About Frank Moraes

Frank Moraes is a freelance writer and editor online and in print. He is educated as a scientist with a PhD in Atmospheric Physics. He has worked in climate science, remote sensing, throughout the computer industry, and as a college physics instructor. Find out more at About Frank Moraes.

Sorry on Christmas

Posted on 25 Dec 2018 by Frank Moraes

Frank and Grumpy Squirrel So this is Christmas. And what have you done? Yeah, we’re all thinking it so let’s just come out and say it: John Lennon was a dick.

I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, but I never visited people way poorer than myself to hector them about how they’ve lived their lives.

As I recall, at the time of his death, he was worth roughly a hundred million dollars — enough money that he could have used $20 bills to wipe his ass for the rest of his life, even if he had lived to be old. But this is not what I want to talk about.

An Apology

I want to apologize for being a dick myself. A lot of people have supported this website for a long time. And I’ve really let it go. I don’t post much and I take forever to answer comments. But I’m trying to change that.

An Excuse or Explanation Depending on Whether You Like Me

This neglect is not due to any animus against the site or its readers. The truth is that for the last year and a half, I haven’t been doing well. I’ve never been suicidal, but if I had had the ability to simply not exist, I would have taken it.

Brain chemistry is a strange thing. It’s weird how the whole universe changes based on your brain chemistry.

“Suddenly Everything Seems So Easy”

I keep thinking about the film As Good as it Gets. In it, Greg Kinnear’s character was a successful artist who has been violently robbed. His whole life has fallen apart. And he is going to see his estranged parents to ask for money to get back on his feet. But he has a magical evening during which he begins to draw again. So he decides not to ask for money from his parents.

Jack Nicholson thinks this is crazy, “What are you talking about? You got real problems.”

And Kinnear replies, “I know. I’m a little bit nervous. Suddenly everything seems so easy.”

Universes of the Mind

This goes along with Ken Baldwin’s experience jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, “I saw my hands leave the bridge. I knew at that moment, that I really, really messed up. Everything could have been better, I could change things. And I was falling. I couldn’t change that.”

There are lots of cheap responses to this. “Wisdom comes to some suddenly.” Or: “Suicide is a long-term solution to a short-term problem.” But for Baldwin and Kevin Hines and countless others, it isn’t necessarily an irrational choice to take their lives.

It’s just that there are two universes that they are living in. One is filled with pain. The other hope. In general, I believe the universe of hope is the more objective one — at least for the vast majority of people.

Hope

By “hope” I’m not talking about the hope that your material situation will improve. I’m talking about the hope that continuing on is worth doing at all.

For the month of September, I billed less than a thousand dollars. That’s not sustainable. But I just couldn’t face work — not even my own work. That was a very bad month, but it’s been this way for roughly a year and a half.

November and December have been better financially. I’ve been working more here and on Psychotronic Review. And I’ve even had a major breakthrough on a play that has been stalled for the last year and a half.

I’m hoping to do a better job around here. The days of having things to say but just not being able to sit down and write them seem to have passed — at least for now.

Merry Evil Christmas

So after this depressing and self-indulgent post, let me wish you a happy whatever. Now go and watch Christmas Evil (AKA: You Better Watch Out). Christmas, art, slasher film. By today’s standards, it’s hardly violent at all. But it’s fascinating. John Waters says he always played it at his Christmas parties. You’ll see why: it’s also kind of a fetish film.

Ho ho ho! And now a song that would offend most people:

The Early Career of Steve Forbert

Posted on 23 Dec 2018 by Frank Moraes

In 1998, the Timberline Lodge outside Portland, Oregon was filming a number of acoustic sets of notable musicians. One of them was Steve Forbert. But the lodge was snowed in. No one could get there, so I was one of maybe 5 people in the audience. I sat about a foot away from him as he performed. It was a magical moment because Forbert had been a hero of mine since I was in my teens.

In Loudon Wainwright’s great “Talking New Bob Dylan,” he pegs Forbert pretty well as a variation of Bob Dylan:

Yeah, I got a deal and so did John Prine
Steve Forbert and Springsteen, all in a line
They were lookin’ for you, signin’ up others
We were new Bob Dylans, your dumb ass kid brothers
Well, we still get together every week at Bruce’s house
Why, he’s got quite a spread I tell ya, it’s a twelve step program.

Discovering Steve Forbert

I was at the mall recently and over the sound system, I heard little Steve Forbert. It reminded me how much I used to like him.

The song was, of course, “Romeo’s Tune” — the only song of his that was ever a hit as far as I know. Of course, I haven’t followed his career for about two decades. But unless all his intelligence and talent left him, I can’t imagine how he would have found himself in the top 40 again. Anyway, I figured it would be a good idea to start with it because most people don’t know who Steve Forbert is.

“Romeo’s Tune” is off his second album, Jackrabbit Slim. So I’m going to jump back below because I love his first album.

But the nice thing about Steve Forbert’s hit song is that it is fully in keeping with his other work. It’s a wonderful song. And as a lyric writer, he’s more of a poet than almost any songwriter I can think of. “Let me smell the moon in your perfume”? That’s such a lovely enigmatic line!

Goin’ Down to Laurel

Okay, let’s go back to the beginning of Steve Forbert, Alive on Arrival.

I remember reading that the agent who originally snagged Steve Forbert found him playing in a punk club. Although in a certain way, that seems bizarre, in another way, it makes perfect sense.

To me, punk isn’t about a style of music, but an approach to music. Listen to that first Bob Dylan album and tell me if that doesn’t sound punk to you. Steve Forbert on album doesn’t sound so very punk, but he does live. It’s the production. Most of his albums have been really beautifully produced, and that is not very punk.

I mentioned this because I am presenting “Goin’ Down to Laurel” first. Forbert was born in Meridian, Mississippi. It’s a town of about 40,000. And Laurel is about 50 miles south of it — with a population of a bit less than 20,000. But there were more people in Laurel when Forbert was growing up — it’s been falling steadily. So maybe when he sings, “It’s a dirty, stinking town,” he is right.

But what I find fascinating about the song is that he is singing as something of a bad boy — or at least a confident one who is in his element. He’s going down south to see a “little girl” who he says is “a fool” for loving him. And I suspect that as long as he was in Mississippi, he was that person. But the same album has the songs that he clearly wrote after he moved to New York. I’ll highlight one of those songs later. But for now, just bask in self-assurance. And remember it.

