Category Archives: Politics

An Open Letter to Pretty Much Everyone I Ever Bought from or Donated to Online

Posted on October 11, 2022 by Michael Froomkin

Dear Online Retailers:

I am so tired of you punishing me for having bought from you by automatically sending me marketing emails, often only days after the sale — even when I don’t check “YES! Send me lots of email I don’t want.”

For the record,

  • I don’t want a follow-up email asking me to give you a high rating on Amazon or some other platform;
  • I don’t want a follow-up email asking how much I love the product, doubly so if the choices regarding filling in the survey are “Yes” or “Later”;
  • I don’t want to know about your new items on sale;
  • I don’t even want a reminder, after a decent interval, to buy more of your consumables, although this at least is more forgivable.

Your Former Customer,

Michael Froomkin

P.S. And please don’t get me started on all the punishment I’m getting for having made some political donations.  Candidates from all over the US are sending me appeals for funds that look like they came out of one of the same pair of cookie-cutters. All opt-out, never opt-in.

It’s so bad that I am ready to give to the first candidate who sends me an email, even an unsolicited one, promising never to email again unless I reply. Although, come to think of it, if I do that, I guess I’ll get more email anyway…

Posted in 2022 Election, Personal, Shopping | Comments Off on An Open Letter to Pretty Much Everyone I Ever Bought from or Donated to Online

Give ’em Hell, Joe

Posted on August 27, 2022 by Michael Froomkin

A ‘Dark Brandon‘ meme.
Source: Know Your Meme

In the early days of the Biden administration, news articles suggested that the Biden gang was dreaming big, of having a tenure as consequential as FDR’s, or if not FDR then at least LBJ.

Didn’t happen–due to the filibuster, and then Joe Manchin.

But a week is long time in politics, and the Biden admin has now had two good ones. They passed some bills and issued some executive orders that look consequential and, equally importantly, sound consequential.

And Joe Biden is taking his show on the road. Listening to the new, or rather renewed, feisty Biden, I don’t hear much FDR. What I do hear is echos of Harry Truman. Truman may have had the “do-noting Republican Congress” to rail against; Biden can say–and has started saying–that for large and popular parts of his agenda, “[N]ot a single Republican — not one single one voted for it. Not one.”

I bet Biden, even though he was only 11 or so when Truman left office, is conscious of those echos too. “Give ’em Hell, Harry,” worked for Truman, and a similar kind of talk might well work for Biden too.

Posted in 2022 Election | Comments Off on Give ’em Hell, Joe

This is Different: Democrats Bragging about “Winning”

Posted on August 12, 2022 by Michael Froomkin

I can’t recall the last time I saw an upbeat ad like this from national Democrats:

Bet no one puts it on TV….

Posted in 2022 Election, 2024 Election | 2 Comments

Summary of Voters’ Guide to the August 2022 Miami-Dade Ballot, Judicial Elections

Posted on August 11, 2022 by Michael Froomkin

Circuit Court
Group 3: Line 91 Judge Lody Jean
Group 20: Line 93 Judge Robert Watson
Group 34: Line 95 Ariel Rodriguez
Group 52: Line 96 (former) Judge Jason Bloch

County Court
Group 5: Line 99 re-elect Judge Fred Seraphin (this one is important!)
Group 19: Line 101 Judge Jeffrey Kolokoff
Group 42: Line 103 Judge Scott Janowitz

If you’d like to know why I’m recommending these judicial candidates, see Voters’ Guide to Miami-Dade Ballot, Judicial Elections (Part 1: Circuit Court) and Voters’ Guide to the August 2022 Miami-Dade Ballot, Judicial Elections (Part 2: County Court)

FWIW, in the School Board race in District 6 I’m supporting Maria Rojas (line 134). I’m not a fan of this long-time Republican, whose voting record is at best wishy-washy (for a mask mandate at the height of the pandemic, but also for banning what I gather is a perfectly ordinary age-appropriate sex ed textbook), but her opponent is far, far worse; if you love Trumpist takeovers of school boards, you’ll probably like her opponent.

Posted in 2022 Election, Miami | Comments Off on Summary of Voters’ Guide to the August 2022 Miami-Dade Ballot, Judicial Elections

HUUUUGER Than Watergate

Posted on March 29, 2022 by Michael Froomkin

Nixon had the eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in the White House tapes. Nixon was a piker. Trump has a SEVEN+  HOUR gap in his phone logs that just happens to fall during the Jan 6 insurrection. There’s almost no conceivable explanation that doesn’t make Trump look awful.

I’m actually quite depressed about this, as I fear that it vastly increases the odds that Governor Evil will become the Republican nominee, and perhaps even the next President.

Posted in The Scandals | Comments Off on HUUUUGER Than Watergate

Five Random Mysteries

Posted on March 29, 2022 by Michael Froomkin

  1. A constitutional question. Why do people who think Donald Trump won the 2020 election think he’s eligible to run again in 2024, when the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution says, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”? (Gary Trudeau wonders this too.)
  2. An ID theft ‘prevention’ question. What is the point of (for pay post-website-breach) so-called ID-theft-prevention services sending me notices that my email has been found on some (unspecified) hacker site and I should change my (unspecified) password? I have few emails and many passwords, all unique except the worthless ones. How am I supposed to figure out what to do? Why not send me the password if it’s compromised anyway so I could search my password manager and password spreadsheet and change it?
  3. A basketball question. Why does the NBA penalize teams for taking good shots that miss when it doesn’t penalize bad shots? The NBA uses a shot clock to force teams to move quickly to score. Ordinarily a team has 24 seconds from getting possession to attempt a shot on pain of losing the ball. If they miss but hit the rim and rebound, the clock is reset to 14 seconds. That makes sense if the offense took the shot with fewer than 14 seconds remaining on the shot clock, and matches how the clock is reset if the other teams fouls or kicks the ball when there are fewer than 14 seconds left on the shot clock. But unlike fouls and kicks, where taking the ball out on the side never costs a team shot-clock seconds but only adds to them if the shot clock is running down, when a team shoots with more than 14 seconds on the clock, misses but hits the rim, then the short clock is shortened to 14 seconds. This just penalizes a team for quick offense. The absurdity of it is even clearer when you consider what happens to a team that attempts a shot when there are more than 14 seconds on the shot clock, but the shot is so bad that it doesn’t hit the rim — that wild shot has no effect on the shot clock at all! The incentives are all wrong: the NBA should reward good shots more than very bad ones rather than the other way around.
  4. A religion in the public sphere question. How come more evangelicals don’t entertain the idea that COVID was a plague sent to punish us for electing Trump?. Goodness knows they’ve claimed all sorts of earlier natural disasters were chastisement for progressive policies.
  5. A shopping question. You have to figure Gatorade is suspicious given the origin story with U. Florida…but this bad? Maybe it’s a good thing G2 is missing from stores? And is lemon-lime G2 cancelled? It does seem to have gone missing from the G2 website.
Posted in Basketball, ID Cards and Identification, Law: Constitutional Law, Shopping, Trump | Comments Off on Five Random Mysteries