[Update: 24 Februaary @ 0924—Modi delivers…

Also: Trump attends massive rally hosted by India’s prime minister and much more.

24 February @ 0327—John Oliver on Modi… And, previously…]

A great deal of what I know about Southern Asian politics following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi comes from watching Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act. Nearly a year ago Minhaj devoted a show—Indian Elections—to the subject and the reactions from his family to his plan are telling. India is our world’s second most populace nation, our largest democracy…

…and they have nuclear weapons controlled by a strongman currently engaged in a love fest with President Donald John Trump (despite his lack geographic knowledge). The world’s largest democracy part may be in danger, however. Forget all the stereotypes. India is a major player on the world stage and we need to be aware of the possibilities.

Samanth Subramanian, writing in How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart for The Guardian, takes us into the story:

Soon after the violence began, on 5 January, Aamir was standing outside a residence hall in Jawaharlal Nehru University in south Delhi. Aamir, a PhD student, is Muslim, and he asked to be identified only by his first name. He had come to return a book to a classmate when he saw 50 or 60 people approaching the building. They carried metal rods, cricket bats and rocks. One swung a sledgehammer. They were yelling slogans: “Shoot the traitors to the nation!” was a common one. Later, Aamir learned that they had spent the previous half-hour assaulting a gathering of teachers and students down the road. Their faces were masked, but some were still recognisable as members of a Hindu nationalist student group that has become increasingly powerful over the past few years.

The group, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad, is the youth wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Founded 94 years ago by men who were besotted with Mussolini’s fascists, the RSS is the holding company of Hindu supremacism: of Hindutva, as it’s called. Given its role and its size, it is difficult to find an analogue for the RSS anywhere in the world. [All underscored emphasis in mine, JH] In nearly every faith, the source of conservative theology is its hierarchical, centrally organised clergy; that theology is recast into a project of religious statecraft elsewhere, by other parties. Hinduism, though, has no principal church, no single pontiff, nobody to ordain or rule. The RSS has appointed itself as both the arbiter of theological meaning and the architect of a Hindu nation-state. It has at least 4 million volunteers, who swear oaths of allegiance and take part in quasi-military drills.

Here’s the bit that should give all Americans in 2020 great pause:

The RSS doesn’t, by itself, engage in electoral politics. But among its affiliated groups is the Bharatiya Janata party, the party that has governed India for the past six years, and that has, under the prime minister Narendra Modi, been remaking India into an authoritarian, Hindu nationalist state.

Samanth Subramanian paints a frightening picture:

It was, It was as if the Young Republicans had invited some alt-right thugs to join them in running amok through Berkeley, beating up black and Hispanic students, Young Democrats and anyone who’d expressed support for Bernie Sanders.

Don’t think it can’t happen here? You have another think coming. India is in the grip of an anti-immigrant pogrom that would make Stephen Miller cum in his dockers.

The onslaught on JNU marked the middle of a season of nationwide protest, provoked by a new law. The Citizenship Amendment Act, passed by parliament on 11 December 2019, provides a fast track to citizenship for refugees fleeing into India from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Refugees of every south Asian faith are eligible—every faith, that is, except Islam. It is a policy that fits neatly with the RSS and the BJP’s demonisation of Muslims, India’s largest religious minority. To votaries of Hindutva, the country is best served if it is expunged of Islam. The act was both a loud signal of that ambition and a handy tool to help achieve it.

Since December, millions of Indians have turned out on to the streets to object to this vision of their country. The government has fought them by banning gatherings, shutting off mobile internet services, detaining people arbitrarily, or worse. After protests flared at Jamia Millia Islamia, an Islamic university in Delhi, cops fired teargas and live rounds, assaulted students and trashed the library. As demonstrations spread across the state of Uttar Pradesh, police raided and vandalised Muslim homes by way of reprisal. Detainees in custody were beaten; one man reported hearing screams in a police station all night long. (In various statements, the police claimed to be acting in self defence, or to prevent violence, or to root out conspiracy.) At least 20 protesters died of bullet wounds. Police officials denied firing at the crowds, even though the police carried the only visible guns at these rallies.

Still, the protests have persisted well into February.

When President Trump arrives in India on Monday, Modi has promised him a reception—7,000,000 in the streets—that would awe Leni Riefenstahl. What favors might Modi ask of our president after such an out pouring of support that makes Trump’s own rallies pale in comparison?

We all need to understand what Trump is going there and how he is going to come home thinking: I can do bigger and better than Modi.

The dream was that when the Internet got running and the cost of entry shrunk towards zero, all stories would get told. The reality is that while there are many more stories published online that were ever published prior to the Internet, the noise level is so high that most are lost in the static. Curating the net was impossible 20 yeas ago. Today nobody even tries.

Ralph Nader, however, does his best to flag our attention to what is going on in plain sight. Nader, in Three Major News Stories That Need To Be Exposed, writes:

The news is filled with stories about President Trump and his predecessors imposing sanctions on other countries, their officials, and other prominent persons. But the media rarely spells out exactly what these sanctions are, the intermediaries who enforce them, the impacts they have on innocent civilians—women, men and children—how they are countered or evaded, and whether they fulfill or undermine their diplomatic, military, or economic purposes.

For example, sanctions against Iran by Trump increase by the year. They force banks and other financial institutions to cut off all decreed transactions, such as exports from Iran or purchase by Iran of critical spare parts, raw materials, even medical devices. Years ago, sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein prohibited Iraq from purchasing chlorine to purify drinking water and children’s catheters. These sanctions produced deadly results for innocents. Iran’s economy is now in ruins and the brunt of the pain is suffered by innocent families. Under international law, disproportionate harm on civilians from sanctions is a serious violation.

Presently, from Trump there are sanctions on individuals in numerous countries, restricting their travel, their purchases and more. When banks like Citigroup and Bank of America are told by Washington to cut off any financial transactions from any companies doing business with a sanctioned country, do the banks receive payment for their trouble, or are there other quid pro quo rewards? We do not know. Secret government actions are pervasive, though sometimes a freedom of information request, followed by litigation, may pry open what is hidden.

Media alert! Sanctions are potential hotbeds for corruption and illegalities.

A little told story relates the tariffs Trump is imposing on imports from other countries, especially China. There are serious questions as to whether presidents have the constitutional authority or whether Congress must maintain authority on tariffs. Veteran constitutional law litigator Alan Morrison is now contesting sweeping executive tariff power in the federal courts. Reporting on this overreaching by the President is scarce.

