Author: A.T.

I went to the opening of Sunset Boulevard Sunday.

The New York Times hated it:

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Despite Norma Desmond, who famously declares in the film “Sunset Boulevard” that it’s not her but “the pictures that got small,” the opposite is true on Broadway these days. In musicals especially, video and projections have grown ever more dominant. Perhaps it is not so much an irony as an inevitability, then, that at the St. James Theater, where a revival of the musical based on “Sunset Boulevard” opened on Sunday, the pictures — live video streamed onto an LCD screen more than 23 feet tall — are so big they almost blot out the show below.

But alas, only almost.

For despite many fascinating interventions by the director Jamie Lloyd and his technical team, and the fact that it is based on one of the greatest of movies, the musical remains too silly for words. In that sense, and others, Norma would have loved it.

Which isn’t praise . . .

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The Daily Beast and most others loved it:

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[The] audience, to varying degrees of whooping, standing, hollering, and applauding — well, lost its damn mind.

It wasn’t just Scherzinger mega-fans in thralls of ecstasy. As Norma and as herself, Scherzinger ignites multiple blazes of originality, mischief, wit and drama in the stupendous revival of the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical (St. James Theatre, booking through July 6, 2025). The show—with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton—transferred laden with awards from London’s West End and opened on Broadway Sunday night, directed with a magnificent witch’s brew of winking satire, absolute dead-seriousness, and stark elegance by Jamie Lloyd.

Lloyd’s show is a meta-piece of theater in the most pleasurable, least grating of ways—based on Billy Wilder’s classic 1950 movie, it is its own homage to the power of movie-making using the most inventive of theatrical techniques that in other productions (video design and cinematography are by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom) can be intrusive and annoying. Here they are vital additive, witty, and complementary, and marry theater- and film-making gorgeously. The shadows of film noir and the stark beauty of black and white photography and movies assume a striking immediacy of animated light and shadows right in front of us.

. . . The clamorous ovation at the end of this superlative show—the perfect mix of bombastic and restrained, the most fun a tragedy could ever be—says it all. It is not the usual Broadway standing ovation: polite and dutiful. It is not even the appreciative and happy standing ovation: heartfelt and feelgood. This is something else. The whooping and applauding goes on and on, a wave upon wave of loud appreciation, no one in any rush to stop or leave.

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I loved it.

The connection to the election is simply the way two people, or sets of people, can see the same thing so differently.

To me, to many of you — and to people as diverse as Mike Pence, Dick Cheney, Bernie Sanders, Mitt Romney, Taylor Swift, Willie Nelson, Mary Trump, his former top general, his former chiefs of staff, his former press secretaries, and so many more — it’s screamingly obvious that America should not return to power a vulgar, lying, adjudicated rapist and convicted felon awaiting trial in three more-serious federal felony cases . . . who, after nine years, has a secret “concept” of a plan to improve health care, who publicly sides with Putin over the FBI, who won’t release his tax returns or medical records, who killed the immigration bill that would have fixed the border problem, and who sat watching TV for 187 minutes brushing off all pleas for help as his nation’s Capitol was under attack.

Are you kidding me?

And yet there are tens of millions of good Americans who love their country, love his show, and hope to see four more years of it.  (And would it be just four?  Term-limited autocrats find ways to extend their run.  Donald, Jr., anyone?)

Beating a demagogue backed by billionaires and by Putin — who murders journalists and opposition leaders and tens of thousands of Ukrainians to get his way — is no slam dunk.

Hard as it is to fully grasp when daily life goes on as usual (did you remember to pick up hamburger buns?  start the dishwasher?  put out the trash?) but the threat to us “enemies within,” to freedom of the press, to America’s ideals — and to the world order at large — is real.

And Democracy, once lost, is nearly impossible to restore.

Help!  

And yes, money can still be used effectively.

We’re gonna win!

NEWSFLASH

Former FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has joined WheelTug’s board of directors.  Presumably, he thinks WheelTug has potential.

“I’m sure you’ve seen this,” I wrote a very smart, upstanding New Yorker I’ve known since high school:

Trump Fixates on Arnold Palmer as ‘All Man’ in Showers During Profane Rally

“I have,” he replied.  “He is not my idea of a good candidate, but at least he is willing and able to speak off the cuff. Let me know when Vice President Harris speaks unscripted so I can react to it.”

“Listen to her on Fox or Howard Stern,” I wrote back.  “No Teleprompters.  Yes, Trump’s comfortable saying anything off the cuff – “vermin,” “s–t Vice President,” “General Millie is an idiot,” etc. etc. But he killed the immigration bill that would have fixed the border problem.  His Project 2025 is a fascist blueprint.  His own vice president, his own chiefs of staff, and hundreds more of his own people are warning us urgently not to let him back in office.  Has anything like that ever happened in American history?  Or, really, in ANY country’s history?”

So far, no reply.

If we all do something, we’re gonna win — early signs are good.

But beating a demagogue backed by billionaires and Putin (Russia goes all-out with covert disinformation aimed at Harris, Microsoft report says) — who murders journalists and opposition leaders and tens of thousands of Ukrainians to get his way — is no slam dunk.

