Edition #1142

Tuesday. And need I continue to say it? Déjà vu, all over again.

“The practice of democracy is not passed down through the gene pool. It must be taught and learned anew by each generation.” Sandra Day O’Connor, quoted in The New York Times. And apparently it has become a generation-skipping phenomenon…or at least we can hope, because my generation has certainly lost touch.

A week or so ago, I heard that something was happening on Trump’s Truth Social to allow selected members access to Trump’s posts slightly earlier than the general public. I assumed it was something that was for the dedicated faithful who just wanted the status of being in the know before anyone else. And that the cost would be cheap enough to be available to the masses of Trump followers…many of whom are struggling in the current Trump economy. But how wrong I was. So let’s say the important thing up front here. There has never been a scheme as blatantly and openly corrupt as this plan. Let’s skip to a subheading before I blather on.

………………..Subheading –

Ok, here is the offer. For one hundred thousand dollars a month, yes, that is $100,000.00 per month, or for a three-year commitment, a mere sixty thousand dollars a month ($60,000.00), you can have access to Trump’s posts before most. And why would anyone even think of paying such an outrageous amount for early access to anything Trump says? Why would someone pay one million two hundred thousand dollars a year, or commit to seven hundred twenty thousand dollars a year for three years, for advance access to that information? Well, if this were being done by a publicly traded company, this is called insider information, and it is not only illegal, but criminally so (ask Martha Stewart). And what will these true patriots do with this access? Well, hello stock market, hello Kalshi, hello Polymarket, hello millions of dollars of profit for being in a position to trade on your paid-for access. And here’s the thing. As has been the case over the years with Trump, if a Trump supporter were told a few months ago that Trump was about to sell advance access to his posts for tens of thousands of dollars a month, I am sure that they would have laughed hysterically and accused the questioner of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). But, as has always been the case…emphasis on always…after the fact, the pretzel twisting begins and the justifications, rationalizations, excuses, finger pointing, whataboutisms, will all come racing out of their mouths. What our lovely president has made of our government, enriching his own family and friends in publicly blatant schemes of corruption and influence peddling, is indefensible.

………………….The Good Old Days –

I am reminded of a simpler time, a time when Jim Jordan and James Comer gleefully broadcast to the world that they had discovered a bombshell that would take down Joe Biden, in that they found a check from Hunter to Joe in the amount of forty thousand dollars. The hoopla that they displayed lasted about a day before it was proven that this was a payback of a loan Joe had made to his son. But imagine that, the Republicans were so smug and self-righteous in thinking they had proven Biden’s corruption over a forty thousand dollar payment, but they are nowhere to be found in the ocean of billions of dollars paid to the Trump family in exchange for pardons, regulation protection, access to restricted goods, and now access to insider information. I suppose the real lesson that Trump and his sycophants are teaching us is what true corruption is. What true deep state shenanigans look like. And maybe at the end of the day, we can come together and recognize that, while certainly in need of fixing, our old institutions were really not that bad.

As our stable genius president digs into the technologies of the 20^th Century, it is more commonly recognized that one of the keys to the technologies of the 21^st Century is the battery. The ability to store excess capacity from renewable energy sources will unlock their full potential. And while many have denigrated the renewable sector for its limitations, as if the supporting infrastructure were an immovable obstacle, that has certainly not been the case. Over the past decade or so, China has put enormous resources to work to improve battery technology. They, as opposed to our current president, have raced forward to provide the vast majority of the batteries that we increasingly rely upon. I visited China in 2018 and was overcome with the extent of air pollution in Beijing, Shanghai, and elsewhere. It was really a horrible situation, but one that the Chinese were already attempting to address. Over the past five years, they have installed battery installations sufficient to handle the electrical needs of California and Texas in the middle of summer. And in this push, China dominates the industry, accounting for up to ninety percent of batteries used in the US, and almost as much for the rest of the world. And sure, they still rely heavily on coal, a domestically mined energy source, but they are committed to moving away from fossil fuels as they increasingly control the renewable energy sector. I know…I keep harping on this from various angles. But it is infuriating to see the technologies of the future being kneecapped here at home, for reasons of vanity and pettiness, making our path forward much less certain. Or I am wrong, and fossil fuels will supplant all renewables forever. But I doubt it.

Or rather, the methodology in its calculation. Calculating the rate of inflation is a long-studied subject. And it has undergone modifications over the years as new data is gathered along with new patterns of behavior by consumers and businesses. We hear every month about the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, and the Core Inflation Rate, once the historically volatile categories of food and energy are stripped out of the data. Then there is the Producer Price Index, which shows where inflation is in the wholesale marketplace. And then there is the issue of what is included in the basket of goods and how they are weighed against each other to produce the final result. And now, as the newly installed chair of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh will oversee a new method of calculating inflation that is expected to revise it all downward. You can read about the specific changes here, if you want, but believe me, it is all somewhat esoteric and, more importantly, boring. Important, but boring. And while the markets will be watching for any hint of political motivations in whatever numbers come out, the greater concern that I see is the misrepresentation of how any new numbers compare to those in the past. To their credit, when they do come out with the new calculation, they will do a five-year look-back so that today’s numbers will have a valid comparison for those who understand what is going on. But you can be assured that there is one person who will not be so sober about it. If the new methodology, to be used in September for the first time, shows a headline number lower than the month before, which used the old method, Trump will only be talking about that, without context. But I cannot really blame him for that. I would be surprised if he actually understands.

I have written in the past about Russian and Chinese sabotage in Europe. The intentional cutting of internet, communication, and energy cables in various locations, aggressive incursions into the airspace of various European and NATO countries, the shadow terrorism that is known to be sponsored by Russia, and more. But trying to piece it all together, for me at least, was uncertain. I always saw it as Russia and China poking the bear, trying to discern how the West would react to various threats and what vulnerabilities existed that could be exploited at some later date. And I do still think that is at least a part of it, but after listening to this piece, I now understand perhaps a different and more targeted strategy. Here it is argued that this is a plan of disruption to the Western alliance in general, but to NATO in particular. The concept of the “entrapment-abandonment-dilemma is discussed. As we all know, the NATO alliance, as well as the European Union, are not homogeneous groups where all members enjoy the same interests and policies. And, knowing this, Russia is playing them off against each other. Those more friendly to Russia, Hungary under Orban for example, were unlikely to suffer any provocations by Russia, whereas those who view Russia as the threat that they are, are subject to all sorts of aggressions. The theory is that this will cause a fracture in the alliances as those who are the subject of the attacks will be forced to question whether others will actually come to their rescue if necessary, while those not subject to aggression will worry about being dragged into a conflict that has less to do with them. In some sense, it is the dilemma that any alliance lives in. And as time passes, interests can change, policies can change, priorities can change, and it is these changes that Russia is exploiting in its attempt to undermine NATO and the overall Western alliance. At least as far as this thesis goes. It makes sense to me that this kind of disruption, generating the anxiety and questioning of what alliance partnership means, as well as poking for security weaknesses, are all at play. Humans…am I right?

So a few nights ago, I realized that I had some slider meat in the freezer from a BBQ we had a few weeks back. So, yes, I made them. A few really smashed and a few not so smashed. But smashed like a pancake or not, fucking good. And corn on the side with some garlic butter ready to spread.

So I didn’t mean to go off so much on the grift thing, but this one is so blatant that I lost my mind (no, Mike, I didn’t really lose my mind, as this is beyond). So stay healthy and be good to each other.

Me.