Wall Street is Not Your Moral Compass

 Wall Street is not your moral compass.

You cannot judge how well the moral soul of the nation is doing based on how the stock market reacts.

I despise Trump and MAGA with every fiber of my being.

I don't think that when the stock market is doing well, that means Trump is doing the right and decent thing. I don't think that when the stock market is down, that is a clear sign that everything Trump is doing is wrong.

Blanket tariffs are a bad thing. They will hurt us all. We will have to pay more for almost everything. Inflation will rise again. We will experience shortages again. Domestic production is not likely to return to the United States. If any of it does, it will likely cost more unless the USA returns to super-low wages, and the cost of construction is passed on to taxpayers. If it creates jobs, many of them will be positions that Americans would rather not have.  It will mostly create opportunities for robots and AI. The manufacturing sector has changed, and it is not always stocked full of the high-wage jobs you think it is.

But the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) doesn't care about any of that. They only react to stockholder value. Will whatever the government does increase or decrease that shareholder value?

When Trump announces blanket tariffs (without regard for reality or economic impact), the stock market plunges. When Trump says, "Psych! Just kidding about some of those!", the stock market may rise.

Meanwhile, those with advanced knowledge of Trump's moods can "play the market" by buying low and selling high.

Because the other aspect of the market is that much of it is legalized gambling. Short sales, buybacks, all sorts of weird stuff that are beyond the scope of my everyday knowledge, happen all the time. The 2008 crash had a lot to do with gambling games that stockbrokers and bankers were playing with, involving mortgages.

So, my feelings about Trump and MAGA are not based on these short-term fluctuations in the markets. It is not my moral compass that should be used to judge whether what the fascists are doing is good or bad.

Virtually all of what Trump is doing is bad, and it may not be reflected in the markets.

The market does not just react to tariff news. The stock market may rise when unemployment increases, because increased labor competition could lead to lower wage increases. It might celebrate legislation that makes it harder to unionize. It might reward Amazon for understaffing and abusing labor, and punish Costco for paying its workers too much. It might be disturbed if polluting companies have to pay to clean up the damage they do.  

It doesn't care. Shareholder value, and the fact that it will rise forever, is capitalism without ends or limits.

The flip side of this is that I know that if Progressive values ever take hold, as promoted by people like Bernie Sanders and AOC, may cause a flip-out of the market. They would throw a hissy fit if they thought things like universal healthcare and free college were coming. Much of what our capitalism thrives on is the exploitation of the working class, not just in wages but also in keeping them in debt. They love things like student loans, payday loans, buying furniture on rent-to-own terms, high home and car prices, and medical debt - these are all money-making opportunities for the capitalist class.

So, when the stock market throws a hissy fit over Progressive changes, I am not going to dwell on it. I am not going to let that convince me that we cannot change. That our moral compass cannot be fixed, and that we forever have to give in to the wealthy and oligarchic power.

Wall Street is not my moral compass.  

Tom Strait

AOC '28

One More Lick: Mysterious Photograph #3

 

Once upon a time, I knew everything there was to know. But now, that time is gone. At my age, I’ve forgotten more than I remember.

I look down at my beautiful stamp collection. One stamp for every country. Switzerland, where I pushed a man off the Matterhorn. Gambia, where I injected a man with strychnine. France with poisoned wine. Strangulation in the USA. 

Every country in the world. But somehow, I had missed Uruguay. I couldn’t stand being incomplete. I had to correct my lapse. Even at 86.

I booked a cruise to Montevideo. As the cruise was leaving port, I knew I had to act fast. Failing to kill in the city itself, I acted before we entered international waters. I pushed an old woman over the railings, but my mind was not what it was. I left a witness, and the police slowly traced it back to me.

Now I sit at my desk, holding the precious Uruguayan stamp in my tweezers, ready to place it in my collection. I hear loud knocking. I move the stamp towards my tongue. I hear the door breaking down.

I need time.

Time for just one more lick.

