The Angry Bear

Of Australian descent singer Helen Reddy passed on September 29, 2020 largely unnoticed, at least by me an old coffee house Marine. Helen’s song “I am Woman” was the 1972 anthem and soundtrack of the women’s movement, with the opening lyrics of “I am woman, hear me roar . . . In numbers too big to ignore” turning her into a feminist icon. In 2011, Billboard named her the number-28 adult contemporary artist of all time (number-9 woman). In 2013, the...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 26 – 30 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Neither of the two constraints determining where the economy will go in the next few quarters are economic themselves. Rather, they are (1) the course of the pandemic, which will in turn be heavily influenced by (2) the outcome of the US elections on Tuesday. As usual, clicking over and reading rewards me a little bit for my...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Steve Hutkins at Save The Post Office This post was written in 2016 and slightly updated on Oct. 31, 2018, exactly two years ago today. The update started like this: According to this AP report today, alarms are already being raised about the rejection of many mail-in ballots in next week’s elections. Several of these […]

Been chatting (email) with a friend based in North Carolina. I thought I would share the comments at AB. ———————- I had to spend a good deal of time cleaning up after the remnants of Zeta. We got 5 inches of rain and 45 mph winds. I managed to get leaves out of the ditches and culverts before the storm so what came down didn’t do too much damage to the road. I had it cleaned up the next day. Our local power company is Western Carolina University – an odd...

“What you just Heard from Senator Graham is what we get The discussion of what is going on in Washington D.C. I do not care what is going on in Washington D.C. Because right now, Rome is on fire right here in South Carolina” Part of Jamie Harrison’s opening statement (above) – Jamie gets the stats right and focuses on the people – Lindsey focuses on liberal and conservative ideologies. [embedded content]If you have not heard Jamie Harrison speak before,...

The final 2020 Senate nowcast: 51 Democrats, 48 GOPers, 1 true toss-up Here are the final maps for the Senate, including all polls since October 1. I’ll post the Presidential nowcast separately later since it is going to be significantly longer this week. To refresh, In the first map below: – States where the race is closer than 3% are shown as toss-ups. – States where the range is between 3% to 5% are light colors. – States where the range is between 5%...

Mark Jamison, Retired NC Postmaster at Save the Post Office, October 29, 2020 In forestry the practice of tree girdling is well known. Although there are some circumstances where this can be a useful practice, in most cases the technique is used for nefarious ends. Girdling involves removing the bark and layers below the bark, usually around the trunk of the tree. The cut, when it includes the entire circumference of the tree, makes it impossible for the...

Did The Hunter Biden Laptop Come From China?  The election season is nearly over, thank heavens, but I guess I shall throw one more story for it out there, one I really did not expect and find plenty weird, but with two different sources pushing it, well.  As it is, I must say that given how totally lacking in any credible support this whole Hunter Biden story was from the get go, I found it hard to believe that the Russian GRU was behind it. I think...

Jobless claims: continued slow progress A quick note about the first report of Q3 GDP released this morning: the rebound is only about 2/3’s of the decline from last year. We are still about 3.5% below that number. On a *relative* basis, this was a “good” number, but on an absolute basis, this is still quite depressed. This week’s new jobless claims continued to decline further below 800,000, and continued claims also made a new pandemic low. On a...

Steve Hutkins at Save The Post Office In response to several inquiries from members of Congress, the Office of Inspector General has issued a report on “Operational Changes to Mail Delivery.” The report discusses the Postal Service’s plan to eliminate 64 million work hours — the equivalent of 33,000 jobs — by implementing 57 cost-cutting initiatives. As discussed in this previous post, the plan represents one of the largest downsizing efforts in the...