Digging deeper, reporters should be asking what standards control presidential discretion or whims on imposing tariffs. The “national security flag” can’t just be waved arbitrarily.

Trump passes out many waivers for certain U.S. companies. Why, for example, did Trump give Apple CEO Tim Cook a waiver on tens of billions of dollars in iPhones imported from China, but not provide waivers to any number of smaller U.S. companies who buy products from China for their manufacturing or retail/wholesale sales?

Constitutional law specialist, Bruce Fein, says the absence of standards for giving waivers raises fundamental questions of unlawful delegation by Congress.

Media alert! Potential incentives for corruption and lawlessness in these burgeoning behind the scenes intrigues are huge.

The third hotbed of abuses relates to the charges by Washington that countries abroad tolerate “corruption,” and that security and economic relations with them are either jeopardized or unworkable. Such charges are regularly made against the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq—both militarily occupied by the U.S.

Corruption involves more than high-level officials taking bribes. Low-level public servants, so woefully underpaid, take money under the table to survive. As it happens, Ashraf Ghani, the elected president of Afghanistan, a former professor at Johns Hopkins University, was a leading expert on the nuances and functions of bribery in third-world countries. He can be a worthy source of knowledge on corruption.

U.S. agencies are a major generator of secret corruption in countries like Afghanistan. For example, cargo planes full of crisp one hundred dollar bills are shipped to Kabul and then trans-shipped to places like Kandahar. It doesn’t take much imagination to frame a reporter’s investigation—of what happens to cash in occupied, desperate societies.

Books and articles on the intelligence agencies note that cash handouts, big and small, are critical to achieve their purposes. There is so much bribery cash in Afghanistan that to stop the flow would seriously affect their shaky economy.

Bribery is a two way street—the briber and the bribee. Secret payments and bribes have often backfired against U.S. foreign policies in many undesirable ways.

Bribes to get what Washington and giant multinational corporations want from fragile countries merits more reporting, if only to show that a good deal of the bribery is under our control and within our power to reverse.

Media Alert!

Only a free and independent media can report such stories. In an increasingly corporate environment that even Bartholomew would envy, even the First Amendment is not enough to get these three stories reported without coragious journalists willing to flip off their masters in the way one of my heroes—Roldo Bartimole—did and continues to do.

Michael Bloomberg assembled a great advertising crew to produce more campaign commercials running online and in more media markets for a presidential campaign than anyone has ever seen before, proving that when you have more money than Jesus you truly believe that you earned every penny and you are entitled to what ever the fuck you want.

Then he stepped onto a stage and blew himself up in a pyrotechnic display worthy of Kiss.

Matt Taibbi, writing in The Bloomberg Myth Explodes on Live TV for Rolling Stone Magazine, ledes:

What a catastrophe Wednesday night was for Mike Bloomberg. The New York plutocrat was kicked in the teeth by Elizabeth Warren in the first minutes—she denounced him as a Trump-like “arrogant billionaire” who called women “horse-faced lesbians”—and never made it back to his feet.

Bloomberg stood in mute fury as his $400 million campaign investment went up in smoke. His contempt for democracy and sense of entitlement surpass even Donald Trump, who at least likes crowds—Bloomberg’s joyless imperiousness makes Trump seem like Robin Williams.

That Bloomberg has been touted as a potential Democratic Party savior across the top ranks of politics and media is an extraordinary indictment of that group of people.

Yesterday I noted (see Bonus No. 2) Ted Rall’s take on the desperation of the center-left wing of the Pro-War Pro-Business party to find a savior that can stop the people’s choice—Bernie Sanders—from taking on President Donald John Trump in November and showing him for the cardboard cutout that he is.

Bloomberg’s non-exchange with Senator Elizabeth Ann Warren was particularly horrible. Taibbi continues:

Far from showing “toughness,” Bloomberg on Wednesday wilted under attacks from his five Democratic opponents. He was unprepared throughout and seemed to be ad-libbing the most important exchanges. When Warren asked him with how many women he’d had sign non-disclosure agreements—

Bloomberg: inaudible…

Warren: How many is that?

Bloomberg: None of them accuse me of doing anything, other than maybe s— they didn’t like a joke I told.

The answer drew groans. Any political consultant could have told Bloomberg “they didn’t like a joke I told” would go over like a dead flounder. Either Bloomberg is a lousy campaigner who doesn’t understand the need for preparation, or he thinks he doesn’t need to prepare for live performances because he’ll just buy PR elsewhere.

See When you have more money than Jesus you truly believe that you earned every penny and you are entitled to what ever the fuck you want above. Taibbi goes for all of the above:

Both explanations bode badly for a theoretical general-election campaign against Trump, an expert at ad-libbing cruelties and generating free media in amounts exceeding even what Bloomberg can buy. If Bloomberg can’t handle being asked by Warren how many NDAs he’s had signed, just imagine when Trump offers him a box to stand on and asks him how it feels to have to spend $4 million per friend.

Bloomberg’s entire argument for office is that he’s better than Trump, but where exactly is he better? The biggest argument against a Trump presidency involves his racial attitudes. Bloomberg’s record is worse.

His defense Wednesday of stop-and-frisk — that it was a widely used policy that got “out of control” because “too many” African Americans were stopped—showed that even after all this time, he still doesn’t get the problem, i.e., that the mass-profiling policy was fundamentally discriminatory. Trump is a crude circus nationalist, but Bloomberg’s policing policies were profoundly, intellectually racist, and he proved in Nevada that his only growth has been to recognize their political inexpediency.

Trump is worse on the environment and on guns. Bloomberg supported George Bush at the height of the Iraq War effort, and says he still doesn’t regret supporting that invasion. Bloomberg also has an awful record when it comes to Wall Street. In the debate Wednesday, he said this about 2008:

The financial crisis came about because the people that took the mortgages, packaged them, and other people bought them, those were—that’s where all the disaster was.

That’s in the ballpark of true, although Bloomberg stopped well short of denouncing the “people that took the mortgages,” by which one presumes he means banks. This is unsurprising, because when Bloomberg was not running for president as a Democrat, he ridiculed Occupy Wall Street and regularly spouted bogus Wall Street talking points deflecting blame from banks. This is what he said in November 2011:

It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.

Forget the emperor, the whole Democratic National Committee, from Thomas Edward Perez down is fucking buck naked.

Bonus No. 1: Bernie Sanders briefed … that Russia is trying to aid his campaign

Bonus No. 2: Will Feign Affection for Catnip

Bob Seger Drops 40th-Anniversary ‘Against the Wind’ Video…

I once fused the magnet on one of my 15-inch woofers while listening to the title track of Seger’s 1969 debut album Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man at more volume than any sensible college student would even conceive of testing. But yeah, I was young and foolish.