Like most of my entries, this one neither won nor received an honorable mention.  Nevertheless, I persevere!

When Did the Madness Start? Our Most Recent Going Off-Track?

 

In the blog post immediately preceding this one, I explored some of the off-road paths we took that led to the madness we are now in. 

I articulated - probably not very well - the two major threads of American History.  Let me try again.

Thread 1 - this thread upholds the ideals of constitutional democracy.  Although it is not a perfect place, it represents the idea that more equality and opportunity will become available over time.  It's found in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that followed.  Except for Prohibition (which was reversed in relatively short order), most of the amendments expanded the concept of democracy, rather than limiting it.  Freeing the slaves, direct vote for Senators, and Civil rights, including women's right to vote, have all been a part of this thread.

Thread 2 - a more authoritarian view of the country, eschewing the benefits of immigration, preferring the dominant culture, and disputing the separation of church and state.  All for so-called economic freedom, which is really just allowing the wealthy and powerful to run roughshod over us. Personal freedom is limited to gun ownership, and the right for their version of religion and morality to control us.

These threads often run concurrently in American History.  However, there have been times when one is more in control than the other.

The circumstances that led us to this point have roots that date back to the country's founding.  However, there has been one event that has most recently and clearly allowed the more virulent and anti-democratic thread to dominate over all the others.

And that was the shoving aside of Bernie Sanders, mostly in 2016, but also in 2020.

It's not that Bernie Sanders is the most golden child of all time.  It's not that Hillary Clinton would not have made an excellent President.  It's more about what it represented in terms of time and opportunity lost by the Democratic Party.

Barack Obama was an excellent President.  He did, however, oversell the "change" aspect of his Presidency. People were quite excited in 2008, ready to move past the disaster that Bush and the mainstream Republicans had led us into.

Even though things seemed relatively stable, the dominant mood in 2016 was a rejection of mainstream politics, as practiced by both the Democratic and Republican parties. Whether the country was advancing or not, they did not see themselves as part of that advancement.

The Republican Party was captured by an outsider, one who promised to blow up politics as usual and make things better for the average American.  Of course, it was a huge lie promoted by a narcissistic conman - but it was clearly different from the controlling political elites.

There was an outsider running in the Democratic Party.  One whose policies were solidly in favor of working families.  It was very exciting and promised a return to true progressive policies, not the Third Way incrementalism that had dominated the party since Bill Clinton.

Well, the powers that be were not going to let that stand.  They put their thumb on the scale and tilted things to ensure Hillary Clinton was the nominee.  Would he have won without this tilting?  Maybe. We'll never know for sure.

The bottom line is that, whether they intended to or not, the Republicans decided on something completely different, and the Democrats decided they would stay the course and promote a highly qualified candidate who was also the very epitome of the establishment that many had grown tired of.

Even with all that, it took considerable Russian interference and the weird vagaries of the electoral college to allow Trump to take the Oval Office.

Once he did, he proved to be quite incompetent.  His only legislation, the Tax Act of 2017, greatly favored the wealthy and powerful.  His behavior during the COVID-19 crisis led to hundreds of thousands of excess deaths that more competent leadership could have avoided. His stupid tariff actions almost broke the American farmer.

In the 2020 primaries, Bernie Sanders was once again emerging as a front-runner, and the Democratic Party was a-twitter-pated.  Biden was dead in the water coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire, but he won in South Carolina.  With Biden revitalized and other primary candidates floundering (except for Bernie), one by one, the other candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden.  It was a stampede to protect the mainstream candidate.

Biden won the 2020 election DECISIVELY (despite whatever lies you've heard), and if you ask me, he was a brilliant leader.  He got us out of the Pandemic and subsequent inflation quicker than anywhere else on Earth.  His economic numbers were the most sterling any President has ever had.  His organization of the international effort to support Ukraine was remarkable. He was as progressive as he could be given the small margins in the House and Senate. And the fact that he was dealing with an ultra-conservative Supreme Court.

