the first round of negotiating drug prices, and we’ll save the taxpayers this year $160 billion.  (Applause.)  That’s like a tax cut.

It lowers the cost of prescription drugs, and it lowers the federal deficit as well.

We’re expanding healthcare coverage for more Americans building on Barack’s Affordable Care Act.  (Applause.)  You know why we’re doing that?  I’m proud to strengthen that act, saving average families $800 a year on their healthcare premiums.

We’re also fighting to end junk fees.  One of the leading bank presidents — God love him, he’s passed away — but he had a yacht.  The name of the yacht was “Overdraft.”  (Laughter.)  I swear to God.  Well, guess what?  There are going to be no more overdraft fees.  (Applause.)

Folks, we’re doing this — we’re doing all this, reducing the deficit at the same time.

You know, reversing 40 years of Republican trickle-down economics that helped few but hurt the middle class, it’s going to take some time.  But we’re moving in the direction where people will see it.

It takes time for them to see it.  And I’m not here to declare victory on the economy.  I’m here to say we have a plan that’s turning things around incredibly quickly.

But we have more work to do.  For example, does anyone here think the federal tax system is fair?  Raise your hand.  No matter how much money you make.  We’re going to make it fair by eliminating loopholes for crypto traders, hedge fund managers.  Big Oil made $200 billion last year and got a $30,000 tax break — $30 billion tax break.

We’re going to get billionaires to pay up a little bit, at least a minimum tax.  You know, when we began, there were 750 — before the pandemic — 750 billionaires in America.  Now there are a thousand.  You know how much their average federal tax is?  Eight percent.  No billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a schoolteacher, a firefighter, or a cop.

I made a commitment when I got elected: No one in America making under $400,000 would ever have to pay a single penny more in federal taxes as long as I’m president.  (Applause.)  And I’ve kept that promise.  And $400,000 is a lot of money where I come from.

I ran on the promise I was going to build an economy from the middle out and the bottom up.  We’re not going to continue down the trickle-down path as long as I’m president.

Here’s the simple truth about trickle-down economics: It didn’t represent the best of American capitalism, let alone America.  It represented a moment where we walked away — and how many in this country — from how — how this country was built, how this city was built.

Bidenomics is about the future.  Bidenomics is just another way of saying: Restore the American Dream because it worked before.

It’s rooted in what’s always worked best in this country: investing in America, investing in Americans.  Because when we invest in our people, we strengthen the middle class, we see the economy grow.  That benefits all Americans.  That’s the American Dream.

Forty years of trickle-down limited that dream except for those at the top.

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I was on the Tibetan Plateau with Xi Jinping.  I traveled 17,000 miles with him.  I’ve spoken with him more than any other head of state because it started when I was vice president and he was the vice president.  We knew he was going to be successful.

I met alone with him, just he and I and a simultaneous interpreter, 68 times — 68 hours — 68 times, more than 68 hours.  By the way, I turned in all my notes.  (Laughter.)

But — and this is the God’s truth — he asked me — we were on the Tibetan Plateau, and he asked me — he said, “Can you define America for me?”  I said, “Yes, in one word” — and I meant it — “possibilities.  Possibilities.”

We’re a land of possibilities.  And I told him: It’s never been a good bet to bet against America.  Never.  (Applause.)

And I can honestly — I can honestly say I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future.  I swear to God.  I’ve never been more optimistic.  We just have to remember who we are.  We are the United States of America.

There is nothing — nothing beyond our capacity if we work together.

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Have a great weekend!

I remember Institutional Investor when it was a magazine. 

With things like a “cover.”  And “paper.”

Its founder, Gil Kaplan, made so much money from it — and loved Mahler’s Second Symphony so much — that . . . well, it’s such a good story, read it yourself.  I was lucky enough to be in the audience myself that night.  He had filled the entire hall with friends and colleagues, with a fancy dinner following, all on his own dime.

But I digress.

Today’s Institutional Investor is all-digital, but if this piece is any indication, the quality of the writing remains undiminished.

It’s about a bit more than investment strategy, as you’ll see.

This is old, so you may have seen it.  But it’s great:

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How would you translate what Donald Trump really means when he says certain words or phrases?

Ross Cohen
B.A. in History and Political Science

I’ve cracked his code and am happy to share it with you.

This should save you time because he repeats from a fairly limited set of code words:

Nobody knew / People don’t realize / People don’t know

“I just learned this thing everyone already knows”

Ex:“Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.”
Ex:“People don’t know this about Iraq, but they have among the largest oil reserves in the world.”
Ex:“Abraham Lincoln…most people don’t even know he was a Republican.”

Believe me

“You shouldn’t believe me”

“I don’t have a real argument to back this up”

Ex: “I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me.”
Ex: “We are going to get rid of the criminals, and it’s going to happen within one hour after I take office.… Believe me.”
Ex: “And believe me, my temperament is very good, very calm.”
Ex: “And believe me, I’ll win that case [regarding Trump University]. That’s an easy case.” (had to pay $25 million)
Ex: “And I was always against going into Iraq. In fact, I — believe me, I was always against it.” (false)

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And that’s just the first two — there are more than 50, plus 31 footnotes.

Have fun.

I can’t imagine Trump will be the nominee, but thanks largely to him we live in crazy times, so who knows?

I also doubt it will be Chris Christie, given what the once-Grand Old Party has come to, and Trump’s still-enormous support among primary voters.

We should remind those who believe it’s a witch hunt:

Witch hunt is not one of the Trump terms “translated” above, but when Trump says “witch hunt,” read: “Oh, my God, I am totally, ridiculously guilty — but who cares?  I could walk down Fifth Avenue shooting people and you’d still be with me, because you love me and I won by a landslide.  Biggest Inaugural crowd in history.  Covfefe.”

Have a great week.