Was all that really 40 years ago?

Fuck.

Bonus No. 1: Bob Seger…

As we brace ourselves to see if Nevada can get right what Iowa got wrong, Ta-Nehisi Coates sits down with Ezra Klein to talk about power and culture. For more than a century European Americans have successfully appropriated African, Latinx and Asian cultures to their own profit. A 21st century cultural shift presages an even more powerful political tsunami.

Stephen Miller’s Make America Great White Again scheme as rolled out by President Donald John Trump, while pleasing his base, has also energized the targeted communities and I expect we’ll see real pushback in the Nevada caucuses, and the California and Texas primaries.

Klein’s 75-minute podcast of his discussion with Coates is far ranging, but he chose to highlight this exchange in Ta-Nehisi Coates on why political power isn’t enough for the right:

Ta-Nehisi Coates—I think to the extent that you see real power changing in this country, you see it in culture rather than politics. This is why people find Black Panther infuriating — it has nothing to do with the content. But you get all of these responses like, “Why do I have to like this? Why is this being rammed down my throat?” I think what’s happened is people who previously did not have power now have power. Shonda Rhimes has actual power to actually affect what you’re going to see on your television.

Ezra Klein—This to me is such an underplayed part of the political moment right now. I love the way Rebecca Traister talks about this: People can see when new groups are gaining the power to be represented in culture, to see their cultural preferences made real, to be represented in politics. It’s noticeable. And the loss of power among people who used to have it in an unquestioned way is also powerful.

Something I talk about in the book is that you can’t pretend that it doesn’t feel like a loss. But one of the hard things about that is, on the other side, it’s not yet a win. Power has not actually shifted to a new dominant majority. What we are witnessing is only the very beginning. We get the first African American president ever and the result is Donald Trump.

Ta-Nehisi Coates—I think we don’t always realize the extent to which the culture actually interacts with politics. You say something in the book about how the effects of demographics are not felt in the immediate moment — it happens much later. And I think it’s actually the same way for culture. I think those who perceive a threat symbolically from Barack Obama are kind of correct because kids are going to grow up and they’re going to remember as a great authority figure this guy who was African American. And if it matters that all the other presidents before him were white, then it has to matter that he is black. So if white identity is important to you, then that might be threatening to you.

Ezra Klein—I have a line in the book that culture runs 10 years ahead of demographics and politics runs 10 years behind. Nike makes [Colin] Kaepernick their spokesman because they want to win the future. They want to appeal to young people, and young America is much more diverse. For the same reason, cable news networks only care how many people watch between 18 and 40 years old.

So cultural power is trying to win over the America that is to come. Political power — if you look at who votes and whose power is amplified by American geography — is operating behind. And then economic power is compounding over time. So there’s a deep instability in our politics right now where it is not wrong that this sort of Trump coalition feels itself losing a power it had. But it’s completely wrong to say that it has lost power. That’s disorienting for everybody because they’re reacting to loss, but it’s not like there’s some winner on the other side who can just sort of move forward with the agenda. So we’re in this incredibly clenched moment of very sharp conflict.

Put your headphones on and listen to the whole conversation. I did.

Bonus No. 1: BLOCK THE VOTE SCHEME IS COUNTER BLOCKED…

Bonus No. 2: Wanted by the DNC: Someone, Anyone to Stop Bernie Sanders.

Bonus No. 3: He may be onto something.

He lived with a family in a Cleveland public house project.

He took early morning rides on RTA buses with workers as they traveled to work.

He was preparing the ground to represent them as their mayor. He said he was a “child of Cleveland.”

The message: I’m one of you. I stand with you.

And in the 1989 mayoral election the people choose him—Michael White–as their leader.
Here was his chance to show he was really a product of Cleveland. He had strongly hinted he represented the ordinary Clevelander. The poor Clevelander, if living in public house and riding the morning worker traffic meant anything.

He took office in January, 1980. Time to prove your bona fides, kid from Cleveland.

It would soon become clear whose interests Mayor White served. Not the public housing families, not the RTA worker/rider.

He became a continuation of the rule by corporate interests. NO DOUBT ABOUT IT.

A LETTER I OBTAINED TOLD ME THAT IN HIS FIRST YEAR AS MAYOR.

In the summer of 1990, I asked to examine a file. A Freedom of Information request.

As I looked through the documents I found a letter. It was from Mayor Michael White to Progressive Insurance top executive Peter Lewis.

I asked for a copy. It was given to me.

Soon after I got a call to return to that office.

They wanted the letter back. It contained personal financial information, they claimed. It did not.

They wanted me to unwring the bell. You cannot do that.

If I were the mayor, I’d want it back, too.

It hardly spoke of a mayor interested in needs of daily RTA riders or public housing residents.

It was a tailored give-away of significant public resources to private interests in this LOOK BACK.

White’s letter offered Progressive some $183-million in subsidies to move its business into downtown Cleveland. On lakefront city land.

It was a Pledge of Allegiance to the same corporate interest the mayor he succeeded served.

And since the city already had property on that land—Browns stadium—it had the promise of significant MORE public cost. The stadium would have to be razed. Another would have to be built elsewhere

These shady deals continue today. It is really time for a Good Government movement to challenge the significant subsidies given major developers or other hands-out strong-armed by corporate thuggery as Sherwin-Williams. This is the new corruption. Public corruption by legal means. Makes Boss Tweed look like a choir boy.

It’s time these sweetheart deals are seen for what they are: payoffs demanded and received by interests powerful enough to shakedown governments.

Of course, this shakedown was all legal. The best law firms were ready to make it so: Squire-Sanders would do urban renewal bond work; Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue would do mortgage revenue bonds; and Calfee-Halter (Voinovich’s old firm) would act as the city’s financial consultant.

All bases covered.

And Gov. Dick Celeste was on board.

It’s time the U. S. Internal Revenue Service examine these “gifts” and seek to tax them at the least.

Back in the 1980s as White prepared to replace George Voinovich the Cleveland Corporates had built a reputation for Cleveland as an “All-American City,” selling itself with a big corporate PR push. The reality, then and now, is quite different, as another LOOK BACK:

The franchise is worthless unless citizens get to the polls and cast their votes. Apathy, sadly, accounts for a real percentage, but the intentional threat to voting rights comes from decades of systematic voter suppression ranging from poll taxes and literacy tests to voter ID and mass incarceration: targeted at non-white voters.

