The Angry Bear

As reported by Crooks and Liars . . . Shirtless man with a holstered handgun, went to the Wisconsin governor’s office on the first floor of the Wisconsin state recently. State Department of Administration spokesperson Tatyana Warrick said, the man was demanding to see the governor who at that time was not in the building. The man was taken into custody for openly carrying a firearm in the Capitol, which is against Wisconsin law. Weapons can...

Very strong initial jobless claims probably the result of unresolved post-pandemic seasonality  –  by New Deal democrat It continues to be reasonably clear that there is some unresolved post-pandemic seasonality in initial jobless claims, which nose-dived last September and rebounded during October. So far the same pattern is evident this year. To wit, initial claims rose 1,000 last week to 207,000. The more important 4 week moving average...

New York Times political reporter focuses on a minor issue involving Democrats and not the utter collapse and insanity of the Republican party. One might think that the story of leading candidate Donald Trump casually revealing top secret information was worth further discussion aside from the article printed on page A3. One might imagine that the complete inability of Republicans in the House of Representatives to do anything non desctructive...

I want to use a tweet by Josh Marshall of TPM to make a broader point about strategic thinking in politics, the situation in the Republican House, and state of competition between Democrats and Republicans. Here is Mashall’s tweet: The idea that Ds should have bailed out McCarthy is a codicil of the larger logic of DC punditry in which R bad behavior/destruction is assumed, a baseline like weather, and Ds managing the consequences of that...

I really really hate to defend Donald Trump, but there is something I don’t get about this story “Trump Said to Have Revealed Nuclear Submarine Secrets to Australian Businessman.” Actually more than one thing, I don’t understand why it isn’t the number one story filling page A1 above the fold like the Anthony Weiner’s laptop has a backup of Huma Abedine’s e-mail story (which it turns out involved no US secrets revealed or endangered IIRC). This...

A follow up to Joel Eissenberg’s commentary on mRNA and how it came to be at BioNTech. This seemed interesting enough to add another post on mRNA discovery. Some more detail . . . Nobel Prize in medicine awarded to scientists who laid foundation for messenger RNA vaccines (msn.com), Carolyn Y. Johnson The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to two scientists whose research laid the groundwork for messenger RNA vaccines that transformed...

LARC (Long Activer Reversible Contraceptives) are highly effective. It seems to me past time for the US Federal Government to pay for contraceptives (all types not just the device of pharmaceutical but also cost of care from the prescribing physician if required) for everyone who wants them (including Elon Musk if he changes his mind about reproducing as much as possible — no means test). I think that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi should make a big...

The current economic “big picture”: by no means are we out of the woods  – by New Deal democrat There is no particularly important economic news out today, so let me take this opportunity to step back and give you more of a “big picture” view of my current thinking. To the extent there is a consensus, it is that a recession has been avoided and a “soft landing” of low inflation and positive jobs and income news will continue. So far, the...

Charles Gaba at ACA Signups in Michigan has been doing the yeoman’s labor of tracking Medicaid, Chips (for children) and the ACA. A good blog to read. He is my go-to person for information on the ACA, etc. CMS releases June 2023 enrollment data: Medicaid/CHIP enrollment dropped another 1.2 million as #MedicaidUnwinding ramped up, ACA Signups, Charles Gaba via the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS): In June 2023, 92,614,205...

This is the upper end or the delivery of product and care of the healthcare food chain. If you want to improve healthcare delivery pricing, you might want to go down a couple of levels more also. The costs of pharma and healthcare supplies are areas to investigate. It may have a bit more of an impact. Rituxan at Medicare prices or private insurance prices. There is a price in between which can be achieved and better than today’s prices. A...