Author: A.T.

There are way, way, WAY more important issues at stake in this election — see, for example, this one . . .

. . . but with immigration now Trump’s liability — because he killed the bi-partisan legislation that would finally have fixed the border crisis . . .

. . . and with inflation now barely 1% above the Fed’s target . . .

. . . Republicans are sure to stoke fear of men in girls’ dressing rooms (well, except for Trump, for whom it’s okay), and all the other scary things about transgenderism.

But how scary should these things really be?

I’d bet not one American in a thousand has been harmed in even the slightest way by a trans person.  Certainly not physically.  (Not only were you not a female Olympic boxer beaten by this trans gold medalist — she turned out not to be trans at all!)

Nor even psychologically, by a glance in a public restroom (or whatever else Republicans want you to fear).

The problem — as it was with gay and lesbian Americans until relatively recently — is that few people know trans people.

Now that most Americans do know LGBT friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members — or at least “know” Anderson Cooper, Ellen DeGeneres, Tim Cook, and Brandi Carlile — they find us a lot less scary.

The same will gradually prove true of the trans community.

A great start will be Netflix’s Will & Harper, streaming worldwide September 27.  Watch the trailer and I think you’ll see what I mean. Whatever your politics, I think it will touch you.

If you have a few minutes more, “meet” Stephanie Fritsch of Wiconisco (pop.784) and a few other trans Pennsylvanians.

All that said, whatever your feelings on this issue, don’t let Trump and Putin fool you into thinking it has anything near the importance to you and your kids as the issue of whether we lose our democracy to a man bent on “vengeance” and “retribution,” whom Vladimir Putin desperately hopes will win.

*I’m sorry; this is entirely off topic.  But those of us who know Tom Lehrer’s iconic “Vatican Rag” can’t hear the word “trans” without immediately thinking, Two, four, six, eight — time to transubstantiate!   You’re welcome.

Dick Cheney joins his daughter in endorsing Kamala:

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In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.  He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.

As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

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And in other big news . . .

PRKR

Today, the appeals court finally ruled, granting PRKR everything it could have hoped.

The stock more than doubled on 8.2 million shares.

Here’s the short form.

(And here’s the 60-page ruling.)

The judicial process takes forever, but this ruling strengthens PRKR’s hand with Qualcomm — should they want to settle for a fraction of what a jury might award — and with a couple of other large companies against whom PRKR also has claims.

So — in for a penny, in for a pound — I’m not tempted to sell here.  More thoughts to come.

GOOD INTENTIONS GONE AWRY

When well-intentioned religious parents drive their home-schooled kids to suicide.

WEEKEND BONUS: THE PIG-DOG CONUNDRUM

John Heilemann interviews Nick Kristof on that and much more.

But first:

TOM FRIEDMAN’S WARNING

Netanyahu and Trump wrecking the world to retain power and avoid prison.

And:

JUSTICE MERCHAN’S IMPOSSIBLE TASK

How and whether to sentence Trump September 18.

And now:

PILING ON

Listen.  There are tens of millions of good people on Team Trump who are unbudgeable.  Nothing he does or says will cause them to lose faith — and nothing we do or say, at least in the short run, will shake that faith.  A slew of his former staffers are either in jail, pardoned, or have written books warning us against re-electing him.  No matter.

He killed the bipartisan border bill that would have ended the border crisis.  It’s his crisis now.  No matter.

He said the stock market would crash if we elected Joe Biden (and says it will crash if we elect Kamala Harris).  If anything, it’s too high now.  No matter.  They believe him; or don’t care that they don’t believe him.

He didn’t get us better health care, he didn’t bring manufacturing jobs back, he didn’t lower the deficit, he didn’t release his tax returns as he promised to.  He didn’t get Mexico to pay for the wall, he didn’t revitalize our infrastructure, he didn’t hire “the best people” (and when he did, he fired them or they quit) — but he did repeal Roe v. Wade, he did make sure kids could still buy AR-15s, he did scoff at the climate crisis, and he did profoundly shake our allies’ faith in us.