This is, and has historically been, the real Southern Strategy to protect the fragile control over the former confederate states wielded by the spiritual and actual descendants of the men who attempted secession to protect their wealth. This election year is shaping up to be a national referendum on the Make America Great White Again movement and Federal Judge Eleanor Ross struck a blow to that scheme after she ruled in favor of investigative journalist Greg Palast in a lawsuit against Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. Nicole Powers, writing in Kemp Loses Vote Purge Suit Brought by Reporter Palast for The Palast Investigative Fund, explains the nut of the suit:

A key issue at stake are the “Interstate Crosscheck” purge lists secretly provided to Georgia by the Kansas Secretary of State in 2015 and 2017. Kemp had turned over Georgia’s voter rolls to Kansas official Kris Kobach, who worked closely with Donald Trump, and is known for his racially biased vote suppression techniques.

“Kemp tried to hide the Crosscheck lists which he got from his crony Kobach. The lists are at least 99.9% wrong. Kemp’s office claimed he did not use the lists to purge voters, an assertion contradicted by his GOP predecessor. Moreover, Zach D. Roberts of the Palast investigative team obtained the Georgia 2013 purge list provided by Kobach through (legal) investigative techniques — so we know, and the judge knows, he has more squirreled away.

“Kemp finally turned over evidence that he purged 106,000 voters, overwhelmingly voters of color, that were on the Crosscheck list. But that’s just the tip of the purge-berg.”

Palast’s co-plaintiff Helen Butler is the Executive Director of the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agenda, a non-partisan group founded by civil rights legend Rev. Joseph Lowery. Lowery, commenting on the Crosscheck purge system, told Palast, “It’s Jim Crow all over again.”

Oddly, one of Kemp’s defenses was that he turned over Georgia’s confidential voter information to Kobach so it could be used to purge voters in 29 other states, but not Georgia. Kobach’s list showed thousands of Michigan voters who’d supposedly also registered or voted in Georgia. Michigan removed tens of thousands of voters with names like “James Brown” and “Mohammed Mohammed” — almost all with mismatched middle names.

The Michigan purge of Georgia voters was key to Trump’s official victory margin of 10,700 in Michigan, putting Trump over the top in the electoral college.

What a nice wedding present for Stephen Miller and Katie Waldman. Also…

Bonus No. 1: Bernie Should Own the Socialist Label

Bonus No. 2: What Really Happened at Ohio University When Kaitlin Showed Up?

Bonus No. 3: One Month Isn’t Enough

Bonus No. 4: Cartoon: And they’re off!

Bonus No. 5: A cheery and helpful guide: How to be happy.

I’m a sucker for learning tools and the headline on David Robson’s book The Intelligence Trap, caught my attention. Here’s the problem, actually here’s the first of two problems. David Robson both wrote the book and wrote the article discussing the book and there’s no disclaimer mentioning this fact until the very bottom of the piece. Not cool, Guardian.

And unless you looked at the byline on the piece—which I routinely do, but I don’t think most people bother—you still might miss the connection. Then there’s the copy/version problem. See, if I search for The Intelligence Trap I come up with two, seemingly different books, both written by David Robson. The first, is a hardback published in August of last year with the subtitle: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes. The second, a paperback published in March of last year with the subtitle: Revolutionise your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions. As near as I can tell, the contents of both books is the same, only the subtitles have been changed and I have no clue why.

The hardback is available in my library system and I’ve ordered a copy and I’ll confirm this when I see the text, but as near as I can tell, Robson pretty much gives away the store in his article. Who knows why authors do that, but I imagine the practice is akin to movie trailers that pretty much show you the only good parts of a movie.

Robson presents six themes: Fail productively, Teach it to someone else, Mix it up, Get moving, Change your environment and Do nothing. I didn’t see anything in any of the sections that I, and other students, didn’t use in college 36 years ago. Still, maybe new generations have forgotten these lesson and need reminding. Here are my favorite bits:

FAIL PRODUCTIVELY:Psychological studies show that a “pre-test” quiz—taken before you have studied the material—primes the brain to absorb the information afterwards, even if you failed to answer a single question correctly. This is true for both the memorisation of simple trivia and the deeper understanding of more complicated material.

TEACH IT TO SOMEONE ELSE: Perhaps the most potent technique is to teach the material to another person, since that forces you to demonstrate a deep conceptual understanding. If you don’t have a willing partner, you could imagine describing it to someone, or draft an email setting out what you’ve learned in as much detail as possible.

MIX IT UP: Try not to spend too long on any one topic – rather, switch between them regularly. If you are learning a new language, for example, you might rotate between two or three vocabulary topics, or switch between the different verb tenses you are practising, rather than studying them in turn in blocks. This strategy is called interleaving and like the pre-test, it can feel frustrating since you can’t really get into the swing of things before moving on.

GET MOVING: Contrary to the stereotype of the sedentary geek, the best learners are also the most physically active, since cardiovascular exercise triggers the release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and epinephrine that are essential for memory formation.

CHANGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT: If we only study or practice a skill in one place, our memories become tied to the sights, sounds and smells of that location. This makes it harder for us to recall the same material in a new environment—the exam hall, the quizshow studio, a Parisian restaurant—without those cues.

AND…

DO NOTHING: After pitting your brain against all those desirable difficulties, give it time to recover. I don’t mean regular time out like watching TV, but literally doing nothing.

Those five are all good starting points, but No. 2 is my favorite. In college I always worked with study groups where we taught each other what we had learned in class. Having to articulate information demanded that we have more than a passing grasp of the material. The method worked well for us.

Bonus No. 1: Boy Scouts of America files for bankruptcy amid new sex-abuse lawsuits.

Bonus No. 2: Why I left the Boy Scouts.

Bonus No. 3: Everyone else is getting government grants why aren’t you?

Bonus No. 1: Hasan On How To Make Your Wedding Cheaper.

There can be no more important topic when it comes to our president than following the money. As a businessman, Donald John Trump lives and dies on credit and when banks started saying no thanks to CEO Trump, he turned to a bank that was willing to let him in the door. That bank was, and continues to be, Deutsche Bank.

The the top line of the bank’s website promises: Deutsche Bank reports continued progress on strategic performance. Now isn’t that comforting? Especially in light of the publication of David Enrich’s Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction Lloyd Green, writing in The Guardian brings us up to the present with his review of in Dark Towers review: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and a must-read mystery.

Steve Bannon, the brains behind Donald Trump’s upset election victory, saw the danger posed by the cash cravings of the First Family. In Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff chronicled Bannon drawing a direct line between purported dark doings at Deutsche Bank and Jared Kushner’s brushes with the Mueller investigation: “This is all about money laundering… It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit.”