But large swaths of the American people did not see that. Their carefully culled media kept them fired up and ready to dismiss Biden - no matter what he achieved.

A bad debate performance and a weak-willed Democratic Party led to him dropping out in 2024.  But his Vice President was highly qualified and made for an exciting campaign.  She picked one of my favorite people, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, to be her running mate, and although this was not quite the progressive turnaround I was hoping for, it went a long way.

Unfortunately, some of the establishment consultants got hold of their campaign, muted her and Tim Walz, so they did not appear to be the progressive powerhouses they could be.  For these and other reasons that may take years of analysis and investigative journalism, they narrowly lost the popular vote to someone who should have been in prison rather than running to be a dictator.

Now that we are clearly losing our democracy, now that the authoritarian thread is unraveling anything the democratic thread tried to do, we are once again seeing that the most popular face of the opposition is...Bernie Sanders.  He has the highest positives of any politician in the country.  His rallies with AOC are setting attendance records, even in traditionally Republican areas.

It's crystal clear.  If the Democrats are ever going to regain their footing, it will have to be with a Bernie Sanders-style approach.  However, well-known establishment Democrats are still fighting back.  Dinosaurs* like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are resisting change and the newer generation as hard as they can.  

A vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), David Hogg (survivor of the Parkland shooting), has suggested running younger, more progressive candidates in primaries against older, more establishment incumbents in safe Democratic districts, to facilitate the change necessary for the Democratic Party to survive. For this effort, establishment Democrats are trying to paint David as a cartoon villain.

It's a tough call to say that the DNC should do this directly.  But...  IT HAS TO BE DONE.

It may take time.  It may not change overnight.  But it does have to change.  Or we really have to sacrifice America's democratic thread.

And I, for one, am not ready to do that.

T. M. Strait

AOC '28

*Yes, Bernie Sanders is old.  But his policies and outlook are forward-thinking.

When Did the Madness Start?

Sometimes it takes a while for a retort.

Maybe as much as two decades ago, in response to global warming, a conservative church parishoner made a joke to other conservative parishoners, deingrating Al Gore by making fun of the so-called claim that "he invented the internet."

Of course, Al Gore made no such assertion, but I couldn't figure out how to challenge it without making a big brouhaha.

So, I let it go. But I never forgot.

A couple of weeks ago, it came up again in a brief conversation about something else involving the perpetrator of the joke. This time, I was comfortable reminding them that Al Gore's claim was not about the invention of the internet but about paving the way legislatively that helped the internet become what it is today.

Victory was sweet, but mostly went over the head of the person who said it two decades ago.

This came out along with some points about the damage Trump is causing. But it mostly swept over the head of whom the message was aimed at, and went careening against a distant wall.

That person was cognizant enough to know that something had gone off track - that our politics had devolved dramatically.

Then he stated when he thought that "off-trackedness" had started.

The answer? 9/11!

I'm like wtf? 9/11?

The assertion was that 9/11 is when "extremism" came out and divided us.

Huh?

What I remember from that period was the Patriot Act, and the potential to be thrown into the Gulag without any constitutional protections, if it connected to "terrorism". What I remember is not being able to say WORD ONE to object to the Iraq War. I remember celebrities, like the Chicks, being vilified and expelled from the airwaves.

So, if that was not when our politics turned nasty, when was it?

It is a nesting egg of brutal decisions, tracing back to the original European settlers of this land.

What led us to this moment where our government is in the hands of an orange conman and his bigoted allies? How did we come to this?

Could it be Newt Gingrich when he led Republicans to treat the Democrats not just as colleagues to negotiate with, but as enemies to vilify and demonize?

Or when Reagan spoke his silly nine-word phrase that has ever since made it difficult to get the government to work together to solve anything - "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help!" Ever since that phrase was uttered, people have gleefully voted against their own interests, and even Democrats are scared to employ government as part of any solution.