Big City Cat

After the last Steve Forbert song “Goin’ Down to Laurel” where he plays the bad boy, I wanted to offer a very different track off Alive on Arrival. The song is “Big City Cat.”

It’s a funny song. He’s talking about his life after moving to New York. Most of the song is just about the feel of the big city with its sights and sounds. The only indication that things are not going that well is when he says, “I’m getting so skinny it hurts to sit down.” This reminds me of once a few years ago when I got down to 99 pounds and it did indeed hurt to sit down.

But the whole song turns into a kind of musical version of The Zoo Story toward the end. He’s living in one of those dreary places with a shared bathroom. And some kind of “lunatic” has been following him. Now the guy is hanging out in his hallway, leading to him being afraid to use the bathroom.

But he ends the song with the wry observation that this is all that he wanted, “I’m supposed to be happy; I’m here where it’s at; I’m a face in the crowd; I’m a big city cat!” Yeah, maybe Laurel wasn’t such a dirty stinking town after all.

Say Goodbye to Little Jo

Okay, now we move back to Steve Forbert’s second album, Jackrabbit Slim. It was his most popular album because of “Romeo’s Tune.” But it also had “Say Goodbye to Little Jo,” which I think got a fair amount of play — at least on AOR stations.

It’s a lovely song. It’s about a break-up. The implication is that it’s kind of a pep-talk the singer is giving to himself: let her go; don’t be a jerk; it’s your own damned fault anyway. There’s also the implication that Little Jo was the one. Break-ups before were easy enough to get through, but this one is going to be different.

This song reminds me a lot of Jules Shear. But that’s hardly surprising. There’s a reason why I admire the two of them so much. But this song has the emotional complexity that I associate with Shear. It’s kind of like one of my all-time favorite Shear tunes, The First Freeze After The Fall. But that song is more about grabbing hold of the pain and cherishing it. That’s in “Say Goodbye to Little Jo,” but it isn’t the focus.

Cellophane City

Now we move to Steve Forbert’s third album, Little Stevie Orbit. It’s actually a very upbeat album — even a bit unhinged at times. But the song I most remember from it is the subdued “Cellophane City.” It’s one of the songs that brings to mind William Goldman’s line about Hollywood, but which applies equally well to the music business, “No one knows anything.” It sounds like a hit to me — at least on AOR. It wasn’t.

Typical of this period of Forbert, the production is exceptional. Or it is just the kind of production that I most like in popular music. Sure, I may admire the more flashy production of Bob Ezrin and Jim Steinman. But its music like this that I listen to again and again. It is probably because it is really creative, but it never crosses that line of being an end in itself. I think Forbert brought that out in producers, given he had different ones.

The refrain in the song “cellophane city” gives the wrong impression about its meaning. It’s really not about some Peyton Place. It’s about one man and how he deals with the infidelity of what sounds like a wife, “He stood in the kitchen, she told him a lie; she left around 7 and kissed him goodbye…” But he gets over it.

The last verse is definitely the best because it puts the man’s previous behavior in context and shows that there is a better way:

You try to be Jesus, you try to be boss
You pulled a few tricks and you hang on a cross
This sepulcher is emptying, yeah all is at peace
We know you’re with Magdalene and you’re sailing for Greece.

That’s right: everyone knows; no one cares; get on with your life. Martyrdom is for chumps. Like a lot of Steve Forbert songs, it manages to be didactic but without the listener knowing it. So there you have your lesson for the day! And a really beautiful song:

Lost

Steve Forbert - Lost Steve Forbert’s fourth self-titled album was, well, weird. It was all over the map. Whereas his earlier albums were incredibly consistent, he decided to spread out on this one. I can’t blame an artist for wanting to do this. But from the standpoint of a listener, it can be a bit disconcerting. It didn’t do well. It led to him losing his record contract.

But I think it’s a fine album. I do think it’s over-produced, and that’s too bad given his first three albums. But it has Steve Forbert’s usual range of emotion and wit. I don’t think it has a single bad song on it. There is a feeling I have a lot with him that I’d rather just listen to him alone with a guitar. He doesn’t need production, even if he was usually served well by it.

I’m going to highlight probably the most low-key song on Steve Forbert, “Lost.” I still think it is over-produced. But it’s such a fine song. And it’s from a perspective we don’t hear much in music — at least like this. It’s about the other man. The singer is talking to the ex of his new lover. The refrain is, “I’m lost in your sweetheart’s arms.” It’s what the other man in The Tennessee Waltz would sing.

He takes no pleasure in the pain he is inflicting on the other man. And he’s not even sure if the woman loves him, “Is she poison? Man, I just can’t tell.” But he’s so in love that he wants her to run off with him and get married. It reminds me of how I used to think when I was younger: that men should be willing to sacrifice their desires out of a kinship of manhood. Think of the ending of Casablanca. But if men can’t do that, they can at least be aware of what they are doing, as in “Lost.”

In saying this, I’m well aware that this a male-centric way of looking at relationships. This is partly why I no longer look at relationships in this way. (More important is that I just don’t see monogamous relationships as being that realistic or healthy.) But overall, everyone would be happier if they at least noticed the pain they cause others.

Steve Forbert Live

Steve Forbert 2015 For years, I’ve looked to see if that 1998 concert ever came out on video. It didn’t. Part of it is on the album, Timberline Acoustic Series. But that’s just audio.

There is surprisingly little Steve Forbert live online. I am getting used to the fact that my tastes are not those of other people. Talking to Will a couple of years ago, I learned that he doesn’t think that much of Forbert. But I must note that in his old age, Will’s taste in music has really deteriorated. Then he made me listen to the Meghan Trainor song NO. All I could think to say was that it sounded like a Meghan Trainor song.

Anyway, the only suitable video I could find was the following 1979 performance at the Capitol Theatre in New Jersey. It’s good, but I’ve already featured the first two songs of it: “Romeo’s Tune” and “Goin’ Down To Laurel.” And it limits his work to the first two albums. But it’s a fine performance. And it’s an excellent way to spend an hour.

Recent Work

Here is a short set from 2015 in support of his album Compromised, which is very good:

First image of Steve Forbert by Lee Paxton via Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Second image of Steve Forbert by Brettalan via Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. All the album covers are from Amazon and used under Fair Use.

