Pop Quiz October 15, 2022October 15, 2022 I have three things to plug today: 1. This interesting op-ed. Executive summary: Require a super-majority for the Court to strike down a law, overturning the will of the elected senators and representatives who passed it and the elected president who signed it. The Constitution itself, notes the author, gives Congress the authority to make such changes. 2. The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s new book, out Tuesday. Pop quiz: Of the last 80 cases to come before the Court affecting corporate interests that fund the Republican Party, how many, do you think, were decided in their favor? The answer, notes the author: All 80. Every single one of them. 3. My “depoliticize” the Court framing. Yet again. (Well, these things require repetition.) Remember: Two-thirds of the Justices were appointed by Republican presidents, even though Republicans lost the popular vote 7 out of the last 8 times. Iwillvote.com vote411.org BlueVoterGuide.org
My Apology To John Fetterman October 13, 2022 I was at a Democratic conference a few weeks ago with a Pennsylvanian who told me that his state’s Lieutenant Governor, John Fetterman, running against “Dr. Oz” for Senate, was in worse shape than people realized. He should withdraw from the race, this man said, so that the state Party could name a replacement before it was too late. He seemed to be in a position to know so I passed his view on to others. Boy, was I wrong. Take a few minutes to watch Tuesday’s interview and see if you don’t find yourself fully behind his candidacy, as do I. Perhaps even click here. BONUS Here is a sober-sided 2015 medical critique of Oz’s questionable practice, having nothing to do with politics. (That year, more than 1,000 doctors called on him to resign from Columbia’s faculty.) And here is a recent video blasting his candidacy in a much more colorful way. I post it with a big caveat. Though I’m guessing most of what Mr. Hofstetter reveals is accurate, it includes a big snark factor (arguably deserved!) . . . an entirely gratuitous reference to a sex scandal at his prep school that had nothing at all to do with Oz (well, who can resist a sex scandal?) . . . and, mainly, an egregious misinterpretation of what Oz apparently said about re-opening schools during Covid. Oz apparently said that doing so would increase mortality by “only” 2% to 3%, which Hofstetter takes to mean 1.5 million dead children. In fact, without even having seen whatever he’s quoting from, it’s surely clear Oz meant that instead of 1 million Americans dying of Covid, it would have been more like 1.02 or 1.03 million — 2% or 3% more — many of them grandparents and great grandparents, virtually none of them children. Not to say there’s not a trade-off to be discussed here: is it better to lose 2% more people to Covid than to stunt the development of tens of millions of children while causing enormous economic and psychological hardship to tens of millions of parents? (And what if Oz was underestimating and the true number would have been 20% or 30% more? Where do you make the trade-off?) I (and most of Europe, etc.) would have taken Oz’s side on this. So it’s unfortunate that Hofstetter highlighted this as he did, because doing so undercuts his credibility. BONUS (If You Own PRKR) The prime example of the need for patent-protection reform, argued here, is ParkerVision. These things take forever, but the start of Intel trial may now be only 12 weeks off. JANUARY 6 HEARINGS RESUME AROUND 1PM TODAY
Parallels To 1940 October 12, 2022October 11, 2022 I voted! My ballot is in the mail. (Use Vote411 for help with yours?) Putin’s energy squeeze on Europe is failing. “Europe is securing enough supplies to avoid an energy crunch this winter.” Rachel Maddow’s podcast has dropped. Listen to the first episode. It started with a plane crash. The tragic, mysterious crash of a commercial airliner in the summer of 1940 left a scene of devastation in rural Virginia — and a series of unanswered questions. The cause of the crash was unclear. Among the dozens of people killed was a sitting U.S. senator. His presence on the flight and the strange circumstances surrounding the crash would end up revealing threats to American democracy itself. Riveting.
A Tsunami Of Truth October 10, 2022October 11, 2022 Michael Moore called it in 2016. Could he be right again? Or so asks Sophia McClennen in Raw Story: Remember when everyone thought Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election? . . . One GOP insider declared that for Trump to win, “it would take video evidence of a smiling Hillary drowning a litter of puppies . . .” There was, however, one lone voice of dissent: Michael Moore. . . . Fast forward and we find ourselves in a similar scenario, but turned upside down. . . . Moore isn’t just echoing the widespread notion that Democrats could hold the Senate while losing the House. He is suggesting that voters “are going to descend upon the polls en masse — a literal overwhelming, unprecedented tsunami of voters — and nonviolently, legally, and without mercy remove every last stinking traitor to our Democracy.” Could he really be right? To make his point, Moore is going beyond armchair punditry and sending out what he is calling a “tsunami of truth,” where each day leading up to the election he offers one specific factual reason why he is right and why it makes sense to be optimistic. If an 18-year-old high school student can beat a Republican incumbent in Boise, Idaho, Moore argues, something is happening that the media can’t see. . . . I’ve signed up for Moore’s tsunami — he offers a variety of subscription prices, including FREE — and accessed the first 13 missives, including that one. This is our chance, America. Yes, we absolutely need to deal with inflation and crime and immigration* . . . and with climate, inequality, and so much more . . . but let’s do it with sensible people (in both parties), not with cultists who chant “Jews will not replace us” — who believe that there were “some very fine people” on both sides that night — who believe Democrats are Satanists and that it’s okay to steal top secret documents from the White House, lie about having them, and then refuse to give them back. Let’s do it with hard-right Republicans like Liz Cheney (and moderate Republicans, may their tribe increase) who believe in the peaceful transfer of power once 61 out of 61 judges, many of them Trump-appointed, find no evidence of fraud in an election Biden won by 7 million votes. Have you joined your local chapter of the League of Women Voters? Joined Field Team 6? Joined Vote Forward? Done all you can to fund the organizing effort? *If only the bipartisan immigration that passed the Senate 68-32 in 2013 had not been denied a vote in the House! There were enough Republican members to join Democrats in bringing it to Obama’s desk for signature. But if the G.O.P. is good at anything, it is blocking progress.
