Author: A.T.

Here’s something you won’t get just anywhere.

Dotson Rader is not your ordinary interviewer.

Pal of Nancy Reagan, pal of Tennessee Williams, male hustler, playwright, novelist, skyscraper tall . . . Dotson has kept the raw tapes from which, decade after decade, he fashioned profiles for PARADE (may its print edition rest in peace).

For example, this interview with Hillary Clinton.

As of last night, just 14 people had listened to their conversation.

Feel free to listen in.

(A friend  hopes to package an edited compendium of all Dotson’s tapes into a podcast.)

And speaking of podcasts . . .

David T.:  “OK, you roped me in.  I have avoided taking your repeated suggestions to listen to Rachel Maddow’s ULTRA, because I hate podcasts.  It’s hard to listen to/focus on them while doing other thought-based work, and they take too much time to listen to on their own.  But I listened to the first and was intrigued, and then I noticed that you could read the transcripts instead of listening, and so I started doing that.  I’m not finished yet but I’m hooked.  It’s pretty blockbuster stuff that I’d expect to read in a spy novel.  That it’s all true and almost nobody knows any of it is remarkable.  So my suggestion is that the next time you plug ULTRA, mention that transcripts are also available for those who prefer to consume information that way.”

→ Good idea.  I liked listening, but to read them instead, just click the link above and then, for each episode, the word transcript.

Have a great weekend!

1. I’ve previously lauded earmuffs (“don’t be an idiot — wear them”), so that’s not what’s amazing.  What’s amazing is that, even with them on, covering my Apple AirPods, Siri — and anyone else I’m talking to — can somehow still hear me through the earmuffs loud and clear.  Hats off to Steve Jobs.

2. It’s an odd time to be telling you about my ceiling fan, but I’ve been meaning to mention this since August.  It just runs quietly, hour after hour, day after day, summer after summer, decade after decade.  Shouldn’t something go wrong?  Can the ball bearings inside be so perfect?  How’d they get inside?  I have no idea.  Like so much else we never give a second thought, it just works.  One more amazing thing we take for granted.

3. With thousands looking on — and Fox News broadcasting live — President Biden signed into law the Respect for Marriage Act.  How far we’ve come from 1965, when 10 brave gays and lesbians picketed the White House.  But as the President said, it’s about two simple things most of us favor: love and freedom.

A good day for America.  Watch.

“Democracy is never a final achievement; it is a call to an untiring effort.” — J.F.K.

Democracy is coming.. . .to the U.S.A. —Leonard Cohen

Or perhaps not.  Have you listened to the ULTRA podcast I keep suggesting?

I have mixed feelings about this, because the nice people who sell glasses from retail stores need to eat, too.  But as I’ve argued before (Why RCN’s Customer Service May Determine America’s Future), we need people to do jobs that need doing, not ones that don’t.  So when I was told by a nice human I could get my new prescription filled “for under $300!” I went back to glassesusa.com and got two pairs delivered for $68.  Which I could have returned for a full refund, “no questions asked.”  But they’re fine, so I didn’t have to.

George Will weighs in on immigration reform.  Might a partial solution be finally at hand?  Doubtful, but one can hope.  At least it’s on the table.

Not included is the H-1B visa reform that Fareed Zakaria laments in the first two minutes of this interview with Commerce Secretary Raimondo.

BONUS

A breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion!

Still at least a decade off . . . but imagine a world powered by cheap, clean energy.  Our species may have a future after all.

Have a great week.

I’m so afraid of heights!  One breathtaking  minute.

Funniest TED Talk Ever.  Ten.

He was instrumental in the Abraham Accords, as one 0f you points out — a very good thing — so Trump wasn’t THAT bad (as another of you points out), other than . . . 

Russ:  “Any chance for a CNF update?”

→ So this one has certainly disappointed; mostly, I’m assuming, because of what seems to be China’s increasingly hostile view of capitalism — and America.  I own a lot of it.  My friend who owns many times more says the company has had to adjust to changes in regulations several times, but that it is doing well and that SOMEDAY the market will recognize its value.  He’s a lot closer to it than me, and patience is my middle name, so (famous last words?), I hang on.

Have a great weekend!

This is really good news.  Reverend Warnock is a wonderfully good man.  Having 51 seats instead of 50 is a big plus.