Is It Really Time to Say Sherrod Brown Should Be President

Posted on 20 Dec 2018 by Frank Moraes

Is It Really Time to Say Sherrod Brown Should Be President I have been really annoyed listening to people talk about who the Democrats should nominate for president. It’s been made all the more annoying listening to The Villagers gush about Joe Biden. That’s nothing against him. I like him. He’s a great retail politician. I loved watching him beat the crap out of Paul Ryan during the 2012 Vice-Presidential Debate. But who cares? He’s run for president twice and lost both times. Democrats like him but they don’t want him as their presidential candidate. He’s polling high because people know his name. That’s it. If he runs, he will again embarrass himself.

For months, my choices have been Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Sherrod Brown. But I’ve evolved on the issue.

Elizabeth Warren

Even though I defended Warren on her Native American heritage business, there’s no doubt that she handled it poorly. Ultimately, I think that Donald Trump — the trust-fund baby with half a brain — managed to out-maneuver her.

But don’t get me wrong: the Democrats can run a little yellow dog. It doesn’t matter. If the economy is tanking in 2020, that little yellow dog with a (D) after its name will win. And the Democrats could nominate the second coming of Jesus Christ and if he had a (D) after his name, he’d go down in flames (Haha!) if the economy has a minor recession next year and comes roaring back in 2020.

But I just don’t think that Warren is going to make a great president. I fear it will be too much like Obama’s presidency where her naivete will hurt the country. (This is in an “opportunity cost” way: she won’t get as much good work done as she could have.)

Of course, if she is the nominee, I will proudly vote for her.

Bernie Sanders

And then we come to my choice in 2016: Bernie Sanders. I still like him — a lot. But there are things about him that do bother me. But rather than go my own way, I think I will address Mehdi Hasan’s article, Critics Say Bernie Sanders Is Too Old, Too White, and Too Socialist to Run for President in 2020. They’re Wrong. He counters five arguments against Sanders, so let’s go through them.

He’s Behind in the Polls

I’ve already addressed this to some extent. Hasan is right: Biden is beating Sanders in the polls. And this has all the relevance as the fact that my truck needs an oil change. We are one month short of two years from the 2020 presidential election. We are over a year from when the primaries even start. As Hasan noted: at this time in 2014, Jeb Bush was not just the front-runner in the Republican primary, he was the front-runner by double-digits! Fun fact: Jeb Bush suspended his presidential run after South Carolina — the third primary contest!

He’s Too White

On this issue, I don’t think that Hasan did a very good job. He noted two things. First, a number of high-profile African Americans supported him. Second, Sanders has done a lot of outreach to the African American community. I can counter both of these. Sanders didn’t get very many high-profile endorsements and he’s continued to make racially insensitive errors.

A much better argument is just to note that Clinton did poorly with blacks in 2008 and great with them in 2016. If Sanders does manage to have a lot of support in the 2020 primary, I expect him to do much better with the African American community.

So even though I don’t find Hasan’s arguments persuasive, I agree with him. Bernie is not “too white.”

He’s Too Old

This is probably my biggest problem with Sanders. Hasan notes that Nancy Pelosi is older than Sanders. Yes, but not as old as when he runs for president and not nearly as old as when he finishes his first tern. He notes that Biden is almost as old as him. But who cares? I could be wrong, but Biden doesn’t even exist in my political universe.

Hasan also mentions that Warren will be 71. And that gets to my main point: brain function. Adult brain function doesn’t normally change that much over time — until the mid-70s. So I’m not really concerned about Warren. She would be 79 at the end of her second term. She was an academic and that helps with brain function. And she is a woman and they do not generally decline as fast as men.

Sanders would be 87 at the end of two terms. I do think humane instincts are more important than mental power. But this is an important job. And you know what Harry Callahan said:

He Isn’t a Democrat

This is something that annoys me a little bit. The reason is that Sanders is not a socialist. I would vote for Jeremy Corbyn over him any day because Corbyn is a socialist. Sanders is just a typical New Deal Democrat. And that’s great! But why the big deal of refusing to join the Democratic Party? We don’t have a parliament. We have a two-party system. Sanders is a Democrat and he should just accept it.

Hasan’s primary argument is, “So what?” That works very well for me. Personally, I feel that Sanders was treated almost as badly in 2016 as Jesse Jackson was in 1988. Unfortunately, it matters a great deal for a whole lot of Democrats. There are a lot of Clinton supporters who seem to hate Sanders more than Trump. And if that’s a bit hyperbolic, a lot of people hold Sanders partly responsible for her loss. That’s totally unfair, but since when was politics fair?

He’s a Socialist

Hasan says the usual things: the word doesn’t have much power anymore; among democrats “socialism” is more popular than “capitalism”; it’s going to be hard for Republicans to demonize him with the word since they called Obama and Bill Clinton — both conservative Democrats — socialists. I’ll add another one: he’s not a socialist!

Why I’m Not Keen on Sanders

It should be clear that my main problem with Sanders is his age. But I also don’t like the fact that the Democratic establishment is going to go after him even harder this time. Just the same, I hear a lot of Democrats on Twitter saying, “We are united!” When I hear that kind of thing it makes my ass twitch. It’s the kind of thing people say right before a major screw-up.

But there is another reason I’m not as keen on Sanders. Although I agree with him on most things, we part ways significantly over policing and guns. That wouldn’t be a problem if there weren’t someone else who I agreed with more.

But again, if he is the nominee, I will proudly vote for him. Sadly, just like a lot of the ignorant Jill Stein voters in 2016, I feel certain that a lot of establishment Democrats will not vote for Sanders if he is nominated. All this tribalism drives me crazy.

Sherrod Brown

I’ve always like Sherrod Brown. He’s kind of my perfect politician: a labor Democrat. In terms of policy, he really isn’t different than Warren or Sanders. But Brown has deep ties with organized labor. And I really think if workers are ever going to get any power in this country, it’s going to take more than policy; it’s going to take a revitalization of organized labor.

But earlier this year, I didn’t know that much about Brown outside of his economic positions. So I researched him. And I found that other than a mixed record on drugs, I agree with him pretty much across the board. He has everything Bernie has going for him and nothing he has going against him.