Tom Friedman: October 8, 2022October 7, 2022 Putin and MBS Are Laughing At Us Today, we have America and its NATO allies backing the brave Ukrainians fighting to save their country from being torn to shreds by Vladimir Putin. And we have Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bernie Sanders, the House progressive caucus and the whole G.O.P. all working — deliberately or because they are dupes — to ensure that Putin has more oil revenue than ever to kill Ukrainians and freeze the Europeans this winter until they abandon Kyiv. . . . . . . What lifted Putin even more was when he watched Bernie Sanders, House progressive Democrats and the whole G.O.P. last week come together to kill a bill backed by President Biden and the Democratic leadership to streamline the permitting process for domestic energy projects, particularly permitting for gas pipelines and wind and solar transmission lines — one of our biggest impediments to a stable green transition. . . . Worth reading in full.
Parker And Patents October 6, 2022October 5, 2022 Long-time readers will be familiar with the ParkerVision saga. Some of you may own shares. I own a zillion. You may also recall that many years ago a jury awarded PRKR $174 million in its suit against Qualcomm, but that — far from awarding additional damages as punishment for “willfulness” (as, up to treble damages, he would have been allowed to do) — the judge waited several months and then inexplicably (at least to our side) tossed the whole thing out. Recently another judge — who we think will be overturned on appeal — refused to allow a second PRKR case against Qualcomm, involving different patents, even to reach a jury. So apart from some small lawsuits, two big ones remain: > This one, against Qualcomm, if the judge is overturned on appeal. > A smaller but still large suit against Intel. The Intel suit was recently delayed from December to February . . . but for a lovely reason. Our lawyers, having lately become convinced that Intel willfully (i.e., knowingly) violated PRKR patents, petitioned the judge to allow them to add willfulness to PRKR’s claim. The judge read their reasons and said okay, giving Intel that extra time to prepare its defense. What were the lawyers’ reasons? Against Intel’s wishes, they’ve just now been made public. It’s dense going, but Paragraph 63 says that Intel was interested in purchasing patents from Skyworks, a multi-billion-dollar leader in the field of wireless technology, and that as part of their back and forth, Skyworks identified for Intel 74 ParkerVision patents as being the dominant patents in the field. So PRKR held the dominant patents . . . as acknowledged by a leading, third-party authority . . . Intel knew this and profited magnificently from PRKRs inventions (or so PRKR claims) . . . yet PRKR was never paid a dime. Might a jury decide in February that a great many dimes are due? Might the judge decide the theft of intellectual property was willful, and double or triple the damages to send Big Tech a message? Might a different judge eventually decide the same thing with respect to Qualcomm? I have no clue, but a zillion reasons to hope so.
Fareed Zakaria On Immigration October 5, 2022October 4, 2022 Two — very different — TV hosts who almost always make sense are Bill Maher (who leans hard against the overly woke) and Fareed Zakaria who here offers Democrats a really important message on immigration. So worth the five minutes, in my view.
