The Angry Bear

“December 11, 2022, Letters from an American,” Prof. Heather Cox Richardson The Keystone Pipeline ruptured Wednesday night near a creek in northern Kansas, spilling what its operator, TC Energy, says is about 14,000 barrels of oil. This is equivalent to about 588,000 gallons (an Olympic swimming pool holds about 666,000 gallons). TC Energy says the leak is now contained. This is the largest land-based crude pipeline spill in the U.S. in nine...

Weekly Indicators for December 5 – 9 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The most noteworthy trend over the past several months has been the almost relentless deterioration in the YoY measures of consumer spending and employment. That trend continued last week. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the state of the economy, and reward me a...

Dale Coberly: Commentary on an article by Nancy Altman that I read yesterday: “Senator Warnock’s Re-Election Is a Victory for Social Security,” Portside, Nancy J. Altman. Nancy Altman wrote a pretty good book about Social Security [The Battle For Social Security (2005)] which I recommend. It’s readable and tells a story better than I can. In it, she explained the difference between worker paid insurance and welfare. And she told a story about...

Kind of beat today. I could not think of anything simple to write. What I have on my agenda to write requires some deep dives in the mechanisms of certain topics. I just don’t have the desire to dive deep. One issue I Have been closely watching Arizona Senator Primadonna Sinema who is just making things difficult. With 48 Dems and three independents, her ability to cause the twisting and turning of the entire Democratic party to appease her is...

“November producer prices: YoY measures mask recent sharp deceleration to mainly tolerable levels“  – by New Deal democrat Consumer prices for November won’t be reported until next Tuesday, but this morning we got the upstream producer prices. The news was mainly good, although not good enough to likely dissuade the Fed from its current course of interest rate hikes. This is one of those cases where YoY measures give a false picture in...

Having worked for Oscar Mayer buying food labels and packaging, this article caught my eye. Oscar Mayer is an old company and was left pretty much alone by its owners until Kraft got involved. A big time of the year was July 4th for hot dogs. The author is going to tell you the food labels on products are not looked at and reviewed. If he means “good until such” date. I am sure there is data backing it up. Somebody i Quality reviewed the data backing...

Some people believe that a DeSantis presidency would be a bigger threat to democracy than a second Trump presidency.  The thought is that DeSantis is just as authoritarian as Trump, but more competent.  I agree that DeSantis appears to be a dangerous authoritarian and he might well be more effective than Trump at undermining democratic control.  However, there are reasons to think that a second Trump presidency would be more dangerous than a...

Weldon, others and I go back a way. All the way to the Best of the Fray on Slate. I am a numbers guy still steeped on the engineering side. Weldon is a journalist. Bad Crow Review, “All The News That Ain’t Anent,” Weldon Berger, (substack.com). New York Times journalists in mass strike for first time in 40 years New York Times journalists have committed some absolutely rotten journalism over the years, whether downplaying Hitler’s...

– by New Deal democrat Jobless claims: troublesome trend continues, but no yellow flag yet Initial jobless claims is one of the few remaining positive short leading indicators. But as I’ve noted for the past several weeks, the trend is troublesome. This week initial claims rose 4,000 to 230,000, and the 4 week moving average rose 1,000, also to 230,000. Continuing claims one week previous rose 62,000 to 1.671 million: Initial claims...

More security documents were found in trump’s possession by a trump discovery team. Maybe his mind is so fried, he is forgetting? Doubtful. trump’s lawyers insist trump still has presidential immunity even though out-of-office. A new crook emerges in Jared Kushner enlisting the aid of foreign interests to pressure another foreign country for donations to bail out his over-leverage property. Gangland style family. A new battle in SCOTUS, can state...