And he has something else that was critical to Sanders in 2016: authenticity. He is not a latecomer to this party. He’s been pushing the same policies for decades. In the 1990s, he wasn’t a New Democrat.

Summary: 2020

So I hope that Sherrod Brown runs. I think if he does, he’s going to blow away the pretenders like Biden, Harris, and Booker. But who knows? He may not even run. I’ll vote for whoever the Democratic candidate is. (Yes, even the little yellow dog.) I’m united with that cause. Sadly, I’m not so sure about a lot of other Democrats — and that includes people on both sides of this ridiculous conflict.

#SherrodBrown2020

Image of Sherrod Brown is an official government photo and so is in the public domain.

Trump Is Not the Problem

Posted on 17 Dec 2018 by Frank Moraes

Mike Lee It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone at this point that Trump is not some pernicious force in American politics. He is, instead, just a symptom of a Republican Party that has lost all of its moorings to liberal democratic government. This has not been a surprise to me. In the early 1990s I noticed conservatives talking about how democracy wasn’t that great. And for good reason! They saw that what they believed in as not popular.

But I bring this up because most Americans do see Trump as some outlier. My father, for example, hates Trump but absolutely cannot see that other than being personally coarse, Trump is a standard issue Republican. Indeed, Trump is in many ways better than you garden-variety Republican. Let’s look at the case of Chai Feldblum.

Chai Feldblum

Feldblum is a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Obama first put her on the board, but Trump just waved her through for her second term. And why wouldn’t he? She is an LGBT advocate and a lesbian. And Trump really doesn’t have problems with the LGBT community. (Obviously, if it comes to it, Trump will demagogue anything and anyone.)

But standard-issue Republican Mike Lee has a problem with Chai Feldblum: she’s anti-religious! So he’s holding up not just her confirmation but two others. I’d go through his complaints, but there really isn’t anything to them.

It’s really just what I’ve talked about with regard to the supposed War on Christmas. The problem for conservative Christians is that not treating Christianity as the One True Religion is the same as attacking it. Saying “Happy holidays!” isn’t good enough. They want, “Happy holidays but remember that unlike those other religions, Christianity is true!”

Mike Lee

That’s what Mike Lee is up to. Feldblum has called for more inclusive kinds of group structures: “partnerships, households, kinship relationships, and families.” Notice: families is in there. But the fact that it isn’t the only structure that is in there is not good enough for Mike Lee and the other Good Christians™ with all their Christian Love™.

It’s a shocking thing, really. Mike Lee wants to limit the franchise of marriage — explicitly. Yet he has the hubris to say that Feldblum is the one who is an opponent of marriage.

This is Mike Lee! He’s been a Republican in the Senate for 8 years. Certainly, he has been considered conservative. But there was no outrage because nothing really stands out about him compared to other Republicans.

The GOP Is the Problem

And that’s the point: the Republican Party is horrible. The difference between a Donald Trump and a Mike Lee is that Trump is obvious in his vileness and Lee is worse in his vileness.

Yet if Mike Lee had been president, I don’t think that the Democrats would have picked up 40 House seats last month. And this is terrifying.

Let’s face it, the next Great Demagogue will be a whole lot smarter than Trump. And he’ll be smooth! People won’t be marching in the street because he seems like an okay guy. Sure, we may disagree with him but at least we can speak reasonably with him. And then he will instruct the military to shoot migrant children at the border.

Seeming Reasonable Isn’t Enough

But isn’t it better when our beastly behavior comes from a man who seems reasonable?

Well, no; no it isn’t.

And this is why we have to continue to focus on the Republican Party itself and the way that it is destroying our country. We must destroy the Republican Party before it can destroy the United States as a relatively free and democratic country.

US Senate image of Mike Lee is in the public domain.

Your Guess Is as Good as Ours!

Posted on 10 Dec 2018 by Frank Moraes

Risk Hedge

The Industry for Those Who Dream Only of Money

Stephen McBride is the editor of RiskHedge Report — a stock analysis company. You know the kind of thing: a must-read website (used to be a newsletter) for people who are bigtime stock traders who are inexplicably not rich. How could following widely circulated tips not be a foolproof way to beat the competition?

McBride is such a successful stock trader that he is the editor of the modern equivalent of a tip sheet and a writer for another magazine of the inexplicitly non-rich, Forbes.

Netflix Is Shockingly Not a Good Investment Anymore

Thus, you might not be surprised when McBride reported, Netflix’s Worst Nightmare Is Coming True. I read the article because I thought McBride might have something to say about the increasing cost of bandwidth. But no, his point was that you shouldn’t buy Netflix for the same reason you shouldn’t by IBM: it seems to have peaked in its current state.

I don’t doubt him. This is the reason I don’t trade stocks: by the time I hear about a good company, everyone else knows. Netflix has been streaming video since 2007. And that is when the company really started raking in the money.

Disney Will Destroy Netflix

McBride’s main point is that Netflix is now getting major competition. So it’s dead. The problem is that Netflix has had competition since, well, 2007. Like Hulu. And Amazon Prime has been nipping at Netflix’s heals for years.

The big change is that Disney is coming out with a streaming system, Disney+, next year. (McBride knows it will be successful because he has a child so McBride will be Disney+.) Disney is planning to pull all of its content off Netflix at that time. That will cost Disney $300 million per year.

More Like Consumers’ Worst Nightmare Than Netflix’s

This move will require most people who want to keep streaming Disney films to buy Disney+. But if they want to continue to watch what are mostly exceptional Netflix-original shows and films, they will still need to continue their Netflix subscriptions. Most people will rightly blame Disney’s usual greed.

Side Note: Porno Mickey Is Coming!

McBride also claimed that Disney still had exclusive use of Mickey Mouse. Either he doesn’t realize that this annoying rodent goes out of copyright in 4 years, or he thinks that Disney will again be able to get the copyright term extended. I’m highly skeptical. At 95 years, no one without a major financial stake can think that a longer term will do anything but hurt creative work.

McBride’s Worthless Data

Netflix NASDAQ

But McBride’s only real data is that Netflix stock went up at a very high rate for the first 6 months of this year and has since gone down. Now it is back to its trend line from 2014 until the beginning of 2018. In other words, his big scoop is… nothing.

McBride Might Have Been Right!

