The Angry Bear

Before we moved to Rhode Island last year, I was familiar with Newport as the home of the Newport Jazz and Folk festivals. Indeed, we attended one afternoon of performances at the Newport Jazz Festival this summer. Newport is only an hour from our home in Rumford RI. Recently, I read in The New York Review of Books that Newport RI was once the epicenter of the North American African slave trade. This surprising (to me) news provoked me to read...

If you get a chance, wander over to Seeking Alpha and read New Deal democrat’s very thorough take on the economy. You can set up a fee, limited account there. AB Weekly Indicators for October 2 – 6 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. While interest rates have continued to rise to multi-decade highs, shorter term indicators continue to chug right along, both on the producer and the...

A Jewish American Living in Berlin, Matt De Vlieger, “Not all civilians are equal: 3,803 Palestinians, 177 Israelis since 2008.” The concern for civilian lives appears to waver, leaning disproportionately towards one side. Spare me your war stories. This old Marine Sergeant does not care to hear them. The Gaza is six miles wide. It is a fish in a barrel shoot with either 105 or 155mm Howitzers. A 155mm round can go back and forth almost multiple...

Medicare Advantage Overbilling Taxpayers by $140 Billion a Year, This is Enough to Wipe Out Medicare Premiums, Informed Comment, Juan Cole and Jake Johnson. AB‘s Joel sent me an Informed Comment article. I read the article and knew there was more to the issue than just overcharging the government by upcoding Medicare Advantage plan members. Merrill Goozner writes GoozNews and got the jump on this topic before me in March of this year. Catching up...

Around the world, up through the mid-20th century, it was pretty much dog-eat-dog. Until the 19th, according to legend, nations attacking one another gave the peasantry something worthwhile to do with their lives and provided entertainment for the Nobility. Until the 19th, legend was a bit weak on the details. Then, history and photography came along and screwed everything up. Turns out, far from being splendid, wars were too awful to even think...

An excellent headline jobs number may mask unresolved seasonality, while unemployment weakness “stuck” at a higher level  – by New Deal democrat As per my reporting earlier this week, my focus this month was on whether wage and jobs growth continue to decelerate, and whether the unemployment rate would remain “sticky” at its higher, 3.8%, rate. Two of those three came to pass. The third, jobs growth, emphatically did not! But it may well...

I have been thinking about buprenorphine, naltrexone and the stimulants cocaine and methamphetamine. An issue which came to my mind recently and which I think it worth discussing is that cocaine is often cut and replaced with fentanyl to hide the over-dilution. This is sometimes done sloppily leading to fentanyl overdoses of people who did not know they were consuming opiates. This is another reason to provide naltrexone to all who request...

This is the latest in a series of posts about drug assisted therapy (DAT) of opioid use disorder (OUD). I will repeat things which I wrote here and here. The bottom line, so far, is that there is strong evidence that drug assisted therapy ov OUD is effective and many extremely establishment experts complain that it is not more universally available. I think this is one issue which should be a political winner for Joe Biden. I read that...

I saw an article online yesterday that claimed that over 1% of Americans are using semaglutides for weight loss. Since these drugs suppress appetite, the article was about the possible impact on food retail. Since global warming promises to destroy a lot of arable land on the planet, as well as ocean fisheries, reducing food consumption by overweight people strikes me as an unalloyed good. Since obesity is a risk factor for cancer, heart disease,...

No that is not the real story here today. It does give a perspective on why so many too big, too fast, and too often vehicles are eating up limited supplies of gasoline and oil. However, what is being missed is we are not buying more oil for the Strategic Oil Reserve. Although, I am recalling our younger days when for Christmas the boys (meaning my brothers and I) would get “metal” Tonka pickup trucks and other versions of the same brand. Not a...