But that’s only half the story. Late last year, a federal appeals court sustained subpoenas issued by congressional committees to the German bank for Trump’s financial records. Come June, the supreme court will probably rule on the enforceability of those demands together with other cases concerning Trump’s tax returns – just in time for political convention season. In other words, Deutsche remains relevant to the 2020 elections.

Green calls the books: a master class in financial sleuthing and the book looks to like what I would have expected from Matt Taibbi. Green continues:

Dark Towers traces the bank’s arc from founding through the second world war to the present, excavates and analyzes Trump’s relationship with his lender of last resort, [Emphasis mine, JH] and lays out the ties that bind Justin Kennedy, son of retired supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy, to the Trump family. In case anyone forgot, Brett Kavanaugh clerked for Kennedy père, who interceded with Trump on Kavanaugh’s behalf.

Like a discordant melody that haunts disturbing lyrics, Dark Towers is woven with the life and the 2014 suicide of Bill Broeksmit, a former Deutsche executive. Broeksmit witnessed the bank’s growth, decline and brushes with the law. His death imparts to Enrich’s book an air of mystery, crystalizing Deutsche’s descent and woes. The bank weighed on Broeksmit to the end.

He left an electronic paper trail. Val Broeksmit, his troubled son, found “detailed information about what was going on deep inside the bank”.

According to Enrich, there “were minutes of board meetings. Financial plans. Indecipherable spreadsheets. Password-protected presentations. And evidence of his father’s misery.”

Broeksmit’s is not the only death here.

This past November, Tom Bowers, a banker who worked on Trump’s account, killed himself. Bowers was an Enrich source with firsthand knowledge of the bank’s $640m loan on Trump International Hotel & Tower, Chicago.

Deutsche and its subsidiaries have faced an array of criminal and civil charges in the US and UK. Money laundering, Russia and rate-fixing played outsized roles. After the Guardian reported on Dark Towers, Deutsche issued a semi-oblique confession: “While elements of the narrative seem to be exaggerated to fit into a storyline, we have long acknowledged and sought to learn from our historical shortcomings.” [Hence the continued progress on strategic performance above? JH]

Cue the conspiracy theorists. Of course Russia pays a role:

With the fall of the Soviet Union it looked east—as would the 45th president—for new markets and opportunities. Among other things, the nexus between Deutsche, Trump and VTB, a Kremlin-favored bank, left House Democrats and Enrich puzzled. The author posits: “Perhaps this was more than a coincidence.”

According to the Mueller report, in the midst of Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination Felix Sater, a Trump crony and former convict, repeatedly attempted to arrange for Michael Cohen, Trump’s now-imprisoned personal lawyer, and “candidate Trump, as representatives of the Trump Organization, to travel to Russia to meet with Russian government officials and possible financing partners”.

In a 19 December 2015 email, Sater wrote: “Invitations & Visas will be issued this week by VTB Bank to discuss financing for Trump Tower Moscow. Politically neither Putin’s office nor Ministry of Foreign Affairs [can] issue invite, so they are inviting commercially/business.”

Trump fans will clutch Green’s conclusion—and perhaps rightly so, like a pearl necklace. He writes:

Dark Towers provides no conclusive evidence that Trump’s funding originated in Russia. Executives denied such ties, Trump Moscow was not built and the redacted Mueller report lacks any mention of Deutsche even as it contains multiple references to VTB. Then again, in December 2017, after learning that the special counsel had subpoenaed Deutsche’s records, Trump reportedly wanted Mueller fired.

It would be generous to say that when it comes to Trump, where the truth lies is a mystery. Throughout the impeachment proceedings, Trump denied he had dispatched Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to dig for dirt on the Biden family. After acquittal by the Senate, the president admitted it to Geraldo Rivera.

As for Trump’s bet on Kennedy and Kavanaugh, it appears to have paid off. In last summer’s much-awaited census case, Kavanaugh voted that the commerce department decision to add a “citizenship” question was subject to only minimal judicial review. The fact that the government had been less than forthcoming failed to sway either of Trump’s appointees to the highest court.

With the Deutsche Bank subpoena headed for resolution in a matter of months, we may see history repeat itself. Regardless, Dark Towers is an excellent primer for what may well await.

How do you think Associate Justice Brett Michael Kavanaugh is likely to vote?

Bonus No. 1: California man freed after 15 years… thanks to genealogy website data.

Bonus No. 2: Fail productively… how to turn yourself into a super-learner.

Trump Tweets Larry David MAGA Hat Spoof Without Realizing the Joke’s on Him.

…Annddd the original tweet… with a MAGA hat tip to Mary Jo. :)

This afternoon, while driving home from having coffee and pastry with one of my mentors, I listened to Political Teamsmanship from Innovation Hub on WCPN. As I listened, mentally agreeing with many of the points I realized: 90 percent, maybe more, of the listeners to this program are progressives/liberals/democrats.

Half of our population that stood to benefit wasn’t even listening. And if somehow they stumbled across the show they would dismiss the program as Anti-Trump propaganda and quickly change the channel. When 80 percent of the people in each party think that everyone in the other party is evil we have a existential problem.

Well, if populism is the problem, then anti-populism must hold the answer. Benjamin Moffitt doesn’t think so. In The trouble with anti-populism: why the champions of civility keep losing for The Guardian, Moffitt writes:

Unlike other “isms”, anti-populism is not a clear ideological disposition or mode of governance, but rather an odd mix of ideological and strategic allies pulled together in a temporary coalition. Anti-populism can draw together politicians from all over the left-right spectrum. They don’t have a shared view of the role of the state, military intervention, fiscal regulation and so on—but what they do share is a broader vision of how politics should be “done”.

Although populists on the left and right clearly have very different stances, there are a number of things that tend to unite them—and mobilise anti-populists’ concerns.

First, while populists appeal to “the people” against “the elite”, anti-populists see this as a crude and patently false way to divide society. The political theorist Jan-Werner Müller argues that populists’ “idea of the single, homogenous, authentic people is a fantasy”. Instead, anti-populists argue that we should acknowledge that there are many overlapping, competing characterisations of “the people” in society, and that such collective identities are only ever made up by individuals anyway.