It is clear that the only purpose of this article is to allow McBride to brag about what an awesome company RiskHedge Report is since it has been skeptical (for reasons so obvious I know them) for some time. If McBride were really secure, he would have waited another 6 months to publish this when the data would be clear. Right now they aren’t at all. So I suspect that he published now because he knew there was roughly a 50 percent chance that in that time the data would show the opposite.

In the article, he also recommends that people buy Disney stock because of Disney+. But I’ve already mentioned a couple of reasons to be skeptical. Another one is that Disney has never run a streaming company. This could all be a catastrophe. But what do I know? Maybe all start-ups prefer to start each year $300 million in the hole.

Stock Analysts Aren’t Worth Much for Society

My point in discussing this is not to say that Netflix is a better investment than Disney. Or vice versa. Rather it is to note that places like RiskHedge Report are more dream factories than Disney and Netflix. The argument by Stephan McBride is so facile that only someone desperate to believe would.

And on a broader level, how is any of this good for our society? This isn’t a situation where Disney+ will make costs go down. Oh sure, maybe each one will cost less than they now do. But most consumers will end up paying slightly less than twice what they now pay. And it’s all because $12.5 billion per year in net profits just isn’t enough for Disney. And note, they make so much because they’ve been so successful in manipulating the government into forcing consumers to pay much more by enacting unconscionable IP laws.

No one can ever say of me, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” I really don’t care about money. Even making the little I do, I still end up giving a sizable percentage of my income to people even poorer than I am.

But Stephan McBride clearly cares a lot about money. But there is no reason to ask that question of him either. He clearly isn’t smart. He’s nothing more than a professional psychic. It’s just that the people who listen to him are richer than those who call The Psychic Hotline. And they think the fact that the drones at RiskHedge Report can push numbers around in a spreadsheet makes their proclamations any more believable.

It’s just a bunch of people with big but shameful dreams.

Happy Thanksgiving 2018

Posted on 22 Nov 2018 by Frank Moraes

We’re not doing much for Thanksgiving this year. I simply cooked two side-dishes yesterday. And most of today, I will be working. So I thought I would present a few interesting holiday things:

Woody Allen Jesus

I haven’t checked in recently with Tim Minchin. Truthfully, a little of him goes a long way. But he’s still good. Derren Brown is a mentalist/magician. I figured you would want to know. I figure you know who Simon Pegg is.

The Komodo Dragon

Almost no one finds Bob & Ray as funny as I do. But they are wrong.

The Lost Plague

This is a good video by CGP Grey. I can’t help but think of all the deadly diseases that the Europeans brought to America when the subject of Thanksgiving comes up. When I was a kid, in as much as it was talked about, the destruction of native peoples was always told as one of differing technologies. Of course, that was always nonsense. Guns at that time were not that useful. But given that Europeans had become used to living in filth, they could blithely wage germ warfare and convince themselves they were really badasses.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have to get back to work. I hope you have a good Thanksgiving. If you want, you can read my 3,700-word Thanksgiving Round-Up. I’m not recommending.

“Squantohowwellthecornprospered” by The German Kali Works, New York – Bricker, Garland Armor. The Teaching of Agriculture in the High School. New York: Macmillan, 1911. Page 112. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.

The Comics Code’s Target: EC Comics

Posted on 17 Nov 2018 by Frank Moraes

Incredible Science Fiction #33 William Gaines was the publisher of EC Comics — the only comic book in the 1950s that I liked. (I’m not that old; in the late-1970s, the comics were reprinted and better than any of the mainstream comics of the day.)

As we face every generation, there was outrage over how comics in general and EC, in particular, were “destroying the youth of today. You would think we would learn but we never do. There are always people of a conservative bent (I’m not particularly talking about politics here, but these do tend to be politically conservative) who think that because they don’t like something it must be stopped — usually in the name of protecting “the children.”

Juvenile Delinquency!

At the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearing (1954), Gaines’ opening statement was:

Entertaining reading has never harmed anyone. Men of good will, free men, should be very grateful for one sentence in the statement made by Federal Judge John M Woolsey when he lifted the ban on Ulysses. Judge Woolsey said, “It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned.” May I repeat, he said, “It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned.” Our American children are, for the most part, normal children. They are bright children, but those who want to prohibit comic magazines seem to see dirty, sneaky, perverted monsters who use the comics as a blueprint for action. Perverted little monsters are few and far between. They don’t read comics. The chances are most of them are in schools for retarded children.

What are we afraid of? Are we afraid of our own children? Do we forget that they are citizens, too, and entitled to select what to read or do? Do we think our children are so evil, so simple-minded, that it takes a story of murder to set them to murder, a story of robbery to set them to robbery? Jimmy Walker once remarked that he never knew a girl to be ruined by a book. Nobody has ever been ruined by a comic.

The Comics Code

The Comics Code Authority (CCA), which Gaines had the original idea for, would be taken over by conservatives who would do more than just censored basically anything worth reading. At least once the CCA tried to censor an EC title for a purely racist reason. Eventually published as Incredible Science Fiction #33, it was about an astronaut who visits a planet that is home to two “races.” At the end of the story, the astronaut decides that the planet won’t be entered into the federation type organization that he represents because of the planet’s racism. Then he takes off his helmet to reveal that he is black.

It was only allowed to be published because Gaines threatened to go public with the information that the administrator of the Comics Code, 40-year-old Charles Murphy, was a bigot. It was published Feb 1956. Sadly, it was the last comic that EC published.

Note how crazy this is! The elite, white, self-appointed defenders of morality weren’t concerned about the explicit racism and terrorism against African Americans. They were worried about comic books destroying Jack and Jill. And those comic books were my first introduction to Edgar Allan Poe, H P Lovecraft, and even Oscar Wilde (although not directly).

The only title that lived on was Mad. But it was converted to a magazine to remove it from the strictures of the CCA. That’s right: even Mad Magazine was too much for these Very Concerned Citizens.

The CCA Gets “Liberal”

Over time, of course, the Comics Code updated what was acceptable in comic books. I remember a full-page image in one Marvel title from around 1976 that was truly destressing. It was the picture of a man who was in a motorcycle accident and slid 50 feet on his face.

The fact that they had to do that shows that none of this was ever about protecting kids or any concern about morality.

Indeed, the reason the Code changed over time was to maintain its power. So it came as no surprise in early 2011, it died when even Archie Comics stopped using the Code. Of course, it had been decades since it had been relevant anyway.