But — and it is a huge but — that nearly half the voters voted Walker is scary and disheartening.

One African American voter said she voted for Herschel because of inflation.  What on earth would a Senator Walker have been able to do to lower prices?  Vote to eliminate the estate tax on billionheirs?  Vote to withhold aid from Ukraine?  What would he have done to help average Georgians like her?  Vote to trim Social Security benefits?  Fight Medicaid expansion?  Vote against capping the price of insulin?  Fight to repeal Obamacare?  Fight hikes to the minimum wage?  Oppose the Violence Against Women Act?  Fight for the right of 18-year-olds — too young to buy a beer — to buy assault weapons?  Cop-killing bullets?  Fight to force poor women to have unwanted babies (non-poor women can travel) whose cost to the taxpayers he, with his fellow Republicans, could then decry?

We won; but we’re nowhere near out of the woods.

Bring back the G.O.P.!

(Youngsters: It stands for Grand Old Party.)

This one bears almost no resemblance.

One of you acknowledges that Trump is a “flawed politician” — ya think? — but his main concern is Hunter Biden’s laptop.  The President’s son certainly has had his share of difficulties.  But my reader’s concern that Hunter’s business interests have caused us to go soft on China is laid to rest by this in-depth look at how the Biden Administration is dealing with China.

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. . .  In October, the U.S. Commerce Department introduced a comprehensive ban on technology exports to China, including cutting-edge semiconductor chips—the foundational components for advanced computers and other electronic devices—as well as software for designing them and equipment for manufacturing them. The new ban covers not only American companies but any company in the world that uses American semiconductor technology. And it forbids all U.S. citizens, residents, and green-card holders from working for Chinese chip makers. The threat to China’s high-tech industries—whether in military applications, artificial intelligence, or the surveillance technology Beijing relies on to monitor its citizens—appears so grave that Gregory Allen, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the new U.S. approach to China’s tech sector “strangling with an intent to kill.” . . .

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Where the “flawed politician” long sought to build a hotel in Moscow and accommodated Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine, siding with Putin over the FBI on the world stage . . .

. . . his successor has been firm with China in what may wind up being game-changing ways.

Polls close in Georgia at 7pm today.  May the more competent, level-headed, morally centered man win, whichever of the two you judge that to be.

Incalculably worse.

So let’s start there:

Two minutes from the rabbi.

By comparison, citrus canker is nothing.

I’m not sure I’d ever even heard of it until I opened my mailbox yesterday to find six identical envelopes sent from Faribault, Minnesota promising “Important Settlement Enclosed.”

Had I won a coupon for $5 off my next purchase of “Original” Smart Balance in settlement for their having surreptitiously changed the formula to something awful?

Out of curiosity, I opened the first envelope and found — guess what! — a check for $439.52.

Do you know how much Smart Balance I can buy with that once they restore the original Original?  (You have to love their own website showing 2,019 1-star reviews and just 150 2-star or better.  The few 5-stars I read also hated the new product; they were just happy Conagra promises to switch back.)

The other five checks ranged from $197.44 to $924.03, my share, apparently, of $77 million that Miami-Dade County homeowners had won in a class action against the Florida Department of Agriculture for cutting down 247,000 “uninfected, non-commercial” trees to prevent the spread of citrus canker.

Leave aside the merits of the case. (Here’s how the $49 million appropriately named Orange County settlement was reported.)

Leave aside that the folks in Orange County are getting more than twice as much per tree as we poor shlubs in Miami-Dade . . . and that my own Florida taxes are helping to pay me (and $11 million to the attorneys).

Leave all that aside.

Here’s what struck me:

This all happened between 2000 and 2006.

Unbeknownst to me, lawyers have been fighting to get me justice in this matter for 20 years.

And it finally arrived.

One could argue our judicial system moves too slowly.

And one could wonder whether the checks I may get as a result of ParkerVision’s various lawsuits, seeking compensation for what it alleges is the willful infringement of patents germane to the workings of virtually every cell phone in the world, will be larger.

The Intel trial is currently set to begin February 6, with Qualcomm to follow.

ParkerVision has been pursuing justice in this matter for 20 years.

Oy.

Yesterday: Reich is usually right — but was wrong:  Biden’s not too old.