Or it could be when President Hayes ended Reconstruction in 1877, and the South quickly reasserted itself, reversing whatever civil rights progress had been made, and returning blacks to a state that was slavery by another name. At that point, without firing a single shot (at least shots aimed at white people), the South in essence won the Civil War. And that status, with some wavering here and there, has essentially held up all the way to today.

Maybe it began at the time of the formation of the Constitution, whose compromises handed an inordinate amount of power to the slave states.

There have always been two threads in American History. One is of bigotry and exclusion, wanting power to remain with a few, and for those of the right skin tone and ancestry to dominate. The other interprets American History as a journey towards more inclusion and participation, a greater move to democracy, open to all who live here.

There has always been a tension between these two. Even in expansive times, there are setbacks. The same President, FDR, who improved the social safety net, increased unionization, and fought the fascists, also interned Japanese-Americans just based on their ethnicity. LBJ brought long-overdue progress in civil rights, but also led the senseless war in Vietnam. On the other side, Bush Jr. brought us the misdirected Iraq War, but also stood up to people who wanted to vilify Muslims. And Trump has...

nah, can't play that game. Trump is not mixed. He's entirely on the wrong side of the agenda, more than any other figure in our history. This is the nightmare we are now facing, and my Gore-dissing friend needs to understand that. Yes, we're divided. We always have been.  

But the authoritarian fascists, the oligarchs, have complete control now.

This is not one set of extremists vs. another set. This is democracy vs. fascism.

I do not know all that we need to do about it. But it starts with recognition of the situation we're in.

There is another, more recent reason we're in the mess we're in, and yes, Democrats are primarily to blame. But I'll save that for another blog story.

Today, let's learn to stand together against that wayward thread of American History.

Let's stand with our better angels instead.

E Pluribus Unum.  Out of many, one.

T. M. Strait

AOC '28.

Top 100 Sci-Fi Movies of the 20th Century!!! Part 4 No. 79 - 73

  I received this issue of Remind, or what Alison calls "my old people magazine," which ranks the top 100 Science Fiction movies of the 20th century.

Remind does have many pop culture stories, focusing primarily on the 1950s through the 1990s, although there are some references to earlier decades. Each issue focuses on different topics, such as country music, westerns, where are they now issues, and much more. I enjoy it, as I love pop history. They also have puzzles and a monthly guide to what's on TCM (Turner Classic Movies).

I thought it would be fun to review the movies on the list in reverse order and share my thoughts. The magazine's ranking of the movies is not mine.  

I won't go into detailed reviews, but I will share the IMDb ranking and my own on a 1 to 10 scale.

79)

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Year: 1954  IMDb: 6.9 Tom: 6  Had I seen before?   No  Service found on: Flixhouse

Bits of  this seemed familiar, but I don't recall seeing it in it's entirety. This is not so much one of those movies about how humankind has caused mutations with their destructive acitivity, but more about our encroachment into areas where we're not supposed to be treading too hard. The creature is a predator, true, but it's mostly defending its territory, and all its moves are met with hostility. The overall feel is kinda retro, but I think it's underwater photography was actually ahead for its time.

78)

 

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Year: 1931  IMDb: 7.6 Tom: 7  Had I seen before? No Service found on: Classic Movies & TV

This is a great rendering of this classic tale, really quite sharp and dramitic.  Fredric March is incredible, winning his first Best Picture Oscar for his performance. It does back away from some of the seedier aspects of Hyde's personality. The ending does not quite lead up to the impact you would expect, but I find that true in a lot of movies. The monster is actually more vulnerable than you would expect.

77)

 

The Time Machine

Year: 1960  IMDb: 7.5 Tom: 8 Had I seen before? Yes  Service found on: Classic Movies & TV

My favorite author when I was young was H. G. Wells, so much so that in 7th grade I was determined that my writing career would use the pen name T. M. Strait.  Some of my love for his works came from his books and stories, but it also came from the movies. And one of the best was this 1960 adaption of The Time Machine.  Done with special effects flair by Director George Pal, and with the gifted Rod Taylor in the lead role, it was one of the first time travel movies I saw that really felt like a journey to the future.  Moving from 1899 with stops during the 20th Century, and then sweeping some 800,000 years into the future, reflecting an exaggeration of the social trends we see presently. 