Target: the Most Edifying Comic Books of the 1950s

The truth is that the purpose of the CCA was always singular and short-term: to put EC Comics out of business. Sure, there were other publishers that the Titans of Morality hated. And obviously, removing people of color and sexy women was great. But that was all icing. Making an example out of Gaines was always its purpose.

But these kinds of people never go away. It’s impossible for them to learn. Indeed, if they got their way and moved society back to 1980, they would immediately start working to set it back to 1940. And so on. That’s because they have an insatiable need to control others. It isn’t enough for them to live by their own morality. They have to push it on others.

Of course, the racist Charles Murphy and the CCA are dead. Meanwhile, those old EC Comics are as good as ever.

Image of Incredible Science Fiction #33 rotated, cropped, and greatly reduced from CGC Comics who are a comic grading service, which is important when people are buying and selling these things that can sell for millions of dollars.

2018 Is Not 1982

Posted on 13 Nov 2018 by Frank Moraes

Ronald Reagan Ed Kilgore recently wrote an unfortunate article, Democrats’ 1982 Midterm Gains Looked a Lot Like 2018’s. Then Reagan Was Reelected in a Landslide.

I understand that Kilgore’s intent was positive: he is worried that Democrats are over-confident about taking the White House back in 2020. But there are ways to do this that don’t distort what we know about political science.

Facile Logic

The article is filled with facile comparisons of Trump and Ronald Reagan. For example:

“Democrats picked up 26 House seats, which was pretty impressive because they held 243 going into the election (they won 55 percent of the national House popular vote). They also gained seven net governorships, precisely the number won in 2018.”

Oh my! I guess I should go drown myself instead of face the prospect of Trump being a two-term president!

Reagan and Trump Coincidences

Some other amazing coincidences:

Trump owns property in California and so did Reagan!
Trump is 6"1' and Reagan was 6"1'!
Trump was 70 when he was elected and Reagan was almost that old!
Trump is mentally ill (narcissistic personality disorder) and Reagan was mentally ill (dementia)!
Trump’s secretary was Reagan and Reagan’s secretary was Trump!

Trump’s Approval Wasn’t the Same as Reagan’s

Okay, most of Kilgore’s coincidences aren’t quite so facile. But they aren’t that much better. And in at least one case, he’s simply wrong: Trump has the same approval rating now as Reagan did at this time: 43 percent. To start with, he’s wrong on the numbers:

First, according to Pew, the polling average so far this year is less than 41 percent. And the yearly average is only 38 percent. Where Kilgore is getting his numbers is unclear.
What’s more, the most correct number for Reagan would be 44 percent, not 43 percent.
So Reagan was beating Trump by 6 percentage points.

But the numbers don’t even matter because Kilgore does not put these numbers in context. When Reagan saw these terrible numbers, the unemployment rate was 10.8 percent! Additionally, the unemployment trend was horrible: it was only 6.3 percent when Reagan entered office. This completely explains why Reagan was so unpopular in 1982.

Things couldn’t be more different for Trump. The unemployment rate went from 4.9 percent when he entered office to 3.7 currently. Yet despite these good economic numbers, Trump is distinctly less popular than Reagan.

But Kilgore just throws up two (incorrect) numbers and provides no context.

Trump Could Very Well Win in 2020

Don’t get me wrong: over the last two years, a lot of liberals have indicated that 2020 will be an easy election for the Democrats. And I always tell them the same thing: if the economy is still growing, Trump will win.

Note that my simple presidential election model predicted that Trump would win the election in 2016 by a very small margin. And it will predict that he wins re-election depending upon the employment numbers in the first 9 months of 2020.

But there are a couple of things that make me think he will not win re-election.

The first is that Trump did far worse than the economic numbers would indicate. Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes when Trump should have won it by a small amount.

The second is that the economy is at as good a place as the Federal Reserve will allow. Trump’s only real hope is that there is a quick downturn and recovery. It certainly could happen. But if I were a betting man, I’d go with the Democrats.

Summary

The last thing I want to see is the Democrats getting complacent. It was tragic that after Obama became president, the base dropped the ball. Even worse: so did Obama. And in 2016, if all those Jill Stein voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio had voted for Clinton, the Democrats would contract the White House — and the Supreme Court for a generation.

The Democrats need to fight hard in every election. 2018 showed how important this is.

But the 2020 election will not depend upon this year’s results. And the comparison with Ronald Reagan in 1982 is meaningless.

Image of Ronald Reagan is in the public domain.

How to Vote: November 2018

Posted on 05 Nov 2018 by Frank Moraes

I’ve been meaning to write this for weeks. In some ways, it is hard to get too excited about, however. I can go through the propositions in July and tell you which good ones that are polling well will go down in flames because all the money spent on them.

Prop 10

This year, the primary example of this in Proposition 10.

The interesting thing about 10 is that it didn’t actually need much spending to be killed. The truth is that our “liberal” Californians are very much like our Silicon Valley plutocrats: they are all for liberal causes as long as it doesn’t require even the smallest personal sacrifice.

And the amazing thing is that Prop 10 doesn’t even do much. All it does is allow local governments to enact rent control if they want to. Currently, local governments are greatly limited regarding how much they can do to keep rents low.

Now, on one level, I’m not that keen on local control. As we have seen over and over, it is usually local governments that are most corrupt and evil. So I always had a small reservation about Prop 10. But I find it annoying that all the “local government is best” conservatives out there are voting against it. Remember: it doesn’t enact rent control; it only makes it available.

Other Stuff

Some propositions each year confuse me greatly. That was the case with Proposition 12. It sets how large a farm animal’s pen must be. I am voting for it. But both sides of 12 claim to be the real defenders of animals. And listening to them go back and forth makes my head spin.

One really good thing this year is that Kevin de Leon is running for US Senator against Dianne Feinstein. I know that she is going to win (although that itself is an indictment of our political system). But it is nice to have someone else to vote for. Feinstein’s sell-by date is about a decade old.

Votes

I am afraid this list is not very interesting. This is how a hard-core Democrat would vote. But that should surprise no one.

