The Angry Bear

Several White House aides and policymakers have resigned in the past 24 hours.  Frankly, I don’t get it.  First, it’s way too late to salvage your reputation.  Second, at this point you can (arguably) do more to protect your reputation by saying that you are staying to prevent Trump from doing something crazy in the final days of his presidency. ...

Coronavirus dashboard for January 6, 2021: new infections vastly outpacing vaccinations Total confirmed COVID-19 infections: 21,046,195* Infections last 7 days average: 219,253 Total deaths: 357,258 Deaths last 7 days average: 2,670 Total vaccinations: 4,836,489 *A study just released, based on random blood samples, suggests that as many as 50,000,000 Americans may have already been infected. Because some of the positive tests...

The events at the capitol today are horrifying, and to many of us seem like the natural outcome of Trumpism and the morally degenerate enabling of the Republican party.  But the events today may well end up strengthening our democracy. I suspect that Trump has badly overplayed his hand.  The images of thugs running loose through the capital will horrify a significant part of Trump’s law and order base.  In the court of public opinion, this will be...

Thoughts on the Invasion of the US Capitol  It’s all happening as I write, but here are a few reactions: 1. Fortunately we see Q-Anonics, Loud Boys and other right wing crazies invading the Capitol Building and not Black Lives Matter or the Left.  Think how many lives would have been lost if it had been the other way around. 2. It will be interesting to see how deeply investigators will delve into the lax security preparations for today’s...

— One of Sandwichman’s good questions prompted my revisiting an earlier writing of mine on wealth (circa 2000?). Extensively revised to the extent that it is hardly recognizable; here is, a, second, best effort. Herein, the terms wealth and capital are thought of as being interchangeable. For thousands of years, humans lived off the bounty of nature. Some societies still do, but, today, and for centuries now, most societies have lived...

The wins in Georgia are huge. Now, if Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina can just come up with their own Stacy Abrams, we could see a snowball effect that would change American politics forever. Well, at least, for a long time. Some might think that this outcome along with its portents can solve the electoral college problem. It doesn’t. Doesn’t solve the problem of someone as unfit as Mitch McConnell tyrannizing the nation. The few...

Zooming in on the Defects of PowerPoint  I’ve just finished several days of staring, hour after hour, at the year’s economics meetings via Zoom.  What really struck me, beyond the content of the talks, was the way Zoom exacerbates “death by bullet point”. PowerPoint’s capabilities encourage speakers to load up their slides with lots of text and graphics, which then leads the audience to glue their eyeballs to the slides and not the speaker. ...

The End Of The Embargo Against Qatar  Yesterday Saudi Arabia announced that it is ending the embargo/boycott of Qatar, and though reportedly the UAE leadership is not entirely happy with this, they are going along with this as are the other nations involved in this, Bahrain and Egypt. This had begun in June 2017, reportedly with the encouragement and initial support by Trump and Jared Kushner, with them buying into it as part of an anti-Iran...

Meet Brad Raffensperger. Take a moment and listen to all three clips. The first is at Crooks and Liars. In an interview with 11Alive reporter Brendan Keefe, the reporter asked Raffensperger directly: “If the president hadn’t tweeted, and tweeted something that was false, would we have ever heard that call recording?”Brad: “No, it was a private conversation as far as I was concerned. He broke privacy when he put out a tweet, but then his tweet...