And he did attract a crowd to Washington to storm the Capitol in an attempt to overturn what his own head of election security called the most secure election in our history as he watched the mayhem for more than three hours, rewinding the most violent parts while ignoring pleas to call his people off.

He mocks the disabled, calls people vermin, kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside, prizes loyalty over competence — prizes loyalty to him over loyalty to the Constitution — bankrupts companies, disrespects women, has contempt for fallen soldiers, uses their graves for a thumbs-up photo op, is a raging, aging egomaniac who sells Bibles he’s never read with his name on them — and none of that matters.

What matters is that he’s against crime (so are we), against high prices (so are we) — and that he sticks it to the libs.  That’s the main thing.

And for now, at least, it is what it is.  We just have to win . . . and by a margin so wide that we hold the Senate and win back the House.  A margin so wide not even Trump’s Supreme Court would find an excuse to throw the election to the House of Representatives (where each state has one vote and he’d win), as was their plan in 2020 and is their plan today.

You’re probably tired of hearing Joe Kennedy’s old line — “Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary,” he told his son, Jack. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.” — but it’s the exact opposite of what we need to do today.  Today we need to pile on.  A line for today is the one I heard from Paul Begala recently: “Don’t give until it hurts — give until it feels good.”

If you can.

Here.

Thank you!

But first:

TOXIC POSITIVITY

I’m not the only one with the happy gene.  I couldn’t have said it better.  Happy belated birthday, Glenn!

And:

INFECTIOUS GENEROSITY

“The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading” — from the head of TED.  “If you want to help create a more equitable world but don’t know where to start, Infectious Generosity is for you.”—Bill Gates

And now:

Apparently, Deadpool and Reagan were the big Labor Day weekend movies.

Andy Borowitz refers to both as he asks, Who Created Trump?

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The new film “Reagan” tells the heroic story of how our 40th president transformed America into a shining city upon a hill and single-handedly slayed the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union.

For a more historically accurate moviegoing experience, I recommend “Deadpool & Wolverine.”

Let’s get real about Ronnie.

. . .

According to Reagan, the greatest environmental hazard wasn’t man-made: “Eighty percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees.” When he shared his theory about these toxic emissions during the 1980 presidential campaign, students at California’s Claremont College affixed this sign to a tree: “Chop Me Down Before I Kill Again.”

Does his anti-tree stance sound familiar? It should.

When Trump’s hand-picked candidate Herschel Walker ran for U.S. Senate in 2022, he slammed Democrats’ climate measures, alleging, “They continue to try to fool you like they are helping you out. But they’re not. They’re not helping you out because a lot of money, it’s going to trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?” Walker’s comments were widely derided as cretinous, but I have another word for them: Reaganesque. “A tree’s a tree,” Reagan told a logging group in 1966. “How many do you need to look at?”

. . .

Ronnie’s contention that trees cause pollution, much like Trump’s that windmills cause cancer, might be charitably described as an alternative fact.  Reagan’s most legendary deployment of alternative facts, however, came during the 1976 campaign, in his broadsides against a character who became famous as the “welfare queen.” Much like Trump’s inflammatory narratives about rapists and murderers swarming across the southern border, Reagan’s stories about the queen blended fabulism and racism.

“There’s a woman in Chicago,” he told his reliably white audiences. “She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards, and is collecting veterans’ benefits on four deceased husbands… And she’s collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income alone is over $150,000.” (Perhaps fearing that his story lacked sufficient punch, he later upgraded the number of her aliases from 80 to 127.)

. . .

Reagan never explicitly said that the welfare queen was Black, but he didn’t have to. By referring to a welfare cheat in Chicago, a city with a large African American population, he was sending a message his white audience would have no trouble decoding. (Never mind that the vast majority of welfare recipients were, and still are, white.)

Unsurprisingly, Reagan’s tales of the welfare queen didn’t stand up to fact-checking. As the New York Times reported on February 15, 1976, the woman Reagan demonized “is now charged with using not 80 aliases but four. The amount the state is charging that she received from her alleged fraud is not $150,000 but $3,000.”