(The alternative to a Biden candidacy is a s—t show that has Democrats spending a fortune fighting each other, leaving us depleted and divided three months before November 5, 2024, while their presumptive nominee, flush with cash, has had what could be a year-long head start.  Sure we wish Joe were younger. He doubtless wishes it, too. But with age comes stature and experience — who else could meet with Xi having known him for 30 years? — and a team of 1,200 younger, vigorous appointees that has shown itself to be effective.  With Joe, you’re not getting an octogenarian; you’re getting that team of 1,200 led by a wise, decent, deeply good-hearted octogenarian who has earned the trust of our allies around the world.  And united them in thwarting Russia’s aggression.  Why would you change administrations when so much is going well — jobs for anyone who wants one, lower drug prices, chip manufacturing coming back to the US, a decade of revitalized infrastructure and rural broadband teed up  — and when progress is being made on the things we all agree need improvement? Why would you mess with that?  Have you seen the SNL Horror Movie Trailer on this topic?  Brilliant.)

Today: Gingrich is usually wrong — but is right:  Quit Underestimating President Biden.

Needless to say, I disagree with all his premises.  His party has long favored the uber-rich at the expense of everyone else and treated straight white Christian men as better than the rest of us.  But as much as he dislikes the Biden administration’s accomplishments, he reminds us how much he has accomplished.  On that much, he is right.

DESANTIS

From Robert Hubbell’s Substack:

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Rolling Stone reports that DeSantis has instructed his team to “keep quiet” about Trump’s dinner with Kanye and Fuentes. See Rolling Stone, Team DeSantis 2024 Keeps Quiet Over Trump’s Dinner with Kanye, Fuentes. The article is well-written, detailed, and balanced. But it is all about “inside baseball” in the political world—who said what, who is stabbing who in the back, and which way the political winds are blowing.

So, what’s missing from the article? What’s missing is any comment on the fact that the governor of a state with a large Jewish population has chosen silence in the face of Trump’s socializing with two antisemites and a white supremacist. There is no sense from the author that DeSantis has done anything wrong, merely that he is calculating the political consequences of his every move. Really? That’s the story? Not DeSantis’s silence in the face of a groundswell of antisemitism in the GOP?

Journalists are under no obligation to be cheerleaders for the Democratic Party, and they must be fair and balanced—to a point. When someone burns down a synagogue, the story is not what type of accelerant the arsonist used or how long the fire burned—it is that someone burned down a synagogue because of animus toward Jewish people.

The story about Ron DeSantis’s silence in the face of Trump’s antisemitism is not how that decision will affect DeSantis’s chances of becoming president—it is that DeSantis is a calculating coward who will condemn antisemitism only if and when it benefits him politically—which makes him unfit to hold any public office. That’s the story Rolling Stone missed.

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Frank Bruni:

Ron DeSantis’s God Complex

Ron DeSantis Is An Optical Illusion

A few months ago, Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote a funny piece urging Biden not to run for re-election (too old).

Reich is usually right, but not this time.

The alternative to a Biden candidacy is a s—t show that has Democrats spending a fortune fighting each other, leaving us depleted and divided three months before November 5, 2024, while their presumptive nominee, flush with cash, has had what could be a year-long head start.

Sure we wish Joe were younger. He doubtless wishes it, too. But with age comes stature and experience — who else could meet with Xi having known him for 30 years? — and a team of 1,200 younger, vigorous appointees that has shown itself to be effective.

With Joe, you’re not getting an octogenarian; you’re getting that team of 1,200 led by a wise, decent, deeply good-hearted octogenarian who has earned the trust of our allies around the world.  And united them in thwarting Russia’s aggression.

Why would you change administrations when so much is going well — jobs for anyone who wants one, lower drug prices, chip manufacturing coming back to the US, a decade of revitalized infrastructure and rural broadband teed up  — and when progress is being made on the things we all agree need improvement?*

Why would you mess with that?

Have you seen the SNL Horror Movie Trailer on this topic?  Brilliant.

As for DeSantis, Frank Bruni’s two recent columns are worth your attention:

Ron DeSantis’s God Complex

Ron DeSantis Is An Optical Illusion

Have a great weekend.

*The more so if MAGA Republicans wouldn’t block compromise.