76)

 

Night of the Comet

Year: 1984  IMDb: 6.3 Tom: 7 Had I seen before? Unsure  Service found on: MGM+

Maybe I've seen this before.  All I can say for sure is that this time it stood out to me more than I was expecting.  Valley girls surviving a horrible apocalypse brought on by a closely passing comet?  Sounds weird, but it was more quirky than stupid.  

75)

 The Truman Show

Year: 1998  IMDb: 8.0 Tom: 8 Had I seen before? Yes  Service found on: Library Rental

Some movies don't age well.  This isn't one of them. It's theme, of our lives being more and more turned into a reality show, is more relevant than ever. And the special effects used still hold up.  Jim Carrey gives one of his strongest performances. I think more and more of us are questioning whether what's happening around us is real, or whether we are stuck in the Matrix.

74)

 

   Gattaca

Year: 1997  IMDb: 7.7 Tom: 7 Had I seen before? Yes  Service found on: Library Rental

I liked this pretty well, but I wanted to like it more. It reflects a near futire where most people are genetically engineered at the time of conception. Those who aren't are considered inferior.  Discrimantion against them isn't official but it exists nonetheless.  This centers around a character who is not genetically engineered (refereed to as in-valids) and tries to pass by disguising himself as someone is engineered but disabled by an accident.   My hesitation on the movie is that the character really wanted to go to Titan, and I REALLY wanted to see that happen, but the movie ended before it transpired. Another important by-product of this movie is Maya Hawke (Stranger Things) - it's where Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman met and began their relationship.

73)

 

Barbarella

Year: 1968  IMDb: 5.9 Tom: 6 Had I seen before? No  Service found on: Prime Rental

Yowza! Is this movie weird! The plot kept making me feel like I needed a drug check.  Hard to follow, but it was fun.  Not quite the X-rated romp some are led to believe, it's actually rated PG.  It seems maybe a little bit much for that rating, but it's not a raunchfest either.  Jane Fonda is beautiful and enthusiastic in the part, if not a shining beacon of acting ability (which she would prove to be in later films).  The chief antagonist is named Durand-Durand, and yes, that is the inspiration for the band named Duran-Duran!  Girls on film!

As an added feature, I would like to keep a running list of those movies I have rated 8 or higher.

90) Akira 8

89) Cocoon 9

88) They Live 9

84) Face Off 8

77) The Time Machine 8

75) The Truman Show 8

Next up? We go on a Quest of the Galaxy, a couple of time romps, and a movie featuring the greatest superhero of all time.

Until next time!

T. M. Strait (thanx, H. G. Wells!)

AOC '28

Pax America!

 April  1st, 2027

God Bless these United States of America!

God Bless Greenland, our 51st State! August 31, 2025!

God Bless Canada, our 52nd State! April 1, 2026!

God Bless the four Senators, 39 Canadian Congresspersons, and one Greenland Congressperson elected in the 2026 election.

God Bless the 2026 election, making it possible to add the following -

God Bless Puerto Rico, our 53rd State! April 1, 2027.

God Bless the District of Columbia, our 54th State, also on April 1, 2027.

Additionally, every territory and possession the US has in the Caribbean was incorporated into the State of Puerto Rico!

And every US territory and possession in the Pacific was incorporated into the State of Hawaii!

Territories and occupations are now rightfully considered backwards and barbaric, a throwback to a more exploitative time.

And now, with all these progressive voters, we will never have to suffer another fascist like Trump again!

HUZZAH!

* too bad, so sad. Even if the authoritarian dictatorship takes over Greenland/Canada/the Panama Canal/Gaza, he will never let them vote. None of us may ever get to vote again. Remember, Trump knows and has said that Musk is really good at getting into computers and voting systems. Good luck, America. You have surrendered your freedom to a monster.