. . .

Those who argue that the economic hardship suffered by people of color under Reagan’s presidency was just a nutty coincidence rather than the inevitable result of racist policies should turn their attention to a 1971 phone conversation between him and then President Richard Nixon, who, always so helpful to historians, taped just about everything.

After the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, on October 25, 1971, members of the Tanzanian delegation danced in celebration. The confluence of a communist state attaining prestige and Africans being happy was too much for Reagan, who, in a rage, rang up Nixon. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Ever the performer, the Gipper knew his audience; Nixon can be heard laughing uproariously.

Let’s close our discussion of Reagan and Trump with one very specific parallel: their predilection for scheduling campaign rallies at locations stained by racial violence.

In 2020, Trump planned an appearance for Juneteenth, the annual commemoration of the emancipation of slaves in the U.S. The place? Tulsa, Oklahoma, which in 1921 was the site of the race massacre that killed as many as 300 Black people. (After the rally’s announcement sparked an uproar, Trump moved the event one day later, and then had the audacity to claim, “I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous.”)

Forty years earlier, Reagan kicked off his general election campaign in a similarly notorious locale: near Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the Mississippi Burning murders of the civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. As in his welfare queen tirades, he made sure his speech at the Neshoba County Fair, to an all-white audience waving the Confederate flags later favored by the January 6 rioters, included a time-tested racist dog whistle: “I believe in states’ rights.” Reagan’s triumphant march to Election Day had begun, with badges trumpeting his campaign slogan: “Let’s Make America Great Again.”

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But first:

EVANGELICALS FOR HARRIS . . .

. . . believe she better reflects Christian values.

Wait.  You mean the lying, cheating, adulterous, charity-scamming, murderer-embracing bully who never turns the other cheek . . . he’s not their guy?

And:

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT . . .

. . . there is nothing Christian about Christian Nationalism.

MEANWHILE . . .

. . . whoever paid $79.38 a share for DJT this past April — its all-time high — must now be wondering whether to buy more today at $19.50.  Though even at that bargain price, Trump’s company is valued at just shy of $4 billion.  Is a company that loses money worth $4 billion?  645 times its sales?  Would it be smarter to buy shares in a company that makes money?  After all, per one lifelong Republican, Everything Trump Touches Dies.  Or to quote Tucker Carlson, Trump Is the undisputed ‘World Champion’ of Destroying Things.  Either “a cynical a**hole” or “America’s Hitler,” J.D. Vance once famously texted.

I wouldn’t rush to buy his stock.  Insiders are selling.

I sat next to Rachel and John Goldberg-Polin one night in Chicago at the Convention.

Each wore a handwritten “318” patch.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The number of days our son Hersh has been held hostage.”

He had been attending a music concert to celebrate his 23rd birthday.

Yesterday, Hamas murdered him.

If Hamas one day murders 40,000 Americans and kidnaps 8.,000 more (the Israeli numbers, adjusted for population) . . . then hides beneath hospitals and schools to use, as human shields, the citizens who elected them . . . I wonder how we will respond.

And (not necessarily the same thing) how we should respond.

And how many college students would take Hamas’s side the very next day, even before we did respond.

Netanyahu is a nightmare.  Israel’s religious extremists (like all religious extremists) are a nightmare.  The situation in the region is tremendously complex and tragic beyond words.

But how many pro-Hamas college kids know that Israel voluntarily left Gaza in 2005, forcing its own citizens to abandon their homes and greenhouses and irrigation systems?  And that instead of their accepting this surrender and becoming prosperous, peaceful neighbors, as hoped, Gazans built a 300-mile underground military-industrial complex with the avowed aim of destroying Israel?

That context, it seems to me, matters.

So, one hopes, might this:

Former Israeli Prime Minister and Palestinian politician sign framework for peace.

Let us pray sanity somehow gains traction.

Thom Hartmann’s headline seemed way over the top . . . Some Republicans Imply Kamala Harris is 3/5th Human & Unfit for Presidency . . . until I read it . . . and the New York Times reporting to which it refers — Trump Elevates False, Fringe Attacks on Harris to Center of His Campaign.