Seriously: do something. And yes, money can still be used effectively.

Thank you!

Prices are too high.

Trump vows to make them higher, via across-the-board tariffs.

And by putting low-wage workers into camps to be fed and deported at taxpayer expense so they can be replaced by higher-wage workers.

Harris would do neither of those things.

Trump has plans to make like easier for billionaires.

Harris has plans to make life easier for average Americans.

I’m terrible at making predictions, as you know well.  A quarter century ago I wrote about “A Stock That’s Surely Going to Zero” — and it still hasn’t.

But who cares?

Of more importance is when Trump assures Americans that if they elect Joe Biden “the stock market will crash.”

Well, they did, and it didn’t — it keeps setting new records.

It’s worth noting:

America’s economy is bigger and better than ever — The Economist. 

[It] has left other rich countries in the dust — also The Economist.

The U.S. economy is the envy of the world, but too many Americans have forgotten why — Philadelphia Inquirer

They’ve forgotten at least in part because they haven’t adequately shared in the prosperity.  But it’s Republicans, not Democrats, who are mainly responsible for that.  Republicans focus on tax cuts for corporations and the rich and starving the IRS so they can’t be properly audited.  Democrats focus on things like affordable healthcare, child tax credits, and consumer protection.

The economy and average Americans — and investors! — do better under Democrats than Republicans.

So if the economy’s your issue (or climate or infrastructure or reproductive freedom — or the immigration bill Trump killed that would have solved the border crisis — or gun safety or democracy or just plain old sanity-and-civility) . . . well, you know — do something!  We’re gonna win!

PRKR

Best video series ever?  For those of us who own PRKR it could be.  Click here to see the first episode.

WHINY

If you don’t like this short video, blame Jimmy Kimmel.

GRIFT

The curious hunt for the company behind Trump watches.

Give!  (Yes, we really do need more money.)  Help!  (Most come back saying canvassing is actually fun!)

Whatever happens, you’ll always know you took a stand against Trump’s Project 2025.*

*About which, of course, he claims to know nothing.  Just as he claimed not to know Lev Parnas (boy, did he ever know Lev Parnas!), or anything about the payments to Stormy Daniels, or to have hidden top secrets documents from the FBI — and on and on and on.   

‘Off the charts’: How Trump tariffs would shock U.S., world economies

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Americans would be hit by higher prices for grocery staples from abroad, such as fruit, vegetables and coffee. Domestic firms dependent on imports would need to either figure out new supply chains or raise costs for consumers. U.S. manufacturers would almost certainly see sharp declines in orders from abroad as foreign nations impose retaliatory tariffs.

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This builds on yesterday’s Wall Street Journal assessment: If the economy’s your issue, Kamala’s your man. (So to speak.)

Which just builds on this ‘“must-watch 8-minute clip” posted yesterday that I still hope you find time to watch and share.

DO something!

BONUSES

New FTC ‘Click-to-Cancel’ Rule Marks Latest Pro-Consumer Win

(Question: Is it Marxist to make it easier to cancel unwanted subscriptions?)

CARVILLE: Winning Is Everything, Stupid. 

(If you don’t have time to watch, reading this review may be nearly as fun.)

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

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Economists Say Inflation, Deficits Will Be Higher Under Trump Than Harris

Most economists think inflation, interest rates and deficits would be higher under the policies former President Donald Trump would pursue in a second administration than under those proposed by Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a quarterly survey by The Wall Street Journal.

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So if you don’t like inflation: vote Harris.  

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“If the tariffs work the way economists think they work, I think people are in for a very nasty surprise,” said Philip Marey, senior U.S. strategist at Rabobank.

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If you’re worried about deficits: vote Harris.

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. . . The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Trump’s plans would widen federal budget deficits by $7.5 trillion over the next decade, more than twice the expected increase under Harris.

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If you hate that Trump killed the bipartisan immigration bill that would have solved the border crisis: vote Harris. 

That one’s not part of the Journal article, but we can’t possibly say it too often:  It’s Trump’s border crisis now.  He has needlessly, selfishly prolonged it in order to win the election and shut down the criminal cases he will otherwise almost surely lose.  It’s not unlike the way we now know Reagan’s team persuaded Iran not to free the hostages on Carter’s watch, even though that meant longer captivity for them.

RACHEL

These 8 minutes are must-watch for business-friendly folks like my friend Peter, who grants that Trump is “a truly horrible person” — his words — but plans to vote for him anyway.

I’m hoping watching this may help to persuade him at least to stay home.

Do something!

We are the underdogs, but we are going to win.

> See how you can volunteer.  You’ll get all the support you need to feel comfortable.  

> Give 15% more than you already have, because that’s (roughly, vaguely) what I figure the campaign can use effectively in these final 21 days (if all our donors do it) to compete with Trump’s lies, Putin’s disinformation, and Musk’s $240 billion.

Share these 30 seconds with your Republican friends.

The mayor joins more than 100 former Republican national security officials . . . more than 200 Republican administration alumni . . . Trump’s own top general (“no one has ever been as dangerous to this country”) . . . and so many others (his own former chiefs of staff!  his own former press secretaries!) . . . in endorsing Kamala Harris.