I’m fine with that as long every individual is afforded the exact same access government. We the People has to mean every single citizen regardless of any auxiliary criteria. Abominations like Super PACS and Citizens United, or any special cases that allow wealth to buy power and influence, have no place in in a free society. Moffitt continues:

Second, populists tend to champion political mechanisms that allegedly give voice to the people (such as referendums, plebiscites and forms of direct democracy), whereas anti-populists see such mechanisms as rather crude and divisive, potentially leading to mob rule. For anti-populists, politics is a relatively rational activity in which politicians debate one another, hopefully finding consensus by convincing the other side with the strength of their arguments. For them, politics is not a battle of passions, but rather something of a puzzle to be solved. This is a supposedly rational view of politics—sober, mature and graceful—against the allegedly immature, kneejerk and sensational politics of populists.

I have no problem with referendums, plebiscites and forms of direct democracy as long as all the actors are transparent again, actors are prevented from buying acceptance of their particular view. So how did we get here?

[P]erhaps the most important tendency of anti-populism, is a valourisation of consensus in politics. For anti-populists, we are no longer living in “ordinary times” in which consensus rules. Characterising these good old days, the political scientist and journalist Yascha Mounk notes that for decades, “developed democracies in North America, western Europe and beyond appeared to be remarkably stable. Moderate parties and politicians were dominant. Independent institutions were strong. A broad political consensus created a sense that the future was highly predictable.” For anti-populists, a return to this consensus would represent a healthy return to “normal” politics.

Moffitt, here, opens a door that should be slammed shut, boarded up, bricked over and buried under a few hundred tons of sand: the Third Way. I nearly deleted the story at that point. I firmly believe that the Third Way is how we got here. Moffitt writes:

The anti-populist call for consensus politics in many ways resembles the third way “beyond left or right” position offered by Blair and the British sociologist Anthony Giddens in the 90s, and adapted by parties and leaders across the world. One cannot help but feel a sense of déjà vu—in 2002, in the face of populist Jean-Marie Le Pen’s progression to the second round of the French presidential elections, Giddens wrote that “the renewed polarisation of politics on the left and right is plainly threatening to political stability”, and that “the third way can beat the far right by modernising, liberalising and being tough on immigration.”

Fast-forward 16 years, and we find Blair singing from the same hymnbook, claiming that “the political space for argument and debate has become very, very hard to curate and understand because everything is just sucked into this vortex of highly inflamed political rhetoric and exchanges of position without people trying to really reach much common ground”, and arguing that the way to fight the far right is by forcing migrants to integrate more. And it’s not only Blair and his coterie: the international enthusiasm for Emmanuel Macron’s “not left, nor right” politics in France is also evidence of an attempted rehabilitation of the third way, with Macron decrying the “populist and nationalist leprosy” of Europe.

Here, one starts to get the feeling that addressing the so-called populist threat is less about fighting actual populism, and more about rehabilitating and rebranding the third way for a new era.

The Third Way was disastrous in the ’90s and the concept has not aged well.

The second weakness of anti-populism is that it creates an atmosphere where any politician that deviates from the “norm”—that is, the centre-left or centre-right—risks being tarnished with the populism label. This can have sometimes end up delegitimising worthy challengers to the existing political consensus, which in turn means that we get stuck with more of the same.

The populism label is also often used to bundle together very different figures or parties. It is true that anti-populists usually acknowledge, correctly, that the threat posed by radical right populists, with their often explicit threats against minorities, tends to be far greater than that posed by populists on the left, who focus their anger on the economic elite. To see just how dangerous rightwing populism can be, look to India, where the prime minister, Narendra Modi, has passed new laws that effectively make the country’s Muslim minority into second-class citizens, or the US, where Trump’s incendiary rhetoric has inspired a spate of violent attacks on minorities, journalists and opponents.

Yet that doesn’t stop some of the more fervent anti-populists drawing an equivalence between the populist left and right. Take, for example, the Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s comments, from 2019, about populist sentiment in the US: “It just kind of turns you against the system in general, and then you’re more likely to want to vote to blow up the system. Which could lead you to somebody like Bernie, and it could lead you to somebody like Trump. That’s how we got where we are.” The message here is that Trump and Sanders are the same in being expressions of democratic discontent: the subtext is that such anti-system sentiment is immature, destructive and dangerous.

When you’re in charge of the system, any opposition is, by necessity: immature, destructive and dangerous. Those in power are the opposite of Bentham’s ideal because they want to maximize utility—find the greatest happiness—for themselves and fuck the rest of you wastes of human genome.

A third weakness of anti-populism is that when it becomes a dominant frame in our thinking about liberal-democratic politics, it tends to reinforce the false opposition between liberalism (with its rule of law, freedom of speech and checks and balances) and democracy (with its popular sovereignty and majoritarianism) – a binary, ironically, that populists also tend to promote. On one side, populists tend to argue that within liberal democracies, we’ve gone too far towards the liberal side of things, with unelected bodies and elites undermining the voice of the people. On the other side, we have anti-populists seeking to fight populism tooth and nail, even if this means playing into arguably not-so-democratic solutions (such as attempting to rerun or ignore referendums that give the “wrong” result) or rigidly defending distant and not particularly representative or responsive institutions or bodies (such as the European troika in the battles over the Greek government debt crisis).

But this opposition is too simplistic.

But not as simple as: Not me. Us. I’m just saying…

Bonus No. 1: Bloomberg Said Ending a Racist Housing Practice Caused Financial Crisis.

Bonus No. 2: In his assault on justice, Trump has out-Nixoned Nixon.

What the hell is socialism anyway? The Merriam-Webster definition is weak, at best, and grossly narrow at best, but the dictionary is as good as any place to start; as long as you don’t stop there. Then you have to deal with Democratic Socialism, which is where Bernie Sanders goes. Whole political science classes are devoted to the topic.

However, if we’re going to speak to each other, we at least need to have some common understanding. This is my elevator pitch: Democratic Socialism is proportional sharing of a community’s wealth under Karl Marx’s idea—From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs—where a democratically elected government holds and distributes the wealth in a a trust for the owners of the wealth: the people.

As radical as that sounds, that is how we have infrastructure and schools and hydro-electric dams and clean water coming from our taps and, well, you get the idea. The simple reason that a tiny percentage of über wealthy families are shitting their pants is because Bernie wants to extend the practice to their personal profit centers like healthcare.

Ralph Nader makes the case that the one percent isn’t against socialism; their just against socialism for the 99 percent. Nader, in “Democratic Socialism—Bring it on Corporate Socialists! , writes:

Crooked Donald Trump, the erstwhile failed gambling czar and corporate welfare king, is assailing Bernie Sanders for his “radical socialism.” How ludicrous given Trump’s three-year giveaway of taxpayer assets and authorities to giant corporations—a perfect portrait of crony capitalism.