Heather Cox Richardson:

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The elephant in the room these days is that most Republicans, along with many pundits, are pretending that Trump is a normal presidential candidate. They are ignoring his mental lapses, calls for authoritarianism, grifting, lack of grasp on any sort of policy, and criminality, even as he has hollowed out the once grand Republican Party and threatens American democracy itself.

It’s hard to look away from the reality that the Republican senators could have stopped this catastrophe at many points in Trump’s term, at the very least by voting to convict Trump at his first impeachment trial. At the time, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said, “Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one.” Republican senators nonetheless stood behind Trump.

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BONUS

Jon Stewart on guns and crime.  (Warning: strong language.)

NERDY BONUS

You might want to listen as a guest to yesterday’s NVIDIA earnings call.

Unless you’ve never heard an earnings call and are curious to hear how they go, skip straight to the Q&A at 21:30 (the button top right).

If you’re like me, you’ll understand none of it (and may not listen to the end) . . . but will get the broadest possible gist of how dramatically the world is and will be changing.

There’s Hopper and Blackwell and I have never been able to grasp how electricity works, either — large language models make no sense to me — but not understanding electricity doesn’t make it any less central to our lives.  The same will become increasingly true of A.I.

D’s are united behind Kamala and Tim, of course.  You saw that at the Convention.

I’s will lean blue as well, I hope.

Andrew Yang, for example:  I Left the Democratic Party to Start a Third Party. I’m Still Voting for Kamala and You Should Too.

R’s — well, what I’m really hoping is that lifelong Republicans will heed calls like this one:

In anti-Trump letter, 230 former GOP staffers say “we’re voting for Vice President Kamala Harris”

(Is there a letter from former Democratic staffers endorsing Trump?)

(Or even one from former Trump staffers endorsing him?)

You heard Adam Kinzinger’s speech at the Convention.

Here’s an email Liz Cheney just sent out:

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Friend-

The GOP has chosen.

They have nominated a man who attempted to overturn an election and seize power.  Now, we have just months to save our republic & ensure Donald Trump is never anywhere near the Oval Office again.

It’s up to all of us to put our love of country ahead of partisanship, to stand together for our values and our freedom in the face of a threat we’ve never faced before.  So much is on the line.  We must right the ship of our democracy. That’s why I launched Our Great Task.

I am committing to doing everything I can to ensure we defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box this November, and I’m asking you to do the same. If you are with me, please contribute today.

Every one of us – Republican, Democrat, Independent – must work together to ensure that Donald Trump and those who have appeased, enabled, and collaborated with him are defeated. This is the cause of our time.

Join me in the fight for our nation’s freedom.

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YOUR THOUGHTS

Paul W.: “Neither party cares about the staggering federal debt.  More spending?  Lower taxes?  Just borrow.  Forcing taxpayers to give $25,000 to ‘first-time homebuyers’ and paying off all ‘medical debt’ are terrible, Bernie-land ideas that will likely not stand a chance of passing Congress.  Yet because I despise Trump I will vote for Harris.  I even sent her money.”

→ I’d note that Clinton and Obama both left office with the Debt shrinking relative to GDP.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Kamala does, too. (Adequately funding the IRS, so it can collect taxes that rich people and corporations owe, would be a piece of that.*)

The same cannot be said for Joe Biden’s final-year deficit, but debt taken on to rebuild infrastructure — and for “social infrastructure” like childcare and education — is way more productive than (say) debt taken on to lower taxes for billionheirs.

Or than the debt we took on to win World War II – necessary though it was.

In the 40 or so years after the War, until Reagan over-shot the tax-cut mark and sent the National Debt — and the Inequality Index — soaring, we gradually shrank all that World War II borrowing back to pre-war, pre-Depression levels (relative to the size of the economy).

With a revitalized infrastructure, thanks to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, we should be in a good position to do that again.

