The Angry Bear

Org-Dimensional Man In 1959, Harold Rosenberg wrote the essay “The Orgamerican Phantasy,” published in The Tradition of the New. Rosenberg’s essay criticized the “post-radical” self-absorption of several of the same authors — William H. Whyte, C. Wright Mills, and Vance Packard — that Herbert Marcuse would subsequently praise in the Introduction to One-Dimensional Man for the “vital importance” of their work. In Vance Packard and American Social...

Why War Might Go On Longer  An unfortunate reason the current war in Ukraine might go on longer than it should (with the should here being that it should never have happened in the first place, and the sooner it stops the better, with the onus here clearly on V.V. Putin to stop it as he started it without any justification), is that wartime leaders get a puff in their popularity at least for awhile and are let off the hook on domestic problems. ...

So says Martin Kulldorff: Surprising choice of @ashishkjha as @JoeBiden's new Covid coordinator. Not only was he wrong promoting lockdowns, school closures and vaccine passports, he mischaracterized and bullied other scientists by calling them "clowns". A clown would do a better job as Covid coordinator. https://t.co/E3kJQ1mkh6— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) March 22, 2022It seems like Jha did call Kulldorff a clown.  (Kulldorff was an...

January 2021 finds 14.5 million people having healthcare plans due to Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act. As commenter “Arne” pointed out, this represents an increase of ~2.98 million more people insured under the ACA. Even the other Joe voted for it. Manchin that is. Kind of catching up with old news here. Earlier this year mid- January (some states end enrollment at the end of January), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)...

RJS, MarketWatch 666 Retail Sales Rose 0.3 % in February After January’s Sales were Revised 1.0% Higher Seasonally adjusted retail sales increased 0.3% in February after retail sales for January were revised 1.0% higher . . . the Advance Retail Sales Report for February (above) from the Census Bureau estimated our seasonally adjusted retail and food services sales totaled $658.1 billion during the month, which was 0.3 percent (±0.5%)*...

Florida’s Surgeon General Is Sending a Dangerous Message | MedPage Today, Thresia B. Gambon, MD, MBA, MPH March 15, 2022 There is a lot of unclear and purposeful misleading messages coming from politicians, pundits, and the internet. Doctors are also not clear in explaining Covid prevention. The result being the public not understanding whether to be vaccinated or not. Get the shots, the jabs, the boosts, whatever you may call it. It will not...

1974 Redux?  The stock of Thomas Robert Malthus rises and falls with the real price of food. He was not the inventor of his theory of population, a point that Karl Marx threw at him among other criticisms, with such people as James Anderson and Benjamin Franklin preceding him with pretty much the entiretly of his theory. But his timing was much better, publishing the flawed first edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, a year...

At the Atlantic, Ed Yong reminds us that COVID has not disappeared, and that our governing institutions are hardly covering themselves in glory on this issue: This week, Congress nixed $15 billion in coronavirus funding from a $1.5 trillion spending bill, which President Joe Biden then signed on Tuesday. The decision is catastrophic, and as the White House has noted, its consequences will unfurl quickly. Next week, the government will have to cut...

RJS, Focus on Fracking; Oil prices went on another wild ride, but i’m going to copy what I wrote on the monthly OPEC report here. The oil surplus, albeit small, surprised me. If it was going to happen, it would be during the winter for most of the planet’s driving population. Note this is for February, before the Russian sh*t really hit the fan . . . February global oil surplus of 360,000 barrels per day is first in 13 months, despite OPEC...