Nothing like this has ever happened in American history.

The people who know him best — his own uber-loyal vice president! — are warning the country not to let him anywhere near the Oval Office again.

Give!

Volunteer!

We’re the underdogs, but we’re going to win.

His own top general calls Trump “fascist to the core.”

“No one has ever been as dangerous to this country,” he says.

That strikes me as more important than the price of eggs — important though that price is.

His team and their 922-page plan may be even more dangerous.

Here’s an arresting 30-second summary: Project 2025: They Mean It!

Here: a guide to its provisions.

Share either or both widely, because they really do mean it.

It’s not just Dick Cheney — who went so far as to condone torture to protect America — who now goes so far as to endorse a Democrat.  It is, as well, hundreds of former Trump appointees and millions of traditional Reagan, Bush, McCain Republicans like this one.  His own vice president warns against voting for him.

Trump is liar, a sociopath, a narcissist, a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, the sole reason the border crisis has not been resolved . . . and the founding fathers’ greatest fear: a demagogue.

He kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside.

He faces three devastating federal indictments.

No one has ever been as dangerous to this country.

Don’t just sit there — DO SOMETHING.

President Obama’s Pittsburgh speech.  So, so good.

Howard Stern’s Kamala Harris interview.  So, so good!

Our Class, on East 13th Street, closing soon.  Based on an all-too-true story, summarized here.  I can’t stop thinking about it.  Language like “vermin” has no more place in 2024 America than it did in 1935 Poland.

Though it’s made big news in the run-up to release of Bob Woodward’s War next week — Trump sent Putin COVID tests before most Americans could get them — KGB interest in Trump goes all the way back to 1977:

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‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years

Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.

Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.

Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump,” Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.

Shvets, a KGB major, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.

Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.

Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.

According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called “spotter agent” who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.

Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics.

The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.

“This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day: it is people like him who could change the world. They fed him these so-called active measures soundbites and it happened. So it was a big achievement for the KGB active measures at the time.”

Soon after he returned to the US, Trump began exploring a run for the Republican nomination for president and even held a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On 1 September, he took out a full-page advert in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe headlined: “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”

The ad offered some highly unorthodox opinions in Ronald Reagan’s cold war America, accusing ally Japan of exploiting the US and expressing scepticism about US participation in Nato. It took the form of an open letter to the American people “on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves”.

The bizarre intervention was cause for astonishment and jubilation in Russia. A few days later Shvets, who had returned home by now, was at the headquarters of the KGB’s first chief directorate in Yasenevo when he received a cable celebrating the ad as a successful “active measure” executed by a new KGB asset.

“It was unprecedented. I am pretty well familiar with KGB active measures starting in the early 70s and 80s, and then afterwards with Russia active measures, and I haven’t heard anything like that or anything similar – until Trump became the president of this country – because it was just silly. It was hard to believe that somebody would publish it under his name and that it will impress real serious people in the west but it did and, finally, this guy became the president.”

Trump’s election win in 2016 was again welcomed by Moscow. Special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. But the Moscow Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, found the Trump campaign and transition team had at least 272 known contacts and at least 38 known meetings with Russia-linked operatives.

Shvets, who has carried out his own investigation, said: “For me, the Mueller report was a big disappointment because people expected that it will be a thorough investigation of all ties between Trump and Moscow, when in fact what we got was an investigation of just crime-related issues. There were no counterintelligence aspects of the relationship between Trump and Moscow.”

He added: “This is what basically we decided to correct. So I did my investigation and then got together with Craig. So we believe that his book will pick up where Mueller left off.”

Unger, the author of seven books and a former contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine, said of Trump: “He was an asset. It was not this grand, ingenious plan that we’re going to develop this guy and 40 years later he’ll be president. At the time it started, which was around 1980, the Russians were trying to recruit like crazy and going after dozens and dozens of people.”

“Trump was the perfect target in a lot of ways: his vanity, narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election.”

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The Guardian published that report in 2021.

It will be interesting to see what Woodward’s War has to add to the story.

We used to prefer the FBI to the KGB.*

Not Trump.  He’s too smart and patriotic for that.

And has been on the phone to Putin a lot these past few years.

SWITCHING GEARS

SQNS  doubled (again).  If you paid 55 cents in August or $1 last week, $2.35 is hard to resist.  But — famous last words — I’m holding most of mine.

*Now FSB.

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Former President Donald Trump has politicized the situation at every turn, spreading falsehoods and conspiracies that fracture the community instead of bringing it together.

The worst example is a social media post Trump made on Monday, in which he accused the federal government and Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas. MAGA!” That same day, Trump also posted that the Biden administration has “left Americans to drown” in North Carolina and other states.

. . . Trump has also said that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp couldn’t get President Joe Biden on the phone to help his state with hurricane relief — a claim that Kemp himself debunked — and falsely claimed that the government doesn’t have enough money to respond to the disaster because “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants.” He’s called it “the worst response in the history of hurricanes” and suggested it would be the Biden administration’s own Hurricane Katrina.

There’s no evidence to support any of those ridiculous claims.

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