(As for helping first-time homebuyers, I agree it may not be enacted.  But if it is, possible benefits include strengthening the middle class and reducing the dangerously gaping wealth-inequality gap . . . which in the long run, I think, would make our economy — and our society — stronger.  Not bad, either, for homebuilders and their employees.)

But I hear Paul’s concerns . . . and share some of them . . . and appreciate his feedback and support!

*Are Trump’s tax returns still under audit?  Is he still planning to release them, as promised?

RFK BONUS

Kudos to Pamela Paul for unearthing this from 2000: Eight at Riverkeeper Resign Over Kennedy’s Hiring of a Rare-Egg Smuggler.

25 ACTUAL MONEY BOOKS

This is 4% shameless self-promotion.  (The other 24 were written by others.)

1 NEW TRUMP BOOK

At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House is billed in this review as “Gen. McMaster’s blistering account of the Trump White House.”

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In his blistering, insightful account of his time in the Trump White House, McMaster describes meetings in the Oval Office as “exercises in competitive sycophancy” . . . [He] provides unique detail on Trump’s approach to foreign policy and — similarly to his successor in the national security adviser role, former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, who wrote scathingly about the former president in a book published in 2020 — his account is likely to do little to reassure US allies about the prospects of a second Trump term.

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Right on the money.

As are these:

3 BOOKS I’LL KEEP RECOMMENDING UNTIL DEMOCRACY IS SAVED

> A Fever in the Heartland — how white Christian nationalists almost took over the country in the 1920’s.

> Prequel — how they almost did again ten years later.

> Blowback — third time’s a charm?

This last, by Trump’s own Homeland Security Chief of Staff, is subtitled: “A Warning to Save Democracy from Trump’s Revenge.”

One of my house guests this past weekend was a brilliant, well-read, wealthy friend of long standing — a gay Ivy League grad in his early sixties — who is not crazy about Trump but was less even crazy about Hillary and Joe.

This year, he said — perhaps just to keep his host’s head from exploding — he’s undecided.  He’s “listening.”

Which is all we have a right to ask.  If people do listen, I feel sure most will agree with Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Trump’s own former chiefs of staff, press secretaries, and Vice President — along with millions of less prominent Republicans — and vote blue.

Or, at the very least, stay home — though that’s the equivalent of half a vote for Trump, so makes zero logical sense.

My friend had never heard of A Fever, Prequel, or Blowback, and — more surprising to me — had not known of the widespread Nazi support (including in the House and Senate) prior to our entry into World War II — not least this famous rally in Madison Square Garden.

He promised to take 3 minutes to watch on the ride home.

(As a reader of this page, you know Trump’s dad was detained at a KKK rally in the 20s; and that, for years, Trump — not a big reader — kept this book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside.  His admiration for dictators and strongmen runs deep.)

I’m hoping that come November 5, my friend will grit his teeth and vote blue.

BUFFETT

There are so many good books about him, but 29 recommendations is enough for one post, so I offer instead — and of perhaps more immediate interest anyway — this chart:

Clearly, with the market at an all-time high*, at least one legendary investor thinks it’s a good time to have cash on the sidelines.

*Trump predicts a crash if Kamala is elected.  But he always predicts a crash if he’s not elected.  And carnage and misery — just look at the banana republic Biden has turned this once-great country into.  Vermin are poisoning our blood stream!  Here’s the clip from four years ago (2 seconds): “If he’s elected, the stock market will crash.”  Note that the Dow opened at 27, 138 on Election Day 2020 and as I type, at 41,254, is more than 50% higher.  And Mexico, oddly, did not pay for the wall.  And he bankrupted half a dozen businesses.  Indeed, Republican strategist Rick Wilson says Everything Trump Touches Dies.  Tucker Carlson calls him “the world champion of destroying things.”  Sorry.  I’ve had too much coffee.

BONUSES

Greg Palast: I was with RFK Jr. when he lost his mind.

Newsweek: RFK Jr Beheading Whale Story Resurfaces After He Endorses Trump.  (“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” said Kick Kennedy.)

Andy Borowitz: Entire Kennedy Family Changes Last Name.