Ted Cruz called for legislation ending Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption the same week that China’s oxymoronic competition authority fined Alibaba $2.8 billion, citing the e-commerce giant for violations of China’s antitrust gufflaw.  Though the United States, unlike China, actually has antitrust laws grounded in and enforced to protect business competition and also unlike China has not yet devolved into one-man rule, Ted and Xi agree about one thing.  Antitrust is merely a cudgel to be wielded politically against businesses that piss them off. […]

While trying to concentrate on “8 Candidates Compete for a Job That May Involve Prosecuting Trump” the New York Times 3/25/2021 cursory review of those seeking to replace Cyrus Vance Jr. as New York County District Attorney[1] - Tom Petty’s “Yer So Bad” flooded my mind and competed for attention.  Specifically, Petty’s repeated sentiment “I can’t decide which is worse.”  Not so much about the 8 candidates – although, so far, we are not overly impressed  – than Cy’s gross abdication of responsibility to finish the one truly important thing he’s attempted as DA. Tom Petty His investigation of the Trump Organization, that’s already made two successful roundtrips to SCOTUS and has great potential as one of three serious vehicles to prosecute, convict, [...]

When those involuntarily kissed on the cheek at a wedding (between chin and cheekbone) became “survivors” as happened at the recent “March to Impeach Cuomo and #TaxTheRich” rally in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park, it may be time for a Doug Ginsburg moment.  The rally starred Lindsey Boylan, a candidate for the primarily ceremonial and patronage rich office of President of the Borough of Manhattan.  Boylan’s campaign to date has primarily been based on being victimized by an unwanted 2018 Cuomo kiss in the Governor’s 40th floor offices at 633 Third Avenue, where HL kissed and was kissed goodbye by another governor, as both resigned. […]

Another classic liberal friend of ours (see HL 129) shared yet another back and forth they’d had with a friend from Oklahoma “where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain.”[1] Our friend had been startled that 92 percent of those recently surveyed in Boise City, Oklahoma said they would not be vaccinated, with many assigning their anti-vax stance to distrust of a medicine foisted on them by coastal elites and with frequent mention of New York “our fair city.”  They even stated that Trump, who himself, along with herself, had been vaccinated in January, was just another New Yorker, not to be trusted, but still voted for, as he was overwhelmingly in all 77 Oklahoma counties.  But only as the least bad choice on the [...]

There’s 538 and then there is my friend, a classic liberal who last week – well before release of the recent Siena Poll showing broad public/voter support for Andrew Cuomo – had the following back and forth by text with a Congressperson of their acquaintance: […]

Unless your attention and hearing are as acute as Horton’s you probably missed it.  Katy Tur’s MSNBC LIVE assurance that we are not to worry that Dr. Seuss had been banned or cancelled.  Not so says Ms. Tur, because she had read one of Mr. Geisel’s not disappeared books to her son the very night before.  Why weren’t we as happy and comfy as Ms. Tur’s child had likely been when soothed by one of the Doctor’s great books. […]

The greatest good for the greatest number, J. Bentham’s formula, further developed by J.S. Mill, was the core of a once in a lifetime interview of Congressman Jamie Raskin by David Remnick of The New Yorker.  Only 18 minutes, here it is.  Going in, the listener expected that center stage would be Raskin’s extraordinarily comprehensive and skillful prosecution of the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.  The New Year’s Eve suicide of Raskin’s son Tommy would only be a powerful reminder of how hard Raskin’s job was and how selfless he had been to accept it. David Remnick But the historic trial, which after all was watched in whole or part by tens of millions, was merely backdrop to how three utilitarians conducted [...]

Political archaeologists will mark 2/18/2021 and Morning Joe on MSNBC as the day and place New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio entered the 2022 New York State gubernatorial primary.  Against incumbent Andrew Cuomo, should he seek a fourth term, as his father did unsuccessfully. […]

We like Wikipedia, and regularly donate to the Wikimedia Foundation in gratitude. But recently spotted its (our crowdsourced) error on the derivation of a “blowback” – assigning that to the CIA, when in fact the agency’s 20th Century spies got it from their boilers, that often exploded, spewing gas, liquid and particulate when fuel dangerously accumulated inside a furnace. […]

The first and abiding reaction to Trump Trial Two is that the only comparable experience in this life was the mid-September 2001 repetitive viewing of the towers collapsing, a place where we had once worked.  Having testified numerous times in the House and Senate, the terrorism images from 1/6/2021 are no less painful but scarier than those from 9/11/2001. Stacey Plaskett The second and ongoing reaction is also suffused with pain, at how badly many Senators are behaving in response to the superb prosecution led by heroic Representative Jamie Raskin and whose breakout star is Stacey Plaskett, the non-voting House delegate for the American Virgin Islands. While true that impeachment and trial under the Constitution is its own thing, and/so not formally governed [...]