Prop 1: yes
Prop 2: yes
Prop 3: yes
Prop 4: yes
Prop 5: no
Prop 6: no
Prop 7: yes
Prop 8: yes
Prop 10: yes
Prop 11: no
Prop 12: yes
US Senate: Kevin de Leon
Representative (5): Mike Thompson
Governor: Gavin Newson
Lieutenant Governor: Ed Hernandez
Secretary of State: Alex Padilla
Controller: Betty Yee
Treasurer: Fiona Ma
Attorney General: Xavier Becerra
Insurance Commissioner: Ricardo Lara
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony Thurmond

But just make sure you vote! Also: it’s important that Tony Thurmond win because that means Marshall Tuck will lose.

Why You Should Read Don Quixote — Part 2

Posted on 31 Oct 2018 by Frank Moraes

Why You Should Read Don Quixote My first article on Why You Should Read Don Quixote was the text for a Toastmasters’ talk. And in this task, I was supposed to take the feedback on the talk and improve the speech. But it would be pretty dull to hear the same speech again. So I decided to take a new approach.

Before, I fear that I focused too much on the “great books” aspects of Don Quixote — how it was the first modern novel and the first postmodern novel. But really: I think you should read Don Quixote because it is enormously entertaining. It is The Twilight Zone of the 17th century. And so I thought I would spend a little time going over some of the amusing bits in the first book.

Pasteboard Visor

The novel starts with a discussion of this silly old man who has been driven crazy by the literary tales of knights errant. So he decides to become one.

In the past, you’ve probably seen movies where rich people have a knight’s suit of armor in their house as decoration. Well, lucky for Don Quixote, he too has one. So went he decides to hit the road and find glory by righting wrongs, he has a suit of armor waiting. Except…

The helmet has no visor on it. What to do? Make one out of pasteboard!

This shows, from the very start, that he understands, at some level, this is all play acting. He’s a knight errant in the same way that child who dresses up for Halloween as a pirate is a pirate.

The fact that pasteboard would not protect him doesn’t matter! As long as it looks like it will protect him!

Andres the Slave Boy

In his first real adventure, Don Quixote comes upon a farmer whipping a boy, Andres. He soon discovers that Andres has been working for the farmer. But the farmer abuses the boy and never pays him.

Don Quixote is outraged and demands that the farmer pay the boy. At first, the boy is happy to have this hero on his side. But Don Quixote simply instructs the farmer to take the boy home and pay him.

When Andres protests that if Don Quixote isn’t around, the farmer will just beat him further, Don Quixote dismisses him. Of course, the farmer will be a man of his word! And Don Quixote rides away, assured that he has done a good deed.

The Helmet of Mambrino

Later on, Don Quixote and Sancho are traveling in the rain. They see a man with a wash basin on his head. Or rather, Sancho sees a man with a wash basin on his head. Don Quixote sees a man wearing the mythical helmet of Mambrino! It makes whoever wears it invincible! So Don Quixote is keen to have it.

He rushes toward the man who, seeing a crazy man coming at him with ill-intent, drops the wash basin/helmet and runs off. A thrilled Don Quixote picks it up.

But he makes a rare admission to Sancho. He says that it does indeed appear to be a wash basin. Someone must have melted down the helmet of Mambrino, not knowing its value, and reformed it into a wash basin.

Reality Rears Its Ugly Head

At the end of the first book, Don Quixote and Sancho find themselves in a village they had visited earlier. There many of the earlier plots come back to haunt the Great Knight of La Mancha. But they don’t haunt us at all, because we are not crazy.

As we expected, after Don Quixote left the slave boy, the farmer beat the poor boy more savagely than he had ever before. The boy was no longer under the farmer’s control. Just the same, he had never been paid.

The man wearing the helmet of Mambrino was actually just a barber who was wearing his wash basin to shield his head from the rain.

It seems that everyone in the village has a story of how this crazy old man who thought he was a knight had ruined their lives. I think Andres, the slave boy, sums up the consensus, “Look here, mister knight-errant, if you ever come across me again, even if you can see that I’m being torn to pieces, for God’s sake don’t come to my rescue — just leave me alone with my troubles, because they can’t possibly be so great that your help won’t make them much worse!”

Many other exciting “adventures” come together at the end to turn Don Quixote’s world upside down. I’ve just highlighted two of my favorites, but I could go on.

If it sounds crazy, it should! You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound. A dimension of sight. A dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of shadow and substance — of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into Don Quixote.

A Useless Press Conference

Posted on 26 Oct 2018 by Frank Moraes

FBI I was driving today, so I got to listen to the entire press conference about the arrest of Cesar Sayoc — the man suspected of sending pipe bombs to a number of Trump critics. What most struck me was just how useless the press conference was.

Jeff Sessions

It all started badly with Jeff Sessions giving a “can’t we all just get along” speech without a hint of irony. This is the way it will be with Republicans. In fact, before the press conference, NPR interviewed two political consultants: a female Republican and a male Democrat. And she, of course, brought up Maxine Waters who told Democrats to harass Trump Cabinet officials in public.

The Democrat pushed back and said that Waters specifically talked about making it uncomfortable for people in the Trump administration to go out to dinner. In other words: putting a social cost on working for Trump. She specifically wasn’t calling for violence. And Trump has specifically called for violence.

The Republican backed-down and claimed that she did not mean to make the two sides equivalent. But if that’s the case, what was she doing? She was trying to give Republicans cover by misrepresenting what Democrats have been saying!

During the same segment, Sessions was applauded for the way he dealt with the matter. But this is totally backward. Sessions is simply trying to remove politics from this clearly political act. And that’s what you would expect because it the Republican Party that has been pushing this kind of violence. In other words: the best political move for the Republicans is to claim that this is not political. Sessions isn’t being a statesman; he’s being a good Republican Party soldier.

Self-Congratulations From Law Enforcement

The law-enforcement officers who spoke were the same way. They didn’t want to get into the politics of it because this was just a law-enforcement matter.

But their bigger mission was to congratulate themselves. There was endless repetition of “The work our people did was amazing” and “The American people should all unite in thanking the FBI for its amazing work in this case.”

But the one bit of information that was helpful in the press conference undercut this: they found the suspect because he left a fingerprint on the envelope that he sent to Maxine Waters.