DALL-E and Dusseldorf October 4, 2022October 3, 2022 Basically, I’m just stalling today. I’m at the New York edition of the Oslo Freedom Forum. But two things: If you like technology: The DALL-E 2 AI text-to-image generator is now available (free). I can now generate clever names for a pet (for example), should I ever acquire one. But my friend David used it to generate a picture of me riding what appeared to be a golden goose (although he claims it’s supposed to be an ostrich) . . . just by typing in an instruction. So I’m hoping to find time to learn how this works because, like it or not, artificial intelligence is the future. It wouldn’t hurt to know how to instruct DALL-E to “find me a call option expiring this month that has a high probability of doubling.” Not sure it can do that, but if it can, it will definitely be a golden goose. If you’re a long-suffering Borealis shareholder: Düsseldorf Airport and WheelTug Agree to Conduct FASTGate Feasibility Study Düsseldorf, Germany, and Douglas, Isle of Man – 3 October 2022 – WheelTug plc, the electric taxi pioneer, and Düsseldorf Airport have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on conducting a FASTGate (Fast And Safe Turn) feasibility study. The goal is to assess the airport’s preparedness for e-taxi procedures and identify process, safety, and technological gaps, and the corresponding mitigation measures that will enable the airport to take full advantage of WheelTug benefits. The WheelTug system consists of motorized nose wheels that allow the pilot to maneuver the aircraft independently. By reducing time spent at the gate and using the APU instead of the main engines for ground movement, WheelTug not only increases airside efficiency and aircraft utilization, it also significantly decreases carbon and noise emissions. The study will quantify these benefits as well as other financial and non-financial airside benefits for the airport coming from WheelTug equipped aircraft arriving at its gates. The FASTGate project was launched by WheelTug and its partner companies with the goal to prepare airport gate areas for WheelTug e-taxi maneuvers so that both airlines and airports can benefit from WheelTug. A recent similar feasibility study that the group finalized at Mumbai International Airport quantified yearly airside operational savings at tens of millions of USD, along with increased safety and reduced congestion and carbon emissions. Dusseldorf Airport and WheelTug intend to work together on this feasibility study with the view that airside operations need to become not only more cost-effective, but also safer and greener. WheelTug has signed letters of intent with two dozen airlines on five continents that have already secured delivery slot positions for more than 2,000 WheelTug systems. “We look forward to working with Düsseldorf on bringing the WheelTug system and its benefits to Germany,” commented WheelTug CEO Isaiah Cox. “We are very excited about the upcoming feasibility study, as the WheelTug system could fit very well into our sustainability strategy. In addition to reducing emissions, the opportunity to make apron procedures more efficient is a promising one for us,” said Lars Mosdorf, CFO of Flughafen Düsseldorf GmbH. About Düsseldorf Airport Düsseldorf Airport is ranked among the major airports in Germany and is the largest in North Rhine-Westphalia. Located in one of Europe’s economically strongest regions, containing 18 million inhabitants within a radius of 100 kilometers, Düsseldorf Airport plays a critical role in meeting the transportation needs of travellers and industry in both North Rhine-Westphalia and the southeastern Netherlands. As the city’s largest employer, Düsseldorf Airport provides a significant stimulus to employment in the state. The decades pass — I initially described BOREF as “a stock that is surely going to zero” 23 years ago — but with the company valued at just $25 million and the prospect that WheelTug could . . . conceivably . . . deliver billions in savings to the airlines each year, I’m certainly not selling now.
Goida! October 1, 2022October 2, 2022 Anything could happen 37 days from now, but as our very democracy at stake — according to lifelong hardline conservative Republicans like Liz Cheney — — it behooves us to win. Otherwise, the autocrats gain the upper hand. And once they do, history suggests they are loathe to relinquish it — whether in Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, or now, for the first time ever, the United States. It’s just a thing. After the Roman republic fell, it took 2000 years to regain democracy — and then Mussolini destroyed it. And we reimposed it. But who will reimpose it on us should we lose ours? (Last week, it looked as though Italians were flirting with losing it again.) More on this in a second (and goida), but first — to help us win — take a look at the Blue Voter Guide and share it widely if you think it could help. The premise is that some people fail to vote, or miss the mail-in deadline, because they feel they don’t know enough to make responsible choices. They know what team they’re on, in most cases; but do they know (for example) which judges to vote for? I tried this out for Florida, where I might have well voted to retain all the judges on the ballot until the Blue Voter Guide gave me more information. So even for someone like me, who never fails to vote, the guide was helpful. And for a potential first-time voter? Who might want to print a “cheat sheet” to take into the voting booth for added confidence? Take a look. And now back to the scary stuff. This quote, for example: “Fascists use lies as a weapon. Fascists switch the roles of victim and attacker. Fascists accuse their victims of being fascists.” ― Oliver Markus Malloy, American Fascism: A German Writer’s Urgent Warning To America Demagogues scare me. (“I’d like to punch him in the face!” “Lock her up!”) Take 47 seconds to watch this clip from Red Square Friday. It’s not Putin; it’s one of his Tucker Carlsons, so to speak, opening for Putin. But, boy, does this guy ever command a crowd. “Goida!” he shouts. “Goida!” A summons to holy war by TV personality Ivan Okhlobystin. (To watch the whole event, a celebration of Russia’s annexation of Eastern Ukraine, click here.) Religion, for all the comfort it can provide and good it can do, has been, also, at the root of so much hatred and murder. Meet the Apostle of Right-Wing Christian Nationalism. “The new Republican fringe is done with the separation of church and state. William ‘Dutch’ Sheets has been trying to tear down that wall for decades.” Which brings me back to wanting to hold the House and Senate. In case you don’t contribute to politics because contributions aren’t tax deductible, here’ a way to help — even at this late stage in the game — that is: MomsRising is an on-the-ground and online grassroots movement of more than a million people that’s proven effective in the past and — based on what I heard on a call Wednesday that got me to give a good chunk of dough — will prove effective in the five weeks ahead. One of the simple messages they convey: In most places you don’t need to find child care in order to vote! Bring your future voter to the polls with you. Use this link to donate tax deductibly. How I long for the Republican Party of old. The party of business and the rich, for sure — yet, behold: I could hardly believe this was accurate; but if you take the time to read the platform, you’ll find it all there. Have a great week.