Others are joining the socialist labeling bandwagon, including corporatist right wing radio talk show blowhards, themselves freeloaders, profitably using the public airwaves. This pack includes Lloyd Blankfein, former lawbreaking chairman of Goldman Sachs.

Bernie knows, of course, how to rebut this distorted interpretation of “democratic socialism.” But will his rebuttals be enough given that the Biden-Bloomberg-Klobuchar wing of the Democratic Party is determined to label Bernie “unelectable” against the boastful Don the Con?

Some suggestions for Bernie and others to use in this upcoming back and forth on “democratic socialism” vs. “corporate socialism” of the super-rich corporations:

1. Go after the corporate socialists who have invited Wall Street and Big Business to socialize the means of government against the peoples’ necessities and freedoms. It is a government of, by, and for the dominant corporations. Such private power dominating our government in so many reported ways was called “fascism” in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a formal message to Congress. This is a fertile field for taking the offensive.

2. Democratic socialism is a political force in countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, sometimes Canada, and others. In these places, it means all the people in those countries get their taxes returned in the form of improved livelihoods, economic security, and peace of mind. [Emphasis mine, JH] Democratic socialism means better pay, universal healthcare, pensions, day care, family sick leave, vacations, tuition-free higher education, robust public transit and parks, and many other amenities backed by stronger unions, denied the American people in the “land of the free and home of the brave.” Since World War II, the European political movements were led by “social democratic” parties.

3. Back to our country. Corporatists and right-wing Wall Street Democrats are inferring that “democratic socialism” is un-American, ruinous for our economy. These demonizers argue that a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” is a sure loser in the election against Donald Trump—a self-enriching crook, outlaw, boastful, savage sexual predator, bigot/racist in his policies, inciter of violence, and a serial, delusionary liar. Trump, the Electoral College-selected tool of the super-rich and corporate powers should be easy to defeat given his disgraceful presidency.

The American people of all backgrounds like their public libraries, public local control water works, municipal fire departments, police precincts, and public schools. They seem okay with government highways, bridges, public transit, and want their taxes spent to repair and upgrade these vital pieces of our infrastructure. Taxpayer’s don’t want our commonwealth being owned by tax-escaping, gouging corporations.

There are over 1,000 municipal public utilities providing electricity. The “Red” states of Tennessee and Alabama would fight any corporatization of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which 87 years ago, brought electricity to a large poor region that the private electric companies didn’t think was profitable enough.

The unfairly maligned Veterans Administration brought free hospitals and health care to millions of veterans. Millions of Americans are favorably disposed to life-saving Medicare and Medicaid and are economically saved by Social Security and unemployment compensation. Hey! There must be a lot of “democratic socialists” out there in “blue” and “red” states. New Hampshirites are mostly okay with state-owned, revenue-producing, hard-liquor retail stores.

At a meeting long ago with top medical officials at the Walter Reed Army hospital, I was told that after learning the second leading cause of hospitalization for U.S. soldiers in Vietnam was malaria, the U.S. Army asked the drug companies to develop remedies. The negative response was that developing medicines to deal with malaria wasn’t profitable enough. In response, the Pentagon brought together skilled doctors and scientists and started its own “drug company” inside Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospitals. For less than 10 percent of what the big drug companies say it costs, our government developed three out of four of the leading anti-malarial drugs in the world and made them available everywhere without any patents producing big pharma-like profits.

If the political and corporate Trumpsters and the Clintonite Democrats snort at all this, tell them that they do agree on one thing. Those in both these camps have been eager to have collapsing capitalism, as during the 2008 Wall Street dive, always saved by reliable socialism—aka—trillions of taxpayer dollars via Washington, D.C. funding the bailout of the reckless bankers and speculators.

Put that in your capitalist pipe and smoke it.

As I noted back on New Year’s Day, my deep dive this year is into the Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Edward H. Davidson. Davidson published his book in 1956 which dates his writing of the book, at least in part, to around my own arrival in this world, that is to say that Davidson’s literary observations are very much those of the mid ’50s.

Davidson structured his book in such a way as to place all of his own material in the introduction under five headings: Poe’s life, Poetry, Tales, his one novel and his letters and literary criticisms. My notes below deal with the first section. Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 19 January 1809. He died in Baltimore, Maryland, on 7 October 1849. Davidson reveals a life much kinder to Poe than the one I grew up with in popular culture; particularly the notion that Poe was twisted drunkard and dope fiend with most unnatural appetites.

First, this line jumped out at me because the point is one I have made several times to people who read my work without first having met me. Davidson writes:

The misunderstanding which has given rise for more than a century to the Poe Myth comes from several sources and stimuli. The first is the obvious human failing to confuse life and literature—to assume, other words, that what a man wrote he inevitably was in his own person. If a writer dealt with corruption, horror and eroticism, he was of necessity corrupt, horrible and erotic. (vii)

I suspect that Stephen King suffers greatly from this fiction. Although he seems to have a sense of humor on this point; occasionally joking that he has the heart of a young boy, in a jar on his desk.

Davidson continues:

Perhaps one might lay down the truism that Poe wrote what he did because it was as remote as possible from his own experience. (vii)

Like King, Poe may have created his own persona for his personal amusement and advancement. Davidson notes:

He effected poses and manners and made profound impressions on easily impressionable ladies. (vii)

As to Poe’s alleged substance abuse, Davidson dismisses the rumors entirely:

One would like for all time, to destroy the fiction that Poe was a drunkard (he could not drink: owing to a curious but well-known nervous sensibility, one drink of wine or whiskey made him virtually senseless); he was not a dope fiend (only once in his life he took laudanum to calm his nerves, and he became violently ill); he was not a rake. His life was, in fact, one of the dullest any figure of literary importance has lived in the past two-hundred years. (viii)

Indeed, Davidson writes, we have much to be thankful for from Poe’s work:

Poe, in short, acted out for us our own childish, arrogant, violent inner world which, because we are civilized people, we all keep under control: Poe has done for us what we wouldn’t dare do for ourselves. (ix)

On two other sections in his introduction, Davidson notes on Poetry that:

[Poe] was America’s major poet before the coming of Walt Whitman and yet his poetry today is considered mere noise and nonsense. (ix)

If Poe’s poetry receives little respect today, his literary condition still holds up:

Generally speaking, [Poe’s literary] criticism still commands respect; but recent critical theory has moved far from Poe’s attempts at making psychology of artistic creation and from his assertions that there can be devised rules for art as cogent, and logical, as the rules of science. (ix)

Finally, as is my practice, I make note of words that are unfamiliar to me, such as:

…a century’s accretion of legends and half truths… Accretion: The process of growth or enlargement by a gradual buildup. (ix)

Bonus No. 1: NOW, That’s a Surprise.