In other words: this wasn’t amazing work by the FBI and others. Apparently, Cesar Sayoc left his fingerprint on the envelope. And even then, the FBI would not have found him had Sayoc not had a criminal history and thus had his fingerprints on file.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure that the FBI has done a professional job with this investigation. But this is not cunning investigational work. Any law enforcement agency would have found this guy. I see nothing that should make Americans especially proud of the work in this case. Indeed, if the FBI had not found this guy quickly, it would have been an indication that we desperately needed reform at the FBI.

Press Conference Was Supposed to Be Useless

I was struck by the fact that the press conference started with the FBI saying that they were not going to comment on the investigation nor the suspect. I thought right then: why are you having a press conference?! After all, that is the information that the people want.

But they didn’t live up to that. They told us a number of things about the investigation like the fingerprint on the envelope. It seems that they simply weren’t going discuss anything that might make the president or his party look bad.

And that makes me think that the government is going to do everything it can to let this whole thing blow over before having to admit that the Republican with all the pro-Trump, pro-Republican, and anti-CNN bumper stickers on his car is, in fact, guilty.

Standing Up for the Rule of Law

One thing Session discussed was that America stands up for the rule of law. That was an interesting claim, because when it comes to criminal behavior by Donald Trump, neither the administration nor the Republican Congress nor even Republican voters believe in the rule of law.

And this whitewash of a press conference is part of this. Had it been a Clinton supporter sending out pipe bombs to Republicans, I’m sure we would hear a lot more — even things that weren’t true.

Elections do have consequences. We see that more clearly now than ever. But at least when Barack Obama was elected, the people knew what they were voting for. Although Trump voters are largely okay with holding the president above the law now, I know that’s not what they voted for.

FBI image is in the public domain, via Wikipedia.

Cherokee Nation’s Response to Elizabeth Warren

Posted on 20 Oct 2018 by Frank Moraes

Cherokee Nation's Response to Elizabeth Warren There is some question as to whether Elizabeth Warren should have been pulled into a pissing contest with Donald Trump. After all, the man does nothing but piss. And there is no winning an argument with a man who habitually lies and who won’t even admit wrongdoing when there is video evidence. For example, Trump offered to donate a million dollars if Warren took a DNA test and it showed she was “an Indian.”[1] When she did so, Trump claimed he never made the offer.

But let’s cut through all the nonsense. The facts are clear. Trump made an offer to Warren. She accepted it and proved she was right. And he has since had a number of excuses for why he doesn’t need to follow through on his promise. I have little doubt that the million dollars does matter to him — even though it isn’t much compared to all the corrupt money he has acquired while being president. But the bigger issue is that Trump will never admit to being wrong. And with the help of the Republican establishment’s mendaciousness and the Republican base’s motivated gullibility, he doesn’t need to.

The Cherokee Nation Responds

What most concerns me is the response from the Cherokee Nation. They have been engaged in some major false equivalence. In addition to it being morally wrong, it is bad politics. Do they really think that knit-picking a Democrat who is broadly supportive of their concerns will translate to support from Trump and the rest of the Republican Party? Although it isn’t a subject of particular concern to the Cherokee Nation, look at how the Republicans has responded to the concerns of Native Americans regarding the Keystone XL pipeline.

I’m not saying that the Cherokee Nation should just accept that their allies are in the Democratic Party and so they should shut up. But in this case, leaders of the tribe seem to be going out of their way to find offense when there really was none. And we know this because their complaints have been about things that Elizabeth Warren never did. For example, Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin was interviewed on NPR.

Determining Who Is A Cherokee Is More Than DNA, Hoskin Says (16 Oct 2018)

Tribal Identity Isn’t Determined by DNA

The complaints circle around what it means to be Cherokee. And Hoskin is right — not just about Cherokees but about any group. The problem is, Warren’s argument with Trump — and the release of her DNA test results — have nothing to do with her being Cherokee.

Chuck Hoskin This whole thing started when she first ran for Senate in 2012. She was challenging Scott Brown, who made a big deal about it. And his supporters began calling her Pocahontas. Warren’s only claim has even been that according to her family members, they had a Native American ancestor. This is pretty common. Most families have one or more such stories. “Thomas Jefferson was the brother of our great-great-…-grandfather.” Or whatever.

What’s more, her listing herself as part Native American while in college is hardly cultural appropriation. I listed myself as Portuguese, and I certainly have no cultural connection to even the local Portuguese community. There certainly is some question about whether people should do this. But the issue is a mess and Warren certainly shouldn’t be held accountable for the fact that our society has (and probably will) never come to terms with its continued history of racism.

Warren Isn’t Claiming to Be a Tribal Member

Regardless, this is not the issue that Cherokee Nation leaders have been complaining about. They have been complaining about the DNA test. And the DNA test was taken to answer one question: did Elizabeth Warren have a Native American ancestor. And the results of the test indicate that she did, in fact, have an ancestor “living around the mid-1800s, which is similar to Warren family lore.”

The result of this attack on Warren has been that the release of her DNA test results is reported as being as bad or worse than Trump’s vile and loud racist comments. In fact, as you will see in the NPR interview above, Chuck Hoskin has no comment about Donald Trump’s racist bullying of Warren that caused her to release the results in the first place.

Elizabeth Warren Makes the Cherokee Case

And in the video that Elizabeth Warren released, she acknowledges all the points that Hoskin makes about DNA not being an indicator of tribal identity. Yet Warren’s video (which must have taken some time to produce) was released a day before Hoskin’s interview.

Yet if you do a Google search on “warren cherokee,” you will find article after article about how angry the Cherokee Nation is at Warren. And it is all about stuff that she did not do. It is all presented as explaining to Warren things that she clearly knows based on her video.

I really hate this because it allows Republicans to run around spreading lies — including their favorite lie that Democrats are the real racists. And I’m really unclear what the Cherokee Nation gets out of all this. Yes, it was an opportunity to educate the public. But it didn’t provide any more information than Warren’s video. And the Cherokee Nation could have educated the public without the false equivalence, which is all most people will take away from this debacle.

Elizabeth Warren’s Family Story (15 Oct 2018)

Images are in the public domain.

[1] Trump’s full statement was, “I will give you a million dollars, to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.” A DNA test can’t actually prove that one is a Native American in any scientific sense. Race is not a scientific thing. But in this context, Trump can mean nothing other than that she was telling the truth about having a Native American ancestor. As for the claim that she has less Native American DNA than the average American, that is completely false.