Bonus No. 2: “It’s Armageddon Time for the Democratic Party”

Bonus No. 3: How ultra-processed food took over your shopping basket.

Bonus No. 4: Slow TV: Cruising England’s canal in a narrow boat.

Bonus No. 5: The Notorious Michael R. Bloomberg.

Bonus No. 6: Focke Wulf Fw-190 D-9 Hasegawa 1/32—Aircraft Model.

If we ever needed solid evidence that the United States of America is a single-party state ruled by the Pro-War Pro-Business Party, consider the comparison of how the party fought a threat from the Right in 2016 and is now freaking out from a nearly identical challenge from the Left. Post Iowa-New Hampshire I’ve listened to pundits make the obvious comparison.

Just as the reasonable Ghidorah—Rafael Edward Cruz, John Richard Kasich and Marco Antonio Rubio—trampled the PWPB’s right-wing darling John Ellis Bush in 2016 and then clawed itself to shreds while Donald John Trump waltzed to the White House, so too has the middle-way Cerberus—Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg, Elizabeth Ann Warren and Amy Jean Klobuchar—thrown down the PWPB’s left-wing sweetheart Joseph Robinette Biden and will gnaw their legs while Bernard Sanders rolls onward to the Oval Office.

The only wildcard in the game is Michael Rubens Bloomberg and his $2 billion—roughly the annual interest on his $62 billion empire—fuck-all-of-you campaign.

Matt Taibbi, in New Hampshire 2020: In Supreme Irony, the Horse Race Favors Bernie Sanders: Sanders and Trump are political opposites, but they’re on the same path to victory for Rolling Stone Magazine, joins the meme. He writes:

Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night. Second-place finisher Pete Buttigieg earned 24.4 percent of the vote, while Amy Klobuchar, not long ago polling in single digits, came out of nowhere with 19.8 percent, a classic New Hampshire outlier result.

The words “eked” and “narrowly” are getting a workout in headlines today. There is a Yeah, but… passage in nearly every major media write-up of Bernie’s win. “Sanders cements his front-runner status, but his narrow margins… show how volatile this race is,” is how The New York Times put it.

In reality, the results for Sanders cut both ways. On one hand, it’s amazing he can win any state after years of propaganda depicting him as a half-dead cross of Hitler and Stalin (MSNBC before New Hampshire outdid itself with Looney Tunes commentary about “executions in Central Park” and a “digital brownshirt brigade”).

On the other hand, there are signs after New Hampshire that some of the relentless corporate messaging against Sanders is landing. This will inspire orgies of excitement—it’s already happening — as pundits revel in every storyline suggesting Democratic voters are scrambling to find an “electable” alternative.

Good. Let them. I saw this movie in 2016 and have a fair idea of how it ends. It just won’t be horrifying this time.

Well, horrifying is in the eye of the beholder, but I take Taibbi’s point. He continues:

Four years ago, after New Hampshire, it was crystal clear that Donald Trump was not only going to win his party’s nomination, but that his path was being actively cleared by the Republican Party establishment and the national news media, whose half-baked efforts to stop him were working in reverse. I wrote this in February 2016:

The [Republicans] sent forth to take on Trump have been so incompetent, they can’t even lose properly. One GOP strategist put it this way: “Maybe 34 [percent] is Trump’s ceiling. But 34 in a five-person race wins…” The numbers simply don’t work, unless the field unexpectedly narrows before March.

Early mixed results guaranteed that Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio would not drop out soon enough to give any of the others a chance. As a result, the following was obvious at this time four years ago: “Trump will probably enjoy at least a five-horse race through Super Tuesday.”

In hindsight, those Republican challengers were so villainously terrible that none would have beaten Trump in a two-person race. Still, Bush’s backers knew their man was roadkill by New Hampshire, yet didn’t pull the plug. Kasich, who in a rare moment of self-awareness was ready to bail after Iowa (“If we get smoked up there, I’m going back to Ohio,” he fumed in New Hampshire), let himself be fooled by one surprise second-place finish.

All pledged to be committed to stopping Trump but accelerated his victory by staying in too long.

Yeah, the Warican-Businocrats are so last century.

Bonus No. 1: Does Bernie have a ceiling? and Will Obama intervene to stop Bernie?

Bonus No. 2: We hear and read a great deal about strong men out of control in Russia, Turkey, Brazil and The Philippines, but we’re much less informed about Australia’s pasty white prime minister: It turns out Scott Morrison and his friends can do whatever they like. What a shock.

Bonus No. 3: A wholesale ass-whuppin’ may descend upon you like a Florida Hurricane.

Bonus No. 4: From 12 May 2019—On the Trail With Bernie Sanders 2.0: Can the Vermont senator win over Trump voters and harness his grassroots army to transform the Democratic Party?

Bonus No. 5: Prager U Wants You! (To Become a Conservative). (Am I the only one who sees Prager U and thinks insult?)

Bonus No. 6: The Pundits Wrote Off Bernie’s Candidacy. In Iowa and New Hampshire, He Proved Them Wrong.

Timing may be everything, but the punch line can demand, must demand, the careful construction of a foundation along with the piece-by-piece framing of a skeleton that allow the reader to bloom. This is tricky for writers because we can rush to get to the point. Mosley cautions against rushing, or even having a point.

On the first page I came across this thought: Plot is the structure of revelation. This is a lesson that too many beginning writers—myself included—don’t learn quickly. We want to the reader to be impressed with our cleverness and in that rush we fail to prepare the reader and, more importantly Mosley argues, allow them to even get ahead of the writer; to glimpse the horizon. Mosley writes:

If we chose the right moment to reveal a truth about the story, we might create an epiphany for the reader that is striking, maybe even life altering. And yet the potential for epiphany is a minor benefit compared to the trace elements that come slowly to awareness during the unveiling of the story being told. (2)

The unveiling of the story. I liken the process to how so much travel happens today. We drive to a generic airport, board a generic airplane, fly to another generic airport and ta-da! we’re there, not really understanding where there is or how where we find ourselves relates to any other part of our experience.

I really like how Mosley uses trace elements here. At the end of the day all salt–NaCl—is sea salt, but the traces elements make all the difference. As a writer I have much to learn about words as trace elements.

Previously…

My further notes on Mosley’s Elements of Fiction may be found in my electronic chapbook.